Mojang Winding Up Scrolls

When Minecraft made a squillion dollars, rather than plough into a sequel, developers Mojang Specifications realised they could fund making whatever games they jolly well pleased. Scrolls [official site] was their first whim, a battling collectible card game. And, since Microsoft bought Mojang, it might be one of their last too.

The most recent Scrolls content update ‘Echoes’ will be its very last, Mojang have announced, and it sounds like the servers will shut down eventually, though not for a while: they’ll keep going until July 1st, 2016, at the very least. The game only officially launched out of beta in December 2014.

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Premature Evaluation: Train Valley

Each week Marsh Davies boards the Steam locomotive as it chugs its way through Early Access and comes back with any stories he can find and/or is cannibalised by rabid commuters while delayed in a siding. This week he’s played Train Valley, a chirpy but challenging rail construction sim.

My attempts to run a railway system make a good case for nationalisation: the absurd delays as I reverse trains back and forth over a switch in the track, somehow making the same signalling error each time; the piles of cargo that end up in the wrong town, or so late that its value has completely expired; the destruction to wildlife, farmland and neolithic monuments; the forced relocation of indigenous people. Oh, and the massive loss of life, too, I suppose. At the end of it all, I go bankrupt – and yet they keep giving me another chance.

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Batman: Arkham Knight Mod Unlocks Other Characters

Okay, so the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight [official site] was so shoddy that Warner Bros have temporarily removed it from sale. That doesn’t mean those of you playing despite the temperamental frame rate and occasional freeze can’t enjoy a little something not available on console, namely, a mod which allows you to play as ten characters other than Batman, from Harley Quinn to Jim Gordon. Even if Harley Quinn: Arkham Knight doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

… [visit site to read more]

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The Coral Cave: A Watercolour Adventure Game

Today on Games I Wish I’d Noticed Sooner Because I Feel I’ve Robbed My Eyes Of Several Months Of Pleasure, we’re looking at The Coral Cave [official site]. The pointy-clicky adventure game, you see, is made of hand-animated watercolour paintings.

Atelier Sento’s French-Japanese-Canadian team are are telling a tale of a young girl who lives on a remote Okinawan island and travels into the spirit world to save her village from a strange threat. That screenshot up top there ↑ is nice, isn’t it? Mate, come see the trailer.

… [visit site to read more]

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We Happy Few’s Fledgling Dystopian Survival Experience

We Happy Few [official site] is, I think, the only survival game with permadeath whose conceit has intrigued me enough that I’ve wanted to stick with it in spite of the insistence that humans lose water at the rate of your average sieve and that anyone can build advanced machinery with enough scavenged scrap metal. That said, I’ve just died for the sixth time and I’m feeling ever-more like the desperate and downcast character I’m playing.

We Happy Few is Compulsion Games’ current project. Its world is the city of Wellington Wells, where a perky, authoritarian bubble called Hamlyn is separated from World War II ruins known as the Garden District by a series of bridges and security checkpoints. The checkpoints are designed to keep Downers – people who aren’t taking their happy pills (“Joy” in the game parlance) – on the ruined side of the river. The idea is to find a way from the ruins where you spawn to the other side of the river and then figure out a way to escape.

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Rebellion Are Remastering That Other Battlezone, Too

Rebellion are not content with simply rebooting the old green-and-black Battlezone [official site] from 1980. They’ve put out an open letter to fans of the series today letting them know that they will also be working on a “remaster” of Battlezone 1998. I guess now no one can moan at them for remaking the “wrong” one.

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Returning To World Of Warcraft With Patch 6.2

I’ve been playing WoW on and off for most of my adult life and quite a bit more besides. It is my comfort game, a warm blanket of mob-killing, number-crunching and loot-grabbing that has always been there when I’ve needed it. Latest expansion Warlords of Draenor [official site] was, on release, the best the game has ever been in terms of quality, though rather quickly ran out of interesting things to do once max level was reached. I burnt out early this year but 6.2 and its laundry list of changes and additions piqued my interest and pulled me back in. Here’s how it played out.

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