The Bioware forums will be closing down their doors on August 26
- By Ash
- in News
The Bioware forums were never exceptionally popular, but that's exactly why I enjoyed visiting them. There are very few other places you can go to in order to see what sort of insane theories the community has come up with in order to explain the various plot holes, character motivations, and other little elements only true RPG fanatics could ever find interesting.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and the same applies to the Bioware forums. In a recent announcement Bioware has stated that the official forums for the majority of their games will be closing down on August 26th as the team found themselves spending more time on social networks than in their own home turf. Here's the most interesting part of the message:
Demons Age Preview - A modern take on the classic RPG formula
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Demons Age is a classic isometric RPG heavily inspired by old school Dungeons & Dragons games such as Baldur's Gate and Temple of Elemental Evil. As you might expect given its pedigree, it features a wide variety of spells and abilities to use against your enemies, numerous followers to recruit and travel with, a wide open world to explore, and naturally, a whole bunch of absurd items to collect and peddle to some poor innkeeper.
Its still under heavy development, but I've recently gotten a preview copy to try out, which as a massive fan of classic RPGs I was more than willing to take for a spin. Since making a proper review based around 2 hours of alpha gameplay would be a pointless venture, I'm mostly going to be focusing on what exactly Demons Age does right and which areas still need improvement.
Rising Islands, a fast paced adventure/runner hybrid, is releasing tomorrow on Steam
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Rising Islands is an upcoming adventure game that will task you with combining high-speed movement, jumping, wallruning, and straight-up flying through the air in order to complete a series of challenges. To make things even more... interesting for the players, there is also a shifting mechanic that lets you move between dimensions and bypass obstacles that way.
The concept itself is fairly simple, but its a tricky one to describe adequately in words alone, so here's the recently posted gameplay trailer to give you a better idea of what Rising Islands is all about:
Life is Strange devs have announced a new studio and started work on Battlecrew Space Pirates, a competitive online shooter
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
For an indie company Dontnod seem to have no fear about branching into a whole variety of genres. They started out with a cyberpunk action-adventure (Remember Me), moved on to a time-warping narrative driven game about a bunch of teenage girls (Life is Strange), and are now working a serious, character focused RPG about vampires in old England (Vampyr).
If that wasn't already broad enough, their recently revealed Dontnod 11 studio is now working on Battlecrew Space Pirates, a competitive online shooter with plenty of cheesy humor and Awesomenauts inspired action. Since the whole thing is a bit off the rails, perhaps it would be best if you just look at the announcement video:
Battlerite, the spiritual successor to Bloodline Champions, is coming to Early Access in September
- By Ash
- in News
Bloodline Champions was once a truly unique and amazing game. It featured a cast of characters perfectly balanced against each other, and with no randomness in any aspect of gameplay every match was decided purely through player skill and team coordination. Unfortunately, one of the post-launch updates brought with it the very antithesis of balance, a whole bunch of stat boosting items and effects that ended up utterly destroying the delicate counterplay between the various characters and eventually drove the majority of the playerbase away.
While Bloodline Champions might be well and truly dead now, the studio behind it has decided to create a spiritual successor based on what everyone has come to love about BLC, the intricate balance and completely controlled environment. The good news, if the recent gameplay trailer is any judge, is that they have managed to do so quite successfully because outside of upgraded visuals this is exactly the same as the BLC as I remember. Have a look:
Starcraft Universe, a fan-made Starcraft 2 MMO, has entered open beta
- By Ash
- in News
Fan projects with grandiose ideas appear every once in a while, usually populate a single web page with a bunch of concept art and then slowly fade away into obscurity. When I first heard about Starcraft Universe (or World of Starcraft as it used to be called) I thought very much the same as the idea of a fan-made MMORPG within the Starcraft 2 engine sounded like pure madness... and yet, here we are.
Starcraft Universe, after being successfully Kickstarted back in 2013, has finally appeared on the Starcraft 2 Arcade with an open and completely free beta, and from what little I've experienced so far, its a pretty damn impressive mod. Most surprisingly of all, however, the dev team has created a fully CGI trailer to celebrate its launch, and while its not on the same level as Blizzard's professional work, its quality is simply astounding. Have a look:
Prison Architect's Update 2.0 will bring in a new interface, more events, and better modding support
- By Ash
- in News
Despite releasing from Early Access last year Prison Architect has consistently been updated with new content, mechanics and balance changes. Among the various features that appeared throughout the patches the most interesting ones are the realistic weather effects, a hidden 3D mode, thermodynamics, and a constantly improving set of modding tools.
That already extensive list is soon going to get even bigger as Prison Architect's upcoming Update 2.0 brings with it a greatly redesigned and easier to use interface, a variety of new events to contend with, and best of all, another round of changed aimed at making the modding tools even better than they currently are. If you're interested in a detailed, hands-on look at all of these new changes, the developers have recently posted their customary preview video, though do be warned, its nearly 50 minutes long! Have a look: