Revolutionary: Unrest Playable At Rezzed
By Adam Smith on March 3rd, 2014 at 3:00 pm.
We live in topsy-turvy times. In the recent past, it was illegal to call something a ‘game’ unless it included at least one dungeon and seven dragons. Then Skyrim contained infinite dragons and the entire gaming market almost crashed because of reptilian boss creature oversaturation. Thankfully, the industry was saved when audiences realised that they didn’t need dragons in their games and might, in fact, prefer chickens. Let’s face it, you never see a Dixie Dragon or a KFD.
Kickstarter success Unrest does contain Naga, which are a bit like dragons, but it’s also a tale of ordinary people, set in an Indian city undergoing a revolution. It’ll be playable at Rezzed and it sounds fascinating.
Monster Pockets: Toby’s Island
By Adam Smith on March 3rd, 2014 at 6:00 pm.
Toby’s Island is currently seeking $20,000 CAD on Kickstarter and has managed to raise a tenth of that total in a couple of days. It’s easy to see why early pledges have been forthcoming because the pitch suggests that this is a game that includes fishing and farming. Toby is a boy who collects monsters so that those monsters can fight other monsters. That sounds a little bit like a game by Uncle Nintendo. But there’s more. Toby also grows food and assists in the construction and expansion of a small settlement. That sounds like another one of Uncle Nintendo’s favourite riffs those there console series that I incorrectly assumed was Nintendo owned. The two-person development team hope to build on the concepts that have inspired them, with random events, minigames and a ‘multi evolution path’.
Time To Dive Into: Sea Of Stars
By Adam Smith on March 3rd, 2014 at 8:00 pm.
My excuse for not spotting the latest video of Infinite Space 3: Sea of Stars is a worthy one. I’ve been too busy playing Out There on my Android CleverPhone. Like the Infinite Space series, it’s a mysterious RPG that drops the player in space, surrounded by the unknown. You should try it and I shall try to find out if it’s still coming to PC, as was originally planned. Enough of that for now though because the new video for Sea Of Stars contains plenty of information to drool over, including diplomacy, alien life and homeworld shipyards. The beta release is planned for the end of March.
The Lighthouse Customer: Under the Ocean
By Christopher Livingston on March 3rd, 2014 at 9:00 pm.
Each Monday, Chris Livingston visits an early access game and reports back with stories about whatever he finds inside. This week, island survival in Under the Ocean.
Where tropical trees once stood, only stumps remain. Beaches are covered with the corpses of crabs, caves littered with the shattered remnants of boulders. An accidental fire burns, warming no one, near a crate stuffed with forgotten items. This island was once beautiful, serene, a paradise. Then I arrived, bringing the apocalypse with me. The apocalypse called crafting. And it all began because I wanted to eat a chicken.
Read the rest of this entry »
Citybound Aims To Be What We Wanted From SimCity
By Nathan Grayson on March 4th, 2014 at 10:00 am.
Beneath a mess of half-baked systems and massively detrimental online requirements, SimCity actually had some pretty cool ideas. Simulation of individual people and entities? Community options for those who want them? Curved roads? All interesting stuff on paper. Unfortunately, the reality of Maxis’ latest city builder failed (rather miserably) to live up to those promises, and Maxis has been struggling to build something workable from the pieces ever since. Enter Citybound. Its goal? To construct a city sim from the ground-up with a focus on single-player, out-of-the-not-a-box moddability, and simulating a truly sizable geographical region – not an itsy bitsy ant hill town. Also curved roads. Always curved roads.
@TheVoxelman on twitter
Essay Pro
