Those of us paying attention to the snapshots Mojang have been releasing in the run up to the release of Minecraft 1.8 might have long since noticed a pattern to the additions to the game, an awful lot of it is centring around making building maps of different types easier to automate. Most of this seems to be because the way blocks are rendered among other things are being subtly fiddled with ‘behind-the-scenes’ in the run up to the implementation of the plugin API that Dinnerbone has been promising for a while, meaning a lack of ‘survival’ changes to the game.

Snapshot 14w07a is no different, although it does bring new iron trapdoors to the survival aspect of the game. Otherwise the majority of changes in this ‘smaller snapshot’ (Mojang’s words) centre once again around adding new ways to customise and set-up maps and mini-games for map-makers to use.

The two major map-making additions in my opinion are the ability to now display team objectives that can only be seen by the team it is for (filtered out by ‘team colour’) and the ability to at last switch off nameplates above a player’s head, using the teams function. That last one especially will have a major effect on Survival Game type maps equal almost to how Spectator Mode did back in snapshot 14w05a.

Other notable command additions have to do with the /scoreboard command added in the last patch, with some new subcommands /scoreboard operation and /scoreboard test, operation used for math-based functions such as totalling up all the kills from one team into one single score and test used to make sure that scores are falling between set parameters (e.g. not under 0 and not over 100).

Needless to say, 1.8 looks like it’s going to be a very good update for all map-makers in the Minecraft community.

Snapshot notes are here.

Back in December EA told everyone that they were not going to work on any future projects or release any expansions or additional content for Battlefield 4 until they had sorted out the problems that continued to plague the game at that point.

Yesterday though they announced the upcoming release of a Battlefield 4 DLC, Naval Strike, coming at the end of March, hot on the heels of the Second Assault map pack being release on February 18^th. As you can probably guess from the name, Naval Strike will add a lot of water-based craft and weaponry as battles are taken to the sea and will also add four new maps to the game: Lost Island, Nansha Strike, Wave Breaker, and Operation Mortar.

The problem seems to be that the reports of game crashes and players being randomly kicked from servers or even the entire game haven’t stopped. There are still people saying that doing certain actions, such as getting into a vehicle with another player is meaning that their playing of a game is stopped right there until they can reboot the game and rejoin the server. Some are even still reporting that they have a problem launching the game at all.

Back in December DICE general manager Karl Troedsson said that they had the “entire team working to stabilise the game” and that the reason they were working on Battlefield 4 before expanding it or concentrating on future projects was because “it’s the right thing to do.” and to be fair certain prominent bugs have been nipped in the bud already.

Hopefully the game will be a little more shipshape when the boats finally set out to sea.

“A Chunder has entered your dungeon!” Eagerly, I scroll over to my dungeon’s portal and watch the somewhat portly monster waddle off in search of new living quarters. It’s then that I realize I’ve lost the last hour of my life to the spell of War For The Overworld.

Pressing concerns like lunch and the wrath of my wife loom large in my mind.

For all of about five seconds…

Then, it’s right back to building my masterfully planned hero deathtrap.

Such is the magic of the spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper. The anti RTS, a game that tasks you with being the evil overlord and ruthlessly crushing any do-gooder that dares enter your twisted lair. All while revelling in the sheer pleasure of being evil.

Dropping today, the team over at Subterranean games have given us a rather substantial patch for the Bedrock Beta of this wonderful game. Among the stand outs from the patch notes:

• Spell: Recall- Benevolent Underlords may now rescue their foolish minions from outside their own dominion.
• Units will now work more reliably
• Units will now need to sleep less often
• Units will now need to eat more often
• Units that spawn will now far more accurately reflect the rooms that you have in your Dungeon
• New death and idle visual effects for some units

And a whole host more, including other visual updates, texture and bug fixes. All in all, it adds up to a rather nice chunk of work from the guys over at Subterranean. Some of these seemingly minor tweaks and fixes actually have a significant impact on the way you play the game. The new tweaks to hunger, units also get hungrier faster when fighting, force you to make sure you have enough slaughter pens to feed your slavering army.

And the game plays fantastically. The Recall spell in particular is a nice new tool for saving those foolish imps that think it’s a good idea to claim enemy dungeon space while a towering behemoth of a hero is flailing at them with an axe bigger than they are. While the game may still be in beta, it’s looking more and more polished all the time. I would encourage you to go jump into the beta right now, but honestly if you haven’t, you need to check your pulse.

You can also check out War For The Overworld here: https://wftogame.com/

And follow them on Facebook and Twitter

War for the Overworld is currently available to buy on STEAM here

I was browsing through the App Store (as you do) looking for my next great mobile game, when I stumbled across Dungeon Keeper (well stumbled upon maybe somewhat of an exaggeration as at the time of writing it is currently ‘the editors choice’) needless to say my heart started pounding and my mouth started salivating at the prospect of one of my favourite childhood games going mobile, even better was that it’s free!.. FREE! and that’s an offer I simply could not refuse, a quick tap and a couple of keystrokes later my game was downloading.

While downloading I noticed that the EA logo now stands where Bullfrog used to, let’s see how EA have adapted the game for the mobile market.

Where any game that is free to download and doesn’t use advertisements to reclaim the revenue will almost certainly offer in app purchases and Dungeon Keeper is no different.

Those looking for the original 1997 game may be disappointed, the “twisted take on the original” as EA put it, lacks the depth, charisma and involvement of the original and I know comparing a mobile game to the full PC version is somewhat unfair, I just feel more could have been done to imitate it. For example you can’t queue your imps work, you have to wait for them to demolish one wall before starting another, minions cannot be plucked from the ground and tossed into other rooms and as yet none of my minions have started a fight with one another.

Although this was the bane of any keepers dungeon management it was a vital element into what made Dungeon Keeper stand out from the rest, instead my minions just tend to stay in their own prospective room. No one ventures to go and eat a chicken from the hatchery or go for a walk and get a fire ball up the arse from a warlock whose research had been disturbed by the noise generated by this stroll.

Not only that when you’re introduced to the game via the short tutorial the horned reaper (or horny to his friends… Friends? Wtf!) is just too nice! Should the reaper from the original meet this new one he would immediately dispatch this imposter and laugh while doing so. The minions themselves have also been modified and in some cases look cartoonish and again just too… Well, nice! Skeletons, trolls, warlocks, bile demons, ghosts, vampires, mistresses and dragons are selectable once their requirements have been met, but I want them all. What happened to my flies and hell hounds! I want my dragon spawns to develop into dragons after hours of vigorous training and I want to be able to claim heroes through means of foul torture methods so brutal that even mighty samurai become sympathetic to my cause.

That being said five days in and I’m really enjoying the game, a lot of the original elements of the game still exist, giving your imps a good slap speeds up your productivity and the new interface makes slapping multiple imps easier without taking any meaning out of the gesture.

The game itself is quite simple, build an army of minions using gold to go and conquer other players, or the built in campaign missions and whilst you are summoning your army from your dungeon heart you can build rooms using rock or gold to entice more creatures to serve you, some minions are room specific. Warlocks seek the dark library, bile demons yearn for a hatchery (although sadly you no longer get to see them feast) and necromancers demand a training room.

Rooms also serve other purposes for example trolls can be summoned once you have a workshop which is also used to build traps, the training room is used to train your creatures to higher levels and the dark library is used to generate not only spells but also the mana used to cast said spells.

Some rooms can also attack intruders in your dungeon, the workshop hurls circular saws, bolts of lightning shock any enemy foolish enough to step within zapping range and to my delight the training room slices into would be invaders although the animation in this room has a lot to be desired.

As previously mentioned traps are also accessible whilst you’re waiting to summon your chosen minion(s) to serve as your primary defence as other keepers attacks you. Sadly pvp attacks are no longer in real time and happen only whilst you’re not in game so the strategic layout of your dungeon pathways and trap lay out is more important than ever, a personal favourite of mine consists of securing a pathway by two doors with a reasonable space between, about 3 spike traps laid on the ground and a freeze trap embedded into a separate cut out of wall to maximize the damage done by the spikes.

As well as gold and rock, gems can also be obtained, And a few are generated at random when you excavate a gem vein. At this point we have to say hi to the in app purchase, EA have made the most valuable commodity in the game chargeable (although this does to be the trend with this style game) and quite a charge it is too. At present 500 gems cost £2.99 and represents the entry level spend (£69.99 for 14,000 is the maximum) where as I’m more used to 69p for around 100 gems from similar games, you can use gems to speed up jobs get more stone and rock and summon additional imps your first additional imp will cost 800 gems.

After the tutorial section pending on your gem spend (and horny really tries to get you to spend as much as possible) you’re left with around 500 and I would recommend saving as much as possible for your third imp, production can be somewhat slow with the average rock excavation taking 4 hours, the toughest rock can take up to a whopping 24hrs to excavate, although with careful planning most of this type of rock can be avoided till later in the game.

Basic rock only takes a matter of seconds but most of this is used in the tutorial so again dungeon planning is key to success.

The keepers voice is still present and I can’t help but feel nostalgic every time I’m told “a wise decision keeper” or “I smell the stench of another keeper in your dungeon”. Ok so the phrases may have been somewhat modified but the voice itself is quite true to the original and the game definitely would not have been the same without it.

Whilst out of game you get notifications in the keepers voice of “upgrade complete” when a room has finished upgrading, “your minions are ready for battle” which is pretty self explanatory and a personal favourite is the standard notification (when your productivity has slowed and your imps need another slap for example) which is the sound of imps claiming new territory/laying pathway in the original game all of which are impressive, just make sure you mute your phone if you don’t want the odd eyebrow raise at the local library.

In short the new version is well worth a play, the basic elements of Dungeon Keeper remain enough to bring back found memories as well as provide amusement and a new perspective on the genre to those unacquainted with the original. Setting up defences around your dungeon with cannons, spikes and flame traps as well as excavating rock and forming new rooms provides as much entertainment as going on raids to pillage every last gold coin and grain of rock from your fallen foes and if nothing else at least you can still give those imps a good hard slap!

Dungeon Keeper for iOs gets: 6.5/10

Yesterday Mojang released the latest snapshot to demonstrate things we could expect from Minecraft’s 1.8 update, and it adds even more functions for the use of mapmakers.

Snapshot 14w06a was released and updated later with a b version to fix some more common bugs. It brought very little to the survival side of the game but added ever more commands for the use of mapmakers in the game to use, adding an optional ‘outline players’ function for spectators, making it so certain types of blocks can only be placed upon other types of blocks in Adventure Mode, a command to prevent item entities from being picked up for a set amount of time and another to stop them from despawning entirely.

However the one survival change talks about a lot of changes being made to the mod AI, which “should mean nothing, but may actually mean something”. To repeat their advice, remember: don’t sit on slimes.

Full snapshot notes are here.