This is another game that crept up on us.  It's a game called Banished and it's a realistic simulator for probably what would be something similar to an early 19th century town.  It features realistic population growth and food gathering.  It's slated for a mid to late 2013 release.  There are more videos and pictures available on www.shiningrocksoftware.com

Gamespot released this video of Total War: Rome 2.  I've always enjoyed the Total War series as it always mixes realistic battles with a sandbox campaign mode allowing to run your country through a grand map.  The Total War series finally comes full circle back to the time period that brought us Total War.  I for one cannot wait to rule Rome and command it's armies.  The only thing Total War: Rome needed was a better UI, better AI and a bit of polish.  This tech demo shows what we have been waiting for all this time.

This is an example of what a great action adventure puzzle game should be like.  It's sandboxy and hilarious.  The beta is on Steam but you need an access code.  I'm not sure if they are still giving out beta keys but if you are interested I recommend signing up for the newsletter at gunpoint.com.  The video above doesn't do the game justice.

Civilization V: Brave New World will bring about a much needed improvement to the culture and diplomatic victory.  Policy Adoption will play a more important role with conflicting ideologies becoming more important in how you interact with other civilizations.  The emphasis is to improve the late game experience and make the culture and diplomatic victories more viable and more interesting.  A type of archaeology system will be added to the game.  Trade will become more important bringing about a new unit called the caravan.  A world congress will be featured.  Nine new civilizations and 2 new scenarios and new units and buildings.  This new expansions is slated for release this summer.

Day Z - TBA

Day Z Game Official Site

I am not one of those zombie loving hipsters.  I'm not even a fan of post apocalyptic horror films and games.  I don't really like them, I'm not into the theme.  But Day Z has capitivated me.  I'm a fan of simulations, I'm a fan of realism.  Day Z gives a chance to experience what life could really be like in a zombie apocalypse.  With humans fighting together and against each other in an endless war for beans, ammunition and survival.  Dubbed Hiking Simulator 2013 by some, the great moments come when you meet face to face with another human and must decide weather to try and talk to them or shoot them and steal there stuff.  Looking online you can find some spectacular moments that have been found in the Arma 2 Mod version of this game.  Day Z is truly deserving of it's standalone version and we are all hoping the fews bugs will be few and there will hopefully be far less hacking.  This game has more potential than most games coming out 2013.

The game has been delayed, and understandably so.  The game is ambitious and the technological problems they face are vast.  My guess is we will know more by summer and we can probably expect some kind of beta by Q3 2013.

Arma III - Q3 2013

Arma 3 Steam

The world's premier military simulator is already available on Steam in a Alpha version.  We're all hoping that Arma 3 brings the needed polish and user friendliness that Arma 2 so badly needed.  The Arma series has been notoriously difficult to get into, primarily because it is a military sandbox.  

Europa Universalis IV - Q3 2013

Feature List of Paradox Forum

What are we going to do tonight Brain?  The same thing we do every night Pinky... try and take over the world.  Come on you know you want to.  Pick your favorite country, and go from there.  With a new trade system involving your navy, a revised combat system, revised religion, revised map and everything any Europa fanboy could want.  This is my most anticipated game of the year.

Civilization Brave New World - Summer 2013

This new expansion set to release this summer will feature new much needed diplomatic features and revised trade system.  It will also feature a sort of cultural mini game, featuring ideological wars.  Not a lot of information is out, but it sounds like cultural victories may be more viable and more interesting.  Think cold war scenario.

Stardrive - May 2013, Beta availabe now

Stardrive on Steam

Featuring tons of 4x features, the beta version is out on Steam and the full version is on it's way.  It's 4x space empire game that features the usual ship building and research trees.  The combat system will probably set this game apart from the others.  It features crew boarding and ground forces into the genre, something that has been largely been ignored or abstracted away in other games like Endless Space.  The twist is that it's real time and you can even control one of your ships with WASD.  It's a strange game, something that hasn't really been done before.  I am torn between playing this and Endless Space.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game - August 2013

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

I have never waited so patiently in anticipation of a board game before.  In the genre of the new "living card games" made somewhat popular by Fantasy Flight.  Paizo Publishing, publisher of the now popular D&D reboot Pathfinder is creating a card game version of Pathfinder.  Instead of having the dungeon master tell you what is happening in your adventure, the game tells you what's happening and all of the items, characters, locations and adventure lie within hundreds of cards.  The base set will be released in August 2013 at GenCon in Indianapolis.  Subsequently more and more of the adventure will be released on a monthly basis, adding more and more cards to the game.  Something like a 1000 cards will released by the end of the first adventure.  It's a persistent card, something which hasn't been done hardly at all.  You level up, you find loot and defeat monsters and you keep going until you die.  It's a cooperative game that can even be played solo.

Eclipse IOS - Probably May 2013

Big Daddy Creations

The board game is a hugely successful space empire building game that is complex, yet streamlined.  It includes ship building and tech trees.  However the game is getting even more streamlined and being put onto the iPad with AI.

Eminent Domain Escalation - December 2013

Eminent Domain Escalation Kickstarter

As of right now there are 57 hours left in the Kickstart campaign for the board game expansion for Eminent Domain.  Eminent Domain is an excellent new twist on deck building strategy and the expansion will probably prove to be just as innovative.  I love playing this game and I am looking for to this expansion.  You can get the original game through the Kickstarter as well.  I highly recommend this game.

Warhammer Quest (IOS) - April 2013

Rodeo Games

Warhammer Quest is one of those unique board games made a long time ago by Games Workshop.  It wasn't initially all that successful, but the world changes and people came to realize how great the game was.  Now the board game sells for $400 on Ebay and there is still no talk of a reprint.  The board game is dungeon tile questing game in which you continue playing and exploring the dungeons leveling up your character.  So the game doesn't end just like every other dungeon crawling game, it keeps going.  You visit towns, get items, fight monsters and level up.  Now the game is coming to IPads and IPhones.  It's being made by the same people that made Hunters which is there own custom strategic fighting game that would probably fit well in the realm of Warhammer 40,000.  I recommend checking out Rode Games

I have hoped this day would come for years.  A digital download of Age of Empires II (1999) is coming to Steam and not only that it's going to support modern native resolutions and multiple monitors!  No longer will you have to resort to Amazon, adventuring or pirating just to find a copy of this glorious game.  I can't say how many times I have bought a copy of this game, but it's been more than twice.  Incidentally I somehow still have my copy of Age of Empires I with the massive manual that came with it.  However it just goes to show how timeless this game really is.

Finally Microsoft found the lost screw and got one there of many heads properly attached to the body of the mighty hydra beast that is Microsoft. This game needed a digital download because it's a big fat giant pinata filled with money.  Microsoft is going to finally cash in as the game will be available on Steam for $19.99, currently $17.99 before release.  That's a mighty big profit considering the game has already paid for itself and the development being put into it is not some kind of massive rewrite or expansion.

The game is getting a lot of great features that are going to make the age of AOE less obvious and with the Forbidden Empires mod which improves AI, the game will be a beast that will transcend it's own age.  If you already have the game and haven't tried out the Forbidden Empires mod, then you are missing out on the best improvement to the game, the only improvement it really needed, better AI.  This is a glorious day.

I shouldn't have to tell anyone reading this how good Age of Empires II is, if so you are on the wrong blog.  You can be sure when I finally finish my best strategy games of all times list, this will be in the top 3 if not number one.

Here are the features:

• Native Resolution Support
• Multiple Monitor Support (No word on how many monitors)
• Texture Revision (No more running into the notorious 256 color bug)
• Steam Multiplayer Support
• Steam Workshop Support
• Game will be complete with campaigns and all features from the Conquerors Expansion.

Links:
Forgotten Empires
Age of Empires II HD on Steam

About a year ago I posted a video about a game in development called Castle Story.  The engine looked promising and the gameplay looked awesome.  To push a long the game into final development stages and for publishing.  The programmers behind Castle Story started a Kickstarter to fund the game to be published.  They asked the Kickstarter community for $80,000 and so far they have gotten $250,000 and they still have a whopping 27 days to go.  The fund currently has over 9,400 backers.

The Kickstarter will expire on August 27 in which the project will be fully funded and then some.  I highly recommend putting up some money towards it just to get some early access to the game.  They also have T-Shirts and posters and the ability to get your name in the credits.  It's nice to hard work for game with a lot of promise being rewarded.  These guys deserve it.

Follow to the link below to help fund them even more.  There is great video there with some new and interesting gameplay.

Kickstarter - Castle Story

Update 8/9/2012 - Castle Story has reached over $420,000 with 17 days to go!

Update 9/7/2012 - Castle Story Kickstarter campaign has finished with over $700,000.

German publisher Kalypso Media, publisher of Sins of a Solar Empires and Tropico 3 and 4, is publishing a new game about space faring civilizations.  This new game will be a blend of turn based and real time strategy labeled as a 4X strategy game.  The grand map will be turn-based and the battles will be real time.  Planets will not always be friendly to your species, so many will need to be terraformed.  After colonizing a planet, you will build buildings on the planet and specialize it to your strategic interests.

One of the most interesting parts of the game is the extremely customizable ships.  You will choose a chassis and then custom fit your ships with a considerably large amount of modules for specialization.  The video below shows a few seconds of what this is like.  The game reminds me a bit of Sword of the Stars, but Kalypso has a better reputation for releasing more polished games than Paradox.

The game will support multiplayer of up to 8 players and 40 hours of single player campaign mode.  Of course there will be a sandbox.  The game will include 3 races and numerous "guilds" which will be minor factions or corporations.  These guilds may have planets that are colonized and aligned with them. 

Novacore Studios which is developing the game is a new German developer.  Legends of Pegasus will be it's first game to be published.  The graphics which I don't generally put much emphasis on are just too beautiful to ignore.

Video

Races

Guilds

The game is available for pre-order on Steam for $33.99 at a discount from $39.99.  The game will be released on August 10th and the pre-order price will no longer be available.

Crusader Kings II was released by Paradox Interactive today.  It is a Europa style game with a heavy religious undertone to it.  It could prove to quite an improvement over the previous Crusader Kings.  The game is not yet available on Steam and there is no word on when it will be.  Generally for Paradox games it can take a month or two for that to happen.  The game is however available from several other sources.

Buy the game here
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Every once in awhile you come along a preview of a game that screams "Shut Up and Take My Money!". I already want to try this little game even though it is in very early stages of development. It mixes some strategic castle building, minimalistic but beautiful 3D art and brilliant physics engine that can make for some surprisingly impressive destructive events.

This game being put together by a small group of people at Sauropod Studio. For how simple it is at the moment, it shows much promise.

Paradox Interactive has announced that the Magna Mundi beta testing is on the horizon. Signup as soon as possible!

Official Magna Mundi Beta Signup Page

Paradox has released a game trailer and developer interview for the upcoming Magna Mundi. I know many Europa Universalis fans who cannot wait for this title. Here is a trailer with some gameplay video.

Here is an interview with one of the Magna Mundi developers about the battle engine.

If you want to know much more detailed information about this title, you should take a look through the developer diaries. They provide tons of information. Still no word on an official release date.

Netropolis is back!  On November 11, 2011, 2:00 PM EST Netropolis III will be alive and well at www.netroworld.com.  If you aren't familiar with the famed browser based game, I'll go into some details.  Netropolis was an early browser based game which most likely helped spawn some of later browser based games to come after it.  It's essentially a business simulator where you begin in a city with a certain amount of buildings types and money.  You work your way up through that city creating buildings in prime locations and getting higher level HQ's for more buildings.  You build store fronts near streets, campsites near forests, etc. 

The most interesting part of the game by far is the player interaction.  You can deface your rivals properties with spray paint, spread fire throughout the city with firebombs or just plain blow your opponents to oblivion.  Making enemies is a sure fire way to get your own properties burnt to the ground, so often the strategy is to slowly pick up properties without creating too much of a ruckus.  Being the new guy in the neighborhood is often difficult, but once you secure a block of property, you simply defend your territory.  Often the game feels very political in nature, simply defending your property and not attacking the wrong person. 

See our full interview with Damon Grainger to see what to expect in the latest version of Netropolis.

Update 7:42 PM

Netropolis is currently down throughout the weekend because of some unforseen problems.  It should hopefully be back up by Monday.

Update Nov 21 2011

Netropolis will be live about 3:00 PM EST November 22nd!  Remember the game is still in beta testing, so hiccups are bound to occur.

Update Nov 22 2011

Netropolis is back down again, no word on the next uptime.

Update Nov 29 2011

Netropolis will be re-released with limited features Dec 1st at 2 PM EST.

Update Dec 1 2011

The release date has come and passed and still no Netropolis, when the site goes live I will send word out.

Paradox Interactive announced a new game a few months back called War of the Roses.  FatShark, the makers of Lead and Gold appear to be giving the makers of Mount & Blade a run for there money.  While Mount & Blade: Warbands was a wild success with some small problems here and there, Fire & Sword was an utter failure.  While boasting much potential, Fire & Sword is simply an unfinished game that should have never been published.  While War of the Roses most likely won't be the type of command and control Mount & Blade was, it certainly will be a much better looking first/third person medieval fighting game.

Just like Mount & Blade it appears the main focus will be multiplayer combat.  War of the Roses will be more of an RPG than a strategy game most likely, but the details are small.  All I know is that in the realm of first person shooters, all of the games made about World War II, the medieval landscape is finally going to get it's just due.  Modern Warfare is great and all, but medieval games are small in number.  It's about time knights get the first person shooter treatment.  I can see it now, Call of Duty: Not So Modern Warfare.  The trailer doesn't reveal much at all but is worth a look.

War of the Roses Site

If you have played Europa Universalis chances are you have at least heard of Magna Mundi.  It has been a mod for Europa Universalis III for quite some time now.  Now Magna Mundi is going to be fully loaded.  Magna Mundi, meaning "Great things of the World" in Latin, has a full development team and should be released as it's own game sometime in mid January 2012.

Even though the game is originally a mod of Europa Universalis III, it will be nothing like Europa Universalis III, just as the mod was nothing like it.  Unrealistic things happen in Europa Universalis III.  Things that would never happen even in alternate universes.  Magna Mundi will be the opposite and will be shooting for historical realism and depth.  This will be a political game where you have to deal with the realities of the times.  The game will last from 1453 to 1815.

In Europa Universalis you will occasionally get a random stability hit with only a couple of sentences explaining why you got the stability hit.  There is no real explanation of why it happened, it's really just a random dice roll in the background based on a few factors of your government.  In Magna Mundi you are going understand why your country is destabilizing because you will be much more involved with the personable decision making process of a ruler.  Events will chain off of eachother to create the story of your nation.  These events will be directly influenced by your decisions.  It is the decisions that you make that will shape your country.  Like so many things in life, you will not have direct control over ever facet of your country.

The game will be global in nature.  Diplomacy is rather weak in Europa Universalis III while in Magna Mundi your diplomatic options will be less vague, more direct and more plentiful.  You will face the actual hardships of controlling colonies across the seas.  You will face the reality of what it means to be a ruler.  You will need to keep your allies close and your enemies closer. 

Over 50 trade goods will be represented in the game and trade will be much more in depth.  No longer will you be able to simply convert a province to a single religion, because most provinces will have multiple religions.  All of these things will come together to make a more plausible sandbox to play in.  While you can change the world in Magna Mundi, you will not be able to conquer it.  You will be one ruler, and one person can only do so much.  If you like politics, diplomacy, history and realism then Magna Mundi will be a game you will want to look into.  If you only really care about military conquest, then you probably be disappointed in Magna Mundi.

Power projection is as important of a term today as it was in history.  Magna Mundi will focus on how you make others look at your country and when you are tested weather you are willing to back up your decisions with force or retreat back to safety.  How your people look at your rule is going to matter.  How other people see your country is going to matter.

Unfortunately the latest mod version of Magna Mundi does not work for Divine Wind, but if you have Heir to the Throne I highly recommend checking it out. 

Mods

For more information about the full game check out the official site.

Magna Mundi