Ludum Dare 22 won by Frostbite and Midas
“Alone” was the theme of the latest Ludum Dare indie game contest. Anyone who fancied joining in had 48 hours to create a game based on the theme. Then, everyone got to play each other’s games and rate them based on categories like humour, fun, innovation, graphics, audio. The game with the highest overall score takes the top spot.
Play Bastion in your browser
Awesome indie action RPG Bastion is now available as a Chrome app. If you’re surfing with Google’s browser you can go to the Bastion app page now and click “launch app” and you’ll dive straight in. You can play through the prologue for free and then unlock the rest of the game for $14.99. It runs beautifully, and even saves your game to your google account so you can pick up where you left off on any PC.
Supergiant made the announcement on the Bastion site, where they also mention “some more Bastion-related news tomorrow.” Intriguing. If you’re curious about Bastion, it’s well worth checking out. We gave it a score of 92 in our Bastion review. Even if you already own the game, it’s worth booting up the app to see how well it all works. It’s a colourful glimpse into the exciting future of browser-based gaming.
Dark Orbit rakes in $2.6 million selling super-powered Drones
You want me to toss in a couple bucks for a sweet mount in your F2P MMO? Sure thing. 10 bucks for a huge content pack? No biggie. Over a thousand dollars for one little drone– wait, what? It may sound crazy to normal folks like you and me, but Bigpoint’s Dark Orbit, a browser-based F2P spaceship MMO, recently sold 2,000 of their in-game drones in just four days, priced at 1,000 Euros each! The sales net Bigpoint around two and a half million dollars.
Unreal Engine 3 “going everywhere” with Flash
I know, I know: You see the word “Flash” on a gaming website and immediately lapse into a month-long coma. And why not? You’re a hardcore gamer. You couldn’t care less about silly things like Angry Birds or the second dimension. That’s the thing, though: Unreal 3 on Flash means that browser-based games are about to get a whole hell of a lot more awesome.
“With UE3 and Flash, games built for high-end consoles can now run on the Web or as Facebook apps, reaching an enormous user base,” Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney said during the Adobe Max conference (via Gamasutra). “This totally changes the playing field for game developers who want to widely deploy and monetize their games.”
Next stop: Gears of Farmville, Angry Birdstorm, and Sorority Un-Life. The future’s looking pretty damn gray. Er, great. Yes, that’s what I meant.
Super Spring Break Hero SD crosses Trackmania with speedboats and dinosaurs in your browser
This just ruined any chance of me getting work done this afternoon: Super Spring Break Hero. It’s a browser-based speedboat racing game, married to a very simple track editor. You race across the beach, around Jurassic obstacles, and through Sharks, against the clock, or against the ghost of your previous time. Also, you can mow down spectators with a judiciously judged sideways leap.
Once the track is loaded, the controls feel lovely and smooth. Tom hates it because it broke his PC, but don’t listen to him, he’s just jealous because he hasn’t finished his game yet. I think it’s pretty good. Why don’t you try and beat my par time on this track?
(via Simon)
Wonderputt breathes a little magic into Friday
Gamescom last week, Deus Ex: Human Revolution this week… things have been very hectic of late. Why not calm down with a little mini golf? If your answer was ‘because mini-golf is boring’, prepare to meet Wonderputt. It’s mini-golf like only a computer can do, with terrain exploding out, trick shots involving space warping and the devil, and much more. When you’ve finished the holes, you unlock a second mode that’s a little more challenging – but really, the challenge isn’t the point and it’s relatively easy to finish the course only (cough) reasonably over par. Check it out at Kongregate.
Civ World open beta is live, build an empire and become king of your friends
Sid Meier’s social take on Civilization is now live for all to play on Facebook. 2K have been running an invite-only closed beta for a short while, which has been sending Owen slightly mad with power. “Look at all my little men!” he would cry as his city slowly grew “look at them!”
Not only can you look at your little men, you can give them jobs and instruct them to build an empire. As the video above explains, the aim of the game is to earn fame, through economic or military victories. You can form groups with your friends and work together to achieve co-operative victories as well. It also offers the rare opportunity for you to become king of all your friends. Head to the Civ World Facebook page to start your reign of terror.
Vorp! launches its new Dota-inspired mode
Facebook games are—WAIT, DON’T GO! This one’s a cut above the Farmvilles and Mafia Wars you’ve played before. Vorp! is a top-down space shooter that plays like the lovechild of Asteroids and Geometry Wars. Before today, the game was confined to some high-score singleplayer maps and a rudimentary deathmatch, but the Defense of the Armada mode adds 5v5 MOBA action. And that can only mean one thing—it’s time to conquer the galaxy the only way I know how: leveling abilities and ganking unsuspecting pilots.
GameTrekking interview: “I released a new notgame from Cambodia today”
Back in September 2010, TIGSource‘s founder Jordan Magnuson set off on an audacious project – travelling around South-East Asia, making indie games about his experiences along the way.
He called the project GameTrekking, and funded it with more than £3,000 of donations solicited from the web. Contributors to the fund get email updates from Magnuson and beta access to games in development, and those who contribute more get postcards from the road, links on his website, and even a credit in the games themselves, which are free, open-source and cross-platform.
PC Gamer spoke to Magnuson about doodling, genocide, and his experiences on the road.
Battlestar Galactica Online, and two other sci-fi MMOs you can play in your browser right now
There’s not a huge downside to having games run in your browser nowadays (thanks in no small part to the magic of the Unity engine). Take BSGO for example: it may run in your browser, but it’s a legitimate space sim MMO with great off-the-rails combat in an attractive, 3D environment. I’ve been playing in the beta, defending the colonies as Captain Santa, Viper pilot. The beta is open at this stage, so you can join the fight to preserve humanity (or you can be a toaster if you’d rather fight for the Cylons) at http://battlestar-galactica.bigpoint.com/, but you should know three things before you do.
You can pilot a Battlestar in Battlestar Galactica Online right now!
Praise Adama, our prayers have been answered: as of today’s patch, we can pilot a Battlestar ship in Battlestar Galactica Online! The patch brings other additions as well–such as a new fighter ships for both sides of the human/cylon war, and upgraded visuals in the Unity 3.3 engine–but let’s be honest, that all pales in comparison to the thought of taking command of the most powerful ships in the BSG universe. And best of all, Bigpoint’s system gives average joes like you and me a fair chance at controlling it–this isn’t for crazy addicts only.
We sat down with Andy Butcher, the game’s lead designer, to get all the details. Read on to find out how you can grab command of your very own Battlestar (or Basestar if you’re a Cylon) as soon as this afternoon!
World’s Biggest Pac-Man is now free to play in your browser
A free-to-play, browser based version of Pac-Man has been released by Namco-Bandai. The blob-gobbling mechanics are as familiar and addictive as ever, but as Gamasutra report, there’s an interesting twist. Logging in on Facebook will let you create your own mazes. Once complete, they’ get added to the gigantic meta level. Every maze has gaps that will let you escape into other people’s levels, creating one vast mega-maze.
At the time of writing, World’s Biggest Pac-Man consists of more than 1300 maps. More than 180,000 ghosts have been killed, and more than 17 million Pac-dots have been eaten. You don’t have to login to Facebook to play, simply head over to The World’s Biggest Pac-Man site and say goodbye to all that working and eating you were planning to do today.
Closed beta access code for Gunshine.net with 1,000 uses – get it while it works!
We love free games, and according to our 100 games giveaway currently underway, you love free games too! That’s why we’re sharing our 1,000-use beta code for Gunshine.net, a browser-based online isometric RPG dungeon crawler set in a dystopian future, with you all. There’s no restrictions on the code: use it, give it to your best friend and make him use it, write it on public bathroom walls or tattoo it to your forehead–whatever you want to do with it, we approve.
The only hitch is that you have to go to a very specific URL to redeem the code (both are listed below). So if you share the code with your friends (or tattoo it on your body), be sure to include the URL as well.
15 multiplayer browser games to play right now
The internet is a scary place. It’s a place full of information, far too much for any one person to absorb even a fraction. It’s a place that caters to every desire, however depraved and esoteric. It’s a place full of other people. Isn’t that terrifying?
And, more than that, you’re expected to interact with these people. Have discussions, comment on articles you’ve all read, and troll one another. It’s enough to make that hermetic ideal of cave living, where you only have to worry about which end of the skunk to eat first, look most appealing. But it’s ok, I’m here to help.
Games are perhaps the best way to survive contact with other humans. They let you vent your frustrations, or work together without having to, y’know, have a proper conversation about it. You’re hidden and safe behind the anonymity of the internet, and the rules of the game. It’s a controlled environment, and so you’re probably going to be ok.
And so, allow me to aid you to submerge yourself in the unwashed masses, a toe at first, before the rest of your leg, and then all to follow. Below is a list of games aimed at interaction over the internet, all from within the safety of your browser. Some are short-fire bursts of multiplayer gaming, others aiming for something much more long form and arduous, but oh-so more rewarding because of it.
Google demo PC gaming in a browser
During a talk at GDC 2011, Vincent Scheib, a software engineer at Google, has shown off the future of web-based gaming with impressive browser-based demos which don’t require plugins or web players to work.
Speaking to PC Gamer live at the show he says: “A lot of the tech is available today but in a beta or test form. You don’t have to use flash. As we move forward, the browsers are dedicated to supplying new technology to support higher quality applications.”
Hit more for a video, and to try out the demos.
