Random Indie Game of The Week: One Late Night

OK, not so chilling the tagline on the game’s site, “Experience the horror of working at an office” made me laugh as I thought of all the crappy office jobs I’ve held over the years since the 80’s, but Black Curtain Studios managed to make its short horror game One Late Night work on a few levels that make it worth a play. Yes, you past to present office drones will feel the chills this one presents more than those who just want another jump-scare game in the Slenderman vein who haven’t worked an honest day in their lives. Of course, this means some of those slackers won’t jump as much as some of us former cubicle dwellers, but, hey. If you’ve paid your dues long enough at that desk making copies and drinking bad company coffee into the night and you’ll maybe squeal like a schoolgirl once or twice while playing this gem. It’s free, so get it and prepare to relive the horror (or experience it for the first time with the realization that it usually takes about a year to start hallucinating like that in a real office situation).

Yeah, it’s over pretty quickly (unlike the average day at the office where watching the clock actually slows down time), but you get a couple of endings and there’s some nice use of lighting here. Make sure you pay attention to that note about keeping a light handy, as it certainly helps out quite a bit (he said, overstating the obvious). Anyway, bonus points if you download and play this while at the office on a day where you’re not getting out until it’s past midnight. If that’s your situation today, I’m hoping that you’re going to have a few hiding places (and at least one from the real-life boss prowling the halls and looking for someone to haunt with more work-filled folders)…

VGA 101: uDraw Tablet (PS3): THQ’s Folly Makes For A Really Cool Budget Artist Buy…

uDraw PS3a uDraw PS3b

When the uDraw was first released for the Nintendo Wii, it sold well enough that THQ decided to bring the tablet peripheral to both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but took a little too long to get it to market as more functional tablet devices became hot sellers. You could say that the company greatly overestimated a few things, most importantly, the selling power of the uDraw to an a PS3 and 360 audience made up of more hardcore gamers who had little to no use for a new peripheral they wouldn’t go near with a ten foot pole (unless they were using that pole to smash the thing to bits). Needless to say, uDraw on the PS3 and 360 didn’t do well at all and plenty of retailers and probably a few distributors were left sitting on plenty unsold stock… Continue reading

What’s The State of Dead State? Funny You Should Ask…

Hot of the presses (well, not really, but it’s from today!) comes this neat interview with members of DoubleBear Productions, the dev team behind the upcoming indie zombie-themed RPG, Dead State. It’s pretty cool to see the game coming together despite the team being in separate locations. I like how the game is shaping up so far as a more serious exploration of the survival theme as opposed to a simple mindless shooter (we’ve enough of those to last a few lifetimes) or comedy-packed take on its theme. Of course, I’m holding out for some hands-on time, so my eyeball is fixed on the progress this makes as it winds its way towards completion…

Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut: The Wii U Gets Another One Worth (Re)Playing…

If you’ve not yet given Eidos Montreal’s award-winning and critically acclaimed 2011 game a go on the PS3, Xbox 360 or PC because you’ve only owned a Nintendo console, here’s your big chance coming up soon. The cool thing is this version adds some great Wii U Game Pad functionality plus new features and content not found in the three earlier versions, so once again it can be said that Wii U owners are getting the most complete and yes, best version possible (outside high-end PC visuals, but what’s here looks great to my eyeballs). Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut will be in stores later this year.

Now I need to find time to (re)PLAY this one at some point down the road…

VGA 101: More Classic PC Game Intros? OK, A Little Dungeon Hack For You…

Another favorite game of mine by Dreamforge was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Hack, a pretty cool create your own dungeon-crawler were you chose or created a hero or heroine and set out in a random dungeon generated by you or the computer. This made for who knows how many millions of possible combinations and no two generated “seeds” playing exactly the same. Basically, it’s a rogue-like where survival was constantly tricky, but not impossible if you lucked out and managed to get some great gear to defeat the increasingly difficult monsters (and found enough rations so your avatar wouldn’t starve to death). Anyway, the intro is another favorite of mine thanks to the great art and colors used plus it’s funny as hell to see the hero whine about needing to get paid in advance with traveling and supply money… only to get zapped to the dungeon unprepared. I think I’ve only ever completed three or four of the dungeons I cooked up with this game, but it’s been a long while since I’ve played this one. I’ll fire it up once I have free time and dink around a bit to see if I can still play this one. It installs and runs perfectly on Windows XP, but I really don’t have the time to dive in and get hooked all over again…

VGA 101: Anvil of Dawn Gets GOG’ed (FINALLY!)

Dreamforge’s classic 1995 first-person dungeon crawler was one of my favorite games back in the day and I still have my original CD and manual in the library. It’s been around as “abandonware” for a few years, but that and other versions were (and are) incomplete, missing the movies and/or fully voiced dialog, making for half the game it should have been. Well, the fine folks at GOG.com have gotten this one up and running (it turns out Ubisoft has the rights, which means we could HOPEFULLY see a remake down the road) and available for the low price of $5.99 (whee!), which makes me a happy camper indeed. Granted, I finally got my CD up and running last week, so I won’t be buying this right away. But it’s REALLY great to know it’s exactly where I need to find it, now whole again and able to be enjoyed by a new generation of gamers (who I surely HOPE will appreciate it for how important it was to the genre) who won’t compare it to games inspired by it (backwards!) or think it’s a new “retro” styled game (oh, the irony there!)…

VGA 101: Your Free Game of the Day, Courtesy Google Image Search…

breakoutOK, I normally hate gimmicks like this, but for once, Google actually gets it right, makes me laugh and yes, I get to pass this bit of fun your way. Go to Google Image Search and type the words  Atari Breakout into that search box. Tap that search button and prepare yourself for a nice little (and free) surprise. Try not to lose that ball or you’ll need to load the search again. History and fun in one shot? Cool beans, I say – you get to see a classic game in action and take some more searches away from Bing in the process. Google wins again (damn them, as they own me a small amount of money, grrr…)…

Indie Royale’s Mayhem Bundle: Spend A Little, Get A Lot of Bodies Dropping…

MAYHEM_bundleThis latest budget bundle from Indie Royale should give that crappy Monday you’re having a nice boot out the nearest window. Six great games are up for grabs and all look like a blast in one way or another. I’ve played Alien Shooter 2: Conscription a while back and it’s a great little shooter/RPG hybrid. The similar looking (but co-op/multiplayer focused) Primal Fears actually looks like one of the Hunter: The Reckoning games from a few years back and Burn Zombie Burn? Well, that title would make me buy it on general principal. Of the other games, Droplitz is a no-brainer for puzzle fanatics, Plain Sight looks pretty cool (despite your ninja/robot avatar needing to blow itself up for points all the time) and Lucius actually looks like someone took the original 1976 film The Omen and based the game around it (which means it’ll be nice and gory as you guide the little devil around and wipe out that mansion full of unfortunates).

Of course, the latter probably isn’t the game you want the babysitter to play at all, as it’ll give him or her nightmares and he or she’ll never drop by ever again. But, hey – what you do with your newly acquired cheap games is all up to you, right?

CD Projekt RED Wants You To Make Your Own RPG Using Their Tools

REDKit_Mod_ScreenIn case you’ve never played it, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a really spectacular adult RPG with some great writing, visuals and gameplay. Developer CD Projekt RED has been cooking up a nice treat for the more creative fans of their work to play around with and the results are pretty damn impressive. Granted, you just can’t grab their REDKit beta and whip out a game in a day or two (and yes, you need to BUY a legal copy of The Witcher 2, which isn’t a bad thing to do at all, as the game is really inexpensive now and is a good way to spend about 60 to 80 hours or so), but as you can see above and on the official site, the results can be amazing.

Of course, given the game’s system requirements and what are bound to be some really complex mods, I’m gathering you’ll need a fairly powerful PC to run anything created using this toolkit. But for those gamers or artistic types with the time to play around with their own ideas in the world of The Witcher, this one’s a no-brainer to at least try out to see if it’s something you can use…

Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting…

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Well, it WASN’T supposed to be such a damn slow day here, but between the rain keeping me inside and away from a decent wi-fi connection and some issues with a PC game I was trying to get running, it’s been kind of a “Meh” day for productivity. I did, however, discover this little clip from the old Sega Saturn and PC game Enemy Zero that sums up all of today in three seconds:

Yeah, well… I’ll get over it tomorrow. OK, enough time burning – back to the salt mines for me…