Shipwreck Review

I recently stumbled upon a really good video game trailer:

The above video, then, is a launch trailer for Brushfire Games’ new indie game Shipwreck. It is as WYSIWYG as you get! In buying this new game, you get the following:

  • Neat and tidy pixel graphics
  • Atmospheric console-style ‘retro’ music
  • Well-balanced, honed gameplay
  • Fun mechanics and a good difficulty curve
  • Zelda! Zelda! Link! Link!
  • I.e., A solid little game.

Interested? Read on, for more commentary on the game’s mechanics, qualities, and genre:

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Steam Treasures: SteamWorld Dig Review

It’s time to bring back our Steam Treasures series.

With hundreds and hundreds of titles now receiving the all-important right to be on Steam - through Valve’s Greenlight initiative (that Gabe Newell now wants to do away with) - the idea of a “jewel” of an indie game somehow “making” it through to the service (against all odds!!) no longer carries the same much any weight.

Where Valve’s standards may have changed (for better or worse), ours haven’t: In this series, we review budget-sized, budget-priced, big-small games that deserve to be added to your Steam library, period - even, when they’re not currently in a bundle for beans! Our first new entry to the series, then, is none other than the aptly-titled SteamWorld Dig: A Fistful of Dirt. SteamWorld Dig Logo

Curiously, the game’s developer, the Swedish Image & Form, actually did not target Steam first, as the game found its original home on the Nintendo eShop. Even on the Nintendo 3DS - a system I don’t currently own or have access to - the game immediately caught my attention due to its colourful look and feel, cute robot designs, and overall Steampunk shenanigans.

Ultimately, nomen est omen, and so forth, and we computer folks ended up receiving a full OS smorgasbord, from Windows to OSX to Linux, all via Steam. I was overjoyed to discover the game was to be ported so quickly over to PC - there still exist footage of me posting awful puns on Twitter. That’s how excited I was about getting to play the game.

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Laggard La-Mulana Loved

Japanese indie developers Nigoro have released by far the most endearing press release of 2010 (just compare theirs to Square-Enix’s latest). On their blog, the team announced their Nicalis-published Nintendo WiiWare title, La-Mulana, will not make its scheduled 2010 released date after all thanks to Nintendo’s highly stringent requirements and testing policies. Their unique, Engrish-flavoured announcement goes on to state that

We did a lot of thinking.
As a result, we come to the conclusion we abandoned to release it in 2010.
Because, it’s better to enhance the completeness instead of completing it roughly in a hurry.

We are so sorry.

We are really frustrating to our ineffectuality like being stuck at such a thing.
Above all, we are sorry for the people who are waiting LA-MULANA.
And also, we are sad to be considered that NIGORO is always late.1

Luckily for the team, Nigoro’s western fan base seems to be a highly appreciative bunch; both in the comments of the post, and on Twitter, (for instance, @TheUltraJMan tweets, “I’m sure the final product will be amazing, I’d wait years for this release if I had to! Here’s to an amazing 2011 release!”) fans have already started literally pouring in messages of encouragement! *cough* Whatever happened to all the good old-fashioned obsessive-compulsives?

In any case, if you’re seriously bummed out about the minor delay, there’s always the massively long PC original, translated by Aeon-Genesis. Plus, to make up for the delay, Nigoro also promise to release their first DLC, “Hell Sanctuary”, in conjunction with the full WiiWare game.

  1. http://la-mulana.com/en/blog/%EF%BD%97e-are-sorry.html []

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EEEk!

The Electronic Entertainment Expo has crept upon us once again!

On this website, we will be following up, at the very least, on four of the major press conferences: Microsoft and Electronic Arts today, and the Nintendo and Sony on Tuesday.

We probably won’t be parroting the more generic announcements – don’t know about you, but my fingers are already worn out from scrolling thru the sudden flood of Kinect news – but anything we think is worth mentioning will certainly find its way on to the blog with some commentary to boot.

Finally, if you’re interested in watching the conferences yourself, the Gamespot live feed has been pretty reliable in the past.

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