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Ludocraft send word that they have opened the shop for Air Buccaneers HD, allowing you to get permanent access to the alpha and all the builds beyond that. They are also following a “benefactor” (ie Kickstarter) model which allows you to contribute more for some additional bonuses and early adopted stuff that won’t be obtainable later on by anyone.

There’s a new version of the alpha up, too. We’ll get an RPS server set up for this next week. Trailer belowdecks!(more…)

Here is where you find download links and a video for a brilliant game that took me just over five minutes to complete. It’s a two-button scenery-dodger in which the scenery is a succession of angry shapes and forward motion is impossible to halt. It’s called The Cat That Got The Milk and I feel like it contains colours I’ve not seen on my monitor for ages. It’s an interactive art gallery of sorts, in the least masturbatory way. If you enjoy the nifty soundtrack, it’s available for free here. The game is free as well. Download for Windows here or for Mac here.

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Here at Joystiq, we pride ourselves on being inside your mind, knowing what it wants, knowing what it thinks. We're like a somewhat creepier, less linguistic Babel Fish. The one thing your brain has been demanding is an updated version of 2002's Command & Conquer: Renegade.

We'd like to bring to your attention Renengade X: Black Dawn, a "spiritual successor" created by fans at Totem Arts. Tomorrow, the group will release the full single-player "mini-campaign," which was built in the Unreal Development Kit, and later Totem Arts plans to release a new multiplayer installment using the UDK.

In its current form, Renegade X is an updated version of the original game's multiplayer, made in Unreal Tournament 3, and has been playable for some time. If you want to partake, you'll need to own a copy of Unreal Tournament 3 with the latest updates.

Or, you know, just wait a day.

[Thanks, ssjChris!]C&C: Renegade remake Renegade X: Black Dawn deploys tomorrow

Yesterday morning, Juho Salila went to work as usual, expecting to streamline the graphics and build a few monsters for Legend of Grimrock, Almost Human's imminent dungeon crawler. He sat down, booted up his computer, and noticed the Grimlock site had crashed multiple times throughout the night due to traffic overload, and his inbox was inundated with new emails.

Hours earlier, Reddit user meandertal had posted this screencap from the Almost Human blog, highlighting a fan's question about the inclusion of on-screen arrows in Grimlock. That wasn't currently an option, programmer Petri Häkkinen said, asking the fan why he wanted to know. "I'm disabled and use a mouth stick for typing," he responded, saying he'd adapt to the existing controls and couldn't wait to play the game.

Two and a half hours later, Häkkinen posted this:

The fan was blown away -- and so were the Redditors who read meandertal's post.

"When we got our inbox open, we almost couldn't believe our eyes; it was just pouring with encouraging emails," Salila told Joystiq. "All these people writing in saying thanks and wishing us good luck, just like in the mountain of comments on Reddit.

"For us it was a rather simple thing to implement, but we couldn't imagine that it could mean so much to somebody else. It kind of gives you perspective on life itself."

Have you ever met a person? EW! People are hairy, covered in limbs, and sometimes they try to talk to you about taxes. Dreadful. But fortunately, thanks to the latest technology created by RPS Laboratories Incorporated, we’ve invented the perfect way to meet actual real people who never talk to you about taxes! (The are still hairy and limby – we’re working on that.) It’s the RPS Social Club, and it’s meeting tomorrow! To be a part of this, it’s happening in London, at The Blue Posts, from 6pm to midnight. You can find out more details on the forum.

You may remember Pineapple Smash Crew as the game that reminded us of Alien Breed, Cannon Fodder and other fun things. It was our pick of the indie games at the Eurogamer Expo last year and today Rich Edwards sends news that all the explodey jollity is coming to Steam on February 2nd, with a Desura release also in the works. For more of our thoughts on the game and an interview with Rich click here, or watch the trailer below and bop along merrily to the music within.(more…)

If only Monaco Is Mine was being developed at the pace this video demonstrated. We’d all be heisting together, instead of picking at every little crumb of development info the haughty team tosses our way. What you’re about to watch is a time-lapse in which a single-player level built, and therefore is totally spoiled for educational purposes. Dare you click the link? I think you’re chicken. Buckaww!(more…)

Today in our series profiling (almost) all the PC/Mac-based finalists at this year’s Independent Games Festival, we turn to wondrous freeform exploration game Proteus. Here, developer Ed Key and composer David Kanaga talk about the game’s origins, the role of music in games, quitting work to go full time on Proteus, wandering hobos and their answers to the most important question of all. (more…)

Dave Perry is the sometime creator of MDK and now CEO of Gaikai, the streaming game provider. He thinks his tech is going to take over PC Gaming; because he’s got his hands on one of those Molyneux Inc. Reality Distortion Fields, he’s VERY persuasive. We caught up with him at the superbly-stimulating Cloud Gaming Summit in London to talk about Gaikai, inspiration in game design, why Battlefield games are awesome, and a few other topics that might interest you.(more…)

Filed under: PC, Retro, Adventure, First Person Shooters, Online, RPGsThis is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
Hey there. Whatcha playing? No, actually, don't tell me. You're playing Ultima. You don't know you're playing Ultima, but you are. If you're playing an open-world game, you're dealing with Ultima. If you're playing a massively-multiplayer game, you're dealing with Ultima. If you'replaying a game with a morality system, Ultima. Even something as simple as three-dimensional graphics - either in perspective or overall representation - have ties to Ultima. How?

Open-world gaming: From the beginning, the Ultima games took place in worlds which were as big as possible given the tech constraints. You traveled across swamps, oceans, and hills, discovering what the world had to offer. The world was rarely "gated", letting exploration proceed in a non-linear fashion. What's more, the developments of open-world gameplay throughout the course of the series presaged the open-world games to come.

Ultima VI (1990) may be the most important open-world game of all time. Previous games in the series had switched perspective based on your context - dungeons were first-person, combat was top-down, and exploration on the world map had a completely different scale than exploration of towns. In Ultima VI, perspective was consistent. Your party walked into a town in the same way that it walks through a dungeon. It was a seamless, consistent world, that felt lived-in, and that open-world games from Grand Theft Auto to Skyrim owe a huge debt to.

The deeper into the series you go, the more complex the world. Want to quit adventuring for a while and bake bread? You could do that. Want to explore dungeons that are totally irrelevant to the plot? That was an option. Grab a cannon and start slaughtering guards so you can steal everything in the town? Well, you could do that, but there were consequences.

Astonishing! RPS is hiring again. We’re looking for a committed and energetic news writer. This is a full-time, paid position. We pay reasonably well, too, although the exact salary will depend on your experience and ability. As RPS news writer you will be responsible for news-posting aspects of RPS five days a week, under the supervision of the existing team. You will be expected to communicate directly with developers and publishers about their news-making games. If you can’t pick up the phone and use Jedi mind-tricks on a PR, then this job is not for you. To put yourself forward for this position please email us here with a CV and a 200-word example of your ability to a write a concise, moderately amusing article on a current gaming news topic. Other links to previous news-length work will also bolster your application.

Applications must arrive in our inbox by the 20th of February 2012.

It’s quite warm here this morning for the first time in days and I was dangerously close to enjoying the sun’s gentle caress, which would be a terrible betrayal of mistress moon. Thankfully I keep a stock of chilly and chilling games behind glass for just such an eventuality and today I’ve broken out The Snowfield, from brainy chaps at the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, whose output we’ve covered previously. This third-person adventure runs in browsers through the magic of Unity and it’s quite conventional to play in some ways, though shot through with atmospheric and narrative weirdness. Best to play it rather than listen to me, or read a little more in the icy depths below.

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Indie platformer A Walk In The Dark has a cat rescuing a lost little girl in a dark, fantasy world; the quarter of Dexter that John owns once lost a fight with his own feet (my bit was obviously the winner there). I see now why they had to place the game in a gothic forest: as a cat owner of four years, I wouldn’t believe the skills he shows off in the trailer below.(more…)

rComplex is a running-man's game. Not The Running Man's game, but a game for a man who runs, much like a thinking-man's game but less of a hypocrisy. See, it stars the silhouette of a man in a trench coat running from the darkness, a mass of creeping tentacles out for blood, and it's coming to your iPhone.

Originally released for PC in 2009, indie classic rComplex is coming to iOS devices at the end of February using Unity 3D, with a launch on Android, Mac and PC (again) to follow. Until then, enjoy a free download of the rComplex theme song right here.

Blizzard has announced that there will be no BlizzCon 2012. Instead, the next convention for all things Blizzard will take place in 2013. Blizzard explained that the need to focus on development of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and Diablo III was more of a priority...

Hello! I bring good news. The release date aiming cone for Bohemia Interactive’s sci-fi action strategy game Carrier Command: Gaea Mission has narrowed. The bad news is it’s only as specific as Q2 2012. Now I’ve been doing this job since 2000, and not once have I ever looked up what release date quarters mean. This chart did not help. So instead of explaining it further, I’ll have to distract you with some new screenshots of the game below.

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“Ohhhh. That’s really clever,” were the words uttered by my mouth as I realised The Fourth Wall‘s conceit. And then I realised I was going to have to try to explain it with words.

It’s a 2D sometimes-side-scrolling platformer from DigiPen student group Pig Trigger, in which you can control the character and the scrolling of the screen. So, run left or right and the screen scrolls with you. However, hold down Ctrl and it becomes static, and running from one edge has you appear on the other side. So you might drop down a hole and appear from the corresponding point on the top edge, or run from the left and appear on the right – it’s a notion familiar to anyone who’s played enough 80s/90s platform games. But here you’re in control of where the screen stops and starts, and it’s manipulating this which allows you to progress.

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Post SOPA might be slightly wishful thinking, because the industries that paid for the bill are not going to back down any time soon. Perhaps they’ve realised they’re at least going to need to be slightly more subtle about wanting control of the internet. (Although as long as Chris Dodd is speaking for the MPAA, subtlety doesn’t look like it’s going to be an option.) They will be back. But there are others about, trying similar. So what’s there to worry about?

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The puzzle game AVSEQ from indie developers Big Robot has recently been released. We managed to get hold of project lead, Jim Rossignol, for a world exclusive interview. Read on for details.

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Remember BoneTown? Now there’s more. BoneCraft is a game with balls, in more ways than one. It’s not just a World of Warcraft porn parody guest-starring cast of horny Starcraft-inspired marines. No, it’s a porn parody that goes so far out of its way to flick Blizzard’s nose, its developers D-Dub even hired the actor who played Tychus “You Are Hearing Mah Voice” Findlay to be its leading man.

But can it hope to provide the hottest elf-on-elf action since Teldrassil’s finest introduced a shocked looking Azeroth to the Wrath of the Licking? There’s only one way to find out. Two, if you include buying it. But reading on will be much, much safer for work.

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Okay, how to go through this without getting confused? Well, since I can barely get through putting on a pair of trousers without confusion (why do they make the arm-holes so big?), it’s not likely. But as far as I can tell, Insane 2 is a sequel to the Codies game from 2000, 1nSANE, a multiplayer off-road racer. And is nothing to do with inSANE, the THQ project from Pan’s Labyrinth director, Guillermo del Toro. But then, it also appears to have previously been released in October, onto GamersGate exclusively. And, oh, I don’t know. It’s out on Steam today, which they appear to be treating as a second coming, and there’s a trailer below. You know what, it looks decent.

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The ever quotable Fred Wester CEO Of Paradox (as his mother calls him) has laid down some views on DRM, and extolled the virtues of PC, at Gamespy at the end of last week. And wouldn’t you know it, the man’s speaking some sense.

“It’s so much simpler to develop for the PC — you can decide everything for yourself… The PC is very rewarding because the audience is very knowledgeable about the games, they’re very hardcore, they’re very quick with their feedback, and we have a great relationship with our customers.”

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Charming paper cut-out adventure game Lume from State of Play is up for the Excellence in Visual Art award at this year’s IGF. As part of our series of chats with the (PC/Mac-based) finalists, here we talk to State of Play director Luke Whittaker about Lume’s origins, the British invasion at IGF this year, games with a handmade aesthetic and his response to the most important question of all.

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Valve's Dota 2, currently in beta, is a beautiful, loyal recreation of the fan-made Warcraft III mod that spawned a sub-genre, and it's still missing about half the original's roster. It's really good, as anyone who has played (or even watched) it can attest. But thanks to League of Legends, I just ...

One more time around the Tiny & Big: Up That Mountain demo for us all! Whee! Black Pants Game Studio have updated the alpha once again. The world slicing content is the same, but there’s been an increase in attractiveness. I’m shallow enough to pick it up and play for that reason.(more…)

Fun fact: ibb and obb shouldn’t be capitalised, as per The Well of Lost Plots from which their names are taken. They are capitalised in my headline though, but so is everything else. Such is the way of the Style Guide (must also be capitalised) that guides my hand. Now that I think about it, that wasn’t very ‘fun’ at all, so here’s a new trailer for ibb and obb instead, which shows the gravity-bending cooperative platformer in action.

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I won’t pretend to understand the complexities of SpaceChem, Zachtronics’ chemical puzzler. Not in the guided single-player mode, nor the sandbox that was added to allow a player to complete the computer he was building within the game. With that sandbox came a challenge for players to build “the most awesome sandbox pipeline imaginable”. The winners are almost mocking in their complexity, given that my chemical romance never got beyond first base. Come revel in their ingenuity and marvel at my utter ignorance. I have marked where I lose the ability to comprehend each.(more…)

Despite looking a lot like Limbo, Kieron and other haters will be pleased to learn it doesn’t play like it. The deeply peculiar Q – Compressing The Heart is instead controlled by single mouse clicks, as you explore a twisted, dangerously organic world of shadows, in pursuit of your own heart. And if that sounds sweet or romantic, then you’ve quite the wrong impression.

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Important disclosure: AVSEQ is created by Big Robot, the indie game dev company owned by one Jim Rossignol. Rossignol was, of course, responsible for the Crimean War and has a police record due to admitting to the kidnap of 18 hobos in 2002. Apart from that, I can’t think of anything whatsoever that needs declaring about Rossignol before I post about Big Robot’s first released game, AVSEQ.

The near-infinite sounds and combos of abstract musical puzzle game AVSEQ are primarily the design and creation of Big Robot’s programmer Tom ‘Nullpointer’ Betts, so don’t expect too many traces of Rossignism in this one (although he’s been helping out with tweaks), but it is the studio’s very first release, and it is jolly clever, as you’ll see below.(more…)

What, you thought I was going to put a gag in the headline? You think that those three words are not beautiful and perfect enough on their own? How you sicken me, you artless philistine.

Yes, the latest in a long line of labour machinery-based sims you would never dream existed is Airport Firefighter Simulator, in which you are all that stands in front of certain, explosive disaster. Quotes like this are simply amazing: “Even the most routine duties of aircraft refuelling and cargo management carry the chance of conflagration so you must always be on your guard to prevent a minor incident becoming a major inferno.”(more…)