By John Walker on October 31st, 2012.
Anyone who has pre-ordered zombie sandbox mulitplayer (if you want) survival sim The Dead Linger will now be able to get playing with the alpha. The game, a hugely ambitious project that intends to give you an entire world to survive in, and no artificial walls to restrict you, casts you as a regular human with limited capacity to stay alive.
By Adam Smith on July 23rd, 2012.
The alpha version of Recruits, a Cannon Foddery squad shooter, is available to play through Desura for people pre-ordering the full game. It’s a UDK-powered game, with simple objectives, tight maps and a sometimes infuriating fixed viewpoint. Enemy soldiers have a habit of being obscured by trees, meaning I’ve often been finding by following my squadmates’ lead. I shoot where they shoot, knowing that something must be there. It’s early days though and there’s promise in the explodey barrels, destructible scenery, and the simple joy of shooting guns and lobbing grenades. Enemy soldiers are vulnerable, spurting blood as they crumple after a single shot, while the player’s own squad are a little more robust. Less tension, more gung-ho charges. Trailer and more details below.
By Adam Smith on May 29th, 2012.
I reckon vertically inclined first-person adventure Against the Wall is one of the most interesting indie projects in development, not only because even in its alpha state its polished and playable, but simply because I’ve never played anything else quite like it. Tasked with climbing a wall upon the side of which entire settlements and ecosystems cling, the player is able to pull out sections of the wall by waving a sort of staff at them. In this way it’s possible to create steps and platforms. It’s a fascinating world with an immediately understandable path and means of progression. The latest version of the alpha adds a fair bit since I first took a look and future plans include randomly placed biomes.
By Adam Smith on May 25th, 2012.
Gnoblins is called Gnoblins and that’s pretty much all I needed to know to convince me that downloading the freely available alpha version might be a very good idea indeed. That it turns out to be a first person RPG, with roguelike features such as random levels, lots of items to equip and mysterious dangers to discover. The Gnoblins themselves are minions, to be added in a future release, that will apparently provide an RTS element to the game and there’s even mention of developing areas of the dungeon for your own use. Dungeon Keeper plus roguelike plus Ultima Underworld? Let’s hope so. It’s tremendously exciting, even if the early version is obviously missing lots of planned features and content. Try the alpha and if your name is Richard Cobbett, click more.
By Adam Smith on May 4th, 2012.
The amount of developers that seem happy to revive our favourite things from times gone by is something recently discussed in the breezy parapets of Castle Shotgun. A few days later a game appeared on Steam, taking preorders that gave access to its alpha. That game is Endless Space and if it were a farmyard animal it would be plodding around a field saying ‘MOO’ quite a lot. It’s a space-based 4X game and although I need to spend more time with it before I say too many more words, it’s already caused me to miss one night’s sleep and that just doesn’t happen enough anymore. Trailer and brief excited key-tapping below.
By Craig Pearson on March 13th, 2012.
Project Zomboid developers The Indie Stone aren’t have-and-have-not types. They’re more egalitarian in their views, and have just released a newly updated public version of the Project Zomboid alpha for everyone. This is actually a test-build of the public build that’s being worked on, with a full, working release incoming in ‘a week or so’ – that’ll have story-based content reinstated and a working launcher. As such this is a somewhat crippled version of the game, as the lengthy list of troubles you can expect demonstrates, but they’re releasing it in the knowledge that a) you know this to be the case, and b) zombies!
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By Adam Smith on March 12th, 2012.
KillFunYeah, three words made one, the first of which makes me a bit nervous, the second of which I’m all for and the third I imagine being said with a slight shrug in between sips of coffee. As a name, it’s not the sort I’d want to yell out loud, that is until developers Arctic Anteater add at least two exclamation marks on the end. KillFunYeah!!!!! sounds like a blast. As it stands, the relatively unexcited KillFunYeah is a 2D arena-based shooter with destructible blocks, guns, grenades and saxophones. Jazzocide is the new Jazzercise. It’s in alpha and currently available for free on Windows, Mac and Linux. Observe the below trailer and tutorial, the latter demonstrating the attract and deflect powers that are KFY’s USP.
By Adam Smith on March 5th, 2012.
A shocking missive landed on my desk this morning. Written by a ‘concerned gamer’, it informed me that “people are starting to wonder about you guys”. The reason given was that we haven’t taken a look at Tomes of Mephistopheles, a first-person dungeon crawler with randomly generated, Daggerfallesque environments to explore and bombs that can blow holes through walls to create new passages. Although the game is at an early stage of development, currently in alpha, what I have just described is clearly something that I would be interested in. So, as I watched the developer diary below, I started to wonder about myself as well. What kind of a monster am I?
By Adam Smith on February 28th, 2012.
Jumping, falling, kicking through walls, RUNNING AWAY. It’s how I’ve spent my morning and some of last night, as I made my way through the alpha release of Lemma, an indie game set to be released as a charity fundraiser. The most obvious point of comparison is Mirror’s Edge and since I’ve not woken up enough to make a more obtuse comparison, let’s go with Mirror’s Edge because in Lemma you perform parkour from a first-person perspective. There’s a story, told through exploration of the island on which you inexplicably awaken as well as through convincingly written text messages exchanged with someone in need of assistance. Stumble from your precarious foothold and join me below for a trailer and more.
By Craig Pearson on February 24th, 2012.
Just like they did with Take On Helicopters, Bohemia Interactive are going to crowd-source a portion of Arma 3′s bug-testing to the community, as well as just letting everyone have a poke around, with a playable alpha release sometime after E3. Their military sim series has always suffered brutally buggy launches, but with plenty of players poking at it in the months before release, things should run a lot smoother. And by that, I mean a LOT smoother. Gamers will be able to start planning mods ahead of the full launch, and you’ll also totally be able to put ‘Game Q&A Tester’ on your CV.
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By Adam Smith on February 23rd, 2012.
Last night I woke from chilling dreams in which my gray-haired future self was alphafunding six thousand games simultaneously and buying fourteen indie bundles in every minute of his waking life. Today, the new Indie Royale bundle has been revealed and those two trends of indiedom have intersected, which somehow makes my vision of the future seem all the more possible. The Alpha Collection contains three games that are in development and is currently available for a minimum of £3.17. The games are Towns, which I’ve previously written about and keep trying to find time to properly revisit, 3079, and Wyv and Keep. More on them and the bundle below.
