By John Walker on April 4th, 2012.
Playing the preview code of Botanicula made me so happy one of my legs fell off. So I’m delighted to report that everyone’s going to have a chance to squeeze off their limbs with excitement on the 19th April, when the full game comes out. To commemorate, a new trailer has appeared, which you can see below. You’ll likely lose a toe.
By Alec Meer on April 3rd, 2012.
This is my first encounter with the longish-running DROD series of puzzle-dungeon crawlers, and a quick check of our much-abused tag system suggests that same is true of the other nodes of the RPS Hivemind too. Thus, for a few precious moments, I can enjoy the lofty status of Hivemind Prime, until the Independent Action Guards activate and laser away the deadly fungal strands of personality that have infected my corner of the monstrous Brain Jar.
So it’s with the new, free demo of fifth DROD game Gunthro and the Epic Blunder that I join the party, and am immediately mildly confused because it’s a prequel to the events of the first four games. This didn’t prove too serious an impediment to a rank newcomer, fortunately, as DROD seems to have a fairly Princess Bride take on fantasy kingdom rather than a depresssing downpour of Important Lore.
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By Adam Smith on April 3rd, 2012.
Kyle Pulver, superior veteran of a thousand gamejams, has expanded a riff on the theme of motherhood that emerged from his brain last year, making it into a full release for PC and Mac. It’s a platform game, with puzzles made up of switches, blocks and infant forest animals deflecting around the levels. The clue as to your maternal ability is in the title: Offspring Fling. As the mother of a sizable brood of cuddly critters, your method of transporting them to safety is to balance them on your head and then lob them out of harm’s way. Of course, as you progress through the 100+ levels throwing your kids around the place becomes increasingly hazardous, as they begin to act more like soft, organ-filled pinballs than living, dying creatures. Watch.
By Alec Meer on April 3rd, 2012.
“Survival depends on striking a balance between hatred and discipline” is, by a strange coincidence, RPS’ mantra. Only without the discipline. So we’re a little galled to discover that Diablo III’s Demon Hunter has the same outlook on life. Here’s a look at what an armed and fully operational Demon Hunter can get up to. She seems to be quite the whirlwind of destruction in the right hands, with a brutal mix of dark magicks and explodey techology.
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By Jim Rossignol on April 3rd, 2012.
Capybara Games have confirmed that their beautiful, lo-fi iOS adventure game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery will be arriving on Steam “very soon”. Good news, I think, because it’s a gentle, weird little game that does a lot with a little and creates an unusual atmosphere. Sort of nostalgic, but at the same time feeling quite modern.
There’s also going to be a Mac version, of course. Trailer below.
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Avellone of this
By Alec Meer on April 2nd, 2012.
Last week’s wonderful shock news was that Brian Fargo and his team at inXile hope to recruit Chris Avellone and his team at Obsidian to work with them on the successfully startkicked sandbox RPG Wasteland 2. If funding for Wasteland 2 can reach $2.1 million (it’s currently at $1.8m, with 14 days left to go), it means a sort of dream team of ex-Black Isle staff would be working on a game that consciously harkens back to that golden age of cRPGs. I had a quick chat with Brian Fargo about what the potential partnership actually means, his thoughts on the wildly successful crowdsourcing of the game to date, whether the hiring of Planescape brain Avellone means a more fixed rather than freeform RPG, how his Kicking It Forwards crowdsourcing reinvestment initiative is going, and how he’d love to out-Kickstart Doublefine.
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"Monsters? They look like monsters to you?"
By Adam Smith on March 27th, 2012.
Lone Survivor is a superb one-man horror show that has a lovely cat sub-plot, the best soundtrack I’ve heard so far this year and an entirely unexpected sense of humour. It’s not the kind of scary that will frighten the toupée off you, but it’s the kind that might just make you think, reflect and then shudder a little. It might even make you all misty-eyed and forlorn. Here’s wot I think.
By Adam Smith on March 19th, 2012.
Breakout games with a plot and monsters should appear more frequently, as should pinball games of the same sort. Wizorb is a neat take on That Sort Of Thing, with world that needs to be rebuilt by the player’s bearded wizard. He collects the money to do this by juggling balls with his wand, bashing bricks and beasties alike. There are spells that help with destruction and ball control, as well as a gentle dose of the funnies. It isn’t new but it is new to Steam and I revisited it just now and was reminded how much fun it is.
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 Craig Pearson on March 8th, 2012.
The handsome writer clicks on the Steam Store and types the word “zombie” into the search bar. Too many. He reorganises them by game only. Still too many. They’re everywhere. Surrounding us. An outbreak. It’s only a matter of time before — wait, what’s that groaning? Where is it coming from? He moves to his browser and checks his tabs. That wasn’t there before. He starts closing tabs down, isolating the infected tab: move Gmail, get away Reddit Aww, flee Katy Perry vs Aha. Just one more tab sits, keeping the outbreak from spreading. Slowly, uncertainly he clicks the ‘x’ on the Apple store tab and reveals the source: it’s the Contagion GDC trailer.
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By Craig Pearson on March 6th, 2012.
The initial announcement of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gave us the hope that we could all get along; that you there with your hand-build Intel i7 rig could be playing with a friend who might be sat on his sofa, starting at his giant television, holding a joypad. I wanted that, you (maybe?) wanted that, Valve initially wanted that. Now Valve do not want that. Speaking to Joystiq, Chet Faliszek told them it was because they need to frequently update the PC and Mac versions more frequently.
The beta has proved we want to update not just the beta, but the game itself post-launch frequently on the PC. To do that we need to separate the platforms so one doesn’t hamstring the other. So for that, we have removed the idea of cross-platform play — essentially make all platforms stronger by not mixing them.
