gaming - page 34

The folks at Industrial Toys have been busy. Their upcoming scifi first-person-shooter game continues to garner advance praise and anticipation from everyone, with good reason. The CEO of Industrial Toys is none other than Bungie (Halo) co-founder, Alex Seropian, and the team is an all-star cast of amazing talent working together to bring a core gaming experience to iPads this summer (we hope).

With all of that work in progress, the team somehow found time to make a brand new, amazing interactive graphic novel that contains not only the backstory to the game, but a ton of choices to make and characters to meet. These choices, and which characters you befriend, will have lasting effects in the actual game when it comes out later this season.

Pretty slick stuff, but the best part? This graphic novel is written by none other than John Scalzi (Old Man’s War, Redshirts) and illustrated by Mike Choi (Marvel Comics). You really need to check this thing out.

Today sees the release of the Mac version of Civilization V’s Brave New World, the original title’s second expansion pack, following last year’s Gods and Kings expansion.

And it’s being released right alongside its PC version twin, also released today — which means multiplayer is gleefully cross-platform.

Spiderweb Software is an independent game developer based in Seattle. It’s been in operation since 1993, when it released its first game, Exile: Escape from the Pit, an old school RPG with tons of plot, dialogue, and fantasy storytelling.

Now in its twentieth year, Spiderweb continues the indie role playing game genre it’s been developing for the past two decades by releasing its twenty-first game, Avadon 2: The Corruption.

You know what the world needs? More free energy sources. Also? We need more games with monkeys in.

Luckily, Gun Monkeys, the new platformer-shooter from Size Five Games, has both.

Lovingly narrated by British actor Kevin Eldon, Gun Monkeys involves a plot wherein you’ll need to send a bunch of monkeys to the distant future where things are super dangerous yet also incredibly full of free energy. To get the energy, you’ll need to send the monkeys. It’s that simple.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown, inarguably the best turn-based, squad-level strategy game on the Mac, is now available from the Steam store — with some big differences from its Mac Store sibling.

One of our picks for the top games of 2012 is The Walking Dead, Telltale Games’ brilliant video game translation of the award-winning comic book and TV show.

It’s getting a sequel, of sorts, in the form of The Walking Dead: 400 Days, a transitional piece between Seasons one and two of The Walking Dead game proper.

Today, IGN reported that 400 Days is indeed headed our way, with a Mac port slated for July 3rd, with only a short wait for an iOS version on July 11.

Egadz is a glitch musician, using video game sounds and samples to create original electronica music. He’s been at it for a while, with a number of releases–some from as far back as 2002–to his credit.

Today, however, Egadz has released an mobile game, with a version on Android, iOS, and Windows 8, based on his new single, “Ghosts,” the video of which can be seen below.

The first update for Warner Bros’ Man of Steel iOS game is here, and it’s got new story content and a new Superman suit to purchase. The new Skin suit from Krypton gives Kal-El a boost to his power, health, and defense. No more kneeling before Zod!

The game itself is a 3D action brawler with gesture-based combat and cinematic cut scenes, and follows the storyline of the movie, Man Of Steel.

Seriously, I’m kind of tired of playing the typical RPG in which I take on the role of the savior of the world. This kind of power fantasy, wish fulfillment story has its place, but boy would it be nice if we could see some different stories out there.

The developers behind Kickstarter project, Unrest, must have felt the same way, as their new online RPG is set in ancient India, for one thing (not a Tolkeinesque forest complete with Orcs and Elves), and will let you play as the ordinary folk struggling to maintain their freedom, safety, peace, and keep their children fed and happy.

World of Warcraft, this isn’t.

If you haven’t played Torchlight, yet, you’re missing out. It’s essentially a Diablo-style dungeon crawling hack n slash game, which is no surprise considering that Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, co-designers of Diablo and Diablo II, were on the team that made it.

Today, and for the next 48 hours, Torchlight is free to download and own on GoG.com, formerly known as Good Old Games, one of the best ways to get older games for your Mac without any digital rights management (DRM) mess.

That’s some seriously worth it for a download, but wait, there’s more!

This somewhat blurry image of a game controller built by Logitech is believed to be one of the first Apple-approved controllers for iOS 7 that will join the “Made for iPhone” program. It’s built for the iPhone 5, and it’s been designed to meet Apple’s new guidelines for Mac and iOS game controllers.

This is your best chance to grab the best turn-based, world-conquering strategy game on the Mac at the best price.

To coincide with the announced availability date of Civilization 5’s second expansion pack, Brave New World — which will be out Jul 9 — all Civ 5 games and DLC have had their prices cut 75 percent for the weekend. That means the original game is just $10; the Gold Edition game — which includes everything Civ 5 released up to this point including all DLC and the first expansion pack, Gods and Kings — is just $12.50.

Jason Citron is a veteran of both the console and gaming space, involved with developing Double Fine’s Brutal Legend in 2006, and then releasing one of the first hit iOS games in the early, heady days of the iOS App store, a match-three puzzle game with a twist, Aurora Feint. Soon after, he created OpenFeint, which was the de facto leaderboard and multiplayer matching system for Apple mobile devices long before Game Center.

After OpenFeint was sold to Japanese social-gaming company, GREE, in April of 2011, Jason headed out to engage his passion for video game development once again with a new company, Hammer & Chisel, and a new game, announced today, called Fates Forever, an iPad-only massively online battle arena (MOBA) game.

Citron took some time out of a busy schedule to talk to Cult of Mac about the new game, it’s mechanics and business strategy, and his own take on what iPad games should be.

Zynga has reportedly closed down Draw Something studio OMGPOP and laid off all of its staff just 14 months after it was acquired in a $180 million deal. OMGPOP released its Draw Something sequel back in April, but it appears it wasn’t the success the company hoped it would be.

I was browsing around the internet, looking for a fun, inexpensive game to play on my Mac, and maybe pass along to you Cult of Mac readers for your weekend fun. I found Tower Wars, a fairly deep tower offense and defense title, and it seemed to be a nice price at eight dollars.

Then I went over to the Steam store and found it going for 40 percent off, making this already inexpensive Mac game even cheaper at $4.79.

So, if you’ve got five bucks, some time to spare, and you like tower defense (and offense), you might want to grab yourself a copy, too.

Tired of slingshotting those angry birds at ever-more preposterous structures build by pigs? Bored with trying to best your friends using nothing more than words?

Bloom Box is a new, cutesy puzzle game from Nexx Studio (Pig Shot, Glow Puzzle) where you’ll need to set up chain reactions to explode the aforementioned boxes, make flowers bloom, and collect all the stars in each level.

Following the launch of its new cheaper iPod touch this morning, Apple has confirmed that it has now sold more than 100 million units of the iPod touch since its introduction back in 2007. That makes it one of the Cupertino company’s most popular products to date.

Real Racing 3, the free-to-play racing game from EA and Firemonkeys, has a new update that is now live in both the App Store and Google Play for iOS and supported Android devices.

The update brings a new Middle Eastern track, the Dubai Autodrome, to twilight and daytime races with six new track layouts. Lexus is now represented in the game, allowing you to test your racing skills with the Lexus IS-F or the Lexus LFA.

God games tend to be pretty similar: build a little city, tell the inhabitants what to do, and watch them do it. Not in this game, though.

Skyward Collapse is a fantastic mashup of a 4X strategy game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) with a god-game (Spore, Black & White, Civilization). Your task is to create and populate a floating continent called Liminith. You get to create gods, creatures, and artifacts from Norse and Greek myth, and keep them from killing each other off until you’re summoned home by The Master. This will definitely be harder than it sounds.

I’m a long time Risk player, with a penchant for grabbing up Australia or South America first, then blockading the heck out of them while I focus my expansion to the rest of the map from these well-fortified positions.

While there is a fantastic Risk game for the iPhone, there’s not one for the Mac, let alone one that plays on both platforms. Checking out Conquist 2, then, a Risk-style conquer the world game, seems like a no brainer, since you can purchase it for Mac and/or iOS, making it the perfect cross platform multiplayer game for fans of Risk.

Check it out.

Known for its collectible card and board game business, Cryptozoic Entertainment put its latest creation, a free-to-play digital collectible card game named HEX, up on Kickstarter with an initial goal of $300,000.

As of today, with 17 days left to go in the full fund raising time period, the project has garnered over $970,000. That’s a pretty good pledge amount right there.

HEX is being billed as an massively multiplayer online (MMO) trading card game for Mac and PC, with the deep strategic game play of a collectible card game mashed up with the social and roleplaying aspects of an MMO, all on your Mac, with dungeons, quests, story lines, advanced AI, and–of course–beautifully illustrated card decks to collect, purchase, and use to claim dominion over your opponents.

Crescent Moon Games, known for its quality iOS gaming work (Aralon: Sword and Shadow, Dig!), has just released it’s well-regarded iOS game, Ravensword: Shadowlands, for Mac OS X.

Apple gave Ravensword: Shadowlands the Editor’s Choice designation for the iPad version, which can still be purchased for $7 on the iTunes App Store. The Mac OS X Version, enhanced with graphical upgrades like realtime shadows, bloom effects, and high resolution textures and environment models, is in the Mac App Store right now for $13, which seems like a pretty decent deal.

Like an odd cross between Sudoku and a collectible card game, Star Trek Rivals, from Elephant Mouse Games, is out for iOS on the App Store to capture your attention today, on the release date of Star Trek: Into Darkness (have you gotten your tickets, yet?).

The game is free, has all your Star Trek reboot characters in it, and is pretty simple to learn, but hard to master. It plays asynchronously, and you can play a bunch of games at once. Did I mention it’s made out of Star Trek? What’s not to like?

https://youtu.be/Vi0HhR-PmQE

Polish-based Infinite Dreams has seen pretty sizable success with their iOS games. Can Knockdown, a physics game that gives the player a row of balls with which to virtually smash stacks of cans, is so popular that the second game in the series (Can Knockdown 2) was even super-sized into a coin-op arcade game.

Now the third game in the series has arrived for iPad and iPhone, Can Knockdown 3. And just like its predecessors, it’s beautifully engineered, gobs of fun and horribly, horribly addictive.

Handheld games consoles like the Nintendo 3DS and the Sony PlayStation Vita have long been suffering at the hands of smartphones and tablets. But the latest data from IDC and App Annie should give handheld game developers — including Nintendo — something to really think about.

While consumer spending on Android and iOS continued to rise during the first quarter of 2013, it fell considerably on handhelds.