During our perusal of student projects around the net we came across a small development from Norwegian student, Anders Schei. We insist that you take a look at his mouse-sized adventure, Prepare For Battle.

N’awwww, look, a little mouse dressed as a Redcoat. How freaking sweet is that?! There’s his mount too – a yellow frog with a harness and saddle. Cuteness overload! I don’t know how these students find time to make such wondrous creations but I am so glad that they do.

Prepare For Battle was made in one semester (3-4 months) by one guy and the result is stunning. Anders does want to continue working on it at some point but he is still bogged down with school work and needs some collaborators to develop Prepare For Battle into a full game. Seeing a game like this actually takes me back to the nineties, when there were elaborate games for children – hence my weird obsession with the mediocre A Bug’s Life game when I was a child. Seeing the world from a small creatures eyes is something that always fascinates me.

If you have a Mac you can actually play the few minutes of Prepare For Battle that does exist by downloading it through this link. You don’t have to miss out though otherwise, the whole thing is captured via the video below, which is also what garnered our attention in the first place.

At the moment, there is no more information on Prepare For Battle anywhere apart from this thread in the UDK forums.

A trio of developers who call themselves the Dreampainters have announced their first game, Anna, which is to be a 3D horror adventure that uses real locations, myths and local Italian folklore to provide an adequate chill down your spine.

No doubt, the first thing you’re pondering is whether the above image of the sawmill is real or entirely made of graphics. The answer lies somewhere in between. The Dreampainters have based Anna on real footage taken from the D’Ayas Valley in Valle d’Aosta; an Alpine region in north-western Italy.

They have then faithfully recreated these locations with the latest developments in computer graphics to come up with images like the above. We must have spent a good 10 minutes deciding whether or not these screens were real or not so were delighted to find out that they were completely artificial – quite a feat!

As you might have guessed, the game itself will be a first person point and click adventure of the Myst-like breed. There will be puzzles to solve across six, highly detailed locations for your exploration. Due to some of the haunts in these locations, your mental condition will deteriorate in different ways according to your actions, which in turn alters your perception of these environments and will lead to one of three different endings. The developers say that a single playthrough will take about three hours.

Anna will be a PC exclusive and is expected to be released sometime before the end of the year. More information on the game can be found on the official website.

Phoenix Online Studios’ upcoming adventure game Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller may have raised over $34,000 via its very successful Kickstarter campaign, but apparently even more of you are demanding to give your money to the developer. So, a new two-week long fundraiser is being held for the game with all the same perks that were available before.

According to the developers, the majority of the upheaval came from those who couldn’t use the Kickstarter system to donate, particularly those outside the US. Not being ones to turn down funding (who would?), Pheonix have created a special fund raising project through their own website which uses PayPal, therefore meaning that pretty much everyone should be able to throw their money at the game.

Other than supporting the game’s development, those who donate will get a number of perks depending on how much they donate, just like the Kickstarter campaign. Pre-orders, soundtracks, special editions of Cognition, beta-testing access and more are available to those who support. To donate, just go to the official website where you can find a list of the perks and a link to the PayPal donation page.

If you don’t know what Cognition is all about, then we suggest checking out the trailer below:

More information on Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller can be found on the game’s official website.

Point and click adventure studio, Wadjet Eye Games, has announced a new comical entry into the genre that explores life inside and outside the wrestling ring in Da New Guys: Day of the Jackass.

Featuring the expected quality voice overs and storyline of Wadjet Eye’s established breed of point and click adventures, Da New Guys is a slightly more humorous tale from UK based developer Chris Burton. The protagonist is a guy called Brain (no he doesn’t have a friend called Pinky) who is the worst brawler in the history of Wrestle Zone. Yet, in the name of comedy, he has somehow won the title belt. This ridiculous feat ends up in the kidnapping of Brain and the belt, so his team mates, Simon and Defender, head off to save him.

The game will have you playing as all three of the aforementioned characters and it looks as if there is a whole crazy cast to interact with throughout the madcap journey. There’s even a throwback to The Secret of Monkey Island which seems to replace the classic “insult sword fighting” with a wrestling equivalent.

“Da New Guys: Day of the Jackass is a rare game that manages to be both charming and bust-a-gut hilarious,” says Dave Gilbert, Wadjet Eye Games’ CEO. “I’ve been a fan of Chris Burton’s work since he first introduced Da New Guys in an amateur freeware game years ago, so I’m very excited to be kicking off Wadjet Eye’s 2012 lineup with their commercial debut.”

The news gets even better though as there is a demo you can download right now by clicking on this link.

The game can also be pre-ordered right now in anticipation of its February 29th release. There are two pre-order options: Limited Edition CD or digital download. The latter contains just the game and an MP3 soundtrack at $9.99 but the former comes with a cartoon short, exclusive collectable trading cards, and free shipping within North America. The Limited Edition CD will only be sold on the day of the game’s launch though and is available at $19.99.

For more information on Da New Guys: Day of the Jackass, head on over to the official website.

Calling all point and click adventure fans! The Living Nightmare series from domithan is free to download and it doesn’t seem half bad. Maybe you should give it a go.

Interestingly, domithan says that their Living Nightmare series is part of their now completed “training” series. “I learned everything I know about programming while making the “Living Nightmare” series”, it reads on the website.

Form playing the first in the series, Living Nightmare Deluxe, we can tell you you’re instantly drawn into the protagonist, James – a guy who has terrible nightmares when falling sick. The interface seems pretty accessible in the majority too, which is always a crucial element to get right when developing point and click adventure games if you don’t want loads of complaints coming in.

As said, the other two games, Endless Dreams and Freedom, are also finished. The developer says they are very proud of their work and you can see that they have come a long way in the last few years by comparing Living Nightmare Deluxe to the original Living Nightmare.

More information on Living Nightmare can be found on the official website where it can also be downloaded for free.

How can I describe Trailer Park King Episode 2? Nuanced? Eloquent, perhaps? Subtle? No. Those descriptions couldn’t be farther from the truth. Few games have ever evoked such a strong, negative reaction from me. Trailer Park King Episode 2 is a crude and pointless waste of time. When critics of this industry call gaming a pastime for children, this is what they’re referring to.

Trailer Park King Episode 2 puts you in the shoes of King, the self professed king of a small trailer park in some unknown part of the USA. Through a series of unbelievable events you find yourself at the funeral of former resident, Truck: a man who died, then wasn’t dead, then ended up dead again. As is the case with most games, things don’t go to plan. It turns out he wasn’t dead (again). Through the game’s point-and-click interaction system you have to solve a series of short, confusing and meaningless actions in order to put things right again. During the course of the game you’ll encounter a variety of clichéd characters, meaningless tasks and pre-pubescent jokes.

Luckily the game only lasts for around 45 minutes or so, though the whole experience can be made shorter if you can work out what you’re expected to do without the first ten minutes of aimless wandering I was forced into. Littered throughout the game is a series of crude adolescent jokes and references, the most eloquent of them being a choice between blue balls and black balls. I wish I was joking.

The gameplay itself is slow and, at times, infuriating. Most of your time will be spent scanning over the backdrops trying to discern precisely what you’re supposed to be interacting with. Unfortunately, the two occasions you earn a respite from this are worse. The shooting range section, for example, features sluggish controls and hit boxes that at best can be called inconsistent.

The voice acting is a highlight in an otherwise dismal showing. Despite some dubious accents and trite dialogue, the acting itself is fairly passable. It’s nothing to write home about but it doesn’t totally disappoint.

Weaving this whole train wreck of a game together is a fairly basic art style. The only animation you’ll encounter is seen during your trips to and from each destination, aside from that you’re given static backdrops that are narrated over. Whilst this style can be well used in other games, it simply isn’t here. The backdrops are fairly basic and feature the over-sexualized characteristics that generally stem from the mind of a bored 15-year-old.

The soundtrack is the one aspect of the game that bares no real criticism, the various songs that serve as mood music are well produced. The music itself fits the whole Redneck South setting; it may be cliché but at least it’s consistent.

Literally the best thing I can say about this game is that it worked. Regardless of it’s many severe flaws, it functions as intended.

I know it appears that I’m being intensely harsh, but it’s for a good reason. A review is essentially a guide to aid in your decision to purchase a game. So would I recommend spending a mere 80 MSP on this title? Not at all. Trailer Park King Episode 2 is a game without purpose. It serves to do nothing more than degrade those who are unfortunate enough to experience it. Unless you are 13 and can’t find your fix of crude point-and-click adventures online, I heavily recommend you avoid this game at all costs.

If you do, however, feel like trying your hand at Trailer Park King Episode 2, you can pick it up for 80MSP in the Xbox Marketplace. Or you can check out more content at Freelance Games’ website.

Jonas Kyratzes is probably the most under appreciated thinker in the indie scene right about now. Each of his games contain a remarkable amount of intelligence hidden within them; it’s clear that the developer puts a lot of thought into them. His latest, a text-based adventure called Arcadia: A Pastoral Tale, holds on to this ever-present fervor that so uniquely embalms his games.

It’s hard to talk about Arcadia without spoiling it too much. It’s gentle, beautiful and elegant as it takes your hand and soothes you through its journey of lyrical and playful words. It’s the kind of thing that lowly journalists, ahem, often dream about creating in their own writing. Sentiment lines each sentence and the various choices you make inside the text are conducted more by ideas of sensory pleasure. Ideas of ensnared beauty often dictate the direction of the adventure too.

I had to pick at least one line out of the many magical ones within Arcadia, so I picked the one below, simply because it elicits the fragility of our lives:

“making you deeply aware of the infinite beauty of the moment, and aware also of its fragile, fleeting nature in the great onrushing river of Time.”

You can play Arcadia: A Pastoral Tale over on Kyratzes’ official website and we highly recommend that you do. But don’t rush it, take your time and take it all in.

You can check out the rest of Kyratzes’ games over on his official website and please donate some money to the guy for his work, he deserves it.

White Whale Games have released the first official trailer for their upcoming retro-fantasy hack ‘n’ slasher, God Of Blades, which shows off the first glimpse of gameplay as well.

After being successfully funded on Kickstarter, White Whale Games have been able to steam on ahead with their debut title God of Blades. We were very excited about the visuals when we first set our eyes on the game, albeit we could only stare at the artwork for the backdrops. However, we found ourselves even more stunned at the realisation of these concept pieces into the actual game.

You can see there is still some more work to be done on the game but what White Whale have managed so far truly looks magnificent. Have a gander at the screenshots here and then watch the trailer below and tell us what you think. When we first watched the trailer, we were reminded of Shadow of the Beast for some reason – probably because of the music and the setting, by the way that’s a very good thing.

More information on God of Blades can be found on White Whale Games’ official website, there is no release date set for God of Blades but we can tell you that it will be coming to iOS platforms.

The provocative point and clicker, The Kite, is now available in English so all of those who can read these words can now enjoy it’s unique tale of harsh realism and beautiful metaphors.

The Kite caught our eye a few weeks ago and although we could see its obvious quality, we couldn’t understand it due to it being available in Russian only. We were thrilled to find out that the developers had been hard at work since and have now released an English version of the game.

We had a quick go and as you might expect the translation made sense, you could read it, but it was sloppy in places. It kind of gives the game an edge though, a natural feel. The use of music is very evocative too and seems to be one of the finer points of the game, next to the hand drawn graphics.

If you don’t know, the game is set in the post-Soviet 90s and follows a mother who lives in the rough of it, but after her son goes missing she lets nothing get in her way to get him back. It’s the kind of narrative you would expect out of cinema and it is indeed this kind of story that attracts many to it, so hopefully it translates into a game well enough for more games of the same calibre to appear.

You can download the English version of The Kite by clicking on this link. More information can be found on the official website.