As hard as it might be to believe, this was a tougher month than most when it came to picking our favorite release. In fact, a lot of what we played in April could easily be called Game of the Year contenders.Was it Monument Valley - a gorgeous minimalist puzzle adventure that plays like a love letter to MC Escher? Or should it be Wayward Souls - one of the finest action-heavy roguelikes we've seen grace the App Store.Or maybe it was Hearthstone, a game that has been available on desktops for a little while now, but really feels like it was designed for this month's inevitable iPad release. Yeah… It should probably be Hearthstone.
Storytelling has always been a sticking point in previous Elder Scrolls games. I contend that the traditional high fantasy nonsense of their primary plots don't do justice to an otherwise intriguing world to explore. The king of fantasy sandbox franchises didn't get to where it is without being interesting in some ways.It's the storytelling, not the stories themselves that make these games. Bethesda knows when to shut up and let environments and players converse - a rare commodity in games. A pedestrian jealousy, betrayal and murder in another game is buoyed by the dopamine squirt that comes with following a few well-placed clues and "figuring it out on your own."The Elder Scrolls Online isn't so subtle, in primary plot or ancillary discoveries.
How has your day been? Good? Don't worry, we can fix that. Just click here and have a play of Drowning in Problems, a strange, statistical, and super depressing birth-to-death simulator from Markus "Notch" Persson, aka the man behind Minecraft.The game was Notch's contribution to the most recent Ludum Dare (a semi-regular gamejam that has resulted in ton of cool stuff over the years). The theme for Ludum Dare 29 was "beneath the surface."If you're about to dive into it, I'll warn you in advance: Drowning in Problems is less a video game than it is an interactive piece of art. Some, like myself, love experiments like this. If you're hoping for something with a jump button and a high score, you're going to be sorely disappointed.If you're looking for something that will make you question the absurdity of our hamster wheel lives, however, you've come to the right place.
There was a time when subscription-based MMO's ruled the roost, but in the world of free-to-play, those few stalwarts of old have had a harder time pulling in an audience than they used to. How do you turn those fates around? How do you turn free players into paying customers? Sony Online Entertainment has a clever idea: offer a single subscription price to get top-tier memberships in all of their games.Starting today, Sony Online Entertainment will deliver full memberships in all of the following games in exchange for a mere $14.99: Everquest, Everquest II, DC Universe Online, Planetside 2, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and the upcoming games Everquest Next, Landmark and H1Z1. You'll also get 500 Station Cash every month, a 10% discount on marketplace purchases, and "access to exclusive promotions and offers throughout the year."So what's the catch?
Love playing a game that makes you feel smart? Or at least one that lets you blunder the space program worse than Alfonso Cuarón? Then you'd better pull out your favorite mobile device (or, failing that, a PC) and download SimpleRockets - a fantastic game of spacecraft creation that recently saw a surprise drop to free.The game is normally $1.99 on mobile and $4.99 on PC, so "free" is a price that's incredibly hard to argue with. The game should have an instant appeal to fans of Steam's long-standing Early Access gem Kerbal Space Program, while at the same time providing a gentle first step for those who've been thinking about playing such games, but feared the genre's intimidating premise.Up up and away, folks! Get it on iPhone, Android, and PC quick. There's no word on how long this price drop will last.
"Cancer: Sam Has It." With those four words, Butterscotch Shenanigans revealed to the world that Sam Coster, one half of the brotherly game development duo, had been stricken by the dreaded disease: a "startlingly aggressive strain" of T-Cell rich Large B Cell lymphoma, diagnosed at stage four - the highest (which is to say, worst) possible. His prognosis was around 65 percent, although he believes his youth, good physical condition and irrepressible optimism gave him better odds than the average. All things considered, he said his chances were "pretty dang good" overall.Even so, a cancer diagnosis has a way of changing a person's perspective on just about everything, and in Sam's case that included his attitude toward the games that he makes alongside his brother Seth. Confronted with his illness, he decided he wanted to make a game that meant something, a game with depth and durability; "I want people to be able to play in a world I made when I no longer get to play in this one," he said. Or as he rather more succinctly put it to his brother, "I don't want Extreme Slothcycling to be the last game I make before I die."And with that, the Costers revealed Crashlands to the world.Crashlands is big. It's ambitious. It is in every meaningful way the complete opposite of the Butterscotch Minis they've been cranking out on a weekly basis over the past month or so. "It's essentially what you'd get if you combined the huge amount of content in Towelfight 2 with the polished mechanics and gameplay of Quadropus Rampage, and then blew it out to epic proportions," Coster explained. "Both of those games took about 10 weeks to make, and we're now on about week 20 with Crashlands."
Anachronistic issues aside, hunting dinosaurs is something that passes through the minds of most children, —and speaking for myself, many adults. Sure, Jurassic Park spoiled the fun by showing us the realities of such a pursuit, but here's to hoping that most of our readers don't honestly see a porta-potty covered in bamboo as ample cover from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.The Stomping Land, from game developer Alex Fundora, may be the closest thing we get to hunting dinosaurs within our lifetime. Within The Stomping Land, players will have to hunt dinosaurs to survive in the game's vast wilderness. The multiplayer aspects combined with the survival mechanics position The Stomping Land akin to Day Z as far as gameplay goes. You know how anxious you get in Day Z, when a random player comes running your way, out of the woods? Imagine how you're going to feel when a random player comes storming out of the woods...on the back of a 15ft tall carnivorous dinosaur.Last summer, Fundora took The Stomping Land to Kickstarter where he managed to pull in over $100,000 to go towards the game's development. Nearly a year later, development is coming along nicely, with Fundora working on implementing one of the coolest features I've seen in a game: celestial navigation. There is no map in the game, and players will have to use the stars to navigate their way at night. During the day players will have to look out for footprints and listen for dinosaur roars to indicate the location of specific species.
Few games grab my attention as fast as Source did. There are just a handful of games that I discover each year that so completely engage me that I feel the need to watch the gameplay trailer three or four times, before I feel I've fully digested what I have been watching. From the spectacularly beautiful scenery, to the instantly charming buzzing protagonist, to the world as a whole, Source presented me with a universe I've never seen before, but one I immediately wished to be a part of.If all goes well with the Kickstarter campaign, Source will be out on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U by August 2015. The husband and wife development team behind Source are drawing inspiration from many sources, Tron perhaps being the most notable. They are also describing Source as a Metroidvania experience that features no dialog or cutscenes, relying on "visual storytelling that unfolds dynamically" to plot the adventure.