Spells spew fire and sparks; minions swipe at each other with invisible claws; a newly summoned warrior lets out a cry, taunting the enemy to face him and him alone.In most trading card games these concepts are imagined - a byproduct of card art and flavor text spooling through the players' minds. Hearthstone, however, has the luxury of being a digital card game with graphics and the like to tickle you fancy and give the old imagination a rest.Now in open beta on PC and Mac, Hearthstone makes a solid first impression.At first I was dazzled, just as I'm sure Blizzard wanted. Then I was worried. Blizzard is a crucible; taking ideas that work in other places and other spaces and boiling them down to their most essential. Card games have certainly been around for an age and a half, but digital card games -- ones designed from the ground up for screens and clicks -- are relatively new. I wondered; did the company have enough original spirit to make those essentials from whole-cloth?
Do you like video games? What about… parties? What about the unbearably bitter cold of a Canadian winter? If you said yes to all three of these, you're going to want to clear your schedule on February 21st. The Fancy Videogame Party is coming.Thanks to its thriving indie scene, Toronto has tons of great events for gamers - and yet Fancy Videogame Party is like the perfect storm of gaming events in Toronto. It's not one, not two, but three celebrations in one.First, it's a celebration of The Hand Eye Society's fifth birthday. The Hand Eye Society, for those not in the know, is a Toronto-based indie gaming collective that holds a variety of events all year long to help spread the word about great Toronto games.
Late last week, EA launched the long-anticipated free-to-play mobile game Dungeon Keeper to both the App Store and Google Play. And the reaction has been nothing short of vitriolic.But here's the problem: I don't really understand why.For a quick primer, it's probably worth taking you through some of the articles that have been lighting up my Twitter feed this week. It all started on Thursday - less than 24 hours after the game's launch - in Play4Real's wonderfully satirical article Our Dungeon Keeper Review for iOS Will Be Done in 8 Hours or Give Us a Dollar to Finish It Now. I don't want to spoil it for you, but THEY DIDN'T REALLY CARE FOR THE GAME'S FREE-TO-PLAY NATURE.The Escapist's Jim Sterling called it "one of the worst examples of a cancer that is eroding the market and has already destroyed the credibility of the once promising mobile game sector." Kotaku later borrowed part of Sterling's quote for a headline to a piece about the backlash Dungeon Keeper has seen - an article whose author admits, by the way, hasn't actually played the game he's writing about: "I can't even bring myself to download EA's newest mobile disaster for fear of tainting my memories of hours and hours digging and crafting on the old Bullfrog classic."
There's no doubt about it - Flappy Bird is our great national obsession of the week. It's the catch of the day; the soup du jour. But like all chart-topping games, its moment in the sun can only last for so long. So what can we expect from developer .GEARS (pronounced dotGEARS) next?Flappy Bird isn't a new game - it's just new to success. And like Flappy Bird, .GEARS has a number of other games already available for play that nobody is paying attention to quite yet. Get in on the ground floor - here are five other games from Flappy Bird creator .GEARS that you can be playing RIGHT NOW.
You know what's cooler than getting one new piece of kit? Getting two. That's why we've bundled up a pretty sweet deal that should appeal to gamers of all walks of life: an awesome PC/Mac USB pixel art controller, and a gaming headset that's just as usable in the living room as it is at your desktop.And the cost? You can pick up these beauties bundled together for only $48, including shipping. For more information (and to order), check out this offer at deals.gamezebo.com.
While I'm not usually one for sports, I've always been a bit of a sucker for football. I don't follow a team or watch every Sunday, mind you, but if there's a game on and I'm in the room, my eyes will probably be glued to the screen. And when there's a big game like the Superbowl or Grey Cup (Canadians know what I'm talking about), I'm happy to carve an evening out of my schedule to watch.Last night's blowout was no exception.The big story from last night, it would seem, is of the Broncos complete and utter meltdown that started with the first play of the game, and the absolute trouncing delivered to Payton and his boys by Seattle's Legion of Boom (which includes former Grey Cup winner Brandon Browner, in case you Canadians are keeping score at home) that followed. Also, Percy Harvin.But if you ask me, there's a much bigger story from last night than utter annihilation of the Denver Broncos. It's the story of technology's growing relationship with events, how our love affair with gadgets perfectly blends with football, and, well… Flappy Bird.But we'll get to that in a moment.
With over 18,000 backers and (as of this writing) £571,108 (roughly, $938,613), Warhorse's upcoming medieval RPG, Kingdom Come, is on-track to be one of 2014's biggest Kickstarter campaigns. Warhorse was founded in 2011 by game industry veterans who have previously worked on games like Operation Flashpoint, Mafia, Forza Horizons, Crysis 3, and more. Kingdom Come is being developed with CryENGINE 3, and Warhorse is anticipating a quarter four, 2015 release date.Kingdom Come is a first-person medieval warfare game set in Medieval Europe that features a non-linear story where players can end up the hero, or the villain. The world of Kingdom Come is planned to be three-and-a-half square miles large, and Warhorse estimates that gameplay will last for over seventy hours.
After last week's debacle involving game developer King trademarking the word CANDY, game developers around the world vented their frustrations by participating in the Candy Jam, a game jam event designed solely to passive-aggressively taunt the trademark system as well as King's other embarrassment from last week, being accused of ripping off another developer's game. The Candy Jam website sets its mantra as: "Because trademarking common words is ridiculous, because ethics matter and because it gives us an occasion to make another game jam."Developers have since been working on creating their games, and uploading them to the Candy Jam website for others to check out. While the Candy Jam lasts through February 3rd, there are a good number of games already posted.One of the more polished games posted is Discord Games' Candy Chasm Saga, an endless-faller that involves falling down an chasm filled with candy, attempting to collect as much candy as possible while avoiding crashing into the scary-looking tokens floating about. Magnets are available to scoop up and make your candy-grabbing life easier, and golden apples provide limited invincibility. Candy Chasm Saga borrows art assets from Discord Games' full-time project, Chasm.