Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, FIFA Soccer, and Silent Hill are the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- 2025 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress
- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game – The New York Times (2026)
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
Most Recent: Articles
Double Fine’s Massive Chalice is already a Kickstarter success
Like it or loathe it, big companies are now turning to crowdfunding in order to push games from inception to reality. But some are old pros, like San Francisco-based Double Fine Productions, who has succeeded in a fully-funded Kickstarter campaign for the second time.
Last year, the company launched a campaign for the Double Fine Adventure (now known as Broken Age), asking for funding so they would not have to deal with meddling middle men. They were seeking $400,000, but managed to get almost ten times that amount, finishing with $3,336,371.
But Double Fine is also looking to the future and a new project. Known as Massive Chalice, the game will take its inspiration from tactical strategy classics such as X-COM and Fire Emblem, as well as a healthy dose of Game of Thrones in terms of story and style. It will feature customisable heroes, who you will set to defend your kingdom. As years pass by, you will have to choose whether to keep your best heroes on in battle, or retire them to teach a new generation of young and eager warriors.
Despite the turn-based strategy game having a target of nearly double the previous Kickstarter campaign, Double Fine has managed to reach their goal of $725,000 with 21 days to spare. At the time of this writing it was sitting comfortably at $827,186 and steadily rising. No doubt Double Fine will be hoping to repeat their initial success and reach the millions before the campaign concludes.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Massive Chalice
DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2 announced as free-to-play PS4 titles
With E3 only days away, game companies are building up momentum to their main expo events with some big announcements. Keen to push their new PlayStation 4 console, Sony has announced not one, but two, free-to-play titles that will hit the console this year.
The first is MMO DC Universe Online, which seems fitting as it was the first MMO available for the PS4’s predecessor, the PS3. Speaking about the PS3 version, Laura Naviaux, Senior VP for Sony Online Entertainment’s Global Sales and Marketing Division, said, “Its thriving community is proof that we can create an exciting and robust console experience for players.”
The second title is the MMO FPS PlanetSide 2, which up until now was only available on PC. Its announcement once again confirms the PS4’s architecture being closely aligned with the PC market. Naviaux commented that “players have been asking for PlanetSide 2 to be playable on consoles, and PS4 is the ideal platform to showcase the game’s beauty, depth and frenetic open world combat.”
Naviaux’s boss, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley, expanded on her comments: “Since the launch of the original EverQuest, we have pioneered major shifts in the development of MMOs and videogames as a whole, and now we’re bringing our titles to the forefront of next-gen gaming. Players are evolving and want a variety of ways to access and play games. Our goal is to deliver epic gaming experiences that players crave while harnessing the awesome power and technology of this incredible new platform. We are thrilled to bring two of our most popular free-to-play games to PS4.”
E3 2013 trailers for both games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged DC Universe Online, E3 2013, PlanetSide 2
Diablo III to be released for PS3 and Xbox 360 on September 3
Today, Blizzard announced that Diablo III will make the jump to consoles on September 3. Yes, consoles, plural. Surprising no one, the developer revealed that the game will be released for the Xbox 360 in addition to the previously announced PS3 version.
“Playing Diablo III on a big screen with your friends brings a whole new level of intensity to the game, and with all of the control and interface adaptations we’ve made, it’s extremely fun to play on PS3 and Xbox 360,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment. “In addition to the fine-tuning we’ve done for the console versions, we’re also including major content and design updates we’ve made to the PC version over the past year, so players can expect an epic Diablo gaming experience when the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions launch in September.”
Players who pre-order Diablo III for the PS3 or Xbox 360 (which will retail for $59.99) will receive a special in-game item: the Infernal Helm. Any character wearing the Infernal Helm will receive an experience point boost, “accelerating their progression as they rise in power.” Retailer-specific pre-order bonuses will also be available.
Diablo III is also in development for the PlayStation 4 and will presumably be available as a launch title for Sony’s next system. After today’s announcement of the game for the Xbox 360, I also fully expect an Xbox One edition to be announced soon.
Posted in News, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Diablo III
Square Enix will release Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII in February 2014
Square Enix has released an E3 2013 trailer for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and you can check it out above. In addition to showing Lightning at her Matrix-y most (and re-introducing us to Snow), the trailer also pins a North American release date on the PS3 and Xbox 360 game for the first time: February 11, 2014.
European gamers will get it three days later on February 14.
Posted in News, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged E3 2013, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Riding Penny Arcade 4’s Demon Train With Zeboyd Games: An Interview
Zeboyd Games resurrected the Rain-Slick series last year with Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, and the team, Designer/Programmer/Writer Robert Boyd and Artist Bill Stiernberg, couldn’t be happier about the response they received. With the release of Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 just a few days away, we sit down with the developers to chat about where they’ve come from, where they’re going, and what it’s like to punch a demon train in the face. (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, PC, Previews, Top Story, Xbox 360
Tagged PAX East 2013, Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4
The Last of Us multiplayer finally revealed by Naughty Dog
With just a week and a half to go before The Last of Us is available in stores, Sony and Naughty Dog have finally unveiled the game’s multiplayer component.
The game’s multiplayer mode is referred to as Factions and players will be able to side with either the Hunters or the Fireflies and from there it branches off into two gametypes: Supply Raid and Survivors.
In Supply Raid, you’ll have to scavenge the area and keep your team alive. Your team has a pool of twenty reinforcements. Once the reinforcements have been exhausted, the match will go into sudden death. In Survivors, you’re going to have to be extremely vigilant. There are no respawns. Once you’re gone you’ve been eliminated until the next round. It’s a best of seven rounds in which the first team to win four rounds wins the match.
Eric Monacelli, Naughty Dog’s Community Strategist is pretty proud of Factions and told the PlayStation Blog: “The moment-to-moment survival present in the single-player campaign is integral to the multiplayer. You’ll feel tension and need to be intensely alert at all times.”
The Last of Us will be available exclusively for the PS3 on June 14.
Posted in News, PS3
Tagged The Last of Us
Daily Scoop: June 5, 2013 – Sleepy Wednesday
Welcome, dear readers, to another exciting Daily Scoop! It’s brought to you by very little sleep, on account of us finally getting our crucial furniture into the new apartment last night around 2AM. I haven’t brought over my PlayStation 3 yet (blasphemy!), but it will certainly be in the next trip.
In case you hadn’t noticed, there are two great Humble Bundles happening right now. There’s the Humble Weekly Sale, which features Telltale Games this week. No better time than now to pick up The Walking Dead if you haven’t played it yet, or all their other games if you have! And The Humble Indie Bundle 8 is chock full of awesome games, including Thomas Was Alone and Hotline Miami, among others.
Also, today’s PS3 Daily Deal at Play-Asia is Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, which is on sale for $26.90. Scoop ’em up!
Just three shirts today: (more…)
Posted in Daily Scoop, Etcetera, News
Deus Ex: The Fall is an iOS exclusive action RPG
As promised, Square Enix and Eidos Montreal have lifted the curtain on Deus Ex: The Fall and it’s not at all what you’d expect. Instead of a full-fledged sequel to 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, The Fall is an iOS-exclusive sequel to the Deus Ex: Icarus Effect tie-in novel, which starred a new protagonist named Ben Saxon:
Deus Ex: The Fall is set in 2027– a golden era for science, technology and human augmentation, but also a time of great social divide and global conspiracy. Powerful corporations have seized control from governments and command the drug supply needed by augmented humans to survive. In this chaos Ben Saxon, a former British SAS Mercenary who underwent physical augmentation, is desperate for the truth behind the drug conspiracy. Betrayed by his private military employers, the Tyrants, not only is his own life at risk, but for all augmented humans, time is running out…
Deus Ex: The Fall will be developed at Square Enix Mobile, with assistance from Eidos Montreal and Executive Game Director Jean-Francois Dugas. Owing to its new home on iDevices, The Fall will eschew the franchise’s traditional FPS feel and play more like an action RPG.
You can listen to Dugas and Executive Producer David Anfossi discuss Deus Ex: The Fall in the video above. Square Enix will reveal more information about their major mobile project next week during the E3 Expo.
Deus Ex: The Fall will be available to download for $6.99 this Summer.
Posted in Mobile, News
Tagged Deus Ex: The Fall, E3 2013