Devolver Digital is working on a Shadow Warrior remake and due to a recent promo glitch some people got the original Shadow Warrior for free. Because of this they decided to make the original totally free on Steam. If you haven't played this 1997 classic and want to, now is your chance.

Available for free download on Mac and PC.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/238070/
https://twitter.com/_ShadowWarrior/status/339752731780726784

Tonight CapnCurry and I beat FTL together in our pairing session. FTL pairing is where two people both make choices for how to play FTL together*. Since FTL is a turn based game its setup well for this. Since I was the less experienced player I controlled the game on my end and we used Google Hangout to share my screen and talk to figure out our strategy. The session lasted about 3 hours in total.

From the start things were going pretty well. One choice about mid way through the game, I believe helped us out considerably. We had our drone system built and two drone weapons on board. We made it to a space station and if we sold off our two drone weapons and our FTL jammer we could afford the cloak. We decided to take the cloak and that was a really good gamble. As it turned out we found more drone weapons later so the gamble really paid off.

Since I only unlocked the Kestrel thats the ship we went with and it proved to be good enough to beat the game with. I sort of figured that you needed to get the other ships to win, but the Kestrel held up like a champ.

I think a few items really sent us over the edge to survive the 3 end boss fights. The Cloak, The Pike Beam and the small bomb. Basically we would hit the boss with the bomb, then do a double salvo using our laser weapons. When the shields were down we raked as many rooms as we could with the Pike Beam and that was all she wrote for the boss.

I want to thank CapnCurry for pairing with me because he really showed me a bunch of useful strategies for FTL. I want to give him a lot of the credit for the win because his strategies were really effective. That said, I was controlling things and we did win so thats also rad.

That said, I had a blast and am looking forward to the next pair session. PS if you can and want to learn your way to a better life and FTL there is no substitute for pairing with the Captain.

We scheduled our pairing session with the new Cheerful Ghost event system. You should do the same.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/11

* I am fairly certain we invented FTL pairing too, so you know thats also awesome.

Many of these films I haven't seen but it was awesome to see them cut together.

If you are interesting in making games in HTML5, you will want to take a peek at Tiny Platformer. Not only is one level of pure bliss, but the author goes over the methods for making the game with code examples. He uses the Tiled editor to make the level and then explains how he wrote the JavaScript and used the HTML5 Canvas element to make the game.

http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2013/5/27/tiny_platformer/

"Stonehearth is a game about exploration and survival in an epic fantasy setting. Your job is to help a small group of settlers survive and carve out a place for themselves in a hostile land. You’ll need to establish a food supply, build shelter, defend your people, and find a way to grow and expand, facing challenges at every step. "

It seems the era of Minecraft issued forth a new style of procedurally generated world building games that only seems to get more interesting. Take Stonehearth, a cool new RTS creative building game Kickstarter. You take control of a small group of settlers and use every means at your disposal to settle the land. Farming, fighting, building, crafting, this game seems to have it all. The game seems to pull from a 3D pixel art vibe that reminds me of 3D Dot Game Heroes.

I only recently heard about Stonehearth today and as such there are only two days left to back this project. They have sailed well beyond the $120k goal to raise over $661. That said, if you want to play this game before its planned launch of September 2014 you can back the project for $30 which will allow you to join the Kickstarter beta December of this year.

Looking forward to getting my hands on Stonehearth and I welcome out new procedurally generation building game overlords!

"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