crawl
Latest
Eerie trailer welcomes Crawl to Steam Early Access
Having survived a brief delay, Powerhoof's Crawl arrives on Steam Early Access alongside the most melodramatic trailer you'll see today. In keeping with its title, Crawl is a multiplayer dungeon crawl that casts one player as the heroic human and the others as ghosts inhabiting the depths. As per standard dungeon ghost protocol, the living are viewed as anathema, so the spirits do everything in their power (which includes summoning beasts and setting off traps) to snuff out the aforementioned hero. Once a ghost kills a human, the ghost then becomes human, allowing the former victim a shot at wrecking the world of the living. With up to four players occupying a single dungeon, you can see how this would get hectic very quickly. Those interested in taking Crawl for a spin can grab the Early Access release for $10. Like all Early Access games Crawl is not yet a finished product, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs. [Image: Powerhoof]
Crawl devs devise a better way to announce a delay
Just like Mother always said: "If you have to deliver bad news, use a gif." Crawl, the monster-infested multiplayer dungeon crawler from Powerhoof, won't launch on its promised July 17 date. Powerhoof is an independent studio in Melbourne, Australia, and the team has run into tax issues that prevent the game from coming out on time. Right now, founders David Lloyd and Barney Cumming are waiting to clear the final pieces of red tape as they transform Powerhoof from a partnership into a company, meaning a delay of days or weeks. "Everything was on track until pretty much the last step, where we got hit with an unexpected bit of red tape that we were told 'may take up to 30 days' to resolve," Cumming writes. "We tried to find a way around it, but there's nothing we can do." Crawl is ready to roll, Cumming says, so with the extra time, he and Lloyd will look at adding some of their wishlist ideas. Crawl was Greenlit in March, and we thought it was the clear standout from that batch of 50 games. It's a pixelated multiplayer montser mash, where one player is the hero and the rest are evil beasties out to kill him – the monster who kills the hero becomes the hero, and the goal of the game is to escape the dungeons. It's like Evolve had a baby with Binding of Isaac (and didn't name it Isaac). Crawl is due out on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux. [Image: Powerhoof]
Crawl, Super Chibi Knight headline Steam Greenlight's latest 50
The pixelated multiplayer madness of Crawl makes it stand out as the one to watch from Steam Greenlight's newest batch of approvals. The Windows, Mac, and Linux dungeon crawler combines retro-inspired action-RPG gameplay with a frenzied multiplayer in which one player controls the Hero, and up to three others play as monsters and traps. The twist is if the Hero is slain by one of the opponents, that player gets to take the Hero's place. Australian two-man outfit Powerhoof only put the game on Greenlight this week, but its debut trailer caught enough attention to speed it past the gates in a single day. Powerhoof says an early-access build is coming "as soon as possible," and while the prototype only features local multiplayer, the dev is exploring the possibility of online multiplayer. Crawl is due for full release in the first half of this year, and beyond that, Powerhoof's expressed interest in bringing its game to consoles. Super Chibi Knight looks to be another to keep an eye on, and there's extra good news for father-and-daughter team behind it because their game just surpassed its Kickstarter goal. The cutesy RPG adventure is due sometime this summer. The full list of the 50 approved games can be found on Steam Greenlight. [Image: Powerhoof]
iMobot creeps, crawls, cranes its way into our hearts (video)
It may not look like much, but this little modular robot's got the stuff to give Keepon a run for its money -- oh yeah, and according to its creators, iMobot's got big implications for the field of robotics too. Sporting four degrees of freedom, two rotating joints, and a pair of faceplates that act as wheels, the patent-pending device can crawl, drive, and potentially act as an autonomous camera platform. The surprisingly agile hunk of machinery was developed by two UC Davis professors who say their versatile invention could aid in search and rescue, as well as education and research. We think it's super cool that iMobot could be a hero, but really, we just want to see it bust a move. Check out a video of our new robo love after the break.
Etrian Odyssey Age
Developer Atlus admits that it will have a tough time selling Etrian Odyssey to anyone who isn't already a fan of dungeon crawls or other niche genres. As great as a turn-based, first-person RPG might sound to some of you, it's rare for that kind of game to register even a blip on the radar of most gamers or gaming media.Atlus has been updating Etrian Odyssey's official site with promotional webcomics, the first of which proposes how the title can attach itself to current trends and elbow its way to the front of the crowd. Likening the game's dungeon crawl experience to Brain Age is a huge stretch, but we have to applaud the creative approach. See what we mean after the post break!
Leg spines set to give robots better footing
Just what we need: an invention to make the robotic armies that will one day surely turn against their creators better scramblers. Regardless of future impact, researchers at the University of California and Pennsylvania University are envisioning "leg spines" that would allow robotic creatures resembling insects and spiders to scramble across gap-ridden surfaces much better than they currently can. The scientists carefully watched slow-motion footage of arachnids dashing across wire mesh and noticed just a 22-percent slow down from running across solid ground. Apparently, the little buggers are able to distribute their weight just so across their myriad of legs, so that there's usually one leg that catches another's fall and prevents the creature from getting too caught up. This biological method is being applied to robotic limbs, assisting crawling creatures to make it across less-than-ideal conditions by utilizing mechanical feedback. Look, we're down with eight-legged freaks, we're just not so fond of these things possessing an inhuman ability to track us down should a case of mutiny sweep the robotic world.
Star Wars TSG, because everyone wants to be George Lucas
Grubs (that's what I call Daring Fireball's John Gruber, we're cool like that) posted Star Wars TSG to his Linked List and it is a winner. And by winner I mean a small, free application that wastes far more of your time than it should, but for some reason you're not upset about all that lost time.Star Wars TSG does one thing: lets you create your very own 'Star Wars title crawl.' If you don't know your Ewoks from your Klingons you might not be aware that the opening title sequence to each Star Wars movie follows the same basic format. This is the format that Star Wars TSG allows you to create for yourself. It even outputs your creation in a number of different sizes. One word of caution: this application renders a sequence of bitmaps that you can stitch together using QuickTime (or another movie editing suite). This means that you should be careful where you point the 'Destination Folder' in the Generate section. You're going to be generating around 800 images to create your masterpiece, and something tells me you don't want them all cluttering up your desktop.
