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!

comment sharing

After Travis posted about the new XBox One I commented in that post and realized I wanted to share the comment on Twitter. I didn't want to make up a post and then share that, I just wanted to share the comment in Travis post. So this evening I added a share button to the comments that allow anyone to get a URL that links back to any post comment. This lets you share any comment on the site you find useful. I have read some really epic comments on Slashdot and Reddit I have linked to and this allows you to do the same. But don't take my word for it, head into an active comment stream and check it out.

new event system - coming soon

For quite some time people have told me they want it to be easier to play games with the Cheerful Ghost community. In the past, someone had to create a post and then people commented if they wanted to play. When the time came to play, sometimes people forgot or didn't join in because of timezone strangeness. Needless to say, it works for some but its not awesome.

For the last month I have been working on an awesome new system for Cheerful Ghost to schedule gaming events with the community. The new Event section will allow anyone on the site to join and create events easily on the site.

If you want to schedule a session of Left 4 Dead on Steam Saturday @ 1pm you will easily be able to do that. Since we all live all over the world the new event system will automagically translate the event times for you. So if I create an event in Portland with a start time of 1PM, when Travis looks at the event in New York he will see 4PM. It doesn't matter where you live, Cheerful Ghost will automagically translate the event time for you to your timezone.

Left 4 Dead 2 only supports 4 players so the new event system has a mechanism to hard limit the amount of people that can join if you say it should.

Events in many ways act like posts and as such after you create your event you can comment in it and share it easily on Twitter, Facebook & Google+.

I am pretty busy and as such use my calendar to schedule my life. Once you join an event you can easily add it to your Smartphone, Desktop or Google Calendar. This is a really hot feature and I just added it this evening. Its so magic seeing the event get added to your iPhone calendar :D

I am still in deep development on this but its already working well. I plan on doing a soft beta launch very soon and plan on releasing a teaser video in the next few days so keep a look out for the new goodness.

Been following all the posted development activity for Starbound over the last few weeks and wanted to bubble some up to your attention. One feature I thought was interesting is that they are adding in game 3D printing. Its an interesting feature and ill have them describe it for you.

"We’re also working on the 3D printing interface, which is very similar to the crafting interface but you’re also able to “scan in” items to reverse engineer them. Almost any object you find in the world can be scanned/reverse engineered to allow you to print it using ‘pixels’. However, anything you make with a 3D printer will be marked as “printed” and will have a much lower value. If you want authentic gear you’ll have to find it."

I am not sure if that means the item will be usable, so if you print a gun you get a usable gun but this would be awesome if just for placable items. They have also put in support for speech bubbles and made the space travel a bit nicer on the eyes(video above).

They are keeping some stuff under wraps, which is pretty fun. As always, when there is talk of a beta or release date you will be the first to know.

http://playstarbound.com/17th-may-progress
http://playstarbound.com/20th-may-progress/

I think I may post every time Steam has a sale on all the Unreal games because I love them so. This one also has the added benefit of being cheaper than I have ever seen.

Nab all the Unreal games for $10. Offer ends may 27th.

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/683/

Seriously, do yourself a favor and frag with one of the most fun tournament shooters around!

The Speedrunner save/loads it for the best run through a particular area but that said, 30 minutes for Fallout 3 is pretty damn good. I think I spent more than 30 minutes in the vault alone.

**the above let's play spoils star trek into darkness accidentally. you have been warned**

I have been knee deep in some really cool Cheerful Ghost development that I am excited to demo in the next few days. I haven't been playing a lot of games because of that, but I still like to have one game on the back burner I take out a play when I have some time. Right now that game is Wizorb.

Wizorb is a really fun retro style 2D Breakout RPG. You play a Wizard on a quest to save Gerudo and to do that you use your Wizorb and paddle to vanquish evil. Its a really unique concept and for someone that hasn't ever been excited about Breakout, this game peaks my interest.

You collect coins to help the village rebuild and also purchase items. Helping a villager rebuild often nets you bonuses in the form of keys and other good stuff. Its also worth noting that when the Wizard is in the home town, the game switches to the typical top down RPG view.

The game is a couple bucks on Steam and you can play it on Mac and Linux. You can get Wizorb from the Wizorb home page and buy it at the Humble Store on Linux, Mac and Windows.

http://www.wizorb.com/

Kotaku released some very detailed images of Wolfenstein World Order. They look great and one image of a robot dog thing kind of reminds me of the mousers from Ninja Turtles, it might just be me though. :D

http://kotaku.com/new-wolfenstein-screens-show-that-life-is-hell-when-naz-505599439

Crawl is a interesting and free new Minecraft meets Legend of Grimrock style game. You play a physician put into someone's mind to help treat trauma thus proving that geek minds really are a maze of dungeons.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/crawl

Chucklefish is now publishing the new 2D sidescrolling rouge-like "Risk of Rain." Interesting to see the Starbound team take on the role of publisher for so many awesome new indie games.

http://riskofraingame.com/new-risk-of-rain-website/

I really like what Valve keeps doing with its games. Take for instance the new Team Fortress 2 update Robotic Boogaloo. After June 3rd when you play Team Fortress 2 you will get random crate drops. You can buy a key for $2.50 that will unlock it and reward you with various content created by the Robotic Boogaloo community artists. The revenue will be split amongst the artists and, I imagine Valve.

Its totally cool to see companies invent new ways to put money in artists hands and I applaud Valve for coming up with another way to do it. Checkout the Robotic Boogaloo site below and the "production drone" credits for whom participated in making it.

http://www.teamfortress.com/roboticboogaloo/
http://www.teamfortress.com/roboticboogaloo/credits/

Team Fortress 2 is available for free on Steam and runs on Linux, Mac and PC.

There is also a comic released as part of the update called "Death of a Salesbot" and is available to read in your browser and also downloadable as a PDF or CBR.

http://www.teamfortress.com/roboticboogaloo/comic.php#

I'll admit, I am a sucker for free stuff. Not that free is always good mind you, but the price is right. Recently I stumbled across a game site that catalogs all the good free games on PC called Freeware Games. I wanted to share it with you because I had forgotten about some of the games on the list and I know some of you somewhat new to PC gaming and might want to try a few games on the list.

Some awesome games of notes:

Black Mesa(The Fan Recreation of the original Half-Life.), CaveStory, Super Mario Bros. X, Team Fortress 2, The Original Grand Theft Auto, DOTA 2, League of Legends, Dwarf Fortress, Lord of the Rings Online, Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall & Kings Quest I.

There are a ton more games on that list, so check it out for yourself and let me know if you find anything good.

http://www.freewaregames.net/allgames.asp

I also found another fairly good article skimming 8 of the most popular free to play games online now.

http://www.techspot.com/article/668-free-to-play-games/