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American McGee's Spicy Horse has downsized its Shanghai studio and is focusing its remaining staff on The Gate, a card-collecting, real-time strategy game - in the meantime, the team developing Akaneiro: Demon Hunters has been reduced from 15 people to two. Akaneiro raised $204,680 on Kickstarter in February 2013 and it's out as an Early Access game on Steam.

"In total, around 360 man-months have gone towards development, bringing our investment in dollars to nearly $2 million USD," McGee writes in a Kickstarter update. "In that same period, we've generated roughly $300,000 USD in revenue - this includes funds collected via the Kickstarter campaign, F2P purchases in-game, and one-time purchases via Steam. In simple math: We've spent $2 million, we've made $300,000, we're 'in the hole' $1.7 million."

McGee says the two people assigned to Akaneiro will continue addressing bugs and working toward multiplayer and tablet support, but development will be slower. If The Gate provides the cash flow Spicy Horse needs, it will return attention to Akaneiro, he says:

"Life as an independent developer is filled with the constant threat of failure. This isn't the first time in our eight-year history we've faced this sort of challenge. It's not the first time we've had to reduce staff on one of our games. It is different because of the demand for transparency that comes with being a part of Kickstarter. In providing transparency like this, I am asking for your understanding and I am hoping for your support."

In 2013, Spicy Horse canceled its attempt to Kickstart OZombie, a twisted take on The Wizard of Oz universe, but it successfully Kickstarted Alice: Otherlands, a project that aims to make animated films of the Alice games, to the tune of $222,377.

This weekend over 10,000 developers created more than 4,000 video games in one weekend. Take a closer look at the Global Game Jam.

I am trapped in a hotel room in San Diego, waiting for one of them ding dang dern vidya game events to start. This would be probably the darkest moment ever faced by any member of the human race if not for the fact that Global Game Jam happened this weekend, giving me thousands – yes, thousands – of crazy unique (or just plain crazy) indie game experiments to try out. The theme for this bout of technomagical mad science? “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Developers were free to interpret that quote as they saw fit, which resulted in everything from surprisingly poignant duck sims to Godzilla QWOP to arsonic fever dreams of SETTING EVERYTHING ON FIRE. I plan on playing until I run out of games or get bored or something.

I’ll kick off at 3:00 PM PT/11:00 PM GMT. Also, please excuse the likely bouts of lag and other such unpleasantry. I’m playing on a fairly abysmal Internet connection, so it’ll probably be a bit inconsistent. Oh, and occasional game switches might take the stream offline for a moment or two, so be aware of that as well. Watch below.

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DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though 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 parts one, two, three.

On the way back to Elektro we meet two New Spawns on the road. They’re totally bear, in nothing but t-shirts and jeans. They seem to be having a little trouble with a fence, so we puff out our charitable chests and take our opportunity.

“Hi there!” one of us announces. The pair turn to look at us.

“Are you guys thirsty? Hungry?” we ask. They say nothing, merely looking at us, a group of about four. We start dropping food and water on the floor for them and I try force feeding one some water from my canteen, but he shuffles awkwardly away to break the animation.(more…)

SNK's run-and-gun action game Metal Slug 3 will launch on Steam in February. The arcade game first arrived in 2000, later leaping to multiple platforms like XBLA in early 2008, the Wii Virtual Console in May 2012 as well as iOS and Android in 2012. The Steam version will feature online cooperative multiplayer, leaderboards and cloud save support.

In addition to the mobile ports, the Steam version was handled by DotEmu, a specialist in retro game adaptations. The developer previously brought the Double Dragon Trilogy to mobile and also took Another World to Mac, iOS and Android. DotEmu is currently hosting a closed beta for Metal Slug 3 on Steam.

I’m so thrilled that explorey games are becoming a bigger thing of late. Low pressure, relaxing games about discovering, as a calming interlude between the DEFEATING. Yes, I’m an old, old man. Apsis looks like it could be a lovely entry into that field – a game about guiding a flock of birds across a landscape, flowing through airstreams, and having a generally floaty flying time.

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Respawn's statement that the Xbox One controller is supported on PC was a mistake.

When I first learned of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number’s existence, it was set to storm into our lives armed with nothing but a pool cue and the steely resolve of someone who’s died in the same room, like, 58 times in a row at the tail end of 2013. It is now the tail beginning of 2014, but still the storied hotline goes straight to the answering machine. So then, when will we finally get to feel deeply uncomfortable about gruesomely killing a whole mess of people again? Try mid-to-late 2014.

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The Lunar Revel event runs from now until February 11.

DuckTales Remastered and Double Dragon: Neon developer WayForward revealed that it is working on a follow-up to Namco's 1987 arcade game Wonder Momo, due for release in the first quarter of this year for Windows, Mac, and Android devices.

The original Wonder Momo was a side-scrolling arcade beat-'em-up that cast players in a superheroic role during a series of live stage shows. As the young protagonist Momo, players battle waves of minor enemies in each level before dramatically transforming into Momo's alter-ego Wonder Momo, who wields a powerful energy hoop for the remainder of the stage. Though the game saw a home port to the PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) console, no version of Wonder Momo was ever released stateside.

WayForward's reboot of the series follows a storyline introduced in Shiftylook's Wonder Momo webcomic, which premiered in 2012 alongside other commissioned comic strips based on classic Namco franchises. A Wonder Momo anime series is also set to premiere this year.

Much as I thought last year’s opening salvo pulled a few too many punches and didn’t offer anything like enough freedom of choice/movement, I could really go for some Shadowrun about now. Offbeat world, reasonably strategic battles, option to be a bit of dick to everyone… Take me, cyberpunk/fantasy roleplaying mashup, I’m yours. Sadly plans for first official expansion Dragonfall to launch this month have been nixed, though a more concrete release date of February 27th has been pinned to it. I’ll probably have changed my mind about wanting to play it by then. I’ll probably want to play something with horses or chefs or chefs on horses in instead.

Anyway: trailer, features, exaggerated descriptions below.(more…)

Concurrent players are up more than 50 percent from where they were a year ago.

I was going to poke fun at the name Strike Vector to take some pressure off the colossal responsibility that is introducing a videogame news post, but then I decided to make sure I knew all meanings of the word “vector” and nope, I absolutely do not. A strike vector might be an actual thing, as my education in the field of vectorology is woefully lacking. I do, however, know one thing for sure: Strike Vector The Videogame is unarguably stunning, especially given that it’s a relatively small indie effort. Also, its unique brand of transforming, sky-city-deforming shootyblams is now on Steam. Hurrah!

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Serena is perhaps the most peculiar tribute anyone could pay to a person. A dark, gruesome adventure game, portraying loss and misery, named for someone who went through tough times at the hands of a prize jerk. I mean, flowers work too.

It’s also free, designed to show off Senscape’s Dagon engine built for their Kickstarter success, Asylum. Senscape being the new company headed by Agustin Cordes, he of notorious horror adventure, Scratches. And Serena being a game made by him, with contributions from a whole bunch of other indie adventure developers, including Space Quest’s Scott Murphy and John Mandel.

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CD Projekt Red has released a trio of gorgeous new screenshots for The Witcher 3, showing off a city, a battleground and a swamp.

As someone who firmly believes in the public domain, and finds it instantly aggravating that games over 20 years old cost anything, GOG’s current Time Machine Sale pulls me in two directions. They’re going back 30 years to highlight 30 games, knocking off substantial sums from each in turn. 1995′s Crusader: No Remorse just had a turn at 75% off. Now it’s Tomb Raiders 1, 2 and 3. (Of which the first came out in 1996.)

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Blackguards is a recently released strategy roleplaying game from Daedalic Entertainment that features an obscene level of character detail, as evidenced by this look at the game's skill trees.

Functionally, assigning skills in Blackguards is pretty simple. You earn experience which gives you points that can then be assigned to various categories including weapon talents, magical aptitudes or miscellaneous abilities. That's all typical of the genre, but where Blackguards differentiates itself is in its breadth of available skills. As you can see in the above footage, the skills menu found in Blackguards is simply massive.

What's more, the game doesn't confine players to pre-determined upgrade paths. Each character is able to learn any skill, so if you'd prefer your burly warrior to toss fireballs instead of swinging an axe that's entirely up to you and your available pool of Adventure Points.

For more information on Blackguards, pay a visit to either Steam or the game's official website. If you like what you see, know that both the standard and deluxe editions of Blackguards are currently available from Steam at a ten percent discount.

Yes, Audiosurf. But Hexcells creator Matthew Brown Games says his next game approaches a similar idea in a different way. Where Audiosurf was about the music, Brown intends Sound Shift to be about the racing. That your tracks come from the music you’re playing is a bonus.

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The Steam version of 3D Realms' classic first-person shooter Duke Nukem 3D has been updated with competitive and cooperative multiplayer gameplay modes, letting up to eight players kick ass and/or chew bubblegum in online Dukematch battles.

The new multiplayer mode supports cross-platform play across Windows, Mac, and Linux, and offers over 200 user-created maps via Steam Workshop. Duke Nukem 3D is also on sale as part of Steam's Midweek Madness promotion, and is currently available for $3.99.

EA executives have weighed in on the company's ongoing Battlefield 4 stability issues during a Q&A.

Amazon has apparently spilled the beans on a collector's edition of Bethesda's upcoming MMO.

A new battle is raging in EVE Online, and damages are rising.

Varia Games is paying homage to the 2D glory days with its new project.

Three developers at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada recently offered a novel multiplayer bomb-diffusing game for this past weekend's Global Game Jam. Dubbed Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, the game has one Oculus Rift-wearing, Razer Hydra-holding player lifting and examining a ticking time bomb while at least one other player holds the manual with instructions to disarm the virtual destructive device. The accompanying video for the game shows three fellows hovering over a spread of papers, shouting instructions (and not always the correct ones) at the bomb's diffuser with choice quotes like "Oh *crag*," and "How much time is on the bomb, Owen?"
Developed by the team of Allen Pestaluky, Ben Kane and Brian Fetter with dramatic music by Liam Sauve, the Windows-only game is freely available for players to check out on the Global Game Jam website. Kane works with Going Loud Studios, developers of the satirical platformer DLC Quest. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes requires the Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra devices, so the rest of us will have no choice but to pray others will snip the correct wires.

Any websites claiming to offer you a slot in the upcoming beta may be a scam.

Three developers at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada recently offered a novel multiplayer bomb-diffusing game for this past weekend's Global Game Jam. Dubbed Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, the game has one Oculus Rift-wearing, Razer Hydra-holding player lifting and examining a ticking time bomb while at least one other player holds the manual with instructions to disarm the virtual destructive device. The accompanying video for the game shows three fellows hovering over a spread of papers, shouting instructions (and not always the correct ones) at the bomb's diffuser with choice quotes like "Oh *crag*," and "How much time is on the bomb, Owen?"
Developed by the team of Allen Pestaluky, Ben Kane and Brian Fetter with dramatic music by Liam Sauve, the Windows-only game is freely available for players to check out on the Global Game Jam website. Kane works with Going Loud Studios, developers of the satirical platformer DLC Quest. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes requires the Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra devices, so the rest of us will have no choice but to pray others will snip the correct wires.

My Game of the Year? No. No. Next week. No, I am NOT just trying to annoy you all at this point. No. Honestly. But yeah, next week. Next week. *Wink*

This week… a new version of an old FAMILY game. Yeah, we’re moving away from the hardcore hobby stuff this week to try out something that is designed for normal, functioning members of society. Read on.(more…)

The stats go deep in Blizzard's latest infographic.

Might and Magic X: Legacy marks a welcome break from the contemporary focus on story-driven RPGs by delivering gridded turn-based combat that largely works.

Though the Oculus Rift won’t be able to let you live in a virtual world, it will have a game you can play about being a man reliving his life in a virtual world. That’s Loading Human’s concept: you are an obscure novelist dying of Alzheimer’s disease. You’ve been placed in a virtual world to essentially reboot yourself. The Rift will stick you in his memories, and the game will enable you to interact with the world, using external controllers to move your hands.(more…)