I wanted to snarkily write ’3D Realms’ in the title, but when I added the apostrophe it looked like ’3D Realms” and everyone would have thought I’d just forgotten what type of speech mark I was using. Anyway! The 3D Realms name is indeed back, even if it’s currently somewhat unclear as to whether it’s anything more than a name at present. The Duke Nukem dev closed its doors after too many years and too much money spent creating the horrible piss-mountain that was Duke Nukem Forever, but owners including Scott Miller and George Broussard kept some intangible measure of it alive afterwards. And so it is that 3D Realms’ name is attached to crowd-funded, post-apocalyptic shooter Earth No More. (more…)

Poor old Firefly are looking a bit beleaguered after the disappointing release of Stronghold 3, to the point where the top thread on their forums is titled “We are listening and we are working”. Anyway, some of that listening and working seems to have gone into yesterday’s patch, which has added a “free-build panel” to allow players to experiment with their fortifications a little more: “Although Stronghold 3 wasn’t designed with a skirmish mode in mind,” announced Simon Bradbury, lead designer, “we have listened to what the fans have been saying, so beefed up the Free Build mode to give players lots more flexibility and the ability to have increasingly powerful invasions attack their castle.” Quite why it wasn’t designed with what seems like the most obvious possible mode for a castle-building game is beyond me, but at least they’re having a crack at it now, eh readers?