InterWave Studios are looking to crowdfund the last few months of development on Dark Matter, a Metroid-esque sci-fi side-scrolling title.

Dark Matter is a 2.5D survival horror title where you make your way through an abandoned deep-space exploration vessel. InterWave claim that the focus is going to be on exploration, puzzle-solving and combat rather than jumping puzzles.

Health and ammunition will be scarce, and it’ll be up to players to craft it for themselves using scavenged resources rather than expecting it to drop out of downed enemies.

“We have taken Dark Matter as far as we could on our own,” say the developers. “This is not an arbitrary limit set by greedy management: it simply is the time when we run out of funds, and are forced to release prematurely, or shut down.”

“Dark Matter deserves better than that.”

Check out the Kickstarter page and, if you agree, chuck them a few dollars.

Source: Kickstarter

The rumour from earlier this week that Fallout 4 has been shown behind closed doors at this year’s E3 has been squashed by Bethesda.

“We showed three games at E3 – Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Elder Scrolls Online and The Evil Within,” said the company in a statement to Kotaku.

“We did not show any of our games behind closed doors.”

Sorry everyone. I mean, Bethesda didn’t deny they were making Fallout 4 — they almost certainly are — but they didn’t show it. Ah well.

Source: Kotaku

A sequel to Hotline Miami has been announced by Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is due out later this year and will be the last in the series.

The game will reportedly follow “an escalating level of violence through multiple factions born from the events of the original game — all within the confines of blistering combat, the unmistakable visual style, and another powerful and intense soundtrack that pushes you to the limit and forces you to question your own thirst for blood.”

“Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number commands you to step into the murderous minds of several distinct characters – each with their own motivations and methods of execution – as storylines intersect and reality slips away into a haze of neon and carnage. Witness hundreds of new sprites and animations in lush new areas to clear floor-by-floor, and harness a variety of savage new weapons to satisfy your murder lust.”

So it’s about killing, then. Good. Here’s a trailer!

(more…)

Fighting zombies is as much a part of video games as collecting coins in Mario, or madly trying everything in your inventory in a point-and-click adventure. Wolfenstein, as one of the first and most popular FPS titles, represents a huge steppingstone for the industry.

The team behind the latest iteration of the franchise, Machine Games, is attempting to recapture that same sense of joy gamers had when they first encountered the original in the early 1990s.

Based on a hands-on demo played by games.on.net on the show floor, we believe they’re showing good signs of succeeding.

It is with regret that we announce today that games.on.net forum regular and passionate gamer MrMoilT passed away last Tuesday night after a long battle with leukemia.

Our admin brimlad describes MrMoilT as “an avid gamer, passionate and dedicated to all the games that he played,” and that “even in hospital in Melbourne he managed to continue playing games on his laptop and would join us on ts for a chat about his treatment and his passion, gaming”.

I’d like to ask anybody wishing to convey their sympathies to head over to this forum thread. I’ll be closing the comments on this article.

Our sympathies to MrMoilT’s family and loved ones.

Troubled zombie MMO The War Z has apparently figured that a good way to leave all those controversies behind and to stop people confusing them with DayZ or perhaps World War Z is to change their name to Infestation: Survivor Stories.

As explained on the official forums, “Effective today, The War Z has changed its name to Infestation: Survivor Stories. This change has come about primarily as a result of some confusion and trademark issues with a similarly titled property.”

“While we were reluctant to rename the game so long after launch, especially with nearly 1 million registered players, it was ultimately decided to be in the best interest of our existing community as well as future players in order to eliminate confusion. Please rest assured that this will in NO WAY affect you as players. The only difference you will see is the change in logo and website. There will be no interruption of service or change in content.”

Source: Infestion Forums

A brief leak that publicly exposed Valve’s internal project tracking software has resulted in a number of mailing lists used within the company being released.

Notable mailing lists inside Valve include a Half-Life 3 group with 42 employees attached, a Left 4 Dead 3 group with around 70 people attached, and other smaller groups such as “Cries Unheard”, “Microbe Wars” and “The Grange”. Some joke groups also clearly exist such as “WUBWUBWUB”, “gayben” and “yo dawg”.

The list of lists was uncovered by Valvetime.net and has been copied into Pastebin. You can see it here.

Source: Valvetime (Thanks, Stefan)

Australians woke up this morning to the bewildering news that Microsoft had performed a complete about-face on the hotly controversial issue of its Xbox One always-online DRM and game-locking strategies.

The latest Steam beta has been discovered to contain some interesting text strings hinting at the possibility of game-borrowing appearing in the future.

If you update to the latest beta (Steam > Settings > Beta Participation) and then look in Steam/Public/steamui_english you’ll find the following UI strings:

“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicense_Title” “Shared game library”
“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_OwnerText” “Just so you know, your games are currently in use by %borrower%. Playing now will send %borrower% a notice that it’s time to quit.”
“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_BorrowerText” “This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library.”

Exciting times ahead! Hopefully an official announcement isn’t far off.

Source: Facepunch (thanks Stefan, JaMbO)

I’ll always remember Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara as a beeping, flashing arcade cabinet, sitting forgotten in the lobby of Valhalla, one of Perth’s only two Nerd Stores. Nobody ever seemed to play it, but every so often I would drop a coin or two in as I went past on my way to thumb greasily through sourcebooks for games that I, on my pathetic 13-year-old pocket money, could not possibly afford.

Fast forward to 2013: I have no less than 50 Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks on my living room shelf, and Shadow Over Mystara has been bundled together with Tower of Doom and re-released in HD for just $15.

The times, they are a-changin’.

The battlegrounds of ancient Rome are reminiscent of Westeros. Yet while the real-time combat may not be quite as up-close-and-brutal as a Game of Thrones style throat-slitting, it’s in the courts of political intrigue — the wheeling, dealing and figurative backstabbing — that the wars of Rome II are won and lost.

Bethesda’s Pete Hines has reaffirmed the company’s decision from April last year to put a halt on Prey 2 development, saying that there’s no new information because it’s “simply not good enough”.

“What we said the last time we said anything was that it’s not up to our quality standards,” said Hines to IGN. “It’s simply not good enough. We’re not going to just proceed blindly with something that isn’t good enough. We’ve been very specific about why, and we’ve been very specific about the whats. When that gets addressed and changed or whatever, at that point we can give an update.”

Hines took the chance to comment somewhat on recent rumours that his company had been strong-arming Human Head into losing control of the game.

“Nobody’s disappointment is greater than ours,” he continued. “We spent a lot of time and money and effort trying to make this thing happen and support folks, but at the same time, you just can’t keep throwing money at it. You have to have the discipline to say, ‘it’s not good enough. It’s not hitting the quality bar’.”

“As we said in our last update, it’s not good enough. It’s not where it needs to be. When we have more info than that, we’ll let you know. What is the chance that we have some amazing, unbelievable game and we’re just not talking about it for no reason? Zero.”

“Again, when we have more info on it, we’ll be happy to talk about it. That’s what I can say for now.”

Source: IGN