electronic-arts-all-points-bulletin posts

Jumping the gun a bit on its Comic-Con presentation on Thursday, publisher Electronic Arts and developer 38 Studios have announced that the upcoming fantasy single player RPG previously known as "Project Mercury" now has the official name of Kingdoms of Amalar: Reckoning. The game is set for release in fall 2011.

Developed by 38 Studios' Big Huge Games dev team the game will feature "a magical world, filled with strange landscapes, exotic cities, colorful characters and terrifying creatures" along with a "fast-paced, graphically stimulating action combat experience." More specific info, including the release of the game's first trailer, will still be revealed at the Comic-Con panel starting on Thursday afternoon.

People have been wondering why there has not been much word on the fate of Penny Arcade Adventures. The first two chapters in the episodic adventure-RPG series from developer Hothead Games came out in 2008 but since then there's been no word on when the third chapter in the series will be released. Now a new Gamasutra interview may have found the reason for the delay.

Hothead's CEO Ian Wilkinson stated that while the first two chapters in Penny Arcade Adventures (based on the Penny Arcade web comic strip) got solid critical notices, "The Penny Arcade series didn't sell as well as we would have liked." He added, "With Penny Arcade, yes, a lot of people knew about it, but we just couldn't transition those people into buyers." There are hints that we will finally learn something about the third chapter in the series at PAX East later in March.

While designer American McGee and his team at Spicy Horse are continuing to work on their remake of American McGee's Alice for Electronic Arts, the company also has another game that he plans to pitch to publishers during next week's Game Developers Conference. On his Flickr web page, McGee has posted up a couple of concept art pieces for the project; a mature retelling of the Red Riding Hood story.

The artwork depicts the title character with an axe and a disposition to use it on some mystical wolves. Again this is just concept artwork for a game that has yet to get the green light but it's clear that McGee still wants to revamp childhood legends. You can check out the other concept art piece after the jump:

[Via GameSetWatch]