Space Pirates And Zombies (Beta)

Remember Star Controller 2? You should really check out SPAZ. In this game you're a pirate, starting out with a single beat-up mothership capable of building a small variety of support and attack ships. As you progress through the game, you'll discover new technologies for weapons and components, find new blueprints for bigger or more lethal ships, and choose a faction to support (or kill them all) while travelling all over the galaxy.

The goal of the game is to eventually reach the center, where the enemies are very difficult indeed. Getting there will require you to fix up your mothership and gather as much weaponry and technology as you can get ahold of. Stealth drone bombers? You can build those. Massive missile swarms? Yep. Automated turrets? In!

Terraria is Available NOW!

Note: Steam now has Terraria showing up in searches and on the front page.

You might not see it on Steam when you do a search. As of right now, you definitely won't. But it's there. In fact, it's right here. Buy it now for $9.99!

Additionally, a Four Pack for Terraria is for sale on Steam for $29.99.

For all the Terraria fans looking to get ahold of this and unable to find it through Steam search, you're welcome.

Terraria : on Steam this Monday!

2D Minecraft / Metroid with multiplayer, random worldgen, and optional PvP? Why, yes, Terraria is all these things and more.

Best of all, it's not expensive. For $10 (but only for the week of release) on Steam this Monday (May 16th), you'll be having a blast building and defending your towns (complete with NPCs), hiding from gigantic (seriously, watch the trailer) monsters that laugh at your walls, and doing everything you can to claw your way to power with a huge array of weapons and armor.

I'll be honest. From what I've seen, there's a lot to love here. Windows only.

Garshasp - Gameplay Vid

One of the first games out of Iran, Garshasp is now available on Steam.

SpyParty - Early Access Beta (Paid)

A Spy Game About Subtle Behavior sounds like an interesting game in any medium, and now everyone has the opportunity to play the early access beta for $15.

Windows only. For now. Cross-platform options are planned at some point in the future.

Mount & Blade Fire & Sword: A Guide

This is a long and detailed guide on getting started in Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword. It goes without saying that this particular installment of the M&B franchise has some difficult spots (like affording well equipped troops and not getting killed by a lucky peasant with a gun), but this guide definitely smooths the transition.

I'm not sure if I like Fire and Sword as much as Warband, but I'll give it some time before declaring it worse. Guides like this, and mods that will come in the future, are all going to make for more fun.

The Tiny Bang Story

A beautifully drawn point-and-click adventure game that's fun for all ages and out now. You can grab it from Steam or GamersGate. See more screenshots and videos at the Colibri Games website.

Grand Rogue Auto 0.3.8 Released!

The video above is a much older version, but it gives you an idea of how GRA plays. It's 2D (tile based) and still early in it's development cycle, but still playable.

Go directly the announcement, or man up and just download now.

Drains

Drains, a platform game by Pathea Games, has been released on Direct2Drive and Impulse. You can grab a demo at Direct2Drive and try it yourself. According the feature list, it has more than 15 hours of gameplay, lots of areas to explore, and a leveling system to increase your power while fighting off 20+ types of enemies.

Might I also say that the trailer above has a great soundtrack. Note: the Direct2Drive version is less expensive as this was published, at $9.95 vs $14.99 at Impulse.

Age of Fear: Multiplayer Testers Needed

Check the Age of Fear forums for details: Multiplayer beta testers needed

Frozen Synapse SP Missions

If you pre-ordered Frozen Synapse, you can download and play some single player awesomeness (55 missions) in a grand campaign of destruction. Right now. Today. Do it!

Fan Suggestions for Devs

This post is intended for indie game developers and is written from the prospective of the fan. Any mid-size or larger indie game project may benefit, smaller projects might not see a need for it.

Read more after the jump!

If there's one thing I appreciate when I get interested in an indie game, it's community building. This doesn't mean you need to be on Twitter (though that helps) or Facebook, nor does it mean you need to have a forum. What it does mean is that you should be responsive.

Set up an automatic Google Alert for your project. You need to know when people are talking about your game on their favorite forums so that you can register and answer questions. This builds hype in your project, but more importantly it builds good will. Gamers appreciate that you've taken the time to find them and interact with them on their home turf. Set one up for free.

Frozen Synapse - Release Soon!

Not much longer now! Frozen Synapse is an action strategy game that plays, in part, like the planning section of the old Rainbow Six games. The action, which is brutal and fast, doesn't make you wait around for "the fun part."

In short, you plan your moves, test them, then execute them when you're ready to see what happens. You and the enemy move at the same time. It's kind of like chess, if chess moves were simultaneous and the pieces carried heavy weapons.

The Second Guest (Teaser)

Even after watching the trailer, I'm not sure I understand what is happening here. It's a little vague. I think it takes place in 1923 London, and it's intended to a frightening game. Maybe we'll find out more closer to release.

There isn't a website for the game. Yet. The development team is composed of Twice Effect and HeadUp Games.

Dragonsphere Free from GoG

Good Old Games, the website that sells old (and I mean old) commercial games is offering Dragonsphere for free. It isn't really indie, but I'm sure it will appeal to indie lovers. Why not? It's classic gameplay, man!

If you've never played Dragonsphere, it's a rather charming point-and-click adventure game with a great story. You should probably play it now since it's free.

Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword Siege trailer

Mount & Blade (and the later Warband) is one of the games I always have to have installed. Usually for the mods, which are far better than the vanilla game in every possible way. Typically.

With Fire and Sword adds (officially) guns. Among other things (which you can read about if you like), including a new map and an entirely different time period, fully customizable armies, new multiplayer action (command AI troops in addition to general deathmatch), better towns and economy modeling. Most places have it for $15 or thereabouts, though initial reviews aren't so great this time around.

A Valley Without Wind: Dev Progress Video

The guys that brought us the amazing AI War: Fleet Command are continuing to develop their next game, A Valley Without Wind.

I've had mixed feelings about the path AVWW is taking (that's a long damn name), but the core of the game appeals to me. Surviving in a procedurally generated world can't be all that bad. Of note: the game never really ends. If you kill off the big bad dude, you've saved that region ... but other regions have their own evil guy causing trouble, giving you more to do.

Definitely worth watching.

Game Dev 2010 Salary Survey for Indies

Gamasutra: Game Developer Reveals 2010 Game Industry Salary Survey Results

The big take away for indie game devs? Contracting your talents out to someone else will earn you more money. According to Gamasutra, the average solo indie dev reported average income of $11, 379.

That said, more than half (55 percent) made less than $500 from game sales in 2010.

Starfarer: Alpha is Awesome

Starfarer has been in alpha for awhile now, and anyone that pre-orders it gets to try it out. As one of those lucky people, let me say up front that I'm loving this game.

The performance is very good even on sub-par computers. The graphics are excellent, the particle effects are awesome, the weapons have serious punch, huge ships are still vulnerable to smaller frigates and tiny bombers, and the sounds/music are very good.

What you can do in the alpha

The alpha only allows you to play the "combat" section of the game (the full version will have a larger strategic layer similar to Mount & Blade) for now. You get access to a few scenario missions, though you're able to mod the game already to create more, or give yourself massive battlecarriers for fun.

The difficulty of these missions ramps up swiftly. You'll need to juggle control of your starship (with WASD, assigning weapons to autofire or fire manually via your mouse), with controlling your fleet (which includes such things as fighters, bombers, frigates, cruisers, battleships and carriers).

Why you should play it
It's unique. There aren't any modern games out there that marry 2D top-down arcade-like starship combat with real-time tactics, role-playing, crew modeling, and the "galaxy-view" (not the official name) of choosing when and where to fight, how to upgrade your ship, and outfitting/choosing a fleet.

Do you want a small team of incredibly powerful ships? Or a larger team of weaker, but easily replaced ships? The idea is that you can make it your own, while watching the impact of crew skill shape the battles. I can't wait for the full release.

Knight Teaser for Hack, Slash, Loot.

Tell me this doesn't look like a great way to spend a few hours. You can visit the Hack, Slash, Loot website for more info on this "coffee-break roguelike," and, even better, grab a copy of the beta to play yourself (Windows, Mac, Linux versions are available).

I've tagged this as a "free" game, but there will be an option to purchase it once the commercial details are finalized. How this will happen is yet to be decided, though the website specifically mentions a free version will coexist with the paid version.