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Final Cognition episode hits September 19, series coming to Steam and GOG
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller began in October 2012 as a four-episode series in which players investigate the murder of Scott Reed, the clairvoyant protagonist's brother. The game's final episode, called The Cain Killer, will launch September 19 for PC and Mac, Phoenix Online Studios announced. Additionally, once the fourth episode arrives, the whole series will finally launch on Steam and GOG.com. Cognition was Greenlit on Steam in June, thanks to over 25,000 votes by the community, according to the developer.
Majesco creates Midnight City label to handle indie games
Majesco Entertainment (Cooking Mama, Zumba) has created an indie publishing label called Midnight City. The division is headed by former IGN Editor-in-Chief Casey Lynch and Doug Kennedy, former president and CEO of public relations firm Reverb Communications. The pair had previously worked together (before Lynch took the IGN gig) at Reverb Publishing, a division of the PR firm that helped streamline and support the publishing process for indies on various digital distribution platforms. "Over the years we have seen tons of really great games coming from smaller independent studios and our vision at Midnight City is to offer these games and development teams a wide range of services and support," said Lynch. "We're here to help with everything from first-party relations, QA, promotion and community building and to put a spotlight on the titles while freeing the development teams to focus 100 percent of their energy on building the best games possible." Midnight City has announced an initial lineup of ten games, which the company will show off at this weekend's PAX Prime in Seattle.
Terraria content coming to Edge of Space in cross-over event
Terraria is a 2D sandbox survival adventure game. Edge of Space is a 2D sandbox exploration game. Like peanut butter and jelly, the two will now meet in a tasty cross-over event, bringing Terraria content to Edge of Space, developers Re-Logic and HandyMan Studios announced. Those attending PAX Prime in Seattle this weekend can get their hands on the Terraria-inspired content at Reverb Publishing's booth (#3436). Among the goodies arriving in Edge of Space is a "cybernetically-enhanced version of Terraria's skeletron boss," Omegatron. Edge of Space is available via Steam Early Access for $11.99. Terraria, meanwhile, launches on iOS today for $4.99.
Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians busts out August 6
Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians, AKA the artist formerly known as just Beatbuddy, is booked to perform on PC, Mac, and Linux on August 6, Threaks tells us. Tickets for the rhythm-based 2D platformer by the Hamburg-based outfit will be available on Steam for $14.99. Threaks describes its jam as "an action-adventure that takes you into the world of a song." Accompanying players on this musical journey are a number of collaborators, including Journey composer Austin Wintory, and Mirror's Edge and Tomb Raider writer Rhianna Pratchett. But if you're curious about Threaks itself, take a look at what the German team gets up to when it's not laying down sweet beats.
Sanctum 2 jumps into the fray on May 15 [Update: PC too, PSN soon after]
Coffee Stain Studios' Sanctum 2 will launch for the Xbox 360 on May 15, Major Nelson has announced. We've followed up with publisher Reverb to see if this is the launch date for PSN and PC, as well. Sanctum 2 is the sequel to Coffee Stain Studio's hybrid first-person shooter and tower defense game. Coffee Stain Studios was founded in 2010 by local Swedish students, and its first game was I Love Strawberries on iOS. Update: Reverb got back to us and confirmed the May 15 is the launch date on PC as well as Xbox 360. We're told the PSN version "will launch soon thereafter."
Shoot a glance at these Sanctum 2 screens and trailer
These screens and trailer for Coffee Stain Studios' Sanctum 2 show off the action-packed shooting in the game. Sanctum 2 is slated to launch on PC, Xbox Live and PSN sometime in 2013.
Beatbuddy breaks out the turntables this summer
Beatbuddy has been jamming on its own for far too long, and it's finally ready to share some sweet tunes with the world. Beatbuddy is coming to PC and Mac this summer, but first it's stopping off at PAX East, in booth 1048, to show some hands-on demos.Beatbuddy is a musical platformer, featuring levels and enemies synced to the individual rhythms of entire songs, all of which are manipulated as you travel throughout the worlds. One level is put together by Grammy-nominated Journey composer Austin Wintory.Play the demo on Steam, for free, if this news alone doesn't set your toes tapping.%Gallery-183260%
Journey composer Austin Wintory lends a friendly hand to Beatbuddy
Beatbuddy is a platform action game in which all of the on-screen elements are musical – the arrangements of the enemies and other things that make up levels each sync to part of a song, Sound Shapes style. One of those levels will be set to new original music by Grammy-nominated Journey composer Austin Wintory."When Threaks first reached out to me, I couldn't wrap my head around what the game would be like, but I couldn't help but be incredibly intrigued," said Wintory in the announcement of the collaboration. "Very quickly thereafter I came to realize what Beatbuddy could be and I had to be a part of it. It is a chance to explore a type of music I'd never touched before within a gameplay style I'd never worked with, and that combination is a dream."To understand how Beatbuddy works, check out the free demo on Steam. The game is set to be released on PC and Mac this year.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Edge of Space
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, lead game designer at Handyman Studios, Jacob Crane, talks Edge of Space, his space shark exploration game in beta and on Greenlight now. What's your game called and what's it about?The game we are working on is Edge of Space, and it is a 2D sandbox exploration game. You, one of the ArkCo Recruits, have been dropped into an area where terraforming should never have been attempted. Stranded in an unknown region of space on a busted-up planet where early terraforming protocols have gone horribly wrong, it's now up to you and whoever else you can find to overcome the obstacles ahead.How is the beta going?The beta is going very well. It has kept our feet on the ground and really helped us identify issues in the core system early on. Whenever you are developing multiplayer, we think it is key you get it out into the "wild" as soon as you can. We wanted to experiment with a different kind of development style to match our small team. After alpha, we pulled out all but the basic features for beta, and then started adding them back in layers as we found things were stable and the necessary iteration was put in place.This is very much a bottom-up approach. To ensure our foundations are rock solid is paramount. Even though mod development is not being released right at release day, everything has already been made to support it when we do. This has served us very well. It does come with the drawback of not being able to show everything we want to, but it allows us make the code infinitely more stable.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Ravaged
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, 2 Dawn Games' Carsten Boserup talks crowdfunding and indie publishing with his Steam game (now on sale!), Ravaged. What's your game called and what's it about?Our game is Ravaged and it's a multiplayer-only first-person shooter focusing on vehicle combat and car chases in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max environment.Why develop independently, rather than work for an established company?Working with a publisher tends to mean that you are giving away parts of your game's creativity and control. We wanted to create a game exactly the way we wanted and imagined. Going independent also meant that our marketing capabilities were limited, which is why we created a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was a success and we almost tripled the amount we asked for to help with marketing.Our roots are with modding, as the core team created the popular Battlefield 1942 mod, Desert Combat, so we decided very early on to be 100 percent community-based. This means that we take feedback and ideas from the community and do our best to add it to the game. We also engage a lot with our community by hosting events and opening up our TeamSpeak virtual office to the fans, which is where we spent most of our time.
Primal Carnage adds free mode, map later this month
Primal Carnage, the human v. dinosaur class-based shooter, will roar in with new content in late November. The game will add a new objective-based mode called "Get to the Chopper" and a new map. Publisher Reverb notes this is the "first of many planned game updates." There is also an alternative character skin pack planned for later this month, but that'll cost an unannounced arm and/or leg... maybe just a pinky."Our goal with Primal Carnage was to make the best dinosaur video game to date, and according to the reviews, we've done just that – but we are far from done," said lead designer Ashton Anderson of Lukewarm Media.We noted in our review for Primal Carnage the game "could become a better beast with updates, but at launch it's missing some key elements and polish."%Gallery-170204%
Primal Carnage review: Roar games
"Oh, great. Another multiplayer game where humans and dinosaurs duke it out for battlefield supremacy." If the game industry had evolved differently, maybe made that left turn at Turok, that's what we might have uttered when Primal Carnage was first revealed. With a few exceptions, however, the mash-up of dinosaur and man at war has mostly eluded the video game industry.Having the foresight to predict what should be the "next big thing," developer Lukewarm Media has delivered its first game, Primal Carnage, under Reverb Publishing. Though there are a few meteor-sized holes in the game's feature list and polished sheen, Primal Carnage makes a good first impression, with some deep thought put into its strange (and awesome) gimmick.%Gallery-170204%
PSA: Pid lights up XBLA, PS3 and PC today
Pid, the puzzle-platformer from ex-Grin folks at Might and Delight, is now available on PC, PS3 and Xbox Live Arcade for $10 (800 MS Points). But you don't have to spend a dime to watch this launch trailer – well, okay, you pay for internet but you know what we mean. Yeah, you get it.
Primal Carnage lunges on Oct. 29
Human-versus-Dinosaur multiplayer shooter Primal Carnage will say "HEY!" on October 29. Those who pre-ordered the game, which runs $15, should currently have access to test out the beta of this class-based shooter. A pre-order on Steam, GameStop, GamersGate and Rain also nets a feathered raptor skin.The game runs on Unreal Engine and pits humans against dinosaurs, with five classes apiece to choose from. Primal Carnage is also scheduled to have extensive downloadable content.
Primal Carnage roars into open beta for all pre-orders
Those who pre-order Lukewarm Media's man-on-dino shooter Primal Carnage will gain instant access to an open beta ahead of its launch later this year. In addition to instant access to the beta, those who pre-order will also unlock an exclusive Raptor skin for use in the final game.Primal Carnage is a team-based shooter built on the Unreal Engine featuring ten different classes, five dinosaur and five human. No final launch date has been set for Primal Carnage yet – it'll launch some time in "Fall 2012" through Steam, GameStop, GamersGate, Rain and the game's official website.
Reverb forced to clarify 'homeless kittens' press release
Reverb Publishing was forced this morning to clarify a press release which implied the company would only donate $5000 towards care for homeless cats if Edge of Space was approved on Steam Greenlight. The press release, while jovial in language, clearly said the money would only be donated to The Humane Society, an animal protection organization, if the game was approved by October 15 for release on Steam. The press release quickly dominated the comments on the game's Greenlight page, with views swinging both against and in defense of the publisher. This led Reverb to issue a clarification: "Hey everyone! There has been a misunderstanding on the marketing side of Edge of Space. We do not support guilt voting in any way and our sincere apologies go out to anyone who felt that way. This was meant in fun, if anything, Reverb's intent was to add a bonus; if we can make it to the top 10 by the 15th, we will help out a worthy cause. Understand that there is some dark humor in the game and they wanted to play off of that. We love CATS!!! That's why we have them in our game to begin with! We have sugar bears too!!! So we like exotics."In the Greenlight page's comments section, Reverb's VP of business development Doug Kennedy claimed that "even before the promotion was approved" his company had agreed to make the donation to The Humane Society.Whichever side you fall on, this is by far not the first time a game's controversial PR campaign didn't go as planned, and certainly not the first one involving animals. We're, of course, talking about the debacle surrounding Sony and the dead goat at the God of War II event. Then there are the things that sound cool on paper when they're dangerous or awkwardly unethical. The inarguable good side of this story is some homeless kittens will be getting much needed care.
Primal Carnage pre-order lets you play as a fine feathered raptor
Last week, the folks at Lukewarm Media gave us a glimpse at the raptors who'll be stomping around in Primal Carnage, undoubtedly outwitting their human enemies who have guns. And if you want to be the prettiest raptor of them all, a pre-order will get you just that.Plunking down cash now will not only net you the pretty feathered raptor above in-game, it'll also get you a Steam key for instant access to the ongoing closed beta. Sorry, no flamboyant raptors in the beta.
Reverb Publishing picks up post-apocalyptic shooter 'Ravaged'
Reverb Publishing is making a cottage industry out of publishing successfully Kickstarted games. Now, it's taken on 2Dawn Games' PC shooter Ravaged, which was funded in May.Ravaged supports up to 32 players fighting together online, and combines combat and both terrestrial and aerial vehicles – like this gyro helicopter thing! That looks like a fun thing to be shot at in.If you'd like to try being shot at in a helicopter, or even shooting a helicopter, Ravaged is in closed beta. Sign up here.%Gallery-163475%
Primal Carnage shows off its raptors and trappers
As made evident by the latest trailer above, Primal Carnage continues to embody the bloody fantasies of 10-year-olds everywhere who want to be real, live dinosaurs when they grow up. This look at the game's humans vs. dinosaurs multiplayer combat highlights two of the playable classes that will be available when the game eventually launches: Velociraptors and Trappers.As you might guess, Velociraptor gameplay involves a lot of running, climbing and pouncing on squishy humans and their delicious organs, while Trapper gameplay is focused on disabling dinos with nets and then stabbing them with big ol' knives. The Trapper also has two sizable pistols at his disposal, which may or may not be a match for the adorable "Skreee!" sound the raptors make while pouncing.If your inner child is throwing wild fits, placate them by signing up for the forthcoming beta.
Explore the mysteries of Cognition in this new trailer
Now that Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller from indie dev Phoenix Online Studios has a publisher, it's time to get the promotion train going! Here's a new trailer for the adventure game's first episode, 'The Hangman.'
