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Halloween is a time for surprises so, with that in mind, boo! Sci-fi FPS-RPG Natural Selection 2 was due to emerge from its leathery egg on that fateful day but, developer Unknown Worlds has announced, is coming early. Only a little, given that Halloween is tomorrow, but it's quite welcome.
The ever-interesting Jason Rohrer has revealed his latest game, a "massively-multiplayer game of burglary and home defense" by the name of The Castle Doctrine. Beyond that little nugget and a few screenshots, though, the chap behind the likes of multiplayer storytell 'em up Sleep is Death and five-minute life simulator Passage is keeping schtum about this intriguing idea.
The spookiest treat of Halloween 2002 was the very first release of Natural Selection for Half-Life, a throughly splendid asymmetrical FPS-RTS. Now, developer Unknown Worlds has announced that it'll release the commercial sequel Natural Selection 2 on that very naughty night this year, exactly a decade later.
Darwinia maker Introversion's Prison Architect is a fascinating one, a prison management simulator described by the developer as "inspired by Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital, and Dwarf Fortress." If you too are intrigued, you can start playing it this very day, as Introversion has opened pre-orders and offers a playable alpha as a perk.
If you're waiting for the Year of the Linux Desktop to begin, take a deep breath and cross your fingers. Valve said yesterday that "Things have been going well" for its Steam Linux client, so it plans to launch an internal beta next week then an invite-only external beta for 1,000 Linuxnauts in October.
Pay-what-you-want pioneers Humble Bundle have returned with another bargain bundle of top indie games for your purchasing pleasure. Its latest offering packs Dustforce, Rochard, Shatter, Space Pirates and Zombies, Torchlight and Vessel, along with most of their soundtracks.
Valve will be launching a public beta today of its Steam Big Picture mode, according to a New York Times report.
Multiplayer-only games live or die on their ability to draw a lasting playerbase, but this can be tricky when you've only got the resources of a small indie studio at hand. Unknown Worlds is tackling this head-on before it can even become an issue for Natural Selection 2, handing out an extra 45,000 free copies of the FPS-RTS to early pre-orders to jump-start the multiplayer community.
Steam Greenlight was flooded with hundreds of games, including countless hoax and illicit entries, within hours of launching last Thursday, which apparently makes it quite difficult to fulfil its purpose of filtering Steam store submissions. To bring the volume down and ward off trolls, Valve has added a $100 fee for submitting a game and improved the selection users are shown. Though Valve donates the $100 to charity, it's rubbing some indies the wrong way.
You've pumped all of this money into Kickstarter projects, and what do you have to show for it? Some "exclusive" desktop wallpapers, a t-shirt, perhaps even a playable alpha build, but mostly wishes and dreams. Proving these can turn into actual games, developer Subset Games today announced that its roguelike-like spaceship sim FTL, one of the first big successes of the recent Kickstarter boom, will blast off on September 14 for backers and mere consumers alike.
