Each weekday MacCentral brings readers news from the world of Mac gaming, but there are always a few stories that don’t make it into our regular news pages. We have this weekly retrospective to help keep up with them.
Blades of Avernum released
Spiderweb Software has released Blades of Avernum, a new role playing game for the Mac that sports two built-in adventures an editor that lets you craft your own adventures as well. The game costs $25.
BUM: Rags to Riches released for iPod
XO Play has released a series of “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style text games for the iPod, using the iPod’s Notes feature. The latest in the series is BUM: Rags to Riches, in which you play a homeless person on a quest for conspicuous wealth.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King hits stores
Aspyr Media Inc. sent out a reminder on Friday that Mac gamers should be able to find their new release, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on store shelves now. It’s the Mac conversion of an Electronic Arts game based on the hit movie.
Pharaoh’s Gold editor, source code available
F.C. Covett has enabled the built-in level editor of his recently released shareware game Pharaoh’s Gold. The source code is also available to developers who want to use the game’s engine in their own titles — you can buy the source code online for $75.
Rally Shift 1.1.1 update released
CodeBlender Software has released another update to their rally racing game Rally Shift. The new 1.1.1 release fixes a problem that could cause a championship race to abort after starting. This news comes on the heels of v1.1’s release, which added night driving, rain and fog, 3D trees and more.
RatMaster released
Red Marble Games and Twilight Games have released RatMaster, a new puzzle game in which you must guide a rat through a maze to get the cheese. It’s up to you to move pieces of the maze in order to give the rat a clear path to his reward. Pitfalls like snacks and electric fences, keys that unlock doors and rotating paths keep up the challenge. RatMaster costs about $20 and requires Mac OS X.
Star Conquest, Surrender now available for download
Complete versions of Dark Shadow Software’s Star Conquest and Surrender are both strategy games; Star Conquest’s scope is larger, while Surrender is designed to work on a 10×10 square grid.
White House Joust released
Remember the classic coin-op arcade game Joust? Kewlbox.com has released White House Joust, which takes the same basic premise and adds Democratic presumptive candidate John Kerry, President George W. Bush and various other political figures into the mix.
Elsewhere on the Web
MacGamer has posted its review of Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Inside Mac Games has posted its review of Total Immersion Racing.
Closer to home
This week on MacCentral, readers learned about Skunk Studios’ release of Varmitz Deluxe. We also reported on 21 Days Later: Vectorized, a new Mac game programming contest with a quick turnaround from uDevGames; a major announcement from Destineer and Take-Two regarding two new Close Combat games that will come to the Mac and PC simultaneously; Aspyr Media noted that Return of the King was shipping; Aspyr also noted that Command & Conquer Generals has gone gold master, the last step before a game is released to duplication; MacSoft announced that Unreal Tournament 2004 is now shipping. Aspyr Media indicated that its Mac conversion of Call of Duty has reached its Beta development milestone.
As always, we encourage you to drop us a line if you have questions, comments or suggestions.