Posts Tagged ‘Iceberg Interactive’

RPS Feature Dead space

Premature Evaluation: Starpoint Gemini Warlords

Every week, Rob Zacny heads into the uncharted systems of Early Access in search of new cargo to bring back to the mothership. This week, Starpoint Gemini Warlords [official site].

Starpoint Gemini Warlords is admirably straightforward in its Steam Early Access statement, warning-off potential buyers with an upfront admission that the game is currently an early alpha with only the most basic systems implemented. The problem is that it’s so basic that I’m having a hard time discerning what is going to set Warlords apart from both its immediate predecessor and the growing field of space-freelancing simulators. It calls to mind games like Privateer and Freelancer… but also games like Elite: Dangerous and Rebel Galaxy. The stripped-down work-in-progress comes across like a nostalgic throwback that remains blissfully unaware that a revival has taken place, and these kinds of open-ended spaceship adventure can be bigger, more ambitious, and more exciting than they were fifteen or twenty years ago.

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A DAB Hand: Inside My Radio

Inside My Radio [official site] is a platforming game with a rhythm action beat. Levels are made up of the usual hazards you’d expect while running and jumping from left to right, but all of your movements must be performed in time to the music that runs alongside each level. We’ve written about it before, and the video below isn’t new, but Iceberg Interactive have agreed to publish the game. That’s news. And I wanted to point people toward the original Ludum Dare prototype. But there’s more…

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Twin Systems: Starpoint Gemini 2

This is the year in which I finally fulfilled my childhood dream by becoming an interest following a man who lives on a space station on Twitter. You might think that would be enough hot space action to satisfy my stellar carvings but you’d be wrong. I’ve got a hankering for space dust that’d make George Jung’s eyes as big as saucers. Thank the lord (or the ancient precursor race that seeded this planet) that we are living through a space game renaissance. It’s possible that Elite: Dangerous, once complete, will satisfy all cravings but perhaps some Starpoint Gemini 2 will provide sustenance in the meantime?

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Solar Strategies: Lords Of The Black Sun

I’ve been away, gallivanting over vales and hills, and living the life of a rugged outdoorsman. Every day, I punched trees to collect firewood and caught fresh fish by sitting beside a babbling brook and engaging in a QTE-based minigame. A sequence of fifteen or higher bagged a sizeable trout, while a score of four or less meant I’d be chewing on a sticklebacks stickles and wondering whether it had been wise to leave all of the pot-based snacks at home.

During my break, I maintained radio silence, telephone silence and internet silence. I expected to return to a changed world, in which new genres had replaced old, and the Oculus Rift had been reduced to the size and weight of a pair of pince-nez spectacles. Instead, the first thing that greets me is a 4X strategy game set in space. Previously known as Star Lords, Lords of the Black Sun is of familiar stock, but it is still capable of capturing my interest.

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Galaxy-Guardin’ – Star Lords Is A New GalCiv Rival

“Human-like AI that doesn’t cheat and plays by the same rules as human players” shouldn’t be a boast, surely. It should be a given. HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING, VIDEOGAMES? But still, this is one of the claims made by Arkavi / Iceberg’s upcoming scifi 4X game Star Lords. That’s a name which has me wishing for a turn-based Guardians of the Galaxy game, and probably has Arkavi and co hoping Marvel don’t catch wind of this.
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Dark Matter Removed From Steam, Team Allegedly Let Go

The dark saga of unfinished Metroidvania scare-’em-up Dark Matter continues. When last we left our intrepid, um, not-really-a-hero-at-all, it had tossed up a “To Be Continued” screen and blamed the fickle whims of Kickstarter for its wet thud of an ending. However, publisher Iceberg Interactive replied to justifiable outrage by claiming that “a more conclusive and satisfying ending” is on the way. Even so, that hasn’t stopped both GOG and Steam from purging their virtual shelves of the half-baked action-adventure, and now, if a report from Gamasutra is to be believed, the recipe for disaster is still boiling away. Apparently, many members of developer Interwave were let go months before Dark Matter came out, and the original team is not involved with the new content at all.

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Brief Encounters Of The Third Kind: Dark Matter

Update: GOG are offering refunds to anyone who bought the game before 21 October 2013 at 15:00 GMT and it is no longer available through Steam due to “a known issue at the end of the game”.

The release of Dark Matter might have taken longer to register on my radar if pockets of the internet hadn’t become enraged about the game’s abrupt ending over the weekend. After the failure of its $50,000 Kickstarter, the grotesque alien-infested Metroid-veinier found solace in the arms of publisher Iceberg Interactive. Unfortunately, as Indie Statik have covered in extensive detail, continued development of the game didn’t follow the original plan and the released version is, effectively, the first episode of a game that may never have a second episode. As it stands, the game ends with a whimper and a sudden block of text that is inconclusive to say the least. A shame, because what I played of the game was promising.

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Mass Entertainment: Dark Matter Coming Out This Month

Adam had a play of Dark Matter back in July, and found himself rather taken with it. At the time it was Kickstartering itself, asking for £50,000. It fell dramatically short of that goal, but since then a publishing deal with Iceberg Interactive seems to have got things finished for Dutch devs, InterWave Studios. The Metroid-meets-horror side-scroller is due out on Steam in the next couple of weeks.

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Ship Of The Iceberg: Starpoint Gemini 2

As we cast our ever-vigilant gaze to the starboard bow, we raise a brow to the sight of Starpoint Gemini 2 gently docking with Steam Early Access, a wild frontier station. We haven’t heard from the space sim/RPG since 2011, when it first appeared, causing Jim to express conflicted thoughts (interesting, but not necessarily enjoyable or robust). The game is now in full 3d and the Gemini system is a cohesive area, with no loading screens to break up the gaps between stars. Players captain one of around seventy ships, controlling a single vessel rather than a fleet, although wingmen will be added at a later date. The developer’s descriptions suggest there will be freedom to explore, salvage and fight, but it’s not entirely clear how early this early access is. Trailer below.

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Tropical Tycoon: The Good Life

CryEngine tech demos make me want to go on holiday. Beautiful, lovingly crafted locations deserve to be explored with a cocktail in one hand and a camera in the other. To those who were annoyed when alien-mutant-monsters showed up in Far Cry, I say that you should have been annoyed when men with guns showed up. They ruined the laidback adventure of a lifetime. The trailer for The Good Life promises a tourism tycoon game about escaping the nine-to-five, which is far more desirable than being stuck in a war. Despite having typos and 94% less graphics than Far Cry, at least everything in it doesn’t keep exploding. Watch.

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On My First Whistle: Starpoint Gemini DLC

American Gladiators was always eighty times better, anyway.

When I see the initials “DLC” not preceded by the word “free” it always makes me wimper a little and remember the effort that once went into expansion packs. Fortunately the generous folks behind Starpoint Gemini have remembered the correct prefix for their freshly announced new content for the space tactic-em-up, called Gladiators.

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Space Time: Starpoint Gemini Demo

Colours added by NASA.

In some ways it’s a bit silly to wait over three months after your game’s come out to release a demo. In other ways, it’s quite effective. Legendary PC gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun mentions your game again, bringing its trillions of readers to your site. Then you become rich, build a rocket, and retire on the Sun. It’s the way of things. And so it is that Iceberg have released a demo for Little Green Men’s Starpoint Gemini, their space strategy roleplay them up from December last year. Jim took a look at it in January, and found it a tad slow, but certainly interesting. But maybe Jim was lying? You can now see for yourself by getting hold of the 755MB demo from here, or maybe here. I’ve put a video of it below, because I know you’re a visual thinker.

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