Hard Reset Release Date/Specs Announced

Castrum - Hard Reset, the indie FPS-RPG that looks like a AAA game, will be out on Steam on September 13th for $30.

Here's the Specs your PC will need to run it:

MINIMUM:
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon 64
RAM: 2 GB
Graphics card: 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GS / ATI Radeon HD 3870 or better
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
Hard Drive: 4 GB free hard drive space

RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: Intel Quad Core 2.3 GHz / AMD Phenom II x4 2.5 GHz
RAM: 3 GB
Graphics card: 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT / ATI Radeon HD 4870 or better
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
Hard Drive: 4 GB free hard drive space

Source: Kotaku

VVVVVV Developer Makes A Short Flash Game

Castrum - A very short Flash game made by the guy who made the uber-hardcore VVVVVV.

It will take you about 2 minutes at best, and it's more like a .gif than a game, but it's good for a coffee-break diversion.

Source: JayIsGames

Amnesia: The Dark Descent Sells 400K

Castrum - Good to see indie developers getting rewarded for making quality games these days:

We're still not sure what drives players to submit themselves to the psychological assault of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Whatever it is, it seems to affect quite a few gamers, as Frictional Games' Thomas Grip revealed at GDC Europe that the survival horror title has sold 400,000 copies.

It's a significantly higher number than last January, when Frictional reported sales were nearing 200,000, which already handily surpassed the company's "dream estimates" of 100,000 copies. In short, that's a lot of dudes screaming like little babies.

I'm not much of a Horror gamer (active imagination and all that), but I've been pestering MjolnirX to play this game for a while now.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/15/amnesia-the-dark-descent-scares-up-400-000-in-sales/

Hard Reset Gameplay

Castrum - This is what happens when you don't show your game in its Alpha stage:

Sheer awesomeness. 

Indie Adventure Game "To The Moon"

Castrum - Looks like it might be good:

Xbox Indies Readies Its Annual Uprising

Castrum - So it's that time of year again, and the Indies community is banding together to pull off their own "Summer of Arcade"-style promotion. Here's the list of games that are coming down the pipe:

Monday, Aug. 22: Raventhorne 

Tuesday, Aug. 23: Battle High: San Bruno 

Wednesday, Aug. 24: Cute Things Dying Violently 

Thursday, Aug. 25: T.E.C. 3001 

Friday, Aug. 26: Doom and Destiny 

Monday, Aug. 29: Take Arms 

Tuesday, Aug. 30: SpeedRunner HD 

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Train Frontier Express 

Thursday, Sept. 1: Fan Vote No. 1 

Friday, Sept. 2: Fan Vote No. 2

The Fan Vote entries will be determined by a Facebook poll (you only get 1 vote):

https://www.facebook.com/XBLIG.IGSU?sk=app_190322544333196

To put this in perspective, here's last year's Uprising:

Cthulhu Saves the World 

Radiangames Crossfire 2 

Aphelion: Episode 2: Wings of Omega 

Soulcaster 2 

Chu’s Dynasty 

Alpha Squad 

Epic Dungeon 

Break Limit 

Decimation X3 

Asteroids Do Concern Me 

Ubergridder 

Rickenbacker vs. the Aliens 

ZP2KX: Zombies & Pterodactyls 

Hypership Out of Control

At least 6 of those were worth paying money for, so I imagine the same rule will apply this year.


Here's some videos of the entries:

http://kotaku.com/5830579/indie-games-summer-uprising-schedules-its-releases

FortressCraft, Minecraft Clone On Xbox Indies, Makes $1 Million

Castrum - This is why Xbox Indies are a joke:

Last year, Minecraft made about a zillion kroner in the time it takes to nuke a Hot Pocket. This year, FortressCraft, the Minecraft knockoff homage on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel, has now bagged a cool million inside of the first six months it was available on the service.

Developers like Robir and Ishisoft bust their asses to make original, interesting games, and then lazy opportunistic douchebags like Fortresscraft's make ten times as much money as they have in a couple of months. I also like how the game's devs vehemently state FC is nothing like MC, as if changing some enemy spawns and updating graphics somehow counts as any real difference.

http://kotaku.com/5829804/fortresscraft-breaks-the-1-million-barrier-on-xbox-live-indie-games

Kokopolo, An Interesting DSiWare Game

Castrum - This looks like it could be fun:

http://kotaku.com/5829387/a-shoot+em+up-no-this-is-a-chase+em+up

Owl Boy

Castrum - Take a skilled indie PC developer and combine it with all the awesomeness of good GBA games, and this occurs:

Minecraft Not For Sale To EA

Castrum - As mediocre as I believe Minecraft is (though I loved Terraria, which is only vaguely like Minecraft), it's great to see an indie developer not just make it big and then hand the keys off to one of the three or four publishers who own virtually every AAA game released these days:

Well, EA came to see us. I think they had plans, but the picked up the vibe. Nothing has been said since – it's all very high politics.

According to Develop, Riccitiello made a special trip to Stockholm just to visit the house of Minecraft. I contacted EA for confirmation, and was told that while EA doesn't comment on their mergers and acquisitions activity, "John's trips to Sweden are more likely related to marveling at the progress DICE has made on Battlefield 3."

Notch also confirmed the DICE visit with me. "He was visiting DICE primarily, but spent a long lunch with us," he said. "Nobody ever mentioned anything about any M&A during that lunch, but there has been definite hints earlier from other people at EA."

http://kotaku.com/5828127/minecraft-developer-gives-off-a-not+for+sale+to+ea-vibe

Ah, Serious Sam, I Heart You

Castrum - Serious Sam + Contra + Weapon Of Choice = win.

Bethesda Threatens Mojang Over Use Of Word "Scrolls"

MjolnirX - According to Notch, the creator of Minecraft, Bethesda is considering suing Mojang over the use of the word "Scrolls" in their expansion. The reasoning is that it's too similar to their use of the word in "The Elder Scrolls".

This isn't really unexpected. When Mojang's lawyers told them to register the name "Minecraft", they also told them to register "Scrolls" as well to avoid any trouble that might cause in the future. After applying for it, they were contacted by Bethesda's lawyers as to their intention of their use of the word "Scrolls" in their product. Notch told Bethesda's lawyers that their intention was to use it as a precursor to the name of expanions i.e Scrolls - The Banana Edition. To Notch's knowledge, he doesn't know if Bethesda had agreed to Mojang's terms.

Today, Mojang recieved a 15-page cease-and-desist letter from Bethesda's lawyers saying that if he does not stop using the word "Scrolls" in his work, they are threatening to sue Mojang should the need arise. Notch doesn't seem too concerned, noting that "I love Bethesda. I assume this nonsense is partly just their lawyers being lawyers, and a result of trademark law being the way it is."

Myself, I'm hoping that this is just something of a misunderstanding. "Scrolls" is such a general term. The patent system is a joke in its current state. The two games aren't similar in any ways, and don't share any of the same appeal to people. It's not like using the word "Scrolls" will somehow hurt Bethesda's business. I know product awareness and saturation is one thing, but this is just a ridiculous situation. Also, I don't think Bethesda wants to be known as the people who sued everyone's beloved Minecraft.