Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By John Walker on February 23rd, 2012 at 11:40 am.

Chinese IGF winner, Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory is having a commercial release. From S. Korean indie team Turtle Cream, it’s a 2D platformer starring a cube of sugar, fighting against his fate. But, and I’ll never get tired of typing this, with yet another awesome twist idea. Here each screen exists in two versions, constructed from a grid of tiles that are flipped in blocks of four when the cube walks past them. So as you walk along a platform, you may replace it with empty space, deadly spikes, or key elements to completing the screen. It’s a brain-hurtingly interesting idea, and it looks utterly lovely, as you’ll see below.

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By Craig Pearson on February 23rd, 2012 at 10:57 am.

I just Googled ‘F2PMOBARTS’ and received nothing. Well done, Ironclad Games! Sins Of A Dark Age, has broken the all-seeing eye of the world’s best search engine, and brought out its passive-aggressive side: “Did you mean: ‘F2P MOBARTS’”. No, Google. I did not. F2PMOBARTS, you are officially a new genre. Now to explain what all those words mean.
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By Adam Smith on February 23rd, 2012 at 10:24 am.

This may be one to bookmark for later, particularly if you’re at work. It’s a game that requires two people to play on one keyboard, so unless you’ve had some severe budget cuts recently, no one’s going to believe that you and Frank Pelvis from Dynamic Solutions are working on different projects on the same PC. They’ll probably notice the cardboard cut-out styled space aliens zooming across the screen as well. Co-Op, free on PC and Mac, pops you and a friend into ships that are connected by a beam. Since you don’t have guns, you’ll have to coordinate movements so that the beam slices through the monsters coming after you. Take a look.

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By Adam Smith on February 23rd, 2012 at 9:44 am.

As it was rumoured, so it shall be. Dear Esther’s lead writer, Dan Pinchbeck, has revealed to Joystiq that thechineseroom are working on A Machine For Pigs, set in Amnesia’s world, although it won’t be a direct sequel to the dimly lit descent. It will, however, star a wealthy industrialist called Daniel Plainview Oswald Mandus, who returns from an ill-fated trip to Mexico in 1899 and finds that his body is plagued with fever and his mind is plagued with nightmares that revolve around an ominous machine. Possibly for pigs. Probably not some sort of mechanical pig disco and daycare centre.

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By John Walker on February 23rd, 2012 at 9:06 am.

A cause of occasional, but rather fervent ire of recent times has been day one DLC. Why do people get pissed off? Because times were you’d buy a game, and get a game. Now, the perception is you buy a portion of the game, and are then asked to buy the rest in premium lumps over the next few months. And when one of those premium portions appears the same day as the game – well, it looks like the publishers are taking the piss. “Here’s most of our game! Now pay more to complete it.” So it is likely with these arguments in mind that BioWare are making it clear that Mass Effect’s day one DLC, From Ashes, was developed after the core game was completed. But does that change anything for the player?

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By John Walker on February 22nd, 2012 at 6:00 pm.

Want you access to the Guild Wars 2 beta? Well, from this very minute and for the next 48 hours you can sign up. It doesn’t seem that it will guarantee you a spot, but you’ll certainly be on the list for future beta events. You need only head here, put in your details, drip one drop of blood from your palm into the gauze pad by your keyboard, and you’re done. I’d suggest doing it right now, but you’ve got until 6pm (Queen’s Time) on Friday before the offer is up.

By Craig Pearson on February 22nd, 2012 at 5:03 pm.

Poor Catacomb Snatch, forever destined to be a quirk of game development: the game Mojang made in a weekend and then tossed out into the world, unready, uneducated, unubered. All it needed was a little polish to make it all better, some tender loving uber. But what if it could happen? What if someone took the source code, appended the game with with “Uber” and carried on developing? That would make an Uber Catacomb Snatch. And if such a thing were to happen, they might as well set up a website saying so. It would look a bit like this , and host downloads of the game for everyone to play. And you know, if it did happen, if the impossible became possible, then I might see fit to include a video of it below this here line. Dare you step over it and into the World of the Impossible?

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By John Walker on February 22nd, 2012 at 4:43 pm.

Today’s the day for indie projects from former major-developers. After Banner comes BlackSpace from PixelFoundry Games, a group of devs who’d previously been together at EA Sports Tiburon. And it’s exclusively for the PC. Good. There’s more details, four pictures of rocks, and a (lifeless) teaser trailer for it below.

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By John Walker on February 22nd, 2012 at 3:50 pm.

The title of Wargame: European Escalation makes me think of all those grey-and-white products you see in the background of adverts for washing powder. There in the front is the packed of Whizzi-Wash, bright and colourful, and behind are stacked greyscale box after box of “SOAP” and “CLEANING POWDER”. I’m saying it’s a bland name. Is that clear? Bland. But it doesn’t look bland at all, as the launch trailer below proves.

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By Craig Pearson on February 22nd, 2012 at 3:16 pm.

“What do we want?” “More people to get access to the upcoming free-to-play shooter Tribes: Ascend, new maps, gametypes, weapons, and bug-fixes!” “When do we want it?” “Sometime on Friday, maybe. It’s really up to you! We’re just keen to get involved!” Well, good news. Tribes: Ascend developers Hi-Rez Studios have crumbled to the pressure I exerted with my catchy protest chant and will be opening the beta of their online shooter on Friday Feb 24th, at exactly 5pm. So far over 300,0000 players have skied the slopes and spammed their spinfusors, and if you missed out then you’re being welcomed with open arms. The current client will be receiving a major content drop as well, details of which are below.
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