Launched just a few days ago, the latest Humble Weekly Bundle features eight platformers for $10. As always, portions of the proceeds from the bundle will go on to support charity (the American Red Cross or Child's Play), while buyers have the option to select how much of their purchase goes to the charity, the developers, or the Humble Bundle team. All the games come with a Steam key and all but one are available as DRM-free downloads too.The bundle is broken into three price tiers. Paying $5.99 or less gets buyers Shank 2, Blocks That Matter, and BIT.TRIP Runner. Paying between $6 and $9.99 gets buyers the previous three titles as well as BIT.TRIP Presents Runner2, Megabyte Punch, and Fly'n. Paying $10 or more gets buyers all six previous games plus King Arthur's Gold (read our review) and Mark of the Ninja: Special Edition.The soundtracks for Shank 2, BIT.TRIP Runner, Blocks that Matter, BIT.TRIP Runner 2, and Megabyte Punch come alongside their respective games.The deal lasts through Thursday, May 22nd.
My original intention for this article was going to be a "best of the bunch" summary to cover the seventy-five games recently Greenlit on Steam. However, as I sorted through the list I discovered that a good chunk of those games were pretty...unimpressive, to put it politely. Hardly any of the games jumped out at me as looking particularly fun, let alone something I'd spend money on. A few of the games are so debatably bad looking that it makes me think that Valve didn't even look these games over before they gave them the greenlight.For awhile now, Valve has been approving batches of seventy-five games, every two weeks. That's 300 games in two months. That's 300 games that will be released through Steam on top of the triple-A publisher-supported games that are lucky enough to bypass the Steam Greenlight toll booth.Recent batches have yielded some really great games, and there are a few really great looking games sprinkled within this latest batch. But for the first time in Greenlight's history, this time around I felt like the unimpressive outweighed the impressive.
Are developers and designers as interesting as the games they create? That's what the Pixel Heart project believes, and if it receives the crowdfunding it's currently seeking on Ulule.com, it will show the world via an ambitious multimedia project.It starts with a documentary that spends a week with six different developers in their own countries: Mark Healey of England (of LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway fame), Robin Hunicke of the U.S. (The Sims and Journey), Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Japan (Rez and Child of Eden), Edmundo Bordeu of Chile (Rock of Ages and Zeno Clash) and Eyram Tawia of Ghana (Africa's Legends). You may notice that's only five people, as a sixth developer from India is still to be determined.All six movie subjects will contribute something to the second part of the Pixel Heart plan, which is a game jam that will gather 100 developers in Paris for 48 hours. Split into 12 teams, the goal of the game jam is to create 12 new games, half of which will be PC fare while the other six aim for more immersive hardware like the Oculus Rift.
If you're a fan of first-person shooters, you've been knee-deep in Nazis for as long as you can remember. But if you can wipe the blood from your trigger finger long enough to concentrate, you might have a distant memory of the little game that started it all: Wolfenstein 3D.The genre-progenitor is coming back later this month with Wolfenstein: The New Order, and if you're looking to pick it up on Steam, Gamezebo Deals wants to help you save $10 by pre-ordering the game right now.If this is the second time you're reading about this deal on Gamezebo, we have some good news for you! We've now arranged codes for the US release date, so you'll be able to join the resistance on May 20. You'll also get access to the beta for the next DOOM game when it becomes available on Steam.Pre-order the game now. Kick some Nazi ass May 20.
SUPERHOT (one word, all caps you philistines) is an incredibly cool time-based first-person shooter that you can play in your browser. We've talked about it before, as a great game you can complete in less than 10 minutes.Now, there's a new version of SUPERHOT that will presumably take a bit longer than that. Or at least there will be. The developer launched a Kickstarter campaign to make a new, fully fleshed version of the game - complete with story, new weapons, and new enemies - with a reasonable goal of $100,000.They've already hit that benchmark and will probably reach their first, $120,000 stretch goal (better 3D animations) by the time you're reading this.
Originally announced back in 2009, it's been a long time since anybody heard anything new on Car Jack Streets 2. After our interview back in 2012, Tag Games seemed to have maintained radio silence on the subject. There was no official word on the game after that point, and Tag Games have since moved on to a number of other now-completed projects, like bringing Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes to the App Store, and creating Moshi Monsters Village.The writing was on the wall. Car Jack Streets 2 was dead.Only… it wasn't."The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." That's Mark Twain, though it just as easily could have been Tag Games CEO Paul Farley. Despite a general consensus amongst internet denizens that the project was dead, Farley has assured Gamezebo that this simply isn't the truth. Production on Car Jack Streets 2 moves on, albeit slowly."Car Jack 2 is still in (very slow) development," said Farley. "It's certainly a labour of love, feels a bit like 'Indie Game: The Movie,' only we're making an open world 3D game with one or two people at a time!"
About five years ago, Mojang popularized a form of pre-purchase known as "early access" with their game Minecraft. By allowing players access to the most current build of the game, back during the Alpha and Beta build days, Mojang opened the door to player's direct feedback, letting them essentially playtest the game through development. This system worked pretty flawlessly for Mojang, and since then, countless independent developers have understandably followed suit.Early access releases are now a pretty normal way for developers to release their games to players anxious to get into the latest build. But, this method of direct developer-to-player feedback has begun to develop a dark side.Within the past year I have observed a number of player bases lash out at development teams, going so far as to call the developers scam artists regarding their early access releases. The buyers of these early access titles feel like the developers have abandoned them, essentially making a prototype of a game, selling it as is while promising more, and then taking the money and running.
GOG.com has long since cast away it's "good old games" moniker, becoming a one-stop shop for great games new and old. But why pay full price for said games when there's a crazy neat sale going on?Unlike most sales where prices are lowered for a set amount of time, the Insomnia Sale put a select number of copies of a certain game at a ridiculously discounted price. Once they sell out, that deal is gone for good and the next deal starts. And sometimes - just sometimes - the deal will drop the price of a game to free.You're going to want to keep this URL open in your browser and keep clicking refresh until the deal ends… which won't be until they run out of the sale's allotted stock.I guess it's time to put on a pot of coffee. You're going to be here awhile.