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'Tetris Royale' brings massive battles to phones worldwide
Just a few weeks after its 35th birthday, Tetris is getting a new look. A Tetris battle royale game is coming to mobile. N3TWORK and The Tetris Company Inc. announced that they've partnered to develop Tetris games built for mobile devices worldwide -- excluding China.
Blizzard isn't ditching the Battle.net name after all
Some fans got sad when they heard that Blizzard plans to ditch the Battle.net name after two decades online. Others shrugged it off: it's new name doesn't matter anyway. It's always going to be called B.net. After hearing its fans' thoughts, the video game developer has decided to scrap its plans. The team said they changed their decision, because they understand that names matter, and that Battle.net "represents years of shared history and enjoyment, community and friendship..."
Mekamon is a fighting robot with an augmented reality twist
A couple of little four-legged bots could be the future of fighting games. Reach Robotics, a UK-based company, is pushing for mixed reality gaming with modular robots called Mekamons that will face off in the digital and physical worlds. It's building an augmented reality game with these intelligent bots that are capable of launching a full-blown attack on each other. Its existing prototype at CES has infrared, Bluetooth and an in-built compass to help it detect the exact location of an opponent for an accurate attack in a multiplayer game. For now, Reach is using an app to control, arm and level up the bot in a single-player game (the only working format at the event).
Watch how a CGI-heavy 'Game of Thrones' zombie battle was made
(Warning: spoilers ahead.) The spectacular Game of Thrones 'Hardhome' battle scene with white walkers, zombie-like wights and wildings is pretty VFX-heavy, judging by a new video from effects house El Ranchito. Highlights include Jon Snow slashing a walker into shards of crystal, battle scenes with the giant Wun Wun, and wights -- so many hordes of wights. Despite having TV's highest budget, the show doesn't rely overly on digital effects, using them sparingly on gore and dragons, we imagine. However, Snow actor Kit Harrington said that the 'Hardhome' battle "is so CGI-heavy it's unlike anything I've ever done on Thrones."
Crush waves of enemies to save princess in Day of the Viking
Day of the Viking is a new game from Adult Swim involving a castle, a princess and vikings. The vikings are coming for the princess's treasure and as the castle defender, you need to destroy them. The game offers numerous ways to go about doing this and there's 80 levels with varying locations and amounts of vikings. As they get stronger, unlock stronger weapons to take them down and complete harder missions in each level. The app is universal for iPhone and iPad and sells for US$2.99. It requires no earlier than iOS 7.0. If you're familiar with the Adult Swim suite of iOS games and even just the Adult Swim brand (or network) in general, you'd probably assume Day of the Viking has cartoonish and playful elements to it. You would be correct! The description makes it seem like Day of the Viking is action-packed and potentially violent, but in practice destroying the vikings is a bit similar to playing a game of Angry Birds in which the pigs are moving targets. The princess of the castle is there to guide you through the first few levels. This is where you learn the essentials of the game. Initially, your only weapon atop the castle is a bow and arrow. Tapping vikings as they head closer shoots directly at them. Then the princess informs you of the slingshot, which can take out more than one viking at a time - useful for when they arrive in groups, which is often. When you pull the slingshot, you're given a sense of the boulder's path to target accurately. Every time you kill a viking, you earn some points and every so often a coin appears in the field. Tap to retrieve it while simultaneously avoiding vikings, but it's important to nab these for a few reasons. For one, they often appear in missions. To gain all three stars in each round, you have to complete three missions. These vary, but they range from having you collect a certain amount of coins to not taking any damage to the castle from a viking to killing three of them with one rock. The other aspect is Day of the Viking's currency. The points and coins add and contribute to your amount of gold, which buys boosters to enhance your weapons or upgrades, among some other things. In-app purchases are available to buy packs of gold, too. The levels are harder than one might expect. By round three or four I had already failed to defend the castle and had to replay the level more than once. To get anywhere in the game, you must rely heavily on boosters and upgrades because your regular weapon set isn't even close to sufficient for defeating the vikings. This increases the likeliness that making an in-app purchase will come into question, which is a little disappointing for a paid game to start. Day of the Viking is lacking somewhat in originality and unabashedly calls on you a bit too much to spend that gold, but it does have plenty of entertainment value and great design. Get the universal Day of the Viking game in the App Store for $2.99.
Entropia Universe comes to smartphones with pet battle system
If you couldn't get enough of Entropia Universe's RMT-based virtual world gameplay on your PC, the devs have announced today that the game will soon be coming to several additional platforms, including smartphones and tablets. Through the new Competitive Pet (ComPet) system, players can battle their pets through various "maturity and price levels available to fit players of all types, including a free-to-play version." Before the ComPet system is launched, 200,000 ComPet deeds will be sold at 100 Project Entropia Dollars (10 USD) each and players will earn 30% of all deeded pet revenue. ComPet is set to be available in Q1 of 2015.
Monument to be built for EVE's largest battle ever
EVE Online is known for its epic battles. Not only did last Monday see the biggest EVE battle to date, but the developers and players have already started work on a monument to remember the event. The Bloodbath of B-R5RB, as the battle is now known, will be commemorated in game with the Titanomachy monument, constructed from the wrecked models of the brand new Titan ship introduced with Rubicon's 1.1 release (coincidentally right after that battle). The permanent monument site will live around the seventh planet in the B-R5RB solar system and is already expected to be a pilgrimage destination for many players. You can read a complete recap of the Bloodbath of B-R5RB on the most recent dev diary, and be sure to tune in today at 19:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. EST) for a developer livestream discussing the event and Rubicon 1.1's release.
Scraps wants you to strap guns to cars, build bringers of destruction
Car combat games can be built with a fairly simplistic formula and still be a lot of fun to play. What would happen if players entered death machines with wheels that they crafted down to a vehicle's chassis, though? It would look something like Scraps, a customization-focused car combat game that's more than willing to hand you the toolbox and a pile of parts. Scraps will focus on a deathmatch experience, both in free-for-all and team-oriented rounds of destruction. As players blast pieces off of an opponent's vehicle, they will be able to collect the rubble and return to designated platforms to repair or upgrade their own rides. If your friends aren't into reducing cars to LEGO sets, single player, AI-filled deathmatch options will also be available. Those more interested in playing with creation tools are covered, too - Scraps will offer a sandbox mode with unlimited funds. Can you build a 20-foot wide wall of turrets on wheels capable of firing without knocking itself over? Only one way to find out! The alpha release of Scraps is planned for the middle of 2014, but you can tinker around with some creation tools in Scraps' pre-alpha builder demo right now. If the project has already won you over, you can donate $20 NZD (~$16 in US currency) to its Kickstarter campaign and secure yourself a digital copy for PC, Mac and Linux once the first alpha is live. Yes, that will eventually include the full game too, and Steam keys will be available now that the project has been Greenlit.
EVE Evolved: The battle of Z9PP-H caught on camera
If you're the kind of person who loves reading about the political shenanigans that go on inside EVE Online, you should be aware that a colossal war has erupted in the wake of the Odyssey expansion. The expansion redistributed the value of nullsec moons and gave the two largest alliances in the game, the Reddit-based TEST Alliance and Something Awful-spawned GoonSwarm Federation, a good excuse to go to full-scale war. Allies have piled in on either side, and nullsec has erupted into full-scale region takedowns, spy-jacking, and more of the lovely political tomfoolery we love to hear about. EVE News 24 has been doing a good job of keeping players up to date on what's happening in nullsec, and its reporters are not the only ones keeping tabs on the war. Streamer Mad Ani has been setting up cameras in strategically important locations throughout the contested regions and providing live coverage of huge battles whenever they happen. A few days ago, the war came to a head in what could have been the deciding battle of the entire Fountain invasion. Over 4,000 people watched the stream as TEST's entire capital fleet of over 100 carriers was taking a pounding in Z9PP-H, when suddenly the server crashed and disconnected everyone in the fight. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at what happened in the battle of Z9PP-H, how CCP crashed its biggest piece of PR in months, and how player livestreams are changing the face of EVE Online for the better.
Battle of the Bulge teased for iPhone
Developer Shenandoah Studio has teased an upcoming release of Battle of the Bulge for iPhone via Vine, of all things. You can watch the full (six-second) video below. As you can see above, the studio's great strategy is definitely coming to the iPhone. Shenandoah notes that the update will make the game universal, so if you've already bought this great World War II strategy title on the iPad, you'll be able to play it on your iPhone as well. Battle of the Bulge is an excellent title (there's a free version to try, if you haven't played it yet), and we'll look forward to seeing what differences, if any, the game has on a smaller screen.
Total War: Rome 2 is a 'completely reworked vision' from The Creative Assembly
Rome: Total War is one of those games that a certain, very dedicated audience loves, while the rest of the gaming world is left outside admiring the craft but not quite understanding the dedication. The first Rome: Total War was critically acclaimed and spawned a line of expansions and updates, and now strategy giants The Creative Assembly are returning to the game with a full sequel, not to mention switching around the title to Total War: Rome 2. What's different? "Just about everything, really," says lead battle designer Jamie Ferguson during an interview at E3 2013. "In the ten years since we did Rome 1, we've completely overhauled the game. The game engine isn't even the same." TCA has released a number of Total War sequels and spinoffs throughout periods of history, and updated the original title with new features and systems already. But even despite those improvements, Ferguson says the new game has even more updates and improvements. "When we call it Rome 2, it might be a bit of a misnomer in a way," he says. "We might call it Rome Redux, I guess. It's a completely reworked vision of the game."%Gallery-191377%
Try not to lose the Battle of Teutoberg Forest again in Total War: Rome 2
The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest is an epic historical Roman defeat against Germanic tribes, in which about 20,000 Romans died, including suicidal officers tormented by their failure and soldiers who had their remains desecrated by the barbarians. And now you can play it as a game!
Witching Hour adds multiplayer into Ravenmark Mercenaries
Last year, Witching Hour Studios (a team that's grown to about eight people now) released Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion, a turn-based strategy title that felt way bigger than the little iPhone's screen it played on. The gameplay is complex (there are lots of units to control and every unit counters and is countered by another), but it's also very impressive, featuring big-scale battles and a story to match. Ever since Ravenmark arrived, fans have been clamoring for multiplayer, and last week at GDC I met up with Witching Hour to see Ravenmark: Mercenaries, a new entry in the series that adds the ability to play against other humans, along with lots of other very impressive features. The multiplayer is obviously the headliner here. The Witching Hour guys say the first game was really "stepping blocks" leading up to a multiplayer game, so obviously it was front and center when they started work on this one. It plays out just like the standard Ravenmark match, with players getting to field two different armies, and taking turns two at a time, passing them back and forth. As the guys showed me during the GDC meeting, moves are made almost simultaneously asychronously, and you can rewatch turns as much as you like to see how the battle is going down. In addition to the actual battles, each player gets to make their own battle standard flag, which is then carried by an actual unit in the multiplayer skirmishes. That's a fun touch -- not only does it provide a bit of customization, but it adds strategy as well, as the battle standard carrier conveys a number of extra powers and benefits (while he's alive, at least). In addition to the multiplayer options, there's also another long singleplayer campaign to play through, and units can now be leveled up. Players can also gain commander levels, which add new abilities to the mix, and give player commanders a little bit of personality ("Cold-blooded" or "hot-headed" are two of the commander attributes players can earn). And if the full campaign and all of the multiplayer isn't enough strategic battling for you, there will also be "contracts" to play out, which are daily skirmishes available against a certain enemy. Finally, Witching Hour is planning to deliver this content in a few different ways. Much of the buzz around mobile titles these days says that free-to-play games are the way to go, but that's not what Witching Hour found with Ravenmark. After releasing the first game both as a full package for a premium price of $9.99, and a free-to-play version with episodic content, the team found that more users wanted to simply go for the whole-package premium version. In fact, the team says they even saw a lot of users downloading the free version, and then buying the full version rather than picking up all of the same content episodically. So the same deal will probably be available with Mercenaries. In addition to a standard premium game, the team is also thinking about offering a "collector's edition" version, with extra content for an even higher price. And they're convinced that their biggest fans will be willing to pay for it, just because their most dedicated fans love the game so much. We'll have to see how that plays out. Ravenmark is a very impressive series, and Mercenaries looks like a more than worthy addition to Witching Hour's work so far. It is expected to be ready for purchase sometime this summer.
Matt Rix and Owen Goss prepare for a Snow Siege
After a long absence from the App Store, developer Matt Rix will soon be back with Snow Siege, a game that's the result of a new collaborative effort between Rix and Owen Goss called Milkbag Games. I met up with Rix at GDC this week to talk about the new game and how it all came together. Rix made a big splash on the App Store a couple of years ago with Trainyard, an excellent game that had you connecting little colored trains with rails on a grid. Since then, Rix has worked on several projects and prototypes but hasn't released a new game for iOS. He admits feeling pressure in trying to follow up Trainyard's high quality, and notes that he "gets really sick of it" when a project goes on for too long. While game development can be fun, polishing a title for release often isn't. As a result, Rix found himself looking for a new project rather than finishing the ones he'd started. Last year, Rix teamed up with fellow developer (and Ontario, Canada resident) Goss, the creator of Finger Tied and Landformer. Rix said he hoped "working with someone else might make me stick to something." Rix has also been working on a framework built for the Unity engine called Futile (which developer NimbleBit has famously embraced for their games), so the duo started making a game together. Snow Siege is scheduled to be released this year. The initial game Goss and Rix started bore a close resemblance to another game Rix made called Baskeball Cannoncube, which itself has roots in a silly comment on Reddit. But the original game, which was about a cube that could shoot basketball hoops, eventually translated into a snowball fight game, and it morphed again and again, as Rix and Goss threw ideas back and forth, into the wild mix of genres that Snow Siege is right now. So here's the run-down. Snow Siege is a tower defense game with action elements. The defenses that you build (against an invading horde of 2D snowmen) are all represented and chosen from a deck of cards. A number of cards go into your hand during every build phase, you get a certain number of points to build with, and then you can spend those points to build defenses. Blue cards are shields that block enemy attacks. Red cards are weapons and used for attack. Green cards represent support units which provide a variety of helpful abilities. Snow Seige has one last twist. Once you choose what cards you'd like to build with, the defenses appear on the board in the form of ... wait for it ... Tetris pieces. With plus-shaped pieces, lines and various angled blocks, you can drop pieces onto the board and build them up as you like, either slotting them together Tetris-style or dangling them dangerously out across each other. There's even a little bit of strategy to building a rickety structure -- if a group of snowmen takes out a support block, the blocks overhead will fall and could give you a "crushing bonus," rewarding you with lots more coins and points. As you might imagine, the game starts simple, with just a few snowmen that are easily defeated. However, Rix showed me a battle from later in the game that was incredibly chaotic, including hordes of snowmen marching on a huge fort, driving tanks and even helicopters. Your defenses can get beefy too, with missile turrets and lasers that will shoot automatically and even target certain enemies for you. Snow Siege looks like a lot of fun, but complicated. The card mechanic is a strange addition to a game that's already got puzzle blocks and shooting weapons. But Rix said it's in there to simplify things, actually, and he and Goss hope that the simple act of collecting cards in a deck makes the choices of what and how to build a little easier and more understandable. At any rate, the pair has plenty of work yet to do. Rix and Goss are both talented game creators and they've got several interesting ideas up in the air already with Snow Siege. Hopefully they can juggle those ideas without dropping any.
EVE Evolved: Making EVE history
EVE Online has the odd distinction of being one of the only MMOs in which the developers have almost no control over the active storyline. There have been plenty of fiction articles written about the game's backstory, and the NPC factions occasionally butt heads in short news pieces, but none of it feels very real. It's only when these events actually occur inside the game world that they become real, and when that happens, the outcome is at the mercy of players. 2010's spectacular Sansha abduction live event was the perfect example of this, with thousands of players becoming immersed in a very real emerging storyline. The story was fluid and evolved based on what players did, and so it made the NPC factions come alive in a way that fiction never could. While the scripted NPC portions of these storylines certainly constitute part of EVE's history, the most interesting tales follow the unexpected actions of players and alliances. The fascinating thing is that the audience for these stories extends far beyond the playerbase itself, with news of high-profile events occasionally taking the global gaming media by storm. But for every 3,000-man battle and 200 billion ISK scam that's reported, there are hundreds of smaller events that would be just as interesting to read about or watch a video on. Most of these events have been lost to the mists of time, kept secret or talked about only among those directly involved ... until now. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the types of NPC-based and player-run stories that happen regularly in EVE and speculate on CCP's upcoming plans to document and preserve that history.
Colossal 3000-man battle rocks EVE Online
What started out as a few EVE Online alliances forming up PvP fleets last night rapidly evolved into one of the largest PvP battles in the game's history. Reports indicate that a total of over 3,000 players may have been involved in the colossal battle in the lowsec system of Asakai in the early hours of this morning, with hundreds of corporations taking sides in the conflict. The battle officially centred around a Liandri Covenant staging starbase in the Caldari faction warfare system of Asakai, but things rapidly got out of control as practically every major alliance with a capital fleet threw its own forces into the mix for a bit of fun and the chance to kill a titan or two. The system peaked at around 2,800 players fighting simultaneously, just 300 short of beating 2010's world record battle in LXQ2-T. Lag set in with around 700 players in the system, but EVE's Time Dilation feature kept the server running amicably up into the thousands of players. At the peak of the battle, the system was running at just 10% normal speed and people were experiencing several-minute delays on module activations. Dozens of valuable capital ships and supercapitals were destroyed, in addition to several titans worth several thousand dollars each. A few players filmed parts of the action and have shared footage of the slow-motion battle on YouTube. [Thanks to BobFromMarketing for the tip!]
Daily iPad App: Battle of the Bulge is brilliant but obscure historical simulation
Battle of the Bulge is a really incredible game that I think a lot of people will overlook, unfortunately. In terms of war simulation games on the App Store, I haven't seen a better game than Battle of the Bulge. As you can tell from the title, it's a full-scale recreation of the legendary German offensive in 1944, the biggest and worst battle fought in World War II. This title is pure historical strategy gaming bliss, put together by a fledgling studio named Shenandoah Games. It's all turn-based gameplay and plays out like a board game, more or less, with you moving various troops and units around on a 2D game board, making strategical moves as carefully as possible and trying to complete whatever objectives the game throws at you. The depth here just can't be understated: Shenandoah clearly cares a lot about war games and the history of this legendary battle, and as you explore the title on your iPad, you'll be astounded at just what's included here, from a full tutorial to two different modes, full online multiplayer and even historical information and photos to fill you in on the real battle itself. The game itself is simple to play, but very hard to master, and as you can see from this gameplay video, strategy gamers will just plain love it. But therein lies the problem: The App Store is traditionally filled with casual gamers, and players expecting the shallow thrills of a game like Angry Birds will be hopelessly disappointed here. This is a real strategy war game, so there are no easy moves or simple decisions, and as you might imagine, a deep knowledge of the actual battle and how it played out is fairly important to being successful at this title. A lot of gamers, even strategy fans, will probably be turned off, eventually, given how slavishly devoted Battle of the Bulge is to portraying the titular battle itself. It's too bad, really, because the game's mechanics are terrific, and I'd love to see this really incredible core strategy game fleshed out into other maps or even settings. Shenendoah's not at fault here at all -- they set out to make a wargame based on the Battle of the Bulge, and they succeeded brilliantly at that goal. If you have any interest in that period of history (or the finer points of WWII strategy at all), the game's well worth the US$9.99 purchase. But it's too bad such great talent was used on a such a narrow focus. Hopefully in the future, we'll see the studio bring their expertise to something slightly more accessible.
Allods previews the vehicle-based skirmish of Summerhold
Allods Online has always laid claim to having a robust system of vehicle customization with its astral ships. The upcoming skirmish available in the next patch takes that vehicle affection to the next level with the battle of Summerhold. Players who take part in this conflict won't be fighting a PvP objective but will instead be piloting a variety of vehicles to take out a rampaging prototype weapon controlled by a goblin. The vehicles are each laid out with strengths and a few crucial weaknesses to force players to work as a team; the high-damage artillery unit can't open fire unless the nimble spotter gets up close to the prototype, but of course the spotters will be ripped apart without a defensive line, and so on. Based on how fast the prototype unit is taken down, players will be awarded a variety of medals which can be exchanged for prizes including minipets and vanity items. If you're looking forward to vehicle-based mayhem, take a look at the full rundown for all the details.
Avengers: Battle for Earth features favorites, familiar faces
Ubisoft has named all twenty characters appearing in Avengers: Battle for Earth, the upcoming fighter for Kinect (and then Wii U). You'll be able to spin off some psy-force as the Phoenix, embodied by the X-Man Jean Grey, and take command of the Skrull queen Veranke, among others. It's not surprising to see a big "Secret Invasion" influence, given the game's initial trailer. See the full list after the break.Avengers: Battle for Earth will have you and your friends jumping around and debating the correct time for clobberin' on November 9. If you want to see some of these heroes throwing down right away, there's a demo available for download in the meantime.
Daily iPhone App: Rune Raiders charges into turn-based combat
Rune Raiders isn't a new app -- it came out a little while ago and has been updated a few times (and you can actually play a version of it online in Flash). But I was looking through the App Store for a few good turn-based games recently, and Rune Raiders has been stealing more and more of my playtime. It is indeed a game you play by turns, where you control a small party of square-shaped soldiers, who move upwards on a grid-based battlefield, fighting a series of enemies who are also represented by tiles. Each of your heroes (and the enemies you face) have various abilities and uses, and each of those abilities has their own range and strength of attack. You can push your party to the right or left or forward, or simply move them at will around the bottom of the screen. Of course, every move takes up a turn, and the game progresses in this way, with you trying to make the fewest turns to keep your heroes alive and bring them to the end of the level as quickly as possible. The whole thing is governed by a currency system (supported by in-app purchases), and unfortunately, the system is a little wonky -- if your characters die during, you can spend some more money to get them back to life. That's a little more annoying than it has to be, I think -- I wish the devs here had come up with some other way to keep characters going than simply asking you to pay more money. But if you're smart with your moves and the strategy behind them, it's completely possible to get lots and lots of gameplay in just by using and earning the in-game currency. There's also a rating system for each level, and you open up different heroes as you go along, so there's plenty of replay value as well. Rune Raiders is a free universal download that's available right now.
