Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Team RPS continues to warily circle Facebook gaming in the manner of coyotes sniffing at a crashed stagecoach, convinced there are delicious, meaty treats somewhere inside the wreckage but anxious they’re defended by something that will cause them harm. While the master thief that is Farmville, and its many derivatives, remain a gruesome prospect indeed, a few games are endeavouring to be, well, games. One of those is the agreeably stupidly-named Gunshine, a sort of shooty-Diablolike which I found to be not-horrible in my brief encounter with its open beta a few months back.

Supercell’s F2P light roleplayer has now reached full-release status, in case you’ve been holding off because you think ‘beta’ means ‘diseased’, so you can take a look for free now. If you prefer to steer clear of the Book of Faces, it is also available in standalone Flash-form (though does, being a sorta-MMO, require registration). There’s a trailer demonstrating Gunshine in its current form below, as I believe is the done thing when a videogame launches these days.
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Social networked Diablo-with-guns thinger Gunshine was a closed beta, and now it is an open beta. NEWS. Good news, however, as it means you no longer have to beg, borrow, steal or create a complicated algorithm to illegally generate a key to get in. It’s open to any and all, so long as they’ve got a browser which supports Flash. I’ve had a quick look at it and… well, it’s not horrible. I say this with some surprise, because I’ve become accustomed to games made for the Book of Faces being pretty horrible for traditional gamers like you and I (even if they are better-suited to non-gamers). Gunshine appears, so far, to be doing the right thing – making the addition of friends and spending give you better stuff and extra clout, rather than essentially locking you out unless you cough up or wait around.
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UPDATE: FRESH KEY FOR ANOTHER 500 USES BELOW!

EDIT: Looks like the key is spent. Thanks for playing!

One of the many smiling faces I saw at GDC belonged to Supercell, the chaps behind browser-based MMO Gunshine. Their Diablo-lite RPG is a quasi-MMO that allows you to quest with your friends’ characters, even if they’re not online. It’s got a bunch of interesting features planned for it, including the capacity for the characters to “learn” to play like their owner. Anyway, this is a bit weird as beta-key thingies go: it’s a speed-based beta-key usage. Basically, the first five-hundred of you to sign up with the key (below) get in. That’s it. Be fast!
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Nice headline, Rossignol, but what does it mean? That is what you are thinking, right? Well it means this: Supercell, who are a small Finnish dev team made up of Remedy and Digital Chocolate veterans, are making a browser-based MMO called Gunshine. It’s the first project to be backed by Phil “He’s Done Some Games Industry Stuff” Harrison’s London Venture Partners. It also doesn’t look half bad, as you can see from the trailer below. It’s a four-player co-op in a cartoon cyberpunk world, with an apparently “endless” amount of quests. The model looks fairly standard (tank, damage, healer) so hopefully that will make for a smooth experience. Here’s the interesting bit, however: “Asynchronous multiplayer mode – no friends online when you need them most? Not to worry, you can still borrow your friends’ characters; the AI will emulate their playing style while you decide their overall tactics.”

Intriguing. I’ll find out some more about this soon. The game is apparently in a closed beta, so it might be worth signing up, which you have to do via the Facebook. (UPDATE: You do not have to have Facebook to play, but that’s the interface for inviting friends, and it’s in working Flash, which they apparently do not count as a plugin.)
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