"Seven excellent indie games to bring your day from good to amazing. Humble Indie Bundle 8 features seven incredible indie games that will keep you enthralled for hours on end. Pay what you want and get the immersive first-person narrative adventure Dear Esther; the extraterrestrial action platformer Capsized; the colorful and cartoonish multiplayer action platformer Awesomenauts; the endearing minimalist puzzle-platformer Thomas Was Alone; and the witty and charming sandbox puzzler Little Inferno. If you pay over the average, you’ll also receive the gory fast-paced top-down action game Hotline Miami and the audio-visual exploration and discovery game Proteus."

Heard good things about the majority of games in this bundle. Hotline Miami in particular looks good and I have wanted to try Awesomenauts for quite some time.

You going to pick this one up? Charity, Steam Keys, whats not to love?

Scrolls is the next game from the mega-ultra-huge Indie game company Mojang, the company that made Minecraft. The game will be available June 3rd and will be for sale on the Scrolls website for $20. The game will ship on Mac and PC.

Scrolls is one of two upcoming Collectable Card Games I am very interested in and will be picking this up on day one. According to people in the beta, the game doesn't have in game micro transactions but you do earn in game currency to buy cards and from the video you can trade them with others.

Because this is a game that has been on my radar for sometime, I am also trying something new with the Cheerful Ghost Event System. I added the Scrolls launch date to the event system. I figure this will be a good way for us to keep track of all the cool new games that will be coming out and serve as another avenue for us to be connected to stuff that interests us. So if you are interested in Scrolls and want to put the release date in your calendar like I do(I put all interesting release dates in my calendar) then head over and join the launch event!

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/14

If there is a game launch date you want in the event system, feel free to add it. I am also thinking of adding events for upcoming Playstation, Nintendo, Sony and Valve live conference streams as well as anything else that may be of interest to us all.

http://scrolls.com/game

Instead of make a post per game update, I decided to condense them into one super post. This post covers updates for Terraria 1.2, Stardew Valley, Secrets of Grindea and Starbound. So lets hit it, shall we?

terraria 1.2

YouTube sensation ChippyGaming released the above Terraria 1.2 video featuring some new armor and dyes. He has access to the Terraria 1.2 beta and was planning on doing a series of spoiler videos, but due to some unfortunate communication with ReLogic, was only able to post the one video.

stardew valley dungeon crawling update

ConcernedApe posted a new update on Stardew Valley showing off some of the cave exploration parts of the game.

"As you explore the mines, you might encounter a dungeon entrance. If you can make it through in one piece, you might just leave with a pocketful of golden souvenirs. These dungeons are procedurally generated to keep things fresh. They are also totally optional for those who prefer to avoid combat!"

The post also goes into some of what you can expect in the mines and the new mine elevator for quick traveling the levels.

http://stardewvalley.net/mini-dev-update-5/

secrets of grindea

"This week, we have finished up one of the last enemy designs for the Winterland. As of now we call them Frostlings! They are agile little creatures with a taste for mischief. Avoiding to get hit and blocking are preferred when fighting these little trouble makers since they have a habit of stealing gold from Collectors venturing through the Winterland! If they nab some of your cash, you’ll have to whack them with something hard before they escape with your life savings."

The Grindea devs are also showcasing some new features for puzzles that take elements from Braid in its rewind system.

http://www.secretsofgrindea.com/index.php/blog/2642

starbound showcases speech bubbles and dry humor

Starbound is implementing the chat system a bit differently than most multiplayer games in that speech will appear in a bubble above your players head. This is pretty neat, but I a wonder how you will handle chat with everyone on the server when you are not in close proximity to them? That said, if you are interested in how the speech bubbles will look and were interested in some very dry Starbound jokes, head over to the post and watch the video.

http://playstarbound.com/23rd-may-progress/

Mercenary Kings is a neat looking Metal Slug styled shooter that was funded on Kickstart last year I totally missed. The game is being made by Tribute, the awesome team that brought us Wizorb and is currently in the closed Steam beta for Kickstarter backers.

The video above shows off the shooting, missions and crafting that makes Mercenary Kings unique. The game also boasts 4 player local co-op something I plan on trying out with my friends.

If you played Metal Slug in the arcade, like me, you might love this franchise. The last new Metal Slug was in 2009 and it seems that now its just re-released on systems in various forms. I picked it up the Metal Slug anthology on the Wii and whereas the games are awesome, the translation and controls were not. Getting a __GREAT__ version of this awesome style of game on PC is very interesting to me.

According to Tribute, the game will initially come to PC followed by a Mac and Ouya port. They did say that a Linux port is possible and would be released on Steam if it was made.

When a formal release date is announced, I will let you know.

I am very happy to be able to bring you the totally new and completely awesome new Cheerful Ghost Events! Cheerful Ghost Events is a system designed to make it easy to schedule games with your friends by:

• Magically translating all events to your local time. Even if your friends live in Hong Kong and you live in Portland the event will show up translated for your local time.


• Some online games allow 30 people to join, some are 1 on 1. We let you specify how many people can join your events and also show you how many spots are open for events you want to join.


• After you create or join an event you can easily add it to your Smartphone or Google Calendar for a reminder.


• After you join or create an event, you can talk with everyone else about it up to the time it happens and afterward!

But don't take my word for it, check it out and join an event!

http://cheerfulghost.com/events

Funny, but a very defective mine. Well defective looney tune style.

After Microsoft's XBox One reveal, it seems Sony is pushing the Playstation 4 efforts in a very different direction. Sony released a interview with indie developer Jonathan Blow(of the Braid fame) about his new game that will debut on the Playstation 4 called The Witness. Instead of focusing on TV, movies and sports, Sony seems to be focusing on games and indie developers.

Still unsure if I will pickup a Playstation 4, but so far Sony is pushing this a bit closer to my style.

In the video Jonathan talks about being an indie developer and that he can pick what games he wants to create. He talks a bit about The Witness and there is some video showing it off. Whenever I see the game I can help but think of Myst.

iD Software is really forward thinking tech company in that it releases the source code for its older game engines and level tools. Don't take my word for it, check out the code they have released on github.

https://github.com/id-Software

This kind of thing should be applauded because when game companies release the source to their games it means that the odds you will be able to play the games you love in the future is pretty good. Plus its awesome to play a game you love on any platform you want. Its also a great way to learn how a top notch game engine operates.

Intro Fabien Sandlard a guy with an awesome hobby, he looks at released game source and blogs about it. Fabien has reviewed Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 3, The Original Doom 3, Doom & the Wolfenstein iPhone port code and more.

Recently he looked at the source for Doom 3: BFG Edition. Doom 3: BFG Edition is interesting because iD back-ported code from Rage into Doom 3: BFG Edition. They also had to get Doom and Doom 2 running inside the Doom 3 code itself, which is an interesting technical feat. The article is pretty interesting and seems accessible to non-programmers(full disclosure, I am in fact a programmer).

A cool bit I found Fabien's article:

"Overall the reader gets an immediate understanding of each part of an algorithm and I hope it will inspire people to write better code: Modern software development is not about being an ace programmers anymore. It is about being a team player that empowers co-workers with: Elegant design. Easy to read and commented code implementing it. Doom 3 BFG ranks high on both those metrics. "

Fabien is spot on here. Wizardy in code is all well and good, but writing good code anyone can understand and maintain is much better when you work on a team.

http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3_bfg/index.php

A.N.N.E. the awesome new 2D metroidvania Kickstarter was recently funded and the games creator shared his excitement in the video above. Awesome to see the game to drop early next year and for more information check out my interview with the games creator, below.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1272

Blizzard will be releasing a new Diablo III graphic novel "Sword of Justice" next month. Written by Aaron Williams and art by Joseph Lacroix this will be a pretty nice addition to your Diablo collection of awesomery.

http://us.battle.net//d3/en/blog/9762740

New Humble Weekly Bundle dropped today featuring Alan Wake. More reasons to pay what you want for games you might want to try.

http://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

demilogic posted a new video update on Terraria 1.2 showing off smooth walking, new house roofs, armor, rock launchers, waterfalls, in game music, painting and more. The video also shows up the new in game mini-map.

"Preview for the slopehalfblockwaterfallpaintrocketlauche­romgwhatisthatthingeater'sbone 1.2 update. Also there is a minimap. The update is far from done, we are aiming for a July release. Thank you for your patience and continued support."

I will be running a Cheerful Ghost Terraria server when the 1.2 update drops in July so stay tuned!