I’m glad to see more Japanese fighting games come over from consoles because 1) they’re a genre and origin traditionally under-represented here; 2) sometimes they are super weird and I adore that. So coo ‘eck, crossover fighting game Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel [official site] is coming to Windows this winter.

Made by Arcana Heart developers Examu, it brings together ladies from visual novel studio Nitroplus’s games, including licensed games. Expect witches, warriors, a schoolgirl with a baseball bat, a rozzer from Psycho-Pass>, someone on a hang glider, and a lady followed by a swarm of cute cats. Amazing scenes. Watch this:

… [visit site to read more]

Introversion Software’s 2001 hackathon Uplink [official site] is one of the most enjoyable depictions of real-world hacking in the realm of gaming. If you love Mr. Robot as much as I do, you probably remember playing through this relic back when it came out. It also happens to be one of our best ten hacking, coding and computer games.

… [visit site to read more]

God, I hate sport. In other news, let’s talk sport! The fate of any successful game or genre is to be picked apart for reusable pieces, until it’s hard to remember a time when they owned it. Adventure games for instance began as one of the few genres with interesting stories and conversations and characters, before slowly being absorbed into RPGs, which now routinely offer much of the same experience minus the puzzles but with the option to shoot people in the face if they annoy you. In turn, sports games – FIFA 17 most recently – are increasingly turning their attention to RPGs to see what they might be able to add. Sadly, no sign of frost mages and dragon-based pitch invasions. Yet.

… [visit site to read more]

Amazon launched Twitch Prime over the weekend, adding perks for the livestreaming service to Amazon Prime subscriptions. Primepeople don’t see Twitch ads, get a free subscription to a Twitch channel, get chat emoticons and stuff, and will receive a small freebie every month for a game, such as a Hearthstone hero. Or, as Twitch say:

“We wanted to make it like a secret level that unlocks the best parts of Twitch and the best parts of Amazon, where members would feel like total bosses.”

Come on, swallow that vomit back. That’s unbecoming of a total boss like yourself.

… [visit site to read more]

Marc Laidlaw posted a fascinating blog entry from a younger version of Laidlaw about the development of Half-Life from the narrative perspective. By “a younger version” I mean that it comes from his own hand but via a file timestamped the day after Half-Life was shipped and is thus far closer to the game’s… ground zero? than the Laidlaw of now.

… [visit site to read more]

Prisons Are ‘Like Sandbox RPGs’, declares The Daily Rag. They rattle off a list of exciting and fun activities inmates get up including joining a band, learning to paint, crafting new items, and something called ‘multiplayer’ – which sounds highly immoral.

You big sillies: you’ve been watching the announcement of prison break RPG sequel The Escapists 2. Publishers Team17 announced the follow-up to The Escapists, which launched last February after a stretch in Early Access, at TwitchCon over the weekend.

… [visit site to read more]

A non-major but still interesting Dota 2 [official site] patch has dropped. 6.88e is all about tweaks, as you’d expect from a patch with a letter on the end of it, rather than one which heralds a whole jump forward in numbering. The reason it’s interesting is more that it gives me a chance to talk about a thought related to patches and living games like Dota 2.

… [visit site to read more]

It was announced over two years ago that Amazon were going to make PC games, but we had no idea what kind until last week. At TwitchCon, the company announced three games and let people play one of them, a four-on-four called Breakaway.

I was there, to play the game, to talk to Patrick Gilmore, studio head of developer Double Helix Games, and to feel out of touch while not recognising a single one of the Twitch streamers surrounding me.

… [visit site to read more]

Masquerada: Songs and Shadows [official site] takes me back to those shining days where I could mess about and play games like Arcanum and Nox all the time without worrying about paying bills. I still do those things, but bills are an unfortunate part of my daily life now. Soon, I imagine, Masquerada will be as well, as the tactical RPG is out.

… [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Look, it s called Crayon Physics [official site]. You could probably invent the game in your mind knowing just that. Now take some crayons and revert to your childhood self. Not too much! Oh, well, you ve done it now. There s no way you ll handle 70 levels of physics puzzles like this.

… [visit site to read more]