The Banner Saga has an official launch date, as developer Stoic reveals
through
Kickstarter that their Viking-themed tactical RPG is coming to Windows and
OS X in January 14, 2014 (thanks
Joystiq). Actually, the release date goes unmentioned in the update, it is
tucked away in
this new
trailer. Here's a bit on the news:
I'd love to give you an update on
everything going on at this point. We finally feel comfortable with giving a
release date for one very big reason: we are essentially content complete. This
means the game is playable from front to back, the combats are in place, the
characters are all hooked up and every conversation throughout the game is ready
to go. In essence: we're almost done with the game. This is a huge milestone
because we've been working nearly every waking hour since Factions released to
get to this point.
Continue here to read the full story.
Adventure Park is now available for Windows PCs through
Steam, offering developer
b-Alive's take on designing your own simulated theme-park. The game is on sale
for the next week for 20% off the regular price, and here's a bit on what it
will allow you to experience: "Create your own theme park just the way you want
it. Let your imagination run wild! Attract visitors to your park with all kinds
of different and unusual attractions. Your revenue and the reactions of your
visitors help you to expand your park and make it even more attractive. Turn
your park into the best and most exciting theme park of all time!"
Mac OS X gamers interested in beta testing a Mac edition of
Fantasy
Kommander: Eukarion Wars should head over to the
Slitherine website and
register their interest. There are details about the game on its
product page, and
here's a brief description: "The gameplay is based on a traditional hex map,
with a wide variety of terrain and units available. You will select, move,
fight, and analyze units on the Battlefield or in the HeadQuarters (HQ) using a
simple point-and-click system."
King Voxel is a The Legend of Zelda-inspired game that's currently
seeking at least $20,000 through
Kickstarter
for completion. The game is the brainchild of a two-person development team, and
using the flexibility of voxels it will include a world generator. There's
a gameplay video as
well as a playable demo which shows the game in its alpha form. Here's the
description of the project from its
Steam
Greenlight page:
King Voxel is an exciting new action adventure game
that is deep into development. It was inspired by the best action adventure
games of the past like “Adventure” on the Atari 2600, and “The Legend of Zelda”
on the NES. The key innovations of this game are the unique cell shaded voxel
graphics and random quest generation allowing for essentially infinite replay
value! The focus of this game is on gameplay. Combat and exploration are the key
components of this game. You won’t find flashy videos here!
Though it seems readily apparent that Blizzard still has
around 7.6 million
reasons to continue charging for World of Warcraft subscriptions,
Eurogamer has verified that they do not plan on walking away from all that
money any time soon to jump on the free-to-play bandwagon that WoW's success
helped force upon almost every other MMORPG on the market. "We didn't make the
game to be free-to-play," production director J Allen Brack said. "We would have
to rework the game pretty significantly in order to make it free-to-play. It's
not something we're currently considering." And though the game's still-enormous
player count has slipped over the years, he indicates they are still creating as
much new content for the game as ever. "We'll continue to invest heavily in
World of Warcraft to deliver frequent, high-quality content to our players, he
explains. "But in terms of the content and developing, we have more resources
focused on developing content for World of Warcraft than ever before. So we
expect to continue having a long and happy life."
My brother and I decided to forestall our trip to clean up the leaves at our
dad's old place, as it seems too many of them are still clinging to the trees
for us to make it be our only such trip of the year. This will come at a cost,
as it will probably be a lot colder there in a couple of weeks when we finally
get to this, but I'll try not to think of this while I'm cozy inside today.
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