Click to enlarge

TransGaming and Cyan Worlds today announced the release of Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle, a puzzle/adventure game for the Macintosh. Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle marks the second collaboration between TransGaming and Cyan Worlds, whom earlier in the year released Myst Online: Uru Live for the Mac using TransGaming's Cider portability technology.

Here's a bit more info on the game:

Cosmic Osmo was first released in 1989. It received rave reviews from computer and mainstream press alike. Newsweek touted it as an engrossing cartoon voyage and named it the best computer game of 1989. Osmo faded away over fifteen years ago, but fans have long cherished the characters and adventure in these whimsical worlds, anxiously awaiting his return.

Cosmic Osmo is back. However, Osmo has been banished to the Hex Isles and needs your help to make his escape and find his space ship again. The goal of Hex Isle is simple: guide Osmo over hexagonal shaped tiles (hexes) to touch six targets, thus completing the level and helping him escape.

Cosmic Osmo's Hex Isle

Cyan

Macworld has posted its 2007 Game Hall of Fame, featuring 10 of the best games and products from the Mac gaming world. Here's a clip from Peter Cohen's article:

If the 10 products that make up the 2007 Hall of Fame class weren’t enough to remind us that there’s plenty of potential waiting to be unleashed, we can also take comfort in the fact that Mac gaming is finishing the year strong. Our eligibility period for Game Hall of Fame honors runs from November to November, and ever since the polls closed on November 1, we’ve seen some great stuff emerge: Guitar Hero III is shipping, for example. A copy of Colin McRae Rally Mac showed up on our doorstep recently. EVE Online, a massively multiplayer online game set in outer space, is now playable on the Mac. And we’ve caught wind of a whole slew of product announcements that should help carry Mac gaming through at least the first part of 2008. Plus there continue to be a veritable onslaught of casual games hitting the Mac space from companies that we’d never heard about two or three years ago. These events, and some good old fashioned optimism, give us a lot of reason to look forward to 2008.

Macworld's 2007 Game Hall of Fame

Macgamestore.com and PlayFirst have teamed up for a special 25 percent discount on nearly all of PlayFirst's Mac titles. During the month of December only, the following titles are available for $14.95, regularly $19.95.

Chocolatier
Diner Dash - Flo On The Go
Diner Dash 2: Restaurant Rescue
Dream Chronicles
Egg vs. Chicken
Mahjong Roadshow
Mystery of Shark Island
Mythic Marbles
Pirate Poppers
Plantasia
Professor Fizzwizzle
SpongeBob Diner Dash
Subway Scramble
Sweetopia
Tasty Planet
TriJinx: A Kristine Kross Mystery
Wedding Dash
Zenerchi

Macgamestore: PlayFirst 25 Percent Off Games

Click to enlarge

Basilisk Games has announced that December 11, 2007 is the official release date for the Macintosh version of Eschalon: Book I, the company's first title in a planned trilogy of RPGs. A demo of the Macintosh version will be available concurrently with the full game.

Eschalon: Book I is inspired by classic role-playing games of the past and will send players across massive outdoor environments and deep into dozens of sprawling dungeons in a quest to uncover the mystery of their character's identity.

Features:

- A tile-built, turn-based game world where the result of absolutely every action is rolled, calculated or statistically determined. Strategy is paramount to success; careful skill management, equipment selection and magic usage will win your fights, not rapid button clicking. We are very pleased to say this is not another "action RPG".
- Hundreds of items and dozens of creatures await your discovery. A combination of randomly generated treasure and carefully hidden goodies means that no two games will play the exact same way.
- Unlimited character development style: Choose from 24 unique skills to make the character you want and 8 base attributes that affect your character's every action throughout the game. The game world does not scale or adjust itself to match anyone's play style, so the ease or difficulty of the game is directly related to how successful you are at developing your character.
- Combat plays out at your pace. Eschalon: Book I features a turn-based system that allows you to roll through combat as fast or slow you want...make it fast and furious, or analyze every option for maximum advantage.
- A non-linear storyline means that the game world is open to explore as you desire. Follow the storyline or don't...it's up to you. Just be careful where you go and who you choose to trust- the world of Eschalon can be a deadly place for an inexperienced adventurer.
- An epic adventure that you must face alone...a single-player RPG carefully designed to feel like the great old school RPGs of the past such as Ultima®, Might & Magic®, and Wizardry®.

Basilisk Games

Eschalon: Book I

Buy Eschalon: Book I

Macgamestore.com has added Babysitting Mania to its list of digital download titles. Created by the makers of Nanny Mania, the game challenges players to become the ultimate baby sitter. Players must manage their time as they attempt to clean up the house and get the kids to bed before the parents arrive. Babysitting Mania features 20 different houses and dozens of different children to care for.

From the makers of Nanny Mania comes the all new hit, Babysitting Mania! Can you get the kids to bed and the house clean before the parents get home? Find out if you're the ultimate babysitter! What you didn't expect was 20 of the craziest houses you ever imagined! Babysitting Mania starts you out slow, but soon you'll be facing a barrage of kids, birthday parties and huge houses to get in order, all before bedtime! Download Babysitting Mania now and start playing right away!

Buy Babysitting Mania

Applelinks recently offered up two new reviews of "sim" style games. The articles cover The Sims Pet Stories, a story driven and laptop friendly game in the Sims universe, and Virtual Villagers, which challenges players to successfully guide a tribe of villagers. Applelinks gave The Sims Pet Stories a score of 5 out of 5 and Virtual Villagers a score of 2 out of 5.

From the reviews:

The Sims Pet Stories:
Especially engaging is your relationship with the pet. You do not Sim-control the pet. He or she comes and goes, plays and eats, almost entirely ignorant of your existence. This is except for the dogs, who really seem to depend on your attention as if it is oxygen (because that's how dogs are). Your pet becomes more responsive to you as you become more responsive to it, and over time the number of commands you can successfully execute is affected by your relationship. Your praise, playing, and petting all contribute to your pet's responsiveness. Here also the Sims series shows its keen insight into human—and pet—psychology. Not only kindness and belly scratching forge the bond, but you can improve your relationship with your pet by scolding and correcting it at the right times, too. Like a real pet, it wants to know its boundaries, and if you find your dog chewing your divan, you can let him have it. Not the divan of course, it's yours. By "let him have it," I mean yell at the dog. Your relationship will improve if you also purchase a chew toy, and praise him when he chews it instead of your furniture. In this way your pet becomes more independent and responsive.

Virtual Villagers:
Basically, gameplay consists of villagers working on farming or fishing to get food, researching to develop the village, building new huts or clearing debris, healing villagers when they're sick, and taking care of babies. Although most of this can be done without your direct involvement (you set preferences for your villagers and they'll automatically return to that task when they get distracted by doing laundry or moving the boulder or relaxing or exercising or any of the other countless reasons they can find to stop doing work), villagers get distracted often and I can't count the times my 70 year-old scientist would slowly wander to the boulder and try to move it.

Applelinks: The Sims Pet Stories Review

Applelinks: Virtual Villagers Review

Aspyr Media

The Sims Pet Stories

Big Fish Games

Virtual Villagers

Buy Virtual Villagers

Click to enlarge

Computer and Video Games has posted a brief interview with Bill Roper, formerly of Blizzard Entertainment and now CEO of Flagship Studios. The interview focuses on Roper's time working at Blizzard, giving some specific insights into the expectations for World of Warcraft, a game which would eventually take the MMO world by storm.

No one at Blizzard ever expected World of Warcraft to become the phenomenon it has, according to Bill Roper.

"I remember a meeting at Blizzard where we were hoping we'd be able to sell a million copies of the game", Roper, former Blizzard North employee and now Flagship Studios CEO, has told CVG in an interview.

"You have to remember," Roper continued, "that the most successful American MMORPG at that time was EverQuest with about 500,000 players. It would have been impossible to predict that World of Warcraft would take off as a cultural phenomenon as it did, but those are the kind of surprises that you like to get in life."

CVG: Bill Roper Interview

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft

Buy World of Warcraft

Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.