You’re probably already aware that Penny Arcade’s Gabe and Tycho will be getting off their good-humoured and maddeningly wealthy behinds next week in the third instalment of their much-heralded adventure series, The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. If so, you might very well harbour some sort of interest in its recently released gameplay trailer. If not, wake up!

Of course, we’d take our Penny Arcade experience no other way than loaded with crude, old-school 16-bit graphics, a smattering of inside japes and a legion of enemies straight out of a sci-fi convention committee meeting, and that’s more or less what the trailer delivers in a deformedly engineered nutshell. There are also a few lashings of turn-based combat jiggery-pokery to rekindle those long-suppressed memories of androgynous teenagers taking it in turns to jab at primordial organisms in Final Fantasy V.

Father’s Day may have come and gone in a flash of ill-fitting socks and suspectly brewed port, but that doesn’t mean that the festivities are over for the papas of the octopus kingdom. That’s thanks to developers The DePaul Gaming Experience, who’ve been so kind as to offer the editing tools for its bizarre, yet hopelessly lovable 3D adventure game, OctoDad.

The so-called OctodadEditor is a freely downloadable editor that allows innovators with an acquired grasp of complex logical and algorithmic concepts to conjure up a theoretically enormous spate of deviations from the classic OctoDad experience. In essence, then, it’s your standard piece of editing software, but I really wanted to season it up with a few pretentiously chosen items of lexis. Don’t judge me.

As you should be quite aware, the 7 Day First Person Shooter (7DFPS) development challenge took place last week and the results started blasting their way in on Friday. Of the many that took part, Wolfire Games were one studio to do so and what they’ve created is quite special. The purpose of 7DFPS was to find something fresh to get excited about within the first person shooter – a genre that has become dull and over saturated due to its popularity in recent years. It’s also a means to have some fun – let’s not forget.

The direction some have taken in order to create their FPS in just seven days has led to some crazy and exciting results. Wacky, is a good word for some of them. Wolfire decided to take things a slightly different direction with Receiver; one that could be described as doing to gun mechanics what they did to melee combat in Overgrowth.

They set out to create an almost HUD-removing experience with a Colt 1911 A1. You check your ammo by taking the clip out of the gun and looking at how many bullets are left, rather than glancing at a number on the edge of the screen. The levels inside consist of a randomized building complex (nod to replay value) and your goal is to make it past the turrets and shock drones with a cassette tape to uncover the secrets of the Mindkill.

As you can tell, the game itself seems a little clunky but for seven days work that’s pretty good. You’re supposed to play it quite slowly that’s for sure, being wary of what may be lying around the next corner and where the nearest cover is – pretty intense stuff. The physics on the bullets and the enemies is a very neat addition which gives rewards to players who take their time and aim for certain targets rather than wasting bullets on blasting like crazy.

It’s definitely an interesting way to approach an FPS and one you can check out for free if you’ve pre-ordered Overgrowth. If you haven’t, then you can purchase Receiver over on its official website.

Oh for goodness sake! I can’t handle it. All of this kiddy cuteness bundled up into a karting game – it’s enough to make you pop. There’s fur, fluff and cotton tails. Let’s just bite our bottom lips to substitute the inability to squeeze it. Oh it’s so gheegle!

Whatever, I’m over it. Teddy Floppy Ear is a karti-, okay I’m not over it! Teddy Floppy Ear? That’s adorable! (Let me just take a breather….and go!) So it’s a karting game, like one you may have played which featured a famous plumber. There are five tracks to compete in, across which you’ll be competing for the Animalville Cup. Luckily there are five game modes to vary those up a bit. A bit skimp on the range of tracks, perhaps, but the game is intended for mobile gaming use as well as PCs.

Much to my surprise, the gameplay isn’t all that cute in reality. The power ups turn it into a game of thwacking innocent little animals off the road, which is fine for competitive reasons but would likely make me feel bad. Well, I did run over a badger once around these country roads that entrap me, and all I did in reaction was blinked, so maybe it won’t be so bad after all. The tarmac tracks seem a bit out of place too. Dirt tracks are fine because cute animals like these live in the countryside, amongst the green grass and high trees. The fantasy just seems a bit ruined by the dark mundaneness of a tarmac road. Just me? Probably.

In any case, as the piggy says, it does have “chicanes and emotions” so all should be good. Yes, that’s intended to sound absurd, I don’t go around judging everything by its ratio of chicanes and emotions. Teddy Floppy Ear is now available over on Desura for PC and Mac and there’s a little more information on the official website.

Back in 2005, a turn-based strategy game made it into the finalist lineup at the IGF, that would be Lux. The game may be getting old but that doesn’t stop it getting involved in those bundle sales that these whipper snappers are so fond of. There is a missed opportunity here though – the sale price is a set $4.99 – why isn’t it determined by dice roll? That would have conjured up a few smiles for sure!

Well maybe not. There are a number of grumpy people around, but only because they constantly lose against the more lucky players in games such as Lux, and of course Risk which is what the strategy game is based on. It’s a little more educational than that though, having expansions that delve into American History and Ancient Empires. There’s still plain old Lux for those who don’t care for digging up the past, though they are included in the bundle. And saying “plain old Lux” is actually wrong as well, considering it is the fabulously titled Lux Delux that you’ll get as part of the deal. This upgraded version has 800 maps to compete on and the online multiplayer is still intact, so saying you run out of things to do in the game is absolute bull.

If you’re looking for something a little different then you’ll be pleased to hear that Castle Vox is also included in the deal. Inspired by Diplomacy and Axis & Allies, this board game variant has players taking simultaneous turns to out do each other. Variation comes aplenty here too, with maps spanning the American Revolution, Hades, Japan, Napoleonic Wars, Native America, Outer Space, and the Roman Empire. Did we mention that there’s a map editor as well? If simultaneous play sounds a bit too hectic then there are other modes to try out, even on turn per day if you so wish. At the other end of the scale is fast speed wars for those who consider themselves a bit manic and a bit of strategy master with it.

You can find out more information on the games from Sillysoft, all of which are bundled up in this sale for a cool $4.99, over on the official website.

With the abundance of space adventures that in some form or another involves shooting fast moving projectiles, you’d have to forgive future generations if they look back at our habits and thought us to be obsessed with such a notion. Well, space is one of those fascinating things for us Earth dwellers, okay, future people. Most of us don’t have the privilege of just jumping out of bed and whizzing off to the Moon for a quick coffee. We still have to make do with the cafe full of last nights drunks recovering and mumbling into their cup as they lazily stir it with a spoon.

Maybe it is them who dream of going off into space the most; staring deep into the recesses of the black beyond and hoping to jettison off to another world. Truth be told, flying around space and blowing up stuff is pretty cool and that’s why quite a few games enable us to do that. The latest which has caught our eye is Delta Space. The initial gameplay struck us for the capacity to fly at high speeds and come to a grinding slow down when necessary, to then participate in a most jolly dog fight. We’re not sure whether the game’s bold colors, particularly of the player’s ship, are going to stay but we certainly hope so for stylistic reasons.

Like so many spacey adventures, you play as a ship-for-hire, primarily working for a faction who quite frankly don’t give a damn about all of those pesky rules some try to uphold. Your work ranges from smuggle runs and freighter escorts to destroying space stations and, perhaps, making contact with alien lifeforms. Once the main questline is dealt with, then it’s time to exploit the dynamically generated quests and interstellar trading, otherwise used to make money and improve your chances of survival. Stir that coffee a little bit more, gaze right on into it and you’ll see the potential in Delta Space, we like to hope.

While Earthlings pimp their wheel-based automobiles, us space suaves enjoy spend our money on ships, and that’s exactly what you’ll be doing in Delta Space as you rake in the monies. Speaking of which, the developer of Delta Space is an eight year veteran of making free browser-based titles, but is hoping that this grander and more commercial effort will give them the push into indie game development on a more full time basis.

Being Australian, he can’t start a Kickstarter but he has mimicked how it operates over on his official website. In return for donating towards the game’s further development there are plenty of rewards. DRM-free copies, early alpha access and the chance to help design the game are all up for grabs. Who needs Kickstarter anyway? More information on the game, if you should need it, is available on the official website – there’s even more videos to watch as well, which is always more entertaining.

Thanks to Terry Cavanagh over at freeindiegam.es for pointing this one out.

Burly, sword-swinging barbarians and mind-crushing logic puzzles tend not to be a common mix, but they’re the core elements of Caravel Games’ classic Deadly Rooms of Death series. In this long-running franchise, you work your way through a tiled dungeon in turn-based form, clearing out monsters, pushing blocks and avoiding death at every step. The art is simple, and quite deliberately ugly (Smitemeisters aren’t exactly known to be the most beautiful of people), but effective and charming, and the silly sounds (especially on death) are effective, but these really aren’t games about polished aesthetics. Beneath the silly portraits and the classic dungeon aesthetic lies something that will make your head spin.

It’s deceptively simple-looking at first, with movement being just your digital numpad, and the only control beyond that being two keys to rotate your facing (and sword) around you. And then you end up stuck on a single room for two hours. The level design is absolutely fiendish, and the behavior of the enemies and various devices scattered around adds layer upon layer of depth. You’re never doing anything more complex than moving and turning, but the level design is what has kept these games selling for years. There’s a huge difference between fighting a swarm of simple Roach enemies (which just move one square closer to you each turn, although will be stopped by a pointed sword) and a room full of Living Tar (which can trap you and render a room un-winnable if you don’t plan your every step.

Screenshot from the standalone version, but the point still stands buried in living tar.

There’s a stern challenge here, and it had put a few people off in the past. It seems that in order to drum up fresh interest in the franchise and open it up to new customers, Caravel are rolling out a Flash-based freeware re-launch of DROD: King Dugan’s Dungeon. Interestingly (and probably due in part to the fact that this is a massive game), they’re releasing it in episodic format, with the first three episodes being available to play via the official site and third-party Flash hubs such as Newgrounds now. They’ve added some modern upgrades along the way, such as achievement tracking, which includes some interesting goals and alternate ways to play such as completing the entire first floor without rotating your sword.

Each of the three currently available episodes is 4 floors long, which is surprisingly lengthy, although it sounds fairly terse on paper. To get through the three episodes currently available will take you some time, although probably not until the planned release of the next episode sometime close to Christmas, apparently. I suppose this version of the game could be considered an extended demo of sorts, but it should grow into a full release in time. In the meantime, there’s a full five games, plus a ridiculous 7 expansions to date, as well as a ton of fan-made content. King Dugan’s Dungeon was just the first outing for professional Smitemeister Beethro Budkin. The whole franchise would actually cost a quite impressive amount of moolah if you tried to consume it all at once, but that would just be silly. None of these games are even approaching easy, and there’s a lot of gameplay to be found in each core game and expansion. For the time being, see if you can’t chip the tip off this iceberg. Give DROD: King Dugan’s Dungeon a spin. The first one, as they say, is free.

This weekend marks the duration of the 48 hour game jam held in Philidelphia, more commonly referred to as the Philly Game Jam. Ten developer teams will be working furiously to create their jam games, and having fun all the while. There are some rewards to be handed out which fall under the following categories: Best Use of Theme, Most Innovative, Judges’ Choice and WTF?

What is the theme though? Well, the Philly Game Jam has partnered up with the International Indie Games Day so that the theme is the same as the one for both jams. It’s a picture, the one seen below in fact:

As the Philly Game Jam finishes on June 17th, so does the submission deadline for the games to be part of the Indie Games Day celebrations on June 25th. If you’ve made a game in seven days or less and want to submit it to be part of the celebrations then you need to sign up with the website and then you’ll be able to upload it via the FTP.

International Indie Games Day is intended to celebrate indie games – no more, no less. By submitting your game then it will be made available for people to play for free and may even win a prize during the event.

Are you North American?! Do you own a PS Vita?! Puzzle games – are they lovely?! If you answered “yes” to all of those questions then you should probably make a purchase over on the PS Minis Store. Not just any old thing though, we’re talking specifically about Die Gute Fabrik’s Where Is My Heart?

Why would we be doing such a thing? Well, those who are smarter than the average bear will know that the game has, until now, only been available to European PS Vita owners. Today marks a change as those who reside in North American can also download it. How lovely. Puzzle fans you’ll seriously want to do that too. This one is pretty tough though highly enjoyable. You are set with the task of getting a weird little family back to their homely tree – it’s simply getting the characters from A to B.

Making that journey quite a bit harder is the quite confusing pictogram aesthetics, which sees the levels split into tiles that are connected through non logical sense. You could exit one tile from the right bottom of the screen to emerge out of another at the bottom left, for instance. More gameplay mechanics are added with progression so expect that initial confusing level design to get much more complex.

Where Is My Heart? will most certainly be a good accompaniment to most journeys, so taking it around with you on your Vita would prove to be a real time killer. It’s very easy to get stuck into this one. To purchase it for your PS Vita just go to the Minis section of the PlayStation Store. More information on the game is available on the official website.

Vivacious point-and-click adventure game Botanicula can now be played via web browsers – in demo form, that is.

The newly playable version of the game went live following an announcement made by developers Amanita Design through their Facebook page, resulting in a predictable spate of knowing approval from the game’s loyal fanbase. From this point onwards, those who didn’t deign to pick up the game at release, either through conventional means or as part of the Humble Botanicula Debut bundle, will be able to sample a reasonably lengthy insight into Amanita’s rich, effervescent game world,a prospect that we certainly wouldn’t recommend scoffing at.