Drag me to bullet-hell.
We’ve been keeping an eye on Savant – Ascent Remix ever since Owlboy developer D-Pad Studio first mentioned it was returning to its debut title early last year. That planned remaster would turn into a full-blown sequel a couple of months later, with a Steam release landing in September 2023.
Well, over a year later, the studio has announced that this frantic shooter will finally make the ascent to Switch on 5th December.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
This month, indie game developers are swinging for the fences. Incredible visuals, inventive game mechanics, audio delights, and chaotic fun are all being showcased with this month’s six Indie Selects.
Each of these games couldn’t be any more different. Need something really special for you and your kiddos? Check! Something to curb your monster-like rage? Check! Does your eclectic music taste need a treat? Check! Are you so confident about your wordsmithing ability you would bet your afterlife on it? Check! Here’s what we’ve got for you this month (in no particular order):
The Plucky Squire is a magical adventure game featuring Jot and his friends, who discover their world exists within a storybook. Jot must leap between the 2D storybook and the 3D artist’s table, solving puzzles, boxing badgers, and engaging in mini-games to save his kingdom. Firstly, the game’s art is stunning, just check out the gameplay trailer. In an all-ages story, Jot and his friends battle the wizard Humgrump with the help of DJing Gandalf figure, Moonbeard. The combat is simple, akin to a 2D Zelda game, but frequently interspersed with new puzzles and challenges requiring exploration in 3D on the artist’s desk.
Though single-player, it’s ideal for playing with a child, offering many accessibility options, including the option to skip mini-games and enable puzzle hints from a mini-Wizard. Another standout feature is the ability to collect art scrolls scattered throughout the world, providing insights into the game’s development process, including draft art and design elements that were cut. It’s a visual showcase of the non-linear nature of video game creation, where ideas are created, iterated and sometimes discarded. What better message could you have in a game, all about art, creativity and how media can inspire a lifetime of creativity?
Devolver Digital
When the malevolent Humgrump realizes he’s the villain of the book – destined to lose his battle against the forces of good for all eternity – he kicks the heroic Jot out of its pages and changes the story forever.
Jot must face challenges, unlike anything he’s ever seen if he is to save his friends from Humgrump’s dark forces and restore the book’s happy ending.
Jump between 2D and 3D worlds in this charming action-adventure – solving puzzles, boxing badgers, flying with a jetpack, and enjoying many more delightful and surprising mini-challenges as you become the hero of a living storybook.
This game is not for the faint of heart. Survive the onslaught of enemies in a constantly evolving arena and get rewarded for your aggression and precision with powerful equipment, special abilities and new arenas for slaughter. It’s safe to say, this will not be going in our cozy collection, ladies and gentleman. Kill Knight is an addictive, violent, adrenaline-charged rampage that is incredibly satisfying. Each run is fast, chaotic, and fun as hell.
Your character build is made up of your primary weapons, a secondary weapon, a sword, armor, and a relic which will provide some sort of boost to your stats, all of which can be upgraded by unlocking new weapons and equipment. Collecting red orbs, dropped by the enemies you kill, increases your damage, but can also be used to charge your secondary weapon’s special attack, which causes enemies to drop healing orbs to restore your health. This combat mechanic creates a really fun gameplay loop where you end up utilizing enemies as resources that you must maintain a balance between healing and damage.
The game has high replayability with a ton of thoughtful mechanics, a wide variety of enemies, and painful environmental challenges. Individually, none of these elements necessarily reinvent the genre, but when these ingredients are carefully plated together, it creates one hell of a murder salad.
PlaySide
FIVE ELDRITCH LAYERS
KILL, OR BE KILLED
MASTER THE DEMON WITHIN
Dance with death in the Abyss, and unveil intricate layers of gameplay lurking beneath the surface. Exploit enemy weaknesses, enact brutal executions, weave through your arsenal to tactically manage resources, and unleash destructive wrath blasts to turn the tide. Every encounter is testament to your mastery.
BEAUTY IN DECAY
KILL KNIGHT’s polished, minimalist aesthetic, and retro visuals pay homage to the neon-soaked arcades and shooters of the 90’s. Set across five relentless, hand-crafted eldritch arenas, KILL KNIGHT embraces lo-fi brutalism and revels in the dread and dream-like ruins that surround your descent into the Abyss.
ETERNAL DAMNATION
Survive the otherworldly onslaught and complete challenges to unlock powerful new equipment for your Knight’s Arsenal, and evolve your unique playstyle. Learn to harness the special abilities and fire-modes of KILL KNIGHT’s array of pistols, heavy weapons, swords, and armor. Take your fight to the global leaderboards against friends and foes alike. Enter if you dare, Knight, and revel in the carnage.
FEATURES
– Fast and visceral top-down, push forward combat that rewards aggression and precision
– An immersive otherworld dripping in corrosive atmosphere with a retro-inspired aesthetic
– Descend through five fatal layers, each more deadly than the last
– Choose your challenge, with four distinct difficulty settings to overcome
– Survive long enough to raise your Kill Power, increasing speed and damage
– Complete challenges to unlock your Knight’s Arsenal, and evolve your playstyle
– Dive into Sever Mode, combining all five layers into one extended arena challenge
– Ascend the global leaderboards, and compete with friends for high-score supremacy
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On this planet, music is illegal. So, naturally, it’s time to do crimes. Keylocker is a Cyberpunk music-themed turn-based RPG where the power of your attack is based on the real-time execution of moves in rhythm. You are Bobo, a lady ready to rage against the machine and bring freedom to her world. The game allows you to choose between 4 different classes revolved around how offensive or defensive you want to play it: Juggernaut, Hacker, Samurai, and Sequencer.
The turn-based combat system takes place on a hexagonal grid where you’ll need to time your hits to the exact moment needed, whether you are attacking or defending. Placement is also critical to this game, so planning out your movements will make a huge difference whether you avoid attacks or receive special buffs and debuffs. You can also plan counters, charge your electricity points or even steal electricity from your opponent. There’s definitely a learning curve with some of these opponents, but some trial and error can lead to some incredibly satisfying moments of clearing the board.
Keylocker is a visually stunning and fun turn-based RPG that excels in combining a fresh combat system with a variety of mini-games and boss fights to keep the playthrough exciting. Also, the music is *chef’s kiss* perfect.
Serenity Forge
Story:
| Saturn, Anno 801. |
| Music is banned for 141 years now. |
B0B0 is one of the Doppelgangers, twins born as perfect human beings fit to obey the purpose of the caste they were assigned to. Her purpose is to serve in the lowest caste for the prosperity of Saturn, but B0B0 doesn’t quite agree to that. Amidst a revolution against the Saturnian Satellites, the ultimate form of law, B0B0 hears news of a newfound music robot that’ll fit right in her illegal band as a drummer. Rebelling against the corrupt system using music is the only thing she knows how to do well and she only needed a drummer to join her pack of misfits. With every piece in place, she’s out to break some laws, and discover the truth behind the essence of music: the Keylocker.
Sticks and stones… well those won’t hurt you nearly as much as the words in this game. In Cryptmaster, words control everything. You can either type words or even use voice recognition to command your character, uncover lost abilities, fight enemies, and solve baffling riddles. This may require some adjustment at first as it’s not a typical way you would usually traverse a dungeon, but there’s a ton of accessibility options available if you find yourself limited.
You’ll have 4 heroes to command, each with unique playstyles, and as you progress, you’ll need to help them find their forgotten powers. This is one of the strangest and most original titles I’ve played in a while with a very creepy aesthetic, memorable side characters, a great story with a surprisingly funny undertone, and one-of-a-kind mechanics. If you are a collector of the strange and rare, boy do I have a gem for you!
Akupara Games
In the ancient past, four brave heroes banded together to destroy a terrible evil, giving their lives to save countless others. But now their eternal rest has been disturbed by the Cryptmaster, a capricious necromancer in whose thrall they must ascend through the buried strata of the city above them – the gloomy Bonehouses, mysterious Sunken Sea and freakish Downwood.
With the enigmatic Soulstone in hand, the four adventurers must recover their memories, solve whimsical puzzles and defeat outlandish enemies. From fishing and card games to bardic rap battles, finding the right word is the key to success. Who knows, maybe you’ll even remember a little more than you bargained for…
Beyond Galaxyland is a gorgeous side-scrolling RPG that seeks to dig into the classic space adventure genre and give it a spark of humor and depth. The story focuses on Doug, whose life abruptly changes one day when a cataclysmic event “destroys” the Earth and Doug is transported to the other side of the galaxy together with his adorable guinea pig friend Boom Boom. From there, their adventure begins, and the duo journey through various planets, each with their own unique aesthetic and characters, with the goal of finding out what happened to their home.
The combat system respects the classic turn-based formula and builds on it by adding new members to the party as your progress and even a “catch” mechanic where you can catch various enemies and summon them in future fights. Overall, the game offers a great balance of things to explore, characters to meet, enemies to fight and mysteries to solve and it is astonishing that it was basically done by one person.
United Label
An all-new take on the beloved RPG adventures of old, prepare for a journey like no other, skyrocketing through teeming jungles, neon-lit cities, and cybernetic casinos, with each new planet brimming with intriguing characters, fiendish adversaries, and many other surprises.
Accompanied by Doug’s pet guinea pig – the pistol-wielding Boom Boom – and a sentient robot called MartyBot, together you must defend the world against an all-powerful entity known only as ‘The End’, before it conquers the Universe itself…
No pressure.
A Bold New Take on the Classic Sci-Fi Caper!
Experience firsthand all the thrills and spills of a retro sci-fi adventure, in an all-new take on the fish-out-of-water tale that sticks you right in the centre of the action! Laughter, loss, peril and friendship, Beyond Galaxyland has it all and then some, dipped in a dazzling layer of neon-tastic pixels.
Explore a Solar System of Extraordinary Worlds
From the blizzard-swept planes of Arcos to the tropical jungle ravines of Erros, the neon-buzzing cities of Neo to the arid sand dunes of Xalm, explore a cosmic cluster of unique worlds, each with its own quests, environmental puzzles, and out-of-this-world characters.
Overcome Cosmic Foes in Tactical Turn-Based Combat
Engage in strategic turn-based battles against a vast range of galactic nemeses, with time-responsive defensive gameplay to minimise damage. Each party member has a range of unique abilities at their disposal, but for an additional tactical advantage, sneakily scan your enemy pre-battle to discover their strengths and weaknesses.
Experience Epic Boss Battles
Each planet boasts its own distinct perils, but none more so than the epic bosses you’ll encounter throughout your extraterrestrial travels, including colossal space dragons, flesh eating flowers, and the all-knowing bionic behemoth that is Mother Brain.
Capture Enemies to Use in Battle
Successfully capture the many weird and wonderful creatures you encounter, to later unleash them in battle, with each possessing a number of exclusive abilities. Will you acquire every last one?
Set in the same universe as the 1997 cult classic film, Starship Troopers: Extermination is a co-op first-person shooter with some twists to set it apart from the rest of the genre. You’ll join the Deep Space Vanguard, an elite Special Forces branch of the Mobile Infantry, as you battle against the Bug menace in an effort to claim victory for humanity.
Each match features 16 players joining forces to build a base, all while fending off wave after wave of skittering enemies. One innovative feature the game sports is that enemy corpses pile up on the battlefield, obstructing your line of sight while giving the next wave of enemies something to help them scale your base’s walls. Starship Troopers: Extermination is a refreshing blast of emergent gameplay, so there’s only one more question: Are you doing your part?
Knights Peak
Welcome to Starship Troopers: Extermination, a 16-player online co-op first-person shooter set in the cult classic Starship Troopers universe.
A GALAXY AT WAR
Your mission: scour expansive planets and warzones while battling relentless hordes of Bugs. With hundreds of Arachnids and carapaces swarming your screen at a time, you Troopers are the only ones holding back the tide in this immense planetary struggle!
DO YOUR PART
Take orders from the legendary General Johnny Rico (voiced by Casper Van Dien) in an all-new single-player mode. Squad up for the full 16-player co-op experience and fight together to crush Bug incursions across the galaxy. The battlefield expands in the Galactic Front, where you can join a Company, push for collective goals and special rewards, and influence the ongoing story.
WELCOME TO THE NEW VANGUARD
Choose from six classes to suit your playstyle and support your squad. Attack with the Ranger, squash Bugs at range with the Sniper, deal devastation with the Demolisher, cover your team with the Guardian, fortify positions with the Engineer, and save lives with the Medic. Progress with each class to unlock new weapons, equipment, perks, and customization options. Do your part AND look the part!
THE ONLY GOOD BUG…
Increasing threat levels beckon bigger, more dangerous Bugs… so you’re going to need to hunker down to stand a chance. Retake and rebuild bases, and construct refineries, towers, machine-gun turrets, and more to wrest control of planets away from the Bug menace. Get your defenses ready, then aim for the weak spots on Drones, Warriors, Gunners, Plasma Grenadiers, Tanker Bugs, and many more ugly varieties of Arachnid bastards!
The post Indie Selects for October: Game Developers Bringing the Treats appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Amazon’s giving us quite a treat to cap off spooky season: the Resident Evil 4 remake for PS5 has dropped to just $20 at the retailer. According to price tracker camelcamelcamel this is its lowest price ever, making it an excellent time to jump on this deal. And considering we hailed this game a ‘Masterpiece’ in our 10/10 review, why not add it to your collection right now?
Writer Tristan Ogilvie said in his Resident Evil 4 remake review that the game’s “combat is friction-free but no less stress-inducing thanks to its ferocious cast of creatures, its story rapidly shuttles through a series of action scenes that are diverse in structure but uniformly unwavering in intensity, and its world is rich in detail and full of fun and often snarling surprises.” He called it “the most relentlessly exciting Resident Evil adventure of all time that’s been rebuilt, refined, and realised to the full limits of its enormous potential.”
There are plenty more game deals to check out right now, too. We have individual roundups for the best PlayStation deals, the best Xbox deals, and the best Nintendo Switch deals that highlight the latest and greatest offers available for each console. We also have an overall roundup of the best video game deals that features our favorite offers from each.
And with Black Friday and Cyber Monday on the horizon, there are sure to be even more gaming discounts popping up over the next few weeks. Some retailers have already shared information on when their sales officially kick off in November, like Walmart, and they’re earlier than you’d expect. Other retailers are sure to drop more information soon, so you won’t have to wait too long to get into some good deals in November.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.
Inflexion Games are closing their UK office, laying off staff and restructuring their main Canadian studio after failing to find commercial success with their Victorian fantasy survival game Nightingale. Reportedly, at least 22 people have been let go.
Microsoft shut down Redfall and Prey developer Arkane Austin in a sudden, devastating move earlier this year, and the studio founder has now called the move “stupid” and “not a good decision.”
In an interview with PC Gamer, Arkane Studios founder and current head of WolfEye Studios Raphaël Colantonio was asked about the move. Colantonio, who left Arkane in 2017 to found WolfEye, had some thoughts to share:
“I think if you look a little bit, it’s obvious that Arkane Austin was a very special group of people that have made some cool things and that could pull it off again,” he said “I think it was a decision that just came down to, ‘We need to cut something.’ Was it to please the investors, the stock market? They’re playing a different game.”
PC Gamer asked Colantonio if he knew why Microsoft had made the decision to shutter the Austin studio. Colantonio didn’t claim to know — he’s been gone from the company since well before Microsoft acquired it, after all. The most logical theory, people have speculated, is due to the struggles of Arkane Austin-developed Redfall, but Colantonio didn’t float that in the interview.
“The rules that they play, we might not understand them. It’s a different thing. It’s hard to know why they did what they did…The only thing that I stand by is saying that the specific choice of killing Arkane Austin, that was not a good decision.”
The interview continued with Colantonio expressing that recreating a similar team to Arkane Austin would be “impossible” or, at best, would “take forever.” “When you have that magic of Harvey [Smith] and Ricardo [Bare] etc that all come together, it’s a specific moment in time and space that just worked out this way, that took forever to reach. Those people together can really make magic. It’s not like, ‘Doesn’t matter, we’ll just rehire.’ No, try it. That’s what big groups do all the time. They try to just hire massively and overpay people to create those magic groups. It doesn’t work like this. So to me, that was stupid. But what do I know?”
Arkane Austin was closed alongside Tango Gameworks and Alpha Dog Games. Arkane Lyon remained intact, and Tango Gameworks was acquired a few months later by Krafton. In a letter to staff at the time, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty said the cuts were due to a “reprioritization of titles and resources” at the company. Microsoft had previously announced plans to cull 1,900 staff from its gaming workforce. The company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, received a $30 million pay raise last year.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Ironically, no trading allowed.
Digital card games like Marvel Snap have seen a lot of success in recent years with short, satisfying matches that you can finish in a few minutes. The mobile release of Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket almost seems like a direct answer to this trend. From uncomplicated card text to simplified rules, it axes much of the complexity of the original Pokémon TCG while still wrapping it up in an addictive collection loop that looks to have players checking their phones daily and maybe even spending real-world money on microtransactions to get more cards.
After spending a little too much time opening booster packs and battling friends and randoms, we can say TCG Pocket is as predatory as a Pidgeot stalking a Caterpie and more mesmerising than a Swoobat using Attract. On the collection side of things, at least.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The post S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: How GSC Game World Battled Real-Life Danger appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Baldur’s Gate 3 players have downloaded more than 50 million mods in less than two months, including 10,000 that renamed Withers “Bone Daddy.”
Developer Larian Studios shared the milestone in an X/Twitter post, saying the feat had been achieved in the time since official modding support arrived via Patch 7 on September 5. This means traditional mods created outside of the Patch 7 modding tool aren’t counted in the 50 million figure, so the actual number will be much, much higher.
“Together, you’ve downloaded more than 50 million mods since Patch 7 introduced modding support,” Larian said. “Apparently 10,000 of those downloads were you renaming Withers to Bone Daddy. So, uh, glad we could facilitate that.”
Modding the beloved Dungeons & Dragons based role-playing game appears to be snowballing in popularity, as only 15 million had been downloaded by October 1. More than double that amount has since been downloaded in basically the same amount of time.
Mods released so far include one that adds real-time combat to the otherwise turn-based RPG and another that brought entire new maps to Faerûn, including the highly requested Avernus.
Patch 7 otherwise added official content including an “absolutely metal” ending for Karlach and a hidden evil ending. Players will also be relieved to hear that it’s not the final major Baldur’s Gate 3 patch after all.
In our 10/10 review of Baldur’s Gate 3, IGN said: “With crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the new high-water mark for CRPGs.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Stationeers and Icarus developers RocketWerkz are making a spiritual successor to beloved space sim Kerbal Space Program, which is currently titled “Kitten Space Agency” in a flagrant display of adherence to wholesome internet trends. It’s based on an actual Kerbal Space Program 2 pitch the studio threw at Take-Two subsidiary Private Division back in the day. RocketWerkz CEO and original DayZ creator Dean Hall has hired several former KSP and KSP2 developers to work on the game, and is describing it on social media as a “KSP killer”.
Sony has revealed the global release times for Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered across PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
A PlayStation Blog post outlined Sony’s launch plans for the somewhat controversial remaster of Horizon: Zero Dawn, which arrives later today, October 31, for $49.99.
Those looking to play the game on PS5 have an easy answer: Horizon Zero Dawn: Remastered launches at midnight local time, meaning it’s already available on console. But PC is a different story, with different launch times around the world.
The remastered version of Horizon: Zero Dawn has 10 hours of re-recorded dialogue and visual enhancements. The original earned a 9/10 in IGN’s review, in which we said: “Horizon Zero Dawn presents us with a beautiful world full of unforgettable challenges.”
Sony doubled the price of PlayStation 4 version following the reveal of Horizon: Zero Dawn’s PS5 remaster, as it jumped from $19.99 to $39.99. The game was at the previous price point for years as part of the PlayStation Hits collection, and other entries such as God of War and The Last of Us Remastered have remained at the typical $19.99 price.
This came after Sony pulled Horizon: Zero Dawn from the PlayStation Plus Extra Games Catalog in May, meaning it’s gone from free for subscribers to $19.99 and now $39.99 in the last four months, or $49.99 for those wanting the best version.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
