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The first half is a non-stop deluge of gags and entertaining minigames, but it can't keep up that pace.

YouTube user CodeCrafted recreates the free-to-play hit in popular block-building game, complete with difficulty settings.

For millennia goats have been known as the most demonic of livestock, and as this footage from Goat Simulator demonstrates, were they not kept in pens, goats would run amok, headbutting buckets into space, climbing ladders and sprinting headlong into moving cars.

Created by Swedish developer Coffee Stain Studios for Global Game Jam 2014, Goat Simulator awards players points for their antisocial barnyard behavior. While never intended for retail release, the internet has unsurprisingly fallen for this combination of fuzzy beasts and wanton destruction. "When I woke up today my video with the damn goat had 100,000 views, which is like more than all our other real game trailers the last year combined," Coffee Stain PR manager Armin Ibrisagic told Vice.

Following this unexpected outpouring of support, Coffee Stain is now pondering the future of Goat Simulator. "We are discussing what more we can do with Goat Simulator now that people have shown such an interest in it, but we don't want to promise anything," Ibrisagic said, adding, "We're going to listen to people's opinions in the coming couple of days and see how it goats." [Image: Coffee Stain Studios]

For a dying platform, the technical innovations for the PC aren’t half coming thick and fast. For starters, Alec and Graham have been dabbling with Steam’s new streaming capability. It all looks bloody clever to me and has the knock on effect of rebooting interest in some previously pretty pedestrian kit. £40 mini-ITX board with embedded Atom chip as basis for client streaming box (based on a free OS)? As if that wasn’t enough, AMD’s Mantle API has gone live with beta driver support, promising a brave new age of high performance gaming for all. Well, kinda. … [visit site to read more]

Take a closer look at the differences between the original and HD texture packs.

It’s time for our annual visit to the land of Telepath Tactics. No doubt we’ll be dropping in on a more regular basis now that the tactical RPG is nearing completion. Kickstarter funds have kept development on an even keel and while they’re running low, “they’ll be sufficient to [reach] the end of development”. Jolly good news. Developer and good egg Craig Stern has been honing his development and design skills for years now, and TT could be the culmination of his impressive work. The game isn’t due until (approximately) Autumn but recent developer updates show plenty of progress and we’re hoping to go hands-on with an early build in a couple of months. Videos below.

… [visit site to read more]

The tiny space station sim gets a dose of content from the Emperor himself.

Decorate your weapons with style.

Go horseback riding in Kingdom Come: Deliverance's latest update.

In horror-adventure game Nevermind, your performance is influenced by your emotional state.

Nevermind is built on biofeedback technology: You hook up a heart-rate monitor and play, becoming more unhinged by the PC game's subject matter, after which tasks and scenarios immediately ramp up in difficulty. Like other first-person adventure games in the vein of Myst, you must navigate strange environments in Nevermind and solve the puzzles within before you can progress.

In one scenario, a kitchen is filling up with milk and you're in danger of drowning unless you figure out how to stop the flood. The faster your actual heart rate, the faster the room fills with delicious-yet-deadly Vitamin D. Calm yourself and the tide will slow, giving you more time to figure out how to proceed.

You explore the subconscious mind of severe trauma patients in Flying Mollusk's Nevermind, so naturally the subject matter will be a bit grim. Creator Erin Reynolds, a former Zynga full-timer who ditched the day job in late September to dedicate herself entirely to this, is not only trying to create a horror game that excels in its own right, but wants to provide players with an experience that instills real-life skills for dealing with stressful situations.

An RTS? Relaxing? Next you’ll be telling me to try wrong-way driving to chill out, or read comments on one of John’s editorials to soothe away my troubles. Real-time strategy games are about getting the blood up, grinding your molars into paste, sleeplessly twitching with a frenzied need to conquer, existing in a hyper-alert borderland between focus and fury. RTSes. Are. Not. For. Relaxation.

Rymdkapsel is relaxing. Until it isn’t, anyway. Then it really isn’t. … [visit site to read more]

Join your friends and make some new enemies in Deep Silver's 'ZOMBA'.

SNOW is currently in Steam Early Access, which means it’s unfinished but you can buy it and start playing right now. Let’s therefore put the buyer’s advice up top: you should not do that. While some games in Early Access are already robust, content-rich, and ready to offer dozens of hours of enjoyment, SNOW is not there yet. After an hour, you’ll have seen all there is to see.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t tremendous potential in the idea: an open-world ski and snowboarding game, in which you can speed from one slope to another contiguously, or shoot off the track and and go exploring. There’s little hints here of what the game might become, and for that hour you might spend with it, you’d likely have fun. … [visit site to read more]

Two years on from its tumultuous release, Diablo 3 is a very different beast. Blizzard's divisive dungeon crawler has been patched, rebalanced, and brought to consoles in the intervening months. Soon it will even be stripped of the auction houses that many thought distracted from the game's primary charms of loot hunting and clicking on stuff. Now that it's leaner and meaner, Diablo 3 is shorn and ready for Reaper of Souls, its first major expansion.

Joystiq's own Xav de Matos is willing to brave the depths of hell to bring you a stream of the Reaper beta. Anthony John Agnello will be hanging out in the chat feeding your questions to Xav as he clicks on monsters then clicks on the piles of goodies they drop. It's all going down on the Joystiq Twitch channel at 4p.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 6. Come on down and hang with us.

Transformers Universe has been reimagined, and we've got the first trailer exclusively right here.

Growing up in Scotland in the early ’90s, people would talk about Space Pirates and Zombies all the time. Which is weird, when you consider that it’s a space exploration game combining combat with a progression curve that was only released in 2012.

Oh well. Now kids can continue to talk about the series for the foreseeable future, as there’s Space Pirates and Zombies 2 has been announced. It has proper 3D now, and there’s an announcement trailer below.

… [visit site to read more]

‘Hands-On’ or ‘Hands-In’? Loading Human combines the power of the Oculus Rift and the Razer Hydra to create a virtual reality experience, in which the player’s head and arms are tracked onto a first-person avatar. The game itself has a great deal in common with Gone Home, and point and click adventures, telling a story of memory, love and loss. Everything is tied to the control system though and as I stood in the middle of an office, as confused and vulnerable as a contestant on Knightmare, I was forced to admit that I am very bad at following instructions. And at standing still. I’ve never been quite so excited and exhausted by a single hour with a game.

… [visit site to read more]

FRACT has been in development awhile. We’ve been writing about it since early 2011, and are excited to finally get our hands on the “musical exploration game”. Developers Phosfiend Systems have got in touch to let us know that finally, finally, it’s, er, months away. But months, not years! They are coming in to land. And to mark this occasion, they’ve released a new trailer, apparently narrated by Agent Coulson.

… [visit site to read more]

The absolute best thing about the completely bonkers Sinister PC game controller’s Kickstarter is they appear to have made a mock-up out of papier mache and Lego. I’m not sure I can cope with anything so adorable. The hand-painted buttons! This mad Transformer-looking device frankly scares me – it looks like it will ker-char-ker-cher its way around my hand, until I’ve got A ROBOT HAND, and then it will go around doing robot hand crimes and I’ll get the blame. However, this feature isn’t mentioned anywhere in the pitch video, which is below.

… [visit site to read more]

It still seems a little bit impossible that there’s a new Elite game actually happening. I keep expecting to hear that it was all a big hoax, and was just Braben holding a torch behind a black sheet with lots of little holes cut in it. I also remain resolutely disappointed that apparently Elite: Dangerous won’t be under 32kb. I thought technology was supposed to get better? Anyhow, my brain aside, the alpha for the game has now entered phase 2.0, allowing backers access to multiplayer.

… [visit site to read more]

As someone who suffers from anxiety disorder, the idea of a horror game designed to get more challenging the more scared you get, “honing your ability to manage anxiety”, sounds like the last thing I’d ever want to play. Which makes my desire to play it a little confusing. Nevermind, a game title that will only further my habit of accidentally writing those two words as one, is Kickstartering itself for the not inconsiderable sum of $250,000, to develop a “biofeedback horror adventure”. Cripes.

… [visit site to read more]

Dubbed the "Mixer Bundle," Indie Royale's latest collection features a wildly disparate selection of games united only by their sizable discounts.

Included in the Bundle are Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, Alien Spidy, Miner Wars 2081, Dollar Dash, The Journey Down: Chapter 1, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, Foreign Legion: Multi Massacre, Final Slam 2 and Party of Sin. Additionally, the Bundle stretches the modern definition of "indie" a bit to include both Duke Nukem and its sequel, Duke Nukem 2, games developed and published by Apogee Software at a time when developers releasing games independently was still the industry standard.

As with all Indie Royale bundles, the price you pay for these games hinges on the average amount paid by other customers. As of now, all of this can be yours for as little as $4.78. If you decide to pay more for the Bundle, know that any purchases above $7 will be rewarded with a copy of Darkman007's "Chiptunes - 2014" album in either .mp3 or .flac format. [Image: 3D Realms]

Linden Lab announced Ebbe Altberg as its new CEO today. He joins the company following former CEO Rod Humble's departure late last week. Altberg was previously COO of professional networking company BranchOut and SVP of Media Products for Yahoo.

Linden Lab is best known for developing Second Life, a Sims-like online virtual world for PC, Mac and Linux that first launched in June 2003. It also acquired the indie-focused game distribution platform Desura in July 2013. [Image: Linden Lab]

Disney Interactive sees a 38% increase in revenue.

It's still unknown who tried to abandon Ubisoft's trademark for the upcoming open-world game.

You might remember that I recently encountered a peculiar situation while chatting with CCP about virtual reality magic face-space portal EVE Valkyrie. Namely, the developer refused to confirm that the seeming PC shoe-in would even launch on PC at all, or even Oculus Rift for that matter. Madness, right? I’m leaning toward “yes,” given that CCP and Oculus are now walking down the aisle, eyes locked in the beautiful, undiluted sort of love that can only blossom from a co-publishing deal. You can be rest easy, ladies and gentlemen. Valkyrie is safe. It’s not dodging PC in favor of, um… what were its other options again?

… [visit site to read more]

Doom founder left "when it became clear that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id software."

Help DICE collect 10 million dog tags in exchange for a Gold Battlepack.

Four maps, an Extinction mode episodic mission, and a new weapon--plus you can don the mask of Michael Myers.

Chris Roberts' new space simulator continues to attract new backers.