German studio Deck13 are mostly known for adventure games like Jack Keane but they’ve gone a bit biff-bow in recent years, most recently with Lords of the Fallen, a pretty bleh Dark Souls-inspired action-RPG. Well, they’ll be biffing again next year with The Surge [official site], a sci-fi hack ‘n’ slash action-RPG which they’re showing off now in a new 15-minute gameplay trailer. Observe:
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>
This is one of those survival games that gnawed away at the top seller list in Steam for ages. For a long time, I couldn t understand it. I watched the videos and scoffed at the raggedy character models, the basic textures, the lumpy landscapes. Another Minecraft clone. Then I was conscripted to actually write about the thing. I soon ended up knee deep in zombies, swinging a bat at their heads, running low on ammo, before eventually escaping from my homely cabin (now in ruins) down the snowy roads. What do you know, I thought, it s good>.
This feature was originally published as part of, and thanks to, the RPS supporter program.>
I don’t tend to watch very much sport, but as I’ve learned in recent years this isn’t because I’m adverse to the concept. It seems I was very much born in the wrong country. I find foot-to-ball achingly tedious to watch, cricket ludicrously slow and uneventful, rugby okay but far less fun than I think it could be. Tennis is the closest I get, but I’ve drifted away from that in recent years.
Baseball is my sport. That’s the one that clicked for me. But exclusively taking place at 1am-5am it’s a difficult one to keep up with. And then along comes the Olympics. It turns out the Olympics is packed with sports I’d love to be watching the rest of the four years, and best of all, sports that I can have running on one screen while playing a game on another.
As someone who causes a lot of problems then somehow expects thanks for clearing them up, I sympathise with wizards. You’d dick about with fireballs and skellingtons if you could, wouldn’t you? You’d have to decency to iceblast your now-flaming curtains, wouldn’t you? Arrowhead’s Magicka is my go-to game for dickhead wizard antics but I am interested in what Trine gang Frozenbyte are up to now. This week they announced Nine Parchments [official site], a zap-bang wizard ’em up about inept spellcasters causing trouble – with co-op support. What Frozenbyte have said and shown does remind me of Arrowhead’s game. Have a look at this announcement trailer:
“War!” sang Edwin Starr. “Huh!” he added, “Yeah”. He continued to pose a question: “What is it good for?” Well, if you sufficiently abstract and gameify war and don’t think hard about it, it’s a fun setting for a video game, yeah? The thrills, chills, and mustard gas spills of The Great War are coming in Battlefield 1 [official site] on October 21st and developers DICE will let people have a go early in an open beta. They’ve now announced that will begin on August 31st. But first, a new trailer out of Gamescom:
Sunless Sea‘s [official site] first expansion, Zubmariner will be released on 11 October bringing with it new ports and cities to explore and tales to be told. Or as developers, Failbetter, put it: “agonising choices presented in beautiful prose.” But it wasn’t the beautiful prose which caught my eye in recent dev blog entries, it was the undersea (or rather, Unterzee) flora and corals. That’s why I’ve been asking Failbetter CEO and art director, Paul Arendt to tell me a little more about how the art works in the game.
For the images in question, just use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard or click the arrows just next to the pictures!>
Gather ye round for details of the Overwatch [official site] competitive season 2 changes, direct from the maw of Jeff Kaplan. The changes currently include the abolishing of sudden death rounds, a new skill tier system and more:
Siralim 2 [official site] is a mash-up of Pokemon and Disgaea, seen through the lens of a Western RPG. The game has now left Early Access and though a few hours with it have taught me that it is absolutely not the kind of game I’ll enjoy long-term, it’s certainly going to be attractive to a certain kind of RPG fan. It’s a game designed around grind, with infinite levelling possibilities, randomised realms to explore, and lots of monsters to collect. There are hundreds of pages of breeding combinations, loads of party builds to experiment with, and equipment that can be levelled by fighting within it>.
Every Monday we cast Brendan out into the cold seas of early access, in a sodden row boat, armed with nothing but a cheap hunting spear. This week, he has returned with tales of The Great Whale Road.
I sacrificed a dog to Odin today. He wasn t a very important dog, just some mutt that (according to the lengthy game text) was the mascot of our longship. I didn t really care when I called him over and cut his throat so that the blood would please the town’s priest. To be honest, all I really wanted at this point was to get back on my stinking vessel, go home, and see out the winter. Because, although all of the The Great Whale Road s battles and questing take place in summer time, it s the winter that offers the most potential.
A final version of Enderal: The Shards of Order [official site] has been completed and can be downloaded for free now. While ‘Enderal’ sounds like it could be something made by a United States pharmaceutical company, it is actually a massive total conversion mod for Skyrim, not just adding new weapons or turning it into a survival game, but creating a whole new RPG using the raw materials of its parent. A German version was recently released but now you can get it in English. Disgusting, verminous English.