I really, really like Is This Seat Taken? It might just be that this logic puzzler stick its thumb out noticeably from the omnipresent gaggle of post-roguelite survivalyptic soulsbuilder decklikes, but I suspect it’s also down to the deeply satisfying bloopy twinkle dink that plays whenever you drop someone into a seat with your floating hand cursor.
You’ve got a limited number of seats and a bunch of jolly demand-os, and it’s your job to make them all happy. “I want to sit with Bob”. “I need a window seat”. “I forgot to shower”. “I do not like bad smells”. So you quarantine the nostril bombers in the back of your limo, make sure everyone else is happy, and drive off to the next level. There, you’ll take the role of a cinema usher. Some punters want to sit next to someone with popcorn so they can steal it, and some want to wear massive cowboy hats that block those behind them. It’s all quite simple, but robust, and just thoughtful enough to lightly tickle your synapses, like a gentle grizzly bear wielding an illustrious peacock feather.
Nintendo has announced that its Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers saving service will not extend to Switch 2 exclusives (thanks, VGC).
The vouchers initially cropped up in 2019 as a way to make a small saving on first-party Switch titles. Nintendo Switch Online subscribers can buy a voucher for £84/$100 and use it to redeem two Switch big hitters (Breath of the Wild, Paper Mario, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet etc.) that would normally come in at a higher combined price.
During a house clearout I recently discovered a cache of creative writing from my teenage years. Naturally, I now consider most of it to be unbearable. Reading certain notebooks makes me feel as though my stomach is mounting an upwards assault on my brain. BURN IT, scream the parts of said brain that have learned the perils of starting poems with “O Muse”. BURN IT ALL. Nonetheless, I felt bad about being mean towards my adolescent self, so I popped all those misbegotten papers in a giant suitcase. It squats next to me right now as I type these words, like a mausoleum filled with dead albatrosses.
Similarly mixed emotions appear to inform Amphora Hell, in which you play an amphora (read: ancient species of vase) with legs. The amphora is the work of the Kilnmaster, a terrible Olympian force who is sort of one part Hephaestus to one part shmup villain. The Kilnmaster has just decided that he hates his amphora with legs and wishes to destroy it with flying hammers. “No evidence of my failure must remain,” he bellows in the Itch preamble. “Prepare to be scrapped!”
Most writing tries to avoid cliché, understanding that an overused idea is one that has lost its power. It often feels as if video games take the opposite approach, gleefully piling tropes high upon their back like Labyrinth’s junk lady. Sure, they sacrifice the opportunity to say anything affecting or which feels true, but presumably the theory is that reminding you of a dozen other films, TV shows, books and games you like is just as good.
Enter Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, hunched over from the weight of all the teen TV shows and young adult novels stacked atop its shoulders.
As Nintendo gears up for its big Switch 2 Direct broadcast in April, it’s still got plenty of other things as well as its day-to-day operations going on behind the scenes.
Nintendo’s weekly ‘Nintendo Music’ app releases continue and the latest one to join the collection is the StreetPass Mii Plaza soundtrack, which originally debuted on the 3DS.
This album includes 39 tracks and has a runtime of 1 hour and 23 minutes in total. You’ll be able to listen to the boot up theme, the memorable main themes, the ‘Salesbunny’ song, and much more. Here’s the full tracklist:
The Fell Omen bosses of Elden Ring are infamous at this point, so it’s nice to see that with Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware has let them loose upon the Lands Between.
Morgott, whom Elden Ring players had to fight later on in the game’s campaign, is one such infamous boss. His phantom versions can pop out and surprise you throughout the campaign, and it seems like that particular facet of Morgott made it into Nightreign, where an unnamed Fell Omen (essentially an upgraded Morgott) can jump-scare invade players.
While Morgott isn’t the only boss that can invade your squad as you run through Nightreign, he is a very fitting invader. Not only does it line up with his surprise appearances in Elden Ring, but he even gets some extra voice lines and a few new moves to throw at you. If you get to bring two pals to the fight, it’s only fair Morgott gets some new moves!
While he can invade you, the Fell Omen can also appear as an end-of-night boss, one of the conclusive fights you can face as the sun sets in the Elden Ring Nightreign test.
How did morgott even manage to sneak into nightreign to fight us. generational hater this is like the 5th time pic.twitter.com/t7euCmkBRy
The Fell Omen’s sudden invasions have hopes high for other enemies to suddenly appear and attack the players. The Pursuer from Dark Souls 2, for example, would make a great candidate. Me, personally? I’d love to see some Hunters invade and attempt to take out players, but anything Bloodborne-related feels like a distant hope at best.
They buffed Margit in Elden Ring Nightreign bro was training with Vergil
There might even be deeper mechanics to Fell Omen invasions. GamesRadar detailed an invasion from the Omen that took out one of their co-op partners, and seemed to leave a curse mark branded on the slain player. It’ll be exciting to see how this game develops, especially as more players get hands-on time with it.
Sometimes to chill out I watch timelapse videos of ocean creatures such as starfish colonising patches of sea floor. Perhaps they’re gracefully devouring a seal’s carcass, or moving to escape a lethal descending finger of ice. Look, I’m quite a morbid guy, but ‘beauty of nature’ and all that.
It turns out there’s an equivalent in Warhorse’s recent RPG-palooza Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2: drop dozens of items in a random town square, and passing NPCs will gradually gather them all up according to preferences dictated by class. Here’s a video showing that in action, created by Redditor Mcloganator, with three thousand groschen worth of goods to harvest.
It seems like an absurd notion these days, but after Tomb Raider made its debut in 1996, developer Core Design pumped out six mainline entries over the next eight years – six. It’s true that teams were able to turn projects around much more quickly in those days, as evidenced by franchises such as Resident Evil and Final Fantasy, but it was also a clear indication of just how popular Lara Croft had become, and how much publisher Eidos Interactive wanted to milk the series to within an inch of its life.
The story goes that Core Design had grown weary of Tomb Raider by the time it commenced work on the fourth entry, The Last Revelation. Though keen to wean off Lara Croft and be done with the series, the team was ordered by Eidos to press on with even more Tomb Raider games. So while one group of devs reworked scrapped ideas from The Last Revelation to produce Tomb Raider: Chronicles, another moved development to the PS2 and began work on The Angel of Darkness.
Hello! I’m Oli, the game director at Kaizen Game Works, the creators of Paradise Killer. I’m thrilled to announce that the playable demo for our new open world mascot management crime drama, Promise Mascot Agency, is out today on PS5!
We’ve spent a long time working on this game, and the whole team is excited for PlayStation players to get their hands on it. Let me kick it to you straight; the PS5 rules. All of us at Kaizen primarily play on PlayStation, and we all grew up with the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PS4. I collect PlayStation and PS2 games, and that era directly influenced the design of Promise Mascot Agency.
I love PS2 games where you Hangout And Do Stuff. Have you ever played Way of the Samurai, Raw Danger, Boku No Natsuyasumi and Steambot Chronicles? You should! You can really chill in those games, meet interesting characters, make important choices and explore at your leisure. That’s the kind of game we wanted to make; a fun world with mysteries, weirdos, secrets, good gameplay friction and immaculate vibes.
Take control of the exiled yakuza lieutenant Michi, and team up with the chaos goblin Pinky to save a bankrupt mascot agency and solve the underworld conspiracy that got Michi sent to a cursed town on the coast of Japan. In this game, mascots are living creatures and the town of Kaso-Machi is filled with misfits that can’t find work anywhere else. Michi is going to need to build a new family of mascots and help them achieve their dreams, so he can save the business and his yakuza family back home.
Kaso-Machi is a town living under a supernatural curse. The mountain in the centre of the island is a playground for spirits and gods. The town is steeped in superstition and occult stories. Michi is able to try to solve the mystery behind ghost sightings, escaped sin talismans and the mythical Tsuchinoko creature. However, his time in town might be limited; the curse that hangs over the town kills any yakuza that come to visit. Can Michi save the mascot agency and solve a conspiracy before the curse rots his body?
We started this project four years ago, collaborating with Ikumi Nakamura and Mai Mattori to design the characters and world. We have blended the Kaizen style with Nakamura-san’s style to create a bizarre, nostalgic, unique game. We’re a western company, so we have worked with Japanese artists, musicians and creatives to bring our world to life and fill it with authenticity. Often we provide very little creative direction, allowing our team members to craft something that is authentic and meaningful to them. This has filled the game with lots of different influences and lived experiences.
We recently unveiled some of our voice actors including the voice of Kiryu Kazuma, Takaya Kuroda as Michi. We never expected to be able to include voice acting, and we CERTAINLY didn’t expect Kuroda-san to just turn up to the audition like it wasn’t a big deal. He teams up with Ayano Shibuya as Pinky to create a buddy-cop dynamic between Michi and Pinky. The game features many great voice actors, along with the first voice acting roles for Shuhei Yoshida and SWERY.
We’re a small team and it has taken everything we have to make a big, silly, generous, bizarre 20 hour open world RPG. We’re so happy to share it with you all. We hope you enjoy the demo (and the DualSense controller haptics, adaptive triggers and speaker features) on PS5. We’ll have more to share about the full release date soon. Now, get out there, keep promises and achieve dreams!
