Tetris lovers of the world listen up, next time you’re redectorating your flat, skip Ikea (though we love our Expedit here in the HQ) and go straight for the Tetris-inspired bookshelves from Brave Space. The Tetris unit is lightweight and modular, allowing owners to mount the blocks on the wall, leave them free-floating for life-size gameplay, or stack the blocks on top of one another. There are also colored backshapes available to match your interior color choices.

[Brave Space Tetris shelves] (Via Netdiver)

CCP, the makers of online MMORPG Eve-Online, have opened their pre-order site for their upcoming collectable card game, Eve: The Second Genesis. Pre-orders are estimated to ship towards the end of July, meaning those placing their orders now will receive their card sets a full 8 weeks before they are released publically. The storyline of the game takes place in the current Eve timeline, with the player taking the role of the CEO of a new and aspiring corporation, struggling for market domination. A complete rulebook is also available in .PDF form directly from the site, for early-adopters to get into the mood as early as possible.

When the game begins, you control a single starbase, a steady income, and access to a market from which you
can buy anything in supply. The “ace up your sleeve” is the secret knowledge of valuable outer regions which can yield the fortune required to build up your corporate empire and defeat the opposition. Your greatest weapon is absolute control over your employees and other corporation assets. Plan the progress of your corporation well by constructing your deck of cards carefully. Rest assured that your opponents – the CEOs of rival corporations – have their strategy planned. In EVE, business is war, and the only thing that matters is winning.

[Eve: Second Genesis | Eve-Online]

Mega Games, one of Europe’s largest online gaming communities, is keeping a live and exhaustive list of free video games. 52 pages of games, covering years of game design and covering all genres and many platforms (from Linux to to XP to OSX), there are hundreds of interesting (and some not so interesting) games free to play and enjoy.

[Free Games at Mega Games]

French artist, Space Invader, or someone close to him, has posted pictures giving Flickr users an inside look of his ‘invasion’ of Vienna throughout June 2006. Creating a mixup of art installation and social exploration game, the artist created tile-based pixel art recreating characters from the classic video games Pac-Man and Space Invaders, then pasted them to buildings around Vienna, Austria. Space Invader is currently at residence in Vienna’s Museumsquartier.

[Space Invader Flickr Gallery | Space Invader]

NCsoft has confirmed previous rumours that they’ve laid off 70 of their over 300 employees at NCsoft-Austin (in Texas). Rumored to get hit the hardest were their QA and GM departments (of course!). Rumours originally broke on a large, private industry-insider’s forum and were quickly picked up by games blog f13.net. Rumored to be at the root of the problems is City of Heroes/Villains dwindling subscriber-base (now supposedly dropping under 100,000 total), the slow-start that new title, Auto Assault, is off to, and the huge flaming money pit that Tabula Rasa has turned into. There’s no news on how, if at all, this will effect ArenaNet and Guildwars development. It’s time to launch that universal subscription fee NCsoft, you’d get me back if only I could play Lineage II, CoH, and Auto Assault all at one low price. Condolences all around to those who are now without work.

[NCsoft fires 70 | (Via TCE)]

City Pixel have created a breath-taking pixelated replica of New York City and merged into a giant internet city-as-social network. Registration is free and users are able to explore the city, shop, rent apartments, use public transportation and even make in-world “calls” to other pixelcitizens on the public telephones available throughout the city. Take 1 part Second-Life, 1 part MySpace, and lots of pixels later, you have a New York-style playground for you to explore and meet new people. City Pixel is currently in production on their second city, rumored to be London, which is leading their user-polls for what should come next.

[City Pixel]

The Sundance of indie gaming, the Indie Games Festival (IGF), has just announced their 9th annual festival and awards program. The festival, started in 1998, is on it’s 9th year of encouraging innovation in game design and development, and continues to offer independent game developers much-needed support and press. The IGF is currently accepting submissions for their main awards category, as well as their mods and student categories. The IGF awards ceremony takes place March 7, 2007 and is always one of the highlights of the annual game developers conference (GDC). Good luck to everyone.

[IGF 2007]

Garage Games have announced the full release of the Torque Game Builder, unofficially known as the Torque 2D engine. With a focus on simplicity, the package features user-friendly editors to manipulate a powerful engine, with features such as animated sprites, special effects system, real world physics, flexible tiles, and a hardware-accelerated 2D rendering graphical engine. With the announcement also comes the addition of the TGB Pro package, which costs a touch more, but gives the user direct access to the TGB and TorqueScript source code.

[Torque Game Builder]

The geniuses at PES have created a beautifully done stop animation video of classic video games (including sound!) performed using traditional items, such as food, birthday candles, coins, and watch faces (among other things). PES is a highly acclaimed multimedia / animation firm who have also worked on commercials for Nike (highly recommended viewing), MoveOn.org, and Diesel (also highly recommended viewing) while creating their quirky brand of animated shorts. Oh, and they offer some of their shorts pre-formatted for PSP, way to go PES!

[Game-Over | PES PSP Videos]

EA announced yesterday that they intend to purchase “Dark Age of Camelot” and “Warhammer Online” developer Mythic Entertainment. Mythic will be expected to transition into a fully-owned studio of EA, focusing on developing EA’s future MMORPG titles. Mythic is currently working on “Warhammer Online”, which is expected to be released Q4 2007 and currently employs around 175 developers.

[EA acquires Mythic Entertainment]