The creature wearing the skin of Atari has announced astonishing plans to launch RollerCoaster Tycoon World [official site] next Wednesday, November 16th. It’s been on Steam early Access for seven months. The surprising part is: Frontier’s theme park sim Planet Coaster comes out the very next day, Thursday the 17th. Given that Planet Coaster looks the better game by far, it’s a bit silly. Perhaps the eyeholes on the creature’s skinsuit have slipped and it’s stumbling blind, groping in the dark, accidentally typing up announcements. We’ve all been there. Read the rest of this entry »

Rollercoaster Tycoon World [official site] will have players create their own parks and rides in-game, of course, but it’ll also let people make brand new things outside the game. The theme park-building game will have simple tools to create new scenery objects and people and doodahs through a Unity plugin then share them over the Steam Workshop, a new trailer explains. Come see how that works below:

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It’s been a ride full of… (if I say “ups and downs” will you continuing reading, dear reader?) turbulence for Rollercoaster Tycoon World [official site]. Since it was first announced in 2014, it’s already been through three different developers and has long passed its original “early 2015” release window. It was then scheduled for a December 10th launch, however has now been pushed back to “early 2016”.

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Alone in the Dark: Illumination [official site] is a curious name for a game that’ll have you neither alone nor really in the dark, but strange things happen when games carry papers plucked from the corpses of fallen franchises frozen on the battlefield of the industry. The shooter named after ye olde survival horror series launched last night with class-based shooty action and support for co-op with up to four players.

I suppose you are in the dark mostly, but there are lots of convenient fires and your guns do have flashlights.

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“This ain’t your grandpa’s Asteroids,” I wish the creature wrapped in the flesh of Atari would hiss. Sadly not. That’s the kind of line I’d like when a classic game becomes something so very, very modern. And what way to reinterpret the vintage space shoot ’em up could be any more modern than a multiplayer sandbox survival game? That’s Asteroids: Outpost [official site], you guys, and it has launched in that thoroughly modern manner: onto Steam Early Access.

“Welcome to the new gold rush” is its wholly unironic slogan. Oh, go on, that’ll do. Atari are only getting started with weird takes on old games too.

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Jeff Minter has been making tip-top arcade shooters for a good thirty years now, including classics like Space Giraffe, Gridrunner, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, and Tempest 2000. That last one is coming back to bite him in the bottom.

TxK [official site] is his latest loud and colourful and silly and exciting shooter, and I’ve been waiting patiently for the PC port since its Vita debut last year. That port is now scrapped, thanks to the terrible creature wearing the skin of Atari. Minter says the publishers of Tempest 2000 claim that TxK is ripping it off, and he can’t afford a legal battle to defend it.

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