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KarjaSoft has announced the release of Wildhollow, an adventure game/pet raising game for the PC or Mac. The goal of the game is to find your parents. The player can play as a boy or girl character and they embark on an adventure to find their parents. Players return home to find that their parents are [...] Continue reading

['The Magic Resolution' is a bi-weekly GameSetWatch column by UK-based writer Lewis Denby, examining all facets of the experience of playing video games. With the release of Modern Warfare 2 and the surrounding airport scene controversy, Lewis is surprised to see a more alarming discussion of the game's potential ills - and those of the entire medium...]

It seems that I, and the entirety of the male gaming population, should be on-guard at the moment. According to Telegraph writer Hannah Betts, “an army of women” is about to argue with us.

In a fascinating piece of writing - which I'd like to think is tongue-in-cheek, but really struggle to believe that's true - Ms. Betts clings onto various gender stereotypes for dear life as she attempts to assign her frustration at the male species to the evils of video games. And with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 this week, she appears to have found her perfect opportunity to do so.

Writing for the Telegraph, Ms. Betts begins by describing the game’s launch as “something momentous [for] The World Of Men, something that those living in The World of Women – that is, largely, The Real World – may yet be unaware of.”

This is an astonishing article, one rooted in traditional male/female values and behaviours. They’re assigned behaviours that gender research has attempted for years to disprove and dissipate, her language the sort that critical linguistics has battled against for almost as long.

The notion of gaming being a male pastime is one that’s existed for many years. It’s become engrained in a sort of folk-sociological culture as a boys’ sport, a no-girls-allowed club, and it’s been subject to much discussion. Heather Chaplin’s rant at this year’s Game Developers Conference, in which she accused mainstream gaming of being deeply embedded in “guy culture”, is but one notable example.

But times are a-changing. Recent surveys suggest that the margin between male and female gamers is significantly narrowing, and that now, as many as 42 per cent of those playing video games are of the fairer sex. I suspect it’s safe to assume Ms. Betts is unfamiliar with these statistics or, worse, determined to ignore them at all cost for the greater good of her furious diatribe.

“Should you be a reader of the female persuasion,” speculates Betts, “your reaction [to the article] is likely to be mystification followed by the dawning realisation that this accounts for your partner’s having since gone AWOL.” Is that really “likely”? Really?

“The gaming widow has become a fixture of contemporary culture in the way that the pub or football widow was wont to be, except that the extent of her abandonment is considerably more profound,” she continues. “He may be with you in (increasingly pallid and flabby) body, but his soul is elsewhere.”

Now, it just so happens that, while I earn my keep by writing about video games, my education is in linguistics. And there’s a whole, enormous field of study into this sort of flabbergasting writing that maintains gender stereotypes by simply throwing the blame between the sexes, assuming that ‘men do this, but women do that’, until the greater population simply laps up these behaviours without second thought. It’s known as the Differences Model. It’s a tempting view to take, but once you scratch beneath the surface it’s an approach that’s demonstrably untrue.

Gender is a behavioural concept. It’s something you “do”, rather than something you “are”. You are your sex, and that's biological. But we choose our behaviours based on what is expected of our own social grouping, whether that’s as a straight man, a straight woman, a gay man, a gay woman, an atypical straight man, an atypical gay woman, and so on. These groupings are social constructs, but they’re so deep-rooted that they now seem impossible to escape from. Consider how many times you’ve heard someone say “be a man!” to a male of apparently cowardly demeanour, or call a young girl who enjoys playing in the mud a “tomboy”.

Now, Ms. Betts attempts to keep these stereotypes alive through the medium of video games. The most alarming realisation for me, upon reading her article, is that these stereotypes are just assumed, and never challenged. They form the whole basis for her argument: that video games, which are surely a male-only pastime, are leaving girlfriends and wives everywhere forlorn and alone, without their big strong man on-hand to get them through the day.

“For legions of British women,” Betts writes, “gaming is a ghost at the feast in their relationship,” before relaying the account of a poor woman whose husband is addicted to his Nintendo DS – a console that has in fact been largely associated with, among other groups outside the core gaming populace, females.

Of course, what Hannah Betts is actually writing about is the notion of gaming addiction, an area that’s being increasingly explored, most hideously in a recent documentary on British television channel ITV, which included such “expert” claims as “gaming addiction could well be more dangerous than regular, chemical addiction.” That’s a whole different area of discussion, but Betts appears not to have realised this.

Indeed, so certain is she of this exclusively male dependency that she went on to scour the ‘net, finding “the plaintive lament of a woman whose newborn has been entirely ignored in favour of Warcraft.”

But some women, bless their hearts, can learn to live with this, Betts says. She points to one email from an acquaintance, who said that his wife assigns a single morning on which she takes the children out so he can stay in to play games. “Within seconds [his email] had 12 replies: 10 stating that she was having an affair, two with links to detective agencies,” adds Betts, unfathomably. Is she serious?

In one meagre attempt to balance her piece, Ms. Betts refers to a single “idyllic scenario”, in which the fiancée of the Telegraph’s Games Correspondent discusses her own way of dealing with her partner’s gaming obsession. “I’m quite crafty so I can be off sewing while he’s on his Xbox,” she says. Thank goodness: while we men are all busy playing games, our women still have time to get the sewing done. Hopefully they’ll factor in the time it takes to wash the dishes and make sure dinner’s on the table at six o’clock, as well.

In no way am I suggesting that there’s isn’t a problem with gender inequality within gaming, its industry and its consumer base. I’ve written about some of the issues at length, in fact. But trying to assign gaming dependency to some sort of biologically male urge is preposterous, and has resulted in the sort of sexist discourse that will only maintain the problems both men and women face in our wider society.

[Lewis Denby is editor of Resolution Magazine and general freelance busybody for anyone that'll have him. Wander over to his website for a blog, more information and contact details.]

['Battle Klaxon' is a bi-weekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column where traveling games journalist Quintin Smith fights to win a bit of glory for the beautiful, brave but overlooked games that people are missing in their lives. This week, we examine two different versions of panicked, squeaky-clean PSP title Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!]

There's been an odd glut of tongue-in-cheek Japanese games based on 16bit RPGs recently, games like Half Minute Hero and 3D Dot Heroes. I've already picked my favourite. I like it because it's about PANIC.

I love panic in games. That icy pang of realisation, the blitz of thoughts that follows, the test of keeping your cool. In panic you can find such easy access to that magical realm where the only things in existence are you and the game. And it's such a useful design tool!

Resident Evil 4 was full of boring bits like rooms where nothing happens or having to retrace your steps to stick a stone donkey tail on a carving of a donkey, but nobody noticed because those moments were respite from panic. Inaction became soothing, and a masterful action game became a game of the year.

My favourite of the comedy 16bit reimaginings, then: Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is a PSP series which gives you the task of digging out a dungeon with the aim of killing the heroes that habitually raid it. The original game isn't great, but the sequel is, and that's getting released in America in Spring 2010 with the majestic title of Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! Time to Tighten Up Security.

The first game (out now in America as Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?) is so impoverished in terms of content it resembles a prototype, which probably explains why it didn't get a boxed English language release and can currently be found in the shiny blue limbo of the Playstation Store.

And yeah, Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! does panic very, very well. Here's how it works:

You play the overlord of a 16bit RPG dungeon, which you view from a side-on perspective like you would an ant farm. The game is in digging out earth to create the tunnels and chambers of your dungeon while keeping it populated with monsters.

Every so often a bunch of nosy jerks known as 'Heroes' will come crashing through your front door, and the game asks where in your existing excavations you want to hide. The game is lost if the heroes find your squealing avatar and manage to drag him, trussed up like a common criminal, back to the surface.

Midnight Soil

What's alarming about this? Well, the way you enlist monsters, for one. Certain tiles of dirt contain nutrients, or, after a hero has cast a spell near them, magic. The more nutrients or magic in a square, the higher level the monster that comes staggering out when you dig out that tile. Fine. Except all but the lowest level slimes and sprites need to eat lower level monsters to survive and reproduce. You're not just filling your dungeon with employees, you're managing a fragile ecosystem, and nature runs its course so fast you're always returning to view parts of your dungeon to find they've changed.

Your lizardmen might have eaten all the dogs in their area and are starving as a result, or your faeries have reproduced like bunnies and set up shop where you were planning to lure a dragon. The exception to this rule is when you want the inevitable to happen for the purposes of something like evolution, whereupon you'll watch predator and pray avoid one another like opposing genders at a school prom. And that's not even the bad news.

Because your only real means of interacting with the world is permanently digging out these tiles, Badman's quirk is that, like a Go board, you only have a limited number of moves to choose from. While most defence games have you building, Badman gets you subtracting.

The irony is that the ultimate protection, 1000 feet of packed dirt, is there from the start, but you need to hide. So you dig down, dig deeper, always chipping away at your options and always panicking because of the acute awareness that you're backing yourself into a corner and sooner or later those heroes are gonna come for you.

Graveyard Humour

Did I mention you need to dig fast? The time frame on each party of heroes arriving is agonisingly tight, so you're often slicing out serpentine tunnels by holding down the dig button and sliding your pickaxe over the screen, praying you don't screw up that delicate ecosystem. You do, of course, and worse besides.

Whether you're extending your dungeon or cutting out delicious nutrient-rich tiles for the monsters within, you'll end up turning blind corners into smooth curves, putting safe spots in killzones and (most embarrassingly of all) knocking down walls and creating shortcuts that let heroes bypass whole areas of your dungeon.

And so you panic. You panic because there's no save, and your dungeon is in ruins, and you don't want to start the level again, and-- oh, mercy! Oh, mother! Here they come!

I'm a big fan of games which invisibly force you into role-playing your character through mechanics alone, so it makes me pretty happy when you end up every bit the bumbling villain in Badman. As a player you'll brood, you'll giggle, you'll hatch plots (the game's too fast-paced for any grand strategy, so hatch you must) and you'll panic when your schemes don't work out, most likely because you ruined them yourself. I love it.

Click here for a trailer and a little more info on Time To Tighten Up Security. And remember, don't bother with the first game! It's not being All It Can Be. Save yourself for this.

[Quinns is a freelance journalist who has fun working for Eurogamer, contributing to Rock Paper Shotgun and reading Every Game Ever. You can currently find him in the damp Irish city of Galway or at quintinsmithster at gmail dot com.]

A while back we previewed a great indie co-op RPG, Wanderlust: Rebirth, shown here in a great tongue-in-cheek trailer (hooray for TIGSource citing!)

Recently, development for this project has picked back up, and an official demo has been released. The demo is a big update from the version we previewed, and now includes several new features.

• 3 Chapters
• 4 Bosses
• Items to craft & collect
• Dedicated Hosting options
• New “Crawl” Game Mode: Where you can fight unlimited waves of enemies who increase in difficulty each level. After each level you get treasure and/or tokens for you and your team.

The team continues to work hard on the project, and I look forward to seeing the game reach completion.

Download / Game’s Site

Writer and director Stacy Davidson showed off this clip for the Star Wars Uncut project last week, but it turns out he's developing an actual SCUMM adventure game featuring Han Solo, though it won't have voice acting or the same tongue-in-cheek tone in the video above.

Titled Han Solo Adventures, this LucasArts-inspired project will feature "a relatively mature style along the lines of Fate of Atlantis and Full Throttle. It will focus on the smuggler's hijinks prior to A New Hope, so don't expect any trips to the Death Star or Endor. Davidson plans to split up Han's adventures into chapters, though, so you should still be able to explore a variety of Star Wars locales in the planned releases.

"This game was born out of my frustration that LucasArts seemed to throw everything but the kitchen sink into their adventure game lineup, with the exception of their flagship property: Star Wars," he explains.

"As awesome as Fate of Atlantis was, it always rubbed salt into the wound for me. I felt like, 'OK, Indy’s awesome... now where’s Han?!?' For me, that’s what it’s all about, so if I am going to properly bring one of my life dreams into reality."

You can see a couple screenshots from the unofficial freeware PC game below, and follow Davidson's progress on his Han Solo Adventures site.

[Via GamOvr]

Likely yelling out the studio's name from a rocky cavern, actor and novelist William Shatner is confronting Shatter developer Sidhe for allegedly using his name and likeness in a game without his permission.

The Priceline Negotiator's attorneys sent a cease and desist notice to Sidhe yesterday:

"We represent William Shatner and it has come to our attention that you are planning to develop or have already developed and will soon place on the market for commercial sale a digital game utilizing our client's name and likeness as well as infringing on both Paramount's rights to the character 'Captain Kirk' and Bob Dylan's rights to the song 'Mr. Tambourine Man'. ...

Please be advised that you are to immediately cease and desist the further development, production, and or distribution of the game SHATNER or any other product that uses William Shatner’s name or likeness without first obtaining his approval."

Surely these lawyers misheard someone mentioning Sidhe's Arkanoid-esque PSN game Shatter, and confused the title with their client's name? As it turns out, they didn't completely fabricate this Shatner video game; someone else did.

Two weeks ago, New Zealand site Game Console posted a tongue-in-cheek news article claiming the Wellington-based developer was working on a skin for Shatter that would replace the game's blocks with disembodied heads resembling the actor's Capt. Kirk character from Star Trek. The site also reported that the mod would remix Shatner's cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man" for the soundtrack.

And if the situation wasn't ridiculous enough, Shatner's attorneys mentioned in their message that they also notified Paramount Studios (which owns the Star Trek license) and Bob Dylan of the alleged game.

Not wishing to go to court over such a frivolous misunderstanding, Sidhe's managing director Mario Wynands sent the following response and posted the text online:

"Thank you for your email.

The GameConsole 'report' you reference is what is commonly referred to on the internet as a 'joke'. The article is a parody of our game, and has no basis in reality in that it does not in any way reflect our intentions for further development of the Shatter IP or relate to any official statement we have made relating to the game.

We have the upmost respect for Mr William Shatner and the licensing process, and if we had any intent of using rights related to either Mr Shatner, Star Trek, or Tambourine Man (which we do not) we would do so using the appropriate channels.

Please respond acknowledging your receipt and understanding of this message, and confirming you have notified both Paramount and Bob Dylan's representatives of your misunderstanding."

Hilarious. How long before actor Richard Roundtree sics his lawyers on the developer for its upcoming but unannounced GripShaft mod?

[Thanks, Matt Matthews]

Rake In The Grass has been making very meaty, very polished fusions of arcade spectacle and thinking optimization. The best example was the immortal Jets'n'Guns, which has gotten plenty of replay even though its myriad combinations suffer from some balancing issues. Larva Mortus gives you a similar dish: repetitive action fused with RPG elements, mixed with a horror aesthetic that comes off somewhere between H.P. Lovecraft and the Vincent Price monologue from Thriller. As your revolver bullets tear into zombie flesh, faces of demons flash over screen, psychologically interesting the first time, then eventually an obfuscation challenge. It feels badass like Jets but without the tongue-in-cheek satire; the procedurally generated levels put you in a Sisyphean loop while you earnestly send demons back to hell.

Mechanically the RPG elements suffer from balancing issues but unlike the issues in Jets, the number of components aren´t as numerous so the gaps are more noticeable. You have seven skills that can be upgraded each time you gain a level: health, health regain rate, time affected by status ailments, probability of item drops, damage dealt by the melee weapon, walk speed, and the XP bonus. Now, I´m a finance geek; when I play Tower Defense games and I see bonuses for like a Tesla Tower, a Flamethrower Tower, and then a 10% interest bonus, I´m like "hey, let me at that 10%". The first time through I went for the deferred trade-off of more skill dependence early on for greater power later. The problem is that XP pay-offs don´t scale much between enemies, while the amount of XP you need per level gain grows in a logarithmic fashion (technically it moves in a graded steps, but the regression is logarithmic). So if you invest a lot of skill points into more XP, you can´t really get ahead and end up wasting most of your bonuses. Luck and regeneration are similarly disposable; since the odds can be churned and you can wait to heal for as long as your patience allows, they´re mostly conveniences. The melee weapon is the only one whose damage scales, but it also carries the most risk, so you need to invest the majority of your points into it to get a real balance there. There is therefore a dominant strategy in putting all your points in walk speed and health with a few in status resistance.

Still, the basic gameplay is pretty satisfying, the pathy map generators keep tickling some basic maze-crawler left over from paleolithic evolution, and the leveling and items are compelling enough to keep you trucking. If you´re in the mood for these kind of grind-fests then you regret the trek into the underworld.