Blizzard is excited to announce that closed beta testing has officially begun in the Americas region for Heroes of the Storm™, our free-to-play, online team brawler featuring iconic heroes from more than 20 years of Blizzard gaming history.

Today’s launch brings a new Battleground, a new Hero, Ranked Play, and much, much more. The closed beta test is expected to launch in all other regions on January 14. Players can opt-in for a chance to join the beta test at www.HeroesoftheStorm.com or through the Beta Profile Settings page in Battle.net® account management.

The latest features introduced to Heroes of the Storm include:

• New Battleground —Sky Temple, a new desert-themed Battleground, challenges players to fight for control of ancient Temples. Once captured, these Temples fire devastating beams of energy toward enemy structures.
• New Hero —Thrall, Warchief of the Horde, is the newest melee assassin to join the Nexus, bringing fearsome abilities, including Chain Lightning, Windfury, and Earthquake.
• Hero League—This new Ranked Play mode enables players (who are level 30 and own at least 10 Heroes) to queue up alone or in a party of up to five for ranked, competitive matches against other players of similar skill and party size.
• Draft Mode —Utilize this mode to build a competitive team composition, counter your opponent’s picks, and dominate the Battleground objectives.

A complete list of the latest game updates can be found in this week’s patch notes,

For more info, visit http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/

Today Techland announced the final touches are being put on a tie-in novel based on the upcoming action survival game Dying Light. Titled Dying Light: Nightmare Row, the novel will be a prequel to the events depicted in the game, taking the reader to the days prior to the outbreak that decimated the city of Harran. Dying Light: Nightmare Row is written by Raymond Benson, the author of over thirty published titles, including the official follow-up James Bond novels commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate.

“Writing the origin story for DYING LIGHT was an exciting adventure for me,” says Benson. “I’d always wanted to try my hand at a zombie-genre tale and this gave me the perfect opportunity. The folks at Techland created a rich and intriguingly bleak setting for the game, so that gave me a wonderful and creepy world in which to play around. All fans of zombie fiction, gamers and readers alike, are in for a real treat.”

Dying Light: Nightmare Row tells the terrifying story of Mel Wyatt, an 18-year-old American athlete who participated in the Harran 2015 Global Athletic Games two weeks earlier. As one of many Americans stranded in Harran as a result of the outbreak, Mel has been surviving with her little brother, Paul, in an isolated hotel – their parents were killed on the first day of the Infected attacks on the stadium. Thus begins a tense and ticking time bomb thriller of survival.

More details about Dying Light: Nightmare Row, including price and release date, will be announced soon.

Dying Light (videogame) is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the PC, and is scheduled for release in 2015 on January 27th in the Americas, January 28th in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and January 30th in Europe.

For more info, visit dyinglightgame.com/

Independent developer Keen Software House, today announced Medieval Engineers, the company’s second “engineering” game. The first, Space Engineers, was released in October 2013 and sold over 1 million copies in its first year, and is still keeping its bestseller position. Medieval Engineers is currently in its alpha stage of development and will be soon available on Steam Early Access. More details will be announced at a later date.

Medieval Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and the maintenance of architectural works and mechanical equipment using medieval technology. Players build cities, castles and fortifications; construct mechanical devices and engines; perform landscaping and underground mining.

Medieval Engineers is inspired by real medieval technology and the way people built architectural and mechanical works in medieval times. Medieval Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and real history and doesn’t use technologies that were not available in 5th to 15th century.

“We are very curious to see how the Space Engineers community will react to Medieval Engineers and if other communities will also get interested in our new title” said Marek Rosa, CEO and Founder of Keen Software House. “We didn’t want to only keep creating space games. Instead we wanted to have a game where players can interact with life and nature. By creating a second engineering game, we are also leveraging our existing technology and experience.”

An in-game alpha video showing gameplay action and key features (creative mode, castle building, trebuchet construction, realistic destruction and physics) can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJBYsv3sGAI
For more information about Medieval Engineers, visit www.MedievalEngineers.com

CCP has just released a new update for their sandbox sci-fi game “EVE Online” with the new Proteus update. This new update features many new changes, including rebalanced ships, field effects, exploration sites and more.

• Rebalanced Recon Ships. An entire class of ships has gone back to the design table with a notable change being immunity to detection by Directional Scanners for Combat Recons, making them incredibly deadly ambushers
• Asteroid field effects bring pulverized rocks, dust particles, light rays and other atmospheric beautifications to the raw materials that help build the EVE universe
• High end exploration sites offer hazards, traps and lucrative rewards for veteran explorers
• 10 more groups of modules are streamlined and simplified to maintain the sophistication of EVE without overdone complexity
• The glorious beta star map gains even more features and improved visualization
• A redesigned Gallente Exequror hull graces the previously humble logistics ship
• New player mining locations ensure that there will always be a fresh store of Veldspar for those venturing into the first few days in EVE

For more info, visit http://community.eveonline.com/releases/proteus/?utm_source=ccp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20150113_pr&utm_content=proteus2