Spec Ops and Dreanought developer Yager Development is working on a new PvEvP shooter called The Cycle, a game it describes as a "competitive quester." Players will form alliances, and break them, as they struggle to get rich or die trying on the extraordinarily inhospitable planet of Fortuna 3.
Fortuna 3 was terraformed by aliens long ago, you see (and yes, I know it's not "terraforming" if non-humans did it but we'll just roll with it for now), but the Cycle—"world-spanning storms that kill anything dumb enough to set foot planetside"—ensures that nobody can actually live there. The compromise solution for people who are dumb enough to set foot on it (that would be you, by the way) is life on the rundown Prospect Station, punctuated by occasional jaunts below.
Why? Money, of course. "The planet’s full of exotic materials that the major galactic factions pay serious credits for," Yager explained. "When the Cycle breaks, that’s your window to get down there and get to work. Just watch out for the competition—the long arm of the law doesn’t reach out this far."
Those factions will also be quite happy to sell you better gear, which will help you collect even more resources to exchange for more money and still better gear, and around and around it goes. It sounds like a fairly standard loot-shooter, but Yager is pushing the "strong focus on emergent social dynamics" as the big hook. In that way, it comes off more like a cross between Monster Hunter: World and Hunt: Showdown, but without the limitations of preset partnerships.
"These social dynamics add a special twist to the game," Yager managing director Timo Ullmann said. "Players strive to achieve objectives while making and breaking temporary alliances. Anyone can attack anyone, and anyone can ally with anyone. Players can be cooperative and competitive at the same time. So, if you meet new players on your way, anything can happen."
Closed alpha testing of The Cycle is expected to begin in August, and you can sign up to take part (and learn more about the game) at thecycle.game. It's also listed on Steam, with an Early Access availability date of "end of 2018."
The moment we have all been waiting for is finally (almost) upon us: Creator Eric Barone, aka ConcernedApe, announced today that the official Stardew Valley multiplayer update will be out on August 1.
Barone said that the release version of the update won't feature any "significant changes" from the beta that's currently underway. "Just a few last-minute bug fixes," he tweeted. He also clarified that split-screen or couch co-op will not be supported.
If you don't want to wait for those last-minute tweaks and fixes before jumping into the Stardew multiplayer (but for some reason haven't done it already), instructions for opting in to the ongoing beta are available on Steam. Once you've got that done, you might as well go whole-hog and dive into Community Farm, a 24,000-tile map with support for ten virtual farmers at once—Stardew Valley's native multiplayer only supports four.
There's always that moment in Fortnite when I engage an enemy player and they start hastily erecting a goddamn fortress and I realize I've lost because my clumsy fingers just cannot build that quickly. I love Fortnite, but I just do not have the patience to try and learn how to build. That's why Realm Royale, an Early Access spin-off of Hi-Rez's Paladins, first appealed to me.
On the surface, it's Fortnite without the building. But Realm Royale has more going on than I initially thought. Its class-based combat and crafting system evoke World of Warcraft PvP in a really exciting way. But an over-reliance on the same structure seen in every other battle royale makes it hard to appreciate.
Keepin' it classy
Realm Royale's class system really forces me to think on my feet.
The main hook of Realm Royale is the class-based combat and abilities. When I join a match and am dropped into a lobby, the first thing I need to do is choose which of the five classes I'll play. Each one has access to different spells, abilities, and a few unique weapons. It's a smart idea that immediately injects a little variety into that same routine of dropping, looting, and fighting because different classes can have wildly different approaches to combat.
Each class uses two abilities from a possible four that are usually looted from chests or dead players along with varying qualities of damage-reducing armor and weapons like assault rifles and shotguns. These abilities (and a few weapons) are class-specific, but they're only one part of what makes your class unique. Passive bonus and a movement ability like the hunter's dodge roll add a lot of flavor to each playstyle. The engineer, for example, passively regenerates armor points, can launch straight into the air, and has access to abilities like being able to drop an automatic turret or protect himself with a big shield. The assassin, likewise, moves faster and can teleport short distances while throwing down smoke grenades or Ghost Walking to escape a bad situation.
What I love about this system is how much depth it adds to fights without making them impossible to follow. Unlike Fortnite or PUBG, where I'm mostly listening for what kind of gun they might have to help inform my strategy, Realm Royale's class system really forces me to think on my feet. If fighting a mage, I need to anticipate that she might use Iceblock to nullify incoming damage and regain some lost health. And I should think twice about chasing a hunter into a house on the off chance they've laid a trap for me with a proximity mine.
Like Fortnite, fights are fast and hectic but they're far easier to parse too. While there's no chaotic eruption of walls and floors to frantically navigate, there's still moments where an almost dead enemy can turn the tide with a clever play. During one fight inside a house, I had a mage turn tail and zip out a window, fly around the corner and come back in through another one behind me. I didn't even realize what had happened before it was over.
But even when the mage shotgunned me in the back, things weren't actually over. One interesting wrinkle Realm Royale adds to the battle royale formula is getting killed temporarily turns enemies into a giant chicken that you then have to kill a second time. It's essentially no different than being downed in Fortnite or PUBG except you can run and jump (and gobble incessantly) and this even happens in solo games. If I survive for 30 seconds without being killed a second time, I'll turn back to normal with reduced health and can continue the fight.
I have a real love-hate relationship with this system. If I'm in a squad, it's great to not be deadweight the moment I die. In the chaos of a fight, I can scamper off and (hopefully) stay safe long enough to revive. Instead of being a liability, my team can just focus on winning the fight and I can continue taking responsibility for my own survival. But, at the same time, downing someone just to have them cluck off before I can finish them is maddening—especially in solo games. It's not all that fun to win a fight and then spend another ten seconds chasing an enemy just to finish them off. I haven't had one instance where me or my enemies have managed to evade long enough to revive in a solo match, so it ends up feeling like a needless process.
Part of that has to do with Realm Royale falling into that same pitfall that Fortnite and PUBG haven't escaped from: There is rarely a happy balance to the flow of combat over the course of a match. I either drop into an area where I'm fighting a few players between vast stretches of boredom or I land in a hotspot that typically ends in defeat because there were just too many people. Having people turn into chickens during the later makes already frantic free-for-alls even harder.
Arts and crafts
Realm Royale nobly tries to alleviate this problem with its crafting system, but it's not a perfect solution. In most major settlements on the map exist especially large buildings which house forges that can be used for crafting. While looting, unneeded pieces of gear can be disenchanted for shards which, in turn, can be used at the forge to craft especially powerful armor, weapons, and abilities. Doing so takes up to a minute, however, and anyone nearby can tell the forge is running due to the massive plume of smoke rising out of its chimney.
It's a promising feature because forging is the only reliable way to get the best gear but it also makes you vulnerable to nearby players looking to kill you and steal that epic-quality loot. If you're near the center of the action on the map, it'll certainly drive combat your way. But it's also just as easy to run to the fringes of the circle and use an isolated forge thanks to each character having access to a speedy horse they can summon at will. It's like having a car at your disposal at all times, which kind of trivializes how easy it is to get places or outrun the slowly collapsing circle of death.
As much as I like these ideas, though, they feel kind of lost in the all-too-familiar routine of battle royale games.
This epic-quality gear, especially the unique class-specific weapons and abilities, can really turn the tide in battle and it's practically mandatory to have some going into the final minutes of a match. Other players certainly will. Fighting over them at forges, then, makes for a great conflict driver in that long stretch between the beginning and climax of a round.
As much as I like these ideas, though, they feel kind of lost in the all-too-familiar routine of battle royale games. At the end of the day, I'm still jumping from some kind of aerial vehicle onto an oversized battlefield filled with named clusters of buildings that all feel and look the same. I'm still enduring long stretches of boredom as I run from house to house collecting gear. And, though Realm Royale is a promising battle royale game, I'm reaching the point where scoring that coveted victory just doesn't have the same emotional rush that it used to.
Realm Royale is also still only in alpha, which means there's a ton of work Hi-Rez needs to do before it can even hold a candle to Fortnite. Though I often tire of Fortnite's building system, the weekly challenges and ever-evolving map and game modes keeps me invested. There's a very compelling metagame behind Fortnite that Realm Royale doesn't have.
In the same way that Heroes of the Storm became the accessible third option for players turned off by DOTA 2 and League of Legends, I can see Realm Royale becoming a haven for players sick of Fortnite and PUBG. It's surprising success on Steam already indicates as much. There's an undeniable charm to the clever way it innovates on combat and looting. I just wish Realm Royale expanded that vision to subvert more of the genre's stale tropes.
Me and Tom are excited about Fallout 76, even if we have loads of damn questions about the first multiplayer Fallout (how can I play this by myself exactly? Does a bigger world really make for a better one? And so on). In the meantime, though, the Fallout mod scene is thriving, and there are plenty of substantial-looking projects in various states of progress that don't involve interactions with other humans.
We've covered all of these mods before as news, but I thought it might be nice to collect all of them in one place, as you ponder your big next Fallout singleplayer experience. You'll also find links to previous stories where you can read more about each project, as well as links to the creators' own sites where you can check out granular updates on the mods discussed.
You might also want to read about Northern Springs, a mod released in beta last week that adds a sizeable new area to Fallout 4.
In development for five years, this New Vegas mod arrives in October, and it's an ambitious-sounding creation. New California will feature 16,000 lines of voiced dialogue (which seems of a pretty high quality based on the above teaser) and 12 endings, inspired by the more open-ended Black Isle Fallout games, to which New Vegas was their most obvious successor. The team is working on adding side quests before launch, too, but even without those, a big chunk of new Fallout story suits us just fine.
Hot damn that is a cool teaser. Clearly you've already got lovely snapshots of beaches in Fallout Miami, but the world will apparently also feature casinos, retirement homes and a golf course that's become an irradiated jungle. The creators of this Fallout 4 mod have also conceived of three entirely new factions to occupy the world, each of which have their own background lore already. Expect new weapons alongside this change of setting, too. I'm mostly just excited about the idea of exploring a seaside holiday destination through the prism of new Fallout.
Hot damn, what is it about empty images of Fallout landscapes and old-ass music? Cascadia's trailer is impressive and kind of moving. This Fallout 4 mod is set in Seattle, a setting that's been reclaimed somewhat by nature—a deliberate touch to reflect it being set several decades after Fallout 4. "We wanted to create a world where nature shows subtle signs of having returned to a more natural order," said Dr Weird, the project's director of implementation, in a conversation with Kotaku. It promises to 'revisit old gameplay systems from previous instalments of the Fallout franchise such as skills, the dialogue system and much more'.
Atlanta, best known to me as a city that sank in an episode of Futurama, the place where The Walking Dead is filmed and as a gigantic airport where I got lost twice, is the subject of this New Vegas mod. Once again it's an entirely new landmass for the game with its own story. It's currently in alpha, having been in the works since 2016. It promises new interiors, a new casino, new quests and most importantly, "a new vibe that will be different to new Vegas or any other fallout game".
The pitch here is nice and straightforward: recreating Fallout: New Vegas in Fallout 4's Creation Engine. As you can see from the environmental comparison above, it's a flattering transition for Obsidian's game, which is often called the best 3D Fallout. I'm not prepared to commit to an opinion on that here, but know that I love them all. Don't expect the team to add anything new to the game. "If it's in the base game, we'll be striving to add it to the mod," says their FAQ page. "If it isn't, probably not."
We've been covering this New Vegas mod since all the way back in 2016. While its creators call it more of an expansion in the vein of those released for New Vegas like Old World Blues, or a 'super DLC', it's already 19GB and growing. It's set in a large, snowy version of Portland, and will feature new assets for buildings, armour and weapons, as well as frost effects. You'll also encounter familiar factions like the NCR, Legion and the Scavengers, with the Enclave also making an appearance. As of now, it's around 80% complete, and the teaser above was released about a month ago.
In conversation with The Guardian, Hello Games head honcho Sean Murray discusses No Man's Sky's turbulent launch—which led to personal death threats and bomb warnings at the developer's office. He speaks about the angry mob nature of the internet, and acknowledges he and his team's mistakes with regards to communication pre-release.
One particularly contentious issue for players at the time was the space explorer's absent multiplayer—a feature some players expected from the off.
“A very light multiplayer was envisioned for launch," Murray tells The Guardian, "and we fought right up until the end to add it, but it was immensely challenging and we knew it was something that only a handful of people would experience due to the size of the universe.
"We later added a version of it for the Atlas Rises update, and it was nice, but not hugely impactful to people’s enjoyment. What players really wanted was the kind of multiplayer we are adding now."
When asked specifically about the absence of multiplayer at launch, Murray tells Eurogamer that Hello Games "talked about the earlier than we should have". He speaks to Hello's small team, and that certain aspirational, but not practical, features were axed along the way.
"We would go way down some routes sometimes and they wouldn't turn out to be a good idea," Murray tells EG. "Other things we were fighting to get into the game until the last breath, basically. Multiplayer was one of those things. To be super clear—multiplayer at that time was the way we had talked about it.
"It was something that'd happen to people super infrequently. In play-testing it was of almost no value to the player—it was just a cool thing, a cool moment that some people would have, and we talked about it with the press that there's this cool thing that would maybe make a story sometime. But it's a big complicated thing for that payoff. We were fighting for it until pretty much the final hours of the game."
Murray reckons NEXT's multiplayer "totally changes the game"—which is doubly important, given it feeds into its pre-existing features. Murray explains things like base-building, riding in vehicles, and owning freighters weren't intended at launch. "None of these things existed," he says, "and we've kind of had to build the game out for multiplayer to make sense."
Check out both The Guardian and Eurogamer's interviews with Sean Murray via those respective links.
If you know anything about No Man's Sky, you'll likely know it was criticised at launch. For some, what shipped didn't reflect its pre-release promotional material—a backlash that was later investigated and dismissed by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority. With its pre-launch promo in mind, Redmas' Origins mod for NMS Atlas Rises "aims to restore the original vision of the game."
On the project's Nexus Mods page, the creator says: "I've restored the original 1.0 biomes, and tweaked them to look like pre-release footage. I've also packed some of my most recent mods from 'Space Adventures'."
It's worth noting that Redmas hasn't created Origins as a way of slighting Hello Games, but is instead a fan of both the developer and NMS itself.
"I've been following the development of No Man’s Sky since pre-release," reads their Nexus bio. "[I've] always supported Hello Games before and after the release, being a developer myself, I know it must have been a lot to go through for a small team. I love the game, and had one of my best gaming moments with this game."
Here are some stills:
More information on Redmas' No Man's Sky Origins mod, including installation instructions, lives on its Nexus Mods page. The space explorer's NEXT update—which adds third-person perspective, multiplayer, and a visual overhaul—lands on Tuesday, July 24.
Three of the four of our little squad are huddled in a tiny cabin, waiting out a life-threatening blizzard on a snowy planet. I’m playing No Man’s Sky Next—the fourth update for the game since launch and the one which brings true multiplayer to the game’s enormous universe—with three of the development team. All four of my team started a new game for this demo so everyone is working through the new version of the game’s introduction. We’re learning the basics of resource gathering and tech creation needed for the meat of the experience: base-building and adventuring. To that end it introduces you to base-building and freighters earlier than before.
But right now I’m out of Sodium—a new harvestable resource which I need to recharge my exosuit’s thermal protection—and my life support system is also perilously low. Hence hiding in a cabin after collecting a piece of tech I need to repair my starship. The jog here nearly killed me so the jog back seems a bit of a gamble.
Where I’d usually have to figure out a survival strategy on my own, multiplayer offers a new lifeline. One of my new friends drops a heap of Sodium (and some Oxygen for my life support) into my inventory and I’m suddenly good to go.
To share resources you hover over the element in your inventory and can choose to transfer it to a fellow player in your immediate vicinity. Sharing is also why the game now lets you split stacks of resources, so you don’t need to absolutely inundate someone with all the Carbon you own when they only need enough for a floor tile. I attempt to return the favour at a later date, offering up a supply of Copper as we build the necessary bits to unlock a base computer.
A base computer is what you need to start a base and thus we start throwing up walls, floors, lights and goodness knows what else, with surprising speed. I decide to build a magnificent bridge from the slope we’re on to another peak. I run out of Carbon after placing about five floor tiles and curse my hubris. Luckily my squad helps out and, by the time I return from another round of mining, it covers a far more impressive distance.
Obviously, co-operating like this is the nicer way to play. The devs are helping me rather than e.g. letting me die slowly; a courtesy they don’t always extend to one another, if my eavesdropping on their chat is accurate. To be fair to them, though, given the choice between saving a friend and letting them die hilariously and unnecessarily, I’d always pick the more amusing option. I also notice I’m tempering my own worst impulses. I mean, I ask what would happen if I shoot them with my mining beam rather than just opening fire like I normally would. (Apparently it would hurt them a bit.)
Because we’re working through the tutorial bits we’re all doing similar activities, but Hello Games’ managing director, Sean Murray, explains that you can dip into multiplayer with friends or random travelers using any of your existing saves, across any of the game’s modes. “You can have played for a hundred hours. I can join you on your game and if I collect stuff or do stuff then I have that and that’s in my save when I go back to playing single-player.”
You can pursue the No Man’s Sky story path together or just explore or muck about, racing exocraft, creating scenic trails, taking on missions as a group, or building extravagant structures.
The ability to experience the world alongside other people is turned on by default. Players can switch it off if they want to be truly alone, but the way Murray explains it, having it enabled won’t suddenly lead to those strange agglomerations of player characters you see in MMO questing hotspots.
There s potential for cities, or at least neighborhoods of some kind, as other people can build bases alongside your own
Instead, it’s about the game’s universe feeling more real, more alive. He describes a scenario from his own experience:
“There’s a new marketplace in our space stations which looks really cool and has got loads of NPCs dotted around and whatever. I had this fucking amazing moment where I went in there and there was somebody else at one of the shops. Initially I just assumed it was an NPC but they’re not normally there. I was like, ‘It’s another person! It’s one of the team!’ It was so good! I didn’t know what to do with myself. But that then coloured the whole rest of the time I was playing.”
He comes back to that story later in the day to illustrate how the existing No Man’s Sky experience sets up slightly different multiplayer expectations than other games.
“In any other game that [moment] wouldn’t be surprising, but because of the scope of No Man’s Sky it’s like, ‘Fuck! I’ve been playing for eight hours and never seen anyone,’ and it just takes you by surprise. In another game you might instantly think to kill that person. But with this it’s like, we’re both having a moment and doing a silly little dance of ‘What should we do with this? Let’s go and build a base together!’ It’s cool to have those feelings.”
I only reached base building towards the end of my hands-on with the game (partly because there was a certain amount of hiding in cabins, barging one another with starships, and deploying all of the emotes in the quick task bar to see what they did). So it was in conversation with Murray where I learned about the rest of what Next will bring.
Until now you could only set up home by finding an abandoned habitable base on a planet, so you weren’t able to just set yourself up near an attractive cave system or a glut of useful resources. You could also only build your base out a certain distance from that point. Next will remove both of those restrictions, letting you build anywhere and letting you sprawl all over the place.
For a brief rundown: there are hundreds of new base building parts and you can own multiple bases per solar system and per planet. From what I saw, the new building components also make the building architecture look very different—they tended to be more angular and more wood-focused, although that could be due to the materials available or what gets unlocked early versus later as you research new parts.
There’s potential for cities, or at least neighborhoods of some kind, as other people can build bases alongside your own, or you could simply throw down another base computer and start a new structure yourself. Given my particular group of friends, it’s also good to know that when playing together there’s nothing too destructive they can really do to my base, and when I’m not online they can only see my base, not edit it.
Personally, I’m most interested in setting up a base underwater, so I ask if there are any extra restrictions there in terms of pressure or oxygen. “What is it with you and underwater bases?” he asks. “Nope, you just build underwater if you want (I means it’s harder to do, and harder to get to, but you are safe once inside).”
Murray says that you can now assemble fleets of frigates, too, walking around on them, repairing them and specialising them for discovery, trade or combat. He adds that you can also build rooms for captains on freighters and then deploy them on missions.
Depending on your fleet you can take on different missions, explains Murray. “When you send them off they go to those places for real. You can follow them round, they sometimes get into trouble—things like that. And when they return they will potentially give you rewards, they will give you a big report of everything that’s happened which is quite fun.
“They send you messages when they’re away as well and sometimes call you for decisions. When they come back, as well as getting rewards and stuff, they might need repairs—you can fly out to them and repair them—and they can level up so you can send them on more missions.”
In terms of the missions you and your team of human players can take on, I see things like resource collection and scanning creatures on one list, but apparently there are also activities like freighter battles.
While we’re on the subject of freighters, Murray points out that you can now land on them. The layout has changed too, to make it more obvious that you can base-build in freighters. I gather that’s something people often missed, like the adjacency bonuses you can get by organising your inventory in a particular way.
To go back to my hands-on experience, I was tentatively excited by how quickly the experience slipped into that “titting about with mates” headspace, sniggering as a copper deposit I’d tagged but then mined out led a companion to an empty hole. The mood felt somewhere between Viscera Cleanup Detail (a game about being a space janitor which you can play with your friends and ruin their clean floors by treading blood everywhere) and Minecraft (where I tended towards pottering about on a server, occasionally collaborating, but mostly working on my own projects).
It’s impossible to say how the experience will settle over the longer term—over the hundreds or even thousands of hours the No Man’s Sky community pours into save files—but the foundations feel promising to me. And I say that as someone who has previously played a determinedly lonely version of the game, just skipping from planet to planet and making videos of particularly dorky animals or taking screenshots of weird landscapes.
The community is getting a particular shout-out after Next launches, thanks to the Galactic Atlas website. It seemed to be part travel guide, part activity hub from the screenshots I saw. The idea is to be able to offer context for the galactic map, pointing out places of interest or information about galactic hubs and their discoveries.
There’s also a shop. Not in the sense of a microtransaction or loot box experience, but as a place where players can spend in-game currency earned through doing community missions. The idea is that people can pick up unique cosmetics, emotes, base building parts and so on which mark or celebrate their community involvement. It made me think of the emblems and shaders I amassed in Destiny as a kind of “I was there!” statement for raids.
Speaking of cosmetics, you can also customise your player character, either taking on the form of a space traveler in the human astronaut vein, or as one of the game’s NPC races, like the Gek or the Vy’keen. Customisation feels more important in Next than other updates, partly because in multiplayer it’s nice to be able to tell people apart at a glance instead of using a default form and relying on the coloured markers on your HUD, and partly because the game will now default to a third-person camera view, meaning you’ll spend a lot of time looking at your character unless you switch back to first person.
As with the previous mega updates, Next feels too big to be able to summarise everything here, and a lot of the changes which will make a lot of difference to players will be under the quality of life heading rather than the eye-catching trailer stuff which gets prioritised in top-level explanations. For example, I’m excited about being able to build a base underwater, but ecstatic about being able to drag and drop resources from one inventory slot to another.
After Next launches, the team will be watching to see what players do with multiplayer. “It’s such a different stage,” says Murray. How players engage with the game, with these new tools and experiences, will inform how it evolves. But it will start to do so on via a smaller, more regular cadence.
Until now we’ve seen massive updates which tend to rewrite both the philosophy of the game and large parts of the player experience. But shortly after Next is out in the wild, Hello Games will switch to weekly updates as the team continues to work on the game. There’s no confirmed date for that yet, though.
“It’s really important for us that people look at the game, look at Next, and they understand that this is a game that continues to evolve,” says Murray. “This isn’t like us saying here’s Next and it’s finished now. Maybe one day I’ll think No Man’s Sky is finished, but I don’t currently feel that way—the team doesn’t, I think.”
Big Robot, the studio behind The Signal From Tölva and Sir, You Are Being Hunted, has revealed its next project. Named The Light Keeps Us Safe, it's billed as a "procedurally-generated apocalypse" with "unique light-based interactions and challenges." It also has an Early Access launch date: October 11.
And, look, a trailer:
With its sci-fi themes and aggressive machine-like aggressors, The Light Keeps Us Safe appears to echo both of Big Robot's most recent games. The studio's penchant for foreboding, ominous scenarios is reflected above, and its "sprawling world of stealth, survival and exploration" looks terrifying.
Despite its flaws, I loved Sir, You Are Being Hunted's pervasive sense of dread. Between the trailer above and its Steam page rundown, it looks like The Light Keeps Us Safe could pull from Sir's best bits.
"The sky has flickered and gone out," so reads the game's Steam blurb. "Only can The Light keeps us safe. And you can't stay down there in the depths of the bunker. The food is gone and the power can't last much longer, either. Those things out there in the dark will only take so long to find their way in... It's time to go outside and face what's waiting for you out there. Maybe then you can go into The Light, like the others."
Again, The Light Keeps Us Safe enters Steam's Early Access initiative on October 11, 2018.
Disclosure: Big Robot's Jim Rossignol worked for PC Gamer until 2010.
Late last year, Clicker Heroes developer Playsaurus announced that the sequel to its popular clicker RPG would ditch the original's free-to-play model in favor of an upfront cost, in no small part because its creators wanted "a cleaner conscience" and didn't want to exploit the big-spending 'whale' players that drive most free-to-play games. At the time, the studio said the change "may or may not work," and that with an upfront cost, the sequel "probably isn't worth nearly as much money." Well, Clicker Heroes 2 is now available on Steam Early Access for $30, and while it remains to be seen if it's as profitable as the original, it is most definitely popular.
At the time of writing, Clicker Heroes 2 is well into Steam's top 100 with 8,947 concurrent players and a daily peak of 9,350. According to Steam Charts, it's managed an average of 7,336 concurrent players since it launched this past Monday, with an all-time peak of 9,570. Those are strong numbers for any new Early Access game, but for a $30 sequel fighting to shed the free-to-play reputation of its predecessor, Clicker Heroes 2's popularity is astonishing. Just as impressively, its Steam reviews are currently 78 percent positive. There's clearly something to it, so I decided to give it a play myself. And I have to admit, while I'm not the biggest fan of idle games, I found Clicker Heroes 2 quite absorbing.
Like its predecessor, Clicker Heroes 2 is an idle action RPG where your character moves and attacks automatically and you passively earn money and experience. Your primary input is clicking to attack faster and occasionally upgrading your character. As Playsaurus puts it, it's "a never-ending journey to the top right of your screen." That journey starts with you swinging a wet noodle around dealing 20 damage to monsters that drop 30 gold. Fast forward an hour and you're wielding the fuckin' femur of Zeus (or whatever it is) dealing so much damage and gaining so much gold that their values can only be expressed in exponents. And that's just the beginning. In Clicker Heroes 2, a quadrillion gold is pocket change. I don't get out of bed for anything under a decillion.
That much hasn't changed, but Clicker Heroes 2 improves on the ideas established in the original by polishing them up and making them considerably more interactive. For instance, you're no longer just clicking stationary enemies. You're also clicking gold piles and energy pylons along the path you're running, fattening your wallet and replenishing the energy you spend on clicks. Apart from energy, you've also got mana which you can spend on skills, of which there are a frightening amount: Playsaurus says the current skill tree has around 600 nodes and that new characters will also get their own unique trees.
Most of those nodes are passive buffs, but some of them are active skills you can slot into your hotbar. Some skills cost energy and some cost mana, but they all have cooldowns. As a result, a big part of Clicker Heroes 2 is building your own skill rotations—yes, exactly like an MMO, albeit greatly simplified. You can even program skills to trigger automatically using a macro-like system called the Automator. You can also tailor your character's stats by buying gear with specific bonuses—earn more gold, deal more critical hits, encounter more treasure chests, and so on.
Finally, Clicker Heroes 2 is a pretty little thing, which is important for a game that's designed to be stared at through a dreamlike haze. Its bright, cartoony art is easy on the eyes, and its smooth attack animations are fun to watch. I especially like the super-click attacks which lob giant cursors at enemies like some kind of Microsoft Office mortar.
If games like Diablo and Borderlands are loot treadmills, Clicker Heroes 2 is a loot conveyor belt that leads right to your face. It's the videogame equivalent of a bottomless bag of potato chips that you don't even have to reach for because the chips are conveniently shoveled into your gaping pie hole. It's a game about pure, unfiltered catharsis, not challenge. But speaking as someone who generally doesn't like idle games, Clicker Heroes 2 does feel like one of the best idle games out there.
Read the news, turn on the TV, or glance at the internet, and one thing is abundantly clear: the world is headed straight for a tacopocalypse. It's only a matter of time before a disaster, man-made or natural, turns the world into a lawless hellscape where only the strongest and bravest can survive to deliver tacos in a speeding car while doing sick ramp stunts and trying to beat the clock. This is an indisputable fact.
Less factual, however, is Tacopocalypse, a stunt driving game about delivering tacos in the tacopocalypse. It's fun, sure. But is it an accurate depiction of our tacopocalyptic future? No. Here's what Tacopocolypse gets wrong about the impending tacopocalypse.
In the tacopocalypse, a single taco will be worth millions of dollars, not a few cents
When civilization crumbles, there's always something that becomes more valuable than anything else. Sometimes it's gasoline. Sometimes it's James' favorite snack: water. In Fallout, it's bottle caps. There was that one time it was mail. Like, letters and shit. That was a really stupid one.
In the tacopocalypse, it's tacos. People want tacos, just like people want tacos now, and they don't have to go to the taco restaurant to get them. They want tacos delivered. And due to the constant tidal waves, tornadoes, and meteor strikes, a single taco will become nearly priceless.
In Tacopocalypse, however, a single taco delivery usually nets me less than a dollar. That's almost nothing, especially considering money is essentially devalued, so a taco, if anything, should cost at least $200 million.
Survivors of the tacopocalypse will not want their tacos delivered to a glowing circle ninety feet in the air
As the world descends into chaos, those who survive will do so by retreating into caves, bunkers, the wilderness, anywhere they might feel safer from bands of roving cannibals and murderers. They will, of course, still want tacos delivered to them, but to avoid attention of mutants and marauders, they won't advertise the location the taco should arrive at with an enormous glowing circle high in the air, marked with a giant spinning taco, visible for miles. That would tell all the warlords and raiders where the taco was about to be delivered. That's not the kind of attention you want.
Tidal waves knocking the delivery car into the air for a bunch of cool mid-air twists, however, is accurate.
Cars will not deliver three tacos at a time
Tacos are precious. There is no way that the owner of a taco business in the tacopocalpse will give a driver three tacos to be delivered at once. Only one taco will be released at a time, and not in a paper bag but in a steel briefcase chained to the driver's wrist. I can't believe I have to point this out.
Drivers will indeed do sick flips for points while delivering tacos but they won't do lengthy rail grinds
We all know that during the tacopocalypse, taco delivery drivers will do a bunch of sick jumps and tricks and flips. That's standard, widely-accepted tacopocalypse theory, verified by hard date and extensive computer simulations. We know there are ramps everywhere during the tacopocalypse, jump pads, volcanos that blast you into the air, and cars will (of course) be able to double jump. Tacopocalypse the game gets this all perfectly correct.
But then it goes too far, adding in long, winding rail grinds. There's simply no evidence to suggest the existence of rails constructed throughout major cities that a driver could grind his car on like a skateboard. For Tacopocalypse 2, I hope the developers will stay a bit more grounded in reality.
Blasting 90s music will be punishable by death (hopefully)
There's a lot of 90s music in Tacopocalypse, but in the real tacopocalypse, as it is now, the 90s will be reviled as perhaps the worst decade for music ever and it will only be used for the purposes of torture. Listening to 90s music will be forbidden, and blasting it while delivering tacos will be punishable by death. Those who conspire to distribute 90s music will be banished to the Wasteland (known as the Bizkit Zone), where no tacos are ever delivered.
