Just one year after the launch of the analog land-grab board game, Small World, Days of Wonder released Small World for iPad, bringing the fantastically fun board game to the digital world. Soon after, the gaming company brought Ticket To Ride to the iOS platform, cementing its claim to best digital version of an actual board game, ever (ok, maybe that’s just me).
Secretly, however, Days of Wonder tasked a small group of developers with coming up with a bigger, better sequel to Small World. They’re now on Kickstarter, almost funded, and ready to bring the game to Android, iOS, and even Steam with the funds from the crowd-sourcing website.
"Sorry buster! No can do. I'll just break free, kick-butt, and be on my way..."
3D Realms (Max Payne, Duke Nukem) and Intercepter Entertainment (Rise of the Triad) announced today the upcoming release of Duke Nukem II for iOS. Coming in April 2013, Duke Nukem II lets you guide a 2D Duke of mayhem across 32 classic levels from the original game, blowing the crap out of everything that gets in the way.
You pay what you want for three cross-platform, DRM-free games that will keep you gaming for hours on end including: The Journey Down, Aztaka, and iBomber Defense, and if you pay more than the average price, you’ll also receive Spades of Time, SpaceChem, and Cubemen.
Your purchase will also do some good. We’ve chosen three charities, Child’s Play Charity, World Wildlife Fund, and Creative Commons, that we believe make a significant positive impact across the globe. 10% of your entire purchase will go to help one of three charities of your choice: Child’s Play Charity, World Wildlife Fund, and Creative Commons. You get to help choose which charity raises the most!
You may have figured that the rhythm game genre was finished, what with nary a Rockband, Tap Tap Revenge, or Guitar Hero game to grace the App Store in recent months.
You’d have figured wrong, at least as far as the devs behind updated iOS game, Duck & Roll, are concerned. WildFactor released Duck and Roll last November at a premium price. We can only assume that after several price drops and price increases, they weren’t finding much success.
Luckily, free games can attract an audience. Even more luckily, this one is pretty darn fun.
The Homeworld series, launched in 1999 by Relic Entertainment and Sierra Entertainment, is considered by many to be the birth of the modern 3D real time strategy game. Homeworld: Cataclysm was released the following year, with Homeworld 2 following in 2003.
Today, development house teamPixel wants to license the Homeworld franchise, liberating it from the THQ bankruptcy, and create two new games: Homeworld Touch, a remake of the Homeworld game with a new, modern, touchscreen interface for iOS and Andriod, and Homeworld 3 for Mac and PC, to extend the game to new frontiers and new audiences. They’d also like to bring the older, legacy Homeworld games to Steam and Good Old Games. All they need is your support with their Kickstarter project.
The Blockheads is a fantastic iOS game that captures so much of the Minecraft experience, it’s a must play for any but the most jaded of iOS gamers.
It updated today, with all sorts of great stuff. You can now warp in up to four players, twice the two previously available. My kids and I are gonna have a ton of fun with this one. You can find fish in the sea, craft a fishing rod to catch them, and hopefully not get eaten by sharks there, either. Also, there’s a way to make tin foil, which lets you roast those fish on a campfire, canceling out the most hunger possible in game. Or, you know, make a tin foil hat.
Sometimes, when Friday rolls around, it’s all we can do to relax. I like to play games on my iPhone and iPad to chill a bit at the end of a long work week. Today, I spent some time with brain-teasing puzzle game, Sporos. It’s got a gentle vibe, calming electronica music, and a ton of challenging puzzles to keep your brain meats engaged and your anxiety level low. I’m enjoying it, and you just might, too.
The sequel to classic puzzler/adventure game, The 7th Guest, is currently in development for iOS, Mac, Android, and Windows PC, according to Polygon, who spoke with Trilobyte Games’ co-founder, Charlie McHenry, today. The game should feature the atmospheric horror and clever puzzles that the series, which includes The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, is known for. The 7th Guest 3 will be set in the Stauf Mansion, as well, and should be in real-time 3D, instead of that pre-rendered stuff of the past. Whew.
Everyone’s favorite recalcitrant Scottish blogger, programmer and whisky drinker Matt “Legend” Gemmel has made available these fantastic iPhone 5 wallpapers, ready for your retro-tendo reminiscences.
Matt made the set of five tall-papers (what I somewhat annoyingly just decided to call the iPhone 5’s tall wallpapers) to commemorate his new-found love of Nintendo gaming on the Mac.
If I didn’t have you at Robot, Pirate, or Robot-Pirate, you might as well stop reading now. Well, maybe if MMO didn’t get you? Ah, what the heck, read on and see what 6waves Lolapps has in store for you on your iPhone and iPad.
I’m sitting here using an amazing pair of headphones while I work: the SteelSeries Flux wired headset. Cult of Mac put these in our Awesome 2012 Advent Calendar this past holiday season, and for good reason. They’re superb headphones, very portable, easy on the ears, and have some great advanced features, like detachable cords and a second headphone jack on the headset itself to share your music with a friend.
Today, then, SteelSeries and EA announced the Real Racing 3 Gaming Headset, which is based on the very same Flux headset, to reproduce the racing sounds and over-the-top dub step soundtrack in Real Racing 3, released in the US App Store today, with much higher fidelity than any standard earbuds you might get from, say, Apple.
We got it wrong last week, when we thought a cryptic Disney teaser was a clue to something we’ve been salivating over for a few months: the arrival of Android and iOS at Disney’s Infinity platform.
Instead, Disney has released a beautiful Toy Story 3D puzzler game for iOS and Android; and even though it’s not exactly what we’ve been waiting for, it still looks really freaking cool.
A couple of weeks ago, 11 bit studios (Anomaly Warzone Earth, Anomaly Korea) asked us all to pre-order its next game at half price, sight unseen. Well, the time has come to lift the curtain on that mystery game.
Anomaly 2 is planned for a Q2 2013 release on Mac, PC and Linux, bringing the sci-fi strategy series started on iOS to desktop computers for the first time. Along with the announcement, the development team has released a preview trailer (above) and developer diary, the latter of which is a very honest look at what it takes to make an independent game these days.
Well, it may be past the officially announced February 22 date, but Canadian game developer Beamdog just sent us an email announcing the availability of Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition for OS X. You can buy it now via the Beamdog site, or wait for the Mac App Store version, which the devs promise is coming soon.
Yep, note the date at the end of that trailer above? It’s February 25 right now. And, as such, you can grab yourself a copy of Awesome Games Studio’s latest indie game release, Yet Another Zombie Defense, on the App Store today for a mere $0.99, half off the regular $1.99 price. Don’t wait too long, though, as this remake of the popular XBox Live Indie Game will only be on sale for a week.
Rogue-like puzzling, physics-based combat, and more!
Delver’s Drop is an upcoming 2D physics puzzler role-playing game (RPG) with strong visual and gameplay inspiration from NES-era games like A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana. However, it’s also a fully modern game that uses the latest in gaming technologies. The developers created a Kickstarter project to finish this labor of love, and to be able to bring it to Mac, PC, and Linux platforms, with some hopeful plans to be able to bring the game to iOS and Android in the future, and in another Kickstarter campaign.
We told you that LEGO The Lord of the Rings was coming out this week, but if you were waiting for it to show up on Steam, you might be as disappointed as I was when I went to check it out tonight. The Steam store entry for the video game only shows PC compatibility, making my poor Mac-loving head sad.
Luckily, though, you can purchase LEGO The Lord of the Rings via the Mac Game Store as well as directly from Feral Interactive, the studio that ported the game to Mac in the first place, for the same $30 as it would cost you on Steam.
Maybe you’ve never played what is, inarguably, the best series of empire-building games ever created, and want to see what all the fuss is about. Or maybe you’ve been meaning to try that Vikings expansion pack. If any of the above fit, now is the time: Aspyr has cut the prices of all their Civilization titles by half to coincide with the release of the Civilization V: Gold Edition.
About a month ago, right after the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, Disney held a small, invitation-only press conference in Los Angeles where they revealed their ambitious, stunning new cross-platform Infinity game universe. They invited us, of course. Only problem was, Infinity had practically nothing to do with anything Apple.
After all the fanfare, when the event was almost over, I pulled aside one of the Disney folks and asked why the heck they’d invited me; turns out iOS is why I was there, and that they had a big mobile-related announcement coming — and this picture just might be its enigmatic messenger.
With Nintendo’s Wii U and Microsoft’s Smart Glass initiatives, it’s not surprising that Sony would find their own second screen solution, this one via a PlayStation app, planned for both iOS and Android devices. The PlayStation App will allow gamers playing Sony’s newly announced PlayStation 4 gaming console to look at in-game maps, buy games from the PlayStation Store while on the go, or watch other gamers play on their own PS4s.
With only five days left in their Kickstarter project, the team behind Vendetta Online would like to get your support. This cross platform massively multiplayer online space game is currently available for the Mac and other platforms, but really wants to get onto the iPad.
The Kickstarter project is looking to raise $100,000 dramatically expand the existing game and create it on the iPad, but they currently only have $38,000 pledged toward that goal.
We’ve got lots of love for the LEGO series games. They often have an uncanny ability to capture the feel of their parent titles — in a way that’s cuter than a basketful of kittens, but much more fun. The Lord of the Rings is the latest title to join the collection, and it’s coming to OS X next week.
The Mac Game Store knows your love for Mac games. So much so, that it’s putting a ton of them up for sale this weekend, all in the name of Valentine’s Day. While we’re not above taking a crack or two at the commercialism of V-Day, we’re not about to look this gift (horse) in the mouth, either.
It looks like there are over 150 games on sale in the Mac Game Store app, the portal for MGS that’s also available on the Mac Game Store website. Most of the games seem to be going for 30 to 50 percent off, which isn’t a bad discount, really.
Some of the standout titles include Amnesia: The Dark Descent for half off at $10, the same price and discount as Assassin’s Creed 2. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood can be had for $15, while the deluxe edition with all the DLC trimmings will run you a tidy $20, half off the regular price. Batman Arkham Asylum is similarly $15, and Call of Duty: Black Ops is now going for a wallet-friendly $25. Driver: San Francisco is a healthy 67% off at ten bucks, and Duke Nukem Forever has the honor of being the full 75% off, coming in at $5.
All in all, with so many Mac games to choose from, you’re bound to find something you like, or something you’re willing to toss a few bucks at. The sale lasts through Sunday, so head on over to the Mac Game Store and scroll through them all.
11Bit Studios has released a couple of fantastic iOS games, Anomaly Warzone Earth and the follow up Anomaly Korea. Now, however, they’re setting their sights on the desktop gaming scene with a new secret game that they won’t even tell you about. Oh, and they’ll let you pre-order it, without even knowing what it is or what it’s about, for $7.49, which is half off the expected $14.99 they’ll release the game for on Steam sometime between March and June.
Intrigued? The developers hope you are, as they’ll only make this offer until February 28th, when they actually announce the game. If you pick it up now for $7.49, you’ll get a Steam code for the game when it comes out sometime in Q2 of this year, as well as a code for the multiplayer beta sometime near the end of March.
That’s right — along with the news today of the Hammerlock DLC release, Aspyr announced that Borderlands 2has gone cross-platform, meaning you can now play the game online with those who own the PC version of the game.
This is a pretty big deal, since there simply aren’t nearly as many Mac players as there are on Windows machines, and forming parties with other players adds a huge chunk of fun to the hybrid RPG/first-person shooter.
