Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Big Fish Games, they of the casual gaming world who aren’t PopCap, have released a new game rather beautifully called Fauna Sphere. I love the name, I’m terrified by the game. It’s one of them-there free cutesy MMO things, with an animal of your creation – a Fauna – and tasks to complete. It seems rather competently done, but it keeps asking me to socialise with other players, which sounds simply awful. But you know, perhaps you’re not me and this is your sort of thing. Have a look at the trailer below to help make up your mind (although it’s hard to believe too many people will be swayed by the opening gambit, “BECOME A CARETAKER”), or play it for free via the magical clicking of this link.

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Big Fish Games have just released a rather charming adventure game called Drawn: The Painted Tower. The story-book illustration art style is perfect for the concept, which involves various magical paintings which must be fixed, navigated, and interacted-with as you negotiate your way up the tower to save the last person who can paint such things: a young girl. Annoyingly, the demo comes wrapped up in Big Fish Games game launcher, but nevertheless the hour-limited taster is definitely enough to get a sense of whether or not you like it, which I rather do. It has some of the frustrations of “er wot” that come with point-and-click adventures, but it’s not been too obtuse with its puzzles so far.

See, John, I can totally write about adventure games!

Well, this isn’t a micro-controversy I was expecting to wake up to. A previous-RPS fave and Gametunnel’s 2008 Innovation award winner has been pulled from Big Fish Games’ portal after climbing its charts due to – gasp! – salacious content. Cue casual fans getting distinctly less casual. The fairly-hefty eight-page comments thread has the full story, but the (minorly spoilery) details can be found beneath the cut…
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