Planet Coaster is the spiritual successor to RollerCoaster Tycoon, that beloved series of theme park simulators. The basic premise hasn’t changed much—build a park, fill it with rides, keep the punters happy—but now there are many extra layers of complexity. The simulation is richer the creation tools are more powerful. “I worked on the RollerCoaster...
Kalypso Media, the studio behind the long-running Tropico series, has announced its new game, a “city ruler” sim called Urban Empire. It will feature elements of city building games, but instead of working as an overblown urban planner, you’ll take control of one of four unique families, each with its own interests and priorities, and...
Space jockeys rejoice! Oculus VR announced today that the space combat-slash-trucking sim Elite Dangerous will offer native support for the Oculus Rift VR headset. Even better, it’s only a few weeks away: The Oculus version of Elite will be released as a Rift launch title on March 28. Elite Dangerous has actually been playable on...
Bear Simulator, which was fed on $100,000 Kickstarter cash after requesting $30,000, is being put to sleep. Unlike many light-hearted Kickstarter sims, however, the update announcing its demise comes over honest, honourable and sad, if a little naive. On Sunday, John Farjay, the sole developer, declared that he would be putting the project aside because Bear...
A strange and troubling spot of drama recently swept through the Spintires community, in the form of allegations that developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj had inserted crash-inducing “time bombs” into the game’s code in retaliation for the failure of publisher Oovee to pay him for his work. Four different bugs appeared in quick succession, each of them...
Horizons is, basically, a four-part “season” of expansions for Frontier Developments’ heavily-armed space trucking sim Elite: Dangerous. It began with Planetary Landings in December, and will continue through three more add-ons spread throughout 2016: The Engineers, which will add a new mission system and “game-changing loot”; Guardians, promising enhanced combat through the addition of ship-launched...
Last night’s livestream with Planet Coaster’s art director John Laws was a series of improbable statements somehow accompanied by footage to back them up. From earlier videos, I had some idea that Frontier’s new theme park sim, a spiritual successor to RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, was rich with detail and flexible in the extreme—see here for a clip...
Remember Spintires? It’s the extraordinarily Russian off-road driving sim that earned attention for both its unique subject material (and accurate rendition thereof) and the ugly conflict between creator Pavel Zagrebelnyj and UK-based publiser Oovee. Those problems appeared to be ironed out early last year, but last week Zagrebelnyj told Eurogamer that the publisher owes him...
After waking up on a pile of dirt in a cave, I’ve scrounged around for a bit, eaten two old pizzas and some strange mushrooms, had a couple cold cups of coffee, and broken into a cabin to steal a hat. Next on my agenda: playing Bear Simulator. Bear Simulator is a bear simulator. It’s a first-person...
That wall’s not gonna fund itself. With all this talk of ‘primaries’, ‘caucuses’ and ‘supreme mugwumps’, I can safely say the US electoral system is more arcane than it has right to be in a country under three centuries old. Today is Super Tuesday, during which a bunch of states get together and exercise their right to vote for a...
