There isn’t a single in-game trailer or screenshot available for DOTA 2, Valve’s sequel to the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. Yet, remarkably, they are showing the game off publically for the first time by hosting a huge tournament for it. For the next few days, you can watch the action live, right here. There’s also a CGI trailer out, which I’ve embedded below.
I didn’t play the original Warcraft 3 mod, but it is widely heralded as one of the best of its kind. Mixing tower defense with real-time strategy elements, you control various ‘hero’ characters and their allies against other teams, while defending your own base. Valve have never made anything outside the FPS genre before, so I’m curious to see how this turns out.
I was watching the live feed earlier, and from first glance I can see it has plenty of character and style to it. Embarrassingly, there seems to be some lag, and the match was paused by the ‘referee’. Technical hiccups aside, this is a really interesting way of unveiling a new game. It’s clear that Valve are trying to get a slice of the RTS tournament pie, spear headed by the likes of Starcraft and League of Legends. DOTA has a huge fanbase, so there’s a good chance this will get a decent following when it’s released. The only remaining question is whether it’ll be free-to-play or not.
Here’s that CGI trailer:
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
You might have heard of Pokémon. I can’t quite believe that date. 1996!? Holy crap. 21 years ago, apparently, I got well into this strange Japanese game about collecting made-up animals, stuffing them into balls and training them to fight each other.
Format: PC
Release date: 1993
I have 2 memories of this game that are separated by over 20 years.
Doki Doki Literature Club has dug its way into my chest and ripped me apart over the last couple of nights. It’s a free visual novel game where you get to know a bunch of girls in an afterschool book club… except not really. It looks exactly like any other tropey Japanese dating sim type game, but what lurks underneath this cutesy exterior is something really quite sinister and thought-provoking. The game’s tagline does a good job of reminding you that all is not what it seems: “This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.”
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