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What you really need to know: Pandemic is one of the most fun board games I’ve played in quite some time. With that out of the way, let me explain.

Finally, a fun way to experience disease!

Players are part of team of experts frantically trying to stop four viruses from causing a devastating pandemic (how topical). Reading between the lines, that means that Pandemic is a co-operative game. There’s no competition between you and your fellows, just a nagging feeling that even when you put your heads together, things can still go horribly wrong.

That’s mainly because your opposition is automated. Each player’s turn will conclude with drawing cards to indicate which locations in the world will become infected with one of the viruses. If a virus manages to infect a location more than three times, an outbreak will occur and the virus will spread to neighbouring locations (possibly triggering more outbreaks). Meanwhile, the players are trying to research cures for each of the four diseases. Obtain all four cures and the players win. Trigger eight outbreaks or let the viruses spread too far and everybody loses.

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We all carry a little bit of a Bayformer in our hearts; waiting to come out at just the right moment…

Bwarn, Jufferclimp and Umbebeble being attacked by Bobreech Mac.

Generally speaking, I don’t like physics in games. So in a way, I don’t likeTrash Panic. This downloadable PlayStation Network puzzle game for PS3 has a great concept: efficiently arrange random pieces of trash in a trash bin by destroying stuff. The most used technique to do this, will be to break your pieces of trash by smashing them into the bin with force. Logically, this is where the physics come into play and, sadly, start ruining the concept.

When you smash a light-bulb into the bin, it usually shatters into satisfying pieces. Not everything shatters instantly though, so when you get a dumbbell to use, you expect it to be some kind of rubbish killer. Surely it will flatten other items under its weight. But smashing it into the bin only seems to break the very first item it hits! Sure, that one item is then completely shattered, but for a ‘heavy’ item, the physics behind it feel weak.

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While everybody seems to be focused on the differences betweenPrototype and inFamous, I found myself curiously forgetting about the entire comparison as I was playing the latter. It’s not that inFamous is perfect, but for me it comes awfully close. Why? Because it is truly an ‘open’ world.

Just... go.

This sounds a bit weird of course. Ever since Shenmue started making virtual worlds believable I’ve been wanting to explore these worlds beyond conventional means. While Grand Theft Auto III offered a bigger world and more freedom, you were essentially still stuck to the ground. Jumping alleviated this problem a bit (the less said about the helicopter, the better), but essentially I was missing Mario’s abilities in a believable world.

Enter Crackdown, which finally did what I was craving for: combining the fantastic platforming abilities of yore with modern open game worlds. Yet, Crackdown felt slightly limited and its controls were at times too floaty, making it feel disconnected. And this is the part that inFamous gets absolutely right.

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If you didn’t catch the news elsewhere already: Spellborn Works went bankrupt. In short this means all of us who worked on the game are now without a job. But what does this mean for The Chronicles of Spellborn itself?

At the moment, it has little impact for the players. The game itself is owned by Spellborn NV, which is different from Spellborn Works. Spellborn NV actually ‘hired’ Spellborn Works to develop the game for them. All developers where in turn hired by Spellborn Works. Now that Spellborn Works is bankrupt, all the developers have been laid off.

However Spellborn NV is still in business and as such Acclaim and Frogster still have a game to run. So currently the servers are still up and you can still play the game without any problems.

Development of the MMO however has been shut down in the Netherlands and is now in the process of being moved to Frogster Asia in South-Korea. Here the game will be developed into a Free-to-Play MMO.Frogster intends to rerelease this new version somewhere in 2010.

That is all I know about the current situation. You can still play the game ‘as it is’. But at the same time it seems illogical to assume all involved parties will update the game up until the relaunch in 2010. Or at least, I wonder who would do so…

So, anyone looking for a game designer slash content writer give me call via LinkedIn or mail me at vincent at cyhwuhx.com. To the players: thank you for your support and enjoyment of the game. In the end, everything we did was for you and I speak for the entire team when I say that we are still proud at what we accomplished despite the many hardships.

Until the next Great Collapse!