The Showdown Effect, the newly-released game from Magicka developer Arrowhead, has gotten a demo on Steam. Read more

Diablo 3's senior technical game designer explains the focus of the upcoming 1.0.8 update, and how it aims to make co-op a more efficient way to play without going too far and making it feel required. Read more

Richard Garriott's "Ultimate RPG" has been revealed, a spiritual successor to the Ultima series titled Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. It's currently seeking crowd-funding via Kickstarter. Read more

Ten months after receiving a whopping $1.9 million from fans to make Shadowrun Returns, Jordan Weisman's HareBrained Schemes has revealed the cyberpunk-fantasy RPG in a twenty-minute alpha gameplay walkthrough. Weisman and co-founder Mitch Gitelman show off a squad of shadowrunners talking, shooting and summoning their way through one mission and gosh, it's good to see. Read more

Double Fine announced its next title today, a joint effort with the Leap Motion controller to produce a rhythm score-challenge game called Dropchord. Read more

With StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm scheduled to rollout March 12, Blizzard is already developing the scripting, story and missions for the Protoss-focused expansion Legacy of the Void, according to Game Director Dustin Browder. Read more

The 7th Guest is getting a sequel, titled The 7th Guest: 3. Developer Trilobyte is aiming to launch in 12-18 months, and plans to use a Kickstarter campaign if it doesn't find other funding. Read more

We don't often report on Kickstarter projects before they are fully funded, but the just-launched crowdfunding for Torment: Tides of Numenera is an exception. When a game blasts through its $900,000 goal, tops $1 million in record time, and blows through two stretch goals in the first 24 hours, that's worth noting. Read more

Few games receive mod tools nowadays, partly because they take time and money to make and support but also because mods often offer for free the sorts of things publishers try to sell as paid DLC. While Painkiller: Hell & Damnation offers a few pieces of DLC, it's also letting players make their own stuff for the FPS remake. Publisher Nordic Games today announced that the mod kit will launch in April. Mac and Linux editions will follow, too. Read more

Square Enix has registered domain names for "Deus Ex: The Fall." Read more