Slay The Spire are a little rarer, though, so I also like that Luck Be A Landlord just left Steam Early Access.
It’s about adding symbols to a slot machine, rather than removing monsters from a dungeon. You emerge from each run with sentences less like ‘damn, if only I’d picked more block cards’ and more like ‘damn, if only I hadn’t invested so much in coal and instead focused on feeding milk to my cats’.
Overwatch 2 Kiriko bug that let her teleport while holding the flag in Capture the Flag mode. Bad news! In doing so they seem to have broken the cleanse effect attached to her Swift Step ability, meaning she can no longer purge debuffs. The bug appeared after yesterday’s update and isn’t mentioned in the patch notes, so yep, it’s a bug rather than a balance change. Hopefully she’ll get back to cleansing soon.
Jojo Pose.
Anime! Who doesn’t love anime? No one who’s clicking on this list, hopefully, because all these games are anime as heck.
We’ve compiled a list of the very best anime video games on the Nintendo Switch — the games which take the action, charm, and/or personality of popular and beloved anime and manga series and squish it into a video game.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Hey there — I’m Scott, Design Director at Heart Shaped Games, and I’ve been given the opportunity to share a bit about the unique design process behind our new sci-fi grand strategy RPG, We Are The Caretakers. A lot went into creating the game over its 4+ years in development, but I’d like to focus on how our design team discovered fun and novel new strategy gameplay mechanics from a very unlikely source: the poaching of endangered animals and real-world animal conservation work.
Inspirations and Ideation
I’ve always wanted to make a grand strategy game with a large roster of characters to organize and upgrade, similar to games like Xcom, Darkest Dungeon, or my personal all-time favorite, the classic Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. I had worked on concepts and prototypes in the grand strategy genre for many years prior, but finally found the right time to revisit those designs after our team was approached about making a game about the tracking and management of wildlife poachers.
At first this seemed like an odd topic to build a game around, but after spending time with actual researchers and rangers working in the field to protect endangered animals, we came away inspired. Their incredible work led us down a path of discovery about the realities of human-animal conflicts and animal conservation. Rangers work in small teams, with limited resources, tracking animals and poachers that move in unpredictable patterns across gigantic spaces. That unique management challenge translated into interesting gameplay decisions, and mapped perfectly to the squad-building and large roster management RPGs we loved. We quickly realized we had something innovative and special on our hands and got to work.
Bending Genres and Creating New Gameplay
Our solution to translating that research into a game was to blend a variety of game genres that each emulated an important aspect of protecting wildlife. We designed a Caretaker headquarters where you organize your hundreds of recruited characters into squads, deal with detained poachers, and upgrade your technology before heading out into the field. We created a real-time-with-pause map exploration system, where you deploy your squads to search for poacher activity. And we created a turn-based combat system to resolve meetings between your squads and poacher teams, giving you diplomatic options in addition to traditional JRPG-like abilities.
By giving players actions to take at the macro and micro levels over the course of our 30+ mission campaign, they get to experience what it is like piecing together an organization and that can fight back.
Building a World
While the gameplay design was a long discovery process, we put an equal amount of effort into creating an exciting world and style that matched the gameplay. Art Director Anthony “robotpencil” Jones found inspiration in Afrofuturist works such as Black Panther for the environment and character designs; Composer Jon Parra infused a striking orchestral score with inspirations from rap beats; and Narrative designer Xalavier Nelson, Jr. heightened the real-world stories with the addition of alien close-encounters and a post-apocalyptic planetary redemption story.
Lessons Learned
The biggest lesson learned making We Are The Caretakers was that looking outside of traditional genres and gameplay tropes is the path to new and original ideas. By bringing in collaborators from outside of the games industry and building a diverse development team, we ensured we had a variety of perspectives that could find the right solution and create something exciting and fresh for our players. Working with the team at Heart Shaped Games on We Are The Caretakers has been one of my greatest professional joys, and I hope it shows in the final game you’ll get to play.
We hope you enjoy We Are The Caretakers as much as we do. It’s available for pre-order today and launches on Friday, January 6th! Your purchase also supports the folks that inspired the game, with 10% of net revenue from the game being given to Wildlife Conservation Network’s Rhino Recovery Fund.
Heart Shaped Games LLC
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Anyone in the market for a wireless VR headset should look first at the Meta Quest 2. It hits a nice sweet spot in terms of price, quality, and the availability of games and apps. For a limited time, between now and January 19, if you buy a Meta Quest 2, you’ll get an Elite Strap thrown in for free (see it at Amazon). Those usually cost $59.99, so it’s a nice value proposition.
The Elite Strap is an add-on that helps make using the Meta Quest 2 more comfortable. The standard Quest 2 uses fabric straps, so the headset feels a little front-weighted and possibly looser. The Elite Strap has plastic straps to hold it in place, plus a flexible rear brace that makes it stay more securely in place. It offers better balance for the device as well, and it has a wheel you can twist to tighten the headset on your head.
As for the current VR market, I’d say the Meta Quest 2 is still the best bet for most people. It’s cheaper than the upcoming PSVR 2, and you don’t need to connect it to a PS5 to run it. It’s way cheaper than the upcoming HTC Vive XR Elite. If you want to run more impressive games than the Quest 2’s hardware allows, like Half Life: Alyx, you can connect it to a gaming PC and use it like a regular VR headset. It’s super versatile, comfortable, and priced a lot lower than most of its competition. You can check out our initial Meta Quest 2 review for more details.
The only real bummer is that the previous Meta Quest 2 promotions have ended. Over the holiday season, you could pick one up for $349.99 and it came with Beat Saber and Resident Evil 4. That promo is over, so there’s no longer a pack-in game. But getting a free Elite Strap is a good deal for anyone who missed out on the previous promo.
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
Team Fortress 2 voice actors, who continue to enrich the internet with their nonsense. We’ve seen them lark about on a ferry. We’ve seen them confuse bakery staff, and amuse the guy behind a counter at a convenience store. Now, we get to see them perform an ABBA parody celebrating sandwiches. The Sniper plays banjo, and the Pyro’s contributions are soul warming. Enjoy.
Developer Supertrick Games and publisher GungHo Online Entertainment announced that Deathverse: Let it Die will temporarily suspend online services on July 18 for the game as they attempt to fix issues such as in-game matchmaking and lag.
“This was a difficult decision for us to make. However, we believe that re-releasing the game with significant improvements will allow it to be enjoyed by a wider audience as well as our current players,” said GungHo in a statement on its website.
GungHo continued, “Considering how much time goes into developing a game–and that there’s a finite number of games one can possibly make in a lifetime–it’s impossible to say at this stage whether this is the right choice. But we love this game and are proud to have developed it together as a team. Therefore, we believe this is the best possible decision at this time.”
[IMPORTANT] Suspension of Service
DEATHVERSE: LET IT DIE will be suspending its services as of 7/18/2023 at 19:00 (PDT).
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of our players for their support.https://t.co/VbHNHzNhty— DEATHVERSE & LET IT DIE Universe HQ ? (@LETITDIETheGame) January 6, 2023
The free-to-play multiplayer game has struggled to capture high player count numbers, with its all-time concurrent high on PC being barely above 1000.
The premium currency, Death Metal, will no longer be purchasable starting on February 7. However, the currency can still be used until the game’s suspension in July. Additionally, Season 2’s content is still planned to launch in Spring 2023, which includes features such as tournament matches and new weapons. Season 3’s content will only be partially released during its planned Summer 2023 launch.
Deathverse: Let it Die was first revealed at a PlayStation State of Play presentation back in October 2021. A spinoff of Let It Die, Deathverse took its aesthetics and added a battle royale component to the series.
The game launched on September 28, 2022, for PS4 and PS5, with a PC release on October 5, 2022.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
It’s super effective!
With the hotly-discussed Pokémon Scarlet and Violet hitting the shelves last year and news of Ash and Pikachu leaving the anime for good, it is sometimes easy to forget that Pokémon cards are one of the most enduring elements of the franchise. While some will have fallen off the collecting bandwagon as the years have gone by, this returning storytelling feature was enough to make us consider getting back to the packs.
Noted on Twitter by YouTuber @Purplecliffe, some of the latest Pokémon cards tell a heartwarming little story when a ‘mon’s evolutions are put side by side. In the example given below, we see little Ralts and its young owner spend their lives together through moving house, childbirth and old age. Check out the following images for yourself, we’ve got a little something in our eye…
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Read more
A new year is upon us, but we still have time to take one final look back at 2022 to visit your Share of the Year moments. Here are this year’s epic highlights:
justinphotomode shares Aloy framed by a machine’s wings in Horizon Forbidden West.
__Auron__ shares a close up of the cat from Stray, with neon reflected in its eye.
i3ecci_ shares Batgirl striking a pose in front of a red light in Gotham Knights.
ChosenVoid shares Ellie enjoying a butterfly in The Last of Us Part I.
nemineminemico shares Akito surrounded by red glowing orbs in Ghostwire: Tokyo.
Tabineco_55 shares the cat in Stray moving past a drain grate.
Kaylem21 shares Aloy perched in a verdant area in Horizon Forbidden West.
toko_luke95 shares Kratos and Freya in the heat of battle in God of War Ragnarök.
m_nt_13 shares Jacob staring out into the darkness of Callisto Protocol.
record_photo shares Jin with his back facing a blooming flower in Ghost of Tsushima.
Defalt368 shares a car moving through a busy city in Gran Turismo 7.
PlaystationSna1 shares Atreus pulling back his bow in God of War Ragnarök.
calisarah1998 shares Aloy leaping across a cresting wave in Horizon Forbidden West.
Morph__1 shares someone applying lipgloss in Cyberpunk 2077.
Vman_95 shares a player lifting their arms towards the Erd Tree in Elden Ring.
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Unlucky
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on January 11, 2023
Next week, capture unlucky characters or moments from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured on Friday the 13th.
