Most 4X and empire-building strategy games are focused on building an empire up. Starting from humble roots and then carefully managing the economy, military, diplomacy and so on to become the most powerful nation of all. It’s a well-established formula, to the point that no one really questions it. Enter Joe Gibbs, an Australian game developer and the largely one-man…
We’ve got something a little different for you today – we don’t often do interviews with folks from outside of the games industry, but the opportunity arose to have a quick chat with Glitch Productions, the Australian animation studio that has been turning heads with the quality of its Web…
Read MoreWayward Strand is such an odd little game, but that is by no means a criticism. Despite its utterly fantastic concept, and ironically given that it takes place in a floating airship, this game is sweet, meditative, and very grounded. It’s also incredibly Australian, but not in the over-the-top, Crocodile…
Read MoreThis is a bit outside of video games, I must admit. It’s even a bit outside of Japanese art and culture, as we cover in the magazine. However, an absolutely amazing subscription service has just launched here in Australia. As DDNet readers know, I usually rage about subscription services, but…
Read MoreDefiant Development was a favourite Aussie studio. Responsible for the excellent Hand of Fate, and the even better Hand of Fate 2, this team of game development veterans were doing amazing work to build the local industry and create a franchise that had real potential. Unfortunately, Defiant couldn’t survive a…
Read MoreReligion is one of those topics you’re never meant to discuss in polite society. When it comes to video games, it’s one that’s historically either been airbrushed out of games to avoid offence, or dealt with in very broad brush strokes to define it away from existing real-world religious groups.…
Read MoreToday was a pretty woeful day in Australia. I don’t want to bore the non-Australians here, but here’s the short version: we’re a country that will be at the forefront of climate change devastation. Today, our Greens political party (who went to the last election on the promise of hard…
Read MoreAustralians should make more visual novels. I don’t just say that because I make them and need to kick myself into actually finalising my latest one (it’s getting there, day by day!). It’s just that whenever an Australian produces a VN, it’s typically gold. Max’s Big Bust is a hilarious…
Read MoreBack in 2015 (seven years ago!), in my review of the original Submerged, I wrote: “Submerged is at its core a deeply frustrated warning against humanity ignoring the 97-odd per cent of climate scientists that insist we’re set for a bad time if we don’t hurry up and start dealing…
Read MoreConan Chop Chop wants to sit somewhere between Gauntlet and Hades. It wants to be an action roguelike with a moreish loot system, but also being orientated heavily towards bringing four friends together for some button-mashing chaos. Unfortunately, it’s much too inconsistent to reach the heights of either genre-defining great,…
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