PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

I’ve not had a chance to get on the Spocean beta yet, but I wanted to get the UDK-powered project up here because it looks fantastic, and could hardly be more RPSy if it tried. It’s a game of team-based galleon-crewing warfare. Built in UDK, the game is – according to creators Woodley Games – a “woodpunk” simulation of “Napoleonic-era naval warfare from a first person perspective.” And it looks rather beautiful with it s gentle caricatures of ship-to-ship conflict. “Teams start on two separate ships, fire cannon shot at each other, and then try to board when they have the advantage,” explains the FAQ. “THEN they murder each other.”

You can get it here. (Thanks, PixelProspector!)

Hollywood director Robert Rodriguez splits his time between working on adult-oriented action movies like Sin City, Planet Terror, and Machete and kid flicks like The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, Shorts, and the Spy Kids movies. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World is his latest film, bu...

Atlanta, GA - RageGage, LLC, the leading producer of rage-release gadgets and online games, indifferently announced the launch Some Hipster Game (You've Probably Never Heard of It), a free online game designed for use with the RageGage USB game controller...

Sat here in my nightmare fortress, watching all my friends tweeting about the soft horrors of modernity, I came to think about the times when I have had to give up on a game because I was too obsessed with it. There have only been a couple of examples of this, but I know I am not alone. RPS chum Craig, for example, recently forced himself to give up his true first-person passion, TF2, so that he could make the most of his holidays. My deletion of my Eve client (moved from one HD to another across five or six years) was a monumental moment that precipitated in a colossal outpouring of elegiac grief, which pretty much constituted my final word on the game. I knew that if I didn’t end it, the relationship would drag on forever as I “just popped in to see what’s going on”, and then come out again four months later having founded a new alliance and led 100-man fleets into inebriated death at 4-am Reyjavik time. I had to delete her.

So I ask, readers, have you ever had to delete what you love?

Markham, Canada - Rock Hippo Productions announced today that its exhibition at Germany's Gamescom last week in Cologne was a major success. The company estimates that tens of thousands of fans visited the Rock Hippo booth to play MicroVolts and Brawl Busters. The company also released photos of th...

Foot-to-ball is coming home. Or at least it will be as soon as you click this direct download link for the PES 2012 demo. As always, perfect to play while lounging on the couch in front of the tellybox. Unless your tellybox is linked to an Xbox 360 in which case, come back to the PC. The 360 demo has been delayed due to those pesky unforeseen circumstances that crop up from time to time! This is the first demo to be released for the game and is based on preview code and it allows you to play ten minute matches with Manchester United, AC Milan, Porto, Napoli, Santos and C.A. Panarol. It’ll be followed by an updated demo mid-September.

I recently had a chance to talk to Special Effect founder Mick Donegan, and to learn a bit about how he was motivated to help disabled gamers and their families make the most of the medium. Special Effect is a UK-based charity which specialises in helping people with serious disability to use eye-control technology in their gaming (which is something you’ll be able to try out if you are attending the Eurogamer Expo in September). The charity does plenty more than just help out with expensive eye-control technologies, however, seemingly taking every route possible to try and give access to gaming to people who might otherwise be denied it. It’s amazing work that they’re doing, and I think it’s a charity that needs deserves support from developers and the community to make their job easier. Read on to find out a bit more about what they get up to. (And watch a video pinched from Eurogamer, too.)(more…)

Dublin, Ireland - Gala Networks Europe, one of the leading free-to-play games publishers and operator of the http://www.gpotato.eu/ portal, is delighted to announce its newest project, fusion-fantasy MMORPG SEVENCORE. Having been shown behind closed doors at Gamescom 2011 and gaining a hugely positive reaction, Gala Networks Europe has released all currently available information and assets available to the public...

SAUSALITO, Calif. - For years, the brain was a slow-to-solve mystery for scientists and the public alike. But today it's more a "marvel," thanks to exciting research, technology and educational breakthroughs over the last decade. In fact, even children as young as four are now soaking up the brain's secrets, thanks to Morphonix LLC (http://www.morphonix.com), a company devoted to using games to teach kids all about the brain...

Ludum Dare, for those who don’t know it, is a competition that challenges people to code games on a specific theme, ‘Escape’ this time around, within 48 hours. I could probably spend 48 years trying to make a game, but it would end well. As a boy, I once programmed a Commodore 64 to draw some flags but I copied the code from a magazine. That’s what we did instead of modding in the Eighties. It was radical. Here in 2011 I have spent slightly less time than these games took to make playing through a bunch and bringing you my pick of the crop, below.(more…)

I have been told to play The Book Of Living Magic by so many people. Even Jay of JayIsGames instructed me to do so. A point and click adventure embedded in a website, that has variously been described as charming and reminiscent of the joy of childhood books. So okay, okay, I took a look.

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Remember Battlechess? It was like chess, but… well it was chess, only the pieces duffed each other up for your amusement. The same sort of thing seems to be true of Rune Storm’s Rooks Keep, which is based in the grand old game, but “where players battle using brutal, animated pieces in a gothic, fantasy themed setting. The blood, weapons and remains of the fallen litter the arena as players fight for glory in this barbaric take on Chess.”

BARBARIC CHESS. You can see why this excites me, obviously. Any chess sequel is pretty exciting, but barbarism just seals the deal. It’s not just chess, either. The game will apparently offer a number of turn-based battle modes of which chess is simply a variant. But can they best chess wit their new-fangled pawn manipulations? We’ll find out soon. The Rune Storm team have sent over a new trailer, which is below.(more…)

PAX Prime, the increasingly gargantuan expo set up by the chaps at Penny Arcade, is almost upon us. One of the most enjoyable parts of the whole shindig is the selection of the PAX 10, a group of indie games selected to enjoy the exposure that such a large platform can bring. Super Meat Boy and Bastion were both picked last year; not bad company to be in. This year there are some familiar titles and one that’s entirely new to me. From DigiPen, A Flipping Good Time is a platformer with a gravity switch mechanic you may have seen before, but do not be deterred. This is fun times. And it won’t cost you a penny.

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It’s time for the return of my irregular series in which I tell games developers exactly what they must do and not do if they want to avoid being flayed and rolled in salt. You can see the rest of these rules here. It’s quite simple: obey my commands and everyone will be happy. No one needs to lose a life.

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Lucasfilm's recruiting website says the studio is hiring a developer for "an open-world RPG." The mid-level gameplay designer position will work on code and engines for an upcoming (and presumably unannounced) role-playing game set to take place in an open world environment. Other than that, the listing is unfortunately vague, asking only for a talented and experienced individual to work with artists and designers to put code together.

There's no mention of online or multiplayer features at all, and no hint of what platforms (other than PC) the game might be built for or run on. So it's anyone's guess as to what this exactly is yet -- just because features aren't mentioned in the listing just means this engineer won't be working on them, not that they don't exist. But it does seem like LucasArts is working on putting together some kind of RPG, possibly based on one of its current properties, in an open world setting. Which is intriguing news on its own.

Gamescom's all done for another year. While the consoles duked it out for supremacy with price-drops and new products left and right, the PC community was content to just enjoy an incredible lineup of games. The lineup was so huge, in fact, that it was easy to miss much of it. So IGN has gone to...

Here’s a cute little game that popped up at GDC Europe. It’s an action-puzzler with a rather nifty retro future vibe to it. The tongue-in-cheek, self-referential trailer raised a smile and the actual gameplay doesn’t look half bad either. From what I can gather, it’s a little like Pipe Mania, which you may know as the hacking game from Bioshock if you’re not an old fart. The difference here is that you actually control Tom, the virus, and must run around the grid switching connections around rather than simply clicking on them with a pointer. And it has co-op and competitive modes. Take a look.(more…)

The next title from Airtight Games is set for debut at PAX Prime this weekend...

This weekend's iteration of the occasional Ludum Dare game-making marathon, in which entrants have 48 hours to create a game from scratch, had a celebrity participant: Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, who spent the weekend developing a first-person dungeon crawler called Prelude of the Chambered.

If you'd like to see what happens when Notch rushes (in contrast to the still unfinished Minecraft) you can play the game in a browser window. Like, right now. Here's the link. "It takes about 20-30 minutes to beat the game," said Notch, suggesting you might be able to get back to work today. Of course, he immediately followed with "if you die, you need to start over from the beginning," throwing your workday back into question.

Cedar Falls, Iowa - Sharpen your spurs as you boldly step into the town of Tumbleweed with Phantom EFX's newest addition to their digital slot game lineup, Slot Quest: Wild West Shootout. As the new sheriff in town, find out if you have what it takes to beat the odds and defeat the Red Bandana Boys....

PARIS, FRANCE - Tindalos Interactive, a French indie games studio based in Paris, has just released its first game, Stellar Impact, an online multiplayer game for PC! Stellar Impact is an online strategy game taking place in a Sci-Fi/Space Opera universe. It stands somewhere between classics RTS ...

Cedar Falls, Iowa - Phantom EFX, a leading developer and publisher of PC-based casino and card game titles, announced today that Reel Deal Slots is out of beta testing and has officially launched on Facebook. With the release of Reel Deal Slots comes nearly an unlimited amount of slot machines to ch...

Oakland, Calif. - Stuntbird Games is proud to announce the release of Pixaquarium Game Maker, a Facebook-based game builder and player...

Interactive experiences in which tiny little people dig into the ground and build stuff with the things they find there are the only game in town. And when I say ‘town’ I mean your town as well as mine. When given the choice between fighting in a modern war or building a house made out of dirt, today’s gamer will reach for his trusty pickaxe every time. Well, most times. Some times. Minecraft continues to be a phenomenon and Terraria has been a massive success. Scuba, a flash game from Louissi posted on Armor Games, certainly has more in common with Terraria than Minecraft. It’s a sidescrolling dig ‘em up with a twist. Guess what the twist is. The clue is in the title.(more…)

I remember when Frictional released Amnesia, there appeared to be a lot of talk about whether a game so relentlessly horrible would have a broad appeal. Refreshingly frank about both potential and actual sales figures, the team said 100,000 copies would be a dream figure. What, then, would they make of four times that number? It can only be assumed that dreams have piled upon other dreams, Inception-style, for 400,000 units have been shifted. So, yes, they have their dreams and almost half a million people now have fresh nightmares. I, for one, am now so afraid that doors will not open in the correct direction for a hasty retreat that I must check every single one when entering a new building. Just in case.

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Indie developer Jake Spencer got in touch with us regarding his DigiPen project, Be Good. A claymation adventure game that explores a person’s life in a series of vignettes. Which isn’t a sentence you type too often, making this something interesting.

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Due to post-Germany exhaustion and racing to get Deus Ex Human Revolution finished before the embargo lifts later today, I’ve not had a chance to take lovely-lookin’ indie platformer/roleplayer Owlboy for a test flight myself yet, but it only seems right to advise you that a demonstration version of this much-anticipated pixel-art slice of steampunkery is now available. 80MB of avian lad await you here. Set to it, chums.

Throughout the late 90s and most of the following decade there was the tedious refrain, “Adventure games are dead.” Which of course meant every single time an adventure game came out there had to be the opposing, “Adventure games are not dead.” Or more usually, “Reports of adventure gaming’s death are much ex…” and every variant thereof. I’m as guilty as it of anyone. Unfortunately, the same mantra has become incredibly commonplace of late to needlessly defend PC gaming. PC gaming hasn’t shown any significant decline in popularity – rather console gaming have become an enormous, mainstream phenomenon. So the efforts to defend PC gaming end up mostly serving to consolidate the myth that there was ever a problem in the first place. So with that said, Razer – the PC peripheral maker – have launched some sort of teaser campaign to prove that PC gaming is not dead.

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Logitech has introduced its new G300 mouse, coming to the US and Europe next month. The biggest selling point seems to be that the mouse is ambidextrous, meaning that as the buttons are laid out symmetrically, you can use it with either your right or your left hand. You can also store up to three profiles on the mouse itself (no software needed), and you can even configure the lighting colors to match up to a certain profile, telling you how it's set with just a look.

There's also a 2500 DPI sensor on the bottom, so your Minecraft blocks will always end up exactly where you place them. The G300 is set to retail for $39.99.

Gremlins are cute on their own, but in packs, they can be more terrifying than a horde of undead headcrabs, which may explain French developer Neko Entertainment's decision to make its early-2000 PS2 Gremlins game a squad-based shooter. Unfortunately, Generation 2000 has trouble distinguishing Gizmo from a Chia Pet, which may explain why production on the game was eventually cancelled. All we have left from Neko's attempt are some screenshots and the above video of Gizmo testing out his 3D skin, as found by Siliconera.

Grab a snack and settle in to watch Gizmo being rendered for the game's opening video. Wait -- what time is it there? Oh.... Maybe we should rethink that snack.