Kingdom Come: Deliverance has kind of a silly name, but it’s one heck of an intriguing prospect. The hyper-detailed historical RPG heralds from a small army of developers who once steered the creation of Mafia and Arma, among many others. Despite coming from a relatively small team by triple-A standards, the game’s production values are through the roof, and the dev team really wants it all: Skyrim-like exploration, a Mount and Blade-style world, entirely procedural combat, and choice reactivity inspired by The Witcher. Can Warhorse pull it off? I checked out an early build of the game and talked extensively with project director Daniel V vra to find out if they’re on the right track.>

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Valve have pushed another 50 games through the Steam Greenlight system, which by my count finally pushes us over the limit. There are now officially too many games. Please cease and desist all game manufacturing immediately. This is not a drill. (more…)

This is bold. The part I already knew: you can now play any of StarCraft 2‘s three races in multiplayer for free. The part I didn’t expect: you can also play any of the user-created custom maps and modes available in StarCraft Arcade for free, too. That’s a huge amount of free game, and a huge boon for the mod community. (more…)

Well, now-ish> anyway. Today is JanuMonth TwentyTwomeral (or however we’re designating dates in these lawless, calendar-bereft times), and tactical multiplayer shooter Insurgency should be out any second now. Originally an award-winning Half-Life 2 mod, a full version has crept forth from the massive camo-tattooed womb that births all military FPSes. After an attempted infiltration of Kickstarter didn’t end so well, developer New World Interactive took the game to Steam Early Access, but now it’s finally graduated to the non-Early-Access portion of Steam, which I believe is populated by something like four or five games these days. Footage and detailsy info below.

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Steam Machines might be Valve’s answer to consoles, but that doesn’t mean they play by the same rules as Sony and Microsoft’s increasingly indistinguishable boxes. Linux is an open platform and Steam is constantly evolving. I do not think it’s unreasonable, then, to expect elements of PC gaming to creep into Steam Machine hardware> as well. Just, uh, maybe don’t get your hopes up for Alienware to kick off that trend. The intergalactic planetary PC supplier has decided that upgrading its Steam Machines won’t be a modular process. If you want shiny new CPUs, graphics cards, or even memory, you’ll have to pick up a whole new box. While SteamOS can change conveniently and for free, hardware, as ever, comes at a price. And that’s a problem – one that hardware manufacturers should consider remedying if they want us to be at all interested in their first round of Steam Machines.

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Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a tremendously dull name for a game, but let’s unpick this. The game is the hearthstone, the bottom of a fireplace. The players are the kindling, being rapidly consumed in that fiery furnace. The closed beta is the flames, locked in place so only those lucky enough to have a key can enter.

Only now the fire is spreading. North America has already been consumed, and the rest of the world will fall in “the next few days.” Run. Run! Hearthstone has entered open beta. (more…)

If Mafia-director-led team Warhorse has its way, Kingdom Come: Deliverance will be gigantic. Like, hundreds of hours gigantic, when it’s all said and done. But this is a smaller team designing a colossal open world full of stories, NPCs, and – yes – warhorses. It was never going to be easy. So Warhorse is doing two things to stave off the monetary death siege banging down its doors: 1) slicing the main plot up into three episodic acts and, yes, 2) going to Kickstarter. But even a successful 300,000 crowdfunding drive won’t be enough to pull this cart over the figurative mountain. A mysterious outside benefactor will handle the rest, apparently. I spoke with >director Daniel V vra about how that will affect the game, if players will still influence development, and whether hacking such a cohesive world into pieces will hurt the final product. >

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Storyteller is a rather novel thing, both in that it’s unlike pretty much any other game and that it offers very convenient opportunities for wordplay. The comic-book-esque mini-story creation puzzler has been in development for quite some time, and each peek offered by developer Daniel Benmergui has only increased the flow of questionable liquid from my slavering chops. I wants it, precious. I wants it. I am, then, somewhat disheartened to hear that he’s putting Storyteller on temporary hold, choosing to instead focus developmental fire on a commercial version of his free “quick RPG” Ernesto. Don’t get me wrong: it’s very good, but perhaps not quite as potential-packed as Storyteller. Fortunately, this detour is still worthwhile, not to mention (hopefully) brief.

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Yesterday the internet was alive with the news about King, owners of Candy Crush Saga, their trademarking of the word “Candy”, and their ensuing threats to other developers who are using the word in their game titles. The response from King was to flap their eyelashes and protest innocence – they were only defending the Earth against evil, not liberally chasing anyone and everyone. About that. We’ve seen the document that shows their attempt to go after The Banner Saga.>

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There are several reason contributing to the fact that wargames have remained a niche hobby while comic books and Dungeons & Dragons have stealthily infiltrated the mainstream. Look at the image in this link. Perhaps your reaction is to spit axle grease into your hands, rub them together and wrestle with the hexes and stats immediately. Or maybe you think the whole thing looks like a particularly unpleasant piece of history/mathematics homework. The fact that publisher Matrix lists Germany At War as “Complexity – Basic” is one of the key reasons that wargames are in a niche. They think that basic training involves holding your breath underwater for two hours while completing an extremely difficult Sudoku. It doesn’t help that they’re pricey and rarely have demos, but Germany At war now has a trial version. So jump in and measure the complexity.

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