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Nick Cave once murmur-sang about his lack of belief in an interventionist god. Not a Populous man, then, Mr Cave. All those pillars of flame and the constant terraforming are sure signs of direct interference by celestial pests. Perhaps he’d be more comfortable with Skyward Collapse [official site], a God game in which you must maintain balance by nudging. You do intervene, but quietly. Nick wouldn’t even notice you.

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Arcen, purveyors of sundry indie oddities, sent a message by pigeon post in the early hours of this morning to inform us of their new game, The Last Federation. It has one of the finest single line pitches I’ve ever encountered – “The Last Federation is a Grand Strategy + RTS Tactics game” – and in honour of the good news that she delivered, the pigeon has now been promoted to Flight Lieutenant and provided with a suitable cap. TLF places players in the role of a mercenary leader in a procedurally generated galaxy, which contains eight alien races to menace and manipulate. The closest point of comparison may well be Soldak’s Drox Operative. Arcen’s pigeon also told us that the spiffing AI War is on sale this weekend, with the complete collection (five DLCs) available for $4.25 and the little blighter didn’t stop there. More news – and a couple of videos – below.

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Arcen’s strangely beautiful isometric multi-sided god game, Skyward Collapse, is updating to version 2.0, and the same time as launching a Japanese-themed expansion, Nihon no Mura. Arcen explain: “The Japanese enter the fray on Luminith: their faction has a very strong military and a very strange pantheon: their gods are much more aggressive than their Greek and Norse counterparts, and each has three god creatures rather than three god tokens. Learning to play this new faction effectively is a fun new challenge: given how powerful the Japanese military and mythology are, you have to be very creative in how you help the Norse and Greeks drive back this threat.” Are you allowed to use two colons in a single sentence? Seems like dangerous sentence programming to me.

Lots of details on the expansion and the free upgrade here. There’s also a trailer detailing Nihon no Mura, which you can see below. (more…)