PC Previews

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Prime World is gearing up for a US Launch, Beta available now

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Dave Voyles in PC Previews, Previews | Leave a comment

Prime World 1

Massive. That’s the best way to describe Russian development studio Nival Games’ upcoming MOBA Prime World. When we previously saw Prime World in July, it wasn’t nearly as feature rich as the version I had viewed during GDC this year. It was probably a wise idea to have two members of the development studio play the game in front of my eyes, as I doubt my brief period with the title would have lent itself well to fully understanding all of Prime World’s intricate mechanics.

 

Those of you who don’t want to play the standard 3 lane DoTA approach can instead choose to take a support role in the form of a mini-game played alongside your base’s spawning point. Upon successfully completing the mini-game, players are awarded scrolls (buffs) which can then be used on other players. Moreover, you could always just purchase them from the marketplace as well, in the case that your time is more valuable than your money.

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Heavy Gear Assault maneuvers its way into the hearts of arena FPS and mech fans

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Dave Voyles in PC Previews, Previews | Leave a comment

Mechwarrior 2 on the PC was lauded as both a critical and commercial success. During the rise of 32-bit consoles in the late ’90s and early 2000s, however, a more casual style of mech game came along, but one team of developers, MekTek, craved their hardcore mech roots.

Building from the rich universe that is Heavy Gear, the team at MekTek has plans to grab that rabid fan base and generate the experience they’ve been craving since the rise and fall of Mechwarrior 2. A brief demo  for Heavy Gear Assault was available at GDC Play this week, and I had the opportunity to get my hands on it. The blend of arena style shooter and mech sim worked well, and should scratch that itch which fans of either genre have so desperately needed resolved over the years.

Armless Octopus Plays: Black Lake Prototype (Amnesia Fortnight)

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Daniel Campbell in PC Previews, Previews | Leave a comment

Each year Double Fine takes a short break from making their scheduled games to take unique game ideas and make them into prototypes. This period is what they like to call “Amnesia Fortnight”. The result can sometimes blossom into an entire game, but most of the time they don’t make it past the prototyping stage. Fortunately Double Fine decided to sell these prototypes as a package to the general populous, and thus Armless Octopus is going to delve into each of them and record the process for your view pleasure. Please enjoy.
 

PAX East Preview: Delvers Drop just can’t stop at one play

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Wayne Kubiak in Mobile, Mobile Previews, PC, PC Previews, Previews | Leave a comment

Delver's Drop Screenshot

Fresh off a widely successful Kickstarter campaign, developer Pixelscopic brought their success to PAX East as part of the Indie Megabooth to demonstrate that Delver’s Drop is more than just an excellent pitch. So after seeing it in person and finally getting my hands on it, I can assure you that it not only looks good on paper, but it’s also an adventure you should be anticipating the arrival of.

Assuming you are unfamiliar with Delver’s Drop, the style is akin to the dungeons of The Legend of Zelda, or maybe more closely to the SNES’ A Link to the Past more specifically, which has you you following one of the chosen/jailed adventurers/miscreants thrown down the “drop”. As you descend further, each room is varied by through a combination of pre-generated floor layouts mixed with randomized content. This helps to create a unique experience every time. Even in our time with the PAX demo, as well as watching others play, we were hard pressed to find the same room layout, with variations between puzzles, traps, battle royals, or an interesting mix of the three. I unfortunately didn’t reach any bosses due to the the difficulty of the demo, but it would also appear that there are larger foes to tackle. Fortunately though, the adversity I faced was not due to the controls, which are extremely fluid and responsive, but instead just due to my own inability to adapt to the constantly changing environment.

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GDC 2013: Deponia wishes you the best, final chapter in the adventure trilogy coming in November

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Dave Voyles in PC, PC Previews | Leave a comment
Goodbye Deponia 2
The brash, self-involved yet lovable protagonist has been a sought after character troupe in modern stories since Han Solo took control of the Millenium Falcon across the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. German developer Daedalic has managed to grab lightning in a bottle and seems to have found what made that archetype so popular oh so long ago with Rufus, the main character featured in their adventure game trilogy Deponia.In the game’s current state, Rufus, who has long sought to escape this wretched planet, had a fate encounter with the beautiful Goal, an Elysian from the city floating in the skies above who fell from grace. Since their initial meeting in the first game they’ve come across a plethora of sarcastic and charismatic characters on this junk filled planet; a relic of a time long gone by.

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PAX East Preview: Dropchord causing people to point fingers

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Anthony Swinnich in Mobile, Mobile Previews, PC, PC Previews, Previews | Leave a comment

dropchord_paxeast

It’s often said that it’s rude to point. But Double Fine Productions doesn’t care. They want you to point the entire time you’re playing Dropchord, their “music-driven score challenge game” that uses the Leap Motion controller. We had a chance to give the game a spin at PAX East 2013 and found ourselves wanting to be pointed in the direction of a full version — the game was a ton of fun.

The Leap Motion controller took a couple of minutes to get used to, but the learning curve was pretty soft. It can track your hands and the way they move right down to the five individual appendages on each one. Luckily for the player, Double Fine has seen fit to use only the pointer fingers. You hold both of them out above the controller and direct the cursors to two specific points to start the game. Like all free-motion gaming devices (Sony’s EyeToy, Microsoft’s Kinect) it’s possible to lose your orientation in regards to where the device is due to a lack of physical feedback, but because it seemed to be less of an issue due to the relatively small motions required to play.
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GDC 2013: Night of the Rabbit creeps out from the shadows and into our dreams

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Dave Voyles in PC, PC Previews, Previews | Leave a comment

Night of the Rabbit 2
As a child our imagination is free to run wild, allowing us to dream of becoming anything we desire, escape our current environment, and unite with a cast of characters unlike any in our physical world. That is precisely the underlying theme in Daedalic’s upcoming point-and-click adventure game, Night of the Rabbit, which stars a 12-year-old boy seeking solace in his dreams, where he wishes to become a wizard.

The rich and engrossing stories of The Chronicles of Narnia and Alice in Wonderland are borrowed from heavily, as the environments and many of the anthropomorphic characters illustrate immediately. Traveling alongside the boy is a clever and charming rabbit who whisked him into this wondrous world, although his true intentions are never made explicitly clear, leading the player to believe he may yet have a trick or two up his cotton-tailed sleeve.
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PAX East Preview: MechKnight Chronicles slashes into view

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Anthony Swinnich in Ouya, Ouya Previews, PC, PC Previews, Previews | Leave a comment

mechknight_pax

The PAX East show floor is filled with all kind of games and projects each year, and like anything trying to gain attention, location is key. Dinosaur Games learned this firsthand in the best way possible while showing off a pre-alpha build of their upcoming MechKnight Chronicles directly next to the ever-popular Fangamer booth. While a spot like this might help generate initial attention, it became clear that people were waiting in line to play less because of proximity and more because the preview build shows a lot of promise. Fans of Treasure’s Guardian Heroes or The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers might want to pay attention — this one stood out among the crowd.

“PAX East was INTENSE,” said Dinosaur’s Jesse Sosa. “The response we got was overwhelmingly positive. We all missed out on seeing anything else at the show because we could not leave our booth. There were just too many people there to try out MechKnight. Although, that’s a problem I was perfectly OK with having.”

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