Yikes. It appears that Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson and the CLANG team have a bit of a mess on their hands. And by “a bit,” I mean the sort that requires years of clean-up and nearly extinguishes at least seven species of marine life. Here’s the skinny: $526,125 in Kickstarter money apparently wasn’t enough for the peripheral-dependent savior of swordfighting, so Stephenson and co were hoping to seek out a more traditional deal to bolster it – for instance venture capital funding or a publisher. So far? No dice. So the team has been forced to “hit the pause button” on further development in order to sort out a new plan of attack. They don’t seem particularly optimistic, either – at least, not in the near term. Oh, and in case you were worried: you’re not> getting your money back. Not yet, anyway.

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Another member of this odd profession of games journalism made a point to me yesterday. He said that in RPS’s statement about PAX, we had caused ourselves to become the news. Well, we’re okay with becoming the news, but it’s true that the statement misdirected the story, and what should have been the 2,500 words of arguments primarily in favour of attending PAX became a single sentence against at the start. The discussion was lost.

We fucked up. We said what we wanted to. We said it at the wrong time. We said it in the wrong place.

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NEWSFLASH: SimCity still isn’t very good. It mostly functions> now, but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly deep or enjoyable. But time has healed part of a wound, so maybe more of it will stitch up the rest? That, I suppose, is the idea behind upcoming expansion SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow, which takes your buzzing metropolis 50 years into the fuuuuuuuuuture. Will this bring it forward (or, I suppose, back) into the Good Ages? Time – as ever – will tell.

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AWOOGA: Do not search on Youtube for “Extraction”. I went looking for some beta footage to add to this post, but without filtering the search the results turned out to be rather anatomical and spider-bitey. Luckily for me a defense mechanism kicked and I was only briefly exposed to the bitten bits of people before my tears and screaming blocked it all. But I’ve seen things, readers. Horrible things. What I was looking for was recent footage of Splash Damage’s Extraction, their in-development shooter set in the streets of London. I have reasons, and it involves you signing up to the closed beta. (more…)

If you have a problem with blood, I suggest you skip this explanatory trailer for Shadow Warrior. If you’ll allow me to briefly slip into a cockney criminal’s parlance, there’s claret everywhere. It puddles, splashes, flicks, pools, drips, and plops, all to show off the differences between guns and swords for people who might need help deciding which to focus on. The results are broadly similar, with red bits on the inside ending up on the outside, but it creates a different approach to the violence. I wouldn’t have asked what sort of weapon you prefer. I’d have asked if you like to see the lights to out in your enemy’s eyes. (more…)

First impressions: Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft is an impressively crap name.

Fantasy games with terrible titles have a long and noble history, but Blizzard’s Warcraft collectible card game boasts a particularly wonderful example. The classical NOUN COLON SOMETHING AND/OF SOMETHING structure is adhered to, but this is an almost gleefully bad noun. You have to go some to find a word they could have used that could be worse, without obviously taking the piss. I keep on checking it to see if my word-blindness has got it wrong, and it’s HEARTSTONE or something, which while terrible, at least seems to be trying a little mythology. But no, it’s hearthstone. A stone, in the hearth. I mean, I presume it’s some very important part of Blizzard’s reheating of Games Workshop’s reheating of all the people who reheated Tolkien, but just because everyone in the world has played your previous game you can’t assume that anyone in the world actually read any of the quest text. (more…)

A: Knock Knock.B: Who’s there?A: Hello! It’s Icepick Lodge here. We’re just scratching and clawing at the door in the manner that a deranged and hungry ghost might if it found itself outside an isolated house in the middle of some shadow-splintered woods. You may know us as the developers of Pathologic and other games. Following a successful Kickstarter, we’ve been working on a new experience about trying to survive the long nights in a home that is haunted by more than memories. It’s terrifying, as you can see in the video below.B: Your response is too long. You’ve ruined the joke.A: No matter. As you have probably noticed, we’ve now passed through the kitchen window and are currently chewing on your leg with our razor-like teeth.

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Mediatonic’s theatrical brawler Foul Play opened its curtains yesterday on Steam. It’s a 2D beat ‘em up where you recount the character’s life on stage by punching actors. I’d intended to WiT it, but I’ve had to stop after a few hours play. There’s only so much button-mashing I can take in a day, and my thumbs were about to ask for the understudy to step-up. I refuse to play games with my feet. Instead you can have some Impressions. Onwards!> (more…)

OUYA have announced that their much criticised Free The Games Fund is to receive some dramatic changes, and most significantly to us, no longer prevent developers from releasing their games on PC.

The fund, that was designed to match Kickstarter-raised funds in return for six months of OUYA exclusivity, had led to accusations of and admissions from developers of fixing their Kickstarters with their own money, in order to receive the cash, all in return for releasing a game on a system without the userbase in place to sustain such exclusivity. It was, in short, a very bad idea. It’s getting better.

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Our lengthy conversation with Alexis Kennedy and Paul Arendt of Failbetter Games continues, with mysterious, enigmatic and untold tales of Fallen London, details of the nightmarish voyages undertaken by the captains of the Sunless Sea, and adventures in the mind of a dead god. If you haven’t read part one, you’ll find it here. If you have, jump right in.>

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