New game releases.
Today’s Deal: Save 67% on Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI and the Digital Deluxe Edition!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends May 20 at 10AM Pacific Time
If you are looking for a tool to quickly create complex shaders by mixing and matching existing shaders, ShaderFrog might be the perfect tool for you! Running entirely in your browser, ShaderFrog can be used to create WebGL shaders in two ways. First you can create a shader by connecting together existing shaders, to create a new composite shader. Shaders can even be imported from ShaderToy or the GLSL Sandbox.
In addition to the composition based approach, there is also a full blown GLSL text editor with automatic compilation/error reporting, syntax highlighting and more. Once you are happy with your created shader, you can save it, share it, or export it to iOS, Unity or Three.js.
Check out ShaderFrog in action in the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEC5NGbf_d4&w=853&h=480]
Today’s Deal: Save 75% on Homefront®: The Revolution and up to 66% on its DLC!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time
BabylonJS, an open source browser based game engine, just released a major update in the form of the 4.0 release. In addition to a website makeover and new forums, the 3D game engine gained several improvements including a new Inspector, improved PBR rendering capabilities, physics support via the Ammo.js plugin and much more. If you are interested in learning BabylonJS, be sure to check out our existing tutorial series available here.
Top level features from the release notes:
Be sure to check the complete release notes for more details, as there are dozens more improvements as well as several breaking changes for Babylon v3.x developers to be aware of.
BabylonJS is open source and available on GitHub under the Apache open source license. It ships with an excellent interactive playground that makes learning and playing with BabylonJS a breeze. There is also a complete cloud based level editor available here. Check out the video below to learn more about this release and to see that playground, inspector and editor in action.
Video HERE
Today’s Deal: Save 50% on Heliborne and its DLC Bundle Heliborne Total Camo Pack!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Sunday at 10AM Pacific Time
It’s been a bit of a slower week this week but hopefully you’ve all found something to your liking – not as many reviews as I’d like but everyone is working on something, so the pipeline will keep spitting out new entries for the index and we’re working on a couple of new features as well.
I especially like updating the Upcoming Mobile Games feature, as it allows me to go back through the various bits of news we don’t always get to cover, and get hyped for the rest of the year.
Meanwhile, in mobile gaming…
This game released last week but we forgot to give it a mention – the SpellForce series can chart its origins to the wild days of 2003, where it’s spent most of 15 years across 8 releases masquerading as a real-time strategy/RPG. Now the series is making its mobile debuts with SpellForce: Heroes & Magic, and it’s ditched the standard flow of time to offers a turn-based strategy experience instead.
It’s leaving the story and lore of the SpellForce universe largely untouched, and offers both a free play or a 13-mission adventure mode. There are three playable races, six neutral factions, and you have to build up your kingdom, explore the surroundings and defeat your enemies in turn-based hex combat.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0RZ2k8HKCY?controls=0]
This one ticks multiple PT Bingo boxes this week – it’s got ‘Spell’ in it, like our top entry, and is a roguelike deck-builder RPG with card mechanics and procedural generation. One of it’s unique hooks is reported to be ‘Card Fusion’, so you can finally summon that Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon that you’ve been dreaming of all these years.
On a serious note, this game is yet another newcomer in what’s becoming a rapidly over-crowded genre. The aesthetic is certainly cool, but it depends whether the gameplay can back it up – we’ll bring you our thoughts as soon as we can.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exse2lLogB8?controls=0]
On PC I’ve been a fan of games like Space Engineers and Kerbal Space Program for years. I don’t quite have the fortitude (or the math) to play them as much as I’d want to, but I’m glad they exist and they are fun to drop into every now and then.
Lunar Rescue Mission is no KSP, but it boasts realistic phsyics and several different vehicles that require mastering as you travel across sectors trying to rescue stranded colonists. Quite keen to get a review done for this one as it’s different and something you often see, plus it’s not even that expensive. It’s been in beta on Android since at least 2017, but now its released fully on both platforms.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw8JMcg16-0?controls=0]
And last but certainly not least, Tropico’s iOS port is now available on iPhone, as well as iPad, making it a universal app. Just go to wait for that android version now…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg2zKSkRjTk?controls=0]
Now that Carriers are well and truly out the door the Trese brother’s unrelenting pace of updates is back on track. Update #146 adds two new female faces, adds a new prototype Bounty Hunter story mission and a whole bunch of QoL fixes. The full change-log can be seen on steam.
Evolution has had a few updates since it released, but the most recent one allows Premium users to play for free with any friends or family that are only using the ‘free’ version of the game.
Asmodee Digital are having a Spring Sale on both iOS & Android, with the following games going for up to 60% off:
It’s May 4th tomorrow, but plenty of places are getting in early with their Star Wars celebrations – everyone’s favourite Bioware RPG is currently half-price on both mobile platforms, just in case you STILL haven’t picked it up yet.
Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
Planet Nomads is Now Available on Steam and is 20% off!*
There’s a whole planet of diverse biomes waiting for you to explore. Gather enough materials to build a mobile base that will carry everything a Nomad needs on a journey through an unknown land.
*Offer ends May 10 at 10AM Pacific Time
Unity are currently running their annual May Madness sale on their asset store. Over 380 of the most popular assets on the store are currently on sale for 50% off or more. Additionally they are offering 4 theme based bundles at 55% off, where you only need to buy the items you don’t already own to get the additional savings. Finally there are daily specials all month, that are up to 70% off.
The bundles include:
Obviously the daily special changes on a daily basis, so be sure to check the asset store daily for the new special. Watch the video embedded below for more details.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvDCxSJVu_g&w=853&h=480]
Announcement – Valve
10:10am
*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time
Save 30% on PC Building Simulator as part of this week’s Weekend Deal*!
Build and grow your very own computer repair enterprise as you learn to diagnose, fix and build PCs. With real-world licensed components and comprehensive hardware and software simulation, you can plan and bring your ultimate PC to life!
*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time
