Silent Hill Style Perspectives With Resident Evil Combat in Upcoming Agni: Village of Calamity
By Adele Wilson
An unauthorised investigation leads to something sinister.Face Ghosts To Collect Cards In Schoolbound
There's something strange about this place.90s Gloomy Survival Horror, Holstin, Switches Between Isometric and Third-Person
By Adele Wilson
An upcoming psychological survival horror.
Category: News
Amazon’s $99 box might be called Fire TV, but it’s the games that have me interested
By Steven Strom
Amazon pulled a Sega Saturn today (perhaps not the most auspicious comparison) and announced that you can buy the Fire TV for $99 at this very moment.The device is a clear competitor for set-top boxes like Apple TV, Chromecast and Roku. You'll be able to stream video from the obligatory services like Netflix and Hulu Plus alongside Amazon's own Instant Video apps.On the hardware end, it sports a dedicated graphics processor, 2GB of RAM and a Mimo dual-band wifi which, theoretically, makes it three times faster than those other devices I just mentioned. It also has voice control, so everyone can know when you're binge-watching Scandal as you shout it out to an empty room.What's most interesting about the little black box is how open it is. It operates on the open Android operating system, meaning it's very simple for software designers to bring content to the device in just about any way they choose. To me, that smells like a greater focus on games than its prime competitors.Hellraid: The Escape draws inspiration from The Room
By Steven Strom
One of my absolute favorite games on mobile is the first-person escape-puzzler, The Room. We were lucky enough to get a sequel recently, but there's still a dearth of such games, perfectly tuned to touchscreens as they are.Hellraid: The Escape has a silly name, but when a press release specifically cites The Room as influence, I'm willing to overlook a lot of things.Perhaps it's best the name is silly. The game itself certainly doesn't look serious, what with the autonomous, disembodied eyeball in front of the May 5, 2014 release date in the trailer. The Escape (which, by itself, may be a better name) is tied to the upcoming PC/console hack-and-slash game Hellraid from Techland.Techland is the team behind Call of Jaurez and Dead Island, if you didn't know. The studio can be very hit (like Call of Jaurez: Gunslinger) or miss (like Call of Jaurez: The Cartel).How the Games Industry Tried to Fool You Today
If you haven't already noticed, it's April Fool's Day. Whether you figured it out by now from a bogus news article, a text from your Uncle telling you he's won the lottery, or even or our shenanigans at Gamezebo, the day is celebrated around the world as a day of kind-hearted trickery. Like Halloween but with no treats, April Fool's Day is celebrated by pretty much everyone, —from the science industry to the snack industry, no one is safe.Gamers are certainly not excluded from the fun, as evidenced by this huge list of pranks seen throughout the games industry today.Apple removes Top Grossing Charts from App Store
By Joel Brodie
In a surprising move, Apple announced that it is removing its Top Grossing Chart from the App Store. From now on, there will only be two top ranking charts - free and paid. In typical Apple fashion, the company made this move at midnight last night, on the first day of April, without giving anyone any notice.Apple released the following statement: "We've noticed, as many of you have, that the games in the Top Ranking Lists have not changed in the past year. We suspect it's because the game companies in the Top 10 are spending millions of dollars a day to keep their position, but it could just be coincidence. So, we decided to take the high road and give game companies the opportunity to compete on merit than money."It's unclear what impact this will have on the success of games in the Top Lists like Candy Crush Saga or Clash of Clans, the future of free-to-play games, or the cost per install ad model. In their S1 released anticipation of going public, King disclosed that they spent $377 million last year on marketing.Game of the Month: Luftrausers
By Jim Squires
Now that March has drawn to a close, it's time to look back at the 31 days that were and see which games really managed to stand out as the best of the best. The first two months of 2014 saw some real game of the year contenders: The Banner Saga in January and Threes in February. Is March's winner of that same caliber?We consulted our Magic 8-Ball: All signs point to yes.Thievery or Thrifty? Selling keys from bundles for profit is not as illegal as you may think
Over the past few years, game bundles have risen to become one of the most popular ways that games are purchased digitally. "Pay what you want for X-amount of games for a super discounted price" is a particularly popular practice throughout the indie game scene, as it offers developers a great way to get their games in front of a massive amount of buyers. Humble Bundle, Indie Royale, Groupees, and Bundle Stars are all popular game bundling brands that promote both games and developers while (typically) allowing the buyer to select a price-point.A few sites are taking ethically-questionable advantage of these deals, buying keys in bulk and then selling them at a later date for a profit. While initially it sounds illegal, there is no concrete court ruling that says it is, in fact, illegal. The closest court case found in the United States was a 2008 ruling that selling "not-for-resale" promotional CDs is legal. In 2012, the European Court of Justice ruled that the first-sale doctrine does apply to digital games, and individuals can resell their lawfully purchased property without penalty.So lawfully buying bundles of keys, and then selling them at a later date, is considered akin to selling a book bought at a book store, later on at a garage sale. There is no definite ruling in the United States, like there was with the European Court of Justice, but it certainly is only a matter of time until a similar ruling makes its way to the US.The real debate boils down to the ethics of it all. Especially concerning the profits, or lack thereof, collected by indie game developers.2048 is why we can’t have nice things
By Jim Squires
2048 is the #1 game on Google Play and the App Store, and that's a damned travesty.Our story starts a little over seven weeks ago. Sirvo LLC, better known as Greg Wohlwend and Asher Vollmer, released their second mobile game collaboration: Threes!. It was a great little puzzle game that had the perfect mix of addictive and charming that can help a game shoot to the top of the App Store. And it did. Seemingly within hours, this indie darling jumped to the #1 spot - and not just any #1 spot, but the #1 spot on the paid games list.Rumors of paid mobile gaming's death, it would seem, were greatly exaggerated.Or at least they would have been if it weren't for 2048.A UI designer and web developer, Gabriele Cirulli "created" 2048 in the span of a weekend. You may have noticed my use of quotation marks there. That's because, while he no doubt programmed the game and did the art, the creative process - aka developing an original idea and making it work - lays at the feet of Team Sirvo.Yes indeed: 2048 is a clone of Threes.Browser Pick: Lamp and Vamp
Earlier in the month, between March 8th and 16th to be exact, the Procedural Death Jam saw developers from all around the world come together with the common goal of producing games based around the Procedural Death Labrynth genre, formerly known as "roguelike-likes". The two core rules involved with the game jam were that the game must feature procedural generation and permadeth. Over seventy games were produced and entered into the jam, and a handful of games walked away with awards.Lamp and Vamp, developed by Globz, walked away from the jam with both Best Game and Best Art awards, and for good reason. Lamp and Vamp is an enjoyable strategy game where players must navigate a vampire to his coffin through a randomly generated neighborhood, while avoiding the local neighborhood watch, determined to catch them. Movement is based on a tile system, each turn the player can move to any adjacent tile, and the vampire hunters also move one tile. The catch is that the vampire hunters have torches and flashlights, and can see ahead. If the vampire is caught in the hunter's line-of-sight, all the hunters in the neighborhood will converge and attempt to corner the vampire, resulting in death.