Dear CoH Community,

Welcome to the latest Company of Heroes 2 “Letter from the Producer!” As you know, a lot has happened since we last spoke. The bankruptcy of THQ has brought big changes to a family we were part of for almost 10 years and we wish all the best for the future to all of our former colleagues!

Looking to our own future, I must admit that the studio as a whole is incredibly stoked to be working alongside a publisher with a heritage as strong as SEGA’s. Shortly after the acquisition was announced, work on integrating the entire Relic team began. It’s been a rapid transition period and I’m happy to say we’re a pretty much fully functioning member of the SEGA family now and remain fully focused on shipping the highest quality version of Company of Heroes 2 you have all been waiting for.

Right now we’re working towards bringing you the closed beta build which we’ll be able to talk more to you about soon. You can find out how to get involved when the time comes on our Facebook and Twitter pages, so be sure to like and follow us there for the latest details.

Hope this answers a few questions. I’ll keep a look out for more hot topics, so keep up the discussions and hope to see you online soon! Please rest assured that as we get out of this transition phase we will be much more communicative regarding our status and upcoming plans. 2013 will be a great year for us!

Cheers,

Greg Wilson
Producer – Company of Heroes 2

Continuing our series of interviews about The Cave with Double Fine, our own Matt Hickman sits down with Character Animator and Designer Dave Gardner on his role in crafting the game. We hope you enjoy!

We are happy to announce that Godsrule: War of Mortals has now moved into Open Beta testing!

SEGA’s joint project with Gogogic, Godsrule is a tactical real-time strategy/combat game where you will build up your village and raise an army, join a faction, and wage war against other players. Free to play and browser-based on the PC – as well as being in Closed Beta on tablets — Godsrule: War of Mortals has opened its gates to all for Open Beta on the PC – you can sign up right now at:

http://game.playgodsrule.com/

If you want to quickly get acquainted with some broad strategies – as well as more advanced tactics – you can also head over and check out the strategy guide:

http://playgodsrule.com/combat-guide/

This is your chance to take part in the active community and discussion which will help shape the game. You can follow our updates and help provide feedback in-game, on the official SEGA forums, or on our Facebook page:

http://forums.sega.com/forumdisplay.php?324-Godsrule-War-of-Mortals

https://www.facebook.com/playgodsrule

The devilish creator of the award winning console game, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, winner of best download game and best indie game in Destructoid’s ‘Best of E3 2012’ awards – brings you Hell Yeah! Pocket Inferno. Now available on iOS for only 99c/69p/0.89€, and coming soon to Android.

Matt Hickman, Producer for The Cave, asks Lead Artist Jane Ng from Double Fine about the art style seen in The Cave, the making of the game, and sandwiches.

Virtua Fighter fans, we hope you are as excited about the upcoming SEGA Cup tournament as we are! Today’s update features new information about registration and prizing for our tournament.

The first annual Sega Virtua Fighter Tournament will be held at the Super Arcade in Los Angeles on April 20, 2012 – it will be exclusively for Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown and is open to anyone who can attend. Sega to partner with Level |Up for hosting and streaming of the event, so even if you can’t be there in person, you can watch from afar and cheer competitors on!

Tournament Registration

To register, hit the link below to visit our Eventbrite registration page. The Tournament is $10 to enter, and features up to 128 slots. Payment is available through Paypal only. You MUST register by April 15th, there will be no on-site registration.

http://segacup2013.eventbrite.com

Tournament Prizing

Cash Prizes will be awarded to the top 16 players across the tournament, following the breakdown below.
1 $3,000.00
2 $2,000.00
3 $1,600.00
4 $1,400.00
5 $1,100.00
6 $1,100.00
7 $900.00
8 $900.00
9 $600.00
10 $600.00
11 $600.00
12 $600.00
13 $400.00
14 $400.00
15 $400.00
16 $400.00

We wish every competitor the best of luck and look forward to see everyone this April for the Tournament.

Care to meet us on the field of battle?

This Saturday, February 16th, SEGA & Gogogic invite you to take up arms and join us in battle: we will be gathering as many people as possible to help test our servers and online play, get general feedback, and of course to enjoy the game with fellow players!

Godsrule: War of Mortals is a new game, currently in closed beta, developed by Gogogic and produced by SEGA. A browser game also in development for mobile, Godsrule combines city and army building with real-time PvP combat, set against a mythic backdrop of fantasy-inspired lore.

Here’s the info on the weekend event:

WHAT:
Godsrule: War of Mortals with SEGA & Gogogic

WHEN:
*Saturday, February 16th*
*12:00 – 2:00PM (PST)*

WHO:
Here’s our User Names and which faction we will be fighting for:

Souls of Ascension

Roguelike (SEGA)
Puzzle Bus (SEGA)
Grima (Gogogic)
Gummudu (Gogogic)
Skrekkur (Gogogic)
Zurgur (Gogogic)

Keepers of the Ancient

Joi (Gogogic)
Ulfljotur (Gogogic)
Zaphod (Gogogic)
Smarty Pants (SEGA)

You may notice the Keepers of the Ancient are outnumbered — don’t let that fool you! They are wily and not to be trusted, and must be crushed. You can find me, Edward@SEGA, as the above-mentioned “Roguelike”, doing my best to bring glory to the valiant Souls of Ascension. Those of you with old-school Phantasy Star Universe PC/PS2 roots may remember Puzzle Bus (also listed above) as Max@SEGA.

WHERE:

You can still sign up to participate in the Closed Beta at: http://playgodsrule.com

WHY:

For honor! For glory! For helping SEGA and Gogogic shape an in-development game and test server load for PvP combat!

To prepare, you can brush up on your combat skills by reading through this handy guide.

Rally your forces and we look forward to engaging you in fierce and unequal combat!

Love is …

…a homicidal automaton that may or may not be aware it is a robot?

…twin-stick-driven, explosion-inducing, everything-blasting mayhem?

…eight friends gathering together in ruined locales to shoot wildly at each other for fun and profit?

…VIKINGS?

…an undead rabbit, wreaking untold undead lagomorph havoc in a side-scrolling manner?

All of the above? Yes, love is all things to all gamers, and for those of you who are less interested in obscure dating sims may today be interested in our selection of games where you can blow things up real good: it is a Valentine’s Day sale at the Sega Store, for catalog past and present!

Here are the many spots at our own SEGA E-Shop — by region — where one can get these romantic, romantic games:

United States:
http://us.download-shop.sega.com/top-deals/valentines-day.html
United Kingdom:
http://uk.download-shop.sega.com/top-deals/valentines-day.html
EU:
http://eu.download-shop.sega.com/top-deals/valentines-day.html
France:
http://fr.download-shop.sega.com/promos-bons-plans/saint-valentin.html
Spain:
http://es.download-shop.sega.com/ofertas-especiales/dia-de-san-valentin.html
Italy:
http://it.download-shop.sega.com/offerte-speciali/san-valentino.html
Germany:
http://de.download-shop.sega.com/promotions-angebote/valentinstag.html

Love isn’t just a thing that happens once a year: love, like a turret entrenched in the dungeon of a clockwork planet, is always there for you, or at least as a rare spawn that sometimes – sometimes! – is there right when you need it.

To celebrate the fleeting and off destructive nature of love, Spiral Knights for a limited time is featuring the Forever Love Puppy mask, available in-game from the Supply Depot. Nothing says true love like wearing a replica severed husk of the anthropomorphized cannon that wanted only to heal your injuries!

And if that is somehow not enough love for you, the Love Aura accessory is available for free with select purchases of crystal energy.

Both these items are available through February 19th, 2013.

For further meditations on love – true love! – here are the official release notes for today.

We recently sat down with members of the Double Fine team to talk about their work on The Cave. First up is Lead Designer JP, watch the video to hear more about what goes into making a modern day adventure game:

We hope you liked this video, stay tuned for more videos in the weeks to come!