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Indie Royale's St. Patrick's Day bundle is semi-blind -- but don't worry, it's more like one of those trips to the eye doctor where you leave wearing giant, ugly, flimsy plastic sunglasses and are told to not look directly at the sun for the afternoon. It gets better, is what we're saying.

Indie Royale has opened pre-orders, at a $4 minimum, for four slightly mysterious titles in its St. Patrick's Day bundle, the actual day of which is Saturday, March 17. If you plan on being even a tad sober any time on Saturday, the games are teased as follows:

"An explosive FPS with a future-leaning setting," "next up the flagpole is a jaunty Windows and Mac adventure game," "a brainy Steam-enabled Windows and Mac title 'dispensing' RTS action," "an acclaimed satirical platformer, plus a bonus DRM-free Windows RPG overhead shooter from the same creator."

Pre-orders and those who pay over the minimum once the bundle is released will get O.S.T.: Original Soundtrack from Daniel Capo.

Fans of classic PC games (with a post-apocalyptic setting) can help fund a sequel to Wasteland starting today. Just as inXile head Brian Fargo promised, a Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 is now live. The goal is $900,000 -- as of writing this post, $380,897 had been raised.

Wasteland 2 will be a DRM-free PC title. "It'll finally be the game worthy to be a Wasteland sequel, as challenging and rewarding as the original, with all added capacity and dazzle of games today," the Kickstarter page says. Many of the original designers are returning for the sequel, and Fallout composer Mark Morgan will create the tunes. Jason Anderson, co-creator of Fallout, will handle Wasteland 2's story.

Fans will be able to offer input during the development of Wasteland 2 through the forums. And of course there are the usual Kickstarter benefits, ranging from the soundtrack to various special boxed copies of Wasteland 2 and a collectible coin and cloth map. Wasteland 2 is slated to launch in October of 2013.

The Diablo 3 beta is well underway with hundreds of thousands of players delving into the dungeons of Sanctuary, and with so many deviants roaming the deadlands, there was bound to be some mischief. A bug in the beta granted access to three areas not yet intended for public play: the Festering Woods, Drowned Temple and Fields of Misery.

The three bugged levels are mostly playable, featuring larger, more diverse beasts than in the released beta levels, including goatmen, violent trees, ghouls, spirits and more, incgamers reports. Blizzard pulled the servers to lock the areas out again, according to ubergizmo, but not before a few players recorded their adventures -- watch one romp through the Fields of Misery above.

One of the annual highlights of GDC is the Experimental Gameplay Workshop (EGW). Although not a workshop, and featuring the nonsense word “gameplay” in its title, it’s an excellent afternoon of developers showing a big crowd some of their more esoteric ideas. I’ve never been in a room where excellent game mechanics receive a delighted round of applause before. Below is a summary of what was shown.

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Almost a year ago, Quinns told you that it would be a wise idea to read Matul Remrit, a collaborative storytelling effort from deep within the demented and ridiculous realm of Dwarf Fortress. He wasn’t wrong and now it falls to me to tell you to watch the latest installment. There are still bits of word-text on the screen occasionally so do bring your reading spectacles but this is a short film detailing the dwarves greatest battle yet, a tale of death, bravery and tragedy.

It’s a wonderful glimpse behind the number-crunching and complexity that illustrates why Dwarf Fortress is such an important game – it isn’t scripted, but it generates so many possible scripts. I wish I had the talent to tell my tales so well.

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I wonder how Kickstarter will deliver the money that’s been pledged to Double Fine to make their game? With arbitrarily magic number of three million dollars has just been crossed, with 11 hours still to go, the Double Fine Adventure is go. It was “go” a few hours after it launched, so now I’ve rendered the term meaningless. Please strike it from your dictionaries. But back to the question at hand: Kickstarter will have at least three million dollars for Tim Schafer by the end of today’s countdown, and they need to give it to him to make an old school adventure. I hope he’s asked to a creepy mansion and has to perform a series of baffling tasks to get to a treasure chest, and in that chest is a thing, like a giant diamond, and in that diamond is, like, a cheque. That would be pretty sweet. They’ve released the blooper reel from the first video, which is your reward for backing RPS. With your eyes.(more…)

You’ve read the interview (right?), some of you have even tried to throw money at the screen, and now the screen will actually accept your money. Sort of. The Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 is now live and is currently receiving about $1,000 per sentence I write, which means I should stop writing sentences and just paste in the link. The page has details of the incentives, quotes one of our readers, and also contains an informative and rather amusing video that explains why Fargo wants to make the game, and also recreates some of the difficulties he’s had convincing publishers that the world wants a Wasteland sequel. “There was a Fallout 1 and 2?”

This could be the most important thing you read today, unless you’re planning to operate dangerous machinery and haven’t peeked at the instructions yet. Actually, forget that, this is still more important. That is providing you’re the sort of handsome individual who enjoys survival sims, hex-based RPGs, post-apocalyptic scavenging and turn-based everything. If you like any of those delicacies, I have just the thing for you. It’s called NEO Scavenger, you can try the demo in your browser here or read on to discover more.

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Games backed by the collective of successful, experienced, indie developers funding game projects that they believe in, Indie Fund, have started to release to great success. What better time to catch up with one of the fund’s partners, Braid designer Jonathan Blow, to find out more about where they’re at, and get an insight into their process for funding games. Here he is sharing about some of what goes on behind the scenes, what it takes to get their money, and what direction the fund might be heading in the future. (more…)

Much-anticipated RTS/sim/tower-defense game Gratuitous Tank Battles is now available, even though it’s not entirely complete. The just-this-moment released beta can be yours if you preorder the finished version for $22.95. Currently only available direct from Positech, a purchase will last forever and ever, and there will also be a Steam key provided once the game is released there. Hurrah! In case you didn’t know, Gratuitous Tank Battles imagines that WWI never ended, mixing trench warfare with laser rifles and mechs. A launch trailer nestles in the fox-hole below.

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Craig espied Anna just a few weeks ago, cheekily comparing it to Amnesia even before he’d seen it in motion. Now that the first in-game footage has been released, the whole world can accept that he was right to do so, although only partly. Anna seems to have a similar approach to interaction with the world but it also has sunlight. In a horror game! Outrageous. Be outraged below.

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Some things are just too powerful for mankind to have in its power, such as Mari0, the Super Mario Bros./Portal crossover from Stabyourself.net. The development team has warned players that there is a version of Mari0 with malware circulating the net, and the only safe place to download the game is directly from Stabyourself.net, of course.

Paradise comes at a price, people. Remember that and play safe.

This little indie ditty has been on our radar for a few months now, intriguing us with slick graphics and a mysterious, vague storyline that seems to smear the line between Dear Esther and Amnesia. Anna takes inspiration from ancient legends in Val D'Ayas, a scenic valley in northern Italy, developer Dreampainters says. Anna is a PC-exclusive, point-and-click exploration title which, as is obvious in the above trailer, has a dark, subtly terrifying edge to it.
It has three different endings, each taking about three hours to complete, thus bringing the entire experience to around nine hours. There is no release date for Anna yet, but it is coming at a "budget price," according to Dreampainters.

Fresh after winning the IGF award for most graphics for Dear Esther, thechineseroom Creative Director Dan Pinchbeck and I sat down for a natter about their upcoming continuation of Frictional Games’ Amnesia series, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. It went a little something like this: (more…)

2012 is, I suspect, going to be a milestone year for old men like some of you and all of us at RPS – one in which old names resurged and old genres returned. Schafer, Fargo, Avellone, Harvey Smith, Molyneux (potentially), XCOM and now, perhaps, one John Romero. The lion-maned, occasionally controversial co-creator of Doom has been away from mainstream games for a while now, focusing on social and mobile titles at the likes of MonkeyStone and Loot Drop, but he recently took to the Twitters to declare “Definitely not! I have plans…” when questioned as to whether he’d entirely abandoned “old school FPS.”(more…)

Telltale Games' adventure adaptation of the Fables comic series has been delayed until the third quarter of this year, according to an interview with CEO Dan Connors by Digital Trends. Originally scheduled for the first quarter, the game will make its first appearance around E3 in June, followed by more details at San Diego Comic-Con in July.

Fables, not to be confused with Microsoft's Fable series, is about characters from folklore and fairty tales living in New York City. Connors mentioned that the series may have to take on a different name to avoid confusion with the established RPG series, and avoid any communiques from the lawyers of Redmond.

Endless Space is a 4X sci-fi strategy game by Amplitude Games, a new Paris outfit made up of former Electronic Arts and Ubisoft folks. A couple things make this announcement interesting. For starters, given their pedigree, the devs plan to come at this game from the potential blockbuster mentality, a rare occurence in the strategy genre. The other is the developer is looking for the community to get involved in what it's calling the "GAMES2GETHER" initiative.

"Few industries have such a vocal community and even fewer have the luxury of listening to the feedback that it provides," said Amplitude CEO Mathieu Girard. "Now that we're independent and get to call the shots, the whole team shares the dream of bringing this interactivity and support one step further."

Those interested in participating in the process can sign up at the Endless Space site. Given how few and far between good 4X strategy games come along, we won't be mad if this one fails -- we'll just be very disappointed in everyone participating in the process.

Eventually all the minutiae of the human condition will be available as budget simulators on the PC. “Yawn Simulator”. “Uncomfortable Silence Simulator”. “Microwave Burger Simulator” It’ll get more and more generic, the titles less and less exotic, until one day we’ll have the machinations of the world described on your shelf. Utility Vehicle Simulator is the first step on the road to “Rolling Your Hands Up And Down On Batteries Simulator”: it’s the game about driving vans, keeping in the speed limit, delivering boxes, trimming trees, sucking sewage. We have a video of it in action. Sorry, “action”.(more…)

There aren’t many autobiographical games, unless I’ve got the wrong idea entirely and the majority of developers fought in make believe versions of wars and have the ability to recover from multiple bullet wounds by standing behind a fence for ten seconds. This new browser-based piece from Anna Anthropy is a chapter of the author’s life though and it’s an insight into intimate moments and tough decisions. Dys4ia is personal, revealing, angry, sad, loving and seemingly very honest indeed. As for interaction, it’s lots of extremely tiny games in a way, with one story connecting them. Take a look.

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Big Robot, the indie developer headed up by one Jim Rossignol of this here website, has just taken the lid off its fourth project. Fourth! How did that happen so quickly? You’ve already played Avseq, you’ll get to play Channel 4-funded education game Fallen City soon and you may have seen a few screenshots and test videos for the open-world game codenamed Project Lodestone. And now, there is Sir, You Are Being Hunted. It’s an open-world survival game starring gentrified English robots who hunt humans for sport, and was referred to on BR’s drawing board as ‘a British indie STALKER.’ We’re promised “robots that ape tea-drinking, poachers that lurk in reed-beds, and red-eyed hounds that patrol the moor”.

I would say that Sir, You Are Being Hunted looks absolutely lovely and has a fantastic concept, but if I did you’d have no idea whether I’m being objective or not.(more…)

Given that the RPS servers wobble like a tightrope walker whenever Notch tips his hat towards us on Twitter, I’m amazed Farm Fortress is still standing. But it is, and it means I can point you in the same direction that the benevolent Minecraft creator pointed. Join the orderly queue. It looks rather interesting. A browser-based persistent, top-down farming and fortress making game. Why farms? Because in this post-apocalyptic vision of future awfulness, the only job for an ex-con is high-risk illegal farming. Why fortresses? Hello! Post-apocalyptic farming obviously means you’re fighting off mutants, other players (a truly apocalyptic addition), and corporate robots. Best build them walls and get hoe-ing in the open alpha.(more…)

KillFunYeah, three words made one, the first of which makes me a bit nervous, the second of which I’m all for and the third I imagine being said with a slight shrug in between sips of coffee. As a name, it’s not the sort I’d want to yell out loud, that is until developers Arctic Anteater add at least two exclamation marks on the end. KillFunYeah!!!!! sounds like a blast. As it stands, the relatively unexcited KillFunYeah is a 2D arena-based shooter with destructible blocks, guns, grenades and saxophones. Jazzocide is the new Jazzercise. It’s in alpha and currently available for free on Windows, Mac and Linux. Observe the below trailer and tutorial, the latter demonstrating the attract and deflect powers that are KFY’s USP.

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The writing appears to be on the wall for increasingly troubled UK videogame retailer GAME and its subsidiary Gamestation. Its share value has fallen dramatically to less than 1 penny, and it allegedly put itself up for sale over the weekend. Doesn’t sound as though Mass Effect 3 will be the only big game it doesn’t stock either, with an official statement today claiming that GAME “remains in discussions with its suppliers and lenders in relation to terms of trade that allow the business to operate within the facility provided by its banking syndicate… While these discussions are on-going, it has not been possible to source new products from a number of suppliers.”

The company’s also seeking “alternative sources of funding and reviewing the position of all of its assets in the UK and international territories. It is uncertain whether any of the solutions currently being explored by the Board will be successful or will result in any value being attributed to the shares of the Company.”(more…)

We've all heard the stories. Gamers signing autographs in the streets. Dedicated e-Sports stadiums. Crowds of thousands lining up to catch a glimpse of the GSL (Global StarCraft II League). So just how true is it? Is South Korea really gaming's Jerusalem, where foreign gaming pilgrims make their way...

Sports games with stories are a good idea. Yes, there's still disagreement, even within the game development community, about how games tell stories. The discourse around games as a storytelling medium has escalated in recent times and developers continue to debate how they ought to approach, embrac...

The Pubcast team enters the naughty forties and sets its collective sights on 2012's biggest threequels. In this episode we discuss the rampant homophobia surrounding the release of Mass Effect 3, the Euphoria-powered gun-porn of Max Payne 3 and the freshly revealed American Revolution setting of As...

Sundays are for nursing a bout of insomnia with some gentle electronica and cup of tea. It’s a beautiful misty morning here in the West. Perfect for collating some internet writings before setting off for a long walk to a pub lunch. After that, surely, a man will be able to sleep.

• Mr Garratt on why Molyneux quitting Microsoft is such a good thing: “No one deserves the accolades more. Peter Molyneux is British gaming’s national treasure, a genius creative who’s pushed games in areas no one else has dared. Yes, he’s failed on more than one occasion, but that’s because he’s tried. In such a risk-averse industry, that’s rare. If you push you will fall, but he never stops. Going it alone again means he can experiment in ways a large corporation would never allow, that he can remain on the road of innovation.”

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While we were talking to Rovio's Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka, our good friends at Engadget were speaking with Rovio's Ville Heijari, who gave them a thorough run through of Angry Birds Space's new gravitational elements and horrendously difficult Danger Zone, the latter of which is exclusive to Samsung's massive 5.3 inch Galaxy Note smartphone.

We had a chance to play the game as well, albeit briefly, and we can report that not only are these birds still very upset, but that the pigs' space program is far, far more advanced than we had anticipated. We also had no idea there were so many planets in the solar system, but who are we to correct NASA?

HD remakes are becoming more prevalent in the video games industry, as a means of introducing a new generation of gamers to something they may have otherwise never played. Frédérick Raynal, designer of the original survival-horror game, Alone in the Dark, said he's totally on board with an HD remake.

"I would love an HD remake one day and I hope it will happen, one day," Raynal responded when asked about the possibility at the conclusion of his GDC postmortem. "I think Infogrames holds the rights; I'm not sure about that."

Atari published the last entry in the Alone in the Dark series back in 2008. If someone wants to get a remake out in time for the 20th Anniversary of the original game, they'll have to get it out within the next nine months.

In the games industry, a 'bullshot' is a screenshot that's been manipulated to appear prettier and more exciting than the actual game. It happens more commonly than our tag would have you believe.

The thing is, scientists have been trying to determine the genesis of this heinous act for quite some time now -- and we think we've found a prominent example of one of the earliest bullshots in Alone in the Dark.

During his GDC postmortem, designer Frédérick Raynal admitted that he drew the back-of-the-box face for Alone in the Dark's protagonist in MS Paint, back in 1992. The main character doesn't look like he does above in the actual game, though the original packaging still shows the hand-drawn visage.

"We were in September 1992, master state, but we still had no head for the hero." Raynal said that Infrogrames was looking for screens to share at the time, and so Raynal was in a tough spot. He decided he was just going to draw the head in.

"It is funny because if you still look on the first box for the game, you an see those pictures with the fake head on it." Raynal said the bullshot even made it into the game -- if you don't touch the keys in the main menu, a slideshow featuring the touched-up image will start up. Nobody ever bothered to fix it.