…Or what happens when Omaha goes on vacation. Yes, I’m back from my week-long vacation (as you can tell, from the posts today), during which I played a *lot* of Torchlight (when I was actually home). I wish vacations weren’t so short. But, now I get to announce…
Runic Games made the announcement last week of the sequel to Torchlight, bringing co-op multiplayer, new character classes, more topworld to explore, more quests, monsters and dungeon to explore. The game is expected to ship sometime in the spring of 2011.
The game will feature online peer-to-peer multiplayer with free matchmaking as well as LAN play (woot!), so we’re not talking a full MMOG, but the way that Torchlight is set up a MMO would be difficult to do. The developers are not canceling on the idea of a MMO…rather they’ve labeled this as an in-between step in the process. A way to feel out how an MMO would look like while giving multiplayer to Torchlight fans.
Torchlight II will debut at Gamescom and at PAX Prime. I’ll be at the latter, so will be able to report back regarding the game’s playability and features. Interestingly, Runic Games also stated that the game will be released “initially as a digital download”, which implies a boxed retail version later. A question also exists of whether they will continue to use the Steam service for the digital download.
Catch up on the news at the Torchlight II website, and look for some more exciting news in a few weeks from me.
What’s inside this episode:
-
Omaha reviews Torchlight for the Mac by Runic Games. A lightweight 3rd person adventure dungeon crawl with fun monsters to defeat and cool swag to find. Comfort food for your Mac gaming habit.
Show Notes:
- Omaha hosts alone as she talks about the StarCraft II launch, and whether it signals the beginning of the end of midnight launches.
- Apple has announced a new Mac Pro for August. Is it worth it to upgrade? Will it compete with other gaming machines?
- Other games for the Mac have been announced or released this past week, and Omaha talks a little about them all, including Ubisoft’s announcement of Assassin’s Creed 2 and Tom Clancy Splinter Cell: Conviction in their financial statements.
- No Plants vs Zombies 2 this year, and say goodbye to the dancing zombie, and hello to the disco zombie.
Music Notes:
- Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
- Zach Young for featuring music from The Great Tree.
- Tomas Dvorak for featuring music from Machinarium.
Valve has announced that Steam will launch on the Mac today, May 12th. Eager Mac users have jumped to the Valve site and enthusiastically await the moment that they can download their copy of Steam. Valve has promised that the first collection of Mac titles will demonstrate “Steam Play”, which will allow customers to purchase games once and play them on all Steam supported platforms.
Some of those Mac titles include Portal, which will also be the first of Valve’s Source engine based games to become available for the Mac. Another title that has been announced for today is Runic Game’s long anticipated Torchlight for the Mac. “We’re very excited to be bringing Torchlight to the Mac,” said Max Schaefer, co-founder of Runic Games. “Having Steam for the Mac solves so many problems for us as a developer. We look forward to our future games coming out on the Mac as well.”
Every Wednesday, Valve will continue to release additional Mac titles, each designed to highlight specific functionalities of Steam on the Mac.
Valve will also make its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform. These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more. The features and services available in Steamworks are offered free of charge and may be used for both electronic and box versions of games. Native OS/X support for the Source engine is also available immediately to licensees for use in their games.
What’s inside this episode:
- An interview with Max Schaefer, Travis Baldree, and Jason Beck of Runic Games about how development is going on the Mac version of Torchlight, how the digital download has been received, and how the art for the game is created.
- Also, a review of Atlantis Sky Patrol for the iPhone by Big Fish Games. Join the Sky Patrol and defend the world from the evil doomsday devices with a flick of your finger.
NOTE: I’ll be taking next week off, so my next podcast will be scheduled to drop on November 12th. And maybe then I’ll be back on schedule.
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