Angled Whiteboards

In case you haven’t checked out our scrumptious mini-site for it, I write to you today, dear readers, to let you know that the first episode of American McGee’s Grimm is now available! This week’s episode is A Boy Learns What Fear Is, and you, as Grimm, will teach this young man exactly that.  And the good part?  This episode is free to all.  Happily forever after.

The launch of the Grimm games also introduces an unique new leaderboard to GameTap.  The Grimm leaderboards are not based on a score, per se, but rather how fast you can complete the game.  The faster you can grimmify each fairy tale, the higher you’ll rank on the leaderboards.  And the only way to post your times to a Grimm leaderboard is exclusively on GameTap.

Each Grimm game will also be available in our Retail Games section to download as a standalone PC game.  We’re even giving away this first episode absolutely free.  There’s one tiny catch, though: the standalone versions of each episode don’t have the ability to allow you to post to our leaderboards.  But, if you need to play some Grimm on the go, we’ve gotcha covered.

New premium games:

• American McGee’s Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear Is
  
• Alien Stars
  

New free game:

• American McGee’s Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear Is

Continuing to add to our GameTap indies titles, Aveyond 2 is available this week. And if you loved Golden Axe as much as I did during its heyday, you’ll love giving this week’s new free title a try: Knights of the Round.

New premium games:

• Aveyond 2
• Battle Chess
• Fallout

New free games:

• Knights of the Round

So how do you prefer to kill the snaking marble ball things?  Shooting from a rotate-y thing in the middle of the screen?  If so, stick with Crabby Adventure and Chameleon Gems.  If you’re like me and you’d rather have a horizontal Breakout-like paddle anchored to the bottom of the screen, then you’ll like Inca Ball.

New premium games:

• Inca Ball
• Freespace 2

Today we launched a redesign of GameTap.com.  You’ll notice that our website focus has shifted a bit.  We’ve had a lot of success in the last half-year or so with our community-driven daily events — so we figured it was time to shine a spotlight on what had previously been housed in our forums.  As a part of this redesign, we’ve integrated a full-on calendar and notification system in the new Daily Events section of the site.  Now you’ll have no excuse for not showing up for the next Radio Arcadio; you’ll have received a text message reminding you! Want to crush your friends in the next Monday Leaderboard Tournament (H.E.R.O.!)?  Just send them an invite right from the event page.

And, of course, the primary focus is still GAMES.  All the same rules apply: add events from the New to GameTap calendar to Google, Outlook, iCal.  Stick the whole thing in your RSS feed reader.  Remind your friends by putting it on your MySpace or Facebook page.  We’ve seen a lot of requests from folks to make it easier to know when and what the new games are; now you’ll have no excuse for not being informed!  (And I hear that we’re pretty close to leaking the sack again, if you catch my drift…)

So head over to the site and take a look around.  What we’ve launched today is foundational.  As with the big 3.0 launch last year, look for us to build upon this in the coming weeks and months.  And, as always, let us know what you think: here, in the suggestion box, or in the forums.

We’ve got two new premium games this week.  But!  We also just launched an update to our online browser play.  The initial beta release had eleven games all in one gigantic package.  This new version has a proper game downloading framework.  Which means we’re no longer limited to jamming in a few smallish games.  Today we launch with over 40 of our emulated games available for quick, online play.  Start at the front door.  Or see the full list here.

AND!  Leaderboard posting works! This is going to be big news for Monday Leaderboard Tournament gamers.  If you don’t have the full GameTap Player on your work machine, you might still be able to get your practice AND scores in during your lunch break.  Or smoke break.  Or game break.  Or… we need a boss button now maybe?

Check the full list of titles below.  Some big names in there: Metal Slug, Super Street Fighter II, Magical Drop III, Twinkle Star Sprites.  And more are on the way.  There might even be a tiny easter egg of functionality hidden in this new online play release — one that should make playing these games even easier.
New Gold games:

• Aveyond
• ClayFighter

Free online-playable games:

But otherwise, this is my favorite infographic of the moment.