Along with Overgrowth and Cortex Command, Unknown Worlds’ FPS/RTS hybrid Natural Selection 2 is one of those indie mega-projects that seems to be in a perpetual state of development. Today marks a rather special day in the development of NS2, as the latest development build – codenamed ‘Gorilla’ – has been released to preordering players, and is accompanied by a genuinely impressive gameplay-footage trailer. Hit the break for some hot marine-on-alien action.

The 2011 phenomenon that is Bundlemania continues unabated into the much more futuristic-sounding 2012. Sneaking in out of nowhere, Indie Royale is back with a ‘bonus’ bundle comprised entirely of Serious Sam games, including the whole third-party indie series, including Vlambeer’s Serious Sam: The Random Encounter and Mommy’s Best Games’ Serious Sam: Double D. As usual, the base price (otherwise pay-what-you-want) is going to creep up – now is the time to snap this lot up for cheap.

First sighted at Magfest, currently in public alpha and available to try now, RetroBlazer is a game that presses all the right buttons for me. Early 2.5d FPS gameplay (Wolfenstein, Rise of The Triad, etc) with an aesthetic very heavily inspired by the MegaMan X series, and running on the Darkplaces engine, a very powerful modern variant of the software behind Quake. It looks like a high-tech version of Locomalito’s 8-Bit Killer if it were made by Capcom, and I must have the full game ASAP. Gameplay footage and some impressions after the break.

How would you like to end the year by playing every FPS from the early 90s up to modern day, all at once? Fighting Half-Life 2 Metrocops with the magical weapons of Heretic, or showing the grunts of Quake who’s the boss with some classic Strife weaponry? I’m fairly sure this amazing multi-mashup mod violates every copyright ever written, but I just don’t care. It lets me blow up the enemies from Duke Nukem 3D with the Quake 2 BFG. Trailer and more after the break.

The crazy deal season that started in November shows no sign of slowing – it’s Indie Royale time again, and this pack is one of the best yet, weighing in at six games of generally excellent quality. Pay what you want (starting at a slowly rising minimum) for the fantastic Blackwell trilogy (remastered, apparently), The Oil Blue, Eets and Dino D-Day for Windows (and Mac/Linux where appropriate). Gameplay trailers and some thoughts after the break.

Killing Floor has come a long way since its days as a relatively awkward Unreal Tourament 2k4 mod. Rather than flare out and fade into obscurity like so many indie multiplayer shooters, it has risen again and again, becoming one of Valve’s own favorite holiday fixtures. It was even the focus of a great amount of attention during the Portal 2 ‘Potato Pack’ event. Tripwire Interactive are nothing if not giving, either. December is here, and with it a free weekend for the game, starting tomorrow. On top of that, a horde of Christmas-themed monsters to slay (sleigh?), a boatload of new weapons to play with and even a new level and all for the price of free.

Ludicrous Gibs! If you were a PC gamer through the early 90s, that phrase should put a big dumb grin on your face. It was the text message that popped up to accompany an enemy exploding violently into a cartoonish cloud of meat (often containing 3+ eyeballs per human, oddly) in Apogee Software’s Wolfenstein-esque Rise Of The Triad, and also the first common usage of the term to describe such splatteriffic delights. A couple of months ago, a pair of dedicated fans (El Zee and 5HFifty) released Return of The Triad, a standalone update/remake of the game, based on the ZDoom engine.

Well it took a while, but that tiny experiment known as the “Indie Fund” is finally about to show off its goods in the form of its very first funded release: Q.U.B.E. by Toxic Games, a game we’ve spoken about plenty of times here and even offered a preview of it in October.

Indie first person shooters are fun. Maybe not always the best looking, or with the most features, but they often include unusual gameplay or story elements not found amongst the comparatively drab war worlds of Battlefield, Call of Duty or Halo. Not to say those latter games are bad just, rather, tiresome.

We featured this a while back in our Retro FPS Freeware lineup, but sometimes an update is worth featuring, especally one as momentous as this. A great many years ago, a small company called Bungie (heard of them?) made the Marathon trilogy. Three heavily story-driven FPS’s that were years ahead of their time. Some time later, Bungie were kind enough to release both the game content and the engine source-code to their fans. Today, the Aleph One project has finally come to its peak. In conjunction with Freeverse, the folks who updated Marathon 2 into ‘HD’ for Xbox Live Arcade, the trilogy has finally been updated fully to modern spec.