March 19, 2010 6:00 AMSoldak Entertainment has announced the release of a demo version of Din's Curse, the upcoming action RPG. In Din's Curse players take the role of an adventurer cursed to walk the lands in a quest for redemption. The game features 141 possible class combinations, an infinite number of dynamically generated towns, and a game world directly impacted by player choices.Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity. In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends. Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter! Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!Features:Uniquely created worlds for every game, with different monsters, items, quests, and even townspeople, give the player a new experience every timeExplore a dynamic, evolving, living worldMany hybrid classes to experience - 6 full classes, 18 specialties, 141 total combinationsYour choices truly impact the gameSurprising, emergent gameplayCo-op multiplayer to adventure with friends (only in full game)The demo for Din's Curse demo is approximately 100MB. For more information click over to the link below.Din's Curse DemoSoldak EntertainmentDin's Curse
March 18, 2010 7:37 AMMacgamestore.com has begun to take pre-orders the digital download version of UbiSoft's upcoming strategy game, The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom. Choose your own path to victory in The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, the long-anticipated sequel to the award-winning strategy game. Embark on an exciting quest to create, build and manage your kingdom in the most innovative, customizable and re-playable version ever!Choose your own path to victory in The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, the long-anticipated sequel to the award-winning strategy game. Embark on an exciting quest to create, build and manage your kingdom in the most innovative, customizable and re-playable version ever!As an incentive, Macgamestore.com is offering a free copy digital download copy of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Hard Evidence when you pre-order the game. To take advantage of this offer, you must pre-order before the game ships on March 23, 2010.The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom is available for pre-order for $49.95.Ubi SoftThe Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom
March 18, 2010 6:00 AMMidnight Mansion 1.1.9, a free update to ActionSoft's action/exploration game, has been released. The latest version fixes several bugs and modifies the Hand tool in the editor. In Midnight Mansion players take the role of Jack Malone as they explore for hidden treasure in eight huge mansions filled with traps, puzzles, and secrets.Midnight Mansion 1.1.9 has the following bug fixes / improvments:- Fixed some license file issues, where the game would sometimes repeatedly prompt registered users to re-enter their code, claiming the computer seemed to be different from the one the code was entered on. This should now be fixed.- Fixed text in in-game dialog boxes to draw correctly on more recent versions of MacOS X, such as Snow Leopard.- Changed "hand" tool in editor to move sprites around. It takes into account the current "Align to grid" settings.- Fixed an editor bug where, if you entered a number higher than 32,767 in the "ObjectID to affect" field for a lever, this number would not be saved properly, and the lever would not affect the ObjectID you had specified.Midnight Mansion is an action/exploration platformer with 32-bit retro graphics, spine-tingling sound effects, and professional quality music. As Jack Malone, you will explore eight huge mansions, each filled with traps, puzzles, and secrets, as you search for legendary treasure. Ride on conveyor belts, avoid zapper beams, and dodge monsters as you collect keys that give you access to new areas of each mansion. Non-violent gameplay allows the whole family to enjoy the game. Features include multiple user accounts, online high scores, suspend Learn more at the links below.ActionSoftMidnight Mansion
March 17, 2010 6:00 AMBlizzard Entertainment has announced the long awaited Diablo II 1.13 patch will be available March 23. As part of the update's launch the company will also be resetting the Diablo II ladders. All existing ladder characters will be converted to non-ladder status.We will be resetting the Diablo II ladder on March 23 with the release of patch 1.13. We anticipate all Diablo II realms to be down for approximately six hours during the reset. More specific information on realm availability on the day of the reset will be posted in the Battle.net Status forum. When the ladder is reset, all existing ladder characters will be converted to non-ladder. All characters and items being converted to non-ladder will remain intact, but once converted these characters will no longer have access to ladder content such as creating ladder-only rune words. For more information on ladder characters please visit the Arreat Summit Realm Character Types pagelTo learn more click on the links below.Diablo II Ladder Reset And Patch ReleaseBlizzard EntertainmentDiablo II
March 15, 2010 6:00 AMTelltale Games has announced it is now taking orders for the Tales of Monkey Island full season Collector's DVD, along with new special items related to the game. In addition to the full five episode pirate adventure for Mac and PC, the DVD includes "making of" team commentaries, production art galleries, promotional videos and more. A special Deluxe Tales of Monkey Island package is also now available for order, which includes the standard DVD as well as a collection of outstanding exclusive extras: a previously un-discovered Voodoo Lady card, a map from Reginald Van Winslow's collection, a piratey piece of eight coin, a drink coaster from Club 41 and a souvenir button from the Trial of the Century. Fans who missed out on the cover art by Monkey Island art legend Steve Purcell with the series pre-order, can now secure this with their Deluxe Edition order. This amazing collection is available for only $14.95 for customers who already own Tales of Monkey Island, and $49.95 for new customers. The celebration continues with a bounty of new Monkey Island items at the Telltale Store, which fans can purchase along with their DVD orders: a full deck of the Voodoo Lady's cards, a Tales of Monkey Island Art Portfolio featuring prints suitable for framing, t-shirts, a new series of buttons and a drinking vessel for your piratey beverages! With this nearly impossible to resist abundance of new Monkey Island product, Telltale is extending free shipping for all orders over $50 for the first weeks of the ordering window.Tales of Monkey Island Collector's DVD (standard edition) Details:The complete five episode season of Tales of Monkey Island Highlight reel with commentary from Telltale design teamProduction art gallery Five fan-created "I Wonder What Happens" video collectionTwo Tales of Monkey Island official trailersPreview of Telltale's next game, Sam & Max: The Devil's PlayhouseDesktop wallpapers and fun forum avatarsDeluxe Edition includes:DVD slip case designed by Monkey Island art legend Steve PurcellA previously un-discovered new card from the Voodoo Lady's deckGulf of Melange MapCommemorative button from Guybrush's Trial of the CenturyDrink coaster from Club 41Piratey piece of eight coinFor more information please visit the website below. Telltale GamesTales of Monkey Island
March 10, 2010 6:00 AMOn the heels of Valve Software's recent announcement that it will be bringing Steam to Mac computers in April, EA Dice's executive producer Karl Magnus Troedsson has stated EA is considering bringing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to Apple computers via Steam. From The Universal Gaming Database:EA DICE's executive producer Karl Magnus Troedsson, made mention of the announcement on his Twitter account today stating, "Steam for Mac - Gabe, we like it." The Universal Gaming Database questioned Mr.Trodsson about the possibility of future Battlefield games coming to Mac via the new Steam client, Mr.Trodsson stated "We're currently investigating the possibility of making BFBC2 available on Mac." DICE has released three titles on Steam for Windows; Battlefield 2: Complete Edition, Mirror's Edge, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition and a Bad Company 2 four friend pack similar to the Left 4 Dead's four friend pack. The last DICE game to be released on Mac was Battlefield 2142 in August of 2008. Currently the Windows version of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has more players online then the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version combined, the addition of Mac gamers into the mix would push these numbers even higher.Read more at the link below.UGDB.com: BFBC2 Mac Bound?Electronic Arts
March 9, 2010 6:00 AMSpiderweb Software has added a collection of new wallpaper images to its website. The images feature scenes from the popular Avernum RPG series, which recently concluded in Avernum 6. The game wrapped up loose plot threads from previous games and revealed the fate of the underground realm and its popular characters.Avernum 6 is the final game in the popular and long-running Avernum series. Explore a gigantic world, with a fascinating storyline, hundreds of quests, multitudes of side dungeons, and many hours of adventure. The game features clever enemies and dozens of interesting scripted encounters. Learn over 50 spells and battle disciplines. Hunt for hundreds of magical items or craft your own powerful artifacts. Avernum is a world underground. It is a nation of people living in an enormous warren of tunnels and caverns, far below the surface of the world. Once a prison colony for rebels and thugs, it is now a wild frontier, full of adventurous souls looking for wealth, fame, and magical power. Avernum's sole link to the surface world: a single magical portal, small and difficult to maintain. And then the Blight came. Almost overnight, the mushrooms Avernum needed to feed itself withered and died. Then the denizens of the low tunnels, the savage, reptilian Slithzerikai, emerged. Sensing weakness, they struck, destroying much of a weakened Avernum and creating waves of hungry, desperate refugees. Now chaos and hunger stalk this land, and none seem to be able to find a solution or a way to stop the Slith Horde. In the midst of all of this chaos, you joined the army. You had a good, simple reason: Soldiers get food. And yet, through a run of good (or bad) fortune, you find that you have a chance to discover and confront Avernum's enemies. The nation of Avernum is rapidly approaching its final destiny, and you will be at the center of events. Can you save your homeland? And, if Avernum survives, what will become of it? Visit the page below to view the wallpaper images.Spiderweb Software: Avernum Desktop ArtSpiderweb SoftwareAvernum 6
March 8, 2010 1:41 PMMacgamestore.com today is pleased to announce the release of Murder, She Wrote on its web site. The game was developed by casual games developer and publisher, Legacy Interactive. Murder, She Wrote is an interactive seek and find "who-dun-it" mystery adventure with unique minigames in every scene.Play as the lovable murder novelist Jessica Fletcher and solve each of the five cases by carefully and methodically investigating murders using an innovative new style of hidden object and light adventure gameplay. First, players need to find missing keys from Jessica's typewriter to fill in the unknown letters in the list of hidden objects. After the entire words are revealed, there are more secrets to uncover as not all the hidden objects can be found by just discovering where they lay. As every detective knows, nothing is ever as it seems! Scour over 80 game levels with familiar characters from the show - Jessica Fletcher, Seth Hazlitt and Sheriff Mort Metzger. Set in the beautiful New England town of Cabot Cove and across the seas in London, the more than 25 detailed 3-D settings may distract even the most determined player from their investigation. Featuring 5 original cases and over 6 hours of gameplay, Murder, She Wrote provides entertaining twists and turns that are sure to please both long time fans of the show and casual gamers alike.Murder, She Wrote requires an Intel Mac with Mac OS X 10.5 or later, 512 MB of RAM, and a Radeon 9000 or similar. It is available immediately as a digital download purchase through Macgamestore.com and Mac Games Arcade. A free demo is available for download. The full version costs $19.95 (USD).Buy Murder, She WroteMacgamestore.comMac Games Arcade
March 8, 2010 12:39 PMValve Software today officially announced that it will be bringing Steam, Valve's gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac. The company also announced it will be brining Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series to the Mac in April.Here's the press release:"As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. "The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services." "Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play." "We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows." Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."For more, visit Steam's web site.Valve Software
March 8, 2010 6:00 AMGuild Software has announced the upcoming launch of a new MMO middleware product: the NAOS Engine. Developed to power the company's long-running MMORPG, Vendetta Online, the engine provides "a complete and multi-platform solution, with native client build targets for Windows, Mac and Linux." The highly scalable distributed game server uses lightweight Erlang threading to provide persistent handling of hundreds of thousands of individual NPCs and other game elements, with seamless management as they transition across running/non-running boundaries in the game universe. A well-proven update/patch server and client are also included, the server allowing optimized binary patching and user queues for rate limiting and overflow. The update client supports redundant failover to multiple patch server clusters, and includes automated client crash reporting, with fetching and submission of auto-generated tracebacks via HTTP to a proprietary bug tracking system. Finally, a completely custom Lua/FastCGI-based web content management system, with proven billing, messageboard, mailing list and administrative features, rounds out the server solution, creating a nearly-complete package for the prospective MMO developer. All server software can be run on either FreeBSD or Linux, and works well with existing RDBMS solutions such as MySQL or Oracle, as well as DBMS such as Mnesia. Beyond the use of a database for persistency, an integrated RDF triple-store is in development to more elegantly enable applications such as advanced AI, simulated-economics, and monitoring tasks. The NAOS Engine will be available either as a complete licensed source package, or individual components may be licensed separately at a reduced cost. The product is expected to launch in the year, and will be followed by the NAOS Platform, a cloud-based MMO development solution which also includes scalable hosting, with sliding pricing based on usage and revenue, to help startup MMO developers focus purely on their games.For more information follow the links below.NAOS EngineGuild SoftwareStrategy FirstVendetta Online
March 8, 2010 6:00 AMBasilisk Games is asking for beta testers for its upcoming RPG, Eschalon: Book II. Although testing of the Mac version will not begin immediately, interested Mac users are asked to sign up now. The second in the old school RPG series will include improvements like re-rendered tiles, new weather effects, new skills, new monsters, and a larger world to explore.Before continuing to the application, you need to consider a few important factors: - Beta testing is not fun. It is work. You will be playing a buggy, incomplete game and you may be asked to start over several times. Basilisk Games expects you to check in every few days and let us know how testing is going. You will grow to hate us and the game itself. Is this really what you want? - If you are anticipating the game so much that you want to beta test it just to play it sooner than anyone else, you should just wait. In just a few more weeks you can enjoy the full, bug-free game like it was meant to be played. - Do you still want to help us test Eschalon: Book II? Good! By becoming a beta tester you will be helping make a bug-free game for others to enjoy. Remember, many people will be counting on you to do your job and play-test the game as much as possible. Submit an application only if you have a lot of free time to give us. You will need a minimum of 20-40 hours of free time over a 3-4 week period to properly test Book II. If you don't have this much time to give us, then please don't submit an application. - Just because you apply doesn't mean you will be chosen to help us. We are expecting a lot of applications and only 10-12 people will be approved. To improve your chances of being accepted, fill out the application completely. Use proper grammar and punctuation. Don't tell us what you think we want to hear, just answer the questions honestly. - We're looking for Windows, Macintosh and Linux testers, but we will start with the Windows people. If you want to test the Macintosh or Linux version please submit an application now but remember it will be a couple extra weeks before we start with the other versions. - What do you get for beta testing? Well, if you can complete the minimal requirements of beta testing, you will get your name listed in the game and a registration code that can be used on all future versions of the game. - We will take applications for one full week before selecting anyone, so everyone has an equal chance of getting a beta-test spot.Click over to the link below for more information.Eschalon Book II Beta TestingBasilisk GamesEschalon: Book II
March 3, 2010 12:57 PMValve Software today sent out various teaser images to popular Mac and PC web sites confirming its intent to not only bring its digital download platform to the Mac, but will also be bringing its catalog of games to the Mac as well.IMG has learned that Steam for the Mac has been in the works for well over a year and was first shown to Apple at last year's WWDC event back in June 2009. Since then the company has been porting its client along with several games to the Mac. It is expected that a full announcement will be made at next week's Game Developer's Conference, which is scheduled to run from March 9th to the 13th.Several web sites have speculated that Portal and Team Fortress 2 will likelly be the first games to be ported.Valve Software
March 2, 2010 6:00 AMMacScene and Bitmob has posted a collection of feature articles examining the history of gaming on the Mac. Writer Richard Moss began with Apple's early days and continued through the rocky history of Mac gaming to discuss the platforms current gaming status and its potential future.Thankfully, there are still a number of companies working on Mac-native ports of PC and console games. Others have come and gone, but the big four Mac game companies nowadays are Aspyr, Feral Interactive, MacSoft Games, and Virtual Programming. Aspyr scrambled to get a Universal Build (that's an executable containing both the Intel and PowerPC binaries) of The Sims 2 ready after Apple first announced the Intel switch. They had usurped MacSoft as the leading Mac publisher, and weren't going to see their most popular title lose its market longevity. Other Universal Build updates followed for much of the Aspyr product line. At the same time, the company set about ensuring that its upcoming games would work equally well for Macs of the two different architectures. They dropped PowerPC support in 2007.Aspyr's porting efforts from the past few years include NeverWinter Nights 2, Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero World Tour, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and the entire Civilization 4 lineup. While ports of Civilization 4 and its first expansion, Warlords, came less than a year after their respective Windows releases, the second expansion, Beyond the Sword, did not arrive until July 2009, a full two years after the PC version, due to difficulty in adding support for the PC version's many fan- and developer-made mods. Civilization 4: Colonization followed in December. Feral Interactive's highest profile release came in October last year, with a Mac port of the award-winning Bioshock, which was released on Windows and Xbox 360 back in August 2007. But they've been busy working on other ports, too. In August 2008, Feral announced their Legends Series, which would be made up of older PC games that never made it to the Mac. Essentially forming the publisher's budget line, this label has so far brought Mac versions of Sid Meier's Pirates! and Rome: Total War, with more titles expected to come. In recent years, Feral have also released ports of LEGO Indiana Jones, Fable, Tomb Raider Anniversary, Black & White 2, and The Movies, amongst others. The delay between Mac and Windows releases is usually either around six months or a few years, although the ports are typically of a high quality. The once mighty MacSoft Games have been disturbingly quiet for the past year. They published the Mac-only snowboarding title Drop Point: Alaska in 2007, and ported Age of Empires 3 and its expansions, with the most recent, Asian Dynasties, released in July 2008. But besides updating their earlier OS X games to run natively on Intel Macs, that's about all they've released in the past few years. Back in 2007 MacSoft announced a port of Unreal Tournament 3, but that has yet to surface. Virtual Programming have been the most prolific of the Mac game publishers since the Intel switch, with more than 30 titles published in the past three years. Highlights include X3: Terran Conflict, Hearts of Iron 3, Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Europa Universalis 3, and Majesty 2. Their lineup also includes a number of adventure games, and some arcade and casual titles.Read the full articles at the links provided below.Part 1: The Rocky History Of Mac GamingPart 2: The Current State Of Mac GamingPart 3: Endlessly Waiting For Tomorrow
March 2, 2010 6:00 AMBasilisk Games' recently released an image of the World Map from Eschalon: Book II, the upcoming second title in its planned "old school" RPG trilogy. The game, scheduled for a 2010 release, will include improvements like re-rendered tiles, new weather effects, new skills, new monsters, and a larger world to explore.I promised this a while back, so it's about time I posted the World Map of Eschalon. A few things to note: 1) I rendered this low-resolution on purpose. The full high-res version will be on the Book II CD.2) Sorry, you do not get to explore this entire world in Book II. This is simply the charted world of Eschalon as it currently exists, giving you an idea of the general continental layout.3) Small details will continue to be added throughout the last few weeks of development, so this map is not likely to be "final".4) The western lands are primarily "Book III" regions, so you see they still lack considerable detail. Those areas will be filled in with detail when we begin development on that game.Click over to the page below to view the world map.Basilisk Games: Eschalon II World MapBasilisk GamesEschalon: Book II
February 23, 2010 6:00 AMSoldak Entertainment, known for its Depths of Peril and Kivi's Underworld fantasy games, has released more new information about the upcoming action RPG, Din's Curse. The latest update reveals the game's Priest class and its associated specialties: Paladin, Healer, and Shaman. This is the sixth and final revealed class of those available in the game. Priest:By the light of good, these holy warriors command more than strength and might, but also heal and bless themselves and others. Specialties: Paladin, Healer, and Shaman. Paladin:This guardian totes heavy armor with ease while using the power of the gods to maim the unjust. Bonuses: higher health per vitality, higher mana per spirit, higher damage per strength, and higher mana regen per spiritMana gen: Mana gain on blocks and parriesArmor: Cloth, Leather, and ShieldsWeapons: MacesZeal - An attack with extra damage and chance to get a crushing blow.Shield Mastery - When using a shield, you receive a defense bonus.Shield Bash - This shield attack will stun your enemy.Mace Mastery - Improves mace combat performance.Mail Armor - Can wear any mail armor. Each skill level makes your armor more efficient.Regeneration - This spell regenerates your health for a while.Stunning Blows - Increased chance of landing stunning blows, which stun the enemy for a moment.Crushing Blow - Increased chance of landing a crushing blow, which automatically causes the maximum damage for that hit.Smite - A powerful attack with lingering damage for a moment.Bravery - Extra defense and chance of hitting for you and your friends for a little while.Din's Curse is currently in beta testing, with version 0.905 recently released to testers. Click over to the link below to learn more.Din's Curse ClassesDin's Curse PatchesSoldak EntertainmentDin's Curse