Project Zomboid, the isometric zombie survival RPG, is getting a multiplayer mode. The Indie Stone unveiled the new feature in an official blog post. The multiplayer mode will use perisistent player-run servers, and may even include split-screen play on the same PC at a later date. According to the developers, multiplayer is being added to increase sales.
However, since release, and particularly since our appearance on Steam, it’s become clearer and clearer not only that MP is of such massive demand, but that the lack of multiplayer has had a not insignificant effect on the ‘must-haveness’ of Zomboid to a large chunk of gamers out there, that would otherwise have dove in long ago.
The Indie Stone insists that the focus of Project Zomboid will still be singleplayer, and that work continues on adding non-player characters to the game. In fact, the developers hope that the singleplayer features will be compelling enough to entice players into leaving the AI-controlled characters enabled on multiplayer servers.
Klei Entertainment’s dapper survival game, Don’t Starve, is getting new DLC. The Reign of Giants teaser video doesn’t give us much information other than that it’s “coming soon,” but there may be a clue in the title of the video. It’s subtitled as “Autumn Teaser.” A new in-game season perhaps? Maybe it’s the expected release period? Other than that speculation, Klei did confirm on Twitter that the DLC will be coming for both PlayStation 4 and PC versions of the game.
I don’t envy anyone trying to sell an MMO before it’s done. Heck, I don’t envy anyone trying to sell an MMO within a month after its inevitable launch woes. But when you’re making an new MMO, what are you gonna do? You put on your dog-and-pony show, you talk about your ideas for what it takes to make a good MMO, and maybe you bank on the reputation of what you’ve done before.
The latest MMO from veteran MMO maker Brad McQuaid — here’s where you opine about whether you liked Everquest, Vanguard, and whatever stories you might have heard about McQuaid (pictured) — is called Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. Pantheon: Getting Back Up Again. Pantheon: He’s Going to Try To Do It Again. Pantheon: Once More Into the Breach. Pantheon: Let’s Put On a Brave Face and Some Alpha Footage To Sell the Heck Out of This Thing. Pantheon: I’ll Even Do That Horns Things With My Hand.
For more information, and lots of terrible quotes from fake fantasy heroes, the Kickstarter page is here.
The worst thing about a new MMO expansion is actually playing through the old stuff from before the expansion. Who really wants to slog through all those quests and monsters to get to the level needed for the new content? Since the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion will raise the overall level cap in World of Warcraft to level 100, players will need to be at least level 90 to appreciate all the shiny new areas. That’s a lot of raiding! Blizzard knows that people can’t wait to experience Warlords of Draenor, so they’re going to help bypass the grind. According to the latest post on the World of Warcraft blog, players that pre-purchase the digital edition will get an immediate boost to level 90 for one character on their account. Boom! Just like that! Draenor ready!
Maybe you have more than one character you’d like to boost? Maybe you just want to get to the “endgame” and do what all your cool guildmates are doing with a new character after the expansion ships? Well, Blizzard has something in the works that may help you get past all the boring stuff so you can actually have fun in their game.
We’ve also heard feedback from players that they’d be interested in boosting multiple characters to 90, including alts they play with friends on other factions and realms. We’ve been evaluating ways to make that possible without having players go through roundabout methods (such as purchasing multiple boxes and performing multiple character transfers), and in the near future we’ll be testing out a feature that gives you the option to purchase a character upgrade directly. We’ll have more information to share later – including details on our character-upgrade plans for Asian regions where players don’t buy expansion boxes – but you’ll start seeing pieces of the process soon on the PTR, so keep an eye out.
Earlier this month, Blizzard had sent a survey to some players asking them if they would purchase a way to advance a character to level 90 and what price they would find acceptable for that offer. What price would put on your time?
Frogwares and publisher Focus Home Interactive have just revealed that they are working on Call of Cthulhu for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One systems. You may not have heard of developer Frogwares, but you’ve probably seen their Sherlock Holmes series of adventure games. They’ve been cranking these out since 2002 with the occasional game based on The Mummy or Dracula to spice things up. With Cthulhu, I expect choosing the wrong dialogue option or picking up some important clues can result in Lovecraftian sanity-blasting terror.
It’s no secret that last year’s Hitman: Absolution didn’t do as well as the publsiher wanted. The assassin with a barcode on the back of his head sold 3.6 million units as of the last Square Enix investment data, but that was well short of the target the publisher projected. Sub-par sales means it’s time for a change in direction! In an open letter posted to fans, Io-Interactive spells out some of the ways they’re going to mix things up for the next installment. Contracts mode is coming back, and the protaganist’s “magic pockets” will be done away with. More importantly, the structure of the game will be more open-world than ever.
We’ve adopted an open, non-linear level design approach to the game, ensuring the game will play out across huge, checkpoint-free, sandbox levels. Our aim is to create living, breathing and believable levels which will allow gamers to play around with the AI to create those unique moments every fan of the Hitman franchise loves.
We can only hope that the next Hitman won’t have flashbacks to an alien invasion conspiracy.
Starbound will be getting more hats! In a new post on the official page, developer Chucklefish announced that the upcoming patch for Starbound should be released in about a week. The patch will add more decorative hats to collect (always a good thing in the race for videogame hat supremacy) new modes like permadeath and drop-everything-on-death, new weapons, and bug fixes. Unfortunately, the patch will also bring a clean sweep of everything players have built so far.
Of course, there’s also the highly anticipated/possibly feared final character wipe – this patch contains a fix for save files so after this, you won’t need to worry about our patches destroying your characters or ships. This patch will wipe everything – characters, ships and worlds. It will definitely be the last time we’ll need to wipe characters or ships, and will hopefully be the last time we’ll need to wipe worlds.
Think of it as an opportunity to collect more hats! Starbound is available on Steam Early Access or through the official site.
Behold an unfamiliar New World in Europa Univeralis IV’s latest add-on, Conquest of Paradise! In the game I just started, this is what you’ll find in place of the usual North and South America. It sort of resembles a squashed Australia, with a crowded Crimean-looking dangly bit on the bottom and the Apache relegated to their own little New Zealand to the south, where they can’t cause any fuss. It may not look like much, but it’s a Big Deal. This is Paradox’s first dalliance with randomized maps. I mean the actual maps are randomized and not just the stuff on them. The manual explains how it works:
…the game draws a box around the regions from Greenland south and west. Pretty much anything past the Azores is going to get mixed up. The engine then generates new continents and islands. We’ve made efforts to get the maps looking sort of like real land masses and not like blobs of space just stuck together. The territories are still grouped into historical regions, of course. There will be a Caribbean region, a Mississippi region and so on, because we use these tags for a bunch of other mechanics in the game, including some new ones. The random maps will also have the same trade nodes (but in different specific locations) and they will feed into each other in the same way that they do on the historical map.
The $15 add-on, available now, also introduces playable Native American nations with unique gameplay and new rules for colonial nations so they aren’t just extra overseas provinces. Maybe it’s time to just call the game Universalis.
Muramasa Rebirth, an absolutely gorgeous hack-and-slash sidescroller for the Vita, gets new DLC today. Fishy Tales of the Nekomata — don’t ask me, I’m just delivering the news — adds a new character who uses claws instead of swords. She is the heroine in a new adventure highlighting how seriously people took tea back in the olden days.
Okoi and her brother are tasked with delivering her family’s prized tea set to the shogun. While on their journey, Okoi’s family’s chief retainer hatches a plan to steal the tea set, killing Okoi’s brother along the way. Swearing to avenge her brother’s death and maintain her family’s honor, she becomes a cat-demon.
Take that, Princess Peach and your Super Mario 3D World cat suit!
Fishy Tales of the Nekomata, which lets you summon a flurry of attack cats, is available from the Playstation Store for $5.
Broken Age, Double Fine’s successfully crowd-funded adventure game, should be rolling out its first episode to beta backers now. In the recent developer post, Double Fine tells backers that they should be receiving a link to a Humble Bundle key allowing them access to the highly anticipated release. While they enjoy the first episode, Double Fine will continue work on the planned second and final episode which will release later this year. People that didn’t back the game can buy the Season Pass on Steam which will let them access to Act 1 on January 28th.
Double Fine is asking all people with early access to the first episode, including the press and Kickstarter backers, to hold off on posting anything about their experience until the official January 28 release date. They’re also asking that people keep spoilers off the internet. Good luck with that.
The same time limit applies to the press as to backers; everyone is in the same boat! We’re trying to be as fair as possible given that backers will have access to the game before everyone else.
No waxing poetic about Elijah Wood’s voice performance in the game until everyone gets it!
Update: Double Fine sends word that they’ve withdrawn their request for an embargo. Go ahead and post your judgments!
It’s time for another Call of Duty map pack. This time, the Onslaught DLC may have something special. Along with a new “Maverick” assault rifle, four multiplayer maps, and an alien Extinction mode chapter, the pack will let players become Michael Myers. Yes, the killer with the William Shatner mask. Fog is a map set in a spooky lakeside campsite that offers a way to turn one player into The Shape, pitting all other players against the Halloween murderer. Why not? The game already has zero-G combat, a dog that can take down helicopters, and an alien invasion horde mode. Go nuts!
Onslaught releases on January 28th for $14.99 on Xbox 360 and Xbox One with other platforms coming later.
Games, especially wargames, tend to get superficial or even dismissive treatment in the mainstream press. So it’s refreshing to see an informed and thoughtful piece explore the outstanding design work of Volko Ruhnke, a CIA security analyst who happens to be the designer of a series of multiplayer counterinsurgency games, including videogame reviewer Tom Chick’s favorite Labyrinth and ex-Colombian general Carlos Ospina Ovale’s favorite Andean Abyss. The Washington Post’s Jason Albert is the best kind of mole, establishing his credentials as an insider only after the article hooks you.
Beginning as a 10-year-old more than three decades ago, I spent innumerable hours hunched over wargames playing commander. My parents didn’t understand. My friends who saw the sun regularly didn’t either. But I wasn’t alone. Even though I left wargaming behind, I never forgot the games’ ability to evoke a sense of time, place and history.
He then describes playing Ruhnke’s games with him at his home, his experiences at the World Boardgame Championships, and how games like this can be a passion for both designer and player.
Back in March, someone asked the official SimCity Twitter account if an offline mode would ever be patched in to the game. The reply was negative.
“The game was designed for MP, we sim the entire region on the server so this is just not possible.”
Apparently, the wizards at EA have been hard at work opening portals to other dimensions and poloraizing flux capacitors because they have achieved the impossible dream! According to Patrick Buechner, general manager of Maxis Emeryville, offline play is coming. In the latest blog post, Buechner explained that offline mode will be coming as part of a free update to SimCity. In offline mode, save games will be stored locally, and all previously downloaded content will be available to players without he need to be connected to EA’s servers.
Update 10, including the offline option, has no launch date at this time, but EA promises to have more details in a follow-up blog post soon.
The latest Tom vs Bruce has been posted here. It’s rated M for mature audiences due to thematic elements, nudity, and one of us not doing very well as we team up against the AI in the fantasy strategy game, Dominions 4.
Focus Interactive and Eugen Systems have announced Wargame: Red Dragon, the follow-up to one of Tom Chick’s top ten games of 2013. The new real-time strategy game will let players win hearts and minds via conventional forces from the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s. Naval platforms will provide new ways to spread your ideology, and five new nations will fill out the already extensive Wargame roster of forces. Instead of the one large strategic campaign map that Wargame: AirLand Battle had, Eugen plans to have a dozen campaigns covering the conflicts in central Asia.
“Bear vs. Dragon” will, chronologically, be the first campaign. As one can easily imagine, this campaign will pitch China against the USSR in a limited border war in 1979, when the former’s intervention in Vietnam triggers the latter’s reaction.
Based on Eugen Systems’ track record with the Wargame series, I expect Wargame: Red Dragon to have outstanding support and plenty of Cold War action.
