It’s a Christmas miracle: AI War 2 [official site] has hits its crowdfunding goal on its second attempt, its wonderful creators Arcen Games will live to dev another day, and we’ve probably all learned a little about feelings or some other sappy nonsense I guess. The original AI War is a fascinating RTS – and one of Adam’s favourites – with a wealth of options in a war against an AI overlord who’s playing entirely differently to you. Given the first Kickstarter’s failure and Arcen’s recent troubles, I’d worried about both this game and the whole studio but thankfully all is looking up. Read the rest of this entry »

Arcen Games have launched a new Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund AI War II [Kickstarter page], sequel to their cracking 2009 real-time strategy game which pitted players against AI playing by entirely different rules. “Didn’t they just…?” you’re wondering and yep, they did try to Kickstart it in October but cancelled the campaign when it was clear they wouldn’t reach their goal. They’re returned with a smaller pitch for a smaller game with a smaller budget, and this time they’re almost at their goal. Read the rest of this entry »

Arcen have launched a Kickstarter for a sequel to their excellent 2009 strategy game AI War: Fleet Command [official site]. The Kickstarter page comes complete with a 159 page design document, so if you really want to dig into the detail you can get a very good idea of what’s likely to be changed or improved in this sequel, and Arcen are shooting for just shy of $300,000. With one day of the campaign down, they’re more than ten percent of the way toward that target. Read the rest of this entry »

Arcen Games are primarily known for making interesting (and ugly) strategy games, but last Wednesday, August 24th, the small team released 3D dino-vs.-robots action game In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor into early access. Then on Saturday, August 27th, they announced they were unreleasing it. Now as of today the game is no longer on sale and refunds are available for those who already purchased it through Steam.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor has been released, which means there must be some kind of emergency. Perhaps the title of the game is a commentary on the situation of creators Arcen, who have been making inventive, weird strategy games for years, and found themselves in financial troubles earlier this year. Upsetting news, because not only were Arcen’s games great, their longevity as a company seemed like evidence that such an unusual portfolio could sustain a studio.

Raptor may or may not be the solution. It’s in Early Access now and it looks as odd as the title suggests.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor [official site] is very much not the game I would have expected next from Arcen Games. The small studio are known for games like AI Wars, Starward Rogue, Bionic Dues – strange and thoughtful twists on strategy games, puzzlers, roguelites. In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor is a 3D smash ’em up with a velociraptor fighting robots in the dystopian future. Surprising! Raptor was due to launch onto Steam Early Access today but instead it’ll arrive on Friday.

For now, you can watch a video dev diary including the line “In a lot of respects it’s kind of like a first-person shooter – the raptor is your gun.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Less than three months ago, AI Wars developer Arcen Games ran into financial bother that left the majority of their studio jobless. Now, they’ve announced their first 3D game – “the first of many”, they say – named In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor [official forum]. Previously, Arcen planned to build a fully-fledged 3D survival game and while this isn’t it, it will see the team “working on building the components for that larger game by building them into a smaller game (this one) first.”

Read the rest of this entry »