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Eschalon isn’t a Spiderweb series of traditional RPGs, with an isometric viewpoint, turn-based combat and free-stylin’ character customisation. If you were to watch a video you might think that was the case but Eschalon is actually a series of traditional RPGs from Basilisk Games. It features an isometric viewpoint, turn-based combat and free-stylin’ character customisation. The third and final entry has been a long time coming, and now that it’s upon us, I’m forced to consider replaying the previous games so that I can play the trilogy back-to-back. They are quite long though and my time is short. I’d strongly recommend the games to anyone hankering for slow-paced pen and paper style roleplaying, and you don’t have to start from the beginning – there are recaps for latecomers. The trilogy is available at a discount until February 28th though. Just sayin’. Also, demos.

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Can Age of Wonders get back to its "fantasy Civilization" niche? Our hands-on investigates.

Rock Band and Dance Central developer Harmonix is going full Chris Gaines with free-to-play, first-person shooter Chroma. The multiplayer class-based arena gunner for PC has that Harmonix music twist with bullets on a beat and finding the flow in the music activating jump pads for easier arena traversal. The game is being developed in partnership with Hidden Path Entertainment (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Defense Grid: The Awakening).

Chroma's closed alpha will begin this month and sign-ups are available now at PlayChroma.com. The game will continue its development on Valve's Steam Early Access through the year and is expected to be in a publicly playable state sometime this fall.

We recently had the chance to try out the alpha and the game is still finding its voice, with Harmonix representatives acknowledging this is the earliest the studio has ever shown a game. If you sign up for the alpha, you are signing up for a game very much in development where feedback will matter. The good news is that if you decide to participate, you're getting involved in one of the more interesting concepts we've seen for a shooter. Players who can find the rhythm to rampage will have a distinct advantage in this game. [Image: Harmonix]

Chroma is equal parts rhythm game and first-person shooter. It’s weird in the best way.

Procedurally-generated PC and PS4 horror game Daylight will see the light of day in April according to Jared Gerritzen, studio director at developer Zombie Studios. Gerritzen revealed the release window during a preview with IGN, which also showed off some of the Unreal Engine 4-powered gameplay. Witches, glowsticks, an abandoned hospital ... either the main character is one unlucky person or this is the worst rave ever. [Image: Zombie Studios]

To certain audiences, La-Mulana is the Japanese indie platformer that crossed Indiana Jones with Metroid. To me, and I suspect a lot of other people, it’s one of the games most responsible for inspiring Spelunky. That puts it in Wasteland territory, in my head; it inspired a thing I love, and so a lot of that love transfers.

La-Mulana 2 was announced in September, popped up on Kickstarter last month, and has just hit its target … [visit site to read more]

I’ve just had a quick shuffle through the RPS lunar archives, where old posts are stored in a air-conditioned crater, and I can’t find a single mention of Grasshopper’s Killer Is Dead. Does this mean we didn’t know that it was coming out on PC until this very moment? It certainly seems that way. From Killer 7 director Suda 51, it’s an action game about a man with a cybernetic arm that can transform into a gun or drill. Like Suda’s previous, Lollipop Chainsaw, it channels an idea of grindhouse trashiness in a way that is easily mistaken for ironic appreciation. I think Suda 51 just loves swords, cybernetics, gore, wrestling, melodrama and sneaky peeks of ladies’ underwear. This is a game in which you must carefully apply male gaze to unlock new weapons. Videos below.

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Suda 51's Killer is Dead is still alive, after Deep Silver Europe announced last year's stylistic slice-and-dicer is coming to PC in May. The new Nightmare Edition arrives as both a physical and downloadable port, and features a new difficulty mode of the same name. The Nightmare mode only allows kills via three attacks - Adrenaline Burst, Dodge Burst, and headshots - and prohibits the use of the Final Judgment finisher. The Nightmare Edition also includes the Smooth Operator DLC pack, and a Theater mode to revisit cut scenes in.

Deep Silver Europe's announcement notes a US price of $20, so even though there's no official confirmation yet, it seems the PC port will hit stores statestide. The European pricepoints are £20/20 euros, and the release date for the region is May 9. [Image: Deep Silver]

Like any half-decent adventuring archaeologist, La-Mulana 2 left it to the last minute to whip past its $200,000 Kickstarter goal. That means Nigoro's platforming sequel, starring new protagonist Lumisa Kosugi, is definitely coming to PC. Although it may take its time to get there, with its estimated delivery listed on Kickstarter as "December 2015."

With five days on the funding clock, Nigoro and publishing partner Playism will now look towards stretch goals. Even though Mac & Linux ports are down from $500,000 to $400,000, they and console ports further up the list look unrealistic. Instead, a retrospective Father's Diary mode at $230,000, and a monster guide at $260,000 are much more attainable. [Image: Playism]

It was just a couple of weeks ago that we wrote about StarCrawlers, a first-person dungeon crawler set onboard derelict spaceships. Now the Legend of Grimrock-style game is up on Kickstarter and almost halfway towards its $65,000 goal. It has endless, procedurally generated levels, and enemy scuttlebots who talk in emoticons. Climb aboard to watch the pitch video below. … [visit site to read more]

As the world’s pre-eminent tables-in-games journalist, Tabletop Simulator pleases me. It’s a game of games, full of things like chess, backgammon, and a deck of cards. The neat twist is that it places these classic games in a physics sandbox, so you can pluck up the pieces and place them calmly and gently on the board, or you can be a little bit more creative and use the physics to whack them away and hope that your multiplayer friends don’t get in a huff. And if they do, well Tabletop Simulator also enables you to create your own board games to share, so Chess Royale 3000 could be a totally legitimate thing … [visit site to read more]

BeamNG.drive reads like someone is attempting to talk after a visit to the dentist, though I’ve no idea what they’d be saying or what the context would be. “Brian, Drive!”, maybe? Now that Brian has the wheel, I can pay more attention to what BeamNG.drive actually is: a game about the joy of realistically crumpling cars. It’s been out for a while, though it still remains an alpha with some big plans rather than a fully-formed game. I think the devs need to sell more to realise that dream, so they’re taking to Greenlight in the hopes of grabbing that Steam bump. Trailer is below. … [visit site to read more]

“While we don’t have dragons, we have chickens,” has just become my favourite developer quote of all time. For a brief moment I was imagining a world-dominating chicken that people would live in terror of. The giant beak, the angry peck, the awkward, flappy attempt at flight… terrifying. But context is important, and in this case that quote is about Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a game that doesn’t have dragons because it wants to be a reasonably realistic portrayal of medieval life. That means it doesn’t have giant chooks, either. The chicken example is just a way of introducing the game’s AI, which promises to have day and night cycles for the animals as well as the humans. Why not join Felix Baumgartner below the cut to find out more? … [visit site to read more]

Access via Origin en route to all who registered for the beta prior to 4pm PST, February 15.

How the home of the world's greatest racing drivers is also home to one of 2014's best-looking racers.

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is going to happen. Whether you've finished the tale's first portion or not, the point-and-click adventure will continue in the beginning of 2015 on PC, Mac and Linux. However, KING Art Games has launched a Kickstarter for fans interested in making the project a bigger, more expansive venture than it already is, and this campaign has surpassed its first two funding goals.

At the time of this writing, the $108,011 that KING Art has gathered will allow the studio to implement projection-mapping in Unwritten Tales 2. The Kickstarter page explains that the result will be better-looking environments and dynamic camera movements, neither of which will crank up the system requirements. Side quests will also be added, rewarding players that take on optional puzzles with equippable garments. KING Art will also produce "Kickstarter-Edition" copies of Unwritten Tales 2, which will come with an artbook, soundtrack and plushies or sock puppets.

With 34 days to go, KING Art is still aiming for additional funding tiers, with extra animations, facial expressions and an orchestra-recorded soundtrack included in the $235,000 Director's Cut goal. If you need more of an incentive beyond extra game features, pledging $25 or more will reward you with a chapter-by-chapter Steam Early Access release of Unwritten Tales 2 in the fall of 2014. [Image: KING Art Games]

"Ancient Shadows," the last chapter in the first season of horror point-and-clicker The Last Door, is now available to play in your browser on PC, Mac and Linux. This installment follows Jeremiah Devitt to Pevensey county in East Sussex, on a trip to find the answers to questions raised in previous chapters. If you've yet to even start The Last Door however, that's alright - the first three chapters are available to play for free online, provided you live in one of the approved countries.

If you're ready for "Ancient Shadows" right this moment, pledging a minimum of €1 (about $1.37) will unlock the chapter. Contributing above the average donation, which is €3.57 at the time of this writing, will also get you a copy of the The Last Door's soundtrack, composed by Carlos Viola.

The press release notes that The Last Door's second season will premiere in the summer of 2014, with a funding campaign to cover The Game Kitchen's development costs kicking off sometime before that. [Image: The Game Kitchen]

How good are your skills? eSports league Gftinity is giving away up to $25000 and is looking for newcomers.

A new NBA Jam may not be in the cards, but that's okay; a different kind of jam is here. A Space Jam. NBA 2K series modder MGX has released a set of files that transform NBA 2K14 into an adaptation of the 1996 classic film, with the Looney Tunes and Michael Jordan on one side and the Monstars on the other.

Transforming a 2D anthropomorphic animal or space monster into a 3D model is no easy feat. Combine this with the fact that the 3D model versions of the Looney Tunes crew are basically human bodies with animal heads attached and you have a recipe for some serious nightmare fuel uh ... '90s nostalgia.

If you want to get in on this mod or others, check out MGX's Facebook page. Now's your chance. Do your dance. At the Space Jam. [Image: 2K Sports/MGX]

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Melancutey point n’ click adventure. Obsidian glitch museum. Flappybalt.

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A quick public service announcement for those of our readers who have a Kickstarter account. If you’re a registered user of the crowdfunding site, an email should have arrived informing of a hack that occurred on Wednesday night. Just in case that information is nestling in a spam folder or a seldom-studied account, I thought it best to share the details that I received late last night. As far as hacks go it doesn’t sound like a particularly bad one, with no credit card information accessed, but Kickstarter are still recommending that users change their passwords.

To change your password, log in to your account at Kickstarter.com and look for the banner at the top of the page to create a new, secure password. We recommend you do the same on other sites where you use this password.

More below.

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A speedy change of password is advised.

The gates have opened to all on Xbox One.

#Dungeon is an upcoming roguelike with a unique twist: rather than procedurally generating its own content, the game is tied to the @HashtagDungeon Twitter account, which tweets out the code that becomes a level. Players can also get in on the creative process by tweeting with the right syntax and including the #HashtagDungeon uh ... hashtag. It's a hashtag of a hashtag's hashtag! Hashtag-ception! BWAHHH.

Developer Kieran Hicks told Pocket Gamer that the game will also feature other social tie-ins, like being able to leave messages for other players to see. Do you want to be honest and helpful or a trolling griefer? Either way will work. There will also be a more standard level editor, as well as a leaderboard for players to rank each other's created levels.

#Dungeon isn't quite ready to go exploring the labyrinth of Twitter just yet, but is expected this summer. [Image: Kieran Hicks/Sean Oxspring]

Proving the old adage that "violence always solves everything," - or something like that - Facepunch Studios has implemented a new anti-cheating system, dubbed "CheatPunch," in their first-person survival game Rust. During its initial run over last weekend, a total of 4,621 people were banned. Facepunch, CheatPunch ... is there any problem that can't be solved by punching?

Developer Garry Newman noted on the game's site that he expects cheats will be found that can circumvent the anti-cheating measure, but players should nonetheless be wary: "If you get kicked from the official servers with the message that you've been banned then you have been caught," Newman wrote. "You're a naughty boy. You know what you have done. You won't get unbanned. We know it was your 9 year old cousin. We know your computer got hijacked. We know that the CIA is getting you banned from all your games on Steam so you will join them in the hunt for aliens."

As a famous dynamic duo would say: POW! [Image: Facepunch Studios]

We've always wanted to play Skyrim with friends. But Elder Scrolls Online may have other ideas...

How did you spend your Valentine’s Day, Bargain Bucket-eers? I spent mine nose-deep in Bravely Default. Also, today’s Bargain Bucket plushie is courtesy of Rachel and Sophie, who are nine and four respectively. Its name is Emma. Now, go. Perish from cute that is the idea that a pair of kids submitted a photo via proxy. Those who survive should then grab some hot cocoa, hunker down, and mill through today’s collection of underpriced goodness.

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Stealthy indie platformer Rain World concluded its Kickstarter campaign yesterday with $63,255 in funding. Developers Joar Jakobsson and James Primate earned enough from the campaign to add Linux to the game's list of platforms, which also spans PC and Mac. Though it didn't go into specifics on its Kickstarter page, the development duo noted that it hopes to bring the game to consoles as well.

The game place players in control of a white slugcat in a retro-looking industrial complex, leaping through areas to search for food and avoid predatory creatures. A recent trailer for the alpha-version of the game also shows off the slugcat's little pups, which players will need to guard from the hostile world. Rain World arrived on Kickstarter just one month ago and has since been greenlit for distribution on Steam. Rain World is expected to launch this December. [Image: Joar Jakobsson]

The Lord of the Rings Online studio has taken job cuts as part of a 'normal business process.'