Guild of Dungeoneering is an upcoming reverse roguelike from developer Gambrinous. The game has players constructing the dungeon gauntlet that the hero will have to venture through, but the catch is that the player does not control the hero. The goal of the player is to, of course, ensure the survival of the hero through a careful balance of gameplay. Make a dungeon too easy and the hero won't get the experience they may need later on to defeat enemies. Make a dungeon too hard and it will more than likely result in a not-so-heroic ending.Gambrinous reinforces the design aspect of the game through Guild of Dungeoneering's aesthetics. The game has a hand-drawn look that reminds me of the little warriors I used to draw on folders, back in middle school math class. I know I'm not the only one who did that.While Guild of Dungeoneering is still in Alpha testing, Gambrinous are selling access to the current build for $9.99 on the game's official website. Gambrinous also posted Guild of Dungeoneering on to Steam Greenlight, for voting. Look for the game to be released late this year for Windows and Mac, with the possibility of a Linux release as well.
I won't lie - that was a fun headline to type. I don't know what a "Fruity Robo 3" is, and there's a good chance that you don't either. But if you're in China, there's a very good chance you do - and you're no doubt excited to learn that it's about to be adapted into the mobile game Three Kingdoms of Fruit.What does it all mean? Read on to find out the answer to that and other questions, like "is Capcom looking for Chinese investment to enter the market?," and "how do the Chinese feel about Papaya?"Thanks again to Laohu.com for sharing the top stories out of China this week. For a daily dose of Chinese gaming news, be sure to bookmark Laohu.com.
Curse of Naxxramas: A Hearthstone Adventure will be the first-ever expansion for Blizzard's free-to-play digital card game, featuring 30 new cards, a new game board and single-player class challenges.The expansion takes the form of a card-based dungeon crawler, with five "wings" unlocking over as many weeks simultaneously on all platforms. Each will feature new single-player encounters with boss fights and unique cards. The first wing, The Arachnid Quarter, will be available for free to all Hearthstone players at launch. The remaining content, true to the game's free-to-play model, will be available either with real money orin-game gold.Hearthstone saw official release on PC last year, while the iOS version launched in Canada, Australia and New Zealand last week (though if you want to be sneaky, you can learn how to get around that here).There's no word on the expansion's pricing or release at this time.
It's been a few years since it first launched, but if you dust off your ol' memory box, I'm sure you'll find plenty of happy ones from your time with Hemisphere Games' 2009 masterpiece Osmos. The game was later ported to mobile devices, winning Apple's iPad Game of the Year award in 2010 - and, it would seem, the hearts and minds of The Simpsons show writers.The internet was abuzz this week with talk of this week's Minecraft couch gag on The Simpsons, but a voxelized Springfield wasn't the only indie gaming nod on this week's show. About halfway through the episode, when Milhouse learns that Bart has plenty of stolen goods - including Milhouse's iPad - Bart suggests he relax to the soothing sounds of "this bubble game."We reached out to Hemisphere Games to see how this collaboration came about, and it turns out they were just as surprised as we were."We had no idea The Simpsons cameo was coming," Hempishere's Eddy Boxerman told Gamezebo. "Our jaws dropped in disbelief when we caught wind of it! As a few friends have said (and who are we to disagree?) 'It's official -- Osmos is pop culture now!'"
With two critically acclaimed platformers under their belt, it was only a matter of time until they gave us a third. BeaverTap Games, the creators of Mikey Shorts and Mikey Hooks have just released the teaser trailer for their next game, Mikey Boots.As you can probably guess from the name, Mikey Boots will add some cool new footwear mechanics to all of the running, hooking and sliding you're used to. Judging from the trailer, this means ROCKET BOOTS.My apologies for the 'all caps' nature of that statement, but you try typing ROCKET BOOTS in lower case. It's scientifically impossible.They're keeping a tight lid on further details right now, but that doesn't mean that BeaverTap Games doesn't have more good news to share. Mikey Hooks also launched on Android today. To celebrate this momentous occassion, the game is on sale for 50% off on both Android and iOS.If you haven't played Mikey Hooks yet, you should fix that immediately.
MMOs tend to open with flashy, pre-rendered cutscenes to show of just how cool their universe is meant to feel. Seasoned players know this is just smoke and mirrors -- something to draw in the pedestrian crowd and invoke the "feeling" of what's actually conveyed by digital dice rolls and numbers leaping from wild boars' heads.The Elder Scrolls Online isn't really so different in the first sense. There's a lovely, action-packed trailer with all the excitement of chains crashing through the sky and wizard/barbarian types thrashing about demon-y things.Like all Elder Scrolls games, however, you start much more humbly -- as a prisoner. You've been taken to Coldharbour and had your soul removed. One of the big bads of The Elder Scrolls mythos needs it -- and those of several million of like-minded players -- to continue being evil. You escape from this contrived tutorial, of course, and the game drops you on Cyrodiil proper in one of three starting islands.Where you end up at first is determined by which faction you choose. Literally nothing is done to explain what choosing a faction means. I had to hit up the game's website to learn the Ebonheart Pact includes the vikings, lizard people and dark elves. These being the raddest of Elder Scrolls species, I obviously chose their alliance and wound up in Morrowind.
If you guessed less than 24 hours, you're a winner. Which means if you're a mobile game developer spending money to acquire new users, you probably are not a winner. In an exclusive to Re/code, Swrve revealed the results of a 90-day tracking survey of 10 million players, indicating that 19% of players open a game only once and 66% stop playing within the first 24 hours. Of the player that stay, 53% of their spending occurs within the first seven days of playing. Meaning, the average game player will leave a game within 24 hours, and the average game spender will be of little value after the first week.If the name Swrve sounds familiar, they are the firm that released a study earlier this year that suggested that .15% of all mobile gamers are responsible for 50% of total revenues.
Late last week, Rovio Stars and 5 Ants announced that their game, Tiny Thief, would shed its $2.99 price tag and become a free-to-play game with in-app purchases. The new, free version of Tiny Thief features three levels (fifteen stages total) for free, with the option for players to purchase the fourth and fifth levels for $1.99 each. To the dismay of Android gamers who already owned the entire game, this update locks previous owners out of the final two levels, forcing everyone to pay to access the content.That's right, Rovio took content away from buyers who already owned the access to it. As far as we can tell, there is nothing different from the original game beyond a new sixth level which is, not surprisingly, behind a paywall. Former Tiny Thief owners are upset at the sudden loss of access to the game."This game gave me hope for mobile gaming," one person posted as a review on the Tiny Thief Google Play page, "[it was] an awesome game you paid for up front without this "free to play" money extortion stuff going on. Now however it seems corporate cash grubbing got the better of even that tiny dream."