Edinburgh’s Gamevial is a development studio focusing on browser-based gaming. The company is one of the most prolific developers in the country, having created around 100 titles, which can be found and played through the Gamevial website.
Gamevial’s titles can best be described as ‘diverse’. The company has released games including Russia’s Army, a multi-player cross-platform first-person-shooter, as well as Fly Like A Bird, which is, as you probably haven’t guessed, a birdy simulator. You fly and soar across the city, peck, feed your chicks, poo on cars – everything a bird could wish for. The website includes every conceivable genre, in every conceivable setting.
Now the company has released two new games. They are as eclectic and peculiar as their siblings. In a good way…
Namaball is a ‘casual battle MMO’ in which players across multiple devices compete, using ‘sentry guns’. Offering hundreds of teams to choose from and weapons to unlock, Namaball sentrygun mechs have H.E.A.R.T. processors (Highly Emotional Android Robot Technology), which the company tells us gives scope for complex social AI within the game.
Gamevial’s Pete Roobol, told us:
“Bizarrely the game started as an Angry Birds engine clone, and evolved into this casual battle MMO. The goal, a seamless multiplayer play experience, fair over shared levels on multiplatform devices. Offering a casual one touch play dymanic, yet having the content and depth of hardcore action title.”
The game’s name, Namaball, apparently comes from the Japanese word ‘nama’ which means life (or genuine). You can find Namaball online and play it FREE. The game is in active development, so the company is telling players to expect regular updates, new content and levels on an ongoing basis.
The company’s second recent release is a little more… unusual. Lif (which is Icelandic for ‘life’) is a nature simulator. Players become a ‘beast of the wild woods’. Hunt, kill, fight, forage, swim, drink, graze and – well – not to put too fine a point on it – breed and create new animals.
Yes, Gamevial has the distinction of being the first company we’re aware of to introduce rutting, tupping or good old fashioned animal sex as a game mechanic. Apart from being fascinated to see what the achievements and multiplayer options are, we’re delighted to see a game which takes sex and violence so very seriously…
And of course there may be puppies, cubs, kittens, fawns or other cutesy-poo little babies to gurgle and coo at.
Totem poles throughout the game allow the player to change species, so presumably you can head back to your den / set / hole / nest / bungalow and scare the hell out of the kids as part of the fun.
Gamevial tells us that Lif started out in lif (do you see what we did there?) as a test for their new terrain engine and was built ‘live’ using feedback from the company’s Facebook followers and fans.
It’s another remarkable and very different title from a company we’re delighted to hear more from.
As with Namaball, you can find Lif, on the Gamevial website and play it for FREE.
We recommend you do.