While it’s still at the ‘sign-up for info’ stage, Fallen London creators Failbetter Games are getting ready to launch a cool sounding set of tools that could let you beat them at their own game. It’s called StoryNexus, and with it anyone will (eventually) be able to create their own card/text based adventures. There’s also going to be a new game based on the technology, described with the company’s ever-erudite panache as “kind of a musketeer noir thing”.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this in the flesh, for a number of reasons…

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The best part of Flare Path’s day? Probably dawn. That’s the time he goes out and checks all his Simulation & Wargame News traps. This morning in the treadle cage by the old pig-sties he found 400 words on a rather promising FSX add-on. The snares in the plantation were empty, but saucer-eyed and struggling in the one in the Chalk Lane culvert was the prettiest little HistWar: Les Grognards snippet you ever saw. Even without the Over Flanders Fields communiqué almost bitten in half by the 7” gin under the Cottonworth bridge, it would have been a good bag. (more…)

Gnoblins is called Gnoblins and that’s pretty much all I needed to know to convince me that downloading the freely available alpha version might be a very good idea indeed. That it turns out to be a first person RPG, with roguelike features such as random levels, lots of items to equip and mysterious dangers to discover. The Gnoblins themselves are minions, to be added in a future release, that will apparently provide an RTS element to the game and there’s even mention of developing areas of the dungeon for your own use. Dungeon Keeper plus roguelike plus Ultima Underworld? Let’s hope so. It’s tremendously exciting, even if the early version is obviously missing lots of planned features and content. Try the alpha and if your name is Richard Cobbett, click more.

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After playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Adam sat down with associate producer Pete Murray and asked him about some of the changes that have been made, as well as seeking clarification on a number of issues. Discussion of the chryssalids’ new look attracts the wrath of an unseen assailant, queries about base invasions lead to talk of balance and punishment, and an unhealthy interest is shown in the various ways that a soldier can bleed to death.

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Blisteringly fast gamers are currently racing their way through top games in front of a live audience to raise money for autism research. It’s the Speed Demos Archive Summer Games Done Quick event, running from the 24th to the 28th, and you can watch it live. There are prizes to be won, games to be played, and large generous donations to be made.

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When we asked Richard to take a look at Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, he started sniffling and claiming to have gone down with the T-Virus. Can this action-packed retelling of the series’ early years be the cure to what ails him, or just one more headache?

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Crush the weak, spare the weekend! Sid Meier and Some Other Peoples’ Civilization V is open to all-comers for a bit, from now until some point on Sunday (1PM PDT, whatever that means in real time), making it the perfect time to give its hexy new style a shot. If you like it, you can buy the full game for 75% off, and have plenty of time to get used to it before the imminent Gods and Kings expansion hits. What megalomaniacal goodness does that contain?

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I’ve got a mighty fine idea. Why not point a camera at a bunch of creative sorts and let them speak their minds? That’s how Indie Game: The Movie was made, although I suspect editing the hundreds of hours of footage into something watchable, fascinating and entertaining was the hard part. Perhaps that’s why Swirsky and Pajot’s film won World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at Sundance 2012. Everyone will be able to watch it soon, or at least anyone near an internet connection, as it will be available as a downloadable purchase on June 12th. What’s most intriguing about this is that one of the download services carrying the film will be Steam. This leads to the obvious questions: will every film in the world soon be available on Steam and will Episode Three be a cinemovie?

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As I’ve progressed further into The Secret World‘s beta, and have cleared most of New England’s enormous territory and swathes of quests, I’m hitting that more difficult place to write about in an MMO preview. That’s partly because you obviously don’t want to know what’s going to happen 30 hours into your game, and I’d be an idiot to say. And it’s partly because being a beta I’m increasingly hitting buggy territory and slightly unfinished missions, and it’s pretty bad form to write about that since it’ll likely be gone by release. (And if it’s not, it’ll certainly get written about then.) I mean, it’s hard not to want to tell you about the time I died so hard all my clothes and my hair fell off, and I spent the next hour streaking around in a tiny pair of pants, baldy-headed with my boobs out for all to see. But that’s unlikely to be a feature in the finished game. So of course everything I’m writing about here is subject to change.

So instead, I’ve thought of the big three things I think The Secret World is really getting right, and then put together a list three things I worry it could get wrong.

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For whatever reason, the gaming industry’s become obsessed with live-action adaptations lately. I don’t claim to understand it, but in the grand scheme of these things – which ranges from the rather impressive Ghost Recon Alpha to the, well, very, very silly Dragon Age: Redemption series – Metro: Last Light‘s tiny, stream-powered screen debut is actually pretty great. Even better, it’s not a million years long like the above examples, so you can watch it without fear of glancing up only to see the smoking, much-grayer-than-you-remember-it ruins of your own civilization mournfully resting in front of you. Without spoiling too much, I’ll just say that it’s rather intense – even if the “It’s the end of the world everyone FREAK OUT” scene has definitely been done before. Heat up some popcorn until it’s nothing more than a charred, butter-flavored crater and check out the full trailer after the break.

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I recently got to see Ron Gilbert’s latest slice of adventure platformer mania, The Cave, in action. It was pretty great. I mean, characters walked and jumped and moved - as though propelled ever onward by the invisible hand of fate or the very visible hand of someone holding a controller. You should’ve been there. But since you weren’t, I desperately struggled to find a way to best relay that experience back to you. At first, my preview was a bunch of screenshot cut-outs glued to popsicle sticks, and then I fiddled with tiny felt finger puppets. Alas, however, it just wasn’t the same. But then Double Fine released this trailer. Madness, I thought. How could a mere video beat the fully 3D, impossibly high-def and immersive experience of a finger puppet? But you know what? It sort of works. Given time, these things might even catch on.

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Or at least, it is right now. Developer “ArenMook” has big plans for the isometric high-seas shooter, but for the moment, there’s a free, fully playable alpha demo that’s already nicely polished – especially given Windward‘s scant three months of development time so far. Basically, though, if you’ve played the 2004 Pirates revamp, you’ll be confidently row- row-rowing enemies’ boats gently down the river Styx in no time. But, if not, it’s a quick formula to pick up, requiring only a deft sense of timing and position from players. Aiming and cannon fire, meanwhile, are automatic.

It’s excellent fun in a 4v4 point capture setting, too. I almost immediately found myself engaged in a lighting quick back-and-forth that saw my opponent and I narrowly darting in and out of firing range. When it became apparent that my faithful Titanic Two was looking a bit more like Swiss cheese than their ill-gotten cruiser, I decided to charge straight into them. Unfortunately, my hull wasn’t nearly as thick as my incredibly suicidal resolve, so I harmlessly exploded mere inches away. I bet it would’ve been even more intense if my fearsome foe’s name wasn’t “Fartzilla.”

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