Free PC Gaming Blog

Aeria Games Announces Closed Beta for Richman Online

California, U.S.A. (May 15, 2008) – Aeria Games is proud to announce the closed beta of one of its newest titles, Richman Online, a massive multiplayer online board game that allows players to become property tycoons.

Richman is a combination of some of the most popular board games where players can engage in purchasing property and even buy and trade stock in a constantly-changing stock market.

In the world of Richman, players have the ability to:

- Buy property and construct all kinds of businesses to force your opponents into spending money… and making you rich!
- Use a wide variety of cards to turn the situation to your favor! Wield missiles and land mines, influence the stock market or swap properties with other players!
- Travel on foot, on scooter, or by car, each granting you a different number of dice to speed across the board.
- Gain the favor of benevolent spirits to multiply your cash, and push the spirits of poverty onto your opponents!
- Set the length of your games and your turns – play as slow or as fast as you’d like!
- Enjoy custom outfits, dice, pets and visual effects purchasable with Aeria Points!
- If you need to run a quick errand, you can turn on the Trusteeship System to play for you for a while.
- Play on a wide variety of maps, each with unique layouts catering to large and small games.
- Play in three different modes: Regular Play, Competitive Play and Boss Battle!
For more information on Richman Online, please visit the official website: http://richman.aeriagames.com

About Aeria Games:

Aeria Games is the dynamic gaming community where players of all backgrounds and interests can connect, share, and enjoy an unparalleled variety of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games from all over the world.

Our vision is to provide the best Community Gaming Experience and Service to each and every one of our players and best of all, every game is FREE to Play! Start playing our games today by registering here for your Aeria Games account.

Founded in 2006, Aeria Games & Entertainment, Inc. is based in Silicon Valley, California.

Joymax Announces Deco Online Open Beta

Take a Glimpse at the New MMORPG’s Unique Combat System

SAN JOSE, Calif. - May 14, 2008

Joymax, an independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment for the global market, announced today that the open beta for Deco Online, the new free-to-play casual massively multiplayer online role-playing game, has begun. After a highly successful closed beta phase, Deco Online is now available to any adventurer who wants to jump into the fantasy world of Millena and Rain, two warring nations that pit steel against sorcery. Players are invited to log in and become an expert in swordsmanship, archery or wizardry while mastering the engaging combo attack system to defend their nation from monsters and invaders.

Deco Online features include:
• Vibrant 3D graphics
• Hundreds of skills and exciting quests
• Two distinct races and a unique character advancement system
• Combo attacks that that emphasizes player skill more than traditional MMORPG combat systems
• Step-by-step NPC tutorials and guides to help players get into the game right away
• Character attire customization options
• A huge and varied selection of armor, shield, weapon, gear, and accessory types

About Deco Online
Deco Online is a 3D, massively multiplayer online role-playing game that puts players of all ages deep into the fantastic story of two warring nations. As a legendary swordsman, a fierce archer, or a master of wizardry, players will constantly be challenged by the opposing nation and by monsters that lurk around every corner. Deco Online is free-to-play and offers a combo system with hundreds of potential skills, combining both arcade and classic MMORPG gameplay.
More information about Deco Online is available at http://www.joymax.com/deco/

About Joymax
Since its establishment in April 1997, Joymax has been developing quality games for the rapidly-growing interactive entertainment market. Based in Seoul, Korea, the company has developed and published numerous titles for the PC platform, and its first MMORPG, Silkroad Online, has grown to offer service to over 150 countries since its 2004 launch. Joymax is a global entertainment company providing multimedia content. For more information, please visit http://www.joymax.co.kr/eng/.

I’m not sure how long this will stay free, but you can sign up for the Gleemax Games Alpha now to play games like Axis & Allies and Acquire online for for free. Other games listed include Magic the Gathering Online, Guillotine, and Vegas Showdown. This definitely has potential!

Check out this post from one of their blogs:

We’re going to be trying out a number of different things in the next few months and along the way there’s lots of free gaming to be done. Eventually we intend to make money off of our Gleemax Games content, but we aren’t ready for that step yet. For now, we have some cool games coded and we figured we’re better off making those available for free rather than having our test servers sit around mostly empty while bored employees (like me) played yet another game versus the computer AI.

What we have ready right now is five of our best Avalon Hill board games: Acquire, Vegas Showdown, Axis and Allies, Guillotine, and Robo Rally. These are inherently multiplayer games which you can play through the website against any combination of humans or computer AI’s. Note that the computer AI opponents are not good, and they aren’t intended to be. We had two goals in mind with the AI: 1) make it possible for new players to learn without embarrassing themselves in front of other humans and 2) fill in for anyone who drops without disrupting the experience for the other people playing the game.

In order to play these board games for free you’re going to have to jump through a couple of hoops. They use Java so you’ll have to download that if you don’t already have it – the prompts should make it pretty easy to do – and you’re also going to have to set up an account on our Alpha server (which is currently a separate account from anything else you might have on our systems – yes, for now you’ll need a new account even if you’re already a Gleemax user).

In addition to the board games, we also have one flash game available: Desktop Tower Defense. DTD won our Gleemax Award for Strategic Gameplay (“The Gleemie”) at the Independent games Festival at GDC two months ago. It’s available for free elsewhere on the ‘Net but we really wanted to include it here as an example of the kind of gameplay we value.

Big picture, the goal here is to have one page that folks can go to in order to learn about all the various digital game projects that Wizards of the Coast is involved with. In some cases it will be direct transliterations of our tabletop games (Magic Online fits this model, as do the board games). In other cases it will be original digital game designs (like Uncivilized: the Goblin Game, which has been in the works for a while but isn’t going to release until we get some back-end infrastructure stuff worked out). Yet a third category of stuff you can expect to see is digital distribution of indie games content. In addition to flash games like DTD, look for our recommendations as to which try-and-buy download games are worth your time.

For now, this is just an Alpha test. We expect to learn a lot and you should expect that stuff isn’t always going to work perfectly and may change without much notice. You should also expect us to experiment with various business models before we settle on the right way to make enough money to keep these games available. We’re optimistic that free, high-quality games will make this an enjoyable ride for you even if it’s a bit bumpy at times. See you in game!