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New Assassin's Creed game, Gameloft's 'Gang Domination' coming to GREE platform

A new Assassin's Creed mobile game will launch in December of this year for English and Japanese audiences. The title is being developed by Ubisoft and GREE. In the same breath, GREE is teaming up with Gameloft on Gang Domination, which will be available on various smartphone devices this coming June.

So, what's GREE? Beyond being a company with way too much money, it's a mobile publisher/platform that's huge in Japan and is moving into the global marketplace, launching the GREE Platform in the second quarter of 2012. The company bought mobile social network OpenFeint last year and has offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, London, Beijing, Sao Paulo and Dubai. The company states: "GREE will continue to aggressively expand worldwide."

"GREE will continue to focus on building relationships with third party game developers and publishers as it moves towards releasing its new platform."

So, if GREE wasn't on your radar before, it appears to be a company you're going to be hearing about a lot in the near future.

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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Catball Eats It All

Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Tyson and Matt Anderson of Broken Compass Studios share the artistic influences of their Kickstarter-funded mobile title, Catball Eats It All. Yes, it stars a cat shaped like a ball. You know you're intrigued.



What's your game called and what's it about?

Tyson Anderson: Our game is Catball Eats It All. From a story standpoint, it's about a voracious little furball that eats everything in sight, and... that's it! Short and sweet. From a gameplay perspective, it's an action-puzzle game based around navigating and optimizing paths through levels and mastering responsive play controls.

As a graffiti artist, how did NoseGo get involved with Broken Compass?

Matt Anderson: We all met through a mutual friend Jeff, who is now our very talented producer. Yis Goodwin -- aka NoseGo -- had expressed a desire to make a game featuring his work, and Tyson and I have been working in games for a while. Jeff, in true producer-ly fashion, put the people together, and the magic was there. We clicked, and our visions, both as creators and as a business, quickly solidified.

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The Simpsons 'Tapped Out' in free-to-play iOS game

The Simpsons are going to your phone! Again! Cnet reports that EA is planning to release a free-to-play Simpsons game called The Simpsons: Tapped Out. The free iOS game focuses on rebuilding Springfield after Homer blows it up. Unlockable characters (voiced by the show's actors) will give you quests as you work on your version of the city.

Of course, your progress will be limited every day, unless you purchase virtual currency, in the denomination of "donuts." You'll also be able to find them in town.

Tapped Out is due on iOS in the next few weeks. An Android version will follow a few months later.

WWE WrestleFest on iOS today, coming to XBLA, PSN, PC, Android in 2012

Well, this is definitely the craziest thing to happen in wrestling games in quite some time -- and wrestling is a sport built entirely on human insanity. WWF WrestleFest, the classic arcade game by Technos, has been updated for release on iOS by THQ. The new "WWE Wrestlefest" has smoother graphics and an updated roster of wrestlers (a rostler, if you will) including John Cena and Randy Orton, alongside old-school wrestlers like the late "Macho Man" Randy Savage. It's also been modernized with "an extensive downloadable content program."

The app is available in a free "Lite" version and a $2.99 "Premium" version for iPhone, and both "Lite" and paid for iPad.

THQ also plans to release this new WrestleFest on XBLA, PSN, Android, and PC, sometime in 2012. So we hope the new version is good.

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'A MAZE. Indie Games Award' is open for submissions, amazement

The A MAZE. Indie Games Award 2012, held during the Deutsche Gamestage in Berlin from April 26 to 27, is now taking submissions and will award one single indie game the "Most Amazing Indie Game" title, which would be a pretty awesome thing to put on your resume. The winner is selected by a "high-profile international jury" to be revealed in March, and will receive €5000 ($6,599) and a suitably "amazing trophy."

Submissions are open to anyone and everyone, for a fee of €45 ($59) through March 30, with finalists announced in mid-April. This is just a hunch, but now might be the time to build that rat-maze game you were thinking of at 2 a.m. that one night -- the one with the makeup-testing and cancer-treatment levels. Again, just a hunch.

Idle Thumbs Kickstarter includes exclusive game, neat artwork

It seems everyone's got a Kickstarter nowadays. Double Fine just surpassed $2 million, inXile is going to use Kickstarter to reboot a classic and now the Idle Thumbs video game podcast is using the site to finance its future.

The interesting thing about this Kickstarter campaign, however, is that it includes an exclusive game called Thirty Flights of Loving by Blendo Games. It's a sequel to the one-man indie development studio's previous effort, Gravity Bone, a spy-based affair blending adventure and first-person shooting elements. Thirty Flights of Loving will be given to all backers who drop $30 or more down.

If you want to throw down more cash, Vincent Perea and Graham Annable, the artists behind The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and Puzzle Agent, respectively, will toss in some of their doodlings. So hurry up and help the crew finance their -- oh, they already hit their goal? Okay then, head on over if you want to pay for some stuff you want.

Skyrim Interactive Map App is a world of microtransactions

Still wandering aimlessly around Tamriel, trying to remember where you left your giant pile of buckets? Get out your phone and get some help. Publisher Prima Games just released an official Skyrim map app, beating the fanmade Dragon Shout to the punch.

The app comes with a world map and 9 capital city maps for free, with other detailed locations available through in-app purchases. You can drop pins on points of interest (say, Bucket Stack Alpha) and zoom in 3200%.

While we're a bit shocked that portions of the Skyrim map are behind a paywall in an app that is nothing but maps of that one game, we must concede the point that Skyrim is irresponsibly huge.

Double Fine Adventure surpasses $2 million on Kickstarter


So, that Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter. You know, the one you contributed to. With 22 days left on the campaign, the total sits at $2,005,826 -- 501 percent of the developer's $400,000 goal.

When the project hit its goal (in about eight hours), Double Fine studio head Tim Schafer said the extra money would go into more production values for the games and accompanying 2 Player Productions documentary. The result of that, so far, has been multiplatform, multilingual development of the game.

How many of the world's 6,909 known languages can Double Fine translate into, if the money keeps rolling in like this? Think of all the populations who have never experienced an adventure game!

Fake Pokemon Yellow ends up on iOS App Store

A fraudulent version of the Game Boy Color classic Pokemon Yellow has somehow made it through Apple's approval gauntlet and wound up on the App Store. Published by "Home of Anime" with Daniel Burford listed as the author, the "game" runs for $0.99 and has a one-and-a-half star rating after 1,352 reviews. According to said reviews, the app crashes after the title screen and cannot actually be played.

As if the simple existence of a Pokemon game on the App Store weren't enough of a red flag, the listing's screenshots aren't even from Pokemon Yellow, they're actually from Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green. The app's description also contains unattributed "press quotes" and a statement that "all trademarks and copyrights are owned by their respective owners," because everyone knows that admitting your copyright infringement absolves you of all responsibility, right? We've reached out to Apple for comment.

Editor's Note: My faulty, old-man brain confused the fact that Pokemon Yellow launched with a Poke-themed Game Boy Color, with it actually being a Game Boy Color game (which it was not). I've exploded an Electrode in penance.

Robota: Vengeance pits robots against genetically modified dinosaurs



Robota: Vengeance
would be your average CGI robot-warfare game featuring gladiator-style combat with genetically modified dinosaurs, if not for three important factors:
  1. The franchise was created by Academy Award winner Doug Chiang, lead designer on Star Wars: Episode 1 and 2, and creative director for Industrial Light and Magic, working on Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Forrest Gump and other titles.
  2. Robota will be released for iOS and Android as the first full-scale rival to Infinity Blade.
  3. It has genetically modified dinosaurs.
Developed by indie studio SiXiTS, Robota: Vengeance has players build their own custom robots, and then battle giant, evil robots and -- did we mention? -- genetically modified dinosaurs, all while discovering the secrets that lie within themselves. SiXiTS is holding a Kickstarter to fund the project, asking for $100,000 from potential fans to bring Robota to mobile devices and the web.

Check out the video above and if you're intrigued, head on over to its Kickstarter page, and gauge how much you want to invest in genetically modified dinosaurs. We mean, Robota: Vengeance. Same thing.

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