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With what we're told is the weekend of Labor Day ahead of us, an Impulse sale is trying to do its best to keep us indoors on this last unofficial weekend of summer. The Impulse store currently has some great titles at deep discounts.

Stardock-published games Sins of a Solar Empire (with Entrenchment) and Demigod are both only $20. Meanwhile, the economic real-time strategy sim Dawn of Discovery is $25. There's plenty of other deals, including World of Goo for $10, so try not to spend those last fleeting days of summer inside. We dare you.

[Via Big Download]

Demigod has finally seen fit to grant a demo to the masses. Gas Powered Games' RTS now comes in a bite-sized offering, in which players have access to one map and four playable demigods (Regulus, Rook [pictured], Sedna and Lord Erebus). All gameplay modes are available in the demo.

The Stardock-published title did have a shaky launch -- thanks to pirates -- but the company has since apologized for the overburdened server loads, and things seem to be in working order. Definitely worth checking out for RTS fans who only have time for short games.

Demigod, the latest from Gas Powered Games, has had quite a rocky start since it launched in April. Its servers were first overrun with pirates and the network problems continued to persist into May. Stardock, the game's publisher, promised to dole out coupons to players as an apology for the poor network performance, and Big Download reports that customers are starting to receive them.

The coupons will allow anyone to purchase the game for 50 percent off the standard $39.99 price. We're not quite sure how offering a discount to new customers amounts to an apology to current customers, but it's definitely better than nothing. We're sure it might also serve to help new customers take the plunge despite the reported issues.

So, how about it, Demigod players, have you received your coupon yet? Did you manage to convince a friend to pick up the game? For that matter, have you stuck with the game despite its problems?

[Via BD]

For those of you not playing that other fantasy RTS with giant beasts on PC (*cough* Demigod *cough*), there's always the card-based strategery of Phenomic's BattleForge. The newest trailer released (seen above) showcases not just the massive scale of some rather colorful battles but also some of the most dramatic music we've ever heard. And what does the sound of tribal drumming bring with it? Apparently a price drop, as EA announced today that the game's price is lowering to a more competitive $29.99.

We'd love to tell you more about the online-only PC game but when we tried to get a hands-on at New York City Comic Con, wouldn't ya know it, the servers went down. We can, however, point you to the game's website where a free demo is waiting patiently for you to download it.

Demigod appears to have been a pirates' cove at launch, as Stardock CEO Brad Wardell explained on his blog a couple days ago: Out of the 120,000 connections on launch day, only 18,000 were legitimate customers (that's not sales, merely "concurrent users"). Obviously, this situation put quite a strain on the servers. He explained that Stardock stress tested for 50,000 players at peak times and wasn't expecting to hit those numbers for weeks.

A letter from Stardock this morning notes that "most" launch day issues were resolved yesterday afternoon. A "doppleganger" of the network was created, along with an update for legitimate players, which now directs them to the clean servers. It's a pretty nasty situation for Stardock, which has actually put faith in gamers by not placing copy protection on its games.

[Via Edge]

Stardock employees had their Easter weekend ruined by GameStop when the retailer decided to break street date on the Gas Powered Games-developed action RTS, Demigod. "We were looking forward to the weekend to recover," Stardock CEO Brad Wardell wrote on the publisher's official forum. "Instead, we found ourselves back at work having to turn on and configure the multiplayer matchmaking servers."

Beyond losing vacation time, Wardell theorizes the early availability of Demigod will cause piracy of the copy protection-free title to be "maximized." But the outspoken (anti-intrusive DRM) exec says Demigod's early release may serve as proof of the actual effects of piracy. In response to GameStop's decision, Stardock released the game via its own digital distribution service, Impulse, a day early (on Monday).

While Wardell wouldn't discuss speculation that GameStop intentionally released Demigod early to combat Stardock's digital distribution service, the CEO says Stardock is in talks with GameStop to find out "how this happened."

[Via Gamasutra]

The latest video of Demigod is actually a four-minute walkthrough of the game with Executive Producer (and Stardock CEO) Brad Wardell. It's been hard to describe Gas Powered Games' Demigod because it's not a conventional RTS. Players mainly focus on leveling up and keeping alive their main deity character, so there are a lot of RPG elements in the game as well.

The video does a solid job of describing what a typical multiplayer match is like. We've had some time with the beta, and the focus of the game is to keep the action going and avoid the micromanagement in normal RTS titles -- a match can be finished in about a half-hour. Although it's not shown in this video, the camera is completely free to set at whatever angle you'd like to experience the action, which is actually pretty cool once The Rook starts whaling on troops. This PC only title -- which once you play, you won't understand why that is -- will be available this April.

Stardock let us know that Demigod is ready to take control of PCs April 14. The new-fangled RTS, developed by Gas Powered Games, is priced at $39.95 for the standard version and $49.99 for the collector's edition. The additional ten-spot will net deity wannabes a soundtrack CD, poster and a pewter figurine of The Rook.

Demigod is also available to purchase on Stardock's Impulse digital distribution system. The game will utilize Impulse for its multiplayer functionality, too, but full details have yet to be revealed.

Stardock just seems to "get it" when it comes to not putting any more burden on our time (or wallets) during the holiday season. The company's CEO, Brad Wardell, tells Gamasutra that the small publisher plans to release a title "every first quarter of every year" over the next five to six years. This way it can avoid the holiday glut, along with the marketing dollars required to stand out in the crowd.

The Q1 release strategy, although not explicit up until now, seems to have worked well for the publisher. Galactic Civilizations II cut out a niche and Sins of a Solar Empire was a bona fide sleeper hit. We know that Gas Powered Games' Demigod is scheduled for February of next year and Stardock's internally developed Elemental is already slated for February of 2010. The publisher has its 2011 game already planned, but isn't announcing it yet.

[Via Evil Avatar]

Are you already decorating for Christmas? If so take a break from the tree and check out our highlights at Big Download for the past week:

Exclusive Features

• Reviews: We review Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 and American McGee's Grimm: The Singing Bone plus the Dead Space Downfall animated DVD. We also have some impressions of the Left 4 Dead PC demo.
• Interviews: We chat with the dev teams behind Demigod, Theatre of War II and Death Track: Resurrection.
• PC Game Character for President: We have a new person in the White House, but what would it be like if some of of the most famous PC characters ran for President of the US?
• Beyond Left 4 Dead: Zombies in PC Games: We take a look at a ton of undead characters in our favorite PC game titles.
• Mac Monday: Our weekly look at Mac games takes a gander at the kid title Majestic Forest
• MODmonday: Our mod feature this week looks at the graphical revamp King's Quest VGA.
• Independent Minds: Our weekly look at the indie game industry takes a look at overly-ambitious game designs
• Big Ideas: Our weekly column on themes in the industry looks at how the PC game audience could be bigger than it is.
• Freeware Friday: Our weekly free games column is about the recently released ad-supported free version of The Suffering.
• Virtual Bargain Bin: Our weekly cheap game column takes a look at the Valve Complete Pack collection on Steam.
• BigCast: It's the latest installment of the best PC game podcast out there (well, we think so anyway).

Following an interview with Gas Powered Games at PAX 2008, we got some hands on time with their newest creation, Demigod. The first thing we noticed while watching it running on glowing, envy-inducing PCs was how deliberate much of it looked. Everything from the unit/map design to the ease-of-use control scheme oozed hours of careful consideration on developer GPG's part. While the concept of Demigod tends to bewilder many who hear it -- ourselves included -- understanding the idea only took us a few minutes of playing the atypical strategy game.

Players only control their Demigod and its set of abilities. Our time was spent with the RPG-style Torchbearer, a Norse flavored character that can switch between ice and fire modes. We were digging his armored-burn-victim look, which just so happened to feature more armor and less burn. The Torchbearer is all about freezing everything before switching to fire and watching the screen light up as your enemies burn. Our magical offensive certainly got us some kills, but it wasn't moving the battlefront at all. Once we began to work more attentively with our AI-controlled troops of the non-Skynet variety, the battle quickly shifted to our favor.

Our actions in-game where peppered by murmurs of, "Oh, whoa." and "I want this game, now" from various onlookers behind us. We were starting to agree with this sentiment. It surprised us to find out that the game is actually running on a version of the Supreme Commander engine, as we saw more visual variety in 30 minutes with Demigod than we ever did playing hours of SupCom. GPG assured us that the system requirements are designed to include low-end machines, which is very much due to the fact that Demigod doesn't try to do a thousand things at once on-screen while you play it. (our wallets say thanks) Looking at the game, it was fairly hard to imagine that the harpy-like creatures and wiggling death-plant-things were living in the same engine that featured angular robot-spiders and hover tanks that bogged down our computers just a year and half ago. All in all, Demigod looks like it's going to steal away our precious personal time when it eventually ships on Stardock's Impulse service next year.


[MP3] Download this interview in MP3 format

Publisher Stardock has released the first trailer for Demigod, its upcoming "team-based action game with RTS and RPG elements" being developed by Gas Powered Games. The title will support one-on-one battles, but the game apparently shines in team play. The idea of a "team-based" RTS is still something we're wrapping our brains around; as multiplayer RTS is nothing new, but Demigod sounds like something different. For those who really want to get some hands-on time with the game, we were able to confirm the title will be at PAX.

Gamespot recently spoke with GPG and Stardock about the development of Demigod and we're definitely looking forward to learning more as the title continues its crusade for an early 2009 launch. We're still keeping our fingers crossed for an announcement that the game will make the leap to consoles. Check out the trailer after the break.

With publisher Stardock's rise the last couple of years and the announcement that it'll be publishing Gas Powered Games' next title, Demigod, it was time catch up with the two companies. We spoke with Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell and Gas Powered Games' founder Chris Taylor and asked some niggling questions on our minds ... and fired a few total shots in the dark which yielded results (like Demigod on consoles?). Find out more about Stardock and why Gas Powered Games decided to hook up with the little-publisher-that-could for its next title in our interview.

OK, let's get right into it, what's Demigod?

Chris Taylor - Demigod is a frantic team-based action game with RPG and RTS elements mixed in. If that doesn't sound familiar, it's because we're sort of inventing a new style of hybrid gameplay. The player selects a Demigod, and fights for a place in the pantheon of Gods in these incredible arenas. Each battle puts the player in command of either an Assassin Demigod, or General Demigod. These two types gives the player a choice of whether they command just the single Demigod, an Assassin, or whether they take command over every single unit in the game, like a traditional RTS, a General.

Gas Powered Games founder, Chris Taylor, recently spoke to Joystiq about his upcoming game Demigod (full interview, which includes publisher Stardock's Brad Wardell, coming later today). With GPG's latest game, Supreme Commander, jumping from PC to consoles, we wanted to know if Demigod could do the same thing. Taylor says it's a discussion the studio is having, "but no final decisions have been made just yet."

Even if the game isn't coming to consoles, we wanted to know if the company is thinking ahead and designing the PC version of Demigod for use with a gamepad. Taylor explains that GPG is focusing on the PC version and if it made another version for consoles, the company would overhaul the interface, as there are currently no plans to support gamepads (like the Xbox 360 controller) at this time. He says GPG re-did Supreme Commander's controls when translating it to the Xbox 360, and also alludes to Supreme Commander coming to PS3 as well. We'll have the full interview up soon.

Update: Interview is up now.

Demigod, Gas Powered Games' team-based RTS/RPG, is expected to launch in February of 2009. The company announced today it has reached a publishing agreement with Stardock, which also prominently stated in its press release that the game will feature no on-disc copy protection.

Gas Powered Games is best known for its Dungeon Siege series, but most recently released the hardcore RTS Supreme Commander (recently delayed for consoles). Publisher Stardock recently found more mainstream success with the best-selling -- and surprisingly scalable on older PCs -- Sins of a Solar Empire (the company's Galactic Civilizations II isn't bad either). Sins sports no copy protection and, despite that fact, the game has found success at retail -- plus, it's only $30. Demigod will have a public beta this summer and we'll be sure to post more about that when details become available.