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Humanity's morbid fascination with the zombie apocalypse continues unabated as DayZ creator Dean Hall has revealed that the standalone, retail release of his open-world hit has racked up over 1.7 million sales.

Hall revealed this figure earlier today at the ongoing EGX Rezzed event in Birmingham, UK. He also noted that the original version of DayZ, a modification for Bohemia Interactive's military simulation ArmA 2, has been downloaded over two million times to date.

But Hall didn't attend the event simply to crow about his game's success. According to Eurogamer, Hall also revealed that DayZ's next update will arrive before the end of April, and that it will include a crossbow, fireplaces that players can use to prepare food and a prototype system which should allow loot to respawn within DayZ's expansive yet sparse world. [Image: Bohemia Interactive]

Publisher Kalypso Media has revealed details on a new version of Prohibition-era gangster simulation Omerta: City of Gangsters that collects all of the game's content into a single, convenient package.

Included in the Gold Edition are Omerta: City of Gangsters, every piece of DLC released for the game to date, and the sizable expansion dubbed The Japanese Incentive. While Omerta itself allows players to build a crime empire in a fictionalized version of Atlantic City through all sorts of illegal means, The Japanese Incentive adds new weapons, gameplay mechanics, player abilities and a wholly original story.

This new release of Omerta: City of Gangsters is slated to make its digital debut later today on both PC and Mac, with a retail release appearing on April 25. Kalypso's announcement fails to specify a price point for this new release, and our attempts to contact the publisher have so far been in vain. [Image: Kalypso Media]

Are you ready to have even more of your life sucked away by FTL’s infinite, endlessly twisting black hole of finely calibrated systems? Then you are in luck, person with an improbable amount of time on your hands, because FTL: Advanced Edition is just around the corner. Or rather, the space equivalent of a corner. There are not a lot of corners in space.

… [visit site to read more]

Long-running video game record-keeping site Twin Galaxies has overhauled its score submission guidelines, removing a controversial fee requirement in an effort to make the community more accessible to fans of classic arcade gaming.

The decision follows up on the recent appointment of gaming veteran Jace Hall as the organization's Head Custodian and Caretaker. Twin Galaxies previously instituted steep submission fees in the wake of a months-long period of inactivity, demanding that record-seekers pay the organization $25 for a single score application and verification. Refunds will be issued to paying applicants, and the organization will resume normal operation upon the launch of a redesigned website.

Twin Galaxies and its previous owner Walter Day played key roles in the 2007 documentary film The King of Kong, verifying submitted scores for the hotly contested Donkey Kong world record.

[Image: Twin Galaxies]

I had died again. For the eighth time I had been murdered by a greedy neighbour. I sighed. It was time to switch servers and try it all again. Usually when you spawn on a Rust server, there are a few quiet minutes to get used to your surroundings and look around. Not on my ninth reincarnation. The very instant I popped into the world I heard a voice behind me, yelling.

“Who are you!”

It was more of a statement of rage than a question. Shocked, I turned and saw him. Silhouetted against the sky, a man stood atop a wrecked building, stretching a bow and pointing an arrow at me. His name was Blazing Bazing. He was completely naked.

… [visit site to read more]

Michael Abrash, the leader of Valve's Research and Development team, joined Oculus VR as chief scientist today. The news follows Oculus' recent acquisition by Facebook to the tune of $2 billion, which Abrash addressed, in a blog post on Oculus VR's site, as a promise that virtual reality "is going to happen in all its glory."

"The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR - and some of them are hard indeed," Abrash wrote. "I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can." As of January, Abrash was at the forefront of Valve's efforts to work with Oculus to develop in-home virtual reality solutions. Valve's VR leader, Atman Binstock, joined Oculus earlier this month to lead a new Seattle-based team as chief architect.

Abrash described his "unlikely" journey to Valve and now Oculus VR in the blog and his work with John Carmack, who joined Oculus in August as the company's CTO. Oculus' own path from a $2.5 million Kickstarter project to a $2 billion sale is equally remarkable, to be sure. [Image: Oculus VR]Valve R&D head Michael Abrash joins Oculus as chief scientist

VR will be "the platform to end all platforms," according to Abrash.

The most interesting thing about Reaper of Souls, the first expansion for Diablo 3, is that it’s an admission of guilt. Blizzard are one of the best developers in the world not only because it makes great games, but because it prods and tweaks and adds to them after release until they positively hum with glory. But Reaper of Souls isn’t a nip here and a tuck there. This expansion is Blizzard dealing with the reality that, in many people’s eyes, Diablo 3 just wasn’t very good. But can it be fixed?

… [visit site to read more]

Standalone multiplayer content features two new armies and launches this summer.

Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR stunned the game industry. In less than two years, Oculus VR and its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset have gone from (literal) overnight Kickstarter success to subsidiary of a social networking giant. To put it another way: John Carmack, one of the principal creative forces behind the original Doom, is now a Facebook employee. Wild.

The transition of Oculus VR from a $2.4 million dollar Kickstarter to a $2 billion dollar acquisition seems unreal. To put things in perspective, and for the benefit of anyone who hasn't kept up with Oculus VR's meteoric rise, we've decided to retrace the company's story all the way from its humble beginnings in 2012.

In the interests of speed and efficiency, I have created a device which allows me to write an entire RPS post with one single press of a button. Unfortunately this machine demands several hours of setup between posts, of winding up clockwork mice, priming boxing gloves on springs, charging lasers, and carefully setting explosives to trigger the series of events that are so effortlessly tapping these keys right now. Hopefully a little practice in Crazy Machines Golden Gears will help me improve this.

The latest in Viva’s Rube Goldberg machine puzzler series has arrived on PC, coming over from pocket telephones to the natural home of weird complex machinery. … [visit site to read more]

Worms developer Team17 has unveiled its new project, Flockers, saying it'll mix Lemmings gameplay with a Tim Burton aesthetic.

Struggling with success is always a hard sell for empathy. It’s all too easy to dismiss such expressions with an easy, “Oh, you poor rich thing.” But it is, of course, far more complicated than that.

Davey Wreden, co-creator of The Stanley Parable, has already written in detail about how phenomenon of his game has personally affected him, in an eloquent blog post last month. Since the release of The Stanley Parable, and its remarkable success, the lives of both of its creators have been turned upside down. At 25 and 20 years old, Davey Wreden and William Pugh, haven’t had an easy time. I spoke with them about their last six months, how the reaction to the game has affected them and their partnership, and how they’re dealing with it all. And Pugh’s desire to create a rivalry with Steve Gaynor.

… [visit site to read more]

With nine days left on the clock, Ashen Rift hasn’t quite gathered half of its target funds. Seeking C$45,000, the first-person shooter/survival horror hybrid has raised just under C$20,000 at the time of writing. When I check back at the end of the day, I expect that number to have risen significantly. The game was already on my radar, simply because it reminds me of STALKER and contains a friendly canine companion, but the latest video shows destructible terrain, collapsing rock formations and sneaky traps. It may have a daft name that keeps slipping out of my memory, but Ashen Rift looks like it may deliver the sort of emergent happenings that I crave.

… [visit site to read more]

Anyone eager to spend a modest portion of their Friday shaking their head and tutting while a tactical halfwit sends virtual Soviet soldiers to their deaths, is in luck. A lend-lease version of the close-to-release Combat Mission: Red Thunder‎ has just been craned onto my bustling quay by my bustling stevedore, Steve Dore. Give me a second to finish my molotov cocktail, quietflowsthedon my ushanka, and retrieve my Bumper Book of Annoying Russian Clichés, and we can get started. … [visit site to read more]

Marvel rewards fans of the game and teases new features and characters.

FTL: Faster Than Light is coming to iPad on April 3, and it includes the Advanced Edition expansion headed to PC for free on the same day. The space-based strategy game is priced $10 on all platforms, and is compatible with iPads version 2 and up - sorry, iPhones.

The Advanced Edition is plenty packed for a freebie, adding new ship layouts, weapons, drones, augmentations, and systems to explore and lose your beloved crew in. On top of that it has new events penned by FTL writer Tom Jubert and Obsidian's Chris Avellone.

"FTL works really well with the general way you play on iPad," co-founder of dev Subset Games Justin Ma told us at GDC, "just because you can pause it at any moment, come back later, and all the little events are bite-sized moments." [Image: Subset Games]

Should society be toppled by some terrible plague, I’d probably neck a few pints of gin then dance to pop music across the rooftops until I inevitably tumbled down. But you, you may have other plans. You know where you’d go in your neighbourhood, where you’d raid for supplies, and where you’d hide. The astonishingly ambitious online action-RPG ReRoll hopes to tap into that knowledge by scanning the real world with drones to make its own. And has now actually started.

The first city to submit to cyberfication is Canada’s fair Montreal, which is only fitting as that’s where Pixyul co-founders Julien Cuny and Louis-Pierre Pharand worked on Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry games at Ubisoft. Come, see Ville-Marie beset with a mutant plague in a new-ish trailer. … [visit site to read more]

The chaps over at Gaijin Entertainment are still waxing their moustaches and sewing cool patches onto their jackets, not quite yet ready to roll out War Thunder‘s tank-adding expansion Ground Forces. This weekend they plan to invite “a really large number” of new players to join the closed beta testing, rewarding pilots who’ve been completing daily tasks in the base game. Oh, life’s always easier for the teacher’s pet.

Or you could simply be at EGX Rezzed in Birmingham this weekend, where Ground Forces will be playable by all and sundry. Even Adam and Graham. … [visit site to read more]

Lots of things are improved when done in the nude. Not least replanting the galaxy with life after a cataclysmic event sees all the tiny planets dying. Which is, impressively, the concept behind Cosmochoria. You play a little naked astronaut, seeding planets (ew, no, not like that) while fending off angry aliens. You can play the alpha right now.

… [visit site to read more]

In lieu of yet another typically brief trailer for Age of Wonders 3, the latest glimpse at the high-fantasy, turn-based strategy game is a nearly 20-minute long primer on the Warlord Leader Class. [Image: Triumph Studios]

Now you'll always have an objective to complete.

The limited-duration Founder's Elite Edition is $100 on Steam.

System to take more time looking for players who are a good skill level match.

Both the advanced edition and the new iPad version launch on April 3.

OlliOlli studio Roll7 is working on a new game with publisher Devolver Digital, a 2.25D, cover-based, pixelated shooter called Not a Hero. Yes, 2.25D. It hits between 2D and 2.5D, a side-on perspective with isometric elements.

Players take on the role of Steve, a gun-for-hire tasked with cleaning up the city for the mayoral candidate, an anthropomorphic bunny. "Now Steve must clear five districts of crime and recruit new heroes for his cause by sliding, diving, ducking and taking cover through hundreds of full-throttle shootouts across the city," Roll7 says.

Not a Hero is due out for PC this summer, Eurogamer reports. Check out the Not a Hero factsheet on Roll7's site.

Frog Fractions 2's Kickstarter jokingly lists several crazy stretch goals.

Rocksteady says last-gen systems couldn't have the Batmobile "in the way that people imagine it."

“SCROLL FACEBOOK…WITH YOUR FACE” it promises. “YOU’LL NEVER FACEBOOK WITHOUT YOUR FACE AGAIN.”

Lacking mystical powers of prophecy (try as we might to guess the end of tonight’s Eastenders), we can’t yet see exactly what will be the fallout of Facebook bought Oculus and its Rift virtual reality goggles for $2 billion. However, thanks to GNAH! and Skipping Stones developer KO-OP Mode, we can now experience the majesty and wonder of browsing Facebook in virtual reality. The wags behind have whipped together a vision of the future with Face It: It’s Complicated, letting Facebookers into glimmering cyberspace to look at photos of their friends’ children.

… [visit site to read more]

The survival horror title that sparked a trilogy is free on PC right now.