braid posts

Jonathon Blow's acclaimed indie puzzle game Braid generated a ton of attention for the developer. Now he and a small team are working on his next project, titled The Witness. Over the weekend he launched a blog site about the game and decided to post a few concept artwork pieces from the game, followed by some early screenshots

The concept artwork comes from an artist named Eric Urquhart. Some of the art depicts a rather fantasy-looking village which the captions say is surrounded by a force field. There's also a blog post about the lighting details for the game's engine that shows off some screenshots such as the one above (although he doesn't really want them to be called screenshots yet since the elements are still place holders). There's no word about gameplay in The Witness yet but it reminds us a lot of The Prisoner at this point, which is a good thing.

The Direct2Drive download site has offered up bundles of a number of indie games for limited times on a couple of previous occasions. Now the service is doing it again as it puts together 10 of the most well known indie games together in one downloadable package from now until March 12.

The bundle costs just $29.95 which is a massive savings compared to the $134.50 that you would have to spend for each game separately. The list includes the puzzle game Cogs which just won $100,000 in GameStop's first annual Indie Game Challenge. The full list of games in the bundle is below:

Braid
Osmos
World of Goo
Cogs
Machinaruim
The Maw
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Aaaaa!
Puzzlegeddon
Gish

Could one of the best games of 2010 be released this week? If it's a BioWare game we are talking about (and we are) the chances are very good that might happen. In addition to that game, two other titles that were first released via digital download (Braid and Blood Bowl) are released to retail stores this week.

Mass Effect 2 - BioWare's sequel to their acclaimed sci-fi RPG could cause many folks to call in sick this week. The game follows Commander Shepard and his team as they try to find out why human colonists in space are disappearing. BioWare has tried to improve the combat features to make the sequel more appealing to shooter gamer fans.

A year has gone by, and we find ourselves once again looking at our family and wondering just what to get them for Christmas. While you can certainly get them such stellar titles as Dawn of War 2, you may want to shift your focus to some cheaper and more interesting games. For the price of three indie games, you can get one triple AAA title, and many of these games exceed the games put out by major studios. Excellent gameplay at a third of the price always sounds like a deal to us, and with massive sales going on in the spirit of Christmas, the deal is even sweeter. We have 15 indie games that we think you or someone you love will absolutely adore this holiday season, and most of them run around or under a $20 price tag. Take a glimpse at some of these titles, and see if you want to go back to the big budgets of more mainstream games. After all, every year indie gaming only gets better.

We are approaching the end of a holiday shortened week and some of the various PC game download sites are already offering some deals for their customers. Over at Steam they have cut the price of Jonathan Blow's unique platform game Braid down to just $4.99. That's a 66 percent price cut from its normal price and it lasts until Sunday.

At Gamersgate they have put a couple of games on their price chopping list including Star Assault and Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces for $4.95 each. And remember that their entire lineup of Sega games (sans pre-order titles) are on sale until Sunday for 50 percent off.

It's one of science fiction's oldest and most popular themes: time travel. Characters that travel to the past or future, alternate timelines caused by making one simple historical event happen differently or even personal manipulation of temporal forces are all themes that have been explored by a number of games.

With the upcoming demo of Darkest of Days coming up tomorrow, Big Download decided to look back and look forward at games that used time travel, alternate timelines or time manipulation as their main themes. Some of the games were well done and others . . . well, you will see what we mean when you check out our latest gallery feature.

Click on the image above to continue reading Back and Forth; Time Travel In PC Games

Not to be outdone by Direct2Drive's previously announced indie game sales bundle, the folks at Valve have decided to hold their own sale on Steam that lowers the cost of getting into the indie games scene. From now until Monday you can buy all the games below in one collection for just $29.99. That's a price cut from $119.90 if each game were bought seperately

Audiosurf
Blueberry Garden
Braid
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Darwinia
Everyday Shooter
Gish
Mr. Robot
The Path
World of Goo

If that's just too much indie game action for your blood you can also purchase Blueberry Garden, Braid, Everyday Shooter, The Path and World of Goo together in a bundle for just $19.99. That's compared to a normal $59.95 price

See that bit of text above this post? That's Braid developer Jonathan Blow's idea of a teaser for The Witness, his next major game project. The web site for the game is already up which says that the title is an "exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island".

According to Blow, in a statement on his blog site, " . . . the game is very visual, and once we have developed those visuals to the point where they are representative, I'll start posting them there." Don't look for them anytime soon, though. The Witness web site states that the game isn't due for release until late 2011.


Download Braid Demo (119 MB)

The weekend isn't always the time to find cuts on PC game prices. Right now two download sites, Direct2Drive and Gamersgate, are offering some price cuts on a couple of select titles this week. Over at Direct2Drive they have added the PC port of the acclaimed puzzle game Braid to its library. From now until Sunday, you can download the DRM-free title for just $9.95 compared to its normal $14.95 price.

Over at GamersGate they have put the action-RPG collection Titan Quest:Gold Edition for sale. The title from the now defunct Iron Lore Entertainment, can be bought and download for today only for just $9.99.

Stardock's Impulse web site is offering up some solid weekend sales deals on a number of downloadable PC titles. From now until the end of the day Sunday you can download games like World of Goo for just $9.99 (a 50 percent discount) and Puzzle Quest Galactrix for $9.99 (another 50 percent discount).

Other games on sale include Braid for $9.99 (a 25 percent discount from its normal price) and Droplitz for just $4.99. They have also got a Trainz collectors pack with four games in the train sim series bundled for just $49.99 (compared to a normal $79.00 price). Finally their sale of Merdian4 games we mentioned last week has bee extend to also end on Sunday.