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When I was first following along with videogames on the internet, there were these things called .plan files. They were essentially blogs, or Twitter before Twitter, but they were updated by game developers like John Carmack, Cliff Bleszinski, Randy Pitchford and more before everyone grew too busy, too old, or too ensconced in the PR machine to speak so openly and frequently.

They were great, because they were a glimpse both into the development process (“Post Q3A, I plan on doing a research engine that is fully dynamically lit and shadowed instead of using lightmaps,” writes Carmack in one 1999 post, marking the moment he worked out how to make Doom 3), but also into the people making those games (I only understand half of everything Carmack writes; he must be very smart).

It’s a good thing that indie development and Kickstarter have brought back regularly updated development blogs, then. It’s a sensible thing, then, that I write this still-not-sure-it’ll-be-a-regular column charting some recent updates from those devlogs.

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Last night, for the second time in my life, I tried to play a MOBA. Infinite Crisis may not be the best choice but I figured the people playing might have spent slightly less time pounding the lanes than the veteran e-thletes of LOL and DOTA 2. Not so. The open beta began this weekend but almost every player seems to be visiting from elsewhere within the genre. There is a tutorial mode of sorts, in which a team of humans fight against bots. If a MOBA were a pair of trousers, I think I’m now at the point where I’d struggle to put them on but I’d be able to explain where the legs are supposed to go. I’d almost certainly fail to zip up the flies though and would inexplicably fill the pockets with termites or blancmange. Launch trailer below.

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There are two trailers seeking to make you desire KinifiGames’ Imagine Me below. The first contains a miniature low budget remake of Koyaanisqatsi with the Philip Glass score replaced by a song that, while pleasant enough, makes me think of achingly twee adverts that are selling floppy-haired lifestyles as well as mobile phones. By the end, you’d have absolutely no clear idea what the game actually involves, unless you’ve noticed the preview screen for the second video below, in which case you’ll be well aware that it’s a lo-fi platformer packed with spikes and trampolines.

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Before Messhof made Nidhogg and then spent a long time not making Nidhogg, he created a set of great singleplayer and local multiplayer games with tight controls, silly conceits and visuals like visual migraines. I miss those days, so the reminiscent style of Heli Brawl by 2BAM is a welcome addition to my life. It’s a local multiplayer game for 2-4 players in which helicopters brawl, skydivers battle, and character who look a lot like Walter from the Big Lebowski struggle in melee combat. Trailer below. … [visit site to read more]

Shows how much has changed, both inside and outside the game.

If you miss after-school action shows, you can manage your own series in Chroma Squad, an upcoming tactical strategy game for PC, Mac and Linux. This mock set of Japanese commercials details the gameplay behind making a show, sans killer guitar intro. [Image: Behold Studios]

IGN continues its Year of Adventure with a seminal title from Ron Gilbert and Lucasfilm Games.

We asked the IGN community to send us their favorite EverQuest memories.

Eating language. My alchemical romance. The end of the world has a choppy frame rate.

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Sundays are for trundling around a small village in Germany, picking up and dropping off passengers in the wondrous, mostly fixed OMSI 2, using my new Logitech Driving Force GT steering wheel. As I park at the terminal, waiting for the beginning of my next route, why not join me in perusing the week’s best (mostly) games writing?

• Relevant to my interests, creator of QWOP and GIRP Bennett Foddy takes to Polygon to explain why you don’t want an online version of Matt Thorson’s Towerfall, or other, similarly local multiplayer-only games. Basically, laaaaaaaag: “As a game designer, if you want players to be able to dodge an arrow at the last second, or to stomp their enemies on the head like they do in TowerFall, you’re designing a game that won’t play well even over a LAN, much less over the messy, noisy collection of networks that make up the internet. There’s literally no way to eliminate the effects of lag, and you’ll wind up with game-breaking problems like Dark Souls’ infamous PvP ‘lag stab’.”

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The Fullbright Company's lead designer speaks about the BAFTAs, Gone Home coming to consoles, and becoming part of modern culture.

You can blame this week’s title on one Matthew Parsons, who delivered this image of “pig” aka “the plushie that is occasionally called Arnold.” On top of sending in a community stuffed animal, Mr. Parsons also shot a picture of said cuddly toy’s round-cheeked owner. In a bucket. Yes, there’s a picture of a little girl with a bucket on her head in my inbox. I am dead from cute. Anyway, have some cheaply priced bundles of joy in honour of Mr. Parsons’ bundle of joy.

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Dead Alien Cult is a studio formed by veterans of the God of War franchise and PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale. If I found myself in a pub quiz faced with a team called Dead Alien Cult, I’d probably quit on the spot and hand them the stout-stained Victory Tankard myself. For their debut title, The Cult (as I’m affectionely calling them) are creating a top-down Smash TV-Gauntlet-Roguelike hybrid called Viking Ghost. If I found myself in a pub quiz faced with a team called Viking Ghost…

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The headline is a quote from the trailer for the recently translated Shikihime Garden, which isn’t a brand new game at all. However, since the English language version has just gone live, this is good a time to talk about it as any. It’s a free-to-play browser-based (or Book of Faces) game, which may well avoid certain free-to-play sins thanks to the absence of paid-for boosters. You can’t pay your way to the top and the game instead rewards skill and ‘patience’. The cynic in me is barking about the similarities between the patient man and a grindstone. As for the activities involved, they range from deck building and turn-based combat to gardening.

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Candy Crush Saga makers King Digital Entertainment Plc, says it expects to price its initial public offering at $21-$24 per share, valuing the company at up to $7.6 billion.

King, which became notorious within the games industry after trademarking and enforcing use of the common word "Candy," saw its revenue grow to $602 million in Q4 2013 from only $22 in the first quarter of 2012. Though King's portfolio features 180 games for mobile devices, Facebook and through its own site, analysts note that most of the company's growth was directly linked to its Candy Crush games and questioned whether King could maintain its growth rate going forward.

"I think the valuation of a P/E ratio of 13 for a high-growth company is indeed reflecting a skepticism about the ability to continue growing at such a rapid pace," professor and IPO expert at the University of Florida Jay Ritter says, according to Reuters. "The ability to come up with future games and get people to pay for the game is a big question mark."

Analysts are quick to compare the high valuation to that of social gaming giant Zynga, which has had its stock price sliced in half since its IPO debuted in 2011 at $10 per share.

According to Reuters, "of the 22.2 million shares on sale in the offering, the company will sell 15.5 million, while stockholders, including Apax Ventures, will sell 6.7 million shares." King's IPO is set to be priced on March 25 and will now begin trading under the NYSE symbol 'KING' on March 26, after recently delaying the plan to prove its worth. [Image: King Digital Entertainment Plc]

GOG has two sales live right now in celebration of St. Patrick's Day: The Luck of the Irish weeklong sale and a big weekend sale. The Luck of The Irish sale offers a build-your-own bundle of five games for up to 90 percent off, from a selection of 25 games including Alan Wake, Fez, Hotline Miami, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, Reus, Brutal Legend, Dust: An Elysian Tail and The Swapper. That sale ends in six days.

The weekend sale offers up to 75 percent off on 14 games, including The Banner Saga for $16.75, Outlast for $6.80, Cognition for $9, Shadow Warrior for $10, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs for $8 and Deponia 3: Goodbye Deponia for $15. The weekend sale ends on March 18 at 1AM ET. [Image: GOG]

Over thirty-five games and soundtracks are on offer in a very special Humble Bundle sale, established to help support IGF chairman Brandon Boyer's cancer treatment relief campaign.

The massive collection of independent gems is priced at $25, with all proceeds going to Boyer's treatment relief fund. The package includes a slew of games and soundtracks ranging from big hits like Capy's Sword & Sworcery EP to quirky bites like Double Fine's Stacking. The majority of available titles are available for PC, Mac and Linux; a few recent additions, including Whitaker Trebella's Pivvot, are only available for Android devices. The Developer Digital Humble Bundle is also available, offering the option to help fund Boyer's treatment.

The Humble Bundle of Love will be available until Friday, March 21 at 11:59 PM Pacific/8:59 PM Eastern. A complete list of the games and soundtracks included in the bundle can be found after the break. [Image: Brandon Boyer]

Microsoft executive debunks rumor that drivers for PC weren't coming for controller.

Valve offered up a clearer side-by-side image of its updated Steam Controller today. The second iteration of the SteamOS gamepad was revealed in January, and peeled away the center touchscreen in favor of more traditional face buttons. The new buttons consist of a directional pad and standard A, B, X and Y buttons, the latter formerly located around the touchscreen. Valve left the large circular trackpads on the device, but also added a Steam icon button in the center with start and select-like buttons on either side with what appear to be stop and play icons.

The Steam Controller was announced alongside SteamOS and Steam Machines in September 2013, and was followed up by a hardware beta program that already excluded the controller's touchscreen. We spent some time with Valve's beta hardware in early January and found the experience lacking on the previous version of the controller with Hotline Miami and Portal in particular. Head past the break for a closer look at the updated controller.

The Xbox One flagship title was originally planned as a PC exclusive.

New touchscreen-free design pictured ahead of Valve's showing next week at GDC.

Mixing old school adventures with modern day classics, we get the first hands-on with this colourful debut.

Among The Sleep has a great hook. Horror games often require the player to feel defenceless, unable to fight back and barely able to flee. Well, says the man at Krillbite Studios, what could be less capable of defending itself than an infant? A slug, perhaps. A slug in a salt mine. But tiny toddling humans are quite rubbish, particularly when they find themselves trapped in a surrealistic nightmare that requires them to navigate a warped version of their own home. A new in-game video shows a game of hide and seek, and makes the game look even more like a prequel to Amnesia than previous footage had indicated.

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EverQuest is celebrating its 15th year of ongoing existence this Sunday.

The award-winning gaming hybrid of geekdom is finally coming to the mobile space.

The Path developer Tale of Tales' next adventure is called Sunset, and it's due to launch in 2015 on PC, Mac and Linux. Described as a first-person exploration game, Sunset is set in a "fictional tropical republic suffering under an oppressive regime" in the early 1970s.

In it, players control the housekeeper of a secluded, former philanthropist, and awaken "a new love for his country and his people" in the troubled occupant. The housekeeper investigates the man's belongings and learns of his role in the civil war, strengthening or weakening their relationship along the way. Tale of Tales founders Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn liken Sunset to "a shooter game where you are not the hero but one of the people in the background."

While deemed the second largest project by Tale of Tales, the game is being developed by Harvey and Samyn, sound designer Kris Force, is penned by an anonymous author and will receive music from Journey composer Austin Wintory. "The game contains both empathy and apathy. But also a feeling of being caught up in a struggle bigger than your day to day life," the founders added in the announcement. [Image: Tale of Tales]

British indie Dan “Tsukasa” Elvins has launched a Kickstarter for “a 2D hand painted, physics based Platformer set in Japans Genroku Period”. What that means is he’s creating a deeply pretty side-scroller called Kodama. The game features a vegetable protagonist, who has to balance water and sunlight uptake in the way in which he deals with puzzles, as well as respecting Shinto customs. Elvins asks: “Have you ever wanted to relax with a Kappa or play drums with a Tanuki?” Well, I actually haven’t, but I know a few Japanophiles who would. See more of the pitch below.

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We go hands-on with WildStar's Design Producer Stephan Frost as he walks us through the Northern Wilds "MOBA" adventure.

This year has a seen a marked shift in how LGBT characters are portrayed in games, so what does the future hold?

“In a couple of thousand years’ time bent-backed archaeologists are going to find the phrase ‘The Greased Pigs Rule!’ scratched into hypercaust tiles, carved on marble horse troughs, and written in tessera on villa floors. Being clever sorts they may guess who we were, but they’ll never fully understand how famous we were and how much that fame cost us in blood, sweat, and tears.” … [visit site to read more]