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Wolfire's Overgrowth plants itself on Steam Early Access
Wolfire Games, the indie outfit responsible for the pistol-reloading sim Receiver, is currently working on a 3D beat-em-up called Overgrowth. The game is now available on PC, Mac and Linux through Steam Early Access for $25 – 17% off its $30 asking price – until January 2. Overgrowth is the sequel to Lugaru: The Rabbit's Foot, the studio's first game release. In Lugaru, you play as Turner, an anthropomorphic rabbit with curiously advanced combat skills, who is on a quest of revenge against the band of raiders who murdered his family. A free demo for Lugaru is available for download through Wolfire's site. There is currently no official launch lined up for Overgrowth and it's clear there is still lots left to do before the game is close to being a fully-realized product. The Steam Early Access version allows early adopters access to the prototype's sandbox exploration mode and modding tools.
Seven-day FPS challenger Receiver now out on Steam
Receiver, a detailed first-person shooter developed as part of a seven-day challenge for PC and Mac, has found its way on Steam. In the game players explore a minimalist world in search of clues to unravel a conspiracy. Well, if you survive an onslaught of deadly turrets and drones, that is. Taking cues from roguelikes, players must start from the beginning of the world – in search of the evidence that generates in random areas – upon death. Developed by Wolfire Games, Receiver explores the detailed mechanics behind managing and handling a Colt 1911 A1 pistol. Players must load each bullet into clips, manage a safety, compensate for recoil and more. Receiver can be a tense experience, as I learned in a livestream with the game when it first launched in June of last year. The Steam version is available for 20% off its regular price of $4.99 – priced to move at $3.99 – until May 6.
Indie shooter Receiver built in seven days, available now
Receiver is a gorgeous, intense new first-person shooter that explores the mechanics of handling a Colt 1911 A1. Developed during a seven-day FPS challenge, Receiver has you unraveling a conspiracy while exploring a building infested with deadly turrets and drones.But there's more to it than that – once you die in Receiver, it's game over. A new game is immediately loaded with a new set of randomly placed rooms, enemies, and weapons.Receiver from Wolfire Games is available for $5 on PC and Mac, or free for those who have pre-ordered Wolfire's Overgrowth.
Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games join Humble Bundle Mojam
As if the basic premise of Mojang's 60 hour Humble Bundle charity programming marathon weren't enough of an incentive for you to hand over as many of your hard earned dollars as you want, the Minecraft developer is now being joined by Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games, who will be creating their own 60-hour indie experiences.Wolfire's game will be based off the same crowdsourced premise as Mojang's, which is an RTS shoot 'em up steeped in an ancient Egypt/steampunk setting. Oxeye Games, on the other hand, will be combining the second-place and second-to-last-place options from the genre poll by constructing "a dungeon crawler beat 'em up set in a post-apocalyptic World War II."All three teams are live streaming their progress at the official Humble Bundle site, and there's still about 20 hours left to go make your donation and claim your games before the event comes to a close.
Humble Bundle 3 adds Atom Zombie Smasher
The Humble Indie Bundle 3 has earned over $1.5 million and is still making room for more DRM-free games. Steel Storm is now joined in that little bonus block on the bottom left by PAX 10 winner Atom Zombie Smasher, the top-down apocalypse evacuation sim (type thing) by Blendo Games. Just like the other participants in this popular pay-what-you-want offer, it's compatible with PC, Mac and Linux. If you've already purchased the bundle, Atom Zombie Smasher should be waiting for you on the download page. Also, if you spend more than the average price ($5.42 at time of writing), you'll receive The Humble Indie Bundle 2. Counting the likes of Braid and Machinarium, the "bonus" games now outnumber the five founding members. Not exactly bad news, is it?
Humble Bundle 3: now with Humble Bundle 2
If your canned response to being offered a new computer game is "Meh, I'll wait for the Steam sale," you're going to love this. Humble Indie Bundle 3, which already allows you to act with severe frugality, now throws in Humble Indie Bundle 2 when you pay more than the average price ($4.97 at time of publishing), or if you already bought it before 10:30AM PST this morning. It seems the new metric for measuring interest is "Meh, I'll wait until there's another bundle in it." This latest mutation contains, in addition to six cool indie games (like Crayon Physics Deluxe, And Yet it Moves and VVVVVV), the full Bundle 2 set: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos and Revenge of the Titans. Well, maybe it's not quite the full Humble Indie Bundle 2 as it was. It was later expanded to include ... Humble Indie Bundle 1. Think of that as a warning: At some point, your penny pinching and love for recursion will intersect inside one of these bundles. [Thanks, Grant.]
Humble Indie Bundle 3 packs VVVVVV, Crayon Physics Deluxe, And Yet It Moves, and more
The Humble Indie Bundle, the wildly successful, DRM-free pay-what-you-want charity game collection curated by Wolfire Games, is back ... right now! The Humble Indie Bundle 3 includes Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVV (now with a level editor and a new level by Minecraft creator Notch), Hammerfight, and And Yet It Moves -- all playable natively in Linux, OSX, and Windows. Some of the games are newly ported specifically for this purpose. As always, you'll be able to pay whatever amount you like for the bundle, and you'll be able to specify how much of that payment goes to the EFF, Child's Play, the developers, or Wolfire itself (to offset the costs of hosting the Bundle). The bundle will go away in two weeks, so you have that long to decide how much to chip in, and to whom. We assume you've already decided to buy it.
Counterfeit version of open source game Lugaru HD being sold on Mac App Store
Another developer is offering Wolfire Game's Lugaru HD title on the Mac App Store for 1/5 of what the official game is selling for. How? As per the terms of the Humble Indie Bundle a while back, Wolfire decided to open source the game, though not its assets or characters, and the other version on the Mac App Store is an outright copy with assets included. Kotaku tracked down the developers, who apparently don't believe they've done anything wrong, saying that "we have every legal right to market and sell the software, and we feel that $1.99 is a fair price." The official version sells for $9.99. The worst part here is that Apple obviously approved the app, and as of this writing has not yet taken the app down. Wolfire hasn't yet heard back from Apple, and a spokesperson from the company says only that it's looking into the matter. Then again, issues of intellectual property are often left to developers to negotiate outside the App Store. This is an unfortunate instance where the App Store could clamp down on obvious infringement. The case seems pretty clear-cut -- Wolfire did open source its title, but it also made clear that it retained rights to all of the assets. Since it's fairly apparent that those are being used in the "unofficial" release, I'd expect Apple to take the offending version off of the store soon enough.
Humble Indie Bundle: Pay what you want for World of Goo and four others
You've commented on Joystiq posts about oppressive DRM many times before. You dutifully wear your Target-purchased indie game t-shirt every week without fail. And you read every Joystiq Indie Pitch we post. But if you want to put some money towards supporting indie games, you won't find a better way to do it than this. Wolfire Games and a few other indie developers have put together the "Humble Indie Bundle" sale, offering five terrific award-winning indie games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru and Penumbra Overture) for the low, low price of ... whatever you want. That's right -- they're asking you to pay what you feel is right for these bundled, non-DRM, developer-owned Mac, Linux or PC games. And that's not all: You can even specify part or all of your donation to go to a charity, either Child's Play or the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That's about as selfless as it gets in gaming -- pay what you think it's worth, to charity or the people who made it. The average donation so far is about $8.00, but individuals have donated as much as $500 to the effort. You get lots of chances to say you support indie gaming, but fewer great chances like this to put your money where your mouth is. And walking away with five great indie titles to play doesn't hurt, either.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Overgrowth
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with John Graham of Wolfire Games, whose Overgrowth, a follow-up to underground hit Lugaru, is currently in development. How did you your company get started? David Rosen created Wolfire in 2003 as a web site where people could download his personal gaming projects. All of us at Wolfire were really into computer games growing up but I think something unique in David compelled him to get an early start. I had the good fortune to go to the same elementary school as David, and while most kids were playing the hunting section of Oregon Trail at recess, he was spending his time coding his own stick figure war game in a programming environment called HyperCard. He even went so far as to craft his own explosion and gunshot sound effects by recording the distortion that occurs from blowing into a microphone. Soon David's war game spread around the school until, not surprisingly, it got banned by the administration for being too violent. By the time David hit high school, he had migrated to 3D games using C++.
