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Yes, one of RPS’ favourite game-related events is happening once again in London, this time on 12th May at Keyworth Centre atrium and its conference rooms at London South Bank University, near Elephant and Castle in central London. The GameCamp “Unconference” is notable for not being about presentations, but rather informal gatherings and conversations sparked off by the speakers. In their own words: “It’s for the designers, coders, artists, writers, thinkers and, above all, the players who are making the 21st century the century of the game. GameCamp is about more than making games: it’s about playing them, thinking about them and how they affect our lives for good or for ill.”

Have a read of Kieron’s account of a GameCamp from a couple of years ago if you want to know a bit more about the event. Tickets are few, so get in there if you want to be involved.

Let’s be prosaic to begin with. Sword & Sworcery EP is the result of a collaboration between Superbrothers, CAPY and musician Jim Guthrie. It’s converted lovingly from its initial Apple phoney-paddy-thing format last year, where it was very well thought of. It’s a graphic adventure which stresses atmosphere and style over traditional puzzles. I like it. You probably will too.

I’m being prosaic, because I’m just about to go off on a 500 word micro-essay tangent. I’ll get back to Sword & Sworcery EP eventually. Trust me. And if you’re interested in the game, you better get used to that. You’re in journey over destination territory.(more…)

Mr Florence, known for his mild verse, has been playing Dark Souls on the console boxes, and wants to convey that experience to you now.

Hi. Rab Florence here. Dark Souls is coming to PC, and so I must talk to you about it. I think that the game is one of the most important designs of the past decade. I’m so glad you’re all going to be able to play it. It doesn’t feel like a console game. Don’t worry about that. Within its dark halls and its vast caverns, there is the ambition and experimentation of the very best PC games. I love it. I love it so dearly that only poetry can properly express that love. I wrote this in a forest last night. Thanks to RPS for publishing this piece, and thanks to you for reading it out loud in your place of work.

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In the real world I am not much of a tinkerer. I can fix a few bits and pieces on a car, and build a PC, but when it comes to actual tweaking and tinkering, figuring out what I can be boosted, what can be overclocked, and what must be tuned, my talents – and my ambitions – are fairly limited. Not so in the gaming world, of course, where I have spent thousands of hours plugging objects into equipment slots and pulling them out again, just to watch the variables shift up and down. Watching the numbers change, it seems, is sometimes enough.

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Not only will the Diablo 3 beta be back online this weekend, it'll be open to everyone with a Battle.net account - intentionally, this time. Starting today at 12:01pm PDT (3:01pm EDT), Blizzard is hosting an open beta weekend to stress test the servers.

If you have a job that keeps you away from your computer on early Friday afternoons, don't despair: the event runs through Monday at 10am PDT (1pm EDT). Download the client now so you can start clicking as soon as possible.

The venerable 48 hour game design competition/jam that is Ludum Dare always manages to tickle my curiosity bone but that’s usually when hundreds of games suddenly sprout up across the internet, as if some manner of imagination/caffeine downpour had filtered its way through the digital dirt. This time around, for the 10th anniversary event Ludum Dare 23, I’m writing before the theme has even been announced. It all takes place this weekend, beginning in just over 12 hours, and there’s an interactive keynote to introduce the concept, energise the participants and demonstrate the basics of iterative design.

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Boys passed as ‘A1′ usually underwent Assignment in the week before their 11th birthday. They’d enter the tramcar-narrow room with its mossy skylights and wall tiles the colour of Danube sludge, thinking about shiny diesel locomotives, sleek jetliners, or shell-scarred battle tanks. In most cases the machine detected these emissions, and assigned appropriately. Sometimes, however, things went awry. Take my best pal, Valka. Despite the fact that Goliath steamrollers were in his blood, he wound up psycho-tethered to a 3M8 ‘Ganef’ SAM missile. (more…)

Turn-based Lovecraft game set during World War I, with crumbling sanity for all concerned? Oh, be still my murmuring heart. Not entirely still, obviously, because that tends to make me go blue in the face and then die, but do slow down a little. Actually, no need to call the doctor at all because the game in question is a port of iOS title Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land and I’ve already poked my fingers into its trenches and tentacles. There’s been at least one major update since I tinkered with it, but despite my initial attraction I did find the interface quite offputting. Hopefully that will be addressed when the tactical madness comes to PC on May 5th.

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Are games art? Can we authentically depict emotion in a virtual space? What is the meaning of Tetris? Can we read authenticity into the actions of Master Chief? If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, is it the Citizen Kane of games? Intrusion 2 attempts to answer precisely none of these important questions. Instead, it’s a Metal-Slug-esque sidescroller, but with gorgeous physics-based animations and an oddly understated love of over-the-top insanity. Like, sure, there’s prominent trailer time given to dire wolf lightning gun jousting, but it’s all so gloriously matter-of-fact. Also featured: grappling robots, chimeras with swords for tails, and a giant mech snacking on a steel bridge like it’s corn on the very brittlest of cobs. There’s an old demo on the game’s website if you’re interested, but it hardly even gazes into the abyss of gleeful absurdity the new trailer so thoroughly plumbs. Find it after the break.

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"Man, I've got a great idea for a game," said every single gamer ever. "If only I had some kind of tool or platform that would allow me to build it without having to learn any form of programming."

This familiar dialogue has either been spoken aloud by you specifically, or by someone you know and love. It's all too common, and because of the gamer's intrinsic urge to try their own hand at game design, companies like Blade Games World create products like Jumala.

At its heart, Jumala is a game development suite designed for Joe Everyguy, devoid of programming languages and requiring no previous game-making experience whatsoever. Working in a fully 3D environment, players can either build their own game from scratch or modify existing template games. Once created, games can be shared with your incredibly patient friends and family via Jumala's social network integration.

What makes Jumala unique, for better or for worse, is the ribcage of gamification bones that surround its design-oriented heart. As they create, players earn "Jumala Spark," an in-game currency used to unlock construction tools, items and character models from the in-game store. Jumala Spark is also earned whenever someone plays a game you've created, or when you play a game someone else has created, which encourages game makers to relentlessly spam actively promote their wares.

Jumala's free, PC-only beta is currently underway. Creatively minded OSX users, fear not: A Mac version is said to arrive "someday."

Remember Roar Rampage? You know, the dino demolition masterpiece John spotted a few weeks ago? Well, you can play it now. I just hopped in the ring and put in a few rounds of space-lizard-vs-an-entire-city boxing action myself, and was surprised to discover a subtly nuanced, brain-bendingly strategic experience. OK, I’m lying. But I was able to block bullets and missiles with my XXXXXXXXL boxing gloves, so it’s a bit more than physics-based structure uppercutting (structurecutting?) – but thankfully, not much. Sometimes, all I want out of my games is to punch helicopters into other helicopters. Roar Rampage approached me – a look of oddly stern determination plastered across its face and elbow pads fitted just so - and granted that innermost of wishes. Then it patted me on the back, said everything was going to be OK, and lumbered off into the sunset. Then it punched the sunset – right in its big, dumb face.

If you starve a man he will gladly chew a button in order to create saliva, which he will then swallow in an attempt to fool his body into thinking it is being fed. This brief cry in the dark is my attempt to nourish myself with a lump of plastic or wood, it is the splinter in my tongue and the grumbling in my belly. This is what happens when they don’t tell me anything about Thief 4. I feast hungrily on scraps.

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When most people sit down in front of their PC intending to play flight sims, there's usually just a mouse and keyboard at their disposal. Some may have a flight stick, and a few might even have multiple monitors set up. Not air traffic controller and private pilot James Price...

Today, Oustpark unlocks their Facebook game Fiesta Social to the masses as it enters open beta. The game looks to be a lighter, more casual counterpart to the free-to-play MMORPG Fiesta. Check out the exclusive trailer below, which shows some of what Fiesta Social offers...

Politics is boring. It’s not politics’ fault that he’s boring, that’s just the way he is. If variety is the spice rack of life, politics is nutmeg. Completely unremarkable and dull to your average teenager, until you mention the fact that it caused a few wars. In large enough doses, nutmeg can also give you palpitations and make you see things that aren’t really there. Like I said, boring, right? No wait, that’s the opposite of boring. That’s interesting.

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Anyone who played, or feared to play, the experimental horror game SCP-087 has probably been wondering if it would inspire more games based on the horrific series of scientific and supernatural lockdown. I’m pleased (and mortified) to say that the time for such things is upon us. If you don’t know what the SCP Foundation is refer to my previous post, but also be aware that the game linked to there has been updated. For tense and hopeless wandering in the dark, you will now want SCP-087B. The newest addition to the SCP gaming family contains more than one horror. There’s been a Containment Breach, you see, and you’re the poor sod who’s tasked with cleaning up the mess.

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It is inevitable that during the trial of Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik, that the matter of videogaming will come up. At the time I dug into what Breivik had actually said about gaming in his ghastly manifesto, and it was pretty much nothing of relevance. But with the press still not having found the next nasty to leap on, gaming is the scapegoat. It seems reasonable to point out how inaccurate this remains, and how attempting to shift the blame onto things uninvolved only makes it more likely that whatever led to Breivik’s state of mind is only less likely to be discovered. But now that Breivik has testified about how important playing WoW was to him, and his peculiar understanding of Modern Warfare 2, it’s all happening again.

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No one can have escaped the chatter about Kickstarter. It’s being a collection of remarkable stories of significant funds raised by crowd-sourced budgets, gamers investing in projects in the place of publishers. And those numbers are significiant. Since the beginning of March, gamers have pledged over ten million dollars to games via Kickstarter. And that’s to projects that have achieved their funding, or are just about to. It’s not including hundreds of thousands more in games only midway through their run.

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Nothing in life is so perfect that it can't be improved with the addition of dinosaurs. Imagine Jurassic Park without dinosaurs, or Dinosaur Comics, or your wedding day, for just a few examples. See? Everything is better with dinosaurs.

Orion: Dino Beatdown understands this principle perfectly, adding vicious dinosaurs to an otherwise standard class-based shooter. The above video explains how each class can best take down the dinos - but really, it's not as if there's a bad way to play a game with dinosaurs in it.

1c send word of Space Rangers HD: A War Apart, which is apparently another “remastering” of the sequel toRPS’-favoured space games Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators and Space Rangers 2: Reboot. A War Apart will include a new campaign, “offering a pirate’s point of view.” The overhaul will redo graphics too, allowing for 1920×1200, which is nice because everyone likes fresh graphics.

No release date yet, but I’d expect it soon.

The Diablo 3 beta servers have been temporarily taken offline, after users discovered a glitch allowing free access to anyone with a Battle.net account. Community manager "Nethaera" said an update on the outages will be issued at approximately 11am PDT (2pm EDT). The beta is currently "unavailable until further notice."

Ars Technica reports that starting around 6am EDT, a glitch inadvertently allowed free access to something called the "Starter Edition" of Diablo 3 to anyone with a Battle.net account, whether or not they had access to the Diablo 3 beta.

Here's where it gets really interesting, as if free Diablo 3 weren't already interesting. The previously unannounced "Starter Edition" that was distributed in this manner had all the features of the beta, Ars reports, but occasionally asked players to buy the complete game. In other words, it was a free-to-play version of Diablo 3, or a feature-rich demo. Those are kind of the same thing.

I’d inadvertently left some Beefheart playing when I unmuted my speakers to have a listen this trailer, below. The effect was quite beautiful. Or perhaps I’ve not had enough sleep. Another thing, the name “Orion: Dino Beatdown” really doesn’t seem quite right to me. I mean, Orion looks like Tribes mated with a Jurassic Park movie licence anyway, but the name sort of doubles that: half serious sci-fi, half 1980s dinosaur platformer. Perhaps that’s appropriate. Hm.

The game is out April 20th.(more…)

Adult Swim's latest risque-themed title for its online portal is 2 AM Truck Stop. Now, if you've ever had the displeasure of seeing the debauchery that is performed at a multi axle rest stop at 2AM, this game is not a simulation of that.

In fact, 2AM Truck Stop is a neon-infused shoot 'em up, featuring adult themes like methamph... er, "crystal" power-ups and surviving an onslaught of trucker paraphernalia. It's not so much an at-work time waster game as it's an "OMG, it's 3AM, why can't I sleep... it was probably that [censored] I took." You know who you are.

Gentleman purveyor of indie-game discoveries, Pixel Prospector, has pointed out the existence of the neon vector flying-shooter type game, Vektropolis. It’s still at an early stage, according to the devs, but it has some lovely visuals already, and that sort of free-flying Descent/G-Police way of doing things that was so popular for a while back there, but these days seems to have fallen out of favour. I wish there was actually a proper genre name for the flying-and-shooting-but-not-a-sim genre. Anyway, I am interested to see more of this. Check out the video below.(more…)

Spiderweb Software have one intention: to keep making 90s-style RPGs, and to keep making them good. Avernum: Escape From The Pit is their latest, technically the seventh game in the Avernum series (although presented with a fresh start), the 20th game from the developers, and the first of their games I’ve played. So from that perspective, and despite having spent so many hours still only a fraction of the way in, here’s Wot I Think:

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1000 Amps is one of my favourite puzzle games in years. Brilliantly designed, and constantly interesting, I went so far as to do cosplay to convince you to play it. Hopefully you did. I am convinced lone developer behind The Odd Man Out, 22 year old college student Brandon Brizzi, is one to watch. Which is why I caught up with him to ask about the experience of releasing a successful game, the motivation behind his projects, and why he no longer has to make pizzas.

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Granted, it has other things too – most of them somehow involving bullets, cover, explosions, or blood-spattered teddy bears sleeping in the rubble of a dystopian, corporation-run nation that’s forgotten how to hug. Mercenary Ops, of course, hails from the stop ‘n’ pop artists formerly known as Epic Games China (now Yingpei Games, but still affiliated), with the twist being that it’s PC-only and quite enamored with fancy physics. Also, it’s apparently more grounded in real-world tech than obvious wind beneath is veiny, rippling wings Gears of War, but – on the other hand – there’s a tentacle monster. So you be the judge. Check out the full trailer after the break.

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As if the recent Dark Souls news wasn’t enough, we’ve now got another sobering report putting a nail in the coffin of GFWL’s coffin. See, there was – if only briefly – a thin ray of hope. Well, sort of. Windows 8 is bringing full Xbox Live functionality along for the ride, so you’d think Microsoft might at least retire its creaky PC gaming backend and put its full efforts behind a hopefully (and that’s a long shot) less tiresome interface. No such luck, however. GFWL, says Microsoft, will live on until long after our pitiful species is dethroned by apes, aliens, zombies, and Mayan ghosts – all at once.

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IGN Pro League announced today that a record-breaking 346,000 concurrent viewers tuned in for IPL 4. The milestone means that IPL 4 secured the largest-ever online viewership for an eSports event held outside of Korea, with more than three million unique viewers tuning in overall...

When some people are rejected they use it as motivation to improve their own lives: start working out, eat healthier, study harder, create something beautiful. Other people take it personally and start manically hitting on anything in a 50-mile radius to prove that one person was so terribly wrong. Zynga, it turns out, takes rejection personally, and as companies are more people than people are, it's planning a years-long acquisition spree, CEO Mark Pincus tells Bloomberg.

Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, rejected an offer from Zynga for $2 billion, Bloomberg writes, and from 2010 to 2011 Zynga spent $147 million to acquire 22 companies, and $180 million on Draw Something's OMGPop alone. Zynga's merger chief Barry Cottle is searching for companies with blockbuster social games on the same scale as Farmville and Cityville, Bloomberg says.

Zynga plans to handle "a few" deals similar to or larger than the OMGPop acquisition in the next three to five years, Pincus says.

"We're sitting in a very advantageous position," Cottle says. "We have a significant amount of cash, we have no debt, and we have access to debt to be as aggressive as we need to be." Zynga has $1.81 billion in cash and short-term investments and its stock is unstable, dropping 3.2 percent this morning to $10.59, Bloomberg notes. Let's hope that with all those new employees Zynga is transplanting and taking on, a few of these acquisitions work out as expected.