Indie RPGs - News Roundup
 

I have a number of indie newsbits to catch up on, so I'll collect them here rather than spam them separately.
First, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land Has Risen is now available from Intel's AppUp thingy for $4.99 - if you try it, let us know how you find Intel's client and, of course, the game.
IndieRPGs.com writes in with reviews of the indie strategy/RPG Styrateg (2.5/5) and turn-based strategy Age of Fear: The Undead King (3.5/5).
Megamat from our friends at RPG France wrote in with a new development called Fraternity Project, an "online" post-apoc 2D "old-school" project. I can't tell you much more but there is a bunch of concept art on offer from the link above and they need more manpower if you are interested.
Von Paulus points out Sovereignty: Crown of Kings, a turn-based fantasy strategy game from The Lordz, described as "Risk meets Master of Magic". Due late 2012 - early 2013.
Lastly the Rampant Coyote has an indie roundup with a bunch of projects we follow but a number of others also.
More information.

"Call of Cthulhu" and "Strategy/Combat System" (from their page) somehow simply sounds strange to me. The Mythos was never about running around and hitting things. The best use for a gun in the Mythos is to give yourself the bullet, after you find out, that… So if it contains much combat - and as the screenshot only shows combat - it's not nearly enough Cthulhu for me.

Agree. You need quests and some exploration/adventure.

Alec Meer (mainly known from RPS) seems to love the game.
(iphone version reviewed)

Some quotes:
He even dares to compare it to: "X-COM, Jagged Alliance and (classic, turn-based) Fallout"

From this and other sites it seems like it is mission oriented, linear, turn based strategy game with some RPG elements (which all have combat-only effect).
This sounds like my type of game and (especially since Intel's shop supposedly has 24-hour money back guarantee) I may try it during the weekend.

I can live with a simple turn-based squad-combat game, which just might be in a more-interesting setting than usual. I'd be interested to hear from folks who have tried it to learn whether the client you have to use is objectionable.

Short version:
Game seems tight, difficulty carefully dosed, tactical options are there (various attacks, abilities, cover etc). But: Let me assure you, you will hate the interface.

Long version:
I bought the game, spent a few hours with it and am filled with disappointment. It's not because of the game itself - seems fine, as expected, it's because horrendous user interface.

Game is controlled by a mouse, pretending it has single button, responding to the click and long-clicks only (wtf is long-click, you may wonder); ignoring the keyboard entirely (even the ESC key).

Forget about anything happening when you move or point your mouse anywhere - no popup info, no map moving by touching the edges of the screen with mouse or key-pressing (map moving is especially painful as it's done by tiny little careful drags of the map - do something less gentle and entire map scrolls away in a blink of an eye, leaving you staring on the black screen).

There are almost no settings at all - language, resolution, sound.
Resolution setting is partially ignored, as game lets you pick your resolution, but then uses something smaller, not covering the whole screen.
This takes the "bad port" meaning to the next level.

I keep reminding myself of games in emulators I was able to enjoy very much in the end - but I really shouldn't be forced to do this playing "PC release" of the game. Does the Intel AppUp have no standards quality-wise? If there ever were any standards about user interface on PC, this product seems to ignore them all.

Intel AppUp itself seems to be pretty painless with two exceptions.
- Support of single payment option (Visa/MasterCard).
- Keeps running in the background even when you close it, without notifying about this at all. (Eats about 5-35 MB RAM, no CPU time, no bandwidth).
When you kill the process, games fail to authenticate (even the free ones).

I'm not writing much more till I play some more and calm down :)

I didn't get a refund, since I know I will like the game, once I learn to control it without too much pain (But I almost got it when I found out that the apple version is half the cost).

Thanks for your impressions, Daddy-O.

Thanks Daddy.
I hate these bad imports, that don't respect the differences between platforms. >:(

I can't speak for the PC port of Wasted Lands, but I wasn't a big fan of the Iphone version. This review by Tom Chick sums up my thoughts on it quite nicely.

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/201…d-opportunity/

I wonder if they implemented the AppUp authorization stuff, which seems to be really nasty DRM to me: http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/…-authorization (Actually from Daddy32's comment I assume they did. What a shame.)

If this is typical of AppUp games, I'll be buying none of them.

I tried uninstalling AppUp (games remained installed) and, as expected, Wasted Land fails to start.
But still, this doesn't seem too nasty to me; apart from a part when it runs even when not asked to.