Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A fresh batch of footage from Arcen has turned up, and it shows magic, robots, structures, vehicles, and plenty of running about. Just in case you missed it, Arcen talked to us about this unusual survival-driven action adventure project here and then here.
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This is the second part of our extensive interview with Arcen Games’ Chris Park about their forthcoming procedurally-generated action-adventure survival game, A Valley Without Wind. Read on…
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Arcen Games, famed for AI War, financial troubles, and causing a shortage of iron, have announced their new game: A Valley Without Wind. It’s quite the concept: survival in a procedurally generated world, exploration, magic, and… perma-death? Interesting. Read on to find out more. (So much more, that there’s another instalment tomorrow.)
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Today, Arcen Games wants you to get in spire(d). Light of the Spire is the biggest expansion for AI War to date, and with its release today it brings with it the series’ first story-driven campaign, a new Defender mode that should take “minutes instead of hours” to play, new AI types, new factions, new music and 180 new ships, which is great, as I was just sat here thinking that AI War really needed even more sodding ships. Just look at the size of the update they released back in October! Madness.
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All aboard the good news Zeppelin! Come, come! Quickly! You too! Yes, and you! No, not you. Sorry. The good news Zeppelin is full now. You should have been faster.

Arcen games has released both another update for Tidalis, their excellent & colourful block puzzler, as well as a new, ‘Lite’ version. A unity-powered browser game, Tidalis Lite was inspired by business models on the iPhone, where the norm is a free, lightweight version that goads people to stop being so cheap and buy the full version. But this is NOT A DEMO. No. Arcen games explain that they already have a demo for Tidalis. This is something else. Ye olde chipper Tidalis trailer is after the jump.
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It’s Saturday, so that means it’s time for another…..Hang on, it’s not Saturday! Never mind. The lovely folk over at Arcen games have just sent word that they are lopping off an entire 60% off all of their games. Not only does buying DRM-free direct from the developers come with a free warm fuzzy feeling deep in your belly, but in this instance you can (optionally) also use the code you get from Arcen to register the games on Steam if you prefer. Best of all worlds. Read the rest of this entry »

Christ. Not last week I posted about Arcen Games’ colossal update of their maximalist space strategy game AI War, which included hundreds of new ships and porting the entire game to a new engine. Guess what? They’ve just announced a new pay-for expansion, Light of the Spire, will be released next month. Arcen say they’ve got some “some seriously cool ideas for this one, too”.

What’s happening with Arcen’s finances? Weren’t they in trouble? Well, in a recent blog post they’ve once again displayed a remarkable degree of transparency.
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Ooh, it’s turning out to be a good week for respected PC indie devs announcing enigmatic new projects. Yesterday we had Arcada Mia, and today we hear about two new games from Arcen Games (of Tidalis and AI War fame): A Valley Without Wind and Alden Ridge.

A Valley Without Wind will essentially be a meaty tower defense game, and Alden Ridge sounds like Dead Rising meets Monaco. You want more details? I’ve got more details.
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Tricky to know how best to approach this kind of thing, but quite frankly just getting on with it is only sensible. What’s happened is that Arcen Games, who make awesomely clever strategy games such as AI War – the source of the ‘Quinns doesn’t have enough iron meta-gag’ and a much-loved AAR that we hope to reboot in the not too distant – and the smart casual title Tidalis, are struggling to make ends meet.

Like, really properly actually horribly struggling. “To put it bluntly and briefly, at present we’re only bringing in about one half of the minimum money we need to survive as a company,” quoth bossguy Chris Park. Help them.
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I’ve been meaning to post about this for a couple of weeks now. The ever-busy Arcen Games are working on another micro-expansion for their AI War: Fleet Command. It’s currently in Beta, and if you order now for four dollars (or about two quid sixty) you gain access to it. Planned for a September release, AI War: Children of Neinzul will add 36 new ships, 6 new AI types, 3 new minor-alien-factions, two extra map styles and more. Perhaps it’ll even add some Iron for Quinns. All sounds lovely and affordable, even before you realise the twist. All the profits for this expansion pack will be donated to the Childs Play charity. Arcen are making no money from it whatsoever. Crikey. Here’s the trailer for the last expansion, to give you a taste, but it’s a game that’s well worth investigating in its expansive demo. In short: it was one of the strongest indie strategy games of last year.
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Right. This is a funny one. Releasing today is the new game from Arcen Games, who you remember from the splendid expansive and original space-strategy game AI War: Fleet Command which you may remember from our long-running diary series which you may remember from Quinn’s constant and chronic lack of Iron. Anyway, his new game is totally nothing like that. I actually have used the logo as the header, as if I just show a screenshot you’d go “Casual square-matching game! No!” and click away. But this is a lot niftier than that – it really seems like exactly how you’d imagine the creator of AI War would make a square-matching game, in terms of quietly adding depth. I’ve only had a quick twenty minutes of it, but it has a mass of content and highlights its rotate-square-create-chains dynamic perfectly. Give it a shot, on PC or Mac. You can buy it from ten dollars direct from the developer, or on any of the usual direct-download places. Well, at least when they appear later today. Launch trailer follows…
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