Tango Fiesta update brings bosses with the best names
Dr Fahrenheit is the best villain name I’ve heard this month.
He’s just one of the five new bosses added to Tango Fiesta in its latest update. It’s not just new bosses, though. Spilt Milk have thrown in four new weapons, six new enemy types, and a whole new game world.
It’s a massive update to the game that pits you against AI and other players in this 80s action movie-inspired arena shooter.
Gun Monkeys giveaway at its peak was “giving away over 100,000 keys per hour”
Size Five Games recently giveaway 1 million copies of their brilliant two player dueller Gun Monkeys. Dveloper Dan Marshall’s revealed a couple of his findings from the event. For instance, at its peak he says they were “giving away over 100,000 keys per hour.”
But there’s more than that.
Battle.net engineer joins Stardock to build new cloud service Tachyon
Stardock are continuing to build an awful amount of infrastructure for their next generation of games. Not content with moving their games over to 64-bit, or financing a new studio to produce a dedicated engine for strategy gaming, Stardock are now working on creating their own cloud-based service. To build it, they’ve brought in Adrian Luff, a former Battle.net engineer with 17 years’ experience at Blizzard.
Online services and “connected gaming” might smack of DRM by another name, but Luff is emphatic that this is not the case.
“We are absolutely not changing our stand on DRM. In fact one of our design goals is to avoid any dependency between the single player game and Tachyon,” Luff said.
Inclusion in The Sims 4: "You don't want to trivialize somebody's life by making it a gameplay feature"
Maxis’ massive dollhouse, The Sims, might sugar coat life, but it still tries to present it in an inclusive way. The inmates sims can embark on same sex relationships, building a family is more representative of reality than the idealised nuclear family, and they can be victims of their emotions, wallowing in depression or having their day spoiled by stress.
But, speaking with Polygon, associate producer Graham Nardone said that the studio tries to strike a balance between being fun and respectful. They’re still trying to perfect that balance, which is why, so far, The Sims - including the upcoming The Sims 4 - has not allowed players to create characters who aren’t either male or female. And it’s also why grim subjects like death through depression have not been broached.
Thailand's military government stops Tropico 5 release: "This does sound like it could have come from one of El Presidente’s own edicts"
Kalypso Media has confirmed, today, that Tropico 5 has been refused distribution in Thailand. The Board of Film and Video Censors said that it could not be released, because “some contents of the game are not appropriate for the current situation”. The board did not mention what content was inappropriate, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out.
In May this year, The Royal Thai Army declared martial law, and then announced that it was a coup. Curfews were put in place, people were rounded up and political gatherings were banned. Though tongue-in-cheek, Tropico 5 is a political simulator, where tyrannical regimes can be built and overthrown. It probably cut too close to the bone.
Second extinction: The Stomping Land developer SuperCrit goes quiet
Trust is important when it comes to Kickstarter and early access titles. People are spending money on intangible things and proofs of concept; hopes, really. I think we’ve been traveling down this road for long enough to know that a finished game isn’t always going to appear. There’s an element of risk inherent in the model. But there’s still an expectation of communication and transparency. It’s slowly being eroded.
Last year, dinosaur survival romp, The Stomping Land, made $114,060 on Kickstarter. On May 30th, an Early Access version was released on Steam, costing £18.99/$24.99. Since its alpha launch, there’s been one update. That was back on June 6th. Since then, the developer SuperCrit has gone quiet. Eerily quiet.
The Fullbright Company is now just Fullbright; new game in the works
Everyone knows The Fullbright Company - creators of Gone Home - as Fullbright. So the developer has pulled a Cher, and is now officially just Fullbright. New name, a new logo too - what’s all this about then? Well, the changes come about at the same time as Fullbright’s announcement that it's working on a new game, and it’s on the look out for a programmer and an animator.
Slap your eyes on Warlords of Draenor's cinematic trailer on August 14th; launch date reveal planned, too
I suppose when you’ve got a customer base as large as Blizzard and World of Warcraft’s, then you don’t just announce the launch date for an expansion in a press release. No, you make an event out of it.
On August 14th, at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, Blizzard will be premiering the Warlords of Draenor cinematic trailer and revealing the launch date for the fifth expansion. I confess that I’m more excited about the trailer - a rarity - because WoW cinematics are, as a rule, a treat.
@TheVoxelman on twitter
Essay Pro