Humanity is a Lemmings inspired puzzle game about protecting hordes of people with no survival instinct
- By Ash
- in News
If you're like me and you have fond memories of the ancient Lemmings puzzle/strategy series, you might want to check out the freshly released Humanity. Much like its inspiration, Humanity is all about trying to prevent a horde of people with absolutely no survival instincts from accidentally flinging themselves off cliffs, running face-first into traps, or simply slamming their heads into walls because the very notion of having to think on their own terrifies them.
In order to get everyone to safety you'll need to micromanage just about every step of their journey. This includes deciding when they should turn around, jump, activate switches, and so forth. It's a very simple system to understand since you're only ever issuing the most basic of commands, though don't let this lull you into a false sense of security as you'll frequently need to get multiple moving pieces working in unison in order to transport everyone safely to the end.
Overwatch 2 will be drastically downscaling the scope and amount of its long-awaited PvE missions
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Bad news, I'm afraid. It looks like Overwatch 2's downsized PvE content will be locked behind a $15 purchase.
[Update]: Overwatch 2's Season 6: Invasion preview shows off the Story Missions and new Flashpoint game mode
In an effort to make Overwatch 2 as impressive as it could possibly be, Blizzard essentially decided to put the original game on pause. And so, despite its immense popularity, the last few years of Overwatch saw no real content updates outside of the occasional balance tweak attempting to make things feel fresh again.
Unsurprisingly, this decision did not go over well with the community, though there was still a certain amount of optimism surrounding the whole thing as Overwatch 2's PvE mode sounded awesome! It promised to add new storylines and dialogue options for a whole bunch of fan-favorite heroes, plenty of co-op focused shooty action which is always a good time, and even a fair bit of replayability thanks to unique talents for each hero. What more could you really ask for?
Deep Rock Galactic's Season 4 is coming June 15th with jetpacks, new enemies and arcade games
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Deep Rock Galactic's Space Beach Party 2023 event has arrived with festive decorations, silly hats and doubled Battle Pass experience.
[Update]: Deep Rock Galactic's Season 4 has arrived with new enemies, boss, jet boots, and an arcade cabinet.
After a lengthy series of cryptic teasers, the Deep Rock Galactic team has now finally revealed the first bit of concrete information about Season 4: Critical Corruption - the release date! You can expect to see the PC version arrive on June 15th, while the console players will be able to dive in a week later, on June 22nd.
While the exact list of new features and additions has not been announced just yet, allow me to give you a brief rundown of everything that has been teased so far, as well as what I think it might actually be. Without further ado, let's dive in:
Firmament is Myst studio's newest steampunk puzzle-adventure for both VR and standard displays
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Firmament has now arrived, and while the puzzles are fun, the plethora of bugs is sadly not.
It took quite a few years for us to get here given that the original Kickstarter campaign was concluded all the way back in 2019, but Myst studio's newest steampunk flavored puzzle-adventure Firmament is now nearly upon us! And when I say nearly, I'm really not joking as Firmament will be launching in a mere few days, on May 18th.
As you would expect given the studio and its pedigree, Firmament is going to be all about exploring a large and detailed world, messing around with a variety of strange devices without having the faintest clue about what they actually do, and naturally, trying to unravel ancient secrets in between all of that puzzlin' around. It's pretty much the same formula as Cyan's previous games, so with a bit of luck Firmament should be a nice bit of fun as well.
Dota 2's Update 7.33c has arrived with yet another massive round of buffs, nerfs and improvements
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Dota 2 is getting rid of its Battle Pass and instead focusing on more frequent updates.
[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.33d has nerfed Vanguard, Octarine Core and some of the overperforming heroes.
As a part of the recent Update 7.33 Dota 2 greatly expanded its map, reworked a whole bunch of core mechanics and rebalanced just about everything and everyone. Unsurprisingly, bringing in this many massive changes all at once resulted in a fair few balance problems, both for the heroes and the items.
So in order to sort this newfound mess out, as well as buff some heroes that got left behind in the previous patch, Valve has now unleashed the rather chunky Update 7.33c. Wisdom runes now also grant bonus experience to the lowest-level hero on the team, clearing stacked camps now gives a portion of the experience to the person that stacked them, a variety of deceptive tree paths have been reshaped, while universal heroes now gain 0.7 damage per attribute rather than 0.6.
HROT, a Quake inspired boomer shooter with a crushingly oppressive atmosphere, is launching on May 16th
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
After spending a bit over two years in Early Access, the Quake inspired and Soviet-era oppression flavored boomer shooter HROT is now almost ready to be unleashed. You can expect to see it launch in full on May 16th alongside the third and final episode, which will bring the total level count to 26 plus an additional 4 endless arenas.
There is unfortunately no launch trailer just yet, but you can get a pretty good idea of what kind of gameplay and atmosphere HROT is going for through the original Early Access one. Have a peek, it's quite a unique style:
Lovecraftian fishing game Dredge has now made navigation smoother and added quality-of-life improvements
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Dredge's third update has added the often requested boat customization and 'craberrations'.
[Update]: Dredge's second update has added photography, new events and a passive difficulty mode.
According to the recently released roadmap, Black Salt Games are planning to release a series of quality-of-life focused updates for their Lovecraftian fishing game Dredge before finally unleashing a chunky paid expansion in the latter part of the year. While the DLC is still shrouded in mystery, I'm pleased to say that the first of the planned updates has now arrived with some nifty tweaks!
First and foremost, Update 1.1 has given the in-game map a couple of often-requested features: the ability to zoom and scroll, as well as the ability to place a variety of markers! Best of all, these markers can be seen through the Spyglass item, so if you're returning to an area in order to finish off any outstanding quests you should be able to easily get through it all without having to keep opening and closing your map.