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Tale of Tales has released The Graveyard, a unique experimental game which puts players in the role of an old lady visiting a graveyard. It is available for both Macs and Windows based machines.

More about The Graveyard:

The Graveyard is a very short computer game designed by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It's more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with realtime poetry, with storytelling without words.

The Graveyard

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Inside Mac Games has posted a review of Freeverse's putt-putt golf game, Tiki Magic Mini Golf. Here's a bit from the review:

What you have in this game is a title that, before you even download it, is trying to stretch what it has to offer. Icons, save games, and... force fields. These are not really features, not in a way that the gamer will find functional. Right-away, this lets me know that for $30, I’m not looking at a feature-rich title. Also among the full-list of features are the legitimate items listing 3 Courses and 54 Holes (18 holes per course). That’s not exactly anemic, but it’s not a terribly large amount of variety, either.

IMG Review: Tiki Magic Mini Golf

Tiki Magic Mini Golf

Freeverse

Buy Tiki Magic Mini Golf

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Applelinks has posted a new review of Freeverse's Neon Tango. The game is an action shooter which gives players a chance to pilot a cybership against the forces of chaos in 50 stages of enemy blasting action. Applelinks gave Neon Tango a score of 4 out of 5.

From the review:

The wild visuals and confined environments aside, the game plays and feels just like Wingnuts 2 (it's based on the same core technology). If you've spent any time at all in that game, you'll recognize the similarities in how your ship flies, how it feels to collide with other ships, how you approach boss battles, etc. Yet, this isn't a simple rehash under a new skin. The strategies are completely different, focusing instead on the use of power-ups, your method of attacking the numerous enemies, and on using the environment to your advantage. For instance, some walls can only be penetrated from one side, while your lasers can pass through. On others, the lasers ricochet. Hiding behind the walls can be beneficial...for a while, anyway. In games such as this, it's never a good idea to stay in one area for long. Similarly, I was having trouble with a particular boss until I began warping in and out of nearby wormholes to take a quick shot or two then duck back in before the boss could turn on me and unleash its attacks.

As with nearly all games of this type, destroying certain enemies will release power-ups that you can collect and use against the stronger enemies or those that come in high numbers. Knowing when and how to use the power-ups is essential for victory, especially against the bosses. I also heavily recommend the use of a gamepad. You can play with the keyboard, of course, but it'll be difficult to get the precise control you need to get deep into the game. Although the initial set-up was a bit jumbled with my Logitech RumblePad, Neon Tango was much more fun once I got off the keyboard.

Applelinks: Neon Tango Review

Freeverse

Neon Tango

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Shacknews recently published an interview with Peter Molyneux. The Q&A covers a range of topics including the upcoming Fable 2, classic game franchises Molyneux would like to revisit, the state of PC gaming, and the rarity of innovation in today's big budget games.

Shack: Do you feel that the lack of innovation is due to the increasing popularity of console development?

Peter Molyneux: I do think though, that innovation is a scary thing these days because it costs so much to make a game. I mean, it costs tens of millions of dollars, and when you've got crazy designers waving their arms around like me, saying "Why don't we try not using a mini-map," or "Why don't we try having interactive cutscenes," then people are going, "Yeah, well, okay, you can try that, but it's gonna cost you twenty million to do." That is very scary for a lot of people.

So, innovation is much more difficult when a lot of money is on the line. It's just far more comforting when you're making a game to say, "I'll make another one of these because at least I know that that one was successful."

Shacknews: Peter Molyneux Interview

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Blizzard Entertainment has added another entry to its Wrath of the Lich King bestiary page. The second expansion for the popular World of Warcraft will feature a variety of new creatures for players to encounter including the Iron Dwarves, a malevolent race of dwarves who dwell in the Howling Fjord region.

The Explorers' League has scoured the far corners of the world, seeking to uncover the truth behind the origins of the dwarves. Now it seems they may be one step closer to unlocking the secrets of the past.

The latest clues come from ancient dig sites within the Howling Fjord, where the iron dwarves were first encountered. Etched with runes of power - and with lightning pulsing beneath their thick, metallic skin - they may represent the missing link between the dwarves and the legendary titans of myth. Unfortunately the malevolent iron dwarves have openly defied the Explorers' League and seem intent on destroying any and all artifacts connecting them to the shadowed recesses of history.

Wrath of the Lich King Bestiary

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

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