Lunar Flight Currently 75% Off

By: Alehkhs

On: May 19th, 2012

A fantastic take on the classic Lunar Lander-style game, Lunar Flight is currently discounted 75% until May 25th. This drops the price of this challenging and (perhaps unexpectedly) atmospheric game to only $2.50 on Steam, Desura, and simMarket.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy my low-gravity maneuvers, and drifting over the surface of the Moon in Lunar Flight really captured my attention. Whether the mission is transporting cargo from one base to another, recovering lost items, or simply exploring the lunar surface, this game provides an incredibly immersive experience that’s still approachable by people not looking for a entirely hardcore simulation.

Dwarf Fortress 2012

By: Alehkhs

On: February 14th, 2012

A new release of Dwarf Fortress has arrived from the Mountainhomes!

Release 0.34.01 fleshes out world generation (including massive cities complete with sewers, dungeons, catacombs, marketplaces, and outlying farmland), creatures (including werewolves, vampires, mummies, and necromancers capable of raising the dead), and many other features.

Click here for a more comprehensive list of changes and additions.

(Image Source: Fault, of the Bay 12 Forums)

Kerbal Space Program 0.12 – Now with more Mun

By: Alehkhs

On: November 25th, 2011

Kerbal Space Program‘s alpha has now reached release 0.12, which introduces a new goal for players: a moon (or “Mun,” as Kerbals spell it) now exists in the game, orbiting the Kerbal homeworld and daring players to try landing on it.

Even in its alpha state, KSP has already established a rather dedicated following, largely due to its ability to be easily modded. Fans are regularly making new parts, allowing for players to construct everything from historical rockets such as NASA’s Saturn V or Roscosmos’s Soyuz, to modern and near-future spaceplanes. Other notable fan contributions range from the game’s 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired loading screen (done by Riess, of Our Intrepid Crew) to the amazing fan trailer seen above, by KSP fan Dippeggs.

0.12 is the second-to-last free version of the game (0.13 is planned to mostly be bug-fixes and optimization) and gives players a great taste of what’s to come. For players who purchase the game, the planned features beyond version 0.13 include more stellar bodies (such as planets and asteroids), space stations, trainable AI crew to man the missions, and even a “story mode,” which will challenge players to complete various goals on a limited budget.

If you haven’t yet played Kerbal Space Program, you can check it out here.

Minecraft Beta 1.8.1

By: Derek Yu

On: September 16th, 2011

The first half of the long-awaited “Adventure Update” to Minecraft has finally been released, and adds a number of features to support the game’s planned Adventure Mode, like NPC villages and improvements to the combat system. It also adds new enemy mobs, biomes, crafting recipes, and a Creative Mode, among other things. The full list of changes can be found here.

TIGdb: Entry for Minecraft

Read the rest of this entry »

Wonderputt

By: Derek Yu

On: August 19th, 2011

What you see above is the entire 18-hole minigolf course that you play through in Wonderputt, a whimsical new casual game from Damp Gnat. The animation and audio matches the quality of that static screen – it’s lovely. The ball-handling is nothing to sniff at, either!

Check out Wonderputt’s development log for some interesting work-in-progress screenshots and concept art.

TIGdb: Entry for Wonderputt

Kerbal Space Program 0.8.0

By: Derek Yu

On: July 11th, 2011

Kerbal Space Program is an in-development simulation game that lets you operate your own space shuttle program. In the current release, you can build a multi-stage rocket out of various parts (e.g. propusion systems, decouplers, and fins), launch it, and operate it as you try to take your adorable astronauts higher into the stratosphere… or blow them up as creatively as possible. There aren’t a ton of parts available right now, but the game is easily moddable, and fans are already developing their own on the game’s forums.

Eventually, creator Felipe Falanghe wants to let players hire and manage crew, take missions, and even build space stations on different worlds.

(Source: Something Awful Forums)

Dwarf Fortress Tale: Matul Remrit

By: Derek Yu

On: July 1st, 2011

There have been some excellent Dwarf Fortress tales floated around the past few years (Boatmurdered perhaps being the most well-known), but this one kicks it up a notch. Combining text, illustrations, screencaps taken from the DF visualizer Stonesense, and even music, Matul Remrit is a rather awe-inspiring tribute to the roguelike/simulation being developed by brothers Toady One and Threetoe. What’s next, a live action film?

(Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Mount&Blade: With Fire and Sword

By: Derek Yu

On: May 4th, 2011

TaleWorlds has released a follow-up to Mount&Blade: Warband called With Fire and Sword that’s set in 17th-century Eastern Europe. The game features firearms, which is a first for the series, and adds some new quests and maps to its singleplayer and multiplayer modes. The full game is $14.99 and a demo is available from the website.

Preview: Blockade Runner

By: Alehkhs

On: April 24th, 2011

It’s undeniable that Minecraft is currently a large force in the indie gaming world, and while the topic of any new Minecraft-inspired games is a fanatically touchy subject with many gamers, I am always excited to see where developers might expand the gametype to next: It’s an important part of the advancement of game to take some already established ideas and use them in new environments. Last week, Ace of Spades utilized the place/destroy nature of voxels in a trench warfare game of capture-the-flag, and last week the formula began, quite literally, traveling to a new frontier.

Inspired by both the open-source Infiniminer and the wildly popular Minecraft, Blockade Runner aims to have players constructing spacecraft – complete with electronics systems, engines, crew stations, weapons batteries, and more – in a zero-g environment, then using them to explore the universe, either peacefully or struggling against fellow players. The game will also include a fluid algorithm for liquids as well as gasses, so if an enemy weapon happens to breach your ship’s hull, you’d better seal the hole quickly before all your air escapes into the vacuum of space.

Currently little more than an early (very early) prototype, Blockade Runner is being actively developed by ZanMgt, a dev-team comprised of six siblings. Their development schedule is split into 6-month release cycles, with weekly updates in between each major release. The current build (Release 1, Week 2) mainly only allows allows for the placement and removal of blocks of varying texture. Next week’s build plans to add propulsion systems to the ships.

Time will tell if Blockade Runner will soar to its full potential, but I’ll certainly be following the development closely.

Game Site

Shores of Hazeron

By: Alehkhs

On: April 23rd, 2011

Shores of Hazeron is an indie sand-box space MMO currently in Open Alpha/Beta stage, bringing to mind such media as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, the Elite series, Noctis, and Spore, to list a few.

Similar to other great labor-of-love projects such as Dwarf Fortress or Noctis, Hazeron‘s current graphics, interface, and performance might not seem cutting-edge (and combined with frequent lag and server downtime threaten to drive many a newcomer away), yet the game boasts incredible features and depth. Allowing for seamless, free-form exploration and colonization of planets in a procedurally-generated universe (containing unique solar systems, planets, animals, and plants), Hazeron allows players to build up a galactic empire from humble beginnings, or join a pre-existing and established empire. Players can design and customize spaceships and space stations, take-off and land seamlessly on planets and moons, fly between stars, and both interact peacefully or wage war with other players and empires.

Game Site / Game Wiki