Joystiq

Indie Royale launches The Summer Bundle with 8 games and some chiptunes

Jordan Mallory — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:00:00 EST

The latest in a long line of Indie Royale bundles is now live, this time named after the hottest, most miserable season of the year: Summer! The Summer Bundle includes Harvest: Massive Encounter, The Journey Down: Chapter 1, Serious Sam 2, Gundemonium Recollection, GundeadliGne, Hitogata Gappa, Acceleration of Suguri X-Edition and Dino Run SE.

Patrons will also receive entrance into the AirMech Steam beta, as well as an Indie Royale in-game pet. Anyone who pays over $8.00 for the bundle will be gifted Pixeljams Volume 1, a chiptune collection of music from Pixeljam's catalogue of work. As with all previous Indie Royale bundles, the price you pay is based on the prices of the transactions that have come before you, so get in there and ruin the bell curve.

Indie Royale launches The Summer Bundle with 8 games and some chiptunes originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Humble Bundle Mojam makes nearly $500K for charity

Ben Gilbert — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST

Mojang is everyone's favorite studio to blindly throw money at these days, so it comes as little surprise that the Sweden-based Minecraft creators raised nearly $500K ($458,215.95) this past weekend during a live "game jam." The conceit was that Mojang would arrange a game jam (a "Mojam," if you will) and stream it live across 60 hours, with the resulting product being added to the most recent Humble Indie Bundle, as well as two games developed under similar constraints from Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games.

What games did the three studios end up making? Mojang created an Egyptian/Steampunk-themed RTS slash shoot 'em up called "Catacomb Snatch," which we'll refrain from making lurid jokes about, while Oxeye made a game named "Fists of Resistance" and Wolfire made "The Broadside Express."

As over 81K bundles were purchased, the three studios collectively raised just under half a million dollars, all of which will be donated to Child's Play, Electronic Frontier Foundation, charity:water, and the American Red Cross. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got some lurid jokes to make in private.

Humble Bundle Mojam makes nearly $500K for charity originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games join Humble Bundle Mojam

Jordan Mallory — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:30:00 EST

As if the basic premise of Mojang's 60 hour Humble Bundle charity programming marathon weren't enough of an incentive for you to hand over as many of your hard earned dollars as you want, the Minecraft developer is now being joined by Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games, who will be creating their own 60-hour indie experiences.

Wolfire's game will be based off the same crowdsourced premise as Mojang's, which is an RTS shoot 'em up steeped in an ancient Egypt/steampunk setting. Oxeye Games, on the other hand, will be combining the second-place and second-to-last-place options from the genre poll by constructing "a dungeon crawler beat 'em up set in a post-apocalyptic World War II."

All three teams are live streaming their progress at the official Humble Bundle site, and there's still about 20 hours left to go make your donation and claim your games before the event comes to a close.

Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games join Humble Bundle Mojam originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mojang's next work-in-progress, Cobalt, now available

Ben Gilbert — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:20:00 EST

You already kinda sorta knew about Cobalt, Mojang's first game launch as a publisher, but did you know that it'd be totally out today in Alpha form? Oh, yeah, okay, you already kinda knew that too. Well now it's official and has a price (€9.95/$13), but beyond that, we've also got a whole mess of info about today's launch. For one, the game will only be available on Windows PC initially, with OS X and Linux support arriving in "Beta." Moreover, there is no "single-player" version of Cobalt, only multiplayer and co-op modes -- according to Mojang, "hot seat" multiplayer is available on the PC and it's "theoretically limited by the number of USB controllers you manage to forcefully plug in to your poor computer." We're gonna go ahead and suggest no more than four, just to be safe.

The game's Alpha also comes with a level editor, which Mojang hopes players will use to "create everything from single maps to whole campaigns from scratch." That isn't to say that the dev team at Oxeye Game Studio are sitting on their hands and waiting for the user-generated content to populate their game, however -- the announcement promises that the team "will continue adding their own maps and game modes to the game as well as continue work on the main campaign."

Like with Minecraft before it, purchasing Cobalt in Alpha (or "pre-ordering" the final build, if you will) nets you access to all future builds of the game, barring the possibility of console or mobile ports. While there is no timeframe for the completed game's launch, the devs set a handful of milestones for themselves, such as the main campaign not showing up until after the game goes "Gold" (read: finished). In the meantime, we'll be sure to let you know when people start creating incredible homages to things they love within Cobalt, as with Minecraft before it.

Mojang's next work-in-progress, Cobalt, now available originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mojang aiming to publish Oxeye's 'Cobalt' on Friday

Griffin McElroy — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:30:00 EST

Usually, we receive a bit of lead time when it comes to release date announcements. "Oh, that game you're looking forward to," it usually goes, "that one won't be out til Q3 2014." We all know that anything past next spring is practically forever away -- fortunately, Mojang has announced that the excellent-looking Cobalt is going to drop this coming Friday, God willing and the creek don't rise.

"We haven't told anyone [about the release date] yet because we're aiming for Friday, but we don't know if we can make it," managing director Carl Manneh told Edge Online in a recent interview, "but I think we can." We do too, Carl. We believe in you.

Mojang aiming to publish Oxeye's 'Cobalt' on Friday originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cobalt preview: Chaotic and robotic

Justin McElroy — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:30:00 EST

There's a lot going on in Cobalt. Like, a lot.

In fact, as much as I detest "it's like this but this," I feel like that's the best place to start. The best way I can describe Cobalt (the first third-party release from Minecraft's Mojang) is as a curious mix of John Woo, Super Meat Boy, Contra and (most prominently) Super Smash Brothers.

Like I said ... a lot going on.

Gallery: Cobalt (Windows, Mac, PC)

Continue reading Cobalt preview: Chaotic and robotic

Cobalt preview: Chaotic and robotic originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mojang unveils first third-party game, Cobalt

Justin McElroy — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:32:00 EST

Mojang may only be known for Minecraft right now, but the studio's looking to branch out from blocks with its first third-party release: Cobalt, developed by Oxeye Game Studios. ... OK, so one of the pieces of concept art we were sent may just be a giant picture of a block made from many other blocks. But it's neon! Good luck finding that in Minecraft.

Kidding aside, Mojang's flagship seems to bear little resemblance to Cobalt, described as "an action game of running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, piñata-ing, passing, scoring... and even more rolling."

Speaking of overlong quotes that we wouldn't dare attempting to condense, here's what we know of Cobalt's story:

"It's hard to be a metal face. Agent Cobalt has learned as much after finding the Space Exploration Foundation's lost colonization ship The Seed at planet X9CSEC5.5B-blue, Trunkopia. It was once built by a one million strong development team back on Earth, but disappeared merely 30 minutes after its subspace jump. Whatever happened on board during its misadventure, sanity was not invited."

So ... robots? The future? Your guess is as good as ours. Hopefully, all will be made clear when the game arrives this fall on Windows, followed by Mac and Linux versions.

Gallery: Cobalt (Windows, Mac, PC)

Mojang unveils first third-party game, Cobalt originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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