Dark Alliance studio is working on a AAA Dungeons & Dragons RPG developed on Unreal Engine 5
- By Ash
- in News
While the recent Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance action-RPG did not pan out well, and that's putting it gently, Wizards of the Coast is not giving up on the idea just yet. As such, they have rebranded Dark Alliance's Tuque Games into Invoke Studios and are now working on greatly expanding the team.
According to the press release, the plan is for Invoke Studios to grow from 80 to more than 200 employees by 2025 in order to ensure the studio's vision will be fully realized. That's a very good thing in my eyes as Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance had some interesting ideas, but it clearly needed a lot more time and resources to get everything polished up and ready to go.
Following Stadia's shutdown, its first exclusive game Gylt is now heading to other platforms
- By Ash
- in News
According to a recent announcement that came so suddenly not even the employees knew about it, Google has decided to shut down their game streaming service Stadia. While the servers will be going down on January 18th, 2023, it's thankfully not all bad news as Google will at least be issuing refunds for all purchases made through their stores.
As you might imagine, this leaves the Stadia-exclusive games in a bit of a rough spot. For a good few of them this will be a death knell as they're simply not popular enough to warrant porting to other platforms, though I'm happy to say that Stadia's very first exclusive, the horror-adventure Gylt, will persevere!
Project Zomboid devs are working on adding highly realistic fire and fire spreading mechanics
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Project Zomboid's Update 42 will rework crafting and greatly expand Engineering/Electrical skills.
[Update]: Project Zomboid devs have now outlined everything they're hoping to add with Update 42.
If you've ever used a Molotov cocktail or a pipe bomb in Project Zomboid, or simply watched your own house go up in flames due to a faulty generator, you've probably noticed that the fire system isn't exactly polished. Fire not only spreads in a weirdly slow fashion and seems to engulf objects that would in reality be fireproof, but it only ever does anything if you're nearby. So if you would set a building on fire, leave for six months and come back, you would find that the blazing inferno was patiently waiting for you exactly as you left it.
Two years ago the Project Zomboid team set to work on greatly improving fire and making it far more realistic, though the importance of the big multiplayer focused Update 41 forced them to redirect their efforts to more pressing matters. Now that things are less hectic, work on the fire system has been reignited!
H.R. Giger inspired first-person horror game Scorn has now arrived alongside some harsh criticism
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
After quite a few years in development, the H.R. Giger inspired horror-adventure Scorn has now finally been unleashed onto PC and Xbox. As you would expect from that description alone, Scorn is all about wandering through disturbingly fleshy landscapes, solving a variety of bizarre puzzles, as well as facing off against an assortment of mutated monstrosities with highly limited ammo and resources.
What all of this looks like in action, as well as what kind of atmosphere Scorn is going for, that you can find out through the freshly posted launch trailer. Have a gander:
Guild Wars 2 devs have now revealed the full update roadmap for Fall and Winter 2022
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Guild Wars 2's late November update rebalanced many underperforming classes with endgame PvE and PvP in mind.
[Update]: Guild Wars 2's Halloween flavored Shadow of the Mad King festival has now arrived.
In an effort to keep the community in the loop about future content updates and major additions, the Guild Wars 2 team has now announced the Fall & Winter 2022 roadmap. The first item on the list is the return of the highly popular and Halloween themed event Shadow of the Mad King. Expect to see an assortment of spooky cosmetics and decorations to mess around with, the Mad King's Labyrinth to endlessly farm for candy-shaped goodies, a devious jumping puzzle to conquer, as well as a couple of fun races to help spice things up a bit.
Then, on November 8th, Guild Wars 2 will bring with it the remastered version of the long-lost final episode of Living World Season 1 - Battle for Lion's Arch. This will be a permanent addition to the game, and one that is free for all players. Best of all, the episode will also come with a brand new Strike Mission to undertake: Old Lion's Court!
Despite recent statements to the contrary, Overwatch 2 is nerfing Sombra, Genji, Zarya and D.Va
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Overwatch 2 is officially nerfing Genji, Zarya, Sombra, D.Va and Kiriko... but only in three weeks, on November 15th!
[Update]: Overwatch 2's Halloween Terror update has now arrived alongside a brand new co-op mission and sadly only three new legendary skins.
As a part of the recent developer update Blizzard announced that they are happy with how all of the heroes are performing and that they have no current plans for any changes outside of nerfing Zarya in Total Mayhem. Furthermore, they revealed that their goal is to release balance updates at the start of each season, seemingly implying that we'll only be getting one massive balance patch every two months.
With that in mind, you can imagine my surprise when Overwatch 2's Game Director Aaron Keller just went onto Twitter to say that not only will they be releasing a mid-season balance update, but that they will also be nerfing a few of the overperforming heroes! While the mixed messaging is a bit annoying given that Blizzard has vowed to be better about communication with the sequel, I'm still happy about this development as only having one balance update per season would've been utter madness for a rapidly evolving game like Overwatch 2.
The Case of the Golden Idol is a charming and Return of the Obra Dinn inspired detective game
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for a remarkably charming yet oddly bizarre game, you might want to give the freshly released The Case of the Golden Idol a chance. To put it simply, it's a Return of the Obra Dinn inspired detective game that will task you with unraveling the mystery behind a bunch of murders spanning 40 years, all of which are somehow connected.
In order to accomplish this you'll have to carefully recreate each scene of death with the evidence at hand, find which seemingly unimportant clues are a part of a much greater conspiracy, and with a bit of luck, bring the killers to justice. What all of this looks like in action, however, that you can get a pretty good idea of through the launch trailer below. Have a gander: