The great crew at Introversion has dropped the latest in the Alpha series for Prison Architect. They have been hard at work on a Tablet port of the game coming to newer iPads and high powered Android tablets. They've also added some really useful features like the ability to untangle your wires and feed prisoners confined to solitary. This release also contains the ability to get a one time payment for new prisoners to help you fund the construction of your prison. Currently, the early game of Prison Architect allows you to get money through grants and your monthly prisoner income. If you've played the game you know this is a pretty tight fiscal scenario as you often spend through your money quickly. The old alpha used to let you easily create spaces where your prisoners could work and make you way more money to fund the prison. That was changed as you had to jump through some really interesting new hoops to do that. Now they have brought things back a bit with the new one time prisoner grant award.

Introversion has hinted they may add more grants but this is a good addition until that happens.

The release date of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number will be March 10th. I've been waiting for this since I heard the news drop that we were getting a level editor out of PAX East last year. The above review video is of the first three levels of the game and they look like everything I loved about the original with some new goodness tossed in. I still head back to Hotline Miami and have a blast so the included difficultly modes seem like a welcome addition.

Mark your gaming calendars as Dennation Games will release Hotline Miami 2 on PC, Mac and Linux at launch on March 10th.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/274170/

As I travel the expanse of the information superhighway I read many words and see lots of things. Some of it incredible, some meh and occasionally things too dastardly to express with casual words. I took part in a Double Fine Bundle that included funding Broken Age to get access to documentaries of it's creation and development. As part of that I get emails about the games progress from Double Fine and the most recent video(shared above) I thought was worth sharing.

Tim Schafer industry legend and proprietor of great hair mentions that Broken Age part two is in beta and nearing release. This is great news as I wanted to wait till the entire game was released before I dove in. To the end of the video he talks about something that recently happened with Peter Molyneux and Godus, a Kickstarted game. Essentially Godus is in some form of development limbo and hasn't lived up to some fans expectations. I don't want to re-litigate the drama here, but suffice it to say people didn't respond well to the situation.

In the video Tim states "The last thing i'd like to do is send our support to our friend and fellow developer Peter Molyneux. In the last few weeks we've seen some extremely rough treatment of Peter on the Internet and in the games press and I think that it's unfortunate and unfair and I don't think that it's healthy. Obviously things did not go as expected with his game and because of that people are making some nasty accusations of Peter and I can really relate to that believe it or not. I'm not saying that developers like Peter and I shouldn't be responsible and shouldn't be accountable to deadlines I'm just saying the reaction to recent events and the tone is really way out of proportion to the seriousness of the events themselves. Out of the many goals of this documentary that we are making(Broken Age) is to show actual game development and to show that the developers are human beings. I think it's clear that the problems that Peter is having are not unique to him and in fact they happen to most projects. If we stay transparent and keep involving players in our development that more and more people will start to see the process and how games are made and the effort involved and how game development goes the way it does. Knowing what goes into the games they play I think actually players will enjoy playing them even more."

I think Tim makes a very rational point which seems to fly in the face of our reactive and hostile online culture and this isn't something new to me as we talked about this in the second episode of the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable titled "The Internet Hate Factory."

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1527/cg-roundtable-ep-2-the-internet-hate-factory

I watched the message from Tim the same day I read an article by Anthony Burch, the writer of Borderlands 2. Anthonys article is titled "Five Things I Didn’t Get About Making Video Games (Until I Did It)." It's a interesting article outlining his start as a writer of often negative articles about games. He seems to regret his often hyperbolic tone as his experience with making Borderlands 2 showed him how hard the process is. Increased knowledge of things often allow people an increased understanding and I appreciate Burchs article as it shows how someone can build some empathy by being an integral part of the creative process.

http://kotaku.com/five-things-i-didn-t-get-about-making-video-games-unti-1687510871

I am not saying I haven't been disappointed by games i've Kickstarted or purchased. It's just that at the end of the day there is a human being on the other end that often just wants to make the best thing they can. When considering a fixed budget and time many games slip in quality and promised features. Whereas this does bother me, I try not to let it eat at my soul such that I need to reflect that pain at someone else. As someone that has stepped in the game publishing and soon development process I can say it's a challenging prospect and we try our best.

That said, if developers create things you don't like, don't buy them. If a studio produces things you don't find fun, stop pre-ordering them. It seems that the video game industry is going the route of digital downloads, which is very convenient but doesn't allow us to return the game if it is terrible. This isn't optimal and as i've considered the subject of video game refunds I can't think of a system that would work to please everyone. Some people want to return a game they've sunk 300 hours in, which I don't understand at all. I can understand an immediate return if the game crashes or is immediately terrible but when some games are 8 hours should you be allowed to return a game after you completed it in a day? That said, I try to stick to purchasing games from developers I trust and when something new comes down the pike, I often wait till I hear from my friends about it. That means that you don't always have the latest and greatest game, but it also means you can buy really great stuff.

I don't think this issue will be solved overnight but I've adopted some strategies to keep myself happy with the games I buy(no early access, no pre-orders from unknown developers, etc). As gaming continues on it will offer us even more ways to buy games and it will be up to us to make the right purchases. And when things go south we should turn on the Internet Hate Factory, that's really not the kind of world we should want to live in.

As a big fan of Earthbound I have been really excited for Mother 4. Since Nintendo doesn't seem interested in making a new Mother game, fans took it on themselves to work on something new. The Mother 4 team has been busily working on the game and last year mentioned a 2015 release date. Today they dropped a new trailer and a tentative release date of June with the new trailer game footage. I like how similar the feel is to Earthbound while proving a more modern take on the classic pixel art.

Oh and Mother 4 will release for free on PC, Mac and Linux.

"Mother 4 follows the journey of three kids and the leader of a biker gang. With dark rumors of "Modern Men" running wild, these unassuming heroes set out to uncover the truth, no matter how dangerous. From bustling urban streets to secret volcano bases, all kinds of oddball thugs and impossible monsters stand in their way... but everything should be okay if they don't forget to write home!"

http://mother4game.com/

Jack and Rich are back with a new episode of Previously Recorded that discusses quick time events, cut scenes and game immersion. They note that when you drop instructions on screen to press buttons you remind the player they are playing the game instead of being the character on the screen. This is a good point and I think that it often gets worse when you are playing a PC game that asks you to press a button on a controller that you are not using.

What do you think, is Super Mario Brothers more immersive than Call of Duty? Do quick time events ruin game immersion? Are Jack and Rich horrible frauds?

Pioneers is a brand new exploration strategy game in alpha development by Eigen Lenk. In Pioneers you take the role of an explorer leading a party to make a name for yourself in the new world. If you ever wanted to play a game where you could be Lewis and Clark, Francis Drake or Edmund Fanning this game is it. It also has a really unique painted pixel art style that I find really refreshing.

You can get Pioneers on itch.io now for as much as you want to spend on it on Mac and PC. If you play it let me know what you think of it in the comments!

http://eigen.itch.io/pioneers

"Pioneers is a turn-based exploration/adventure RPG where you lead a party of travellers in search of treasure-rich temples, new tribes and ways to go down in history - ways to go beyond the horizon. To achieve all that you complete quests building up your reputation to become a sought out explorer by kings and commoners alike.

You set out promising your father to become someone, to make him proud but not all goes like planned in life, does it? On the way you'll meet many interesting characters, solve challenging puzzles and face all that nature has to offer, be it finding and collecting food and building a shelter to survive harsh winters or facing against a pack of wolves in the densest of forests."

"Set in the lush and vibrant world of the Forgotten Realms, Sword Coast Legends offers an all-new way to enjoy the time-tested magic of playing Dungeons & Dragons as a shared storytelling experience. With a deep narrative developed by a team of long-time industry veterans and a partnership with Wizards of the Coast, the single player campaign of Sword Coast Legends brings the world of Faerûn home like never before."

When I heard about the brand new D&D game Sword Coast Legends I was pretty excited. A few of us on Cheerful Ghost have been playing Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic as part of the Cheerful Games Club and i've really enjoyed the turn based D&D hack n slashing. We don't get a ton of games built with the D&D rules these days so it's really cool to see a modern game in that style.

If you are interested in getting in on the digital D&D goodness there are a ton of pre-order options on the developers website. Starting with the digital Steam copy and finishing with an epic $350 version, Sword Coast Legends is aiming itself directly at a hardcore D&D audience.

https://swordcoast.com/preorder

Broforce continues it's Steam Early Access domination in the form of an all new update featuring Zenomorph Aliens. Fight these iconic Aliens as Indiana Brones, The Brominator, Cherry Broling and the rest of the Broforce crew! Free Lives have treated the Broforce Early Access well and the great updates just keep coming. If they continue on at this rapid fire pace I imagine Broforce will launch some time this year!

YouTuber Mauri Helme has recreated the last scene of Back to the Future using pixel art. Contains some great moments all involving pixel art Doc Brown.

Jam Session is a Nintendo DS game that was released in 2007. The game is rated "E for Everyone" but featured the above commercial in an Australian ad campaign. The game may not have a classic, but this amazing commercial lives on,