Chants of Sennaar is a clever and colorful language-based puzzle game
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're a fan of puzzles games and you're in the mood for something a little bit out of the ordinary, you might want to check out the remarkably charming Chants of Sennaar. Inspired by the Tower of Babel myth, Chants of Sennaar puts you in the shoes of a traveler attempting to decipher ancient languages in an effort to restore the connections between the now-divided peoples of the tower.
In order to do that you'll need to collect, catalogue and expand upon a variety of phrases, solve all sorts of tricky puzzles, and once you find yourself in some of the more hostile areas, even do a little bit of sneaking around to get to the bottom of things! What all of this looks like in action, as well as what it sounds like, that you can check out through the launch trailer below. Have a peek:
Brotato is a Vampire Survivors inspired arena shooter starring a Potato with serious anger issues
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Much like Vampire Survivors from which it takes a great deal of inspiration, Brotato is a ridiculously customizable and equally addictive action roguelite. You'll start off each run with a fairly generic set of gear, and by the time you're done you'll not only have additional arms sprouting from your body, but each of those arms will be armed with some kind of absurdly overpowered (or just absurd in general) weapon that can rip and tear through the enemy hordes.
The big difference between the two games is that Brotato focuses a bit more on presenting the players with proper challenges while Vampire Survivors is all about the non-stop power trip. As such, Brotato not only comes with multiple difficulty settings to choose from, but also an additional set of sliders that you can use to fine-tune the settings in either direction. So if even you get good at it, you can still amp things up to the point where the fate of each run will rest at the knife's edge.
Dota 2's Patch 7.38b has arrived to fix up some of the recent balance mishaps
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Patch 7.38 really messed things up, because Valve has now released Patch 7.38c in order to sort out even more balance problems!
With Patch 7.38 the Dota 2 team redesigned the map yet again, reworked how neutral items are distributed and, as is tradition, rebalanced just about every single aspect of the game. Unsurprisingly, this sweeping set of changes has resulted in a variety of different bugs, as well as a couple of monumentally overpowered heroes.
So in order to sort out this newfound mess Valve has now unleashed the much humbler though just as important Patch 7.38b. The highlights include nerfs to Glimmer Cape and Orchid Malevolence/Bloodthorn, a widespread rebalance of neutral items, as well as nerfs to some of the overperforming heroes like Abbadon, Dragon Knight, Lifestealer and Nature's Prophet.
Slay the Spire 2, much-anticipated sequel to the phenomenal roguelike deckbuilder, is coming in 2025
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're like me and you've done basically all there is to do in Slay the Spire and you're now hungry for more, you'll be delighted to hear that a sequel has just been announced! Slay the Spire 2 will bring with it a brand new engine with improved visuals and expanded mod support, new characters and mechanics, enemies and treasures, and naturally, a whole boatload of new cards to fling at people!
While it sadly contains no gameplay footage, allow me to share with you the freshly posted trailer as that should give you a bit of an idea of the sort of atmosphere Slay the Spire 2 is going for, as well as who one of the new characters is! Have a peek:
The Dead Cells team has now launched Windblown - a 3D, challenging and fast-paced roguelite
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Given the popularity and quality of Dead Cells I wouldn't have blamed Motion Twin from simply making Dead Cells 2 and going for a near guaranteed success. However, that doesn't seem to be where their passion lies. So instead of doing a retread, they've decided to tackle the roguelite genre from a different direction with the freshly launched Windblown.
We're still talking about a fast-paced and challenging roguelite, though this time around the action is in 3D which means a lot more room to maneuver, a lot trickier attacks to deal with, as well as more potential to outplay your enemies. And the biggest new addition? There's now online co-op so you can relentlessly mock your friends every time they get smashed by a boss!
Once highly popular MOBA Heroes of Newerth is teasing some sort of a revival
- By Ash
- in News
Before Dota 2 and League of Legends became the juggernauts they are today, Heroes of Newerth was the MOBA to play thanks to its highly polished gameplay, creative hero designs, and some really punchy spell effects. Unfortunately due to a variety of missteps, the biggest of which was going buy-to-play despite its competition being free-to-play, Heroes of Newerth slowly but surely found itself getting overshadowed.
It still continued on for many years, but it sadly never managed to find the same success it had in the early days. And so, after twelve years of frantic battles and magical dumpsters, Heroes of Newerth finally closed down its doors in 2022. However, in a little bit of a twist, it seems that this might not be the end of its story!
Dota 2's truly excellent Crownfall event has been extended for a few more weeks
- By Ash
- in News
All good things must come to an end, but sometimes you do get lucky and get a little bit of an extension! So if the holidays have interfered with your ability to finish Dota 2's rather massive Crownfall 'battle pass', you'll be pleased to hear that Valve has extended the event for a couple of extra weeks.
The whole thing will close, for real this time around, on February 6th. What this means is that you have a few additional weeks to collect all of the various rewards found throughout the four maps, as well as potentially find some extra goodies in the Candyworks Caravan as extra weeks means extra re-rolls... as long as you haven't wasted all of your candy like I have!