Dee Brown of Beenox recently made a post to the official Coldstone Game Engine progress logs at partner Ambrosia Software. It seems the powerful RPG engine is closing its final beta phase now, with just a few minor tweaks necessary before release. This means would-be game makers will soon have a chance to create their own titles which run on Windows as well as Mac OS 8/9/X.

Coldstone will be released to the public once the Windows version of Pillars of Garendall is made available. This action/RPG is the first to use the engine. Here's Brown with more:

When will it be released?

After Pillars of Garendall is released on Windows. While Pillars of Garendall is a really cool game, it's also a showcase of Coldstone abilities and a way for us to test every part of Coldstone on both platforms. It won't be logical to release Coldstone while a game made with it has platform specific bugs. Don't fear though, we are currently working days and nights to deliver a final candidate of PoG Windows as well as the update of PoG Macintosh

In related news, IMG last week posted a review by Chris Barylick of Pillars of Garendall. Here's a brief taste:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a brave warrior in medieval times (the treasure, the groupies, the profit sharing...) Yes, I’d pull my strong yet flexible armor over my rippling muscles, don my fearsome weaponry and go slay hideous dragons to rescue beautiful maidens in varying degrees of distress.

Unfortunately, this hasn’t panned out as well as I hoped it would.

Download Pillars of Garendall Demo (30MB)

IMG Review: Pillars of Garendall

Trinity Expansion Screen Shots

Coldstone Progress Log

Ambrosia Software

Beenox

Pillars of Garendall

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