Nuclear Monster

  • About 14 years ago a game called Kingdom of Loathing sprang out of the wacky mind of Zack Johnson. Kingdom is a free, wacky, online browser-based RPG with goofy hand-drawn stick figures, and funny as hell. It’s been so long since I played that I can’t even remember what email address I ever used to sign up.

    Good news for everyone who wants more Loathing, the developer has sprung West of Loathing on us for Windows, macOS, and Linux on Steam. While the original Kingdom was all fantasy, West is taking the action-RPG to the wild west of Loathing for $11. Looks fun.


  • Blizzard have gone and done it, the remastered versions of StarCraft and its expansion Brood War are available on Battle.net for Windows and macOS at $15. Back when these remasters were announced Blizzard had said that the Battle.net name was going away, they’ve gone back on that and will now call it Blizzard Battle.net, which is fine.

    The remastered version of StarCraft has updated graphics, resolutions, cloud saves, and multiplayer features with leaderboards and matchmaking from Blizzard’s modern online services. You can also just get the regular un-remastered version for free at this link, which plays just fine on modern desktop operating systems.

    What I really want to know is: When are they remastering Warcraft 2?


  • Derek Yu, the developer of the amazing Spelunky side-scrolling rando-caver is putting together a multi-game collection called UFO 50 with a team of 4 other developers and artists. It’ll be 50 games that they reassure us are “…full games and not microgames or minigames!”

    Each game will have its own director, although all of the people working on the project have collaborated with each other to improve on the other games in the collection.

    I’m not sure I’d be excited for games with this 8-bit style from anyone else in 2017, but Yu’s Spelunky had an incredible following after it was released due to a daily challenge mode that popularized the concept and was an incredibly well put-together game.

    UFO 50 is promised for a 2018 release on Windows before it hits other unspecified platforms.

  • The extremely adorable Slime Rancher has exited out of Steam’s Early Access and is available on Steam for Windows, macOS, and Linux as well as on the Xbox One where it’s currently available for free to anyone who has the Xbox Live Gold subscription. Otherwise it’s $20, except for right now when it’s on sale for $13.39 on Steam.

    According to Steam I’ve put in a little under 5 hours of collecting Slimes and their poop and I know that I’ve enjoyed my time with it prior to release, it’ll be fun to come back and see how it has changed.

  • Recently, Apple started removing VPN apps from their iOS App Store in China in order to comply with local laws. That may be something they have to do as a business, but it’s time to allow apps from developers outside of the App Store. Gruber:

    To me, the more interesting question isn’t whether Apple should be selling its products in China, but rather whether Apple should continue to make the App Store the only way to install apps on iOS devices. A full-on “install whatever you want” policy isn’t going to happen, but something like Gatekeeper on MacOS could.

    Keep iOS App Store-only by default. Add a preference in Settings to allow apps to be downloaded from “identified developers” (those with an Apple developer certificate) in addition to the App Store. In that scenario, the App Store is no longer a single choke point for all native apps on the device.

    The App Store was envisioned as a means for Apple to maintain strict control over the software running on iOS devices. But in a totalitarian state like China (or perhaps Russia, next), it becomes a source of control for the totalitarian regime.

    Gruber doesn’t think this will happen, but it should. These pocket computers are supremely important to communications and it’s well past time for Apple to open things up.