PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Super Retro Squad's $10,000 Kickstarter goal to turn Super Mario Bros. Crossover into a real, legitimate title has already been achieved, over 20 days ahead of schedule.

Creator Jav Pavlina is currently enmeshed in an "Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit, but he's also posted what he calls "stretch goals," or things that the team plans to do if they reach a certain amount of funding: $20,000 will get Time Attack modes, leaderboards, and achievements added to the game; $30,000 will get translation into foreign languages; and $40,000 will earn players access to Eve VII, a character based heavily on Blaster Master's Sophia III.

After that, says Pavlina, it all depends on how big the project ends up growing. Hopefully it won't get too big: We could do without a character based on Hudson Hawk.

Here are our suggestions to turn Steam into an even more powerful PC gaming program. What are yours?

The next entries in Zynga’s massively successful Ville series allow you to build a whole new life…or restaurant.

I’ve just sat through around an hour of newly-elongated (no, not changed as such – elongated. Improved? A bit. Hope you like paintings!) Mass Effect 3 endings so I can’t quite bring myself to watch another seven minutes of explosions and other lighting effects right now, but I’m basically just skim-viewing this full-length E3 presentation of PlanetSide 2 then leaving it for myself to come back to properly tomorrow. It’s all been quick clips and devblogs so far, but this seems to be more of an overview of the SOE’s MMOFPS’ scope’n'stuff.(more…)

Zynga has announced that a sequel to Farmville is coming soon.

Zynga is introducing real-time multiplayer to its games through zynga.com, starting today with Bubble Safari. Booting up Bubble Safari allows players to enter a live match with four other people, friends and strangers alike. Each multiplayer match runs for 90 seconds, a time that can be easily changed in the backend, Zynga announced at its conference today.

Bubble Safari multiplayer will also incorporate in-game group chat.

Real-time multiplayer will be available in all games in the new Zynga With Friends network from here on out. This is not to be confused with the Zynga With Friends studio, formerly Newtoy, which produces titles such as Words With Friends and Hanging With Friends. The network has 290 million users and will soon replace zynga.com on the web and mobile with more social features and an inbox function.

At its ongoing Zynga Unleashed event in San Francisco, the social media game giant revealed three new partners: Majesco, 50 Cubes, and Portalarium.

Majesco's current crop of top properties include the Zumba Fitness franchise and Cooking Mama. 50 Cubes currently features three titles on its website, including the "Facebook top fashion game for 2011" Mall World. Portalarium, which was founded by Ultima series creator and RPG legend Richard Garriott in 2009, recently launched a casual game based on garage sales, and is working on a project the company says will return Garriott to his RPG roots.

At its conference, Zynga also highlighted three partners it announced during GDC 2012: Konami, Playdemic, and Rebellion.

Zynga is introducing real-time multiplayer to its games through zynga.com, starting today with Bubble Safari. Booting up Bubble Safari allows players to enter a live match with four other people, friends and strangers alike. Each multiplayer match runs for 90 seconds, a time that can be easily changed in the backend, Zynga announced at its conference today.

Bubble Safari multiplayer will also incorporate in-game group chat.

Real-time multiplayer will be available in all games in the Zynga With Friends network from here on out.

Codemasters’ cars wot go fast management game, F1 Online, has now entered open beta and since it’s a microtransaction-scoffing online sort of a thing, that means anyone can play it right now without spending so much as a penny, in any sense of the phrase. Ace car-pilot Brendan took a look at the game for us almost exactly a month ago today and found it an enjoyable snack rather than a feast, although not without complaining about how “Facebookey” the whole thing can be. I’m tempted to try it as building a team from scratch sounds like fun, but if it starts trying my patience I’ll probably forget about it, leaving Team Pay To Win languishing in a garage with a half-built car. Sign up or watch the trailer below.

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Tired of losing so much cash to durability loss incurred by simply using items? Blizzard has heard you.

Cubemen has been out on Desura and Steam for a while, but it’s currently very cheap indeed.

There’s something pleasing about a cube. And something pleasinger about cubes that go pop when exposed to in-game forces of craft or peril. Cubemen understands this, and that’s why the understated visuals of this clean and precise tower defence game hold a simple allure. Being curiously unable to resist either tower defence or cubes, I was drawn in to take a closer look. A brief summary of wot I think about Cubemen follows.(more…)

Today I paid my bills, considered the pros and cons of renting a nicer apartment, opened a bank account that seemed vaguely exploitative, feared that I was in danger of spending beyond my means and made a squirrel wear hob-nailed boots so that it could kick its athletic opponents in the back of the knee. Then I wondered if squirrels have knees. I’ve actually done all of those things, except the bits about squirrels. UNTIL NOW. International Racing Squirrels, a free browser game developed by Playniac for Britain’s own Channel 4, aims to teach youngsters about financial responsibility and running small businesses. Does it work?

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DLC "expands on the endings of Mass Effect 3 through additional scenes and epilogue sequences", providing more answers and closure.

Alright, busted. I’m almost entirely posting about this because of the amazing name. WAR OF THE HUMAN TANKS is the best of all the names, you see. Would I be posting about this Japanese indie strategy game if it was not, in fact, called WAR OF THE HUMAN TANKS?

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Remember McPixel? You first met the bizarro rapid-fire point-and-click adventure when it was naught but a bouncing baby demo. It may have vomited on your shirt. It, er, finds those sorts of things funny. But now McPixel’s all grown up and available for purchase, so naturally, its humorous sensibilities have matured. A little. OK, so it’s still amazingly low-brow in places (for instance, McPixel’s go-to means of attempting to save the world is generally a casual kick to the groin) but replaying 20-second, constantly exploding scenarios for hidden gags yields some gleefully unexpected results. Witness the mesmerizing (and, for some reason, partially live-action) madness in a new trailer after the break.

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Rome: Total War (pictured) may be getting a sequel, according to the latest issue of Australia's PC PowerPlay. The page highlighting next month's issue of the magazine, as captured by NeoGAF, shows a screenshot of numerous Roman soldiers battling it out, all overlaid by the large Roman numeral 2.

Another forum goer notes that Total War developer Creative Assembly will be at this year's Rezzed exposition in Brighton on July 6 and 7. The next PC PowerPlay, meanwhile, goes on sale July 18.

The studio is supposed to be discussing "the future of Total War," so it seems likely that a sequel is in the cards. A lot has changed since Rome: Total War was first released back in 2004. Notably, the naming convention has been flipped, meaning a sequel will probably be called Total War: Rome 2.

The group finder has almost arrived in BioWare's popular MMO.

Join IGN Prime and enter space in the year 2381 with an 8-player RTS called Tryst. Only Primes get in, so get on it!

Revitalised by going microtransaction-to-play last year, Dungeons & Dragons Online has found itself in a healthy enough state to launch what appears to be a pretty beefy ‘premium expansion.’ Menace of the Underdark is, somehow, DDO’s first ever full-fat add-on after six years of hanging onto its servers for dear life until business models changed. It brings the more appealing, darker, undergroundy, demonic’n'Drowy aspects of the Forgotten Realms setting to the fore, as well as introducing the skinchanging Druid class for the first time. I am genuinely amazed this game didn’t have Druids before now. Aren’t all fantasy MMOs supposed to have Druids?

Take a look at the new stuff, settings, enemies, classes and “Epic levels to 25″ in a four-part video, which also talks about luminescent algae.(more…)

Even if you don’t like flight simulations, you should probably watch this. Some trailers give me a migraine, some tickle my curiosity box and many have very little impact on me at all. I press play, I sit back, I watch and then I wonder why it was quite so noisy or why it adds nothing to, or seemingly contradicts, what I already knew about the game it purports to advertise. Since I probably couldn’t even manage to turn the ignition key and check the mirrors in DCS: P-51D Mustang’s intricately simulated WW2 fighter, I’m pleased I can at least enjoy looking at the game. This is one of the most beautiful promotional videos I’ve seen for a long time.

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I’m about as much use as toenails on a strawberry in terms of discussing StarCraft II’s popular, ladder-based multiplayer, so I’m sure you’ll be hanging upon the golden wisdom of my every word as I bring you news that the UK SC2 championships are being held at BAFTA this weekend. To be honest I mostly clicked through because it said ‘free tickets‘ and even though I now earn enough to have three square meals a week the f-word brings me running every time.(more…)

The next game from the studio that created Minecraft is nearing closed alpha testing.

A new game mode on the way for Vavle’s popular online shooter.

Even though, as my partner commented with no little disgust the other day, I seem to be becoming ever-more geeky as I age, I’ve managed to pass 33 years of life without ever playing/understanding Magic: The Gathering. So it is that the demo of Stainless’ new Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 has been my first experience of the deathless collectible card game. It didn’t take long for me to develop a profound and frightening understanding of just why so many people are so drawn to and sucked into this cardboard crack and its digital variant.(more…)

So I enjoyed The Journey Down, SkyGoblin’s remake of their classic-style point and click adventure. But I was so hesitant about the price. Charging £10 for a game that lasted a couple of hours seemed problematic. But worse, this is the first chapter of an unknown number, meaning it’s impossible to know just how much you’d be investing to see the series through. Rather brilliantly, the developers have just announced they’re halving the price, bringing it to $7/£5, which is exactly where I think it should be. There’s a fun video explaining this below.

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Sometimes I spend my days in the company of mythical creatures, devious kings and diplomats from distant stars. Other times it’s just zombies from dawn until dusk, broken up by the occasional yet-living survivor to exchange words and supplies with. Today is shaping up to be one of those days, with the last half hour having been spent watching videos of Zombox, a sandbox game with crafting, barricading and horticulture. It’s not available yet but the informative development footage has me imagining grotesquely under-appreciated freeware game Survival Crisis Z, except with more of everything. There’s also a bit where an NPC says ‘buzz off!’ in response to being clobbered with a baseball bat.

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I live in fear – true, cold, debilitating terror – of my cat dying, even though she’s surely got anywhere from 5 to 10 years still left on the clock. These strange, joyful, fearful, psychopathic creatures can achieve such a hold on our lives and affections. Maybe it’s just the toxoplasmosis speaking, but young Ripley’s chirruping presence in my house makes for a tangible improvement of my days. So I can offer the most enormous condolences and sympathy to Distractionware’s Terry Cavanagh, whose long-term pet Thomas P. Cat passed away last week. Terry has offered the greatest of tributes to his dearly departed Tom – by swamping his ever-vital FreeIndieGam.es blog with over 20 weird and wonderful cat-based games.(more…)

Twas on Saturday that I found myself boasting on Twitter about how great RPS is, even on the weekends. Because it is! But there was one thing missing. As Thais Weller pointed out, Danilo Dias and Pedro Paiva’s sprite platformer Oniken wasn’t mentioned. It was a gross oversight, and I can only apologise. You have to give this trailer a view.

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I could have sworn I’d already mentioned TRIP, which seems like what would happen if gentle, musical exploration game Proteus poured hallucinogenics all over its cereal in the morning and shovelled the whole lot into its mouth using a delicate crystalline spoon carved out of frozen absinthe. ‘ART GAME’, says the trailer in brightly coloured letters that desire to be taller than buildings, before proceeding to show various creatures slowly jiving in luridly lucid landscapes. Maybe I dreamt that I wrote about it or nearly wrote about it but assumed I shouldn’t as it had been a dream rather than a PC game. Or I just misplaced a tag or two. It’s out now, on PC and Mac, priced at £7.29. Launch trailer below, impressions when I’ve formed them.

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