Level With Me is a series of interviews with game developers about their games, work process, and design philosophy. At the end of each interview, they design part of a small first person game. You can play this game at the very end of the series.

Andrew Weldon started as a Half-Life 1 modder and made the notorious ns_eclipse and ns_veil maps for Natural Selection, then worked at Raven on Quake 4, Wolfenstein, and Singularity, then worked at Gearbox on Borderlands, then helped prototype some of the first test levels for Natural Selection 2, then (inhale) worked at Lightbox on Starhawk — and now he’s at Bungie, working on Destiny. (more…)

We all know how the story of Rohan plays out, and in November The Lord Of The Rings Online will allow you to play out that story. The Helm’s Deep expansion is a great big piece of work for the MMO, including the famous siege itself, and a raise of the level cap to 95. It’s not unpricey, though, with the basic edition ringing in at a hefty £29.99.

More details below. (more…)

Well this is me consumed. I adore gentle puzzle games, and they gobble up vast amounts of my time. A day doesn’t go by without at least a couple of Killer Sudoku completed, and currently Kakuros help me slide off to sleep each night. I’ve spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours playing Slitherlinks and Picrosses on my various Nintendo handhelds, and can’t walk past a Nurikabe without shading. But goodness me, the PC is starved of quality offerings in this field. So thank goodness for Matthew Brown Games’ Hexcells. Because it’s absolutely stunning. Here’s wot I think:>

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Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world racing game The Crew might not let me do a Fuel, but it nevertheless sings to the road-hungry part of my soul. But why? But because it looks slick as all hell. Evidence: Newshounds VG247 caught up with the downed pheasant of pre-release hype at Gamescom last month, and produced a video, which you can watch below. (more…)

Why are AGEOD revisiting the American Civil War? Is firing from the Hip as tricky as it looks? What’s the largest animal that could pass through a John Deere 1400 baler and survive? Why is there Marmite on my bannister?* Does beginning yet another Flare Path with a string of questions mean I’m as creatively bankrupt as Nathan “Oh. Oh my.” Grayson? In this week’s Flare Path I intend to answer the questions the other simulation and wargaming columns won’t, can’t, shan’t, daren’t or Robert Plan’t answer.

*Not a euphemism. (more…)

Oh. Oh my. That is the second post I’ve introduced with those words today, but that does not (necessarily!) mean I’m creatively bankrupt. Rather, it’s been a very good time for brilliantly impressive games that just sort of appear out of nowhere. First Eden Star took me entirely by surprise with its runleaping Minecraft’s Edge antics, and now Hyper Light Drifter is dazzling me with glorious grimdarkpink art and music provided by Fez chiptune maestro Disasterpeace. Oh, and then there is this: “It plays like the best parts of A Link to the Past and Diablo, evolved: lightning fast combat, more mobility, an array of tactical options, more numerous and intelligent enemies, and a larger world with a twisted past to do it all in.” Mmmmmmmm, yes. Good. Goooooooood>.

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David Goldfarb has a brilliant name. He’s the game director of Payday 2, a very good game about being a horrible bank robber. It turns out everyone in the world enjoys being an awful person, because Payday 2 has remained near the very top of the Steam’s sales charts since its release, while hovering in and around the top ten most played games list. I chatted to him about what it’s like being a tiny studio with a huge hit. > (more…)

Oh. Oh my. Hello there, Eden Star. Like most profoundly ambitious indies, you sort of just crashed through the fully destructible walls of our lives without any warning, but I have a feeling we’re going to become fast friends. Where once we un-groomed savages hefted blocks with glass-frail hands of pixelated flesh and bone, you now offer us a crazy laser glove that bends matter to our will. With physics! And that’s good, because we’ll need our hands and feet lithe and un-calloused for Mirror’s-Edge-esque parkour leaping to aid in our survival against all sorts of extraterrestrial nastiness. Maybe I’m just starstruck, but this looks entirely brilliant. Trailer below.

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Remember when Alec played Card Hunter’s multiplayer? Back when he couldn’t even beat the game’s own creators on his first go at it ever? What a joke, right? I mean, practically anyone could do that. I would, but I’m too busy decimating the world’s most sophisticated chess-playing computer with both> my brains tied behind my back. You, though – you should absolutely brush up on your Card Hunter skills, as a) Alec still lurks in the shadows, waiting to suck all potential victims into the black night of his vengeance and b) it’s a really great game from former BioShock developers. The free-to-play pen-and-paper/TCG game fusion is now available in easily accessible browser form. Go slay dragons with a vicious series of paper cuts!

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What’s the deal with game developers and spiders? I’m actually working on a podcast-ish feature thing that tackles that very subject (it’s been quite enlightening so far!), but for now I will sum up my findings in a brief, easily parsed expression of unbridled terror: EWWWEWWWWEWWWW. And also this for good measure. Metro: Last Light’s “Developer Pack” DLC continues gaming’s heartfelt, eight-legged embrace of arachnophobia with a horrific-sounding Spider’s Lair solo mission. Also, it includes a bunch of a fun developer tools (think AI battlefields, etc) for you to toy around with. This, I assume, is merely a distraction so that the spiders can sneak up behind you and lay eggs in your hair.

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