Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Eidos was nice enough to show off Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures for us today and the game is looking pretty nice. Graphics are running off of DirectX 9.0c right now, but the code and graphics are in place for DirectX 10. They also talked about the mature themes of the game and that they have not shied away from the violence that has always been associated with the Conan brand. In the trailer they showed, two guys were fighting when one of them had their arm removed. Blood shot out and the guy ran back to continue the fight, only to have his head removed from his body. The violence is harsh and brutal. The developers emphasized this repeatedly through the viewing of the demo.

From there, they gave us a tour of the dungeons that are in the game. It was the first public unveiling of the dungeons, and they have a lot of volume to them. Height is played up with flying creatures and the detail that went into the textures is nice. The battle system scales the battle according to the amount of participants. So if you only have three people traveling with you, the game will scale the difficulty down.

Pets come into play as well. If you are a spellcaster, you can summon pets that will join your fight. As you go through the game, you will gain pet points that in turn will give you the chance to summon a combination of pets to join you.

Overall, there is about 186 square miles of terrain that will be used for the game and it all is explorable. You see some mountains, you can work your way to the top of them. Also, you will be able to achieve a top level of 80 in the game right out of the box.

The thing that really surprised me was how much the developers knew about the history of Conan. They had done tons of research going back to the pulp novels, the Marvel Comics series and even the movies to get as much info as they could to build up the story in the game.

The game looks great, but it is a case of another MMO game joining an already crowded space. With the right marketing, the game could do well, but only time and monthly subscribers can tell how well it will succeed.

Eidos also left us with a downloadable movie that they have for the game. It shows off the brutal nature of the game. Click here view the video, or right click to save it. Enjoy the video.