I've had my eye on Tangledeep for a while: it's a roguelike dungeon crawler where you start underground and your goal is to reach the surface, which is a decent twist on an age-old formula. It entered Early Access in July and developer Impact Gameworks has just announced that its full release will be shooting out on February 1.
You'll be fighting strange creatures in turn-based battles throughout the game's labyrinth of underground villages and dungeons, which mix handcrafted locations with procedurally-generated bits. I know some people have grown tired of pixel art, but I think the game looks gorgeous, especially those underground villages. I mean, just look at 0:16 in the new trailer, above. The dungeons are a little more dull, but the combat looks frantic enough to at least hold your interest.
Death is permanent, but you can bank some of your progress between characters and there's an adventure mode that lets you respawn when you die. In the combat system, you can move tiles one after the other without a pause, and when you move your opponents move too. You can choose between 12 jobs that affect your stats (there are more than 100 skills), and modify your character with loot.
If you're interested, it'll cost £10.99/$14.99 on Steam, and a tad more on GOG.
Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana's PC port has been delayed indefinitely, just 10 days after it was given a concrete release date of January 30. The game is suffering from massive framerate drops in certain sections, and publisher NIS America is bringing in a new developer to sort it out.
It's disappointing, especially since the game has already been delayed by a few months because of localisation problems. NIS America said all of its PC builds had suffered from "low framerate issues and memory leak problems" but admitted that it "underestimated the severity" of the issues. It wasn't until the latest beta test (presumably during the past week or so) that it became clear that the game could not release in its current state.
The company had intended to leave the "core programming" of the game alone and just focus on porting it to PC, but now it's going to have to play around with the innards. The memory leak problem should be solved in the next couple of days, but fixing the framerate is a bigger job.
"As the PC version of the game was originally envisioned as a port, we avoided touching the core programming as much as possible and focused on PC performance optimization. However, in light of the feedback of those who have participated in the second beta test, we have concluded that we cannot avoid modifying the core programming," it said in a Steam post.
The new developer, which was not named, will come on board at the end of the month to help fix the issues. NIS America will monitor progress and then decide on a release schedule, giving regular updates in the meantime.
"Again, we truly regret that we underestimated the severity of the issues that have surfaced (and how long it would take to resolve them), and for that, NIS America sincerely apologizes to all of you for this unexpected delay. We are fully aware of how much our fans have been anticipating this release, and will do our very best to launch the game the way it is meant to be launched: without any issues, game-breaking bugs, or errors."
Tower of Time, a "new take on classic RPGs" about a shattered land, a mysterious tower, and a gang of champions who decide to venture inside and see what's cooking, was expected to trade Early Access for full release by the end of 2017. A quick trip to Steam will reveal that it did not happen. It will (hopefully) happen soon, however, as developer Event Horizon now says that it will be ready for release in April.
The Early Access version of the game has been updated and now includes an estimated 30 hours of play, double what was available in the initial EA release, with more than 100 enemy types and 500 possible upgrades on the skill tree. There's also a new "Arrow Time" system, which the studio described as "bullet-time for CRPGs: It allows players to slow down combat or even pause it completely, enabling true strategic development as the battle unfolds."
That sounds a lot like the real-time with pause system made famous in Baldur's Gate, although these days I think Divinity: Original Sin is probably the better comparison, even if it is fully turn-based. Those are tough acts to follow, but at this point the response on Steam is quite positive, and the new gameplay trailer looks promising. None of which guarantees anything, but I think it's one worth keeping an eye on. You can find out more about Tower of Time at evehor.com.
The trouble with deep space exploration is that it's awfully easy for the people doing it to die. That, simplistically, is the situation in the retro-future sci-fi survival management sim Symmetry, which publisher IMGN Pro announced today will be released on February 20: Your research vessel has crash-landed on a desolate planet, and now you have to get as much of the crew as you can back home.
Crew members will have to maintain both their physical and their mental health as they take on tasks that may be far outside their conventional expertise. Moral choices will have to be made—the Steam page references "collectivism vs individualism"—and toughing it out isn't an option, because the clock is ticking. And it's not just the extreme weather on the planet that's out to kill your team: "Life-threatening supernatural activities" will become increasingly common as time passes.
"As a survival management game, Symmetry's storyline will propel you forward toward big payoffs depending upon the strategies employed across the survivors," Dariusz Leczycki of developer Sleepless Clinic said. "At first look, Symmetry is a basic, old school looking game, but don’t be fooled, it is complex, compelling, and most of all, fun, and possesses a story line that you don’t see coming."
Visually, Symmetry strikes me as a cross between The Long Dark and The Final Station, which is not a bad place to start, but what really hooks me is the promise of a "non-obvious sci-fi plot." Survivors of a crashed spaceship struggling against time to escape the clutches of an otherworldly terror sounds like something Andre Norton would've written in 1953, and that's the kind of game I want to know more about.
It appears that things are once again happening in the No Man's Sky 'Waking Titan' ARG that began way back in May 2017. As noted by Game Detectives (via Eurogamer), the Atlas Passes that were promised in an earlier stage of the ARG have begun to arrive, and rather than answering questions they are deepening the mystery.
In late December, the tenth of 15 glyphs along the bottom of the Waking Titan website unlocked, leading to a password prompt and a Google Drive folder called 1.5 that's filled with images of the NMS logo reflected in various arrangements of mirrors. The names of the images, when strung together and converted from hex, decode to the letters "moirrr," an anagram for "mirror." The Myriad website, uncovered during an earlier stage of the ARG investigation, also contains the hex code for the word.
An image in the background of the most recent glyph link makes reference to the completion of 10,000 passes, and says that "you should have them in time for the next phase." The first of those passes reportedly turned up on January 17: It was made of cardboard with a "textured pass" on it, a CSD category ranking, and another hexadecimal number that translated to "Phoenix." More numbers, including a CSD-ID and serial number, were on the back.
Those numbers are now being collated in this Google Docs spreadsheet. All the entries so far appear to originate in Canada, although whether that's a matter of timing or something more significant is impossible to say. Gaming Detectives recommends that anyone submitting a pass includes all numbers on it, and a photo of the front as well.
No Man's Sky creator Sean Murray contributed to the tease with a January 10 tweet that also referenced mirrors, and contained an image of the Netflix series Black Mirror and an excerpt from an interview with Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, in which he says he's playing No Man's Sky and "there's an idea for the second season that's sprung from a procedurally generated universe."
The whole thing seems incredibly complex, and there appears to be quite a bit left to come, as five glyphs on the Waking Titan site are still locked. The 1.5 references are also perplexing, because there hasn't been a 1.4 update yet: That could suggest that 1.4 will be a surprise drop, or too minor to warrant all this fuss, or perhaps will be skipped altogether. Or it might mean something else entirely—I'm bad at ARGs so while I find them interesting, I'm rarely much use when it comes to moving things forward.
I am, however, happy to see that No Man's Sky is still a going concern, and I continue to hold out hope that it will eventually evolve into the game we were promised—or at least as close to it as we can reasonably expect. A full rundown of what's happened so far in the Waking Titan ARG is available here.
Want to play a game that will stamp all over your heart, leave you regretting every decision you've ever made and have you questioning why you even bothered in the first place—but in a good way? If your answer to all the above is yes, then might I suggest Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Then, when you've finished all three episodes, come back and read the rest of this article because it contains hella spoilers.
Before the Storm captures the zeitgeist just like its predecessor, Life is Strange. Both games nod to the cult iconography of the Pacific Northwest, and both play out like an indie movie fresh from Sundance. Before the Storm had the extra challenge of weaving themes of love, loss, and recovery into an established and beloved story though. Before the tornado, before the dark room, before time travel, there was Chloe Price (voiced by Rhianna DeVries) and Rachel Amber (voiced by Kylie Brown)—two teenagers drawn together by their own personal pain. That's the story Before the Storm sets out to tell.
In the original, Rachel's absence was the driving force of the narrative, and everything we knew about her was reconstructed through photographs, letters, and Chloe's memories. In Before the Storm Rachel is no longer a plot device, but a fully fleshed out and complex character, making the later events of Life is Strange even more tragic. Before the Storm goes to great lengths to establish Rachel as Chloe's savior and vice versa, injecting hope into a devastating chain of events. It's hard not to fall in love with Rachel just like Chloe does, which is why Episode 3 was met with such a mixed response.
Love at the center of the storm
At the start of Before the Storm, Chloe is isolated. Her diary and texts are filled with messages to Max, who is now in Seattle, leaving her alone to deal with the death of her father and the jarring presence of her mom's commando boyfriend. Rachel quickly fills that gap left by Max in Episode 1, then their relationship deepens and Rachel's influence seeps into every aspect of Chloe's life.
When you get the opportunity to kiss Rachel to prove your devotion, it's the validation that Life is Strange flirted with but wouldn't commit to.
In dream sequences Chloe's father tells her "sometimes people need you, even when they don't admit it," and refers to their first fight as a "lovers quarrel." Steph, the openly gay student at Blackwell Academy, also asks Chloe the exact nature of their friendship. You learn that Chloe's overuse of the word 'hella' is thanks to Rachel, and you're given the option to adorably flirt with her to pass the time. None of these moments change depending on the decisions you make as the game goes on. It's quite clear from the 73% of people who told Rachel you were more than just friends at the end of Episode 1 that the romantic path is a popular one, which I am all for.
While a romantic relationship between Chloe and Rachel was expected, one this explicit was not. Life is Strange struck a chord with LGBT gamers thanks to Chloe and Max's ambiguous friendship during the first game, and there are several moments where Max can cross that boundary. Before the Storm is different. Rather than a bonus kiss which you only get by making certain choices, Episode 2 leaves no room for uncertainty.
If Before the Storm were a rollercoaster, Episode 2 would be the moment you reach the top and enjoy the view. The most romantic and meaningful moments happen toward the end, including one of the best interpretations of Shakespeare's play The Tempest I've ever seen. When you get the opportunity to kiss Rachel to prove your devotion, it's the validation that Life is Strange flirted with but wouldn't commit to. When they express their feelings for each other, who could help but root for them to escape Oregon?
Episode 2 is also where the other plot points begin to take shape—in particular the relationship between Chloe's drug dealer Frank, his partner Damon, and Rachel's heroin-addicted mom Sera.
Episode 3 shifts focus onto this storyline dramatically. Gone are the moments of tenderness between Chloe and Rachel, replaced by a balls-to-the-wall finale with a stabbing, a main character who turns homicidal, and the reveal of the real villain of the story. At the start of the episode Chloe creates a lightshow of stars on Rachel’s ceiling, but this is the last moment of genuine intimacy between the two, and given that we know Rachel dies two years later it doesn’t feel like enough.
While it was not the finale I expected, Deck Nine had a lot of loose ends to tie up and a short amount of time to do it in. Ideally Before the Storm would have been five episodes long like its predecessor—there is so much more of this story that could have been told.
We get it, Rachel is dead
The series ends with a decision to lie to Rachel about her father's dirty dealings or tell her the truth. Compared to the ultimatum at the end of Life is Strange, this decision is pretty low stakes but important given how themes of honesty play throughout the game. We're then presented with a montage of Chloe and Rachel's next two years together—Chloe dying her hair, rolling around Arcadia Bay in Chloe's truck, getting their tattoos, etc. This is where it should have ended. It's bittersweet given what we know will happen in the future, but heartwarming to see Chloe and Rachel enjoy some time together.
Having said all this, I was not expecting a happy ending.
Yet, for some reason, a post-credits scene was added showing Chloe desperately trying to contact Rachel while the sounds of a camera go off in the background, reminding us of Rachel's fate in the dark room. This kind of emotional manipulation is something that a lot of players, myself included, found unnecessary. It was a twist of the knife that seemed too obvious.
Given the way Chloe and Rachel’s relationship is presented throughout Before the Storm, there's a touch of unusual malice in the decision to include the post-credit scene. It's entirely out of place given the subtlety and thoughtfulness of the previous episodes. The ending also played into a lot of damaging tropes that queer people have been battling against within media—the Bury Your Gays trope for one, the time-worn narrative that homosexuality ultimately ends in tragedy. Queer women in TV, film, and now games seem to have a nasty habit of dying, and after a while it begins to wear you down. While I don’t think Deck Nine, Dontnod or Square Enix considered this when they created their game, I wish they had.
Having said all this, I was not expecting a happy ending. Rachel is dead when Max returns to Arcadia Bay and Deck Nine had a responsibility to the canon that Dontnod created. However, I find it hard to get behind the decision to keep Rachel dead in every outcome of the game, especially when the mechanic revolves around player choice and, well, time travel. But perhaps that is the point, sometimes people have to die and there’s nothing you can do about it—it’s just a shame it has to be yet another beloved queer character.
It’s going to take a good while before I can sit through a replay Life is Strange now that we know exactly what it was that Chloe lost when Rachel died, but maybe this time I’ll choose to save Arcadia Bay—at least that way they can finally be together.
The release of We Happy Few, the game about getting high and getting along in the jolly old England of an alt-history 1960s, has been pushed a little deeper into the year. Developer Compulsion Games said in an update on Steam that it's now "content complete" but requires more time to polish than was originally expected, and so it won't be released until sometime in the summer.
The launch date had been set last summer to April 13 of this year as part of a publishing deal with Gearbox that also saw its price double from $30 to $60. The studio explained at the time that the price hike was driven by a tremendous increase in the game's scope to a "full sized, retail game," and while that may be accurate it nonetheless did not make a particularly good impression among fans and followers.
The studio acknowledged in the delay announcement that the reaction was fair, although it reiterated that "we’ve done a huge amount of work and the scope of the game is substantially increasing over what’s there right now, which is a very unusual situation for Early Access games, especially as we have a retail release on the way."
"So, we find ourselves caught between Early Access (where it’s important to have a price that reflects the current game) and the eventual release of the full game with increased scope (which we believe reflects a traditional retail game)," it wrote. "We had anticipated that Steam players would be okay with pre-purchase still granting early access, but since we won’t be offering any additional early access updates beyond August’s 'Life in Technicolor,' we think having this labeled Early Access and charging the price of a larger game caused more confusion than we had hoped."
To address concerns, Compulsion has decided to offer refunds to anyone who has purchased the game so far, regardless of playtime, and will remove the game from sale on Steam on February 1. Sales will be re-enabled closer to release, "when more info and materials on the game will have been released, giving players more clarity on what they can expect in the full version of We Happy Few."
A production update video below offers a bit more insight into why the game has been pushed back, and also shows off a few clips of gameplay featuring a newly-revealed female playable character.
It's been 21 years since the beleaguered patients of Theme Hospital were first diagnosed with Bloaty Heads, Third Degree Sideburns, Slack Tongues and worse. I caught up Two Point Studios to find out what's changed in that time, and what the future holds for the devs' debut venture.
A Theme Hospital successor? Tell us everything we need to know about Two Point Hospital.
Mark Webley: Well, it’s everything you imagined it would be and more [laughs]. Gary and I have been talking about coming back to these Bullfrog-esque games for a long time. When we did Theme Hospital, we had ideas for Theme Prison, Theme Resort. We went our separate ways and kept talking about getting back together.
Gary Carr: When we went our separate ways it was nothing mysterious. When Bullfrog was bought by EA it was just the time to move on. We just parked that ambition for 20 years. With Black and White, and with Fable we had two pretty big franchises out of Lionhead. We parked making sims for a while, did The Movies, and Ben Huskins was a big part of that.
We don't like to think of it as a spiritual succession to Theme Hospital as such, we like to think of it as a thing in its own right—something new and different. Thematically, of course, there are similarities, but we're making a completely new game. This isn't a reskinning of something we've already done.
Webley: The values are the same, the humour is important. Theme Hospital had its own quirky off-centre, offbeat take on the sim genre. It didn't take itself too seriously, but under the hood there was actually quite a deep sim.
As you say, Theme Hospital had some deep management elements, but it’s remembered for its Bloaty Heads, Slack Tongues, and King Complexes. What can we expect on the illness and disease front here?
Ben Hymers: It's still going to be very much about the humour and still won't take itself too seriously. That's been one of our core principles from the start. I think we want to separate ourselves from some of the more dry simulation games that are out there, and while they're great, we're never going to be able to make a completely serious game.
Webley: There have been a few hospital games since Theme Hospital, but [they’ve] certainly missed the point of not taking themselves too seriously. I mean, medicine and illnesses are, well they’re not much fun, really. You don’t want to dwell on that. We certainly have a lot of interesting illnesses. One of the illnesses in the trailer is Light Headedness—that started as the idea of a bulbous head and it went from there.
Ultimately it s been a really fun thing to get involved with again, it feels like we ve gone back to the good old days of Bullfrog.
Gary Carr
Carr: To be honest, all of just created a list of ideas. Often it’s just a play on words and often it’s turning something into a bit of a pun. And then you think of a visual for the pun.
Hymers: Camel Toe, for instance. That’s my favourite one.
Carr: Stop saying that. Anyway, sometimes you come up with the cure before you have the illness, it’s weird, and other times it’s the other way around. If we like the ideas, the ones we start to talk about more start to get worked on by the team. That’s the way we go about it: if we get a bit of banter in the office, then it’s more fun to work on.
Webley: I think if it makes us laugh, we know we’re onto something. And that’s how it was 22 years ago.
Carr: We’ve tried to do that again, we’ve tried not to be overly process-driven and let the ideas come out where we riff around them. This makes the studio more involved, it’s not waiting on one person to be the visionary, and actually when we pull all of our ideas—Two Point has a lot of experienced people, some people have worked with us for over 20 years, so why wouldn’t we utilise their minds?
Ultimately it’s been a really fun thing to get involved with again, it feels like we’ve gone back to the good old days of Bullfrog.
I imagine a big draw for Two Point Hospital will be nostalgia. But what modern considerations have you had to deal with here?
Webley: One of the big things when we started is the look and feel of it. Theme Hospital, even now, has got a nice charm to it. Visually it’s dated, but it hasn’t dated as much as other things that were around at that time. A lot of things that entered into 3D haven’t necessarily fared as well.
Carr: If I remember rightly, Edge magazine came in to do a preview at the time and were quite honest about it. They said it felt a bit old school, even then, doing it isometric pixel art. We were doing Dungeon Keeper at the same time and that was in a new 3D engine and looked really shiny and exciting. In a sense we kind of looked dated then, but weirdly it kind of looks better now over the 20 year period than the games we were working on in the studio at the same time. It’s aged better.
One of the things we’ve tried to do is think: Right, it’s very difficult to future-proof it, but we’ve tried to come up with a style, rather than use the technology to put it in its time. We’ve went for a claymation style, which doesn’t date as much as some other rendering styles, so we’ve kept it kind of simple and clean.
I think it’s important to do that as well because if you’ve got 60 or 70 characters on screen, you don’t want too much noise and detail because it can quickly become too messy. Hopefully it won’t age too much, but you never know. Hopefully the gameplay will carry us through.
It’s also got a semi-procedural nature to it. You do feel like the game’s characters are aware of each other—they turn and look at each other and gesture to each other, You couldn’t do that in the original game, everything was baked and hand drawn. And as nice as that is, there’s only so many variations you do with that. Now the characters do feel more alive and we want to do that, we want you to care about your staff and patients as much as possible, rather than seeing them as little units that you’re just trying to get through the system.
What about online and modding support—Theme Hospital predated the same level of community access players have today, how will Two Point take advantage of this?
Hymers: I've thought a lot about modding from a technical perspective. On launch we're not going to have modding because it's hard and I need to think about how to do it, but yeah that's something we aim to do in an update later. It's in the plan.
Ben Huskins: That was one of our core pillars early on was to think about online, because it's such a common thing these days. Our approach to online is to think of it as creating a bit of a social feel to the game, and basing that on asynchronous play. We're very aware of the fact that a lot of people play their simulation games as single-player experiences and don't want to have to feel the influence of other games. Our approach is that it's very much something that you opt into - if you're into, you can get involved on that side of it as much as you want to.
One of the things that we're putting in is competitive multiplayer challenges where you're playing the game as you would usually, but will start one of these challenges. There might be a bunch of different ones, like: how many patients can you cure in the next 12 months? Or how attractive can you make your hospital in the next half year?
You'll keep track of your progress in that time period. If your friends have played that challenge already, their data will be stored on the cloud, and you can get this sense of playing at the same time as you. This was influenced by the ghost racing feature that appeared in old arcade racing games.
Beyond Two Point Hospital, what does the future hold for Two Point as a studio—have you thought that far ahead?
Carr: This isn’t just us doing a reimagined version in the same theme, this is one of many simulation themes that we’re going to put in our Two Point County—which is the world we set our game in. We’re planning more than just this, we’ve got a plan to do more ideas, that kind of interweave together. That’s something for the future.
Webley: In some ways it’s quite nice to set up a company and say: This is what we’re going to do, a la Bullfrog titles. This is the first of our ‘Little Springfield’, as you like to put it Gary.
Speaking of Bullfrog and Lionhead games, would you be open to revisiting and/or remaking the likes of Dungeon Keeper and Black and White?
Carr: I don’t think Mark and I can take much credit for Dungeon Keeper, that’s Peter’s baby. Mark had a lot more to do with Black and White.
Webley: It’s probably not in the right vein for what we want to do. I think in Two Point County, we’re imagining a number of businesses and little sims that interact with each other. We can see a road map ahead of us and exactly what we’re going to do next is a bit up in the air at the moment.
Carr: Yeah, we’re hoping to build this rich sim world and this is the first step towards that. And we can’t do that in a half-measure by jumping off and doing another one of our older games, so we need to really get behind this idea.
In December, GTA Online added a Red Dead Redemption 2-themed challenge, which was nice, even if the game it's promoting has not yet been announced for PC. The quest is well worth doing—not just for the cool, deadly revolver it gets you in GTA or the exclusive gun skin it gets you for Red Dead, but mainly for the $250,000 you get for completing the ensuing headshot challenge. 50 headshots of any NPC gets you the money. It took me less than 40 minutes.Why am I writing about this now, then? Well, I think it's easy to ignore or put off the things you're bombarded with by email and phone in GTA Online, and despite playing the game pretty regularly, I only got around to beating the quest this week. Finishing it is nice and simple, too. It involves a treasure hunt with an initial randomised location, pictured in a photograph and highlighted on the map, but the method remains the same. Here's how you do that, in handy video form:
VIDEO: How to get the revolver in GTA Online, as detailed by our pals at GamesRadar.
Secondly, for lapsed GTA Online players who fancy a quick cash injection, this is extremely good value for the time demanded in my opinion—you can treat it like a singleplayer mission. $250,000 in air deliveries from my hangar would probably take me at least twice as long to earn, and require the help of another player. This challenge, though, you can do alone. In Shark Card terms, this amount of money is more than you get for the second lowest tier, which is $200,000 for £3.19/$5.
So, yes, this is just a quick reminder in case you missed it. The quest itself is pretty fun to do solo, too—I actually wish GTA had more mystery-led missions after playing through it. Then I realised what I really wanted was to play another Red Dead, where the side content leans more towards exploration and discovery.
Earlier this week, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds launched a fairly innocuous PC patch that targeted bugs and client optimisation. "We are hoping to give you an update on what we have been working on soon", said PUBG Corp in this forum post.
Soon is now, it seems, as the developer has announced it will ban 100,000 cheaters in a "single wave" following a comprehensive data review. Moreover, balance adjustments have been applied to the blue zone, which will first appear on test servers.
"We recently discovered a new pattern of cheats in action. This week, we performed a thorough gameplay data review of 10 million players and completed analysis of tens of millions of data logs," explains PUBG Corp in this Steam Community post. "Through this exercise, we were able to identify over 100,000 instances of the new pattern related to use of cheat and now we have confirmed that it was clearly an attempt of compromising our game.
"These players will be permanently banned in a single wave. This is an example of additional measures we will be taking on top of the basic detection systems in place. We will continue to check the data logs like this even if it means the anti-cheat team has to filter through hundreds of billions of data logs manually."
The dev adds that despite recently encouraging players to report cheaters directly from replay mode, a bug tied to the game's deathcam and observing system—"it looks like there is no recoil even for a player who is not using a cheat"—has caused non-cheaters to be inadvertently flagged. It is of course working to iron this out.
As for the blue zone, the following changes will be applied and tested over the coming days:
Slightly decreased the waiting time of the blue zones in mid-to-late phase of a match.
Slightly decreased the shrinking speed of the blue zones in mid-to-late phase (In this phase, blue zones will now move at a slower speed and the travel time of blue zones has slightly increased due to this change).
Slightly increased the damage per second of the last blue zone.
Since launching in full at the end of last year, it seems PUBG Corp has doubled down on stomping out cheaters. But let me now turn this over to you lot: are cheaters less frequent in your games? Share you thoughts and experiences in the comments south of here.
