The week in games

It’s Sunday, so it must be time for another installment of The Week In Games. It’s a weekly feature here at MacCentral that gives us an opportunity to highlight news and releases from the Mac games industry that we didn’t have a chance to get to during the week.

Alice goes beta

Westlake Interactive and Aspyr Media report that American McGee’s Alice is now in beta testing. Brad Oliver, who’s managing the Mac conversion, has Carbonized the game to make it possible to play on Mac OS X. The game is a dark and twisted take on the Alice In Wonderland story from Lewis Carroll.

Fly! II goes gold master

Word emerged this past week that Terminal Reality Inc.’s latest flight sim title, Fly! II, has gone gold master — the final step before the game goes into production. Fly! II enables users to pilot a variety of civilian aircraft ranging from single-prop driven recreational aircraft to bizjets to helicopters. The new title will be published by Gathering of Developers next month.

Indrema no more

Okay, it isn’t direct Mac-related, but we know that many of you have eyes on console systems and other forms of computer gaming entertainment. Just in case you missed the news, the Linux-derived console system Indrema won’t be seeing the light of day any time soon. The company shut down, citing a lack of funding.

Majesty updated to v1.0.1

Developer Cyberlore Studios has updated the Macintosh release of Majesty to version 1.0.1. Majesty, published for Mac by MacPlay, is a “fantasy kingdom sim” that puts you in control of a medieval realm beset by various calamaties and problems. The new patch fixes a variety of problems, and can be downloaded from Macgamefiles.com.

Qube brings puzzle gaming to OS X

Catara Software has released a game this week called Qube, which can safely be classified as a Tetris-style falling blocks puzzle game. What makes Qube different is that players need to fill “partials” — partially solid cubes — with other partials. It makes for some addictive challenge. And it runs on Mac OS X, too. More details are available from the Web site.

Shapes II 1.0.2 released

Carrot Software has released an update to Shapes II, its Tetris-style action puzzle game. The new version fixes a sound bug, and uses the latest version of CarbonLib and Universal Headers. You can Download it from Carrot Software’s Web site now.

Targetware launches Japanese Web site

Target: Korea is a new flight sim of PC and Mac currently in development by Targetware, and this week the company announced the launch of a Japanese-language Web site called Targetware Community of Japan. The site will feature news from Targetware, a user-drive community message board, and more.

Elsewhere on the Web

In other game-related news around the Web, Apple has posted an article of interest to wireless networking fans. Brad Cook has posted an article called Fun and Games with AirPort that highlights some of those benefits. The folks at MacGamer have posted a Deus Ex Multiplayer Guide, and the folks at Inside Mac Games have posted New screenshots from Otto Matic, the forthcoming game from Pangea Software. You can also take a look at a preview of Star Conquest at Gamesmania.

Closer to home

We reported on Blizzard’s update of Diablo II to 1.06; 3dfx’s completion of its sale of assets to Nvidia; Id Software designer/project manager Graeme Devine’s latest outlook on Quake 3 Arena for Mac OS X; WWDC sessions focused on game developers; and more.

As always, we encourage you to visit MacCentral every day for the latest news and info, both about games and about other Mac-related topics. If you have ideas for ways that we can improve our games coverage, or if you have a product you’d like to see us profile, drop us a line by e-mail today.