Screenshot Saturday! A day for peering behind the curtain of game development, at least insofar as carefully chosen early peeks of games-in-progress will allow. This week: some NPCs that aren t happy with what you re selling; a desert fit for a car-fight, and a farm that might have more going on than meets the eye.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) have voted to recognise gaming disorder as a health condition. After drafting it into the updated International Classification of Diseases (ICD) last year, members of the assembly unanimously agreed the draft yesterday, despite dissent from academics, industry groups, and governmental bodies. The classification will come into effect in 2022.
Almost the first thing that happens in Plasticity is that the pile of rubbish you re climbing gives way and you fall into a gross, wet cave. Protagonist Noa doesn t look especially thrown off by the event, as though it s happened before. There s even a ladder to get out. It s clearly a world accustomed to living side-by-side with trash. But in setting off to a fabled paradise island, Noa might decide that it doesn t need to be. Take a peek at the trailer below (though the game is free, so you could just try it for yourself).
A cat in a little mech makes a lot of sense to me, from what I understand about cats and their love of all things cramped and enclosed. Our intrepid hero Kiki, then, is probably having the time of their life in Gato Roboto, getting to switch between all kinds of armoured suits. Though they might just wish they could take up residence in the cardboard boxes they came in. Here they are going on an adventure to fetch us the game s release date in the latest trailer.
World Of Warcraft s Corrupted Blood incident swept through the game over a decade ago. A debuff inflicted by an end boss, Hakkar The Soulflayer, wasn t supposed to leave the raid area, but was accidentally carried by pets throughout Azeroth, causing a pandemic and ensuing panic that emptied out towns, killed low-level characters, and was eventually studied by epidemiologists to see how people might react to a plague in the real world.
Blizzard s spin-off card game, Hearthstone, cheerily added a tribute to the event in the form of adding Hakkar himself as a legendary card. When killed, he adds a new card to both players decks, Corrupted Blood. When drawn, it deals three damage and shuffles two new Corrupted Bloods back in, which can snowball quickly. Still, it was a novelty addition that s not been seriously played except, in recent competitions, by accident.
Photo modes are an excellent addition to any game, but when the photo mode is the game, it s even better. And when all of your subjects are adorable dogs, like in Pupperazzi, well, you might just have hit the jackpot. I ll get out of your way now so that you can see these good babies in the trailer below.
Spring has sprung. That’s what they say, isn’t it? The air is full of sick-sweet over-bloomed flowers, and there’s a thin sheen of pollen on car windscreens. It is around this time of year that I am always reminded of floral genre paintings of the Northern Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age, you know? Casual. Still lifes and vanitas make for pretty compelling stuff — molting flowers bending outward, rotten fruit all mottled-brown, memento mori in all those transient spring things. And so, I am thinking about that which rots when it perseveres.
Whether it’s too beautiful, too realistic, overdone or overripe, here are a handful of games which lend that creeping vernal feeling of imminent death.
It seems unlikely that we’re starting yet another three-day weekend but I am assured that I’m not fired if I don’t come in on Monday. So I do trust that it’s a three-day weekend. Probably. Unless that’s a trap? But wouldn’t that be entrapment? We’ll see after I/we take Monday off and return in full force on Tuesday. You know what, the only surefire way to get fired that I know is not telling me what you’re playing.
What are you playing this long weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!
Who here remembers Realm Of The Mad God, the free-to-play shmup MMO? Well, co-developers Spry Fox (Alphabear, Triple Town, etc) just launched their next shot at the genre – Steambirds Alliance – into open beta today, with servers running until Monday. Take your common-or-garden variety twin-stick shooter, cram sixty players into each battlefield and commence the looting and shooting. There’s some light RPG elements, but mostly a lot of bullet dodging, and perma-death for your fighter (but not pilot, who levels up) if you catch too many shots. Jump into the beta here, and see my initial thoughts (plus a trailer) below.
Three US senators have introduced a bill seeking to regulate “pay-to-win microtransactions and sales of loot boxes in video games” which are aimed at, or known to be played by, people under 18. Should it pass, it would bar games from selling randomised rewards, things that boost the natural pace of progression, or items that give an unfair advantage in competitive games. Even if this doesn’t become law, it’s interesting to see what such legislation might look like in the USA. The most important part is that they say “video games,” so if this bill passed it would surely become ILLEGAL to spell the word as “videogames.”