A Valley Without Wind out now, demo available
Version 1.0 of procedurally generated 2D explorathon, A Valley Without Wind, is out now on Steam and directly from the developers, Arcen. It casts you as a wandering adventurer on a mission to take down the powerful Overlord of the realm. You can wander into his chambers at any time, but he’ll reduce you to a gooey smear in moments if you confront him right away. Exploring the world, saving citizens, building villages and defeating monsters will grant you the equipment, spells and enchantments needed to take him down.
AI War: Light of the Spire expansion is out now
A colossal new expansion has been released for AI War adding a new faction, 180 new ships, story-based victory conditions and a new ‘defender’ game type that concentrates AI War’s huge, brainy space battles into frantic scraps that last minutes instead of hours. Read on for details and a trailer for the expansion.
AI War developer’s two upcoming games
Arcen games, whose financial troubles have been splashed across our frontpage of late, have announced two new games. Hopefully, if they can release them before they shrivel up and moths explode out of their pockets, they’ll be so awesome that everyone will buy them and it’ll all be great. There are two: a zombie trap-laying roguelike thing, and a tower defence game.
Let me say that again: a tower defence game from the makers of AI war.
AI War and the hidden cost of indie games
Earlier this month Chris Park revealed that his company could be bankrupt by November. His company is Arcen Games, the developer of popular space strategy game AI War. Despite that game’s excellence, it wasn’t a surprise to find he was struggling: most indie games developers do.
Prompted by the tale of trouble on his site, I sent him an email asking for more information. What are the costs involved in independent game development? What are the profits of a game like AI War? Chris was willing to talk numbers – something no developer ever does – and he kindly replied with a breakdown of the profits and costs of AI War and his latest game Tidalis. I’m reprinting his email in full below with permission.
AI War review
This is review appeared in PC Gamer UK 206, which was like a million years ago. We’re putting it online because Arcen Games are dying of no money disease, and you need to know how good their game is. It’s only got better in the year since we reviewed it.
The difficult thing is trying to describe what AI War actually is. It’s an RTS with turnbased combat. It’s tower defence with spaceships and wormholes. It’s galactic conquest where the silliest thing you can do is try to conquer everything. It’s a skirmish game where the AI has no interest in pretending it’s a human player.
AI Wars developer bankrupt by November
There are a lot of indie gaming success stories, but for every World of Goo, Minecraft, or Garry’s Mod, there are a lot of small companies that struggle to make a living from their games. Chris Park, developer of space strategy AI War, is one of them. He’s just revealed that Arcen Games will be out of money by November unless things change. Maybe you can help? More info and a trailer about Arcen and their 86% rated (in PC Gamer Issue 205) game below.
