Casual Game News

As I acknowledge in the oh so clever headline of this post, 10000000 (that’s seven zeroes) is a mutt of a game. More to the point, however, it also appears to be a rather nomadic one. After spending some time on iOS, Mac, and PC, the fast-paced puzzler is making its way to Android and Linux this Thursday. Hope you're ready to match some threes!

With The Cave now out on virtual shelves everywhere, creator Ron Gilbert has decided it's time to depart from Double Fine Productions. While that's something of a bummer, the good news is that he plans to remain in the game industry. Maybe he'll even seek out a real-life sentient cave and begin developing games inside of it!

We spend a lot of time looking at games here at Gamezebo. You’d expect as much – heck, it’s in our name! But have you ever wondered which games the Gamezebo staff are really passionate about? The ones we can’t personally wait to get our hands on?

Indie Royale’s Debut Bundle was tailor-made for people who adore shiny new things. Some of the games in it are completely new, others are the first releases from developers, and others yet are debuting on a new platform. Take that, older games!

You’ve played the arcade classic Breakout before, but you probably haven’t played a version of it that spans several 3D levels and forces you to negotiate your way around countless tricks and traps. You definitely haven’t played a version of the game that calls on you and your paddle to save the world from an alien virus. It’s time to embrace your new responsibility and step up to the challenge of Caromble!, a Breakout/pinball cross-breed being developed for PC, Linux, and Mac and (hopefully) distributed on Steam. All it needs is your Greenlight vote.

Hi there! I'm Adam Langridge (@ajlangridge) and I'm a game maker on Polycraft here at Wonderstruck.

In case you missed our previous developer diary, Polycraft is a new real-time strategy game with an action heart! Your hero has been washed up on the beach of a mysterious island. Rescued by a Wildling, you’re tasked with building a new life and defending it from the Ferals that seek to destroy it.

Double Fine has revealed Dropchord, a "music-driven score challenge" game coming soon to iOS and PC. While they didn’t divulge any details about how the game is played, they made sure to throw in some snazzy screenshots of what it will look like.  I wish I could tell you whether or not I included said screenshots in this post, but that would be a huge spoiler.

A lot of game developers use randomness to add variety to their creations. With Crayon Chronicles from Outer Grid Games, that randomness is taken to the extreme. Currently seeking a final funding push on Kickstarter, the creative action RPG is built around the idea of a randomly generated world where everything is new each time you play. Just like a kid playing with crayons on the living room floor, each time you sit down you never know what will happen!

There must be some really crafty birds working in the marketing department at Rovio.  The highlight of this week’s sales roundup is, without a doubt, Angry Birds.  …but should it be?  The game has been out for more than three years, and has sold (doing math… doing math…) a kajillion copies already.  If you ask me, I say it’s a trick.  What better way to get free publicity then to give away a game that EVERYBODY already owns?!?!

Rayman Jungle Run, Ubisoft’s award-winning mobile take on the Rayman Origins reboot, has just crashed landed into the Windows Store, presumably setting off burglar alarms and getting glass everywhere. This new version of the game is compatible with PCs and Surface tablets running either Windows 8 or Microsoft’s mobile-centric operating system, Windows RT. Like its Android and iOS equivalents, the app goes for $2.99.

If there’s one thing we enjoy more than awesome games, it’s awesome games available for the low price of free. As such, you can probably imagine how excited we were when we saw the almighty Angry Birds go free earlier today on iOS (as well as our subsequent disappointment when we realized we already owned it).

It’s not easy to make your way to Oz (its public transportation is made entirely of tornadoes and is terribly unreliable as a result), which is why Disney is bringing Oz to you. This week, some of Disney’s social games are getting an update to reflect the theatrical release of Oz The Great and Powerful. Players will be able to access lots of fashions and accessories from the home of the Yellow Brick Road.

With Easter right around the corner, it’s no surprise that my sweet tooth has already started craving things like chocolate bunnies and Cadbury eggs. One of my favorite Easter treats has always been those sugary marshmallow Peeps, which I tend to eat every year until I get a stomachache, and then just keep on eating more. But this holiday season, we’ll see a special new treat that combines two of the most addictive substances known on Earth: Peeps and Minecraft.

Why have a stuffy, grid-based defense game when you can put all the action on back of a gigantic dinosaur-like creature? Roaming Fortress does precisely that, combining action and strategy elements in a 2D sidescrolling game of conquer and defend. Roaming Fortress features several dozen levels split between three unique maps, and several more are already in the works. The game is currently available for iPad 2 and Android tablets, but developer YETi CGI is promising some nice visual and interface upgrades for the PC release if the Greenlight project goes through.

We cover plenty of new games here at Gamezebo every week, but the number of games we’ve already covered that show up on new platforms?  It’s staggering.  This Wednesday and every Wednesday, Gamezebo is rounding up the games that aren’t quite new, but might be new to you depending on your platform of choice.  And who doesn't love new(ish) games?

Humble Bundle for Android 5 is officially live, and it’s pretty much everything an Android user could hope for. It’s worth noting, however, that all the games featured in it are also playable on Mac, PC, and Linux. Hooray for options!

There’s no denying the rise of digital gaming these days. With last month’s reveal of Sony’s PlayStation 4, we saw a huge emphasis on digital downloads and streaming capabilities, with instant downloads of games and other nifty cyber features. But now we have some real numbers from one of gaming’s biggest retail publishers to reinforce the fact that digital gaming is here to stay. SuperData Research is reporting that Electronic Arts’ digital revenue is expected to overtake their physical game sales by the end of 2013, which would be a first for one of the big retail video game publishers.

After expanding the vocabularies of Mac and iOS users everwhere, Zach Gage’s SpellTower is revving up to offer the same help to Android users this Thursday. Now’s the time to throw away all those ratty thesauruses!

If you’re not familiar with the name Rumble Entertainment yet, you soon will be.  The company has just launched KingsRoad, a game that does the seemingly impossible: it brings download-quality Diablo-style gameplay to your browser and Facebook, and it does so with a free-to-play model. 

Some may try to deny it, but there’s a wonderful joy that comes with hugging a soft stuffed animal. And when said animal is based on a character from a game you enjoy? Well, that’s just the icing on an already awesome cake. If what I’m saying here is clicking with you at all, and you happen to be a fan of Triple Town, this is your lucky day. Triple Town bear plushies are available in developer Spry Fox’s shop, and they’re the very definition of adorable.