Indie Royale – The April Fools Bundle
The latest bundle from the Indie Royale is The April Fools Bundle, containing five games on the usual pay what you want scheme.
The games are: Hidden Path Entertainment’s tower defense, Defense Grid: The Awakening, Hack, Slash, Loot, a turn based dungeon crawler by OddballDave, insane platform shoot-em-up Alien Zombie Megadeath, by PomPom Games, Explodemon, by CurveStudios, and bonus game Astro Tripper, a shoot-em-up by PomPom Games.
The music is Sexy Synthesizer’s Rock: Delux Edition, available free to those who pay more than the minimum price for the bundle!
Orcs Must Die! 2
Robot Entertainment have revealed Orcs Must Die! 2, which brings players together with their friends to continue the slaughter of the mindless orc mobs left over from Orcs Must Die!
The War Mage returns, and is largely unchanged, but now he’s joined by the Sorceress, who uses mind-control and magic..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s9wkicuXog]
The game is due for release in summer 2012!
In The Grim Dark Future, There Is Only Single-Player
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium is now only going to be a single-player game, thanks to layoffs at Relic and Vigil.
MMOs are expensive to make, so changing the game to a single-player saves them a considerable amount of money.. but what a disappointment.
The Indie Gala III
The newest Indie Gala bundle has now been revealed: this bundle contains three games, with another two unlocked for those who pay more than the average, as well as an unnamed bonus game. There are also three secret bonuses to come next week, again for those who pay more than the average.
The first three games are: Trapped Dead, a third person isometric survival game by Crenetic; Greed: Black Border, a sci-fi action RPG by Clockstone Studio; Future Wars, strategy from Radon Labs. The next two games are Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes, a story-driven RPG by Silent Dreams, and Twin Sector, a post-apocalyptic action story by Dns Development.
This bundle is available for another two weeks, with additional bonuses being unlocked during the second week.
Indie Royale – The Ninja Pack
The Ninja Pack is another Lightning round from Indie Royale: available for just 100 hours, and with the same pay what you want scheme as the normal indie game bundles.
Games in this pack come from developer NinjaBee: Ancients of Ooga, a puzzle platformer; Cloning Clyde, from NinjaBee and Bacon Wrapped Games, a side-scrolling platformer; city-building game A Kingdom for Keflings; Outpost Kaloki, a humorous space station tycoon game.. and bonus strategy game, Band of Bugs.
There are 79 hours remaining on the bundle. The next Indie Royale bundle will be the April Fools Bundle, in two weeks time.
GAME Over and Other News
GAME has now officially filed for administration, after suspension of their shares this morning. Stores will continue to trade for the time being.
BioWare’s Mass Effect 3 woes continue this week.. gamers complaining about the ending, Amazon allegedly offering refunds on copies of the game, and now Dr Ray Muzyka, the co-founder and GM of BioWare, has released a statement which seems to suggest they may change the ending, or add more endings, at least.
To counter bad news with good.. I was pleased to see that the Chancellor has now announced tax credits for the UK gaming industry, this should hopefully boost the industry and allow the UK to compete with the rest of the world! (more…)
Mists of Pandaria Info..
Loads of information has been released this morning about Mists of Pandaria, the next expansion for World of Warcraft!
There’s a full list of features on MMO Champion, including screenshots of the Pandaren female:
Indie Royale – The St. Patrick’s Day Bundle!
The latest bundle from the Indie Royale is up: The St. Patrick’s Day Bundle, containing Hard Reset, Jolly Rover, Vertex Dispenser and DLC Quest, and bonus game Lair of the Evildoer.
As usual, the bundle is pay-what-you-want with a minimum price; beat the average to knock the price down for others!
Hard Reset is an action shooter by Flying Wild Hog, set in a cyberpunk city with humanity verging on extinction and under attack by machines. The game features over-the-top destruction, loads of weapons, enemies and a plot inspired by the likes of Blade Runner!
Brawsome‘s Jolly Rover is a 2d point-and-click adventure following Gaius James Rover across three tropical islands, facing off pirates, villains, voodoo, love and a lack of loot, while following his dream of starting a circus.
Vertex Dispenser, by brog, is an abstract strategy game with mathematical puzzle elements: the game features a mixture of action and mind-bending challenges, as you collect power-ups and capture territory in the right order to maximise the colour of vertices, defend territory and eradicate enemies.
Going Loud Studios‘ DLC Quest is a platforming action game where you defeat the bad guy, save the world and get the girl.. while taking a swipe at the games industry’s DLC practices!
Bonus game Lair of the Evildoer, also by Going Loud Studios, is an RPG shooter with 20 levels procedurally generated with evil, over 30 types of enemy, 25 weapons with plenty of variation, and a stat-based levelling system. Escape the evil Dr. Odious’ lair any way you want to!
Impressions of each game to follow..
Diablo III Releases on May 15th!
Diablo III is to be released on May 15th.. a global release (or at least nearly global) with both retail and digital being made available at the same time. You can pre-purchase the game now from Blizzard, for £44.99.
Those who have signed up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass will get the game for free, along with the Tyrael’s Charger mount and beta access to the next expansion: Mists of Pandaria.
I’m really looking forward to the game. Two months to clear my backlog first, though? Unlikely to happen! 😀
Grim Times
It’s really not looking good for GAME. Yesterday’s news showed that they were looking for a buyer.. a few options such as a partial GameStop buyout were being outed in the press, with the latest possible buyers being Hilco and OpCapita.
Share prices, which started the week at 3.5p, fell to below 1p yesterday morning, and only just made it back over the penny mark. This may put buyers off. It may be that buyers are waiting until GAME goes into administration, as they can then negotiate around store liabilities.
GAME has also failed to secure stocks of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, which is due on March 23rd, and a press release from Tecmo Koei states that neither Ninja Gaiden 3 or Warriors Orochi 3 will be available through GAME or GameStation in the UK and Ireland, with alternative stores listed as HMV, ASDA, Blockbuster, or online.
Other bad news, or bad press at least, came for EA and BioWare.. there was a large backlash against Mass Effect 3’s ending, which apparently doesn’t take into account players’ choices in the game.
Fans discovered that the Day 1 DLC character can be unlocked from the disc; EA stepped forward to say that From Ashes is not on the disc, but is a 600MB+ download; but that some “framework elements and character models needed to be put on disc”.
The latest news is that a multiplayer DLC for the game has been spotted, by somebody using a development kit. No pricing or release date has been mentioned as yet, but this news doesn’t seem to be getting a good reception from fans. At this rate, we’ll be waiting for the GOTY edition.