Miner Wars

By: Alehkhs

On: July 16th, 2009

If there is one game type that I love, it’s a free-roaming space sim. Games like Elite or Freelancer come to mind, where the player has the freedom to explore a universe unbounded, to etch out a living through trading, piracy, transportation, and even mining asteroid fields.

As much as I enjoy playing the miner route in these games, the experiences is hardly ever more than a 3D Asteroids clone, where you continually shoot spinning rocks into smaller and smaller chunks. I always wanted a game with a more detailed mining simulation; similar to the suddenly popular games Infiniminer or Minecraft.

Seems like Miner Wars is gonna be my kind of game.

Inspired by games like 1991’s Tunneler, where players dug tunnels to infiltrate their enemies base, and Descent, where they flew spaceships through cramped tunnels, Miner Wars allows players to dig their way through massive asteroids in an effort to uncover precious ores and investigate alien artifacts.

Don’t be afraid you’ll roam the stars alone though, Miner Wars is an MMO. Players will be able to join guilds and work together. Will your team mine ore from the kilometer-wide asteroids? or perhaps you will lie in ambush and snatch the ore out of the hands of another hard-working miner. You are free to make your living as you please, and there is a main plot to entertain you along the way, which will evolve with future game updates.

I talked briefly with Marek Rosa, Miner Wars Game Director, about this interesting project. “The player has several factions to choose from, and this choice determines who is his friend or enemy,” explains Rosa. “This faction’s bases also act as respawn locations for the player, and he can return to these bases to upgrade his ship with new weapons, engines, shields, etc.” I was told that currently there are ten ship-types for the player to choose from, varying in things like size, cargo capacity, armaments and power.

The factions also provide NPCs for the players to interact with, and Rosa gave a few examples of missions the player might receive, “It may be rescue, fighting, exploration, mining and harvesting ore, patrolling space, stealth missions or something else entirely.” Fighting will no doubt occur between players, and faction control of various sections of asteroid field will likely be one of the driving forces in the evolution of the game’s universe. “If you dig a tunnel, and the leave and go across the universe, another player can still come across your tunnel,” said Rosa. Every interaction you have with the physical world of the game will leave a permanent effect.

Although Miner Wars has an infinite world, with asteroid fields scattered forever in every direction, players don’t need to worry about flying for hours just to complete a mission. Rosa explained that players can travel instantaneously between various ‘transportation ships,’ which will be spread throughout the game’s universe. That’s not to say that players can’t strike out on their own though, and explore the places between these transport hubs. In fact, it’s this kind of exploration that will allow the player to discover alien artifacts among the asteroids, which can be collected and sold for a high profit.

The current distribution plan for Miner Wars is a release for PC in August, with updates and expansions of the game’s story and world expected to come every few months. Shortly after the PC release, it’s planned that Miner Wars will be coming to XBLA, and there are even whisperings of a 2D version headed to handheld devices like iPhone…

Game Website

Interview with Casey Flynn of Faery Tale Online

By: Lorne Whiting

On: June 1st, 2009

I don’t do enough around the site, so here’s an interview with Casey Flynn (AKA Lumin) of Faery Tale Online, a unique browser-based MMO that involves a lot more incest, fratricide, and thievery than its name implies. Some of the main hooks of the game are its unique birth system, coupled with a perma-death system, so player deaths have a lot more weigh than in a normal game, and its lack of premade history, so players create the whole world.

It’s got a lot of focus on role-playing, something I’m not too keen on, but the game’s approach to, well, being a game is too cool for me to not like it, even with the sizable wait just to be born.

Dwarf Fortress: Life Imitates Art

By: Derek Yu

On: April 16th, 2009

A programmer dwarf reclines with his pet and his lute.

Happy belated birthday, Tarn. Congratulations on the new kitten… gulp!

I’m going to get flamed for posting this, aren’t I?

A New Zero (Open Beta)

By: Derek Yu

On: January 20th, 2009

A New Zero is a team-based multiplayer game by programmer Alex Austin of Cryptic Sea (Gish, Blast Miner). In the game you can pilot either a plane or one of two types of boats to try to take out the opposing team’s base. ANZ is procedurally-generated and is impressively small (just under a megabyte), but more importantly, it looks like a hell of a lot of fun! I haven’t played it yet, but falicon writes (via TIGForums):

TIGdb: Entry for A New Zero

P.S. Happy belated birthday, Dr. King!

Venture Arctic Free Until New Year’s

By: Derek Yu

On: December 24th, 2008

Andy Schatz offers up a great gift for the holidays: his ecological sim Venture Arctic is free until 2009. In his own words:

TIGdb: Entry for Venture Arctic

Qwop

By: Derek Yu

On: November 10th, 2008

I’m not sure I could explain, in words, what Benzido’s Qwop is about any better than the above screenshot can. This must be what it’s like for a baby to try and walk!

TIGdb: Entry for Qwop

Kudos 2 2 soduKo

By: Lorne Whiting

On: October 13th, 2008

Positech Games released Kudos 2 recently, so, yeah, have at.

_{pictured: Amanda, my best shemale friend}

The game’s a sequel to their possibly-popular life-sim Kudos (which I think Rockstar was a spin off of?). The main change to the sequel, to my knowledge, is that they hired an artist to vector them up some non-undead (which I guess would go back to being dead? It’s a conundrum since the graphics are good and livin’) graphics.

And uh, that tells you nothing about the game, so, it’s like the Sims only instead of having a family of people who pee themselves and catch on fire, you play from a first person perspective and spend all your money making your friends hate you because you go bowling too much.

The game has a lot of charm, as a sim game should, and it’s easy to get hooked. It might seem shallow at first, with very little to do, but in the minimal GUI there’s a lot of depth: many activities do more than the basic “you did this all day, you get 14 heart points”, and you unlock new activities, make more friends, and piss more friends off with time.

So, yeah, check it out.

(Thanks, seregrail7!)

Mount & Blade v1.0

By: Derek Yu

On: September 19th, 2008

At long last, the mighty Mount & Blade has reached version 1.0! You can now purchase it in retail shops across the United States and Europe, or as a download here, from GamersGate. The final price of the game is $29.99.

As usual, developer TaleWorlds is keeping mum on the changes from v0.960 (their front page hasn’t even been updated to reflect the new release). However, a quick peek around the TaleWorlds forums might glean some info as to what’s been added.

What is this, the banner year for independent gaming? Braid, Castle Crashers, Iji, and now M&B (to name just a few). I’m scared to think what’s going to pop up after the IGF submission deadline! …Maybe a beer angel?

(Source: Kieron Gillen, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

TIGdb: Entry for Mount & Blade

The Torture Game 2

By: Derek Yu

On: May 29th, 2008

Somewhere out there, a U.S. Senator is earning his or her wings.

But really, what I like about Torture Game 2 is not so much that it lets you hurt a guy with nails, rope, spikes, a chainsaw, etc. – the actual gore is pretty campy, in my opinion. No, what I like is that you can use his body to make macabre art! The game even provides a little paintbrush for you to paint on him with.

For example, check out what the creative folks at Sensible Erection (NSFWish) have done with the game.

Caveman Craig

By: Derek Yu

On: May 14th, 2008

In Caveman Craig you’re charged with leading a tribe of cavemen as they try to survive the harsh realities of everyday life as a friggin’ prehistoric caveman! Namely, dinosaurs. And evil cavemen dressed in black.

The interesting thing about CC is how you train each individual caveman to do his job (which he will then perform automatically). Cavemen come in three flavors (hunter, gatherer, and preparer), which each have two skills. To teach them these skills you simply perform the action a number of times while they are following you. New cavemen arrive when enough food has been prepared.

Along the way, you’re blessed with small gifts that make things easier for you (e.g. a fire and spit that prepares carcasses). These are fun rewards, and they alleviate the repetitiveness of training somewhat, but more skills, more dinosaurs, and more variety would have been very welcome. Raids on other tribes, perhaps?

Still, it’s a fun little game while it lasts!