After just two days, developer Vlambeer's latest game, Luftrausers, is already profitable according to a tweet from the company's official account.Luftrausers is a 2D aerial combat game that launched on PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita that spent two and a half years in development The game will eventually cost $9.99, but launched (and remains) at a 10% discount on Steam and a 20% discount on PlayStation Network for PlayStation Plus subscribers, making the fast turnaround on profitability just that much more impressive.Nearly a year ago, the game was cloned on the App Store long before release. The story caused a bit of a ruckus as Vlambeer's previous game, Ridiculous Fishing, went through a major cloning ordeal itself.Vlambeer is also the studio behind Super Crate Box and the upcoming Nuclear Throne (formerly Wasteland Kings) for PlayStation 4 and PC. You can currently pick up the prerelease version of Nuclear Throne through Steam Early Access.
Blue Manchu's Card Hunter, the browser-based, RPG-meets-CCG-meets-tabletop game with a sense of humor and a Richard Garfield pedigree, is really good. So good, in fact, that I sometimes wish I could take it with me when I'm not by my laptop.DropForge Games must have read my mind. The relatively new Seattle studio funded by Wargaming.net (yes, the World of Tanks folks) is helping Blue Manchu by developing and publishing a mobile version of Card Hunter made with tablets in mind."The number one request from the Card Hunter community has been 'when will this be on my tablet?'" Blue Manchu founder and CEO Jon Chey said in a press release announcing the deal. "The game's design screams out for a tablet experience."Indeed it does, as the turn-based, tactical battles feel like they'd transfer to touchscreens without too much trouble. It's also already built on a free-to-play model, enhanced with a sensible option to pay for more content.
Few games have a story behind them quite as riveting as Tetris. I first learned about the strange and storied history of the game when reading Game Over, David Sheff's insanely detailed book on the history of Nintendo.The story of Tetris is really the story of the end of the Soviet Era, Cold War Politics, and dirty business. For years I've said that it would make a brilliant HBO miniseries, and while we don't have that, this BBC documentary from 2004 is the next best thing.Sit back, make some popcorn, and spend the next 59 minutes of your day with Tetris: From Russia With Love.
2013 was a pretty great year for games, and when it came down to picking the best of them, we here at Gamezebo had our hands full last December. Above all of the others, though, there were three games that stood out as simply amazing: Papers, Please, Device 6 and Kentucky Route Zero. These games made up our top 3 picks for the year, and while there was a definite #1, #2, #3 order to them, really, any would have been fair to call our Game of the Year.It looks like the annual Independent Games Festival Awards (a great indie celebration that takes place at GDC) happens to agree. Last night, Lucas Pope's Papers, Please took home the Seamus McNally Grand Prize for Best Indie Game (as well as two additional awards: Excellence in Design and Excellence in Narrative).
It was just two weeks ago when free-to-play powerhouse Game Insight announced they were working on a game that sounds suspsiciously like XCOM. Promising a strategy simulation where you assemble a band of mercenaries to fight off an alien, as well as using their weapons to forge your own, it wasn't hard to see where X-Mercs: Invasion was drawing inspiration from.But considering how well they pulled off Tank Domination - a game that looked an awful lot like World of Tanks - we're not complaining.Earlier today, Game Insight posted new screenshots to the game's Facebook page (joining the few that were already there) to show off the gameplay in a bit more detail. Thanks to these, we can say for sure that it's an XCOM-alike - and we can also say that it looks pretty fantastic.Hit the jump for a bunch more.
Well that didn't take long. It was only last week that Rolling Stone published an interview with Dong Ngyuen, the creator of Flappy Bird, that led to a fury of "will he/won't he?" speculation about the game being returned to the App Store. When asked by Peter Travers if he Flappy Bird would ever take flight again, Nguyen responded "I'm considering it."But where Peter Travers failed to get a concrete answer, Twitter has now succeeded.In response to a similar question by tweeter @painfullpacman, Nguyen has confirmed that Flappy Bird is indeed heading back to the App Store: "Yes. But not soon."
Oculus Rift, the company leading the charge on virtual reality headsets, announced today during the Games Developers Conference that the second development kit version of their product is available for preorder. The headset costs $350 and will be available in July on a first-come, first-serve basis. So if you actually want to get it by then, you had better be quick. The new development kit (DK2) features enhanced positional tracking, which reduces the lag between movement of the user's head and the display inside the device. Reporters at the conference are saying this virtually eliminates input lag and nullifies the motion sickness some users have reported previously.Just as impressive are the new screens. The new kit uses OLED screens (the same sort found on the first generation PlayStation Vita) and displays at 960 x 1080 in each eye.
It's hard to get too excited about mobile games that are movie tie-ins. They often seem perfunctory, like they were rolled off an assembly line, and if the movie in question is based on a comic book, that only leads to disappointed fans.Good thing, then, that the upcoming Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past is no movie adaptation. Though its May launch on iOS and Android is no doubt intended to coincide with the May 23 release of the X-Men: Days of Future Past film, it's going to one-up Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence and company when it comes to staying faithful to the classic story from the Marvel comics.That means Kitty Pryde will be doing the time traveling instead of Wolverine. It also means settings and backdrops taken right from Uncanny X-Men #141 and #142, and the pop culture buffs at Glitchsoft, the Canadian studio developing the game, wouldn't have it any other way.