It seems people are quite keen to play a new RPG from Richard Garriott, creator of the hallowed Ultima series. As Shroud of the Avatar races towards its crowdfunding goal of $1 million, his studio has dropped more information on the various multiplayer options it'll offer. They range from barely online, just seeing other players' effect on the persistent world, to essentially an MMO. Or hey, just play offline.
Mode 7, the studio behind Frozen Synapse, today announced a new title with a sports twist: Frozen Endzone. The strategy game has two teams attempt to use the randomly-generated stadium terrain to their advantage to run the ball into their opponents' endzone. It's like football, played by robots, with random elements.
The first gameplay footage of Shadowrun Returns does look awfully nice, doesn't it? That may be because HareBrained Schemes has "spent every penny" of the $1.9 million it raised from crowdfunding--"and more." It's a gamble because, as head honcho Jordan Weisman told us last year, "if [crowdfunded] games don't reach a larger audience than the people we've pre-sold to, then they don't become self-sustaining."
Never one for fuss and fanfare, celebrated indie developer Jason Rohrer yesterday quietly released The Castle Doctrine. The home security/invasion game from the creator of The Passage and Sleep Is Death is out in alpha form for $8--half the price the finished version will be. Heck, if you pick up a few tricks from playing, you can make that money back in a few minutes of casual burglary.
Read more: All players defend against, and steal from, each other »
"We spied the solitary grave at the edge of The Perilous Precipice & we wondered what was up with that. #sworcery", your Twitter chums tweet, and what is up with that? They're playing Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, see, and you can too for cheap, as it's been added to the pay-what-you-want Humble Bundle With Android #5, along with two other games. You don't need to let it spam Twitter, mind.
The tower defense genre hit its peak somewhere in the late Aughts with Plants vs. Zombies, Desktop Tower Defense, and PixelJunk Monsters defining and dominating the genre. It's stagnated a bit since, due in large part to how rigid the genre's rules are. The last few years have seen a resurgence, but not in the traditional isometric-viewpoint-sense of games passed. Watching with bated breath if your best laid plans match the opposition making its way toward your goal line still has its charms, but what if you were the opposition? That's where the Anomaly series comes in.
Anomaly 2's motif may be transformation, but the core of what made its 2011 prequel so refreshing remains largely unchanged. Running a tiny commander around a maze of city streets and dropping power-ups and buffs to my units hurling explosives at adversarial towers felt great in the first game, so it's still in the sequel. The dialog and story remain just as cheesy and cliché, with one story line being, wait for it, find the German scientist working on a super-weapon that will turn the tide of battle against the alien occupiers. It's campy, but Anomaly never took itself all that seriously to begin with so it still works. I can only hope an alien occupation would be this cheerful if it actually happened.
Ragnar Tørnquist and Red Thread Games were clearly getting enough money to make Dreamfall Chapters, as its crowdfunding campaign rocketed out the gate and hit its $850,000 target in about a week, but how many stretch goals could it hit? Funding wrapped up over the weekend at $1,538,425--180% of the goal and just enough to make the adventure game as a 'Director's Cut.' Planned features it trimmed or cut to make the basic budget viable will now be added back in.
Read more: In-game commentary plus cut characters, locations, and more »
Ten months after receiving a whopping $1.9 million from fans to make Shadowrun Returns, Jordan Weisman's HareBrained Schemes has revealed the cyberpunk-fantasy RPG in a 19-minute gameplay walkthrough. Weisman and co-founder Mitch Gitelman show off a squad of shadowrunners talking, shooting and summoning their way through one mission and gosh, it's good to see.
Continuing its adventures into Linux, Valve has released a penguin-friendly edition of another of its games, bringing the total to five. Could it be Left 4 Dead? Portal 2? HL2: Episode Two? Gosh, even Episode 3? Er, no, it's Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Still, that's nice, isn't it?
Few games receive mod tools nowadays, partly because they take time and money to make and support but also because mods often offer for free the sorts of things publishers try to sell as paid DLC. While Painkiller: Hell & Damnation offers a few pieces of DLC, it's also letting players make their own stuff for the FPS remake. Publisher Nordic Games today announced that the mod kit will launch in April. Mac and Linux editions will follow, too.
Hey, you! Do you want a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment? I am, of course, only asking for rhetorical effect: you do. You'll need to pay for it, though. inXile Entertainment today launched its crowdfunding campaign to make Torment: Tides of Numenera, a thematic and tonal follow-up set in the Numenera universe--itself a Kickstarter success. inXile needs $900,000 to make the RPG for PC, Mac and Linux, so get pledging.
The Humble stork has delivered another big bouncing bundle of games in the Humble Bundle with Android 5. The latest pay-what-you-want package offers musical shoot 'em up Beat Hazard Ultra, Dynamite Jack, Solar 2, NightSky HD, and, if you beat the average price, tower defense action-RPG Dungeon Defenders plus superb spin 'em up Super Hexagon too. All games come in PC, Mac, Linux and Android flavours.
It won't be much longer until a few lucky gamers will get a chance to try out an early version of the "Steam Box"--Valve's foray into TV-connected hardware. According to Valve head Gabe Newell, the company plans on "giving out some prototypes to customers to get their reactions in the next three to four months."
Assuming Valve Time doesn't strike, of course.
Have you pledged money to the Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey crowdfunding campaign yet? Yes? Then you'll be thrilled by this new trailer for Ragnar Tørnquist's conclusion to the adventure game trilogy. No? Then perhaps this'll win you over. Or not. Whatever. Watch it, if you want. The game's smashing through stretch goals like nobody's business so it doesn't particularly need your help, but it'd still like it.
Defending towers is so passé; let them burn! Heck, raze them yourself! No, tower offense is where 'it' 'is at', and Anomaly: Warzone Earth developer 11 Bit Studios is delivering another dose of path-pushing action with Anomaly 2. Announced yesterday, the sequel's coming to PC, Mac and Linux some time from April to June.
"I backed it on day one but this makes me a bit leery, I like tight, focused designs and this ..."
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