Casual

It's been a busy week for the stock market, most of it bad. Thankfully the folks at Valve know that everyone appreciates a sale and this weekend's game on sale via Steam is the original Peggle title from Popcap. The casual arcade game is normally $9.99 but you can grab it for just $4.99 this weekend. The sequel, Peggle Nights, will be released on Steam on Oct. 15

That's not all that's gone on at Steam, however. The download service just added a number of older Ubisoft games to its line-up, including both expansion packs for Heroes of Might and Magic V, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire Gold Edition, The Sum of All Fears and Brain Spa. All of these games are 10 percent off their normal prices on Steam until Oct. 17. You can also pre-order Far Cry 2 via Steam and get $5 off its normal price until its release on Oct. 22.

You want more? How about that World of Goo, the award winning indepdent puzzle/construction game from the two man dev team called 2D Boy, will make its worldwide debut via Steam Oct. 13? Pre-orders for the game are being taken for $19.99 and the Steam version will contain achievements via Steamworks. Finally, pre-orders are being taken for Egosoft's X3: Terran Conflict, the space trading-combat game. The release has now been confirmed for Oct. 17.

Grimm's first assault on Happy Ever After ended in September, but developer Spicy Horse and publisher GameTap are already entrenched in the next season of American McGee's Grimm, the episodic series that follows the mean-spirited exploits of eponymous protagonist Grimm. Big Download recently caught up with Grimm designer American McGee to discuss the highs and lows of Season One, as well as how the idea for Grimm came about, the process of selecting fairy tales, and a tease of what we can expect from Season Two.

Telltale Games's third and latest episode in its Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People is set for release later this month and the developer wants you to know it's about about ROCK. Episode 3 is titled Baddest of the Bands and we have the first screenshots to show you how "bad" it is (and we mean good when we say "bad")

So what's "bad" about it. Here's the description: "Rock and roll! Hurting for cash, Strong Bad sets out to dominate the Battle Royale of the Bands. Can he rule the stage and win the big prize? Or will he be drowned out by the competition? Find out in this high-voltage episode -- with special guest stars, rock gods LIMOZEEN!." As usual Episode 3 will be sold directly via Telltale for the PC for $8.95 and a demo will likely be released as well.

I won't lie to you: I'm a huge Batman fan. A Bat-freak, you might say. From collecting comics and watching The Animated Series ad infinitum to camping out for tickets to the midnight showing of new Bat-films (barring the Joel Schumacher travesties), if it's Batman, I'll give it a shot.

So great is my Batman fanaticism that I purposely skipped LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures in order to maintain my anticipation for LEGO Batman. The two properties may seem unrelated, but the truth is, I knew full well that despite all the Batman lore that Traveler's Tales would no doubt cram into a Gotham built brick by LEGO brick, taking in too much of the LEGO action game formula would kill Batman's fun factor quicker than a whiff of the Joker's deadly gas. As I predicted, LEGO Batman is immense fun -- if you can look past the LEGO formula's reoccurring flaws that should have been fixed after the first LEGO Star Wars.

Popcap Games continues to dominate the casual games market and one of the reasons is their "Match-3" style puzzle game Bejeweled and its sequel. The games have pretty much been adapted for every game platform known to man, including inside World of Warcraft, with 25 million copies of the two games having actually sold.

Now Popcap has announced that the next game in the series, Bejeweled Twist, is being prepared for a launch next month. Details on the game are being kept under wraps until a launch event to be held in Seattle on Oct. 27. At the moment all the publisher is saying is that the game has been under development for over three years and will "bring a completely new perspective" to the genre.

Karelia, Finland's dawn air was crisp, and its icy mists were tinged with just a hint of gold from the sun peaking over the horizon. The earth was blanketed in freshly fallen snow, and a slight breeze caused the pine trees bordering a frozen stream to shiver, their rustling branches sending white crystals plopping to the ground. It was the perfect morning to live in peaceful co-existence with all other creatures upon the earth, to curl up near a fire burning in the hearth of the cabin near the lake and read a book.

But this is Deer Hunter Tournament, and in that context, either of those activities would have proven quite boring. For those to answer the call of the wild with a hail of lead, it was the perfect day for a hunt.

Somewhere between Popcap's rise to power and Spore's retail release I've found myself both enjoying and being annoyed by the rise of casual gaming. The word "casual" is at best prescribed to games like Peggle or flash-based web games of higher quality. At worst, it's a buzzword, a fallacy and often a crutch. It's because of this that whenever a developer says their game is targeted at more casual audiences, my internal alarms go off in a big way.

There's apparently not enough stuff to do in World of Warcraft to make people happy to play in the best selling MMO so casual game maker Popcap Games is getting ready to release an add-on for the game that will allow players of Blizzard's title to play the hugely popular puzzle game Bejeweled inside the title.

Our sister site WoWinsider has a hands-on preview of the Bejeweled add-on for World of Warcraft which is scheduled to be released for free on Tuesday. The add-on, which is not officially endorced by Blizzard, will have some World of Warcraft sounds and art incorporated into the game and will even interact with World of Warcraft itself in small ways.

This casual arcade style independent game, created by the same team that developed the Gumboy: Crazy Adventures, lets up to nine players compete against each other over LAN or Internet. There's also support for 4-person split screen action. Or players can treat it as a single player game and compete against bots. This demo for Gumboy: Tournament includes all the features of the full game but only has six stages.

Download the Gumboy Tournament v1.8 Demo (80 MB)

Happily Ever After ends now... as does the first season of American McGee's Grimm. Today's episode marks Grimm's last filthy foray before a brief hiatus, which will end later this fall when Grimm returns for his second season. For his first of three grand finales, Grimm tackles a tale as old as time, and dirties it with lots and lots of grime.

It's been nearly a year since Harvey Smith, best known as the lead designer for the Deux Ex series, resigned from Midway's Austin studios after admitting publically about the issues he had with their BlackSite: Area 51 first person shooter. But fear not, fans of Smith. Harvey is working hard at the Austin, Texas offices of French developer Arkane Studios.

Gamasutra reports via a speech Smith made at the Austin Game Developers Conference this week that he is working on an unnamed first person RPG for Arkane along with a casual strategy game for Apple's iPhone. This kind of work is old hat not just to Smith but Arkane as well who released two such first person RPGs in the past; Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Nearly two years ago, Arkane announced plans for an ambitious game called The Crossing which was to seemless mix single and multiplayer gameplay. Since its inital reveal, no info on the game's progress has been announced.

"The sun has set at the Peggle Institute, but the bouncy delight has just begun! Join the Peggle Masters on a dreamtime adventure of alter egos and peg-tastic action. Stay up late to aim, shoot and clear orange pegs from over 60 levels, and bask in Extreme Fever glory. Then, take on 60 Challenges for even more rebounding joy!"

Download Peggle Nights Demo (24 MB)

If you are a fan of casual PC games then you know Peggle, the addictive action-puzzle game from Popcap Games. The title combines a colorful art style with gameplay that has you trying to get rid of pegs in each level via firing balls and hoping your shot combined with gravity and bounce-backs from other special ricochet pegs. The game was released in early 2007 and has since been downloaded 20 million times. Peggle got an extra boost thanks to Valve, who included a special version of the game, Peggle Extreme, with every version of their game collection The Orange Box in the fall of 2007, complete with art and sounds from the games in the collection.

Now Popcap has finally released the long awaited next game in the series, Peggle Nights. This new game contains, among other things, 60 new Adventure levels and 60 new Challenge mode levels along with new power-ups, trophies and more. The full version of the game costs $19.99 but a free demo is available. The game will be available for sale on other sites, including Valve's Steam, next month. There's no word on if there will be a special Left 4 Dead version of Peggle Nights released.

Download the Peggle Nights demo from Big Download right now

Earlier this month, THQ announced the opening of a new office in Shanghai and today the company announced the first major project that will come out of that location. Working with local publisher ICE Entertainment, THQ will launch Dragonica, a free-to-play casual MMO that will launch in the US in 2009.

The game itself is being developed by Korea based Barunson Interactive and is described as a cartoon-like 3D side scroller title. Testing will being in China late this year befoe the game is brought over to the US. Dragonica will gain revenue through micro-transactions for additional content and features. This represents the latest attempt by a big Western publisher to enter the online micro-transaction game genre. Electronic Arts plans to officially launch Battlefield Heroes, a multiplayer shooter with plans for micro-transactions, later this year.

Known and adored for its vault of classic cartoons, Cartoon Network's unique properties such as Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog and more have helped establish the network as more than just a portal to animation's past. Characters such as Samurai Jack and Dee Dee have become as recognizable to little tykes as Bugs Bunny, so creating an expansive video game based on Cartoon Network's universe would seem a logical step.

But to whom would such a product world be catered? As mentioned and readily acknowledged by Cartoon Network, the cartoon juggernaut's toons are technically aimed at a very young demographic, one commonly believed too young to partake in such a large world. The solution to this and other problems was recently explained by Chris Waldron, executive producer of the Grigon Entertainment Company-developed FusionFall, who also provided a brief tour of the forthcoming persistent world's more notable features.