Rock, Paper, Shotgun

UPDATE: Ubisoft confirm that there will be a digitally distributed PC version of this game.

Eric “Another World” Chahi is making a game that is currently code-named Project Dust. It’s a Populous-like sandbox featuring a tribe of alien type folk, which is looking rather beautiful (see trailer below), but which we didn’t think was heading to the beige box. However, in an insightful Chahi interview for Edge online it is claimed that the game will appear on Steam. Fortunately for us, such details do not escape the bionic brain of LewieP.

I’ll poke Ubi to double check this is true (it is, see above). If true, then good, because it looks like just the kind of game that might please me. You can never really have enough simulated volcanoes or tiny people dependent on your whims.
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It was a sad loss of a genuinely decades-old-franchise when Microsoft seemed to abandon Microsoft Flight Simulator. However, as part of its three-pronged PC-offensive announced at Gamescom, they’ve brought back an internally-developed PC-Exclusive Microsoft Flight. Very few more details on its sparse page. Few bits from the press release which stand out include the desire to “Welcoming everyone, including long-time fans, to experience the magic of flight” – which brings to mind Tim’s feature on the descent of the Flight Sim – and talking about a shared, social experience. The very short teaser follows…
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I’ve been meaning to look at this for a while, and am glad I’ve finally had a chance. Goblin Camp is – perhaps somewhat obviously – inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but is off doing its own thing, and adds a little Open Source malarkies in the side. In short: running a Goblin camp. While it’s early days yet, it seems to be concentrating brilliantly on UI aspects. Frankly, between space-to-pause, h to read help and guess-work I got my little camp up and running. I only had to look at the read-me file to realise that you order production on the Stock Manager (S), and then I was away. It’s a really nifty design. If you’re interested in the way its heading, here’s its future-road map but its worth downloading the current build to get a sense of this city-builder with an orcish twist. A little footage of the UI is below. And I’ve just made my militarised club-wielding orcs run off and try and escort a unicorn. Awesome!
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Warren Spector has been making some interesting comments at GDC Europe, regarding the differences between games and film. And more specifically, developers who are trying to make the former like the latter. Stop it, he cries. “If you want make your game as a movie,” Develop reports the Epic Mickey developer saying, “you should be making movies”. He then goes on to discuss what games should be doing differently. But I’m not sure I agree.

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Hello! I’m currently out at GDC Europe, skipping around businessy talks to cover for my day job, but I ended up sat in on BIoware’s laidback and fascinating retrospective on the making of their breakthrough game, Baldur’s Gate. It’s a landmark title, and fascinatingly critical to what modern RPGs and MMOs are, but one we’ve surprisingly not talked about much on RPS. Thanks to my magic (and now rather broken) hands of transcripting +1, let’s change that…
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Indie dev Cactus has released two new games, both deeply different and both deeply Cactus (read: disturbing).

Gamma4 is a beautiful, disappointingly brief headtrip set to a club beat where you guide four independant lasers through various squres. I say it’s disappointing, but I’m sure if it were any longer it’d just start to hurt. Norrland is a little stranger, being a kind of 8-bit simulator of a Swedish hillbilly on a hunting trip. In between shooting and punching various animals you deal with dreams of withering insecurity. Videos of (and thoughts on) both after the jump.
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Many internet tipsters have been forwarding this particular title toward us over the weekend, and it’s looking intriguing. Star Ruler is a 4X space strategy that… well, some features: “choose however many systems you desire; you are limited only by the speed of your cpu… Full 3D too much to handle? Flatten maps for ease of interaction … Massive ship battles fought in real-time with particle effects and directional damage… Play with as many competitors as your server can manage, with drop-in-drop-out compatibility.” Sounds too good to be true, eh? Now go look at the video I posted below. Yeah, I’m going to be taking a look at this one. At £13 for the GamersGate pre-order, (also on D2D) and it being out on Saturday, it’s almost worth a punt in the dark. Much more on this soon.
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RPS reader Ben Esposito writes to say “I’m a stupid intern at Dejobaan Games (AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!) and after seeing what it’s like to make games with no money and no air conditioning, I decided to start doing it myself.”

Mr. Esposito’s new game, Nudo, has just been released (for free!) and provides about an hour of addictive, rewarding puzzling. Ben describes it as “a platformer on top of a rubik’s cube”, but as a professional games journalist I must categorise it as “game where you kind of move the level as well as the little man but with certain limitations.” To borrow a phrase from Kieron, it’s one of those games that’s much easier to grasp with a video rather than an explanation, so I’ve wedged a video after the jump.
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My love for Soldner is real and weird. The most bugged game I’ve encountered (while Boiling Point’s bugs were extraordinary, it was at least a decent game underneath), it plays like slapstick comedy with an unbreakably straight face. I returned to it, playing the completely unpatched original version, and sticking to the single player (I did try to play some multiplayer later, but of course it didn’t work), to see if it would deliver the joy years on. It, of course, did. You can read my adventures here.

There’s a quote from it below, as it’s a bit long.

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Sad news broke on Friday. Firstly, with rumours that in addition to previously announced scaling back of the APB team post-launch, the whole team of the recently announced Social Networking Game MyWorld would be laid off. Later, speaking to Develop, Studio Manager Colin Macdonald confirmed that the further redundancies had been made, and that those cuts were made to the MyWorld team, but stopped short of saying the project was cancelled and they “were still looking at options for it.” However, APB would continue…
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Catching up with some news from the back end of last week! The previously covered Battlestar Galactica Online revealed that Dean Stockwell (A character from Battlestar Galactica), Callum Keith Rennie (Another character from Battlestar Galactica) Tricia Helfer (A third character from Battlestar Galactica), Grace Park (Someone else from Battlestar Galactica), Aaron Douglas (Battlestar Galactica), Katee Sackhof (Who you know from Battlestar Galactica), Edward James Olmos (Yet another Battlestar Galactica character) and James Bamber (Jace & His Wheeled Warriors*) are “do”ing their roles in the forthcoming browser-based MMO (powered by Unity). Go over to Bleeding Cool for more grabs of the cast in game-o-vision or see the (not in game) trailer beneath the cut…
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