Radiangames Discounts its Entire Catalog to Celebrate JoyJoy's Second Birthday
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Syder Arcade - A Love Letter to a Genre That Welcomes It
Blocks That Matter Celebrates its Birthday with a Sale
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Want to take over the world but don’t own an Xbox? No problem. Chaosoft Games’ XBLIG hit EvilQuest will be conquering PCs on February 29. You can preorder the game on Desura for $1.99. EvilQuest is a retro action-RPG where you play as Galvis, a dispicable warlord in search of the Chaos Axe so that he can murder God. You know, it’s one of those fluffy feel-good games. The PC release will be based on the latest revision of the Xbox version.
Source: Chaosoft
Fortune Summoners is one of those games that may conjure up some doubt at first glance. There are seemingly dozens of side-scrolling anime style games that ultimately disappoint in their gameplay, presentation, design…or sometimes just plain suck all around. Is Fortune Summoners another game to add to that pile, or is this a downloadable indie game truly worthy of your time and money? Guess you’ll just have to watch the video review and see.
Fortune Summoners was provided for review by Carpe Fulgar. You can purchase it for $19.99 on Steam.
Games like Portal distort our perceptions of other games in the same genre. They are made to a caliber above not only what is expected, but also what was imagined. This can have a terrible effect on other titles that would otherwise stand out on their own merits and be praised for originality and innovation. Q.U.B.E. is one such game. Ranging from its aesthetics to the level design, you can feel the influences that Portal had over it. But, if you can manage to peel yourself away from those associations, you’ll find a gem of a game.
The beginning moments of the game are rough: no explanation is given as to the situation you are in, and as you progress, none is given to you as to how to use new tools as they are provided. The gameplay breaks down to using a glove to control different colored… let’s call them cubes. Depending on the color, right and left clicking on them produces different effects. From there, puzzles are born and run a gambit of just platforming – made capable by maneuvering the cubes – to light mirror puzzles with a bit of color courtesy of the cubes thrown in for a bit of added complexity.
There’s something to be said for games that incorporate FMV scenes. A game that knows how to enhance the experience as a whole with FMV is usually a game that could still be considered a good game without the additional gimmick. In recent years a number of small studios seem to have honed in on this fact, and as a result we, the consumers, have been treated to a number of excellent games.
Twisted Pixel, for example, has a few titles that used it well until they crossed the line with The Gunstringer. While it could be argued that the Kinect peripheral is to blame for some of the underwhelming feeling associated with The Gunstringer, it can’t change the fact that it was the first game Twisted Pixel released where their use of FMV was meant to carry the entire package, and that’s the aforementioned line: one that should never be crossed.
But Futuremark Games Studio’s Unstoppable Gorg manages to offer a solid experience even if you ignore the FMV scenes, and an incredible one if you immerse yourself in them. The videos themselves eschew the normal CGI techniques, turning instead to actual objects and costumed people. It’s this loving attention to detail that really cements the right way to incorporate FMV into a game.
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New Life Interactive’s cancer-curing, voxel-based game, Cell: emergence finally has a release date. The “action surgery game” will be released on February 9 on Xbox Live Indie Games for $5 (400 MS Points). Cell: emergence HD will also be released for PC for GamersGate, Gamestop PC Downloads, Green Man Gaming, Playism, and Desura for $8.95. The extra four bucks nabs you almost twice as many cells to destroy, along with improved sound.
You might remember Cell: emergence as that trippy-looking game written by Sheldon Pacotti, the writer of the seminal Deus Ex. You play as a microscopic nanobot fighting against diseases inside a the body of a sick child, and you have to stunt the growth of the rapidly-reproducing malignant cells by employing a mixture of RTS tactics and good old fashioned arcade shooting. Sound confusing? Check out the developer walkthrough video (conveniently embedded above!) for a glimpse into this unique game.
For immediate release:
“Cell: emergence” Shipping February 9th, 2012
The action surgery game “Cell: emergence” will be released Thursday, February 9th on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, GamersGate, GameStop PC Downloads (formerly Impulse), Green Man Gaming, Playism, and Desura. A free demo will be released on Tuesday, February 7th.
In the game players fight a nanoscale war against disease inside the body of a sick child. The fast, deep simulation of tissues, antibodies, germs, nanomachinery, and other elements is achieved with a “dynamic voxel” gameworld, within which every visual detail has meaning, reacts to the player, and interacts with its neighbors.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Tutorial and Developer Diary on “Massively Reactive” Gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
The Xbox version of the game, selling for 400 MS Points, offers a world of almost half a million cells, and the “Cell HD” version on PC, selling for $8.95 USD, offers a world of nearly a million. The HD version on the PC also provides higher fidelity sound and more frenetic gameplay tuned exclusively to the mouse/trackball/touchpad.
The Xbox version will be available in English and in English subtitled for Japanese, German, and Spanish. The PC version will be available in the preceding languages plus Italian, French, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Korean.
Inspired by “hard” ’80s arcade games like Defender, Centipede, and Missile Command, Cell offers 17 punishing levels that require players to decipher a level’s “cellular automata” simulation and then battle living processes with speed and dexterity.
The game’s story, written by Deus Ex writer Sheldon Pacotti, is a first glimpse at a near-future fictional world where war is fought in code and chemistry and the inner workings of Nature.
ABOUT NEW LIFE INTERACTIVE, LLC
New Life Interactive, LLC is an indie game studio based in Austin, TX specializing in massively reactive gameplay.
http://www.newlifeinteractive.
ABOUT CELL: EMERGENCE
For detailed information on the game and team behind it, please visit http://www.newlifeinteractive.
ABOUT GREEN MAN GAMING
Green Man Gaming (GMG) is the leading UK-based independent digital retailer for PC games, selling more than 700 titles from 75 publishing partners to 146 countries around the world. Thanks to its unique proprietary technology, GMG offers consumers the ability to trade-in their digitally downloaded games for new purchases, while enabling publishers to generate on-going revenue from their intellectual property. Green Man Gaming is the only games retailer to pay a royalty back to a publisher on all pre-owned sales.
Radiangames dipped its toes into the PC market earlier this month with Super Crossfire, but now it is preparing to cannonball off the high dive and drench us all in its neon nectar. The studio has announced that four more games are coming to PC and Mac on January 24, and it is bundling them together for a limited time. The Quadtastic Launch Collection includes updated versions of 3 of our favorite XBLIG games: Inferno, Ballistic, and Fireball. The fourth game is the previously unreleased Slydris, a puzzle game that appears to be the most drastic departure from the developer’s explosion-laden catalog. The bundle is available for pre-order on the Radiangames website for $9.99, and then it will be $11.99 until it disappears from the face of the Internet on February 1.
Do you scoff at a mere four games in a bundle? Do you demand audial treats with your multi-game purchases? There are also two larger bundles that will survive past the Quadtastic Launch Collection’s short shelf life. The Super Radiangames Collection includes everything from the Quadtastic Bundle and throws in Super Crossfire for $14.99 ($12.99 pre-order). But wait, there’s more! The I Love Radiangames Collection includes all that jazz plus access to the Inferno+ Beta and soundtracks to all the games for $19.99. A portion of all of the bundle sales will be donated to Child’s Play and St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital. The percentage donated increases as more bundles are sold.
Sick of bundles? All of the games will be available à la carte for $4.99 ($6.99 for Inferno) on February 1.
To The Moon is an independent title that has been getting a lot of mainstream attention, but does it deserve it? Does the game really impress enough to warrant a top 10 entry? Or is this game simply a pretentious hipster’s dream that has caused widespread lunacy? Get it?! Lunacy!?… To the MOON =Lunar? HA HA HA H! …………fine! Just watch the damn video.
To The Moon was provided for review by Freebird Games. You can purchase it on their website for $11.95.
If the New Year’s fireworks celebrations didn’t satiate your appetite for shiny explosions, then perhaps you should check out the Indie Royale New Year’s Bundle. The newest pay-practically-nothing bundle features the debut of Radiangames Super Crossfire on PC. The souped-up version of the XBLIG classic is joined by Nuclear Dawn, Max & The Magic Marker, and Fractal. Plus, if you pay more than the fluctuating minimum price, you’ll nab George and Jonathan’s (awesome) new album, Beautiful Lifestyle. The bundle is on sale over at the Indie Royale website until Tuesday at 12 p.m. Eastern
