The release date for Rynn’s Adventure: Trouble in the Enchanted Forest has just been announced, with the game hitting the Nintendo Wii U eShop on May 26th.
Developed by Canadian developer Arcane Four Studios, Rynn’s Adventure is a 2D platformer game in which the player guides Rynn through a variety of environments teeming with magic and danger. The player will help Rynn combat the many enemies she encounters and outwit each of their fearsome generals. Rynn will eventually face off against the evil wizard himself in order to free her parents and ultimately save the Enchanted Forest and its inhabitants.
The invaders are a marauding army of fierce reptiles whose unopposed ruthlessness will destroy the Forest. Meanwhile, an evil wizard has kidnapped the king and queen and has them imprisoned in his dark castle. The only hope for the forest dwellers is Rynn, a spry young fox who also happens to be their princess. Rynn’s mental and physical agility, along with power gained from magical fruit, will allow her to halt the siege and defeat the evil wizard.
I’ve been following id Software’s revival of the granddaddy of First Person Shooters, DOOM, since it was announced over two years ago. After the rather bland looking E3 campaign demos from last year, there was relative silence about the single player content right up until a few weeks before the game’s release. After spending 3 hours with the single-player mode into the wee hours of the morning I’ve got some initial impressions to share.Read More
It has been quite a few years since we got a properly numbered Civilization title – sure side adventures like Civilization: Beyond Earth and its’ expansion were fun but they really did feel like an incremental step forward from Civilization V, rather than a completely new experience. Firaxis Games and publisher 2K have announced that the next mainline entry in the 25 year old franchise, Civilization VI will be released on Windows PC in late October.
[youtube id=”qvBf6WBatk0″]
Civilization VI looks to build on the successful franchise formula by introducing changes to some of the key components that comprise Civ’s signature gameplay. Cities will now be able to expand across the map, meaning that cities will now be able to take up multiple tiles as they grow. Diplomacy and placating other factions within the game world has always been one of the keys to a successful campaign and now your relationship with A.I rulers will change over the course of the game – your first interaction with another faction could shape how your relationship forms right until the end of the game. Multiplayer enhancements in Civ VI will include a new set of tutorials designed to allow multiple players to take on pre-designed mini-campaigns that can be completed in a single session.
Speaking about the visual presentation and overall experience of Civilization VI Lead Designer, ED Beach said:
“The visual presentation of the game is inspired by the maps and tools of the Age of Exploration, and we’ve made several key gameplay changes such as expansive cities and active research that makes Sid Meier’s Civilization VIan entirely unique experience while remaining true to what makes the Civilizationseries so special.”
Civilization V is one of my favorite local games to play with friends, as surprising as that may be to hear. That game’s “hot seat mode” – which allows each player to take a complete turn and then “pass off” to the other player – captured the strategic thrill of a complex board game, like RISK, for me – without all of the messy pieces and the need to remember the position of units when it came time to shutdown the game for the night. I spent many long nights two summers ago playing a single game of CIV V with a former roommate, if you ever wanted a game that could potentially destroy a friendship over hundreds of turns, Civilization is one of those games!
2K Games and Firaxis will have more on Civilization VI at this year’s E3!
I Want to be Human is a new game from the indie developer Sinclair Strange, over in the UK. It is a run’n’gun 2D platformer with tight jumping puzzles and Super Meat Boy like wall climbing. The game also features a soundtrack from Jimmy Urine, a member of Mindless Self Indulgence and a very unique visual aesthetic with a comic book style and featuring only white, black and red coloring. Out on Windows via Steam at the moment, with major console releases expected as well.
Let’s start with the positives for this game, the joypad controls and movement are tight and easy to pick up, enemies are varied and the electronic punk soundtrack is a joy. The intro song is great, and worth listening to on its own. There’s a lot to recommend this game on those merits. I enjoyed that the main character is a vampire wearing her now bat-boyfriend as a hat. It reminded me of Banjo Kazooie in a good way. There are plenty of levels, giant bad-ass bosses and lots of challenges and collectibles. All that said, the game suffers from common issues of a tiny development team.
To me, the most frustrating issue is frame rate. On Windows 7, with a GTX960 card, I had constant stuttering. Even the level selection area had a lot ton of it, and it seemed to be connected to certain in-game effects as some levels barely stuttered. My system is a solid mid-range gaming PC, and far more intense 2D and not games have given me no trouble at high quality settings. This is something that can hopefully be resolved with some bug fixing and performance patching. I do hope the developer sees that through, but it’s frustrating that these bugs made it through development without being caught.
This should not cause stuttering
There are design choices that were made that I don’t think a larger team would have let through development. For starters, the color palette. The game uses a few shades each of red, white and black. That’s it. I think the intention is to give it a penciled, kids comic book like feel and in that regard it succeeds. The problem is in actual game play. Telling everything apart is difficult at times, which blotch of grays of reds are enemies and which are the level itself? The limited palette, heavy gore and constant effects combine to make screen mush. Even with this, it was easy enough to get through any level with a C on the first try (challenge levels excepted). How to improve my score was never made clear after any attempt, though.
Somewhere, I’m sure, a 9-year-old is giggling
A further issue is the writing. If I were still a kid living in the nineties, I probably would have found it cool or edgy. Sort of like a low quality Invader Zim. As someone over the age of 16, though it comes across as sophomoric, dull and uninventive. Not only that, but there are many basic spelling mistakes littered throughout. Since this is an action oriented platformer, it could have been excused, but there is such constant dialogue and it gets right over parts of the screen I need to see to play. Honestly, I’d prefer the game if it simply didn’t have the running commentary and dialogue between you and your bat boyfriend. The writing is there though, and pretty constant as you mow through enemies. Ironically, the game likes to try and make fun of indie games and the people who enjoy them while falling into almost every trope it mocks. If it were more self-effacing it would be funny, but it’s not. The low quality of the writing makes the jabs at other indie games sad, like you’re trying to piss off your customers.
Not with that spelling you aren’t
This game had a lot of potential for me. I like almost every category it fits in: comics, music, pixel art, punk music, and platformers. I had really hoped to enjoy this game, but simply couldn’t. Some parts of it would be easy enough to iron out. I do hope the poor spelling and random stuttering are worked out before long. The other issues are just too much a part of the game itself to ever be resolved. I respect that the developer stuck with their choices, but it comes out as mush. Graphics that stutter and run together, writing that comes across as insecure for the games’ own genre, and seemingly inconsequential level scoring. All of this leads to me not being able to recommend this game.
Indie horror sensation Five Nights At Freddy’s could get a remake on current generation consoles according to the game’s developer, Scott Cawthon. According to Scott he is already in talks with “a few companies” about fully remaking the games to take advantage of the 8th generation of consoles.
The original Five Nights At Freddy’s and its’ sequels were developed in ClickTeam Fusions 2.5 – an visual orientated game development suite that eschews traditional scripting languages like C++ or C# for an easy to understand “Event Editor” grid system. While Fusion 2.5 is a very versatile creation suite that supports a number of platforms – and version 3.0 looks even more promising – it currently does not support major games consoles, making a full remake necessary.
FNAF and its spin-offs became almost overnight sensations after the first game’s massive success on YouTube in 2014. The player takes the role of a night watchmen during the 12 AM – 6AM security shift at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a Chucky E Cheese analogue. Developer Scott Cawthron has developed 2 direct sequels to the original game and one less than praised attempt to turn the series into an RPG.
Humble’s latest bundle is a feast for the eyes – called the Humble Eye Candy Bundle, this latest set of discount games are absolutely beautiful. To be clear I’m not talking about “a game that has the most technically demanding graphics” but more in the way of “this game will stand up aesthetically for along time to come.”
So what can you get? By chipping $1 towards charity you’ll receive two of Wayforward’s beautiful 2D games – 2010’s Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, the recent PC port of the 2009 Wii Exclusive A Boy and His Blob as well as Tomorrow Corporation’s Human Resource Machine.
The other tiers are full of other great titles, with more being added soon.
Bethesda‘s Dishonored II will be dropping on November 11th 2016 according to an image that appeared on the German branch of the publisher’s website. It is unknown if this post was made live by mistake but no English version of the post has yet to appear. The full title of the game appears to be Dishonored 2: Legacy of the Mask” if this German post is accurate.
In part (according to google translate) the post reads:
“Take what belongs to you! Under the slogan starts on November 11th worldwide “Dishonored 2: The Legacy of the Mask”, the successor of Arkane Studios’ critically acclaimed first-person action game on PS4, Xbox One and PC.”
Dishonored II was originally revealed at E3 2015 by Arkane Studios, a re-mastered version of the original Dishonored was released on PS4 and Xbox One last Fall.
Comcept, the developers behind the Kickstarter darling & spiritual successor to the Mega Man Franchise, Mighty Number 9, have announced that the game has officially gone gold. Keiji Inafune, the mind behind the blue bomber and the protagonist of this latest game, Beck, wrote in part on the official Mighty Number 9 site about how crucial crowd funding was to the game’s colossal success 3 years ago.
Inafune wrote:
“It has been almost three years since the start of our Kickstarter campaign, which was only made possible through the support of our backers and fans around the world. This is a project where everyone’s passions were combined in order to create something very special, and we are looking forward to delivering the final product to everyone who was involved. There can be no stronger connection between game creators and game fans.”
Mighty Number 9 now has a “set in stone” release date of June 21st 2016 for North America and June 24th 2016 for the rest of the world. The PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS editions of the game are expected to be released sometime later this year.
Developers Virtual Basement bring the childhood pastime of backyard warfare with plastic army men into the modern era with their Unreal 4 engine powered team death match shooter The Mean Greens. This is certainly territory that has been covered by 3DO’s now defunct Army Men franchise on previous generation consoles, but no other title has made watching your plastic figure melting into a pile of goo like The Mean Greens has achieved.Read More
Lichdom: Battlemage is a fantasy first person shooter, developed by indie developers Xaviant. It came out in the summer of 2014 for PC, with ports for Xbox One and Playstation 4 recently. The game offers players a chance to play as a battlemage, a being capable of casting and crafting powerful magical spells in the heat of combat. Lichdom introduces you to a beautiful world powered by CryEngine3 that will leave you awestruck at the amazing scenery and spell effects. There’s also a very deep spell crafting system, based off of 8 elemental sigils (fire, ice, necromancy, etc) which can be combined together to create new types of magic. The game promises thousands of unique spells, each unique and distinct. So does Lichdom live up to its lofty goals?
Xaviant is an indie developer that started in 2014. I do feel that Lichdom is an impressive piece of art considering it’s their first game. They’re currently working on a new game called The Culling which is a Hunger Games style battle royale tournament and it looks very promising. Their games use CryEngine3 which has been used in the Farcry series of games. Lichdom is a very pretty game and in my opinion, the graphics really carry it. It’s worth checking out just based on the beautiful environments.
The story starts off with the protagonist experiencing a horrific run-in with a cult leader. Depending on whether you choose to be a boy or a girl, this individual proceeds to either kill your wife or kidnap your sister. After that, you find yourself waking in the presence of a mysterious old man who tells you that you are the dragon, a hero destined to save the world using powerful magic. Apparently, your destiny is to fix the wrongdoings of this same powerful cult, who, years ago, literally shattered the moon. Driven by revenge, you set out, fighting hordes upon hordes of evil cultists and demons to find the leader and put an end to their destruction. You will make your way through abandoned catacombs, scorching deserts, and eerie swamps, all the while collecting magical totems to make a variety of spells you will need to win this war.
I thought the magic in Lichdom sounded really cool when I heard that there were thousands of potential spells that you could craft. But for a good portion of the game I found the crafting system very complicated to use. They show you a short “video” consisting of 3 slides, and then just throw you into the spellcrafting system, which can be very confusing to new players. Luckily, there is an auto-magic crafting system that makes things a lot easier. There’s also a somewhat helpful guide on their steam community page. Lichdom’s magic can be fun, but be prepared to invest a lot of time in learning how it works.
Some of the spells really made me want to experiment. For example, I enjoyed playing with necromancy, a spell set that lets you turn fallen enemies into undead companions to fight for you. However, I always felt like I was going to ruin the specific effect my spell currently had if I upgraded it in any way. Further I learned that the extensive variety of spells I was promised were really just small stat tweaks to a number of base spells. I don’t think increasing the damage of a spell counts as an entirely new spell if the effect remains the same, but that’s what this game would like you to believe.
In battle, you can use three elemental sigils at a time. Each of these can can be used in three different ways – a projectile, a defensive blast that works with your shield, and an AoE that you can cast at a distance. You can also equip a magic shield that grants you different abilities depending on what the shield’s type is. Building a perfect blend of these sigils is tedious and requires lots of experimentation. Some spells combo well with others for cool effects. For example, when you kill an enemy marked with both corruption and necromancy, not only will you get a zombie to fight for you, but additionally a bunch of creepy bugs will fly out of them, attacking the closest enemy and causing lots of damage. Later on in the game you also gain access to combination magic, called synergies. These are the heaviest hitting spells in the game. They range from summoning a fire golem, to sending out a supernova in the middle of some unsuspecting cultists.
Usually I’m the type of gamer that likes a long campaign with lots of story. Lichdom: Battlemage certainly has that, but I felt that the game really drags on too long. While playing, I was constantly asking myself, “Ok, is it going to be over soon?” and then it threw more at me. Unfortunately this game was so long that I almost gave up, but the little bit of story here and there was still interesting enough that I had to know how it ended. There’s not a lot of dialogue or story while playing through the levels and what little there is always ends with “Well, whatever, we’ll ask questions later – let’s just get this over with.” It also doesn’t help that every stage was incredibly linear and repetitive. If the environments for each stage weren’t so different from each other, I would have mistaken each stage for the one before.
You mostly fight the same handful of enemies throughout the game, with a few bigger monsters later on. However, these enemies do scale with you as you progress, which can be both challenging and fun. At the end of each level you face a magical boss. I found this to be the only real challenge in the game. When you beat a boss in Lichdom, you feel like you actually accomplished something. The bosses make you strategize on how to take them down, whereas most other battles feel like just aimlessly firing projectiles to win. Actually, there’s not any aiming required in this game. You just shoot a projectile and it heads towards whatever enemy is closest in your field of view. There’s a lob projectile that works like a grenade but it’s not even that great. I tried to power through this game but it ended up taking about 20 hours to complete. I was excited for the ending but after I finally beat the last boss, the game just ended with next to nothing explained. I was really disappointed because the game had convinced me that I would get my answers at the end – but when the credits started to roll I felt as if I had wasted my time.
Despite my criticism, Lichdom: Battlemage is not a bad game, especially since it was the developers first attempt. However I found myself bored throughout my playthrough, and that is less than ideal to me. I also felt misled by its promise of thousands of spells and disappointed by where the story ended, but as I mentioned, the graphics are very good and were the one thing that kept me hanging on for more. There was a particularly memorable environment with hot springs in a snowy forest that really showed what Xavient is capable of in terms of atmosphere and graphics. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone who isn’t a huge fantasy fps/rpg fan, but I’m looking forward to seeing what the developers bring to the table with their next title.
Developer Grey Box games announced after PAX this weekend that their much anticipated space ship combat game Dreadnought will enter a closed beta period on April 29th. I have had my eye on this game since it first surfaced a couple of PAX’s ago, its basically a 3D space shooter, with classes like a sniper, a heavy, and a healer. Its a bit of class based shooter mixed with the fun of 3D space combat. Now operating on a free to play model the game has surfaced again and this time its for the public to give it a try.
Set in a futuristic era of all-out galactic warfare, Dreadnought turns strategic, team-based warfare into one heart-pounding, action experience. Each of the game’s varied vessels is designed to fill a unique, class-based role, and can be customized with specialized weapons, abilities, cosmetic enhancements and more. Head over to their webstite to sign up for a chance to get in to the Beta, or chose to buy in.
The game is from veteran developer Grey Box Games, who recently published RTS Grey Goo, as well as Six Foot and independent developer YAGER. Players who do not wish to have the elements of random chance effecting their chance to get in the to the beta have the option to purchase their access in two different packs. Currently the Hunter and Mercenary packs are available. Each pack comes with entry to the beta, some cosmetic customization for the ships, and coins for Grey box’s store that will eventually support the free-to-play model.
Hunter Pack – $10
Guaranteed access to Closed Beta
500 Grey Box Points (GP)
7 Days of Elite Status at official game launch
Exclusive Hunter Pack ship decal, emblem and coating
2 Fleet Recruitment Packs(give 2 friends access to the Beta with 250 Grey Box Points and the Hero version of the Medium Dreadnought – Morningstar)
1 Hero Ship – The Morningstar (Medium Dreadnought)
Mercenary Pack – $40
Guaranteed access to Closed Beta
3000 Grey Box Points (GP)
30 Days of Elite Status at official game launch
Exclusive Hunter Pack ship decal, emblem and coating
2 Fleet Recruitment Packs(give 2 friends access to the Beta with 250 Grey Box Points and the Hero version of the Medium Dreadnought – Morningstar)
5 Hero Ship – The Morningstar (Medium Dreadnought), The Outis (Medium Corvette), The Silesia (Light Artillery Cruiser), The Huscarl (Heavy Destroyer), The Kali (Heavy Tactical Cruiser)
Word around the information super highway is that this little game, aptly named Into the Stars, is a hybrid of Star Trek Commander and FTL: Faster Than Light, but is it really? The people have spoken and the people are generally right. Into the Stars is filling the void of the lack of spaceship commander based games that are out there. With inspiration gathered from these games and mixing it with a collection of modern ideas and stunning graphics, Into the Stars is paving the way and breaking ground on a genre that has not been explored to its full potential yet.
Into the Stars is the first title to come out of the California based studio Fugitive Games and published by Iceberg Interactive based out of The Netherlands. With just a team of four at Fugitive Games, they managed to squeeze out some of the finest graphics in a space based game that I’ve seen from the Unreal Engine 4. Though, the level of artistry and talent comes at no surprise when mentioning the team behind this game. Being former EA DICE and Spark Unlimited developers means that this game should be held at a higher pillar than most. Some of their past titles they’ve worked on are Lost Planet, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor. If working on AAA titles wasn’t enough, they managed to get Jack Wall to work on their soundtrack. For those who do not know Jack Wall’s works, he is the man behind Myst IV, Jade Empire, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Lost Planet 3, but most notably from the Mass Effect series.
Like most small developing teams these days, Into the Stars was conceived by crowd funding through Kickstarter and surpassed their goal on January 16th, 2015 and by their last day on February 4th, they managed to raise over $110,000. By early July, they were Greenlit through Steam and up for Early Access. Now into 2016, their game is finally released, but does it hold up to the ideals they instilled in their 4,000+ backers and many others who helped through early access?
Activision and Sony Pictures has announced a pair of new Ghostbusters video games set in and inspired by the comedic action world of the upcoming Ghostbusters film, which hits theaters on July 15th.
Taking place after the events of the new movie, both Ghostbusters games introduce new casts of rookies keeping watch over the station while the now-famous Ghostbusters tour the country stopping high-profile poltergeists. When paranormal phenomena unleash apparitions across New York City, these new squads of recruits must don their proton packs and wrestle those rogue spirits back to the afterlife!
The console game, Ghostbusters, is a third-person action role-playing game positively charged for thrilling couch co-op with up to four players locally. As rookie Ghostbusters, players can level up their characters’ gear and abilities by tackling objectives, defeating ghastly creatures and discovering hidden collectibles in Manhattan’s most haunted haunts. There are four heroes to choose from, and each has his or her own unique personality and play style, bringing special strengths to support the team.
Mushroom Wars, the acclaimed PS3 strategy game by Creat Studios, has made its way to PC.
On its surface, Mushroom Wars comes across as a cutesy game that might be better suited to children than adults, with a simplistic art style and user interface. You’d be wrong to approach it this way, as the game is deceptively difficult. The game begins easily enough, with competent tutorials explaining the game’s mechanics, but rapidly becomes a tough, pure RTS experience.Read More
The latest patch for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain adds a brand new online survival mode that can be played on all platforms. Somewhat buried in the official patch notes is mention that the new Survival Mode is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC – players must use a consumable item called “survival tickets” to access this new mode. Each player is given 10 survival tickets per weeks during weekly maintenance and the free tickets do not rollover from week to week. By purchasing the “Cloaked in Silence” expansion DLC for $4 players can try out survival mode as much as they’d like – in addition to the new maps & Quiet skin.
[SURVIVAL]
– New “SURVIVAL” mode has been added.
*You can play SURVIVAL even if you don’t have the EXPANSION PACK “CLOAKED IN SILENCE”, as long as you have a minimum of one (1) SURVIVAL TICKET.
*10 (non-stackable) SURVIVAL TICKETS are distributed during the regularly scheduled maintenance each week. SURVIVAL TICKETS do not carry over week upon week.
+
