The fine folks over at Kotaku have uncovered a job ad that seems to indicate a serious new game in the HOMM universe is under development.

The advertisement, posted on Gamasutra by UbiSoft Studios in Shanghai, originally said that the studio is developing "Heroes of MM" as "a brand new fantasy RPG title for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac". The original job ad has since been edited, but the job still calls for someone who has "shipped at least two AAA RPG titles in a senior or lead game designer."

Being an "RPG" game means this could be HOMM6 or a whole new adventure/RPG. At this point I'm leaning towards the latter given that turn-based strategy games don't normally end up on the Xbox or PS3 (or the Mac -- haha). It might also make sense given that UbiSoft Shanghai has been responsible for...

Hail and well met!

After a long and sleepy hiatus twiddling our thumbs and playing King's Bounty alone by ourselves (you have played King's Bounty right?) we finally have some news to report from Yaiden. And it is good news.

The technical beta that just ended offering a great and furious war between the Dominion, the most powerful alliance from the last 2 betas, and a coalition of several eminent alliances. We would like to thanks all the beta testers who definitely and positively allow us to tune and improve the game features and mechanics, especially the PVP aspect.

We are now launching a new closed beta to test all the new implementations and the new gameplay balance. This closed beta will be the last step before a Public Beta.

We will keep you informed about the next steps and...

It has only been around for a week, but browser-based strategy game Civony is already looking pretty good. At first blush, the game offers robust trading, questing, building, chat, tutorial and alliance systems. Armies are lead into combat by heroes who can be customized with a decent number of rewards, upgrades and buffs. The game also starts off at a blistering pace -- through a combination of development rewards and "speed" upgrades, the first few hours make for a fairly compelling click-fest.

The game does adopt a monetization model. Players can use real money to buy a wide array of goods including scrolls of instant development, hero experience, and even tokens for gambling in a "wheel of fortune" slot machine. However, early adopters of the game are being given a big pile of swag and game money to begin, so...

Indy French game developer Luc Bernard wrote Kotaku yesterday with news that his new iPhone game, MechoWars, will be available sometime this month for $5.

The gameplay in MechoWars is said to borrow heavily from AdvanceWars and Fire Emblem. The story text seems to borrow heavily from teenage melodrama. And the color palette seems to borrow from the craziest psychedelic mushroom ever. Conquering a giant octopus base with hose-beast dog? Ah Luc, you're nothing if not consistent.

Despite the general weirdness of what we see here it will be nice to get a strategy game on the iPhone. iDevelopment has weighed heavily in favor of fart apps, cheap ports and arcade rip-offs at the expense of game requiring a little thought. Which is unfortunate given that the iPhone is a natural for strategy gaming with the touch controls and large screen...

Our good friends over at CelestialHeavens report that March 1st was Fabrice Cambounet's birthday. As we all know, Fabrice dresses like Pikachu and produced the very pretty HOMMV. Last August he joined the HOMMK team to get it ready for release. Fabrice is now level 36 and can cast expert Meteor Shower.

We decided to give Fabrice a nice fez to match the one Yaiden has been wearing lately. Looks great man.