Developer S2 Games and iGames Publishing announced today that the one-of-a-kind real-time strategy shooter Savage: The Battle for Newerth has been named one of the top ten finalists in the Open Category of the 2004 Independent Games Festival (IGF) competition. The IGF competition will take place at the 2004 Game Developer’s Conference in San Jose, CA from March 24-26, 2004.

Vivendi Universal Games announced that it has hired Chance Thomas as the Tolkien Music Director in charge of the creation and production of the musical themes for all of its videogames based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

You are Paul de Raque, Knight of the Temple, as you set out on a holy crusade across a forbidding, mediaeval Europe to join your order in the Holy Land. Armed with your sword, axe, bow and shield, you must fight with all your strength to complete your journey, for saving the future of the world is your ultimate goal! The core of the game is medieval style fighting with the classical weapons of European knights, coupled with stunning graphics of the historical milieus of the 12th century crusades. Check these 60 new screens.

On its 1 year anniversary, the DesertCombat team has released the next major public alpha of DesertCombat. Happy Birthday! Public Beta 0.6F is a patch to be used to upgrade from 0.5L and features a slew of bug fixes, new vehicles, 3 new maps and additions aimed at creating on of the best war game experiences on the PC. In this stage of development each is roughly balanced with some minor advantages to each, making gameplay much more fun and exciting. Read more for download links ...

UPDATE:We now also have the win32/Linux dedicated server patches available for download.