PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

NASA is kind of known for having a clean and orderly workplace - so when the recently-released teaser trailers for Quadrant by HKFiftyOne Games shows light fixtures swinging from the ceiling, overturned desks and blood stains smeared across the floor, we suspect something might be amiss.

Quadrant is an indie horror game that places players in a 1979 NASA facility on lockdown after a mission to the moon brings something decidedly unfriendly back. It seems the events that transpire in the game happen following a fictional post-Apollo 17 trip, judging by a note on the game's website. It reads in part, "After a four year marathon of six manned missions, here we are again, seven years later. And for what? But they must have known something we didn't, if only they would have known how to contain it when it arrived back home."

HKFiftyOne Games seem to be big fans of horror - their previous games include Imbalance and Cold Fusion. Quadrant is slated to release for PC and Mac in August this year.

Virtual Boy hellscape. Not all levels have spikes. Godhand.

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Sundays are for spying a glimpse of the finish line and stretching wide in preparation for the final sprint home. Sundays are for this.

• I forgot this one last week: Tom Chatfield on Wired writing about how in videogames, difficulty is the point. “Time is of the essence when it comes to almost every aspect of the field. Even the most difficult works of literature or philosophy tend to take at most tens of hours to read. Yet far simpler games can demand a hundred hours or more of play if they are to be exhaustively explored, while some online games raise the pitch of this expertise to thousands (hello, EVE).”

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Cloud Imperium Games have run a thorough pre-flight check and flipped the switch on Star Citizen's clan system, referred to as Organizations. Eager citizens can now register or join an Organization, but you only get to align yourself with one for now, so choose wisely.

Organizations will get their own URL and customizable websites (think of it like Facebook for space flight aficionados) where users can interact with one another and ... well ... organize themselves. The launch of Organizations also brings with it a new Live Chat system, which allows users to separate themselves into their own rooms, so that the rest of the universe doesn't have to know what you and your crew are up to.

Organizations are pretty basic right now, but Cloud Imperium Games notes on the announcement page that they have "extensive long-range plans" to improve the experience over time. "Our goal with the Organization system, like the Hangar and Dogfighting modules, is to allow the Star Citizen community to get a foot in the door and start experiencing (and expanding) the Star Citizen 'verse as soon as possible," the post states. "Remember: organizations isn't just about letting you group together with friends and gamers, it's about backers beginning to shape Star Citizen's lore!"

Vehicles, camping, hunting, base building and an improved stamina system are in the works for Bohemia Interactive's survival game, DayZ. Creator Dean Hall recently took to Reddit for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, where he revealed the upcoming additions to the game.

The new features are expected to be available in-game sometime within the next six months. "Vehicles will be done based on the architecture we are doing for items/weapons now (i.e. attachments)," Hall wrote. "So it's in progress really. We are replacing the physics system for items (throwing, etc...) and this new middleware will be used for vehicles also."

For those less inclined to murder their fellow humans, Hall also teased more PvE content such as hunting, camping, and base-building. Bases, Hall noted, will take longer to achieve. Barricades are expected to be the first step toward their eventual full implementation.

Hall wrote on Twitter that there will be "experimental" patches for the game regularly, and that updates will be moved to stable status once per month.

“Golly jee,” I said to myself when I first came across Captain Astronaut’s Last Hurrah, “those sure are some pretty video picture portraits graph-o-grams. I sure would like to–” AND STOP. Did I then say, a) “point-and-click adventure through it,” b) “do some rad kickflips over its majestic creatures,” or c) “play a StarCraft-inspired RTS on top of it with… is that jelly? I can’t tell if… what?” Well, I said b), but the reality of the game is c). The mixture is a bit strange, but it’s certainly novel and perhaps promising?

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As an adventure game rife with pop cultural spoofs and slapstick comedy, it makes a certain kind of sense that the latest Jazzpunk trailer would be an extended riff on the 1995 Keanu Reeves "classic" Johnny Mnemonic.

In development at Necrophone Games, Jazzpunk is described as "a comedy adventure set in an alternate reality Cold War World, plagued with corporate espionage, CyberCrime, and sentient martinis." Its developers claim that the game is largely based on the spoof comedy films of yesteryear and features open-world exploration. There's no mention of the trailer's ill-fated pocket pigeon, but we're sure that will all be explained when the game makes its February 7 Steam debut.

For more details visit the newly-launched Jazzpunk Steam site. It's worth a look for the "Key Features" list alone.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance didn’t quite win me over during a recent demo, but it certainly got me galloping toward its corner. Evidently, I’m not the only one, given that it’s already made enough money to buy its own kingdom. It’s preposterous with a capital Osterous, and I doubt it’ll be slowing down any time soon. But maybe you’re still on the fence. And that’s fine. I respect your most-annoying-person-in-the-ice-cream-line-like discernment. But I must say, Warhorse sure seems to be on the right track, and its approach to modding is no different.

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I have a confession to make. Last night, I allowed my bibliophilism to run free. Books were purchased. So very many of them. Enough to last the next week, perhaps. (I read frustratingly quickly.) And all it’s because I couldn’t endure being on the Internet this week. I’m just so crushed by this long, legal saga surrounding Candy Crush Saga developers-nee-troglodytes King.  But before I go into my self-imposed exile, have a bunch of interesting games gone cheap. And a Diggle plushie. Because Dungeons of Dredmor is on sale this week and someone asked for one last week.

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UPDATE: Blizzard has confirmed staff changes and departures from its San Francisco office, including David Ting.

The Forest, a first-person horror game compatible with the Oculus Rift, is set in some woods inhabited by cannibals. While we've yet to get our hands on the promised paid alpha, we can at least study up on the terrain right now in these new screens chock full of god beams, fire and hungry freaks.

Consortium is a game of great ideas in search of a story that deserves them

Hoping to make rocket science a bit more palatable to the average person, the developers behind Kerbal Space Program have joined forces with TeacherGaming to launch a modified version of the game called KerbalEdu.

Kerbal Space Program, for those unaware, is a construction game that gives players a wide range of components, then asks them to build and launch a spacecraft. The game's physics are meticulously detailed, making this easier said than done. In the course of designing a functional spaceship, players will repeatedly crash, explode and lose ships in increasingly spectacular fashion, but with each failure they learn a bit more about how to push their rocket into space. This is what KerbalEdu hopes to capitalize on.

"KSP is about making rocket science fun, which is why we didn't need any complex algorithms to realize an educational version is a great extension," said Adrian Goya, co-owner of Kerbal Space Program developer Squad.

The first release of KerbalEdu has yet to appear, but TeacherGaming has revealed plans to alter the game's UI to make data collection more simple and akin to real world scientific methods. Further, the educational developer also plans to build a series of lessons into the game that focus on specific topics. These will be complemented by more traditional educational materials which expand upon the lessons taught by the game.

Educators interested in this modification can follow its progress and receive details on how to employ it in the classroom on the official KerbalEdu website.

Death by zombies, strangers, and starvation is common in the infected, post-Soviet wasteland.

Sony Online Entertainment will shut down Free Realms, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, and Wizardry Online by July.

Blizzard kicks off its series of looks at its MMO's new and improved character models.

Rust's Maurino Berry talks about spying on the people playing his game, and retaliating against the worst of them.

DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though buggy and incomplete, produces anecdotes of drama, desperation and clown mask-wearing weirdos. Emily Richardson has been playing it with a question: can you be a good person in the videogame post-apocalypse? Read part one here.

I’ve started a new life in DayZ and I’m determined that this one isn’t going to kill anyone. I’ve already lost all my friends, but I’ve got a lot of food and water from the town of Polana. It’s time to head back to the coast, meet up with some allies and begin my work as a good Samaritan of Chernarus. (more…)

The developers of this short experience are seeking $15,000 through Kickstarter over the next month.

Something nice for the weekend for you. Ghost Control Inc., a mash-up of X-COM and Ghostbusters that apparently didn’t exist–even though the idea is pretty compelling–has been out for a few weeks. Normally I wouldn’t just post about a wee game being out for a while, but in this case the developers have released a demo, enabling you to play before you pay, hunt before you take a punt, trapping before snapping (open your wallet). Adam liked it.(more…)

Romance in videogames is weird. For one, it’s often handled in ways that range from awkward to downright offensive, and let’s not even start on how deep the uncanny valley suddenly becomes when plasticine mannequin men/women start making goo-goo eyes at each other. But romance, relationships, and sex are fundamental parts of the human experience. They make and break people, peel back layers of personality and reveal us at our most vulnerable. So I’m glad to see that BioWare has no intention of quitting romance, but I sure do wish they did it better.

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Indie developer Stolen Goose has leveled a public complaint against Candy Crush Saga publisher King.com, alleging that the casual games company deliberately cloned its game after a licensing deal fell through.

According to developer Matthew Cox, Stolen Goose pitched its enemy-avoiding game Scamperghost to King in 2009 but later backed out after striking a more lucrative licensing deal with a rival online games portal. King responded by publishing a clone of Scamperghost, doubling down on its similarity to Namco's Pac-Man by giving it the new title Pac-Avoid.

King claimed that it was looking into licensing similar games when the Scamperghost deal fell through, but Stolen Goose alleges that this turn of events was more than coincidence. Speaking with Pac-Avoid's developer, Stolen Goose learned that King ordered another indie studio to specifically clone Scamperghost, citing a nonexistent breach of contract as justification. According to Stolen Goose's report, the developer was additionally requested to finish its clone before Scamperghost could hit the market.

King trademarked the word "candy" this week in a bid to curb mobile clones of its hit Candy Crush Saga, and recently targeted The Banner Saga developer Stoic Studio over its use of the word "saga."

Nathan’s excitement over Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a realistic open-world medieval RPG, has translated to Kickstarter success. The project is now funded, defeating the dragon (£300,000 funding target) with a swinging blow after only three days. With 27 days still remaining, they might be able to buy their own castle.(more…)

Remember when Alienware said you won’t be able to upgrade or customize its Steam Machine just a few days ago? Yeah, well it didn’t really mean that. Not entirely, anyway. Dell’s mighty squad of moon men have explained that you’ll technically be able to worm around in its pristine innards – for instance, by cracking its shell with a large mallet – but don’t expect to have an easy time of it.

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'Adapt,' the second mission in Arma 3's official campaign dubbed 'The East Wind' has arrived. Launching on Tuesday, 'Adapt' puts players in the role of a soldier trapped on the island of Altis following a tumultuous event in the Mediterranean.

"While the first part of the campaign introduced players to Arma 3's basic infantry combat and story, episode two opens up the military sandbox further, challenging players to adopt guerrilla tactics in the face of against a stronger, better-equipped enemy," an announcement on developer Bohemia Interactive's website notes. The mission is available for free to owners of the game, and will be added to the Arma 3 via a Steam update.

Arma 3's first campaign mission - labeled 'Survive' - launched in October. The third and final mission in 'The East Wind' campaign, entitled 'Win,' is expected in March 2014.

Arma 3 is a gorgeous, highly-moddable and unforgiving military shooter for PC. The series helped birth the popular DayZ mod and, perhaps most infamously, raised political tensions in Europe when two of its developers were detained by authorities in Greece on suspicion of espionage.

This story is starting to turn into a saga in its own right. A developer is now alleging that the increasingly infamous Candy Crush Saga-creator King.com copied the design of one of their games. Stolen Goose are the creators of a game called Scamperghost, about avoiding ghosts, collecting coins and using slow-motion to dodge. In a post explaining the situation, they say they were contacted by King.com to license the game, but that they turned down the offer before signing any contracts when a better deal came through. They claim that King.com then copied the game by producing a clone called Pac-Avoid.

As always, it’s not that simple.(more…)

Anything interesting happened in Gameshire during the past seven days? I confess I’ve been so busy lusting after Naval Action, contemplating Combat-Helo’s changing fortunes, and toiling away on 50 Mission Candy Crush (My Operation Little Vittles wargame. Think 50 Mission Crush but with lollipops and gum instead of GP bombs and incendiaries) that I haven’t had time to follow this week’s news. (more…)

Oh jeez. Every single aspect of The Floor Is Jelly looks entirely too adorable. It’s also one of those rare instances where a game’s title describes precisely what it’s about instead of obfuscating everything with words like “Reckoning,” “Ops,” and “Saga Sagaaaaa SAGA neener-neener-neener, King.com.” No matter where you end up – in a forest, underground, rooting through somebody’s kitchen – the floor is made of jelly. You can’t stop bouncing. But then, honestly, why would you ever want to?

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the authentic medieval RPG, has hit its Kickstarter goal within two days of launching its quest for funding.

Paradox Con 2014 is in full-swing, and Adam is in Miami gathering up every piece of information he can while dodging the coked up Justin Biebers that roam the city’s balmy sands. He will have tons of news for you soon, but for now I’ll be your burly, beardy guide into the Norse-mythology-inspired world of Runemaster. It’ll be a turn-based Heroes-of-Might-and-Magic-esque affair with procedurally generated worlds and quests. Why yes, headline, that does sound like “quite a thing.” I’m glad we agree, you charmer, you.

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