The Imagine Cup 2012 Worldwide Finals are to be taking place in Sydney, Australia this upcoming July, and the ten game design finalists for Xbox 360 or Windows have been announced. Students from around the world have been submitting their games in order to represent their country and to hopefully win the big cash prizes at the end of it. New this year were a couple of awards from Coca-Cola – both the Health Awareness Award and Environmental Sustainability Award encourage entries to tackle relevant issues regarding those topics and that has been reflected in the games.

There’s some interesting games to talk about it – a pertinent title from Japan focusing on restoring a city after a Tsunami, a Kinect-based Tai Chi title from China, and a cute Brazilian city planning game are some of the highlights. After three gruelling rounds of judging, the final ten have been picked and you can see them all below with a trailer to complement each.

BLUE FIELD by Esperanza (Japan)

An RTS title which has the player rebuilding a city after a tsunami hits.

InBalance by HammerBird (Ukraine)

Isometric strategy game about health and environment.

Influence by Hotfix (Belgium)

Strategy/Puzzle game about influencing for change.

Nano by Nano (France)

Action puzzler game about genetics and gene sequences.

Robert’s Quest by Radiant (Iceland)

Side-scrolling platformer about cleaning up the environment.

Clean World by Red Phoenix Studios (Portugal)

Third person action game featuring an animated machine aimed at cleaning up the environment.

Verdant Fantasy by TANG Thai (Thailand)

Multiplayer action game about the environment.

Bloom*Block by Team Blossom (Japan)

3D puzzle game about the environment.

Do More by The Doers (Brazil)

Strategy game about city planning.

TaiJi by xidianembed_6 (China)

Kinect-based Tai Ji game for health and well-being.

Via Andrew Parsons

The developers of Satazius, Astro Port, have released their top-down tank shmup Super Tank Warfare: ADVENTIA to Japanese players; for everyone else there’s the demo and it’s definitely worth playing!

We’re not sure of the exact details of the storyline for Super Tank Warfare, but it’s set just shortly after World War II when a secret military base is set-up and develops devastating technology in a ploy to take over the world – that kind of thing. You’ll be playing as a squadron of chirpy ladies who are clearly out to stop them. There are five of them altogether and each of them correspond to a different gun for your tank, you can select up to three. There’s some great variation between each of the guns too, from the standard one-shot to a spread shot and even huge balls of electric which can be used while you hide behind cover.

Super Tank Warfare is of course an arcade game through and through so the levels are fairly short but they make up with that with huge explosions to complement the meaty shooting. The tank isn’t the most maneuverable of vehicles of course, so anticipating the enemies fire is quite essential. Most of them don’t fire that often but the bigger ones will take quite the pounding in order to distract you while the smaller ones attempt a flanking maneuver. Later into the demo you’ll also have mines to dodge and turrets to deal with, or even turn against your opponents.

Then of course you have your big boss tanks to deal with. There’s only two of them in the demo and both are pretty easy to take down as their attacks are very easy to dodge. Still very fun though. After each level you can use the experience gained to upgrade each of your guns, movement speed and armor. Your health will also be replenished a little, which does mean that you won’t start off every level with full health.

Download the demo for Super Tank Warfare yourself, we highly recommend it – just click on this link and it’s all yours.

You can find out more information about Super Tank Warfare: ADVENTIA over on the game’s official website.

At long last the mystery of the contents of Bundle In A Box: The Adventure Bundle are revealed to you all! This is a new bundle launched as the first of many thematic bundles to come. In this first bundle, the wonderfully quirky The Sea Will Claim Everything is being launched as a brand new release and you can read our preview of that right here. 1893: A World’s Fair Mystery is also the first text-based adventure title to be part of a bundle.

The seven adventure titles contained within are available as DRM-free downloads for Windows at a pay-what-you-want rate, a couple of them also come with Steam and Desura codes. The minimum expenditure is $2.99 which will bag you five of the games, with the other two requiring an over the average spend. The minimum price will drop $0.05 for every 500 purchases and for every 10,000 sales an extra will be unlocked. There are three extras altogether: the Gemini Rue soundtrack, a never-before-seen Metal Dead Making Of PDF booklet and the soundtrack to The Shivah.

The Bundle In A Box is also being very generous with the money it receives as for every 15,000 bundles sold $2,000 will be added to the fund and the whole sum will be given to one developer selected by vote at the end of the bundle. The Indie Dev Grant is open to everyone. On top of that, they’re also supporting the Greek charity, Perivolaki – The Hellenic Centre for Mental Health and Treatment of Child and Family, which the organizers hold close to their hearts.

Here’s the full game lineup:

• Gemini Rue by Joshua Nuernberger (direct, Steam, Desura)
• Ben There, Dan That! Special Edition by Size Five Games (direct, Steam, Desura)
• Time Gentlemen, Please! by Size Five Games (direct, Steam, Desura)
• The Sea Will Claim Everything by Jonas Kyratzes (direct download only)
• 1893: A World’s Fair Mystery by The Illuminated Lantern (direct download only)

Available to those who pay above the average:

• Metal Dead by Walk Thru Walls (direct, Desura)
• The Shivah by Wadjet Eye Games (direct download only)

You can purchase the Bundle In A Box over on the official website.

The ’2.5d’ FPS will likely never die. With engines like EDuke32 (based on Duke Nukem 3D) and ZDoom (based on Doom, surprisingly enough) still being updated and refined, and the tools required to make games in these engines being so simple to use, they’re a great entry-level outlet for indie creativity and even the occasional full, standalone freeware game.

The AMC Team is one of those full games. A sprawling, wildly ambitious full-length FPS with 8 playable characters, many enemies and environments shamelessly stolen from 16 years of shooter history, and a fair few ideas of its own including some light RPG elements. Set long after the Duke Nukem series (and after the death of Duke himself), and simultaneously being sequel to three other mods by three separate developers, AMC really is ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ design at work.

Each of the 8 characters has their own starting home within the mission hub area, their own full arsenal of weapons and powerups, and even some unique areas opened up in some levels depending on who you’re playing as. 95% of the content seems to be looted from other games, with the second main campaign level featuring some enemies used frequently in Doom mods, but that also means that it seldom repeats itself. The tonal change between the first and second levels alone is massive, and I can’t wait to see what other strange directions the game goes in.

It’s obviously an amateur effort – the decision to fully voice the (many) cutscenes is undermined somewhat amusingly by the cast of gravel-voiced elite commando types being played by the same band of meek British and Swedish modders that created the levels. It provides a few laughs at first, but it does make skipping the cutscenes altogether a tempting prospect, along with disabling your characters own random Duke-esque wisecracking. Both are options, thankfully.

Still, imagination and creativity prevail in the end. Lots of neat little features on show, like your objective window being replaced by sinister babble when you’re too close to evil alien mega-brains, and one character having possibly the best grenade launcher in gaming history. Why? The alt-fire mode on it shows you a quick holographic projection of how the shot will travel, so you have no excuse to ever blow yourself up again.

Difficulty is thoroughly old-school. The core gameplay is very Duke 3D in style. That means that enemies can rip through your health bar in seconds. Anything above Normal difficulty will require very extensive saving and loading to get past the tougher fights. There seems to be a fair amount of depth, including a weapon upgrade store system, and even a research tree to invest in to upgrade gear and characters over time.

It’s seriously impressive stuff – back in the day, this would have easily commanded full price (assuming it wasn’t a freakish franken-game made of pilfered content) and been hailed as a forward-thinking piece of design. As it is, it’s a really neat little throwback, and well worth a look if you like your shooters fast and challenging. Check out the trailer (actual gameplay begins at the 1:40 mark) and download the game on ModDB.