The Kickstarter campaign for La-Mulana 2 has managed to pull in over $118,000 in just four days. With 2,457 backers, and twenty-nine days to go, Nigoro and Playism are seeking an additional $82,000 to meet their Kickstarter goal.La-Mulana 2 is the direct sequel to 2011's La-Mulana. In the sequel, players are archeologists tasked with discovering the entrance of ruins that are rumored to be the source of the recent influx in monster appearances."It's true that La-Mulana 2 is a sequel," explain the developers on the Kickstarter campaign, "but we want to make it enjoyable both for people returning to the series and newcomers alike. While, 'You don't need to have played the prequel!' is a horribly overused cliché, we feel it's appropriate here. We want all players to be able to play and enjoy our work."
We have a bit of a mixed bag of free games and sales this week, but what would life be without the ups and the downs? The biggest area where you should direct your bargain-hunting sensors is over at the Nordic Games catalogue, which is currently on sale across GOG.com and even on the Steam store for a few select titles.If you're still hungry for some price cuts after that, you can always make your way over to the Humble Bundle camp and pick up an excellent bundle for fans of roguelike games, as well as mosey on over to the iOS App Store for a short but sweet collection of fun games at next-to-nothing prices."So even though this week seemed a little bit on the sparse side, what greater incentive than to head out into the wilds of the internet and see if you can locate any other great deals that we may have missed! Be sure to add to this week's current list of free games and sales by heading down to the comments section below.
This week's news about King has really stirred the hornet's nest. Not only has their trademarking of CANDY ruffled a few feathers, and their dispute with The Banner Saga ruffled a few more, but other developers who feel they've previously been wronged by the company are seeing this as an opportunity to let their stories be told.Take Junkyard Sam for instance. Back in 2009, he and Nick Bray teamed up under the name Stolen Goose to make the Flash game Scamperghost. In a recent blog post, Sam explains how the company was in talks with King to publish the game, decided to go with a different publisher, and then quickly saw their game cloned and released on King.com under the name Pac-Avoid:"We were in talks with Lars Jörnow at King.com to license our Scamperghost game. Before the deal was closed (and certainly before any contracts were signed) MaxGames.com made a better offer so we thanked King for considering our game and politely ended our negotiations. King.com (giant company) retaliated against us (two young indie devs) by quickly making a direct clone of our game and almost released it before us! We only got ours out sooner because a friend close with the company contacted us privately to warn us in advance..."
Just when I thought I've heard of everything, the newly-formed Tingly Games unveils their exciting plans to take the world of casual gaming to a brave new frontier: greeting cards. Forget those stuffy paper cards, forgot those awkward singing telegrams - with the super cool and innovative Greeting Games, you'll now be able to give your loved ones the very special gift of a personalized game for any occasion!The Greeting Games beta is currently live on the company's official website, where they are featuring their unique greeting card games for such holidays and occasions as "Birthday," "New Year," "Thank You" and "Get Well." Users will also be able to choose from a number of popular casual game genres, including Match 3, Slicer, Sudoku, Bubble Shooter, Puzzle, Word, Mahjong, and Blaster. Afterwards, they can further customize their message and their game by choosing such options as the game's title, the game's story, and the game's difficulty setting. The game is then sent to your loved one just like a regular e-card."So the next time you can't think of anything to get Mom for Mother's Day, just remember that all Moms love Bubble Shooters, and that all Moms would love a Bubble Shooter even more if it came directly from your heart. Better yet, all Greeting Games services will remain free for the time being during the initial beta period, so what better time to test one out than now?
If you've been following King's trademark sideshow this week (and we know you have), there have been two interesting developments in the last 24 hours that you already know about. Last night, word broke that King was trying to use its IP law muscle to prevent Stoic Studio from using the word SAGA in The Banner Saga. And then this morning, King issued a statement responding to these allegations.This is where things get a little weird, because their response was basically "we're not trying to stop them from using the name, we've just filed a formal opposition with the US Trademark Office that says otherwise." More to the point, they said that if they don't exercise their claim in every instance than the mark on words like SAGA will lose its potency, and they'll have a hard time when it comes to fighting the real targets of their IP theft.It's an argument that's in complete contradiction with a statement they released earlier in the day. "We don't enforce against all uses… some are legitimate of course, we would not ask App developers who use the term legitimately to stop doing so."Methinks someone in King's PR department has a really short memory.
In this week's ongoing saga about King and their controversial "trademark trolling" of common dictionary words- oops, I just said the "s" word in that last sentence, I hope I don't need to call a lawyer now. Anyway, after the whole CANDY debacle on Monday, the internet then learned that King was also targeting recent indie darling The Banner Saga from Stoic as well, with reports claiming that the Viking-themed SRPG infringed upon the way the word "Saga" is a known extension of many of King's popular gaming brands.As you might expect, this story about King attacking The Banner Saga quickly spread like a wildfire across the gaming world, forcing King's PR department to make yet another statement to try and clear up all of the negative press about them. Spoiler alert: people are still disgusted. The latest statement reads:""King has not and is not trying to stop Banner Saga from using its name. We do not have any concerns that Banner Saga is trying build on our brand or our content. However, like any prudent company, we need to take all appropriate steps to protect our IP, both now and in the future."In this case, that means preserving our ability to enforce our rights in cases where other developers may try to use the Saga mark in a way which infringes our IP rights and causes player confusion. If we had not opposed Banner Saga's trade mark application, it would be much easier for real copy cats to argue that their use of 'Saga' was legitimate.
If there's one word that's on the tip of everybody's tongues this week, it's CANDY. King trademarked the word in the EU and is trying to do the same in the US, and the internet has exploded as a result.If you've ever wanted to see what an exploded internet looks like, you need look no further than Twitter. The community has been quite vocal about King's trademarking actions this week - many even going so far as to add CANDY to their Twitter name in protest - and the @#$torm hasn't died down yet.It's been only two days since King's maneuvers first came to light (and one day since we learned about their opposition to The Banner Saga's trademark). Here's the best of what the internet has had to say about it:
I've mentioned before how 2014 is already shaping up to be the year of long-awaited sequels, from Mega Jump 2 all the way to Jet Car Stunts 2. But I think this next one easily takes the cake for being the most long-awaited: because the original game came out in 1984! That's right, the iconic arcade game Boulder Dash will be getting a long-awaited 30th Anniversary revamp this year for mobile devices. This also marks the first time that original Boulder Dash creators Chris Gray and Peter Liepa will be working on a project together since the initial debut of the game all those years ago.Now 30 years is certainly a long time to wait for a sequel, so what new things can we expect to find when Boulder Dash - 30th Anniversary launches in early 2014? Well for one thing, Gray and Liepa have made over 50 levels full of brand-spanking-new worlds, creatures, and gem combos to encounter. Everything is rendered in beautiful 3D graphics and animations thanks to the power of the Unity Engine, and players will even be able to enjoy a cave editor mode and second playable character, Crystal."Boulder Dash - 30th Anniversary is the first planned project of Gray's newly formed studio, TapStar Interactive, which already has two other games in the works as well: a word game called Spell Slots and a zombie-themed running game called Run for your Life! But for the time being, it's all about the boulders. You can expect to see the free-to-play Boulder Dash - 30th Anniversary making its way to iOS and Android early this year, with PC and Mac versions to follow sometime after.