Mojang to bring Cake Defense, The Walls and more to Minecraft Realms users as "mini games"
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Minecraft Realms is the online service Mojang pitch at families not stubborn enough to work through the arcane process of setting up and running servers. For a monthly subscription, Realms players - mostly parents - get access to one of Mojang’s secure servers and can invite 20-odd friends to deface a new world.
That’s probably not for you texture pack-savvy, adventure map-happy lot. But some of Minecraft’s best-loved maps are likely to be opened up to a brand new audience with Realms’ new “mini game” option.
Wolfenstein: The New Order preorders come with Doom beta access
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Wolfenstein is available for preorder. But that fact is somewhat dwarfed by the fact that pre-ordering it will also secure you access to Doom. It’s not often that you hear next to nothing about a game until access to it appears alongside a pre-order for something entirely different.
Note that it’s “Doom” and not “Doom 4”. Maybe it is actually Doom 4 but someone over at id or Bethesda decided that numbers had become passe. But there’s already a Doom sans number, so maybe they should have called Doom: The Doomliest or something to that effect.
Bringing World of Warcraft's female orc into the modern age
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Ever since The Burning Crusade launched in 2007, World of Warcraft’s non-Blood Elf and Draenei population have been looking a little antiquated. Sure, you can hide them beneath ridiculous armour, but when you want to streak through Orgrimmar, the last thing you want to look is dated.
Warlords of Draenor promises to make that situation a thing of the past, revamping all the vanilla races to bring them more in line with the Worgen, Goblins, Blood Elves and Draenei. Art director Chris Robertson discusses the revamp of the female orc model in the latest edition of Artcraft, touching on the design philosophy and the team’s art process. It’s shaping up very nicely.
FTL Advanced Edition: Cloning, hacking and mind control... oh my
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The Advanced Edition free update for FTL is just getting bigger and bigger. It’s silly, really, that this isn’t going to cost anyone a penny. Don’t tell Subset Games that, though. After being quiet for a couple of months, Subset is ready to spill the beans on yet more of the Advanced Edition’s growing feature list.
Mind control, hacking and cloning are the big additions, and crikey do I want to get my hands on them right bloody now before being smashed into space dust.
SMITE update gives Agni a makeover, and we're giving away codes for his new look
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Today’s SMITE update gave the twin-headed Hindu god of fire, Agni, a bit of a makeover. His new look is pretty fearsome, not a chap you’d like to get into a heated argument with. His two heads represent his duality, as a god of purity and destruction, but in SMITE they look like they both favour the latter.
We’ve got our grubby mitts on five codes that instantly unlock this angry god and his alternate costume, Incinerator. We burned our hands getting them. Read on to see how you can snatch one up for yourself.
Moobs and boobs: Sacred 3 gets a reveal trailer
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Hack n’ slash RPG Sacred is getting another installment, Deep Silver revealed today. Players can return to Ancaria for some fantasy co-op shenanigans, with drop in, drop out local and online multiplayer.
“The paramount development goal for Sacred 3 has been to create a seamless online and offline co-op experience”, said Remy van Leeuwen, Brand Manager of Deep Silver. “By creating a game built around the central concept of co-op gameplay, we’re expanding the series to new audiences without compromising the rich lore and fantasy of the Sacred universe.”
Slap your eyes on the trailer, below.
Valve's Free to Play documentary launching on Steam March 19th
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Valve’s Dota 2 documentary, Free to Play, will launch on March 19th via Steam. The feature-length movie follows a trio of Dota 2 players as they travel the globe in search of adventure and fights to bring honour to their respective villages, maybe learning a little bit about themselves in the process.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that. It actually follows Dendi, HYHY and Fear as they compete in the Dota 2 International Tournament for a million dollar prize.
Unlock down: DICE to hand out "shortcut" weapon kits for Battlefield 4 over next two weeks
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We haven’t written a lot about about Battlefield 4’s Player Appreciation Month, and if we could write our way through February again I’m sure we’d do the same. Where DICE’s pledge to drop DLC until they’d fixed everything that was broken in Battlefield was a sober and sensible mark of respect to their suffering playerbase, a month of in-game unlocks and community missions didn’t seem like an awful lot of skin off their backs.
That said, the men and women who regularly shoot at you in Battlefield 4 are about to become significantly better equipped - and you’ve a right to know about that, and choose whether or not to join them. DICE are releasing a couple of voluntary “shortcut kits” over the next two weeks, which will unlock a number of the game’s existing higher-level weapons.
Blizzard gear up for Diablo III 2.0: explain Clans and Communities, prep players for auction house closure
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Reaper of Souls is nigh, and even Diablo III players who go without will feel palpable change once it hits. By March 24, the auction house will be gone, and a slew of new social features will hit the game. Be the envy of your friends when that time comes by swotting up on the key differences between a Clan and a Community now, and learning the precise date when the last hammer will drop at auction.
Minecraft snapshot 14w08a brings back customisation for superflat worlds, enforces drowning
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Mojang’s dedicated Minecraft squad continue to work away on overhauls to the game’s block models, menus and inventory system in line with a new API. But if Obama has time to swat bugs, so do they, and so here’s Minecraft snapshot 14w08a - the catchiest monikered Mojang project since 0x10c.
If Portal 2 co-op is main course, Ibb and Obb is dessert: a platformer that makes apple pie of Newtonian physics
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“Gravity isn’t what it used to be.”
That’s the quip at the heart of Ibb and Obb, but it’s probably not entirely fair on Gravity - who is always in the room and ready to bring the ground rushing up to meet your face should you say the wrong thing.
In this puzzle platformer, gravity’s about half there. Levels are split horizontally down the middle, and in the bottom half physics is reversed. Mario taught us to hate bottomless chasms - but where’s the worry when the floor is paved with sky?
Bobbing from one half to the other, via a ‘warp’, looks a lot like lining up two of Valve’s portals next to each other and hopping in - and the puzzles that spring from them have more than a whiff of Portal about them too.
House of shards: Eve: True Stories issue #1 now free to download
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CCP have always profited from retellings of the back channel politics and backstabbings of Eve Online - but never so directly as this. Eve: True Stories is a series of graphic novels produced by Dark Horse, based on player-driven events in the game’s history - and its first issue is free.
Thief's out next week; have a launch trailer to remind yourself
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Stealthy reboot Thifourf Thief is launching next week. Did you know that? Well you do now, because there’s a launch trailer, and it would be a little silly to make a launch trailer for a game that was months off.
As you’d expect from a game about silently going through buildings, looting everything, it contains loads of fire and violence and noise and overwrought dialogue. Thief comes out on the 25th or 28th depending on which side of the Atlantic you’ve set up shop.
Titanfall producer responds to accusations of bribery
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Previews for Titanfall have been, right from the start, overwhelmingly positive. There’s nothing particularly odd about that, since it’s a very enjoyable game. But it has a legacy. And it has backing. And that’s made people suspicious and cynical.
There are those who would suggest that Respawn has been paying off the press. Accusations of the sort that always come out whenever a Call of Duty title starts to get glowing coverage.
Titanfall producer Drew McCoy seems to be a bit sick of such accusations, and took to NeoGAF to respond.
DayZ's Dean "Rocket" Hall gets up to no good in Project Zomboid's multiplayer
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Project Zomboid - which I highly recommend - has been expanded with some very early multiplayer, and it hasn’t taken very long for people to turn feral. The zombie apocalypse is no place for making friends.
DayZ creator Dean “Rocket” Hall decided to take a break from his own post-apocalyptic zombie game for some shenanigans in Project Zomboid, but while you can take the man out of DayZ, you can’t take DayZ out of the man.
When Rocket and chums find another survivor, things escalate quickly. They decide that they’d like to lock him up (while also demanding he strips and dances for them). This was a bad idea, as you’ll see in the video below.
Jane Jensen's new adventure game, Moebius, launches on April 15th
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It’s been a long time since we’ve had an adventure game from Gabriel Knight creator Jane Jensen. But the first game from her Pinkerton Road studio, Moebius: Empire Rising, is almost upon us. It’ll be making its way onto Mac and PC on April 15th.
Moebius follows the adventures of antiquities hunter Malachi Rector as he becomes embroiled in a murder, cover-up and history-spanning conspiracy. Not altogether far removed from Gabriel Knight’s adventures, really.
Reus developer Abbey Games announces Renowned Explorers - International Society
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Reus developer Abbey Games announced it’s next project today: Renowned Explorers - International Society, a game of traveling the world in search of unexplored places, treasure and fame.
I absolutely adored Reus, though Jules wasn’t nearly as impressed, and it sounds like Renowned Explorers is going to tick all the right boxes for me, at least on paper. A mix of exploration and turn-based combat, Abbey Games has been inspired by Jules Verne, Indiana Jones, X-COM: Enemy Unknown, and Fire Emblem.
Daylight Releases On April 8th
Zombie Studios has announced that its horror title that will be powered by Unreal Engine 4, Daylight, will be released on April 8th with a suggested price of €14.99/£11.99. From what we know so far, this will be the first title powered by Epic’s new engine, so we are really looking forward to see what Zombie Studios has managed to create. Continue reading
Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar Gets Multiplayer Functionalities
Portalarium announced that a new build of Shroud of the Avatar is currently available to all backers. According to the team, players will be able to interact with other players in Shroud’s virtual world via several social systems including chat and emotes. These are some of the latest features to be unveiled as the team continues to deliver new early release content to backers of the crowd funded project every single month. Continue reading
Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty – New Screenshots
Oddworld Inhabitants and Just Add Water have released a new set of screenshots for the remake of Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty aims to stay true to its roots, while sporting overhauled visuals. The game will hit PC, as well as PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PS VITA, Wii U, Mac and Linux this Summer. Enjoy! Continue reading
The Witness Gets Gorgeous New Screenshots
Jonathan Blow has released some gorgeous new screenshots for The Witness; a puzzle adventure game that will be experienced in first-person view. While you can easily notice some low-res textures, you have to admit that its art style – that is accompanied by all these colors – is simply beautiful. The Witness is coming on PS4, PC and iOS this year. Enjoy! Continue reading
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