Games

InXile Entertainment have launched their Kickstarter campaign for their roleplaying game, Torment: Tides of Numenera . This game is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment , the 1999 PC game which is widely regarded as the best (and certainly the best-written) computer RPG ever made. Eschewing traditional fantasy conventions (no elves, no dwarves, precious few action sequences), the game delved deeply into themes of identity, responsibility, consequence and if people can every truly change themselves. It sold modestly but has attracted critical acclaim like no other RPG in history. Since inXile do not have the rights to the Planescape setting, they are instead setting this game in a different universe altogether. The setting is Numenera, a pen-and-paper setting conceived by Monte Cook, one of the chief designers on the 3rd Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game. The setting is Earth, approximately one billion years in the future. Our world has been rendered almost unrecognisa...

InXile Studios may be hard at work on Wasteland 2 , the crowd-funded sequel to the seminal 1988 computer RPG Wasteland , but they have already announced their next project . With most of the writing and concept art completed for Wasteland 2 , those teams have started work on a game that may be called Numenera: Torment . This game will be a spiritual sequel to the classic 1999 RPG Planescape: Torment , widely-regarded as the finest (and most literate) computer roleplaying game ever made. The new game will not involve any of the characters or situations from Planescape: Torment (which is copyrighted by Atari and Wizards of the Coast), but will share a similar focus on characterisation and philosophical matters, such as the nature of life, death and consciousness. The setting will be Numenera , a new roleplaying setting created by Monte Cook. Cook is a highly respected RPG game designer and worked extensively on the original Planescape setting for the Dungeons and Dragons game in the 1...

Gollancz have announced that they will be publishing three novels based on the Elite series of computer games in 2014. The new Elite game, Elite: Dangerous (the fourth in the thirty-year-old series), recently passed its funding goal on Kickstarter , ending with more than £1.5 million raised for game development. The title is expected to be released by mid-2014. To help the game reach its goal Gollancz pledged a significant sum on Kickstarter to buy the rights to publish three novels based on the Elite universe. Gollancz had already been in discussions with David Braben and Frontier Studios about adding the original Elite tie-in novella, The Dark Wheel , to its SF Gateway online store. The Dark Wheel is notable as it was written by the late Robert Holdstock, best-known for his Mythago Wood series of novels. The Dark Wheel was packaged with the original BBC Micro release of Elite in 1984 (I still have a copy in a box somewhere). Frontier: Elite II , released in 1992, was also ac...

David Braben and Frontier Developments have put up a Kickstarter page for Elite: Dangerous , the long-awaited fourth game in the Elite series. In visual terms, this was 1984's answer to Crysis II . The original Elite was released in 1984 on the BBC Micro and is one of the most famous, seminal and game-changing titles of all time. It was an open-universe game in which you took a spaceship and could trade and fight your way across eight galaxies and some 2,000 star systems, all in (wireframe) 3D. It was the first major 3D game and one of the first games to give you total freedom in how you approached playing it. The sequel, Frontier: Elite II was released in 1993 and featured filled-in 3D graphics, multiple controllable spacecraft, an even vaster universe (hundreds of millions of procedurally-generated star systems in a - somewhat - accurate recreation of the Milky Way) and the ability to land on planets. The third game, First Encounters: Frontier II was released in 1995 and wa...

As covered previously , Obsidian Entertainment have been working on a brand-new, 'old-school' RPG with the working title Project Eternity . The game is heavily influenced and inspired by their own classic games (when they were working as Black Isle), such as Planescape: Torment , Icewind Dale and the early Fallout games, as well as those of their associated companies, such as BioWare's Baldur's Gate titles. To help fund the title, Obsidian requested fans to pledge $1.1 million via the Kickstarter crowdfunding website. Click for massive version. A month later, the Kickstarter has come to an end with Obsidian having raised $3,986,929 via the website, plus an additional $140,099 in PayPal contributions. The result being that the game achieved all of its planned stretch goals and will now be radically enhanced as a result. This includes the game now shipping on PC, Mac and Linux platforms, in multiple languages and with several added areas (including a whole new city an...

More than two years ago, it was reported that Red Eagle had signed a deal with Obsidian Entertainment to make a Wheel of Time computer roleplaying game for release on PC and console platforms. Chris Avellone, the well-respected creator of Planescape: Torment and a key writer on games like Fallout 2 , New Vegas , Alpha Protocol , Icewind Dale and the forthcoming Wasteland 2 and Project: Eternity , was reported to be working on the initial ideas for the game. Fans and even gamers who had never heard of Wheel of Time were intrigued. Then nothing. Obsidian moved onto several projects. There was excitement when they reported they were working on a major franchise tie-in game, but this turned out to be a South Park title (due out in spring 2013). More recent reports emerged explaining what had happened: Red Eagle's responsibility had been to find a publisher to fund development of the game. Despite signing a distribution agreement with Electronic Arts in 2009, they were unable to...

Obsidian Entertainment have announced their next big RPG: a fantasy game called Project Eternity (working title). This game will be an isometric, old-school RPG that draws heavily on their old D&D games using the Infinity Engine (the Icewind Dale series and the legendary Planescape: Torment ). However, tired of working for publishers who either don't do proper Q&A on their games (resulting in the bug-filled mess of Alpha Protocol ), rush them out in an incomplete state ( Knights of the Old Republic II ) or refuse to pay them a bonus by failing to hit a ludicrously arbitrary Metacritic score by one point despite selling millions of copies ( Fallout: New Vegas ), Obsidian have decided to take this one to the fans. Via Kickstarter, Obsidian are asking for $1.1 million to help fund the game . They're already at $300,000 less than a day after starting the project. The creative forces behind the game include Chris Avellone, the writer of Planescape: Torment ; Tim Cain, the...

In the past I have spoken positively about Dead Gentleman Productions and their excellent fan-made, low-budget Gamers movies. Fans have waiting for a third movie in the series for some five years now. Rather than continue to slowly accrue the budget necessary to make a third film, Dead Gentleman have gone directly to the fans through a Kickstarter campaign . The Gamers: Hands of Fate picks up several years after the events of Dorkness Rising . The same cast of characters returns, this time determined to master a new game (a collectible card game) and overcome some more personal issues whilst continuing their roleplaying campaign (and attempting to finally destroy their arch-nemesis, the Shadow). Part of the movie will be filmed at GenCon 2012, the largest roleplaying and CCG convention in the world. The first two Gamers films are probably the best and most accurate representations of roleplaying put to film. They certainly knock the official D&D movies into a cocked hat, and...

No, really. SF author Neal Stephenson - of Snow Crash , Cryptonomicon , Baroque Cycle , Anathem and Reamde fame - is apparently unhappy with the depiction of swordfighting in computer games, so is now working on a new system. He's set up a Kickstarter (crowd-funding) project and asked for half a million dollars, roping in a whole bunch of experts and some nifty swords-with-sensors-attached to help pitch the idea. Interesting. Mental, clearly, but interesting if they can actually pull it off. Stephenson's pitch is quite amusing and apparently they raised $30,000 within a few hours of the page going up, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the project succeed in raising the initial investment.

Min-Liang Tan, the founder of pro-gaming peripheral company Razer , has given $10,000 to games developer Brian Fargo as an apology for pirating his game Wasteland a couple of decades ago. Fargo has been using the 'Kickstarter' system to raise funds for a potential Wasteland 2 and has recently passed his first goal of raising $900,000. In a Tweet, Tan said "I'm sorry for playing on a pirated copy of Wasteland years ago, I hope this makes up for it." Fargo's startled reply was: "Wow.. I just saw that you donated 10k... You more than made up for it. I am most grateful...You are forgiven... ;) Thanks for the support." Fargo is legendary within the video games market for founding Interplay in 1983. He directly wrote and created Wasteland (released in 1988) and later worked on games such as the original Fallout , which was directly inspired by Wasteland . He also worked on the Baldur's Gate franchise. During the numerous tumults that shook Interpl...