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In ‘Yeahhh, probably should have had that already’ news, the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED are getting a new low-power mode that will let the handheld PCs continue any active downloads with the display switched off. It’s part of a SteamOS update that’s available right now on the Beta and Preview channels, at last closing a longstanding feature gap that’s had us all downloading games to our Decks with the screens chewing up precious battery life. Like savages.
How to describe Sorath’s Hyper Demon, other than by labelling it an arena score-attacking FPS from the developer of Devil Daggers? Well, imagine you’re a caveman, the descendant of a forgotten tribe miraculously preserved in the remote wilds. You accidentally eat some fermented berries one day and stumble upon a billionaire’s wilderness Halloween fancy dress party.
Delirious and appalled by the teeming lights and faces, you trip and wedge your head inside the giant, Cirque-du-Soleil-supplied crystal ball the guests are using to predict each other’s net worth fluctuations over the next year. Then you’re chased into the middle of a firework show by flunkeys dressed as vintage heavy metal album covers, while the jet setters throw jewelry and bioluminescent canapes. There you go, this is approximately the experience of playing Hyper Demon. If you don’t believe me, there’s now a free 1v1 multiplayer version of the game on Steam.
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay,” Austrian journalist and Marxist Ernst Fischer wrote in The Necessity of Art. “And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” I can’t help but feel he’d very much appreciate Wreckfest 2‘s fourth early access update, which has added in a tool you can use to brush detailed rust, dirt, and dents onto the canvas of your old banger. Said tool has been given a suitably glorious name: CRAP-IT.
Ten hours into Arc Raiders, I felt betrayal’s sharp sting for the first time.
The round began with generosity. I met a fellow raider who had dropped me a rare shotgun as well as a damaged heat sink to upgrade my workbench. They asked nothing in return. It was one of many friendly encounters I’ve had roaming the surface of Arc Raiders’ hostile maps, but I also felt my heart rate rise: when you die you lose everything you’re carrying, so I knew I had to reach an extraction point quickly and quietly.
On the way, I met another player. We exchanged “don’t shoot” emotes followed by our actual voices on proximity chat, agreeing to cover each other until the exit. I even dropped him some bandages.
Fool.
The servers of shooter Arc Raiders had a bit of a “wobble” on Sunday, as many would-be raiders of the arc queued up to get in. Developers Embark have now decided to offer those affected by the outage some free in-game as a make good for said server swoonage.
The wobble came on November 2nd, as the game was hovering around the 300 to 330k concurrent player mark. It’s left a brief, but unmistakeable dip in the SteamDB graph. Think one of those heart machines having a quick blip before regular beats resume.
Pillars of Eternity‘s much-anticipated turn-based mode debuts in PC open beta form on November 5th, with Obsidian seeking more input on their very nice tenth anniversary gift before rolling out a final version. That’s not to say the devs haven’t already been working to ensure “very reasonable criticisms” of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire‘s own turn-based mode, though, as outlined by director Josh Sawyer in the beta’s announcement video.
Unfortunately, we are here yet again with another games studio that will seemingly be closing its doors for good. A couple of years ago, Greg Street, known for his work on World of Warcraft and League of Legends, set up Fantastic Pixel Castle. There, it was announced at the time, he would lead development on an MMO codenamed Ghost, with NetEase serving as publisher. Except in a LinkedIn post earlier today, Street shared that Fantastic Pixel Castle will be shutting down.
Friendslop games may come and go, but the (for all intents and purposes) progenitor of them all, Lethal Company is still the one I think of most. It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s otherworldly, literally, there’s so much mystery to it that you just want to spend time in its world. But while it will likely go down as solo dev Zeekerss’ most notable work, he did just release a brand new horror game 10 years in the making. And in a recent interview, he spoke of how he got his start in horror, and the roots that make up his latest work.
The Stop Killing Games campaign‘s petition to the UK government urging action against publishers rendering online games unplayable when servers are switched off has been debated in parliament.
The petition, which amassed just under 190,000 signatures prior to its closure in July, received a response from the UK government back in February, when it hit 10,000. “There are no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games,” this reply read. “Those selling games must comply with existing requirements in consumer law and we will continue to monitor this issue.” As is the process, once it hit 100,000 signatures, it was eligible to be debated by parliament’s petitions committee.
Last month, Heart Machine announced that they would be ending development on their roguelike follow-up to the seminal indie RPG Hyper Light Drifter, Hyper Light Breaker. As a result, as is far too common in the industry these days, a number of staff were laid off – including a writer on the yet-to-be released Possessor(s). As a result, a post cropped up on the Possessor(s)’s discussions page on Steam with some expressing discomfort at the idea of buying the game post-layoffs, prompting the game’s narrative director to explain why he (understandably) would still like it if you bought it.
