All Topics older than one year ago

The old-timey Zomboss Down Trailer shows off the new map and classes of Garden Warfare.

We play one full match and check out each of the new zombie class variants in Garden Warfare's Zomboss Down DLC.

The zombies must push a golf ball bomb into a hole while the plants try to defend their underground army.

Hey that's not the Mewtwo and the Cerulean Cave I remember from the Pokémon games. This—otherwise amazing—redesign by DeviantART artist arvalis is way more creepy.Read more...

Xenon 2 meets Eufloria! Transcendence meets Flower! Errr… to be honest our new Eufloria game is hard to classify… Let me try again:

It’s a completely new game within the Eufloria Universe, in which you can evolve a single Seedling Ship in different ways. You can specialize by attribute, focusing on Speed, Strength, or Energy.

The Mother Tree has sent you to investigate a strange alien installation, filled with wondrous habitats and sectors. Your ultimate aim is to explore three large environments to discover ancient artifacts, with which you can power up your ship, find lost seedlings, and take over enemy seedling colonies.

Other seedlings have gone before you and as you find their diaries in old data canisters you learn more and more about the installation, yourself, and your role in this universe.

All your evolving ships have their own story arc, although that aspect is fairly unobtrusive. (But nice for people who like a bit of lore)

Gameplay

The game experience can be hard-core or casual or something in between, depending on your own choices. Eufloria Adventures lets you delve deeper and deeper into ever harder areas, but if you haven’t powered up enough you will run into trouble. If you prefer an easier ride you stay in the easier levels for longer periods, while if you crave a challenge you can dive in headfirst and see how long you can last. This is pretty similar to classic dungeon crawlers and roguelikes, but done with our own twist on things.

We also added a casual mode for people who prefer to just explore, and a roguelike mode for people who crave a BRUTALLY HARD experience. (Seriously, it’s hard)

Brian Grainger provided the music again, and Anthony Flack did some stunning art for the game. (It really does look lovely)

About those visuals

The levels are procedurally generated, and populated with procedural plants, trees, flowers, and strange creatures. Where Eufloria is zen and subdued, “Eufloria Adventures” is lush and splendiferous. The idea is that each new level discovery is a reward in its own right. A joy to explore and see the wondrous sights in this strange alien installation.

Whenever you conquer a new colony, beautiful random flowers shoot up and bloom. While you fly around the many levels strange plants grow in your path, giving you useful information on where you have been before, while making the levels look better and better.

Simple controls

We stuck with pure touch controls for now, as it seemed the best fit for all the PlayStation Mobile devices we need to support, and we wanted to keep the game accessible. There is something quite rewarding about having direct physical control as well. Touch your ship to bring up a hud, touch an ancient artifact to activate it, touch the screen and your ship flies to your finger. Simple but effective.

About the music

Brian Grainger (AKA Milieu) did such a good job on the Eufloria OST that we asked him back to provide beats and moods. This time he operates as “Coppice Halifax” for a trippy, dubby and more direct experience, but with plenty of relaxed ambient vibes too. Hope you like it. J

Let me know what you think in the comments below? I can answer any and all questions you have. Alternatively get in touch via our website: www.eufloria-game.com.

It really, really is chaos. Good chaos. Go on, have a look. Read more...

I generally hate slice-of-life stories. I find them meandering and pointless. But Silver Spoon stands at the pinnacle of the genre and weaves a tale so full of life lessons, deep characters, and thematic exploration that even I can’t help but love it.Read more...

One of the high profile Kickstarters in the Great Wave of 2012 was Gabriel Knight creator Jane Jensen’s half-million gathering cry for her new Pinkerton Road Studio. The first project to emerge from this, in collaboration with Phoenix Online, is Moebius: Empire Rising. A brand new adventure game featuring a genius antiques dealer and a worldwide, history-spanning mystery. Is it any good? Spoiler: No, it’s astonishingly terrible. Here’s wot I think:

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Watch a full playthrough of the final Borderlands 2 DLC mission, including a takedown of the boss.

Gearbox shows us how to beat the Son of Crawmerax in Borderlands 2's new DLC.

See the heads and skins you'll get for taking down the boss in Borderlands 2's final DLC as each character.

Finding excuses when we lose online is something we all sometimes do. It can be frustrating, after all. Tutorial Central collected a fair amount of StarCraft II-related ones, but most of them would apply to any competitive game.Read more...

The "Stray Hound" is the foe Dark Souls 2 players are murdering the most, as revealed by the new Enemy page on the game's Beyond the Bonfire stats site. Between them, Xbox 360 and PS3 players have to date felled just over 110 million of the vicious canines so far, while the various varieties of hollow and royal soldiers also rank highly on the Most Dead-ed list. If the soldiers were grouped together they'd no doubt place higher, but they're differed by the weapons they're wielding.

The question is, who's died more: Stray Hounds or Dark Souls 2 players? It's not even a contest. Players deaths are now past the 248 million mark, just over a month after From's devilish action-RPG hit PS3 and Xbox 360. With the PC port due to arrive on April 25, the billion milestone for combined deaths can't be far away. So, who are the real stray hounds in Dark Souls 2: the dogs or the players, hmmmmmm?

Well, it's the dogs. 'Cos they're dogs.

Costly slippage demonstrates Ubisoft's focus on quality, says Massive Entertainment.

The "Stray Hound" is the foe Dark Souls 2 players are murdering the most, as revealed by the new Enemy page on the game's Beyond the Bonfire stats site. Between them, Xbox 360 and PS3 players have to date felled just over 110 million of the vicious canines so far, while the various varieties of hollow and royal soldiers also rank highly on the Most Dead-ed list. If the soldiers were grouped together they'd no doubt place higher, but they're differed by the weapons they're wielding.

The question is, who's died more: Stray Hounds or Dark Souls 2 players? It's not even a contest. Players deaths are now past the 248 million mark, just over a month after From's devilish action-RPG hit PS3 and Xbox 360. With the PC port due to arrive on April 25, the billion milestone for combined deaths can't be far away. So, who are the real stray hounds in Dark Souls 2: the dogs or the players, hmmmmmm?

Well, it's the dogs. 'Cos they're dogs.

Daimidaler: Prince vs. Penguin Empire is the story of a boy who finds that by doing perverted things—i.e., groping women—he can power and pilot a giant robot. And with a premise like that, is it any surprise the enemy robots have giant penis guns?Read more...

GameSpy giveth, and – years later – it shutteth down due to the cruleth realities of modern busineth practices and, in doing so, taketh away. The list of games affected by said untimely (but also kinda timely) demise is long and prone to billowing ominously in the wind, and we still don’t know what exactly will happen to a number of those trapped in its server purgatory. Sometimes, though, no news is good news. Case in point: it turns out that Crysis and Crysis 2 won’t be coming back online after GameSpy goes dark.

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Want to get good at League of Legends? Like, real good? You need to go to China's new LoL bootcamp. Read more...

What does the future of the genre lie? And could games, one day, become too scary?

“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo,” lamented Juliet’s disembodied cyber-spine from her mechanized gelatinous vat while wistfully tearing the arms from a cleaning droid the way one might pick petals from a flower. That is what the name Technolust makes me think of. The game is not at all about that, but it is about as cyberpunk as cyberpunk gets. It’s got monolithic, neon-glistening structures, drone-eclipsed skies, and copious references to the likes of Blade Runner and Neuromancer. The twist? It’s a made-for-VR experience, and it looks mighty attractive despite its somewhat generic leanings.

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South Korean plastic surgeons, it appears, are good at their jobs. But they might be too good for some customs officials. Read more...

There are a few Twitter accounts that can delight you on a daily basis. This is one of them. Read more...

It's full of those little moments that make you go "ooooh." Like that one up there, when the little guy jumps over. Ooooh.Read more...

Cast your mind back, if you can, to the year 2012. Our young eyes (clear of cataracts) watched the skies eagerly for the next great space game, unaware that Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, and so many more were soon to be announced. In that distant year, a more innocent Adam played space shooter SOL: Exodus and, finding it fun for a bit though wonky, wondered where the developers might take pew-pew spaceships next. Turns out, er, the answer is back to SOL.

What’s described as the “core development team” is now revamping and expanding SOL: Exodus, planning to release it as a new game under the sure-to-be-a-bit-confusing name Exodus of Sol.

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Ever wonder what kind of person would want to shake hands with a Japanese love doll? Read more...

If you can look beyond their booger-noses and barely masked sociopathy, children make excellent game designers. They do this stuff for free all the time, just to amuse themselves. Every weekend is crunch time. Developers North of Earth are wise to look to them for inspiration, making a multiplayer shooter about human dogfights. “In Cult of the Wind, players compete and cooperate in ritualistic multi-player human dogfights, complete with imaginary weapons, pretend explosions, and airplane noises made with their mouths.” It looks delightful, it’s on Greenlight, and there’s a trailer below.

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New CEO Darrell Rodriguez is hoping to expand Trendy Entertainment's portfolio.

Like old Stalker tales told around the campfire, a lot of strange and wonderful things were once said to be in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, from naked green dwarves to driveable vehicles and a whole extra city. Several mods have restored various bits of cut content, based on leftover files and leaked dev builds, but Lost Alpha is one of the more ambitious. What began as a project to remake and reintegrate these leftovers has blown up into a new parallel story which includes (new) old content and a bits of the creators’ own design too.

In response to some ruffian leaking a scrappy old build from November, developers Dezowave Group have decided to release Lost Alpha earlier than planned then keep working on it. It’ll arrive on April 26, the 28th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster which started all this.

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