Link Dump Friday
It's March, which is an exciting month, because there's a whole lot of big gaming things happening this year in it! While most of you are going to vanish the minute March 6th rolls around, some of us are girding our loins for the 13th, with grim expressions like we're Grey Wardens heading off to the Deep Roads. (And then there's this which I'm trying not to get too excited about because if nothing happens then I'll have to drag myself sobbing and howling to Bioware's doorstep. Again.) But! It ain't all triple A titles that're in the news, folks! Here's some things to get excited about.
That's A Fine, Strong Name For a Dwarf You know Winter Wolves, right? Fine purveyor of top-notch visual novels and simulations? Well, check dis out; Loren the Amazon Princess is an RPG that's coming down the pipe soon, and it looks stunning. Blending tactical turn-based battling with a massive story and cast of characters, not to mention a ton of romance options, it looks like it's going to be a great indie fantasy game and is well worth keeping an eye on. Especially if you like improbable female clothing. Be sure and try out the demo, available in Windows, Mac, and Linux flavours!
Start Growing Your Stoic Beards Now Stoic Studio, a new company made up of three ridiculously talented souls who originally emerged from the eldritch wilds of Bioware, has recently announced their new game The Banner Saga, coming later this summer. Billed as "role-playing meets turn-based strategy, wrapped into an adventure mini-series about vikings", which is really just about everything you could ask for (apart from people to stop wearing those awful Skeletoes things), it looks absolutely stunning, and you should check out the announcement trailer right this second. If, like me, your issue with strategy games is that they frequently tend to feature a departure from story and focus solely on the combat, you'll find that this looks like it was made with you in mind since it promises "decisions with real consequences in conversations with people you'll actually care about". Fingers crossed, guys, but this looks beautiful.
The Best. Possible. BRAWL. A lot of popular things wind up getting fan projects that sound really cool and ambitious but never see the light of day, so the continual and impressive progress on the My Little Pony fighting game, Fighting is Magic, is really something to get excited about. Since the last time we peeked at them, they've chosen a voice actress for Rarity (one of the best ponies), uploaded her stage's background music, and recorded another livestream video showing off all the progress so far. If you haven't seen any of the actual gameplay yet, then that last link is definitely worth checking out. Now that's some serious brony talent! Still no release date, but this is looking better all the time.
Diggy Diggy Hole Big news, blockheads! The latest Minecraft update, 1.2, is now live! The full notes are available here, but there are a bunch of really interesting things to be found this time. (And, if you're like me and avoid the snapshots, will be entirely new to you.) For instances, mobs now have rare item drops, ocelots have been introduced along with a new jungle biome, and mob AI has been tweaked and improved overall. The villagers have also gotten a significant tweak to their AI, allowing for basic things like getting inside out of the rain and dark, and reacting to... zombie sieges! That's the best kind of siege, you know. Remember to back up your saves before updating, and especially backup your worlds too if you run a server like I do.
Just saying that there is also like two Homestuck games that I know of going pretty well into development that have never been mentioned here and never will because
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh why ponies
I can promise you ponies have nothing to do with why a game isn't featured. :) Ponies do, however, have to do with the fact that our audience has a lot of varied tastes and we're doing our best to cover all the quality, promising projects we can.
We can pass on games for a variety of reasons, such as content concerns, but it also might just be that we've never heard of the game in question for whatever reason. If you have something you want us to look at, go ahead and use the submission box to pass it our way!
Not to sound like a negative Nancy but this site really sucks since switching to the new Link Dump Friday format. I have come to expect game links and brief reviews, not upcoming news, from this "column". This Info should really have its own section IMHO. I do like the new "Vault" entries though.
[As we have mentioned several times before, the games and brief reviews previously featured in the old Link Dump Friday format are still here on the site, they have been given separate posts/review pages of their own. The purpose of that is to give each game a place for comments and walkthroughs of its own rather than mixing up all the comments for several games together on one page. It's better for the games and easier to catalog on the site, which actually makes the site better, not worse. The new info in the new Link Dump Friday format is all a bonus, never before featured content including news, previews, word about updates to existing games previously featured, and interviews from time to time. I'm sorry that you do not like the new info, please feel free to skip it each week. We won't be offended if you do. :) -Jay]
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