A lot of people have a problem with Twitter. They think it’s meaningless, reductive, frivolous. This I say to them: what if it was a tower defence game? Oh-ho, now you’re listening. (more…)

It’s been a year since Champions Online went (er) Online. What are Cryptic Studios doing to celebrate? “Re-do an interview with Jim because it didn’t record first time he did it?” you say? No, you’re wrong. That’s just something they’re doing because we’re rubbish. They’re having a free week. How free? “From September 1 (at 10:00 a.m. Pacific) until September 7 (at 10:00 a.m. Pacific), you can play Champions Online absolutely free!” says their website. That’s how free it is. ..read the full article

I’ve only had a quick prod at this, but it’s interesting enough to post – and there’s a reason why posting sooner rather than later, as there’s a sorta-time-limit here. Radio 7 have done a two part radio drama, about a pair of browsers discovering that their inheritance is harder to get than you may expect. However, it’s complimented by an audio-lead web-adventure . The game concentrates on one brother’s perspective. The radio play concentrates on the other. By experiencing ..read the full article

RPS chum RoBurky has been making games with his comrades in righteousness from Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. Having had a good old waggle of their programming sticks for a Gamejam earlier this year they made Destroy The Brain. In it you play an invincible sliding tank thing that must destroy the brain of a creepy space station contraption. You can play it here, via Unity plugin. You can also read about it on Rob’s blog. Trailer below, ..read the full article

You know what – you’re wrong about hidden object games. Sure, there’s an awful lot of crappy ones, and sure, people who don’t like hardcore turn-based strategy are happy to play them, but stop judging. They’re calming fun, and the best of the bunch are the Mystery P.I. series, made by SpinTop Games. There’s a new one out (which is a bit like saying, “There’s a Tuesday this week”) called Stolen In San Francisco, and you can download a demo ..read the full article

Thanks for downloading this and playing with me, if that’s what you did. We had a quick game and it’s a kind of GTA2 with cyberpunk twist, only it’s multiplayer. And there are elements of Counter-Strike in there. So it’s a top down shooter with money, vehicles, a skill tree, special abilities, with deathmatch and capture the flag modes. It felt a bit like the levels needed attention to make them more playable, and to make the vehicles relevant to ..read the full article

The endearingly sleepy Grow series continues, with designer/animator Eyezmaze last week beckoning folk into Grow Valley. This ongoing collection of flash games is a funny series to post about, as it’s so resolutely unchanging. What else can I say beyond “the animations are wonderful and unpredictable?” While in this one one he’s extending the visual conceit into the characters interacting with the interface rather than being entirely abstracted from it, it’s still about pushing icons in the right order. The ..read the full article

Okay, this delightful little interactive thing TheBlackBandit sent us isn’t strictly speaking a game – but it is a delightful little interactive thing, and a lovely way to start the week with a higher note after the brutality of the last. In Seasons you control a thing on a unicycle, moving from screen to screen and seeing what happens. That’s it. And it’s quite lovely. Go play.

Well, not with me. I’m playing with Elemental. But GameRanger noted that it’s turned ten this week, and trying to organise people to come online and play it tomorrow. “GameRanger is inviting everyone to a day of online gaming on Sunday, August 29 from 9am PT / 12pm ET / 4pm GMT onwards” they say in their little press-release. If you don’t own the game, there’s still demos of both the original Age of Kings and Age of Empires II: ..read the full article

No time2play? Try Time4Cat. It’s an over-in-minutes, single-mechanic flash game that’s about as much like a flash game as you could ever imagine, at least in terms of controls. It’s also about a cat eating untold amounts of food on a busy crossroads and helplessly controlling time as it does, so you’ll want to play it anyway. The faster you move, the more you score from each food-munch – but the faster the pedestrians storm about the place and the ..read the full article

It’s time for another chance for all the female-fancying members of the audience to be disturbed by fancying a lady with a very similar name to mine. The third of the four Doctor Who adventure games is now available to download. You can get it from here, on the Internet. The USP of this one is that you actually get to control the Tardis. Those who played the first two are beginning to suspect that’ll mean a minigame or a ..read the full article

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll probably be aware of the Lone Wolf books. Basically, the best of the wave of D&D-derived choose-your-own-adventure books which emerged in the wake of Jackson/Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy. In fact, for my money, the best of the genre. Dever and his collaborators gave Project Aon a licence for the books to be downloaded, so have been able to be played online for a while, in a manual text form. A Project-Aon-er has gone one ..read the full article

Metagun is a game about a man who fires a gun that fires men who fire guns. At you. Which would rather seem to defeat the point, but as you can’t fire bullets, only little men, you need their bullets to destroy stuff and open up pathways for you. Lure the deadly bullets towards whatever you need to be shot, then duck out the way before you end up sporting more holes than Swiss nano-cheese. It’s about progress (and egress) ..read the full article

Comrade Hobbes forwards :the game: to me. “It’s not as clever as it thinks,” says Hobbes, ” but it’s cute enough”. And he’s not wrong. :the game: is a series of videogame jokes, which aren’t as clever as it thinks it is, but are pretty cute. You can play it here.

One Mr Bastock informs us that following the release of the German demo there’s a PC version of the September-releasing economics game demo available on Steam. You can totally download it now. Or later. Or earlier, if you knew about it before we told you. Go demo! Go demo!

I enjoy when a game experience creates moods or emotions, rather than coherent narrative sense. And Tale Of Tales have certainly done that for me in the past. But with Vanitas I hold up my hands an admit defeat. It’s a box with some stuff in. I haven’t been able to interpret any more than that, despite the explanations on the site. Previously an iPhone game, it’s now available for free to play with Unity on PC (look for tiny ..read the full article

Lies, damned lies, and ballistics. That’s what’s in store for anybody who chooses to download the R.U.S.E. demo, which is available right now on Steam. Worth mentioning once again that R.U.S.E. isn’t going to feature Ubisoft’s DRM of legend, so it looks like this whole mess has worked itself out peacefully.

A video of R.U.S.E. isn’t to be found after the jump. (more…)

How do I like to start the day? With a spectacular orgy with a lustful Martian pantheon. However, I’m prepared to settle with a quick flashgame. Today’s is Up Down Ready from the charmingly named Sword Lady & The Viking which just won Best Design In A Game at the recent Freeplay indie festival in Melbourne. Well done them. Basically, it’s a string of mini-games all which you control with the up and down arrows. I’m not too fond with ..read the full article