- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3 has launched from Early Access alongside some excellent reviews.
[Update]: It's official, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3 is leaving Early Access on October 14, 2020.
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3 only landed onto Steam Early Access in late January, and already the developers are getting ready for its full release. According to the latest announcement, you can expect Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3 to leave Early Access and properly launch this fall for PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.
Version 1.0 will contain a lengthy singleplayer campaign that will have you travel across a futuristic and oddly war-torn America to participate in a food truck championship with your trusty robot companions. Along the way you'll be able to expand your food truck with new modules, experiment with your food catalog, and if you're so inclined, invite a friend to help make a gigantic mess in local co-op.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Satisfactory Update 6 has reworked the Spire Coast, added ammo types and even an explosive boom box.
[Update]: Satisfactory's chunky Update 5 has arrived with major vehicle and build system improvements.
After spending a fair bit of time being exclusive to the Epic Games Store, the first-person factory building game Satisfactory has now also made its way to Steam Early Access. As you might imagine from that last part alone, Satisfactory is currently still unfinished and somewhat unpolished, though most of the core factory-building gameplay seems to be present and accounted for.
What is currently missing is the story mode that's supposed to give everything a bit of context, as well as a proper end-game challenge to really sink your teeth into. So if you do decide to explore Satisfactory's rather alien world, make sure you're doing so because you love a good sandbox to play around with - at this point that's pretty much exactly what you're getting.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Much like Besiege from which it draws a great deal of inspiration, the rather poorly named Sea of Craft is a physics-based sandbox game. It's all about creating an assortment of outrageous ships, outfitting them with more weapons and armor than the poor vessels can possibly support, and then watching as your mechanical abomination self-destructs in a hilarious fashion!
What exactly this looks like in gameplay terms, that you'll find out through the recently posted trailer. Have a gander, it's a pretty fun-looking one:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're looking for something to distract you from the upcoming summer heat, you might be interested to hear that Frostpunk's third and final season pass expansion has now been announced. On The Edge will be launching at some point this summer, bringing with it a brand new story set after the all-devouring Great Storm.
The details are unfortunately few and far between, but you can expect to see a variety of new mechanics and challenges to tackle in both the city and the Frostland map. There will also be an additional story scenario that will have you follow an expedition sent from New London on a rather special assignment. What exactly this assignment might be, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little while longer in order to find out as the developers will slowly be dishing out more information on the road to release.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: The Soroboreans expansion has now arrived alongside highly positive reviews.
If you're like me and you've pretty much explored everything Outward has to offer, you'll be glad to hear that it's very first expansion - The Soroboreans - will be launching this June 16th for PC. As for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions, they will be arriving slightly later - on July 7th.
The Soroboreans will bring with it a brand new enchantment system that will let you tweak your weapons, trinkets and armor sets. While no details have been given just yet, I fully expect this system to be both tricky to manage and quite expensive, as is often the case with any sort of power increase in Outward.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Northgard's Sword & Solace update has spruced up everything from multiplayer to the UI.
[Update]: Shiro Games are now working on a real-time 4X strategy game set in the Dune universe!
Northgard is a viking themed strategy game from the makers of Evoland, and as the name itself would suggest, is all about trying to create a thriving colony in the extremely hostile and frigid north. On its own Northgard already has a fair bit of replayability given the various clans and map layouts, but if that's just not enough, I'm very happy to say that the newest update has now also brought in a Map Editor!
The newly added Map Editor allows you to create or modify maps in almost any way. You can fully mess around with the visual design and overall layout of the map, populate it with buildings and resources, paint the landscape with decorations or creatures of your choosing, as well as add and edit special tiles found throughout the world.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Satisfactory has now made its way to Early Access alongside mostly positive reviews.
After being exclusive to the Epic Games Store for about a year now, the open world factory-building game Satisfactory is now coming to Steam. You can expect to see it arrive this June 8th as a part of Steam's Early Access program, though the full release is still quite a few years away.
In terms of content, the current version of Satisfactory is perfectly playable and quite fun, though a bit aimless as there's no real story or end-game to dive into. So if you're looking for a carefully guided experience, you might want to stay away for a little while longer. On the other hand, if you love a good sandbox and if creating impossibly complex factories that work despite all known laws of logic sounds like a fun way to spend your time, Satisfactory might just be worth looking into.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're a fan of games with highly unusual and rather innovative mechanics, you should definitely check out the newly launched Quantum League. It's essentially an arena shooter where you and your opponent are stuck in a time loop, with each new round only adding more variables to further fuel the chaos.
Once you're done with your first duel, you'll be able to re-enter the arena again as a different iteration of yourself and then either attempt to save your past self by countering whatever got them killed, or just create an entirely different battle for your opponent to contend with. It's about as wacky as it sounds, but somehow it actually works pretty well!
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Much like its predecessor, Poly Bridge 2 has now arrived in order to show everyone exactly how hard the job of an architect truly is. Expect to see numerous bridge-related puzzles that revolve around safely guiding lunatic drivers from one end of the map to another, as well as a slow descent into madness once you realize your carefully constructed bridges are about as effective as ramshackle scrapheaps that fall apart after one use.
As for what exactly this looks like in gameplay terms, the first part anyway, that you'll find out through the recently posted launch trailer. Have a little peek:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: After nearly a decade in development, Factorio has now finally been released!
Given the current pandemic and plethora of delays that have been announced over the past few months, you might expect that the same fate would befall Factorio. However, in an interesting twist, Factorio developers have instead pushed the launch version's release date forward five weeks, to August 14th!
"The main reason to change the release date is the release of Cyberpunk 2077," reads the official update. "We think any release close to such a monumental game is going to feel some negative effects, such as everybody playing and covering Cyberpunk and taking attention away from other games. So we thought it was best to try release either before Cyberpunk or quite a while after it. Given the two choices, we opted to bring the release date forward."