Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It’s out! Super Crate Box is out! Go skedaddling over to the site immediately and download yourself the finest and most frenetic freeware game we’ve seen all… month? Perhaps, perhaps. I’ve posted the trailer again below, just in case you missed me talking about this excitedly earlier in the week. Now you can talk about it excitedly yourselves!

You know, the Disc Gun gets the bad press, but I’d say the Mines are the cruellest weapon in this game. Getting to a crate at the top of a crowded level, armed with nothing but mines? That’s a very bad time.
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The new Edge came sliding through my letterbox today. I was about to cut it up and reassemble it into a huge paper effigy of myself, like I always do, but then something caught my eye. An interview with Interplay’s president, Eric Caen? Ooh. What does he have to say?

Some quite heartening things about Fallout Online, as it turns out.
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There’s appears to be a widely-held misconception that RPS knows very little about football. This is a lie, spread by ourselves for comic effect. For instance, I know that my own country, England, has a dependably underwhelming team whose fans endlessly hark on about a match that they won by mistake 44 years ago, that an increasing number of the major UK clubs are owned by horrifyingly rich foreign businessmen, and that Manchester United have today announced the rather mysterious decision to sign a new five-year contract with the headmaster from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

I also know that a demo version of the latest Football Manager is huge news for an awful lot of PC gamers, and that 2001-era jokes about the game being a series of spreadsheets are enormously ignorant.
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I like the sound of anything zen at the moment. Gosh I’m tired. Fortunately, looking at screenshots of The UnderGarden makes me feel all peaceful and serene. Described as a puzzle exploration game, it boasts relaxing physics challenges, and local co-op so players can, and I swear this is a direct quote, “chill out, work together to solve puzzles and explore the world.” Man. It’s due out on the 10th November, but we should hopefully be taking a look at it before then. In the mean time, “chill out” with these screenshots.

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Coo, here’s something good. New MMOs are announced every day now. There’s an extraordinary glut of them, most of which will never trouble your attention, being free-to-pay conversions of Korean et al epics that have 50 million players, none of whom you’ll ever meet. However, when the new MMO being announced is being developed by they behind King’s Bounty, everyone should suddenly sit up and take notice. Royal Quest, 1C’s first MMO, is being developed by the Russian mad geniuses at Katauri Interactive.

Set in a world called Aura, the game is centred around capturing castles and gathering gold, and while only a little is known at this point, if it captures the spirit of Space Rangers or King’s Bounty, then this could be a real treat. We’ve got as many details as I could find below, along with some gorgeous art, and the four (rubbish) screenshots that have so far appeared.

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It’s Friday. You’ve had a long week at the office. The boss did that thing with his mouth and his fingers again this morning, the thing you hate. So why not relax with cathartic browser game Corporate Climber? It’s a bit great. You’re tasked with climbing a tall office block, and each new floor you reach means a promotion and a new challenge. Wonderful payoff of an ending, too.

Oh, wait- you’re in an office. Of course, there aren’t any games allowed in the office. Whoops! How silly of me. Back to work with you. Well, the rest of you should have a play.
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Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam. Naaaaaaam. Naaaaaaaaaam nam naaaaaaaam nam naaaaaaam. Naaaaaaaaaam. Nam. Naaam nam, nam, Nam, naaaaaaaam naaam naaaam nam nam. NAM! Naam nam, naaaaaaaam nam naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam. Nam! Nam! Naaaaaaaam.

That’s an early draft of my movie about some American veterans talking in a bar. They’re somewhat reminiscing, and somewhat excited because they’re looking forward to the DLC pack for Battlefield Bad Company 2, Vietnam. There’s a new trailer below. It’ll be playing on a screen in the bar.

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Crikey, the Independent Game Festival has received four hundred entries, according to yesterday’s announcement. They’re all listed just here. This, the thirteenth year for the competition, has some real crackers in the line up, including Amnesia, Hecker’s Spy Party, as well as some of the games we got excited about at the recent EG Expo, such as Skulls Of The Shogun. And then there’s Minecraft. Yeah, it’s going to be a hell of a year for the big indie games awards session. It also conveniently puts four hundred indies games in one place for the hivemind to browse through. We’ll be reporting back with some treasures, I suspect.

Virtual millinery proves to pay off. Valve sent us this on the roaring hat-trade in Team Fortress 2, and the benefits for the community creators:

Five Steam community members participated in the initial round of content creation. Rob Laro, Shawn Spetch, Steven Skidmore, Spencer Kern, and Shaylyn Hamm created items for Team Fortress 2 which were then made available to other community members for purchase from the in-game Mann Co. Store. Today they received checks for the first two weeks of sales, with royalties ranging from $39,000 to $47,000 per person.

“It’s astounding that so many people want to purchase the items that came out of the community,” said Spencer Kern, TF2 community content creator. “The response exceeded my wildest expectations. There really is no doubt at this point that there’s a huge demand for community-created content in TF2 and, hopefully, more games will start to tap into this demand.”

Yep. Astounding is the word.

Speaking on the EA Forums, DICE designer Alan Kertz talks a bit about the consideration he has had to put into the PC version of Battlefield 3. He says that PC players are, like their machines, a little more demanding, and as such need extra work on DICE’s part. He explains that this will affect his work on the as-yet-unrevealed game: “It’s too early to talk BF3 specifics. But it’s never too early for me to acknowledge that PC players have a fear that BF3 will be “consolized.” PC gaming is alive and well, BFBC2 has proven that and no one at DICE or EA can argue with the numbers. Battlefield 3 needs an extra bit of special attention on the PC. I intend to give it that attention, tradition and our community demand it.”

I, for one, can’t wait to see those specifics.

Remember VVVVVV, the brutal & brilliant gravity-flipping platformer from early in the year? Ah, you do. Here‘s what Kieron had to say about it, and here‘s my take. Have you tried the demo? There’s a demo, you know.

More excitingly, as of last week there’s also a demo of the C64 demake. As in, converting the game so it will run on a C64. Why? Because, that’s why. Grab yourself an emulator and get the whopping 16kb ROM here. And for a reminder of why Kieron expects somebody to punch the VVVVVV creator in the face one day, watch the video after the jump.
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