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Sunside has announced that the Mac version of its iOS action-adventure title Crow will be available for sale on Thursday, August 30, 2012. The new version of the game will feature Game Center support, high resolution graphics, support for mouse and keyboard, and a remastered soundtrack.

“Crow has had an incredibly successful run so far on the App Store. It’s a really unique immersive experience and it demonstrates that there is a desire for something fun and different. We’re really excited to bring this experience to the Mac,” said Richard Cowgill, CEO of Sunside, Inc.

Crow for the Mac supports the latest features of OSX Mountain Lion including Game Center leaderboards and achievements. It also includes high resolution graphics, bloom and other advanced post processing effects, support for the mouse and keyboard, and a remastered soundtrack.

Crow is a story-driven action-adventure game. Combining unique exploration, combat, and game mechanics, Crow takes the player on an exciting journey to faraway lands where an ancient battle is unfolding.

Created using Sunside's in-house game platform Radiance, Crow delivers stunning visuals and immersion in a fully 3D world.

Your choices will forever alter the course of this world. Will you Curse your foes or Spare them and risk the consequences?

Featuring:

• Immersive story line
  
• Meaningful player choice
  
• Stunning 3D graphics
  
• Visceral combat
  
• Sweeping musical score

Sunside Games

Buy Crow

Gaslamp Games has announced work on Clockwork Empires , a new city building strategy title with a steampunk theme. Gaslamp plans to release the game for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. The game puts players in the role of a junior bureaucrat tasked with building successful colonies, and features both single and multiplayer action.

The Clockwork Empire is expanding! Brave people, seeking glory and wealth, are setting forth for uncharted lands in search of fame and fortune. This is a new age of Science – fearless naturalists, clever tinkerers, and brilliant inventors hold sway over the imagination of the common folk, wielding voltaic energies and constructing chromed brass clockwork engines. It is an age of The Arts – poets lie expiring on every street corner, crying for Reform and more laudanum, while the Empire Times spews forth from the great presses of the Capitol, filled with stories of inspiring hubris and adventure from The Colonies. It is an age of Trade – the many arms of the Imperial Chartered Antipodean Trading Company lurch across the oceans like the limbs of a commodity-crazed octopus, dredging untapped markets for wealth and glory. It is an age of Politics – scheming agents of the Empire skulk through the slums and grottoes of the colonies, dodging anarchist schemes and cultists’ rituals, and fulfilling secretive missions on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen. Meanwhile, in the Capitol, favours are curried in the Houses of Parliament and the Panopticon between the artistocratic Lords and the rising classes of Industrial Barons.

Fly the Union Cog over all three identified corners of the world!

But not all is well in the Empire. Strangers gather under lampposts and in bars, telling stories of Those That Live Beyond The Stars, operating in invisible geometries from another dimension. The Queen, some whisper, has been locked away at the behest of her own Prime Minister… but to what end? The Church of the Holy Cog prays for the salvation of the Empire, yet everybody fears the indescribable colors that trace lines through the darkest woods and beyond the reassuring glow of the gas-lamps. The fortunes of the Clockwork Empire are watched, silently, by unseen eye-clusters and malevolent entities trying to breach the walls of reality into this world.

Take on the role of a Junior Bureaucrat (Colonial Grade), sent forth to seek fame, promotions, and natural resources to feed the ever-hungry maw of industry and commerce. Build mighty colonies, fill them with magnificent factories and tortured machinery, and harness the power of steam and energies brought forth by determined, unregulated men and women of Science!

Glory is yours to seize; the world is yours to do with as you please. For fame and fortune, for Science, and for the Queen and the glory of the Clockwork Empires!

But wait, there’s more!

Herein, the good folk of Gaslamp Games present a small selection of their “penny dreadful” game development features, demonstrating wonders never-before seen in plebian entertainment:

• Dynamic, city-building, citizen-simulating action. Every imperial subject has a purpose and agenda of their own, and their interactions are rich, exciting, and often lethal!
  
• New “procedural extrusion” technology lets you design your colony the way you want! Buildings are procedurally generated and extruded directly from the aether to your specifications!
  
• Tame the uncharted continents by land, sea, and air! Set forth in mighty Zeppelins to do battle with Sky Pirates, or take to the seas in search of fortune and probably sea serpents!
  
• Create magnificent acts of plumbing, link together mighty gears, and build ominous Megaprojects!
  
• Tangle with the machinations of malevolent entities! Scry the legacy of the Invisible Geometers, fumigate the baleful moon-fungus of the Selenian Polyps, and cleanse the scuttling creepiness and poor personal and moral hygiene of your everyday, average cultist.
  
• Losing is still fun! When your colony fails miserably, earn medals, promotions, and titles as befits a true politician and scion of the Empire!
  
• Multi-player mode, with up to 4 players, lets you co-operate with your closest friends to build a glorious city… or fight a horrifying economic battle to total annihilation!
  
• Round-Robin mode lets you share your Clockwork Empires with friends! Take turns running a colony directly into the ground then argue for fun-filled hours about whose fault it was! (Like Monopoly but with more exploding Zeppelins!)
  
• Rendered in glorious GaslampVision! Thrill as the colours are brought to life by Gaslamp’s team of caffeine-addled artists labouring under the technical specifications of our elite programmers* to bring you a game that is rendered in Each of the Three Dimensions! New multi-core technology by Actual University Students lets you use every last ounce of power in your computer to run a thrilling and vivid simulation!
  (* We’ll see about that, Nicholas. Soon. – David)
  
• Featuring the new Dynamic Soundtrack Orchestra – the Soundtrack that Adjusts to Your Gameplay! (Mr. M. Steele, conductor)
  
• No always-online DRM requirement, unlike certain other games we don’t want to mention. You know who you are and your mothers are very disappointed.
  
• Comes complete with the Gaslamp Games Quality of Excellence that you know and love, and if you don’t like something you can mod it yourself in the best tradition of Empire Craftsmanship!

Clockwork Empires

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The Live Pixel recently posted a new interview with members of the Stoic team about their upcoming strategy role playing adventure game, The Banner Saga. The lengthy interview includes a detailed description of the game's elements, and reveals work on The Banner Saga: Factions - a combat focused multiplayer demo.

Justin Lowe: So, what is Banner Saga?

Alex Thomas: The problem with that question is that Banner Saga is kind of complex; not in a pretentious way, but you cannot just say that it is a genre. We had a story idea and that was the kernel of it. Arnie and I were talking about it and thought, “This is a really cool idea and it would work with turn based strategy.” So we started looking at how we could integrate combat with the story. In most turn-based strategy, you play through a series of maps, there is not much interaction, it is somewhat dull, and no one cares about the story anyway. We wanted to focus on the tale that we were telling. So we were thinking, “What could we do to make it interesting, make you invested in the people that are in your caravan and civilization?”

The story is about the end of the world. The end of the world happened and the gods died, but the people that they created are left. So they are very confused. They do not know what happened or what is going to happen. They do not know what that means about the afterlife. There is another event happening that looks like another Ragnarok. Maybe this one is for them; they do not know. So they’re all scared, they don’t know what’s happening, and they have to travel to constantly escape this rolling wall of darkness. The inspiration came from The NeverEnding Story, like how the nothing was coming and sweeping up everything behind it. It is kind of a similar thing. A large part of the story is the mystery of what is causing it, what exactly it is, and how they can reverse it. Can they reverse it?

We questioned what kind of combat could encompass that idea. Turn-based strategy worked for us, but it could not be the only thing that happened. We came up with a travel mode that is sort of like a moving King of Dragon Pass, if you have ever played that. It is also like an advanced Oregon Trail, which many people are familiar with. We both had the idea that you are rolling along with your entire civilization. Events are happening and you have to deal with these problems. Instead of “billy bob broke a leg,” it is “these people in your caravan have a problem,” and there is multiple choice. Do you get involved? Do you let it sort itself out? That affects the makeup of your caravan. Along the way you can get into points where the main story kicks in, there’s events that happen as you’re going along, and how you deal with them affects what happens further down the road. That integrated pretty well with the idea of small combat. We kept building up back and forth on these ideas, and one would influence the other. Both systems would feel like things that you do in travel change what happens in combat, and vice versa. That was the crux of our concept for the game.

The Live Pixel

The Banner Saga

Ignis Studios recently informed us of its new Kickstarter project, Deozoa: Legends of Eden. The game is a title which gives players the chance to take control of 11 playable characters and set about catching and befriending some of the game's more than 100 monsters.

Deozoa is a monster catching game with over 100 monsters and 11 playable characters. Instead of sending the monsters out to fight for you, you get to pair one monster with one human and fight together on the battlefield. It will be released for iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Linux, and Ouya.

We are especially excited about using a community driven development approach for Deozoa. We grew up playing a lot of Pokemon and Monster Rancher games, the whole time wishing there was some way to get our own monster creations included in a real game. We are very excited to provide that kind of channel with Deozoa. Obviously, we can't include every monster in the official title - we will probably have some contests and polls to pick the best, but we are excited to make it available for our backers to be part of making Deozoa!

Here are some more features:

• One time game purchase for all monsters, characters, and story. No repetitive in-app purchases, no monthly fees. Just buy the game and have it forever.
  
• Join a community and submit your monster creations for them to be in the game.
  
• Capture and befriend over 100 monsters
  
• Evolve your Deozoa between 2 and 4 stages
  
• Recruit 10 characters to your team
  
• Level up and upgrade human classes
  
• Use 12 elements to your advantage
  
• Fight in a free-form battling system
  
• Rich RPG storyline - this will not be a casual game - it will be a full blown RPG!

Deozoa: Legends Of Eden Kickstarter

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Telltale Games has announced that The Walking Dead: Episode Three - Long Road Ahead will be released this Wednesday. To celebrate the imminent release the developers revealed a new trailer and several screenshots for the latest episode. The game adaptation of Robert Kirkman's graphic novel series is a five part episodic adventure horror game that follows the struggles of survivors attempting to survive in a world filled with undead.

In the meantime, we've released a brand new trailer for Episode Three, giving you an insight into what to expect in what is probably the most emotionally harrowing episode to date.

The stakes get even higher in episode three as Lee, Clem, and the group are forced to move on from the motel. The fallout from treachery within the group will lead to some shocking moments, and - depending on the choices you make - one of the hardest things that Lee has ever had to do.

Telltale Games: Walking Dead Trailer, Screenshots

Telltale Games

The Walking Dead

Buy The Walking Dead

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