Nerdy News Roundup for Your First Week of October

Happy October, y’all. While some of you may have been experiencing the delightful sweater and scarf weather that normally comes with fall, we here in Texas have still been sweating our balls off. Until today, that is. High of 53 degrees! Can I get an amen?

Anyway, moving on…

Happy Wars may have missed its September goal for release, but it’ll be less than a week now before it hits Xbox Live Arcade. The game will be free for Xbox Live Gold Members starting October 12th, and players will be able to upgrade characters and weapons with the in-game money they earn.

Plus, it’s adorable as shit.

The multiplayer feature allows thirty players to participate at once, which sounds confusing as all hell and awesome at the same time. But you probably knew all of this already.

The sequel to the great little 3DS game Pushmo will be out in North America on November 22nd. Fallblox will allow blocks to be pushed and pulled in any direction. So…that’s exciting. I don’t really have much content for this paragraph, can you tell?

The brothers who created Words with Friends, Paul and David Bettner, are leaving Zynga. In an interview with GamesBeat, they wouldn’t say what they were planning for the future, nor would they say what they thought about their time with Zynga. Hmmm….

They did add that they were “…still very excited about the future and feel like we are at the beginning.”

The brothers started the McKinney, Texas based studio Newtoy in 2008 and created one of the most successful iPhone games of all time. Zynga paid $53.3 million for Newtoy in 2010, and made the Bettner Brothers studio heads of Zynga With Friends.

Adventure Time‘s Rebecca Sugar is going to be Cartoon Network’s first solo female showrunner with her new show Steven Universe. In addition to being one of AT‘s writers and storyboard artists, Sugar has written a crapload of the songs featured on the show. The episode “It Came From the Nightosphere” earned her an Emmy nomination.

Her new show is going to be about the youngest member of a magical group called The Guardians of the Universe.

Presumably named Steven.

Machinarium is finally going to be available on North America’s PSN. It will be available next Tuesday for $9.99, and Amanita Design is saying that they have the game in development for the Vita, but they have “no idea” when it will be released.

Notch, creator of the much-loved Minecraft, has released some test footage of his new game 0x10c. I have no idea what that name is supposed to mean, but apparently it is going to be a space-based adventure? Anyway, here’s the video.

Angry Birds has a teaser tumblr page. And the only thing that’s on it is a gif of a cloaked Jedi bird holding a lightsaber. OH MAN I WONDER WHAT IS GOING ON THERE? Could it be Star Wars maybe?

Anyway, it’s a pretty cool-looking page. Apparently, they are going to be posting lots of exclusive material there in the future, such as animations, behind the scenes content, and comics. Check it out.

The official Hobbit website lets tricksy hobbitses answer riddles in the dark…

Check out this sweet smartphone charging cable that can be many, many awesome things.

And finally, in case you’ve been living under a rock or dead for a few months or maybe banished to a remote locale, there was a presidential debate this past Wednesday. And it was the shit-show you would expect from such an event.

Besides Jim Lehrer having absolutely no control over the candidates as moderator, Mitt Romney also pledged to end funding to PBS and give that sad, few million dollars to the military’s trillion dollar budget.