I’m glad Strategic Command 3’s camera is a tad myopic. Not being able to see the Panzers parked in Parliament Square… the SS Sturmgrenadiers marching down The Mall… Mosley and Hitler shaking hands on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, means I can push north towards unconquered Scotland with a spring in my goose-step. … [visit site to read more]
Amazon have announced three PC games being made by their own games studio: a multiplayer sandbox world, a MOBA-ish 4v4 mythological murdersport, and some sort of class-based Battle Royale ’em up. That sandbox ’em up sounds like it might be interesting, at least. As Amazon also owns Twitch, all three games have bits to entertain livestream viewers or let them fiddle with what’s going on. Let’s look at New World, Breakaway [official site], and Crucible in decreasing order of interestingness.
GIANT MACHINES!
HONKING GREAT HONKERS RUMBLING TO A PC NEAR YOU
MEGA-MINERS! DONKING DUMPERS!
DEVOUR MOUNTAINS! SCHLEP SPACE SHUTTLES! DEMOLISH DEMOLISH DEMOLISH!
G I A N T M A C H I N E S
Many backers who funded Psychonauts 2 on the crowdfunding site Fig are now considered ‘investors’, says a US regulatory body, paving the way for them to get a return in real money if the game sells well. Fig is a video games-focused fundraising site partly founded by a bunch of veteran developers including Brian Fargo and Tim Schafer. It lets you throw some quids into a project as a punter just like Kickstarter but also lets people invest in it. As well as welcoming serious accredited investors, it hoped to let any old mug invest by giving $1,000 or more at an ‘investor’ level – but the US Securities and Exchange Commission needed to have the final say on letting anyone have a crack. Now they have, and they’ve approved the whole thing. What does this mean? Can you invest in the next big project? More importantly: should you?
Good news: a new Dishonored 2 [official site] gameplay trailer is out, with a pleasing eight-minute chunk of Emily murdering her way through a place we’ve seen a bit of before. What I saw was quite nice, but I started peeking through my fingers then stopped watching because I’d still like to be surprised by Arkane’s sneak-o-FPS.
Plbbbbbrfffff news: those silly sausages at Bethesda have announced that they’ll release the game a day early – to people who pre-order it. You cheeky bunch!
My major question when first-person-puzzler Maize [official site] got announced was not “lolwut talking corn???’ but rather ‘what even is this game?’ We knew there was anthropomorphic crop but not a lot else. I like not knowing what something is when I come to play it, as it spares me from worrying ‘what if it just does this again or gets that thing wrong?’ So Maize and its weirdo plant-people has had me intrigued. Now, however, I do know what it is. Kinda preferred it when I didn’t. … [visit site to read more]
You can have any genre, says Positech, as long as it s management. Production Line [official site] will be the studio s new game of building cars on a long assembly line with the penny-pinching efficiency of Henry Ford. I never used to care about cars, said Cliffski, the creator of Democracy and Gratuitous Space Battles, in his announcement. Then I bought a nice hybrid one (Lexus) then I bought a stupidly flash electric one (Tesla). I started to realize cars had become interesting to geeks, not just petrol-heads. Right so. Here s what we know so far.
We recently found out that the frantic and melodramatic fencing of Nidhogg would be making a return thanks to the sequel plans of developers Messhof. Nidhogg 2 [official site] is set to include new weapons, levels and a surreal new art style. We talked to co-founders Mark Essen and Kristy Norindr about what can be expected when we roll up our sleeves for the next duel.
Burly Men At Sea [official site] sailed onto my radar at Rezzed earlier this year. Part of the Leftfield Collection, the game offered a beautifully stylised tale about three bearded brothers going off on an adventure. The reason I was particularly excited was, more than any other game, the demo I played seemed to capture the essence of children’s story books and translate that to the screen in a way that felt natural.
To find out more I spoke to one half of the development team at Brain&Brain, Brooke Condolora and asked her to share snippets from her sketchbooks and from across the game’s development.
Take a peek after the jump, and click on any of the images to see a larger version.
And not just axes. Bows and arrows, throwing knives and good old-fashioned fisticuffs will all feature in the sequel to the hectic fencing and neck-snapping game Nidhogg [official site]. Messhof s original foray into poking people with sharp objects first appeared in the dark ages of 2010 and then vanished for approximately one thousand years before finally being released to euphoric applause. Now, Nidhogg 2 [same official site] is in the works, the developer has announced. It looks both wildly different and comfortably familiar. Come watch the trailer.