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Now Zynga.com Has Two Castle Building Games To Choose From
Crafted by Playdemic and now available on Facebook and Zynga.com, Kingdom Quest (cleverly tagged “A Game of Scones”) is a social game that revolves around building a fantasy kingdom, not to be confused with CastleVille, a game about building a fantasy kingdom. What are the differences between CastleVille and Kingdom Quest? I could not tell…
By Mike Fahey -
Are You Ready for Some Motherduckin’ Rock and Roll?
Rock music is incredibly powerful. Ducks as also incredibly powerful. Combine the two and damn, man… just damn. Wild Factor’s Duck and Roll, available now on iTunes, tells the age-old story of a duck with rock and roll in his heart, setting out from the pond to find success in the big city. His name…
By Mike Fahey -
Free-to-Play Fantasy MMO Arcane Legends Launches on Android and Chrome
Spacetime Studios’ latest and greatest mobile/browser MMO Arcane Legends is now live on Android devices and the Google Chrome Web Store, giving fantasy fighters everywhere a chance to take on the forces of evil with their best pals by their side. Anyone keen on a Kotaku-exclusive in-game weapon? Spacetime Studios applies lessons learned over the…
By Mike Fahey -
Your Skylanders Are the Most Important Resource in Lost Islands
Build things to harvest things to build more things—the resource management genre is huge on mobile, thanks to its simple click-based gameplay and the ability to play for minutes at a time and still get things done. Activision takes that winning formula and layers another one on top—the ability to transfer real-world collectible figures into…
By Mike Fahey -
This Week’s iPhone Charts: Oh Look, Angry Birds Star Wars
A trend that began with last week’s iPad charts and will continue until the Windows Phone charts on Thursday, the newly-released Angry Birds Star Wars force pushes its way to the top of this week’s iPhone charts. Everybody look surprised! You are not looking surprised. Look, this only works if we cooperate. Otherwise the news…
By Mike Fahey -
This Game is Called The Adorables. Our Resident Adorable Expert Weighs In. [Update]
The first internally-developed game from mobile publisher Thumbstar Games, The Adorables is a dazzlingly colorful pachinko-puzzle sort of game, coming on Thanksgiving to iOS and Android, but is it indeed adorable? Update: getting cuter. It’s certainly pretty, and my predilection for raccoons and raccoon-ish creatures has me gaga over Sneaker, the obviously leader of the…
By Mike Fahey -
Reality Show Ensures Zynga’s Hiring Process Just as Spectacular as Its Firing Process
Last month Zynga laid off more than 100 game developers in a firing extravaganza set against the backdrop of Apple’s big iPad event. Thanks to CBS reality show “The Job”, the company’s hiring of a new associate game designer will be every bit as spectacular and public as that mass termination. According to a Games.com…
By Mike Fahey -
Reviews
Call of Duty: Black Ops II: The Snacktaku Review
I don’t know if it’s the “rating pending” box or something specific to the Xbox 360 version of the game, but I’ve been chewing for hours and all I’ve got to show for it is disc shards slicing painfully into my gums. Thanks a lot, Activision. Snacktaku is Kotaku’s take on the wild and wonderful…
By Mike Fahey -
It Isn’t All Fun and Frivolity — Gamers Have Problems Too
When non-gamers get on your case about sitting around fiddling with your game pad all night long, show them this. It’s a sobering look at the real problems that affect us as gamers, from the folks at BadWeatherFilm. As tongue-in-cheek as many of these entries, harvested from Twitter tag #GamerProblems may be, a couple of…
By Mike Fahey -
The Dorkly Weekly: Oh Come On, Everybody Loves Mortal Kombat‘s Toasty Guy
Don’t be like that, Dorkly! Dan Forden sounds like a great guy to hang out at T.G.I. Friday’s with on a Monday. Dan Forden, one of the four programmers that initially began working on the original Mortal Kombat, along with Ed Boon, John Tobias and John Vogel, is better known to the world at large…
By Mike Fahey -
Legends: Rise of a Hero is the Perfect Example of a Mid-Core Action RPG
“Mid-core” is a term being bandied about quite a lot lately, indicating the evolution of social games from passive clicking affairs to experiences that flirt with hardcore gameplay while remaining accessible to casual players. Need an example? Play Mob Science’s newly-launched Legends: Rise of a Hero Out today on Zynga.com, Legends is a mouse-based action…
By Mike Fahey -
NatGeo’s Brilliant Doomsday Preppers Game is Tiny Tower, Only Underground
NatGeo’s Doomsday Preppers is a documentary series about people preparing for the end of the world, hording supplies, learning survival skills and building elaborate shelters in the hopes that when the big day comes the four horse-persons of the apocalypse might pass them by. In celebration of tomorrow’s launch of the show’s second season, G5…
By Mike Fahey -
Zenonia 5 Comes Alive on Android This Week
Gamevil’s ever-expanding mobile action RPG series turns five this week, with the release of Zenonia 5: Wheel of Destiny for Android devices. Has it really been five games already? That’s the joy of mobile gaming. While the console folks are still sitting around waiting for Square Enix to finish up a Final Fantasy game that…
By Mike Fahey -
Zelda Meets WarioWare Meets King’s Quest? I’ll Take It.
Coming November 15 to an iTunes near you, Arranger is a madcap musical adventure that stitches together a Zelda-style RPG, WarioWare-esque mini-games and King’s Quest questing and style into an epic tale of world-saving and saxophone-playing. Arranger is the creation of musician Arman Bohn, who according to the official announcement press release is “former bandmate…
By Mike Fahey -
This Week’s Facebook Losers and Winners: Zynga Only Dominates One of These Charts
For the past couple of months I’ve been taking time every Monday morning to report on the top ten Facebook games by daily active users. That list has barely budged in four week. Here’s a better pair of lists — the top fan gainers and losers of the week, featuring a chart that’s almost entirely…
By Mike Fahey -
Reviews
Darkstalkers‘ Sultry Succubus Has Never Looked Quite So Good
Morrigan Aensland from Capcom’s Darkstalkers is one of the most widely depicted characters in video games. Her distinctive features have spawned dozens of statues, hundreds of cosplays and thousands of pieces of fan art. Of her myriad appearances, this statue from E2046’s Gathering line might just be my favorite. Let’s just get this out of…
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A Wretched Hive of Scum and Gaming Apps
Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Week in Gaming Apps. Its continuing mission — to explore strange new apps, seek out new games and game applications; to boldly make thematically incorrect quotes in an article with a Star Wars title. Space played a large role in this week’s selection of Gaming…
By Mike Fahey -
Puzzle & Dragons… It’s All Right There in the Title, Isn’t It?
GungHo Online Entertainment’s Puzzle & Dragons is a game that contains both puzzles and dragons. It’s generated more than three million downloads in Japan. I’d say a good half of those downloaded it simply because the game’s name features all anyone really needs in a video game. Puzzle & Dragons is an amazing combination of…
By Mike Fahey -
The First Gaming-Dedicated Android Handheld Goes on Sale
Want to play Android games but don’t want to invest in an Android phone or tablet? Are you children always taking your phone away to play games? The answer to these problems just went on sale in the form of the MG, the first pocketable Wi-Fi Android app-gaming system. PlayMG, the company behind the device,…
By Mike Fahey
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