Posts from ‘Macintosh’ Category
Meriwether: An American Epic
By: Andy Hull
On: December 8th, 2012
I’m guessing most of you learned what dysentery was at a young age, and I’d also bet that your teacher wasn’t the reason why. MECC found a way to incorporate real history and fun gameplay into a groundbreaking educational game to teach players not just what happened, but what it was like to be there. What The Oregon Trail did for the Oregon Trail, Sortasoft’s Meriwether aims to do for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to travel across the United States to the West Coast. They were to catalog and study the plants, animals, natural resources, and geography along the way. They were also charged with establishing trade and U.S. sovereignty over the Native Americans along the Missouri River. Helping them in these endeavors was a small group of volunteers known as the Corps of Discovery.
Gameplay in Meriwether consists of two types of levels. In Lewis levels, the player will be navigating handcrafted levels focused on storytelling and dealing with situations that faced the actual expedition. In the travel mode, players will control the entirety of Meriwether’s Corps of Discovery through procedural wilderness as you gather resources, discover wildlife and ration whiskey. In both modes, Sortasoft seems committed to delivering a historically plausible account of the expedition. They have even gone so far as to have a Lewis and Clark historian involved in the project. However, Meriwether isn’t meant to be just a fun experience for history buffs, but for anyone looking for an entertaining survival/exploration game.
I actually had a chance to play this game about a year ago and found it extremely involving, even at such an early state. From the looks of their Kickstarter page, the game has improved by leaps and bounds since then. Check it out for tons more information on the project and the expedition itself. Who knows, you might even learn something!
Kerbal Space Program 0.18
By: Alehkhs
On: November 30th, 2012
Rocket-construction and space-exploration game Kerbal Space Program celebrated its two-year anniversary tonight, and version 0.18 has just launched.
The jump to 0.18 is the largest update KSP has seen and brings with it many new additions, including new resource and flight-planning systems, new parts like solar panels and unmanned probes, the ability to dock ships together, two new celestial bodies to explore, and more.
On a two-year anniversary stream, the team behind KSP also unveiled Kerbal SpacePort a new community hub for the sharing of user-created content. Future development plans were discussed as well, including aspects like weather, resource-mining, and rover creation.
Desperate Gods
By: Derek Yu
On: November 29th, 2012
Desperate Gods is an open source “digital board game” developed by Wolfire Games for Fuck This Jam, a week-and-a-half-long game jam based around making games in genres you generally dislike. In his design overview, Wolfire’s David Rosen describes how he enjoys board games but feels that their video game counterparts lack a lot of what makes them fun. Check out the video above to see how he and artist Aubrey Serr tried to overcome these problems while developing a unique board game from the ground up.
Probability 0
By: Lorne Whiting
On: October 19th, 2012
Droqen‘s first commercial game, Probability 0, is out now for five dollars. Also available is a bundle offering three other games, including an extended version of Fishbane and Starseed Pilgrim, which was first announced on the TIGForums nearly 2 years ago.
Probability 0 is a platformer roguelike where you have to descend an infinitely long dungeon, with your score measured in the depth you’ve reached. You do have an incentive to murder things, however, in order to gather the orbs enemies drop for new skills and more ammunition. You’ll have a lot of opportunities to experiment as you die over and over, in true roguelike fashion.
The game is pretty damn addicting if you get in to it; I’ve easily gotten more than my money’s worth out of the game, so if the game interest you it’s well worth trying the demo. And punching and headbutting everything.
Steam Greenlight: Probability 0
Receiver Content Update #1
By: Derek Yu
On: September 28th, 2012
Wolfire has released the first content update for their “7-day” FPS Receiver, which includes a flashlight, a S&W Model 10 revolver, a Glock 17, and the ability to move your guns closer to the screen through the settings menu. Players who already own Receiver can get the update free from the Humble Store. You can purchase the game for $5 on its website or by pre-ordering Wolfire’s main project, Overgrowth.
Steam Greenlight: Receiver
Cinders
By: Lorne Whiting
On: September 22nd, 2012
We previously covered Moacube‘s beautiful visual novel Cinders almost a year ago, which makes it a bit silly that we’ve missed its release by a few months.
Cinders is a somewhat loose re-telling of the classic fairy tale of Cinderella, with themes of free will added. The game’s story is heavily focused on the various characters, driven more by their individual conversations than the narrative surrounding the Prince’s ball. I wouldn’t call this a bad thing; it makes the narrative more personal, but it does lend it a certain flavor that I’m sure not everyone will find appealing.
Zineth
By: Derek Yu
On: August 19th, 2012
Developed by a group of students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute during their Spring semester, Zineth is a non-linear action game that mostly lets you skate around, but also gives you the option to fiddle around with fetch quests, races, Twitter, and a strange Pokémon-esque minigame that’s accessible through the player’s mobile device. The main draw, however, is the skating, and it feels fast and fun. It’s complemented by a cool aesthetic and an expansive world that offers plenty of opportunities to grind, glide, and wall jump across huge distances.
Mercury (Beta 1.1)
By: Derek Yu
On: August 3rd, 2012
Described as an “experimental, winner-generated arcade roguelike”, Mercury is a simple dungeon crawl that allows the two top-scoring players at the end of each 4-day cycle to permanently add something new to it. Released as beta last month, the game began with only one monster, item, and class, but has since been expanded by the leading players in its community. There’s also a Chaos Mode, which allows anyone to add new entities to the game at any time (this is an easy way to see how the creation system works).
Combat is handled like any other roguelike: you deal and receive damage by stepping into an enemy’s tile. The scoring system, however, is based around killing bosses for multipliers and clearing a floor of monsters for a large point bonus. The player also has to manage a finite pool of actions that is only replenished by descending to the next floor.
Mercury was created by James Lantz, with artwork by his father Frank Lantz (Drop7). Since the game’s in beta, it’s still being worked on actively – in his latest blog post, James says that future updates may allow players to create private servers.
(Source: Jason Rohrer)
Kerbal Space Program 0.16 – One Small Step
By: Alehkhs
On: July 20th, 2012
Today marked the 43rd anniversary of the first lunar landing and the first steps taken by mankind on the surface of the Moon. In celebration of this grand scientific achievement, the team at Squad has released the newest alpha version of their outstanding space game, Kerbal Space Program. Version 0.16 allows players to direct their Kerbal explorers to leave their vehicles for the first time and travel around on foot or even by jetpack. Will it be a momentous occasion for the annuls of history, or a embarrassing failure of aeronautical mishap? It’s up to you.
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