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Play Bastion in your Chrome browser right now
Google's new "Native Client" tech lets developers compile high-end programs to run directly in a Chrome browser window. One of the first companies to take advantage of this is Supergiant Games, who has released its PC/XBLA hit Bastion to the Chrome Web Store. If you're running Chrome, and you meet the system requirements, trying out the new version is as simple as opening that link and hitting "Launch App." If it works well for you, you can purchase it for $14.99 and take your saved progress to any Chrome browser on any computer you happen to use. It worked pretty well for us -- on a Mac!
Aeria Games acquires Punch Entertainment, brags about growth
Even if you've never heard of Aeria Games, chances are you've heard of one of the company's free-to-play MMO titles. A new press release touts the California-based firm's recent growth and boasts of its desire to cater to "hardcore and medium-core players who play as much as four hours per day." Aeria's latest acquisition includes the internal development team at Punch Entertainment as well as an unnamed iOS and Android game that will soon be added to a stable of titles that numbers over 30 strong, including Shaiya and Eden Eternal. "As we move forward, we will continue to form strategic partnerships and grow our development teams while building and acquiring more engaging content to reward our dedicated power gamers," said Aeria CEO Lan Hoang. [Source: Aeria press release]
Play the game Notch made in 48 hours
This weekend's iteration of the occasional Ludum Dare game-making marathon, in which entrants have 48 hours to create a game from scratch, had a celebrity participant: Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, who spent the weekend developing a first-person dungeon crawler called Prelude of the Chambered. If you'd like to see what happens when Notch rushes (in contrast to the still unfinished Minecraft) you can play the game in a browser window. Like, right now. Here's the link. "It takes about 20-30 minutes to beat the game," said Notch, suggesting you might be able to get back to work today. Of course, he immediately followed with "if you die, you need to start over from the beginning," throwing your workday back into question.
Dragon's Call joins Aeria Now catalogue
Last time we heard from Dragon's Call was way back in October of 2009, when we were just getting our hands on the first details of the game. Over the past year-and-change, the browser-based fantasy MMORPG has made its way into the hands of Aeria Games. It's now available in Aeria's Aeria Now stable of browser-based games. Dragon's Call features a story told through Flash-animated cutscenes and drops players into the role of one of three classes (Warrior, Mage, or Assassin) and sends them on a series of "thousands of captivating quests." PvP battles are also offered alongside the storyline quests for those of you with a bit more bloodlust. No matter which route players take, they will have the opportunity to level up their characters' skills and upgrade their equipment to customize their characters as it suits them. To give the game a whirl, head over to the official site.
Let Adult Swim's 'Soul Brother' possess your browser
Adult Swim continues to be a venue for brilliantly weird browser games from indie talent, following up games like Robot Unicorn Attack and Cream Wolf with Soul Brother, by Superflat Games (developer of the Silent Hill 2 demake Soundless Mountain II). The beautifully pixel-illustrated Soul Brother gives you control of a variety of creatures with different abilities, all controlled by killing your current host body and then inhabiting the new one as a ghost. Each body has a skill that can be used to pass certain obstacles in the Metroidvania-esque game, like flight or double-jumping. While you're at Adult Swim, we also encourage you to check out Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars by Auntie Pixelante, probably our favorite maze game about slavery.
Drakensang Online moving into closed beta
If game development had trending topics a la Twitter, "play in your browser" would be at the top of the list. After all, a game you can play in your browser takes all of the slow download and install times out of the equation. Drakensang Online is the latest such game in development heading for a release, with the closed beta having just begun. If you've never heard of the game before now, don't fret -- applications for testers are still being accepted. How much social interaction will be present in the game remains to be seen, although the game's page boasts that players can engage in battle with and against other players around the world. There's a definite Diablo vibe to the screenshots and the trailers, so if that's up your alley, it might well be worth taking a look at the game during its beta testing phase. [Thanks to B1GG1N for the tip!]
No client, no download, no problem: Runes of Magic coming to browsers
If there's a crippling weakness to the free-to-play model's success, it's the fact that trying each new game requires an awful lot of client downloads and installations. You could be forgiven for not wanting to clutter up your drive with another game that you may or may not want to invest in for the long haul. Runes of Magic is bridging that gap, however, with the addition of a browser-based client in the works for the second quarter of this year. As if that weren't enough, the development team is looking into providing full Facebook integration as well. Partnering up with Kalydo, Frogster is hoping to make registration and playing easier than ever, allowing signed-in Facebook users to jump right into the game with no further registration required. If all goes well, this will open up a large venue of new playability, letting players enjoy the game on virtually any Windows machine without installing the full Runes of Magic client each time. We'll be taking the opportunity to talk with Frogster about this development at GDC next week, so be sure to check back in for more news on the browser conversion.
Garriott's Portalarium going the social media route
Our friends at Joystiq tipped us off to the latest endeavor for MMO legend Richard Garriott (and no, it doesn't involve the intrepid developer orbiting the earth). While speaking at the Austin, Texas-based Fantastic Arcade event, Lord British dropped a few hints regarding the social media stylings that his latest company (and game), Portalarium, will feature. "You play it by clicking on a link, nothing to pay for up front, no real installation and only if you decide you really want to play it will we decide how to eventually charge you money for it," Garriott enthused. While we're not quite as excited as we would be if he'd announced an updated Ultima Online project, Portalarium bears watching, if only to see whether Garriott can still walk the walk. "Since everybody else is doing Flash and Java games, I can kick their ass pretty easy," he told attendees.
InstantAction announces Instant Jam, a browser-based music game
You're no longer limited to the old strawberries-plus-mallet approach for Instant Jam. Now there's a video game! InstantAction, the company behind the impressive embeddable game service, has announced Instant Jam, an original embeddable Rock Band-style music game for PC, developed by InstantAction's studio in Las Vegas. Instant Jam uses the music in your own music library, matching it to note charts for "the world's most popular songs." It supports the keyboard or USB guitar controllers, and allows in-game music purchases through Amazon or iTunes -- its version of DLC, which also happens to enhance your regular music library. A beta is currently available through Facebook. Versions playable through the website and embeddable elsewhere will be rolled out soon, and the team promises additional features regularly.%Gallery-99527%
GameStop's Zork 'customer acquisition engine' experiment was a success
The free-to-play browser game Legends of Zork has been a bit of an experiment for GameStop. The retailer has promoted the free-to-play browser game both in-store and online as the major title in its "Free2Play" service. It hasn't just been an experiment in offering online content to customers -- GameStop has also used it as a testing ground for promoting specific games. "Targeted customers received free in-game play cards with purchases at GameStop and they used the codes on cards to enter the game site online," explained COO J. Paul Raines in yesterday's investor call. "The results were that we added a large number of new game players to Legends of Zork, roughly doubling the audience of that game in four weeks. Our customer acquisition costs were significantly lower than advertising driven customer acquisition, and it is clear to us now that stores can efficiently convert online game players and provide a multi-channel gaming experience." Later, in response to a question about the growth of web-based games and its effect on GameStop, Raines called GameStop stores a "customer acquisition engine" for specific online games, as proven by Zork. GameStop's idea appears to be to earn revenue by promoting online games in stores -- and then possibly sell DLC cards. If it can do those things, it has nothing to fear from browser games.
Robot Unicorn Attack to live in harmony, harmony with your iPhone June 1
Robot Unicorn Attack, developer Spiritonin's excessively magical browser-based game about a unicorn running through a dreamscape and smashing stars, is bringing its Erasure-fueled wonder to the iPhone, where it can always be with you. Entertainment Weekly reports that the Adult Swim-published browser game will be available on the App Store on June 1, for $2.99. Adam Atomic's Canabalt, also a game about running forever and jumping between platforms, similarly started as a pretty amazing browser game before becoming a smash hit on iPhone. We suspect that unicorn magic will help Robot Unicorn Attack achieve Adult Swim's wish for a hit iPhone game. [Via @superpac]
WoW on iPad via streaming
World of Warcraft on the iPad? Apparently, thanks to an interesting service called Gaikai. Gaikai, currently in beta, is a new technology that will let you play any game online in your browser. Here's how it works -- Gaikai hosts the games on their servers and worries about the hardware and software updates, then they stream the games to you through your browser. They call this technology "Streaming Worlds." What does this mean for the average WoW player? Well, when you have a computer that otherwise looks seemingly impossible to play WoW on such as the iPad, you can use Gaikai to stream the game via Java, Flash or Silverlight to your computer, resulting in the screenshot shown above. While the screenshot is amazing, there are doubts to its credibility since iPad's browser doesn't support Flash. Unfortunately no video of the game in action was provided. However, the concept surrounding Gaikai, and the implications for browser-based games that are graphically intensive like World of Warcraft are fascinating.
Battlestar Galactica MMO announced (don't get too frakkin' excited)
This is the type of news that just hurts to report: Battlestar Galactica is becoming -- wait for it -- a browser-based MMO. We know! It's painful, right? The "game" is being developed by Bigpoint, which operates several titles in the genre. Battlestar Galactica Online will infect your internets like a Cylon-based virus sometime this autumn on the Syfy(lis) website for an exclusive 30 day period. Battlestar Galactica, and its fans, deserve better. We're not saying they deserve a BioWare RPG version of Wing Commander but ... actually, that's exactly what we're saying. [Via Big Download]
zOMG! beta reaches half a million players
Gaia Online's latest title, zOMG!, has attracted over half a million beta users, according to Worlds in Motion. This cutesy, anime-looking game was named by the players back in July of this year and has enjoyed tremendous success even this early in its life cycle.zOMG! is a Flash-based browser game marketed primarily to children and teens. Players earn Gaia Gold by interacting with the Gaia website and can then spend said gold to customize their avatar. If you're interested in trying the beta or just looking for more information on what it's all about, check out our First Impression of zOMG!.%Gallery-38996%
Bigpoint is poised and ready to invade US markets
USA Network and the SCI FI Channel are getting ready for a blitz of online games coming their way from Bigpoint. Peacock Equity Fund, which includes NBC Universal, recently bought a majority stake in the German game producer and are planning to distribute their browser-based, free-to-play titles on network sites.Previously planned titles, including a game based on the hit series Next Top Model, are still in the works. Bigpoint is also expanding across Europe through partnerships with MTV Networks International to promote their 26 browser games to users in nearly a dozen countries. They also offer a handful of downloadable games and a veritable plethora of mini games to over 43 million registered users.
World of Warcraft in two dimensions
With all the hullabaloo over the last several months speculating about the elimination or possible convergence of traditional single player experiences into the new massively multiplayer model, the last thing we expected to turn up in our daily lap around the web is one of the most beloved MMOs to date transmogrified into a single player platformer/RPG. While it's hardly the robust single player experience of a commercial product, the aptly named WTF?! takes a look at what would happen if World of Warcraft were condensed into two dimensions.You can play either a Blood Elf Priest or a Gnome Rogue, both of which play slightly differently even within the confines of two dimensions. The game is a little buggy (make sure you get the trinket from Hegemon before you try and take down Mary Daly!) and slightly misogynistic, but it's got a certain flare that is hard to not find endearing. Maybe it's the humor or maybe it's the Mario sound effects, it's hard to pin down. In any case, if you're bored at work this week but don't have the machine for WoW, check it out.[Via Broken Toys]
