Ubi send word that their free online dungeon-crawling hack ‘n slash,The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot, will open up for a week for everyone, not just beta folks, from yesterday until 3rd September. You can jump right in just here, or you can watch a video of a comedy mage with a terrible squeaky mage, below.
Anyone playing this? I’ve been meaning to take a look. (more…)
Handsome alternate history steampunk Civil War card game from the makers of SpaceChem, Ironclad Tactics, is set to appear on Steam on September 18th. But that far off date hasn’t stopped them from taking pre-orders that give you rather more than you’d get purchasing on release day. What’s this pre-order business all about? Developers Zachtronics explain that the bundle: “contains Ironclad Tactics, the first two add-on campaigns for Ironclad Tactics when they’re released, a copy of SpaceChem with the 63 Corvi DLC, and a bunch of other fantastic extras.” They do look okay, too.
Oh, and there’s a video for you watch in the Confederate South of this post. Take a look. (more…)
SolForge is a Kickstarter success story, nearly doubling their not insignificant target of $250,000, and since then going live on Steam, where it has been unfolding for a couple of weeks. It’s a unusual, credible take on the genre, exploiting the digital nature of its medium to the fullest. Cards are simultaneously in your deck and in play, sometimes with entirely different statistics in each case. It’s incredibly quick to learn despite these complexities and won’t take long to hook you – but can it keep your attentions? How does its take on “free” effect it? Moreover, is it any good?>
Get your secret decoder rings out, make sure you have access to a librarian with a murky past, and would it kill you to put on some tweed? Team Fortress celebrated 17 years of being Team Fortress on August 24th, which Valve completely missed. To sort-of-but-not celebrate this occasion, they’ve made a new comic starring everyone’s favourite sky-diving CEO, Saxton Hale. Part one is long and here, and there’s more to follow. This is typically when Valve pulls some sort of trick on everyone, so I’ve saved the blogpost, and sent a copy via carrier pigeon to CERN. If they can’t figure out if anything’s been secreted away, then no-one can. Valve also added a new crafting tool into the game, and it’s pretty Strange.
What a strange time for game selling we live in. Not ten years ago the idea of doing basically anything other than heading down to your local Woolworths and picking up an honest-to-goodness box was madness. Now, not only would there have to be a special case for a game to come in any sort of packaging but you can do anything from pay for a game before it’s made to never pay for it at all. And here’s yet another method: distributing copies of multiplayer indie platformer blast-em-up Gun Monkeys to those who spend a long time waiting to find a game. In a blog post yesterday, Size Five Games man Dan Marshall outlined the plan as a way to drum up interest in the game and ensure current players get the experience they paid for. Full statement below.
Those of you with special organic brains that can actually retain information for more than a few moments will recall the Guild Wars 2 April fool that materialised into something real: Super Adventure Box was an 8-bit “demake” of the MMO, a free standalone dungeon which amused the MMOing masses. It turns out that ArenaNet were rather pleased with the idea, too, because they’re revisiting it with Super Adventure Box: Back To School. “The asuran genius Moto is back with his new and improved Super Adventure Box! This virtual reality simulator was designed to educate young asura, but anyone can enroll! Face new challenges and new enemies in World 2, or put your skills to the ultimate test with the aptly-named Tribulation Mode!” There are a bunch of new rewards and such, too, of course, so you might want to get your 8-bit pauldrons ready for its September 3rd release.
Kickstarter nostalgia-trading isn’t exactly new – the crowd-funding revolution was started by that most romanticised of genres the adventure game, after all – but I can still get the odd hit off it. Quantum Rush is one such provider, calling to mind two mainstays of my childhood: Lego Racers (awful, buggy, bad controls, loved it to death) and Rollcage (probably crap, won’t hear a bad word against it). It’s a “combat racer” in a futuristic style that allows for anti-grav technology, industry standard death beams and a truly wacky selection of locales. GameArt Studio are after the lofty sum of $100,000 on the dream-funder and you can see what they’ve got to say after the cut.
I’ve been watching the skies, waiting for news about XCOM: Expansion Unknown ever since the first teaser trailer landed. Turns out I would have been wiser watching my inbox instead because that’s where I found an invitation to speak to Firaxis about the Enemy Within expansion at Gamescom. I spent half an hour with senior games designer Anand Gupta. As well as details on the contents of the expansion, we talked about the theme of the game, Lovecraftian possibilities and moral choices. Oh, and base invasions. Then Gupta casually mentioned that it’s possible to rip out a soldier’s heart.>
Awesomenauts has two main goals in its existence. The first is to defy all genre definitions with its blend of 2D RTS platforming and MOBA-like character selection and power usage. The second is, or was, to raise $125,000 on Kickstarter for the production of an expansion. This has been thoroughly smashed within just seven days, opening up a whole slew of stretch goals to now attain. This will pile on top of the already impressive promises of new characters, a spectator mode and more. Dev team Romino Games are understandably pleased with the situation and their slightly frenetic, totally adorable announcement video is below.
Spiderweb has now been making turn-based RPGs for a long time. Twenty years. We spoke to Mr Vogel about that quite recently, and he’s not looking to break his pattern: Avadon 2: The Corruption is landing some time before the end of the year. Spiderweb explains: “As a Hand of Avadon, the Black Fortress, you once held unlimited power. Your word was law. Your homeland was united and prospered under the protection of the Black Fortress. Now that fragile alliance has collapsed. Rebellion rages, outside enemies gather, and Avadon lies in ruins. Will you fight to restore your power and bring peace to your realm, or will you join the rebels and forge a new nation? The decision will be yours in Avadon 2: The Corruption.”
Trailer below. (more…)