The Humble Bundle for Android
The latest Humble Bundle is here, and this time it’s an offering for fans of mobile gaming, as the games are available for Android mobile devices, as well as Windows, Mac and Linux.
Games in this bundle are: reverse tower defense Anomaly: Warzone Earth, by 11 Bit Studios, ambient physics game Osmos, by Hemisphere Games, and Mobigame‘s puzzle-platformer EDGE, with 2D Boy‘s classic indie game World of Goo the bonus for those paying more than the average price.
As usual, the bundle is pay what you want, with a choice in how your donation is split up: between developers, the Child’s Play Charity, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Humble Tip.
Behind the Scenes: Man vs Machine
MuchDifferent‘s browser-based FPS / world record attempt / tech demo took place on Sunday, and while the team underestimated the number of people who would be interested in taking part, and struggled to balance the game, the world record attempt and tech demo were a success!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJKLHjHjxBc]
The highest number of players reached was 999, breaking the world record!
Darksiders Novel Announced
THQ and Random House Publishing Group have announced today that a Darksiders novel is to be published in May.
Darksiders: The Abomination Vault, by Ari Marmell, takes place millennia before the events of the games.. featuring the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and a plot to resurrect ancient weapons of unimaginable power.
King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Wargame
King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Wargame, the turn-based strategy RPG by Neocore Games and Paradox Interactive, has now been released on the PC.
While trying to protect his kingdom, King Arthur suffered a wound which won’t heal and thus became the Maimed King.. and his land is suffering with him. Camelot is in ruins, with the Knights of the Round Table scattered or turned against each other, and monsters roam the lands..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-2leHqbE0]
Players take control of a small army of warriors, attempting to uncover the dark forces at work in the lands of ancient Britannia. Gameplay consists of a mixture of strategic and tactical phases, with a large campaign map for strategic actions such as moving armies and completing story-driven quests, and tactical battles taking place when two armies meet. Battles can take place under the direct command of the player, with numerous tactics to choose from, or they can be Auto-Resolved for an instant decision.
The King Arthur II demo, featuring the tutorial and first mission, is available for download here.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a single-player action RPG developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, and published by 38 Studios and Electronic Arts.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7vzRaMAx90]
The game takes place in the fantasy kingdom of Amalur, where players can choose from four playable races and define their own class through the destiny system. Players begin the game having arisen from the dead, and are free to choose and customise their character as they wish, while exploring a vast game world.
The game universe is also planned to be the setting of an upcoming MMO by 38 Studios, codenamed Project Copernicus.
A demo of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was made available on the 17th January, on Steam, Origin, Xbox Live and PSN, although critics complained of a number of bugs in the demo.
38 Studios and EA have also come under fire for the revelation that the game has an online pass.
Kingdoms of Amalur’s online pass is to be included with all new copies of the game, and unlocks a “House of Valor” content pack containing seven additional quests. This is unusual, as it effectively locks out single-player content for anyone not buying new: the usual stated reason for using an online pass is to recuperate server costs and ongoing maintenance for online content.
Gamers annoyed by the inclusion of the online pass posted on the game’s forum to ask if the studio fought the restriction or not; studio head Curt Shilling also posted in the thread in defense of the online pass. The debate is ongoing, with the thread now up to 137 pages.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Intro
CD Projekt have released a video showing the introduction to The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition, following on from the CG trailer posted recently.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ajukUlRKdA]
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition is due for release on April 17th for Xbox 360.
IndieCity Global Game Jam 2012 and 100 games!
IndieCity hosted a game jam in Birmingham this weekend, as part of the Global Game Jam. All games created for the jam, and submitted during the weekend will be accepted and published by IndieCity!
The Global Game Jam is the world’s largest game jam event taking place in January each year. Thousands of student, indie and professional game developers get together across hundreds of local jams to share advice and develop games based on a secret theme during the weekend. This year’s attendee figures reached 11228, with 2310 active game projects listed; beating the 2011 record of over 1500 games created.
IndieCity have been steadily growing, and have now reached 100 games, with platform exploration game LaserCat being the 100th game.
Rexaura – a mod for Portal
Rexaura is a mod for Portal by Mevious, featuring a full sized campaign, unique dialogue, and plenty of puzzles including some new types featuring plasma balls, which you can deflect using cubes, send through light barriers and so on.
You can download Rexaura from moddb. To play this mod, you need to extract the file into your sourcemods folder, and restart Steam.
The author of this mod has previously created another Portal mod: Portal Pro, which can also be downloaded from moddb.
Castle Story Devs talking Unity and Voxels
I’m watching Sauropod Studio‘s Castle Story out of interest in the game itself, but I’m also interested in the latest blog post on how they’re building it, using Unity3d.
I’ve always been interested in game design, but I’ve not studied it.. many technical explanations are inaccessible as they use terms I don’t understand, or refer to other concepts I’ve never heard of.
That’s why I was pleased to see this post, and an explanation which covered some basics.. hopefully there’ll be a few more of these too!
Demoing Darkness
This week, the demo for The Darkness II, by Digital Extremes and 2K Games, was released on Steam, Xbox LIVE, and later, the PlayStation Network.
Player-character Jackie Estacado is the don of a crime family, as well as the owner of a demonic power called The Darkness. After the death of his girlfriend, Jackie has tried to control The Darkness.. but it wants out!
Jackie is also being hunted by others who want The Darkness for themselves, and the demo starts with a scene of Jackie being crucified and beaten in order to try and force him to give up his powers of his own free will..
Earlier events have Jackie going to a restaurant and meeting some girls before one of them is shot and a car rams its way through the wall, crushing Jackie’s leg and foot. This results in Jackie himself having to be dragged away by a henchman while he shoots the enemies who have come to capture him..
This bit was on rails, but I found the shooting fun, with plenty of enemies appearing from all around.
Once outside, though.. that’s when The Darkness put in an appearance! 🙂
One of the new features of this game is quad-wielding: Jackie can use firearms while still manifesting powerful demon arms, unlike in the previous game where you used either The Darkness or guns.
The demon arms are powerful enough to pick up enemies, who you can then execute or throw away to their deaths; other items can also be picked up and thrown too. I got extra points for impaling an enemy with a thrown bit of scaffolding.. very Bulletstorm 🙂
There are also bonus points for different executions.. and lifting an enemy into the air with one arm and then splitting them in two with the other does feel rather powerful!
Once out into the street, car doors can be torn off and used as a shield while you shoot it out, or you can throw the door itself at them if you prefer. All these abilities are available via different buttons on the keyboard or mouse, and while this saved me from having to switch between active abilities, I found the use of middle-click strange and slightly uncomfortable.
In the first Darkness game, there were a range of Darkling types with their own unique abilities: Beserker, Gunner, Kamikaze and Lightkiller. In this game there is just one Darkling with some importance to the story and gameplay. He is able to help out in fights, interact with the environment around him, and scout out areas for Jackie.. more of an ally than expendable minion this time.
Certainly, he is rather unique.. as well as having an affected British accent, he’s wearing a Union Jack for a jumper and has a dead cat on his head..
Upgrades for Jackie’s various abilities can be acquired at various Dark Shrines. Essense can be spent on various abilities or improvements via the talent tree, and I was pleased to see that you can spread the points around or specialise as you wish! I’ll be taking the extra-strong demon arms, thanks 😉