It's 'Black Friday' in the US, which means prices are falling across the internet like drunks playing in a greased up bouncy castle. Given the deals that even Humble's own store currently hosts, the Humble Weekly Sale for this week seems almost pedestrian. Not that that should worry anyone who doesn't own these six indie games, and doesn't object to paying what they want to get them.

Whatever you pay, you'll get access to the following:


Jamestown
Closure
S.P.A.Z.
Shatter


Of them, Jamestown and Shatter are both excellent. One is a steampunk shmup set on Mars, the other a retro-future physics-based block breaking game. While I've not played Closure, it's a pretty looking puzzle-platformer that garnered plenty of positive feedback on release.

In addition, you can pay £6 or more to also get:


Defense Grid Gold
Dungeon Defenders


I'm a big fan of Defense Grid, and I say that as someone who generally can't stand tower defence. From what I understand, this Gold edition comes bundled with the Resurgence and Borderlands DLCs.

Relevant trailers? Here's a couple:

Here's an announcement trailer for Warhammer 40K: Space Wolf, the free-to-play tactical card game that was announced back in August. If you follow Warhammer to any extent, you'll have an idea of what to expect. If you don't, I've got some bad news: the Space Wolves are just people, not actual wolves who prowl around and do wolf things in space. I know, I was disappointed too.



Hmmm.

The game promises to "blend the grim, dark Warhammer 40,000 universe, collectable cards and turn-based tactical combat." That sounds appealing, but so far, all we've really got to go on is this pretty lacklustre trailer. Given the increasingly variable quality of Warhammer games, it's too early to speculate about how this will turn out.

That's why I'm going to talk about the game Card Hunter instead.

Card Hunter is a free-to-play tactical card game that you can play right now. It's great: beautifully blending turn-based tactical planning with the randomised element of card games. Your deck is tied to the armour and weapons you equip, which makes it an instantly understandable process if - like me - you've never really clicked with CCGs. And the upside is that the random card draws force you to adapt and plan encounters based on the hand you're dealt.

If you still think free-to-play is automatically synonymous with manipulative greed, if you usually dismiss CCGs as being too random or complicated to bother with, or if you just need something to play for half hour during your lunch break, I implore you to give it a shot.

Space Wolf, meanwhile, is due out during the first half of 2014, for PC, iOS and Android.

All is quiet on the gently rolling news plains. The Americans have yet to rouse from their turkey-fuelled hibernation and, throughout Europe, the PS4 launch stampede has startled the nearby news beasts. Given the lull, it looks like I'll be posting Scraps.

Luckily, Scraps is a physics-based vehicle combat game in which you'll construct your own car from a selection of parts. As the game's excellent pre-alpha trailer shows, your design can have a dramatic effect on that vehicle's ability to drive and fight.



"Success lies just as much in designing a well-crafted vehicle as in your combat skills," explains the game's description. "It's about competitive creativity, and having fun while making horrible design decisions."

The game is currently looking for funding through Kickstarter. Moment Studio are hoping to raise $23,000 NZD, which is a ridiculously reasonable £11,436. Currently, they've received pledges totalling $9,316 NZD, with 18 days left.

If you'd like to play around with the first few scraps of Scraps, a pre-alpha demo is available from the game's website.

We're in a giving mood at PC Gamer, and so in the style of a certain in-flight catalog (except without dog sofas or skeleton gnomes), we're giving you the gift of a gift guide packed with great ideas for all the gamers in your life (or yourself, of course). So welcome to PC Gamer's 2013 Giftstravaganza, your one stop holiday satisfaction machine with toys, gadgets, tools, and merriment for all as we embark on the next month of family gatherings, overeating, and gaming marathons. Let the binging begin.

Plush Doom Monsters
 


Warm up your heart with the fires of hell! Who says evil hell monsters don’t like to cuddle? Get cozy with a snuggly plush Cacodemon or Pain Elemental, and fall in love with their insidious eyeballs and twisted grins.

bit.ly/doomplush $15 / ~£10

Nerf N-Strike Elite
 


Fire high-caliber foam with the Centurion Blaster! The N-Strike Elite Centurion Blaster is a marvel of foam dart weaponry. The 6 included MEGA darts (big darts, that is) can fly 100 feet—we swear we felt recoil from this thing. It even includes a detachable bipod so you can accurately pelt your friends while lying prone under a ghillie suit made of lawn trimmings. That is, if the bright orange plastic doesn’t give you away.

hasbro.com/nerf $50 / £50

Kerbal 3D Prints
 


The cutest little green men in the universe! They’ve died countless deaths adventuring into the great unknown, and now you can memorialize the sacrifices of your Kerbal Space Program astronauts with an adorable 3D print! Made by Shapeways, these little guys are the perfect addition to any launch control room or captain’s quarters.

bit.ly/kerbal3d $47 / €41.35

Artisan Dice
 


D20s just like they used to make ‘em! These gorgeous hand-crafted dice are made from the finest hardwoods. Take your pick from standard six-sided dice, fudge dice, and polyhedral dice, and choose from dozens of exotic woods for your own custom set of fate-deciders!

artisandice.com $25+ / £15+

D&D Books
 


Give the gift of imagination! We’ve crawled countless dungeons and slayed hundreds of dragons on our monitors, but some of the fantasy adventures we remember best happened around a table with friends. Pick up the D&D 3.5 handbook (we prefer it to the newer 4th edition), accessorize with guides and adventures, and start a quest you’ll never forget!

wizards.com $20-$40



LEGO MindStorms EV3
 


Robot block! Robot block! Build and command five robots or design your own with the incredible LEGO MindStorms EV3 kit! The set includes an ARM9 processor, touch sensor, color sensor, infrared sensor, and over 550 LEGO Technic parts. You can build remote control and automated machines that’ll scare your cat like never before! Or, design a robot that solves Rubik’s Cubes while scaring your cat—the possibilities are endless!

bit.ly/legoev3 $350 / £300

Fretlight Guitar
 


Learn to play the LED way! Learning to play a new instrument is hard—most of us have given up on a few—but Fretlight has designed a solution that gives beginning guitarists the lessons they need without all the frustration. The built in LED system removes the finger position guesswork new players struggle with by showing where the hands should be right on the fretboard. The $300 FG-507 Acoustic model is great for beginners, but novice rock stars should also have a look at the $600 FG-521 Traditional Electric model pictured here. If you want to go really crazy, Fretlight also sells a $900 Pro Electric model, but at that level of investment, we’re guessing you have some idea how to play already.

store.fretlight.com $300+ / ~£185+

Necomimi
 


They’re not just cat ears—they can read your mind! Expressing emotions is hard (why not just bottle them up?), but the Necomimi makes it easy! Just put it on your head and let the ears do the talking—your brainwaves make them move! Believe it or not, it works! We're pretty sure, at least—if all is operable, concentrate to make the ears rise, and relax to let them lie down. When you do both at the same time, they move back and forth. Science!

necomimi.com $70 / £60



Flip Book Kit
 


Make your own moving pictures! It’s actually called “FlipBooKit,” and includes everything you need to create incredible animations—we’ve chosen to showcase Laser Death Cat from Team Fortress 2 map achievement_all_v4. Run!

bit.ly/flipbookit $49 / £30

Songbird Plushie
 


Stay safe with your own obsessive robot protector! This hand-crafted faux-leather plushie won’t just love you, it will watch you sleep and violently kill intruders with its brass eyes and beak! Everyone’s favorite BioShock Infinite character sits seven inches tall with a wingspan of 14 inches.

bit.ly/songbirdplush $55 / ~£34

BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia
 


The great board game in the sky! Replay BioShock Infinite on your table! This time, you’ll wrestle for control of Columbia as the Founders or Vox Populi—draw cards to zip across sky-lines, build an army, and deal with some jerk named Booker.

bit.ly/siegegame $85 / £70



Logitech Driving Force GT
 


Woah, slow down buddy! Cory’s having a blast obeying traffic laws in Euro Truck Simulator, but you can go as fast as you want with Logitech’s Driving Force GT, which includes a force feedback steering wheel with 900-degree rotation plus gas and brake pedals. Quit racing with WASD, silly!

bit.ly/drivingforce $150 / £272

ModMat Xtreme
 


Stay grounded! Make your next PC repairs go smoothly with this giant anti-static surface—it even includes nine handy reference guides so you can get to work without referencing a pesky manual!

bit.ly/modmat $60 / £55

SoundSticks III


Great sound with style! Is that a glowing jellyfish under your desk? Nope! It’s the stylish down-firing subwoofer in Harman Kardon’s three-piece speaker system. Add the eight transducers in the two speaker towers, and the set pumps out a deep, rich sound—it looks and sounds so good, even the New York City Museum of Modern Art has one!

bit.ly/sndsticks $170 / £130

Parrot AR Drone 2.0
 


Fly by phone and watch in 720p! The Parrot AR Drone 2.0 flies high and fast, and even includes a camera to capture photos and 720p video from the sky! Control it with your iOS or Android device, and fly it inside or out—embedded sensors help you take off and land, and you can even tell it to hover or flip on autopilot!

ardrone2.parrot.com $300 / £279



Rosewill PC Tool Kit
 


Fix it the right way! This 90-piece tool set includes everything you need to build and maintain your rig, including a ratchet driver with 40-piece bit and socket set, six precision screwdrivers, nine hex keys, a wire cutter, an anti-static wrist strap, a soldering iron, an electronic tester—the list goes on and on! If you like to tinker—and we know you do—make sure you’re never without the right tool for the job.

bit.ly/pctoolkit $30 / ~ £19

ViewSonic Projector
 


Play bigger with the PJD7820HD! Pronounced “Puh-Juh-Duh,” the PJD7820HD is the perfect way to play your games big! With a native resolution of 1920x1080, 3000 ANSI Lumens, and 15000:1 contrast, this projector fills your wall with crisp, high-definition gaming. Try pointing it at your ceiling—you’ll never need to sit again!

bit.ly/vsprojector $780 / £688

Mounted T-Rex Head
 


Wall decorations may be closer than they appear! Remember when you traveled back in time to hunt Tyrannosaurus? If not, you probably stepped on winged insect and irreparably altered history, but no matter! Remind yourself of the greatest hunting exhibition to ever possibly happen with a mounted T-Rex head—your friends rightfully won’t believe it!

bit.ly/trexmount $100 / £62

Raspberry Pi Starter Pack
 


Build your own electronics! Want to build a murderous robot that enslaves all humans? Start here! Adafruit’s Raspberry PI Starter Pack includes everything you need to learn microcontroller programming basics.

bit.ly/raspikit $105 / £63

A few days ago, Ashes Cricket 2013 was pulled from sale following complaints from buyers. These weren't design complaints about the game being too slow or too boring (this is cricket, after all), but rather what appears to be an absurdly shoddy product: full of bugs, terrible textures, awful AI, a choppy camera, and players that could barely move without glitching. Given how much of a mess the game was in, its publishers today released a statement criticising the game's developers and promising refunds to buyers.

Here's just one example of the game in action, via Reddit's amazing r/GamePhysics:



I'm sure we'll get a few readers not familiar with the intricacies of cricket, so let me assure you that teleporting to the ground isn't in the rules.

“As most people who have followed the project closely can affirm, the development of Ashes Cricket 2013 has been fraught with challenges almost from the outset," 505 Games said. "The chosen developer, even with their many years of cricket game development experience, was unable to overcome the unexpected challenges that the chosen game engine threw up, even with multiple extensions to the development schedule. At the start of the project, 505 Games received all assurances from the developer that the engine was up to the task of creating a dynamic, cutting-edge cricket game for the modern age across multiple platforms, and unfortunately those assurances were found to be misplaced."

505 Games then apologised to their licensors, the ECB and Cricket Australia, who they say "have been nothing but patient and supportive of us throughout the challenges this project has presented, and who, ultimately, we have let down."

"Our deepest apologies, however, are reserved for the fans of cricket and cricket games worldwide," they said. "505 Games prides itself on being a safe pair of hands on which gamers of all tastes and denominations can rely to put their best foot forward to create compelling gaming experiences. It is clear that, in this instance, we have fallen way short of our stated aims and failed to deliver. We know that the mitigating factors, as highlighted above, hold little solace to the hordes of excited cricket fans worldwide who had hoped this year to be able to play out their fantasy of playing in the Ashes series.

"The people who purchased the game will be contacted very shortly with details of a full refund.”

Give how bad the game turned out, it seems strange that 505 would even release it in the first place. At least they seem committed to making up for their mistake.

We've contacted the developer, Trickstar, for their side of the story.

Thanks, RPS.

Eden Star drops you into the spaceboots of a pioneer at the height of a cosmic gold rush. In this vision of the future, Earth is barren and dying, forcing humanity to look for life-sustaining resources on other planets. It’s a curious mix of tower defence, real-time strategy and Minecraft, and although it’s early in development, I was able to play a promising preview build made available to Kickstarter backers.

Key to your survival is an arm-mounted tool called a Remote Manipulation Device, which functions like a futuristic Swiss Army knife. You can use it as a weapon, grabbing enemies with a fluorescent tendril and throwing them into walls, or you can use it to break down space-rocks and harvest the minerals hidden inside, which can then be used to build basic structures out of square blocks.

The Unreal-powered physics make the world feel impressively dynamic: rocks crumble realistically as you cut through them and scenery falls apart with the passage of time.



At the heart of each map is the Eden Kit, a terraformer that’s perpetually under attack from waves of increasingly angry enemies – which in my demo were flying squid-bots. You’ll respawn if you’re killed, but if the Kit is destroyed, it’s game over. As the enemies flood in, you can use harvested minerals to build a protective shell around it while using the RMD’s weapons to fight them off. But even if you completely cover it in blocks, the squids can smash through them, meaning you have to devote some time between waves to collecting minerals and repairing your fortifications.

It feels a little twitchy in this early demo, but using what I’ve christened the ‘physics tentacle’ to fling robo-squids around is really fun. Yank the mouse down and you slam them into the ground. Flick it towards a wall and they crash into it, bringing physics rubble down with them. Jerk one enemy towards another and they smash into each other with a satisfying crunch. If this doesn’t kill them, you can fire a laser beam from your palm like Iron Man, cutting through what’s left of their health.



There’s some Mirror’s Edge-style freerunning in there too, and even at this early stage it feels nicely responsive. Sprint towards a vertical surface at an angle and you’ll perform a wall-run. Any object you can reach can be climbed on – including the ones you’ve built yourself with the RMD. Get used to the controls and you can use the build tool to navigate around the map, quickly dropping blocks to break your fall and create on-the-fly bridges between structures.

I’ve only tasted a tiny fraction of what developers Flix say the final game will offer. My demo took place in a relatively small arena, with only one Eden Kit to protect, and only a single enemy type. They’re promising large levels, multiple points to defend, a variety of enemy types with different behaviours, and co-op multiplayer. If it’s this enjoyable at prealpha, they’re doing something right.

Here's a trick that'll stop opponents stealing sneaky glances at your screen during LAN matches. Instructables have a funky little monitor hack that'll make it show an apparently blank white screen, unless you're wearing polarised glasses, in which case the real image is suddenly revealed. If you want maximum privacy for your desktop screen, you will need a spare LCD monitor, one that you don’t mind never having working normally again, and some sharp tools for some rather invasive screen surgery.

The idea is simple - you just remove the polarising film from the panel itself and inserting that into a pair of glasses - 3D cinema goggles will do nicely. There are many times I can think where this would come in handy. I remember one press unveiling where the company’s US PR was sat in front of me writing derogatory things about the CEO’s onstage performance to a buddy on MSN. My friend live-blogged his entire spiel. I bet he’ll have been hacking at his laptop screen after seeing this. Also, if you're a spy. You're welcome, Mi5.

Still, if you’ve got an old screen gathering dust up in the attic and a penchant for a little light hackery, it’s worth giving it a go. I’m certainly going to be taking a screwdriver to some of the old screens in the office kit cupboard. Total freedom to procrastinate - a dangerous development.

I'm starting to realise it would be easier to list the distributors not currently holding a Black Friday sale. Even so, we'll give Origin the spotlight for a second. After all, their sale does have some good discounts on a selection of EA games, and, let's be honest, people are hardly going to check Origin's store page unprompted. Now you've had that prompt, head over for up to 66% off certain games, including 40% off Battlefield 4.

Not all of the games are cheap cheap, largely thanks to Origin's launch prices being... well, "premium" would be the diplomatic way of putting it. Batshit insane would be another. Still, there are a few nice prices to enjoy:




Battlefield 4 - £27
SimCity - £22.50
FIFA 14 - £28
Battlefield 3 - £6
Battlefield 3 (+ Premium) - £14
The Sims 3 - £15
The Sims 3: Expansion #1-23,462 - £Various
Crysis 3 - £6
Dead Space 3 - £6
Mass Effect 3 - £4
Mass Effect Trilogy - £16
C&C: Ultimate Collection - £10
Dragon Age: Origins, Ultimate Edition - £10
Dragon Age 2 - £6


Origin is being a touch temperamental right now, but you can try your luck by visiting the sale page.

Pathologic is a weird game. It's an interesting, atmospheric and creepy open-world horror. It's also not very good. The annoying part is that its failings are actually quite mundane: dodgy translation, numerous bugs, generally janky execution. It's impossibly ambitious, but made base and decrepit by the skin that it inhabits. Apt, but disappointing.

Its own developers seem to agree, and are talking about "resurrecting" the game. It's far from certain at this point, but it does sound like they're considering the possibility of a remake.

As discovered by RPS, Ice Pick Lodge made the announcement via Russian social networking site VK. Here's a segment of their statement, via Google Translate:

"Friends. We initiate resuscitation Mora. Make this game will be very difficult. Magnitude of the task to which we swung far exceed our resources. Therefore, we will refer to your help whenever possible. First task that faces us - Kick training. We will need to shoot a few commercials for-page application."


A couple of Google mistranslation points:

- "Mora" was instead written as Мора. Мор is the original Russian name for Pathologic.
- "Kick training" is almost certainly Kickstarter, given the context and Ice Pick's previous use of the service.

As part of their commercial, the studio is accepting fan art submissions, and asking 40 to 50 people to come to a video shoot - planned for this weekend - to be wrapped and bundled in bedsheets. The teaser image they provided would appear to reveal what they have in mind.



If you're in Moscow this weekend, there are probably worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

Well this is disappointing. Not the contents of this Moebius trailer, which, for the first time since the reveal of Jane Jensen's Kickstarted adventure, has me looking forward to the game's release. Instead, it's disappointing because here the actors clearly say "Rector", as opposed to in previous trailers where... well, let's just say that the pronunciation was open to interpretation.



Rectum. It used to sound like they were saying rectum. Yes, I am that immature.

Back to the game. You play as historical genius Malachi "Rector", who is hired by the secretive "FIST" organisation to research the life of a dead woman. Names aside, the game's plot certainly has the potential to be an enjoyably campy mystery. Hopefully the puzzles and design will too.

Moebius is due out early 2014.