Monthly Archives: November 2011

Indie Galore

Posted on by
1

Both of the big indie game distribution campaigns have been in full force in the last couple of days but I will kick off with news from Indie Royale who have just launched their ‘Really Big Bundle’ which includes:

  • Really Big Sky
  • Runespell: Overture
  • Cthulhu Saves the World
  • Eufloria
  • BONUS: Breath of Death VII

All of which are available on both Desura or Steam.  At time of writing you can get all of this for less than £2.70 which is not a bad deal or if you are feeling charitable to others you can help push the price down by paying more.

Not to be beaten, the Humble Bundle team have added Dungeons of Dredmor to their previous Introversion bundle which you will recieve if you pay more than the current average ($3.99 at time of writing).  For those of you who have already paid for this bundle it will automatically be added to your account, just log back in to retrieve the code for your distribution platform of choice.

In addition to this you will also receive access to two bonus prototypes from Introversion as well as the source code to Darwinia, Multiwinia, DEFCON and Uplink!

I have to say that rightly or wrongly the Indie gaming scene never really grabbed me before but the work that Humble Bundle and Indie Royale is doing to promote them is making them almost unmissable!

CD Projekt to make new AAA Title

Posted on by
2

CD Projekt are best known for their award winning Witcher series. The Witcher 2 looked beautiful and excelled in the RPG category, they listened to the community and offered free, quick patches and free future content. Now they are talking about making a new AAA title that will be “set in a totally different universe” from the Witcher series. Having experience in making a great RPG one can only assume they’ll be making a new RPG set somewhere else. What do you think?

It’s great to see a company make a new, original IP. Publishers are so scared of investing in an original idea today that they will only invest if the developers are pitching to make a sequel to a successful game.

CD projekt are in no rush to spill details and will do so “…when the time is right.”

Sounds like something to look forward too.

Firefall: Dev Diary – Class Balance

Posted on by
Reply

More from the Firefall developers with this video focusing on the classes themselves.

Im still not entirely convinced by firefall at the moment.  I was hoping for Planetside meets Borderlands but I dont think that this is the scale that they are targeting.  Its looking more and more like Team Fortress 2 meets Unreal Tournament.

This is not a terrible thing I suppose, the environments are unique and very rich, the development team themselves are very experienced and I sure this product will be well polished but I just dont see it breaking any moulds.

Firefall…. prove me wrong.

Whisky festival winners!

Posted on by
3

After lots and lots (and lots more) research, our team did finally reach a verdict on this year’s best whiskeys. We were extremely thorough and you can believe that we put the best of our soul into it.
I think that the team member that deserves a special recognition is without a doubt Invisible Johnny, who was key into drinking the 250 whiskeys that the rest of the team could not try.
So anyway, these are the winners:

Balvenie Peated Cask 17 years, really awesome stuff.

Balvenie Peated Cask

Connemara Single Cask, catholics make whiskey too!

Connemara Single Cask

And chosen by Invisible Johnny as we all know he would because he loves Japanese Whisky, Yamakazi 18 years.

Yamakazi 18 Years

EDIT:

The surprise of the year has to go to an amazing discovery by Labchimp. Kavalan is a very, very good Taiwanese Whisky that can easily stand by the best single malts in Scotland.

Kavalan Single Malt

Steam Sale!

Posted on by
3

I hope you are ready, because the double sale is starting. We are now going to see lots of good games from the beginning of the year at very good prices. If you kept your head cool and did not buy under the influence of an impulse (or too much booze), then you should be able to find some gems. However do not go all crazy, you can miss some titles and still be able to get them, do not forget the BIG sale after Christmas.
How does the sale work? It seems to follow the format of past years. There some permanent discount prices from publisher catalogues that go from 15% to 50%. Then you have the daily deals, those have been known to go all the way to 85% discount. Obviously the proper way to deal with this is to let the whole sale pass and get to see all the daily offers and the last day, search for any catalogue discounts that you may still want and never went on a daily.
Ok, so what is cool this first day? People in the forum are interested in Orcs Must Die (yay!) and in Renegade Ops (boo!)
And Portal 2 of course. I cannot understand how anyone would not have Portal 2 yet, but if you do not, just get it, you can thank me later.

Serious Sam 3: BFE is now out!

Posted on by
2

OK so Im a little late on this one but I do have a wife and child to feed!

CroTeam have provided a new launch video to celebrate the release which has got me itching to play it.  I managed to get it installed yesterday but sadly no game time yet.

The graphics and the environments look fantastic, I just hope its maintained the same level of humour as the previous games.

Cant wait to play this co-op…  Anyone else tried it yet?

Introversion Humble Indie Bundle

Posted on by
Reply

If you haven’t heard of the Humble Indie Bundle before now, then this really is something for you to look into.

Basically the premise is that a bundle of Indie games go on sale and you can pay what you want.  You can then split the amount you are giving between the developers, charitable organisations and the bundle organisers.  If you pay more than the average amount (which is usually less than four dollars) you will get access to bonus games and prototypes.

Buying games, supporting independent development and giving to charity?  There is basically no downside!

Best of all this bundle is predominantly from the developers Introversion giving you access to the simply fantastic Uplink and Defcon games.

For more details go to their website…  do it!

http://www.humblebundle.com/

YWBL4DA tournament 2012 edition

Posted on by
8

As you know, next March we will try to have the third edition of the YWBL4DA tournament. And usually we start preparing it around this time of the year, by looking for good fun games and brainstorming ideas about the format. The first year it was all about 1 vs 1 and the second year it was about creativity.
I want to send to the community an open question:
If you have ideas, suggestions and specially games that you would like to see in next year’s tournament, drop me a line at joeduck@ywbl4da.com, on Steam or even better, send me a private message in the forum. I will be very glad to have some pointers. In terms of games, I am specifically looking for games that meet certain requirements. They have to be free, as we do not want to ask participants to buy a game. It should be a game with a clear way to know who wins or loses. If possible, we should be able to spectate or at least record the match. It should be simple to learn and fast to play. And ideally, participants should be able to compete directly against each other.
The cherry on the cake would be to find a genre that we have not yet explored.
And the most important, it should be FUN!
So there you go, keep your eyes peeled for games that could be used for the tournament and if you see them, tell me.

DC Universe Online sees 700% daily revenue increase

Posted on by
1

I have just read in PCGamer that Sony have seen a massive increase in not only their player base (I believe it was at 2000% at last count) but also their revenue.

For me DC Universe is the perfect comparison of the traditional ‘pay monthly’ subscription based MMO to the, becoming increasingly popular, free to play model.

DC Online represents a big budget game with a recognised developer/publisher dealing with a subject with comparatively wide appeal. More interestingly is that in the space of 2011 than have transitioned completely from the regular payments model to the free to play model and in this way can almost be used as a benchmark for how successful this transition can be.

I say ‘can be’ as credit has to be given to SOE here and their application of the free to pay model has been handled well. Getting the balance where the free players are given enough of the game but still encouraging some level of investment in value without over rewarding paying players and effecting the balance of the game is the real challenge facing any developer considering this switch. Many have already tried and failed with one of the more recent victims being the Lego MMO.

The point that interests me the most however is, is there a future for games wanting to charge a traditional model? Both the Starwars MMO and World of Warcraft follow this model and both are, or in the case of one of these, have the potential to be, massive releases.

2012 is going to see the release of a lot of new games that will fall into the MMO mould and will be competing for your cash, in the same way that DC Universe has successfully transitioned, I dont think it will be long before you see these last great releases make the change to free to play as well.