mud-tv posts

Free games are always good in that you don't have to pay money to play them (of course the game itself could be bad but at least your wallet's safe). This week publisher Kalypso Media announced that folks who pre-order the upcoming fantasy strategy-RPG game Dungeons via the Steam service will get immediate downloadable access to a free title.

That game is M.U.D. TV, the sim-style game where you have to run a television studio. Kalypso released the game about a year or so ago. This is in addition to the extra content in the Steam version of Dungeons which includes an extra mission, exclusive in-game items and new maps in the game's sandbox mode. The game is due out on February 10.

Update: Impulse is also taking pre-orders for Dungeons and is offering a free copy of the adventure game Ceville to those pre-orders.

In M.U.D. TV, players have a chance to become a ruthless TV executive and edge out all rival channels in the ratings. This playable demo includes the tutorial and two missions from the single player campaign. Continue after the jump for a trailer and mission descriptions. The full game, which will include cooperative multiplayer, is expected to release in the early half of March.

"MUD TV is your ticket to the weird wild world of television. Once you take control of your own station it's up to you to determine the line-up, hire actors and directors, produce your own shows, series and movies and to grab those lucrative advertising deals from right under your competitors' noses. Oh, and about the competition: you can either play MUD TV alone, with your friends over a network or via Internet! Go head-to-head with your opponents as you fight for market share amongst the retired and housewives, headhunt their best employees and, if that doesn't do the trick, a little sabotage should keep your enemies from getting too bored! Or, as an alternative, you can assume control of a station together with a friend and run it cooperatively."

Download M.U.D. TV Demo (321 MB)
Download HD M.U.D. TV Trailer (34 MB)

Everyone seems to want to be on TV but what about running things behind the camera? That's the basic premise behind M.U.D. (Mad Dirty Ugly) TV, a new sim game from publisher Kalypso Media. The game, from developer Realmforge, is due to be released in the US in March 2010.

The game, which employs a cartoon-like art style, gives you the power to run your own TV studio. That also means hiring staff, actors, and directors to make TV shows that get high ratings for your advertisers. Which sounds great, right? Except that the game also has rival TV stations who will resort to mad, dirty and ugly tricks to sabotage your operations.

So what TV shows would you make? Personally, we want to see "Little People as Lawmen with 10 Kid Chefs in the Jungle." Ratings gold.

[Via email press release]