Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Is anyone interested in watching an hour and a half of Salem’s developers playing an early version for an hour and a half while answering viewers’ questions? Salem isn’t the easiest game in the world to describe, being a crafting-based MMO set in 17th Century New England, with permadeath, alchemy, farming and beasties. That’s why it’s so impressive that I just described it, even if I may have told you nothing you don’t already know. Thankfully, you’ll find out lots you don’t know in the video. The audio is more informative than the actual game footage, with combat in particular looking a bit of a chore at the moment, but there’s a lot of detail on how things will actually work. The first fourteen minutes of the video is dead air, as this was originally a livestream that started too soon.

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Salem – the forthcoming free-to-play crafting MMO from Paradox – has teased us with its first teaser, which you can see below. It’s apparently a taste that’s just getting the essence of the game across, and in that regard looks pretty interesting, especially when you consider the feature list: open PvP combat with perma-death, crafting and building as core mechanics, as well as being free. Now we can add “Being Cute” and “Being Spooky” to that list. I’ve also reposted the video of the developers talking about their idea for the game, so you can refresh your thoughts on it, because I think Salem could be genuinely interesting.
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Last week I was in New York, eating pizza and inventing all-new comparative metaphors for how cold it was (“colder than Bobby Kotick’s eyes”, “colder than a Game Gear’s battery”, “colder than a handjob from an eel”). Why? Because last week was the yearly Paradox Convention, where journalists are invited to meet a whole bag of developers and look at all of Paradox’s upcoming releases.

In short, we’ve got even more to look forward to in 2011 than we thought. I’ll be going through these at top speed, so put on your protective goggles and we’ll take a look. Do I have to remind you of the boy who once read a succinct article of mine and lost an eye? No? Good.
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