Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Battleforge, you might remember, is a “deck” based RTS, in which you play a pre-selection of units against your opponents. It went free-to-play a couple of months after launch and is now supported by people purchasing the expansion card decks. The Lost Souls expansion, which arrived last week, contains two new factions, which in turn delivers 120 new cards to your deck, adding 28 new units, 16 new buildings and 16 spells. The cost for a Lost Souls pack is about $2.50. The main game is free, and although not my favourite RTS experience it does have some neat touches and is probably worth trying out if you like a bit of strategic fantasy elf-biff.

Ooh, I completely meant to post this last week, and never clicked the button. Bohemia Interactive Studios have announced the winners of their Community Awards 2009, in which they flag up all the sterling efforts of their busy community. This is awesome for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because it’s good to see a company that relies so heavily on its community making all efforts to thank them for what they’re doing. The full shortlist for the awards can be seen here, and the winners (including that winning machinima video) are posted below. Congratulations to all involved, obviously.
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Gas Powered Games have announced their next RTS (they’re wrapping up Supreme Commander 2 right now) and it’s called Kings And Castles. Apparently it’s a “one-of-a-kind experience” that will “let players take on the role of one of three powerful kings who are vying for control of an all-new, original fantasy world.” The team plan to record and publish every aspect of development for this new title. “We’re doing something different this time around,” said Chris Taylor, Creative Director of Gas Powered Games. “We want to take our fans on a great adventure with us. They’ll get to go behind-the-scenes and watch the game come to life from start to finish.” And with that in mind, the first video-blog of the game is posted below.
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This fantastic webgame came to us via a tip from Jack, for which we salute him. Called Prose and Motion, it’s by MoFunZone.com. It’s a remarkably clever idea, taking something as simple as solving anagrams, and applying fifteen types of smart to it. It’s spelling meets physics meets lateral thinking.

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Sundays are for the romancing mini-game, finishing off Bioshock 2 and a series of non-Valentines-Day related events you should consider going to if you’re in That There London, while compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading from across the week, while trying to resist linking to a couple of pop songs that caught my ear.

• Proust was a Game Designer. Mitu Khandaker has the clevers, regarding art as the forefront of science and similar

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Love is in the air. Or is it Carbon monoxide? I always mix those two up. Valentines day is nearly upon us, that time of year when people with significant others excuse themselves from not being romantic 364 days of the year by getting some flowers and paying for a meal at Pizza Express, and people who are single get all cynical and pretend to be above it, but are really crying on the inside. Looks like it’s also a time when games get discounted more than usual, and the bargain bucket is overflowing this week. For more ways to numb the pain, head to SavyGamer.
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Free C and C Four Three. C Free and Three Four C. She sells seashells on the seashore. Aaargh. Anyway! The first three Command & Conquer games: no-pennies. A welcome promotional wotsit by EA on the eve-ish of C&C4: Tiberian Twilight, the only price you have to pay to get your hands on C&C, Red Alert and Tiberian Sun (plus the Firestorm expansion) is to take the time to burn/extract some ISOs. It’s all over here. Of course, you’ll need to buy C&C3 to get the entire Tiberium story, but that can be summed up as “Earth’s screwed, nasty aliens arrive, Kane wants to pal up with them, Kane’s killed again (except not), Earth’s even more screwed.”

Friend of RPS and sometime games journo Dan Griliopoulos suffers from deuteranopia, a form of red-green colourblindness. He’s a lifelong gamer, yet the industry at large seems entirely ignorant of how difficult games that rely on red and green differentiation can be for his condition – one that’s shared by at least 6% of all males. So, pray allow the man to vent a little…

I’m Big Daddy Delta, terror of Rapture, splitter of splicers, defender of the weak, diving suit fetishist extraordinaire. I’m stuck on one side of a door, there’s a broken window and a yellow glowing switch a few feet away. I have a clever hacking dart gun, which requires my simply pressing a button when a needle on its meter passes through a certain colour. I shoot, I score… and get a mild electric shock. I repeat. Again and again. There’s an endless supply of darts so I keep shooting until I die of Electron Overdose and respawn, humiliated, at a Vitachamber. Yet again, someone on the art team has thoughtlessly swallowed the Manichean standard that red is bad and green is good, and decided he should use a primary palette to distinguish between these opposites -which means poor old colour-blind me gets killed.
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No. Noooo. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. No. No. No. “Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen. We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience “Alan Wake” was on the Xbox 360 platform, so we focused on making it an Xbox 360 exclusive. Both Microsoft and Remedy have long histories in PC game development. This decision was about matching this specific game to the right platform.” Sez nasty Mister Microsoft. Nooooooooooo. There’s a trailer beneath the cut, if you wish to mourn for what might have been.
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Part of you wants to be upset with Pocketwatch Games. Why haven’t they given us 2009′s Unknown Pleasure Venture Dinosauria yet? That part is soon quashed when you see what Andy Schatz is working on. Monaco is a four-player co-op stealth game that’s been shortlisted for both the Design and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Minimalist graphics. Exciting theme. Stealth. This one has RPS written all over it. Our interview with Andy, and footage of Monaco follows…
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I’m a Warrior! Now I’m a Necromancer! Now I’m a Triclops Monk! Now I’m a Giant Spider! Now I’m a Cosmonaut! Now I’m an Alien Robot! Now I’m a Drow Ranger! Now I’m a Chicken!

Great Dungeon In The Sky is Diablo/Pokemon/Spelunky. It is a 16ish-bit-esque stabby-jumpy game in which, as well as carving your way through the semi-randomly generated levels, you collect new character classes. Kill a Dire Jelly, and you can choose to play as Dire Jelly come the next level/death. Kill a Witch and… well, you don’t want to play as the Witch, trust me. Rubbish! The Giant Spider’s my favourite so far, but there are dozens I’m yet to unlock. What the game may lack in terms of combat/platforming mechanics, it more than makes up for in compulsive collection of new characters. All of which pack Cute Factor Maximum into their 20-odd pixels. (Thanks to Bret Anderson for the tip, and for making Dog Man Star).