Pinball Wizards And Warriors: Rollers Of The Realm
By Adam Smith on August 4th, 2014 at 10:00 am.
I spent most of the weekend lying in bed with a maelstrom in my innards, feeling sorry for myself and occasionally checking the news on a laptop, which made me feel sorry for everyone else in the world instead. To bring the misery back home, I’d occasionally rewatch the trailer for Rollers Of The Realm, a fantasy RPG in the guise of a pinball game. It’s like a modern Devil’s Crush, a more fleshed out Epic Quest (Zen Pinball 2) or a less demanding take on Odama’s battleballs. The reason Rollers brought about bouts of despair is that I thought it was a Playstation exclusive. Clearly I was too weary to spy the Steam logo in the corner of the screen, which leapt out at me this morning. Trailer below.
Freeware Garden: Ghost Wheel?
By Konstantinos Dimopoulos on August 4th, 2014 at 11:00 am.
Freeware Garden searches the corners of the internet to highlight one free game every day.
Ghost Wheel? is not an oddly named game, but it is an odd theme for a game jam. The result is a downloadable, freeware bundle sporting nine games, each starring ghosts and wheels in different formations.
Walk below to find out what they are called (and what they are all about).
The Placing Of Products: Middle Earth – Shadows Of Mordor
By Adam Smith on August 4th, 2014 at 12:00 pm.
While watching the latest trailer for Middle Earth: God of War-dor, I realised that I’d started to think of the Lord of the Rings references as a sort of product placement. There’s a splatter of blood, a decapitation, a roaring of monsters, and then the narrator mentions something about Sauron. It’s branded decapitation, y’see. In the latest video, a ranger uses ‘wraith’ powers to see into the minds of his enemies, seeking their weaknesses and fears. It seems like a perfect opportunity for more product placement, which is something I’d like to encourage in games as in films. The industry needs a new pair of shoes, after all.
First-Person Sporter: Game On For Epigenesis
By Alice O'Connor on August 4th, 2014 at 4:00 pm.
Most current sports were designed around what a couple of blokes could get up to in a field with a ball and, optionally, a few bits of wood. But what about futuresports, for the future when humanity is all glimmering cyberpeople frolicking amongst the stars and definitely not e.g. lost and desperate people fighting over scraps in a world we willingly tore apart? In the future we won’t think twice about building ballgame rules around things like gravity cannons and genetically-engineered plants.
That’s the stuff Epigenesis is dabbling in, a first-person futuresport which hit v1.0 and came out of Early Access on Friday. I bet Futuresports will do Early Access and everything too.
Video: Slowly Starving To Death In Eidolon
By John Walker on August 4th, 2014 at 5:00 pm.
The extremely pretty Eidolon is out now – an explore-them-up set in a future Washington that has been reclaimed by Nature. Unquestionably looking like Shelter meets Proteus, it plays differently to both, this game primarily a survival simulator. However, with no information at all, including that bit, I started playing and recorded my efforts. You can watch them below.
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