The week in games

Every day MacCentral brings readers news and info from the world of Mac games, but there are sometimes stories that don’t make it onto our main news pages. That’s why we’ve come up with this feature — a weekly retrospective we call The Week in Games.

Bugdom 1.2 released

Pangea Software has released an updated version of Bugdom, its best-selling 3D action game. Bugdom tells the story of Rollie McFly, a pill-bug that must save his friends from King Thorax and the Fire Ants. The new version fixes a problem with cheat codes and makes other embellishments.

Dominions released for OS X

As we’d mentioned in past columns, Illwinter Game Design developed a Mac OS X version of their strategy game Dominions. That conversion is now released and there’s even a downloadable and playable demo for OS X you can try. It’s a turn-based strategy game with fantasy leanings in which you assume the role of a god as you try to win territory against other gods. It supports both single and multiplayer capabilities.

Freeverse “Mac Card Game Week” kicks off tomorrow

Freeverse Software’s Colin Lynch Smith recently announced that the company is calling this coming week “Mac Card Game Week.” Beginning tomorrow and running through Saturday the company will offer new Carbonized versions of its popular card game: Classic Cribbage, 3D Hearts Deluxe, 3D Euchre Deluxe, 3D Spades Deluxe, 3D Pitch Deluxe (aka Setback), and 3D Bridge Deluxe.

Pillars of Garendall “Spells Expander” plug-in released

Mike Zeman’s Spells Expander plug-in is now available for download, for Ambrosia Software’s role playing game, Pillars of Garendall. The new plug-in adds 25 new spells, new locations, new items, and more.

UT 2003 demo downloaded 1.2 million times

Infogrames subsidiary Atari noted that Unreal Tournament 2003’s demo — currently only for Windows but available at some point in the future for Mac OS X as well — has been downloaded about 1.2 million times. It’s the latest iteration of the enormously popular multiplayer first person shooter, featuring dramatically improved graphics and gameplay. And yes, it is coming to the Mac, thanks to the efforts of Epic Games, which developed the original version.

Xoggle beta 1C45 released

Drew Hamlin has released a new version of Xoggle, the open-source Boggle game for the Macintosh. The new version adds networking capabilities and many other new features, as well as some bug fixes.

Elsewhere on the Web

As part of their OS X Week coverage, Inside Mac Games has posted an article called Must Have Mac OS X Games that’s worth a read. MacGamer has previewed Bugdom 2, the forthcoming sequel to Pangea Software’s best-selling 3D action game for the Mac. Apple’s Games site has taken a look at Fallout and Fallout 2, revivals of the post-nuclear role playing games from MacPlay, now for OS X.

Closer to home

Aspyr Media noted that Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast has gone final candidate. GarageGames has announced IndieGamesCon ’02, an independent game developer’s conference. ATI expanded some information about its forthcoming Radeon 9000 Mac Edition card and quelled rumors that it would soon introduce an All In Wonder product for the Mac. Clone Campaigns has gone final candidate; it’s the add-on pack to Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, from Aspyr Media. MacPlay revamped its Web site and offered up details about a team-based 3D shooter in development called Global Operations. Riverdeep is shipping a new Reader Rabbit Phonics reading title for 1st and 2nd graders. Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein talked further about his company’s Mac development efforts for Unreal Tournament 2003.

As always, we heartily encourage you to drop us a line if you have questions we haven’t answered, ideas for ways that we can improve our game coverage here on MacCentral, or games or related services you’d like to see featured.