I drop the house into the great maw (not that one). It screams as it falls away from the clutches of my mouse clicker. It disappears from view, but there’s a sickeningly wet crunching that betrays its fate. Oh and the fact that the entity’s jaws immediately flare open once more, teeth and tongue dripping with anguish to cram vegetation, trees, towerblocks into its gullet.
This is In Full Bloom, a game that scores the full 10/10 in the wonderfully ironic naming category. Set in a greyscale universe sucked free of all hope and colour, it tasks you with accomplishing an impossible task. You’ve got to keep the infernal child of constant consumption happy by tossing an unending stream of junk into its mouth.
Open-world action RPG The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin released a new trailer as part of gamescom’s Opening Night Live on Tuesday and also announced that sign-ups are open now for an upcoming closed beta test.
Presented by Netmarble, The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin tells an original story set in Britannia, the same world as the globally popular The Seven Deadly Sins anime and manga series. The art style is also inspired by those series, and the game’s multiverse narrative will transcend timelines and dimensions to combine brand-new characters with established heroes from throughout the series.
The latest trailer continues a trend of releasing new footage at major game shows this year. Two new trailers released back-to-back at Summer Game Fest and the Future Games Show in June, and now the gamescom trailer (which you can watch above) shows some brand-new footage and gives us a look at combat and exploration. The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin is also scheduled to be showcased at Tokyo Game Show in September, and its presence at all these major game shows is steadily building momentum and anticipation of a release later this year.
Narrated by the Japanese voice actor of Meliodas, one of the series’ lead characters, the new trailer begins by giving us a glimpse of its vast open world from atop a cliff. We then see a series of short clips of characters that fans of the series will recognize before transitioning to exploration of the world.
There’s fishing and then the main character Tristan inserts blocks into a small monument and is rewarded with the appearance of a treasure chest. So it seems like the open world will have scattered environmental puzzles to solve and earn rewards.
After that, there’s a look at traversal methods. A character jumps onto a spinning flower and rides its updraft of wind into the air before summoning a flying mount, and then we see the full party exploring a desert region on the backs of other flying mounts. So you won’t have to hoof it across Britannia all the time; that’s a relief.
The rest of the trailer is essentially a supercut of several different characters in flashy, fast-paced combat against some wild-looking enemies. The combat showcase includes switching between characters to combo their attacks together, along with multiple different elements being used — lightning, fire, and ice all make an appearance. The trailer ends with 10 characters running toward the horizon together, giving us a taste of the large cast that will be available.
Alongside the trailer, Netmarble announced that they’re now accepting sign-ups for an upcoming closed beta test that will give fans a preview of gameplay mechanics, character interactions, and environments.
You can sign up on the game’s official website, and everyone is eligible. There are no location-based restrictions. All you need to do is submit your email address and fill out a short survey. Additional details about the closed beta test will be revealed at a later date.
The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin is scheduled to release simultaneously worldwide later this year on PlayStation 5, Steam, and mobile. You can add it to your wishlist on Steam or the PlayStation Store now and get the latest news and updates as soon as they’re available to keep you informed about the game’s progress.
You can pre-register for the game using your email by visiting the official website, where you can also find more details about the game’s world, characters, and story. Mobile pre-registration on the App Store and Google Play will be available later. If you’d like to join the game’s community, you can follow the official Twitter, Discord, YouTube, and Facebook pages.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2‘s forthcoming Legacy of the Forge expansion introduces a new home customisation system, as part of a story about restoring a legendary burnt-down blacksmith’s joint where your dad once worked as an apprentice.
Out September 9th, the expansion takes Henry of Skalitz back to Kuttenberg to climb the ranks of the blacksmith guild, with unique armour and weapon blueprints. Expect “quirky” requests from clients, but above all, expect a nagging sense of failure, because the aforesaid customisation system “supports over 136 million combinations”, and always, always at the back of your mind, the creeping suspicion that yours is the very worst.
“I do hope that players will look forward to hopefully good news”.
The hugely-popular MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV — which is about to celebrate its 12th anniversary (in its rebooted form) — is one of our most-requested Switch 2 ports, particularly from this writer. And it sounds like we’re one step closer to seeing the game come to the hybrid console.
The game’s director Naoki Yoshida — better known as Yoshi-P — has spoken to VGC at Gamescom and confirmed that he and the team have been having “positive discussions” with Nintendo on the possibility of a port. Not only that, but he also wants to bring his other mainline Final Fantasy to the console, Final Fantasy XVI.
There’s a primal human pleasure in simply finding out what something does. It’s the reason you’d still want to push a button that says “do not touch”, or wonder what’s behind a locked door. Keeper thrives on that idea, building out a game of discoveries and experiments around it.
Seeing extended gameplay for the first time at gamescom, Keeper’s key trick – of telling its story in a never-before-seen world, all without words – means that almost everything you do is less about completing an objective you’re told to follow, and more about finding out what the objective is.
Shine Your Light
First revealed at Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year, Keeper is a dreamy, otherworldly adventure that puts you in the misshapen body of a suddenly sentient walking lighthouse – but there’s no narrator, nor talking sidekick to explain where you are, what’s going on, and what you should be doing. Working these things out is the game.
“A key tenet of this game is the unexpected,” Creative Director Lee Petty tells me. “We wanted players to be able to relax a bit, chill out a bit, and embrace the unexpected. So to that end, there’s some experimentation, but there’s nothing the player can do to die in this game. They can’t mess up the experience. We sort of get the player on board early so that, when something unexpected is thrown at them, it’s not a moment of panic that they don’t know how to get through.”
In three portions taken from early sections, I see how Keeper slowly introduces new ideas in subtle ways. With only the ability to walk, shine a beacon, and the help of a bird companion called Twig, the player needs to work out what they should be doing through context clues.
“The lighthouse beam has two main modes,” explains Petty. “It has an unfocused and a focused mode. The unfocused mode is for exploring – as you shine it around, you might see little subtle shimmers or reactions in the world. Bigger transformations occur when the player focuses that bigger, brighter beam on things, and that’s often used to solve puzzles as well.
“Twig rides along on the lighthouse and can do things that the lighthouse can’t. The lighthouse doesn’t have arms, only legs. Twig however, can directly manipulate things in the world. So what the player can do, for example, to solve a puzzle is use a combination of that light ability and Twig’s ability to pick up and collect things.”
I see this early on, as the lighthouse comes across a lumpen… thing blocking its path. Under the unfocused beam, the creature bristles slightly, enough to show you that it’s reacting – and, focusing the beam, it puts a claw in front of its eyes. This produces a shimmer, which attracts Twig, who flies to grab the claw, and an option to “tug” appears on the screen. Twig pulls at the creature, who flops to one side, revealing a seed that Twig stows away for a future puzzle.
It’s a sequence of purely organic discovery – the game doesn’t tell you what you need to be doing, and the weirdness of it all means you don’t come in with a preconceived idea of what you should be doing, other than trying things out. And this is repeated throughout. I see the lighthouse effectively organising a dance of creatures attracted to its light to smash through a sheet of ice, a gorgeous discovery that touching a certain spore-like plant will allow the lighthouse to subvert gravity itself, and even a wild sequence in which it becomes apparent that the beam can control the flow of time on objects it touches in a certain area.
The real ace in the hole here is that Keeper’s world is unlike any other – its bucolic landscapes inhabited by scuttling, alien-like creatures, trees with faces, and flora with unusual effects. It means that, even once you do work out where to go, or what to look at, the effects of your interaction remain a surprise. Crucially, Double Fine never want that feeling to go away:
“We wanted the entire game to have this sort of organic, almost handmade, bespoke feel,” Petty adds. “It’s not a game of repeating actions as much as a game of wandering among unique areas and set pieces that change.”
In just 15 minutes of gameplay, I see – by my count – 11 different puzzles (not to mention smaller interactions as you prod and poke at the world around you). It’s clear that the aim here is to keep surprising the player with what they realize they’re being asked to do. Not all of this is ‘mission-critical’, either – the more you explore, the more you’ll find:
“There’s a lot of stuff for the player to discover along the experience,” adds Petty. “Some of those come in the form of environmental storytelling, some of those things are in the form of hidden interactions with the various creatures, and a lot of it is also just about the players’ interpretation of the games events, and finding meaning in the experience.”
Crucially, though, this is all done with the same small pool of button presses. It might have been complex for the developers to find so many ways to play with these toys, but they didn’t want the player to be bogged down by an unwieldy control scheme:
“We wanted Keeper to be an experience that wasn’t especially difficult to play,” says Petty. “It’s not a game about control, mastery or incredibly hard challenges, because we wanted this sort of unique, weird-but-chill experience for players to go on. We don’t have a need for all those buttons on the controller.
“And we also just have a really big set of accessibility features where people can map the controls to what they want. If they prefer to play with keyboard and mouse, or they play on a controller, we support both of them.”
For a game this overtly strange, it’s a way of easing you in – in all ways, Keeper has been designed as a welcoming experience, not an alienating one. You’re discovering this world, not being repelled by it – and it seems there’s a great deal to discover. What I’ve seen is from its earliest stages, and a literal cliffhanger at the end of the demo – in which the lighthouse tumbles into an abyss caused by a bridge, well, ceasing to exist under its feet – promises that there are far more surprises to come.
Keeper arrives for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, and Steam on October 17, priced at $29.99 USD. It will be an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and available day one with Game Pass.
From Lee Petty and Double Fine Productions, Keeper is a beautiful and surreal otherworldly adventure, and a story told without words.
On an island in a long-lost sea, a forgotten lighthouse stands dormant in the shadow of a distant mountain peak. As withering tendrils spread and coalesce, it awakens. Taken with a mysterious sense of purpose and joined by a spirited seabird, it embarks upon a heartening tale of unlikely companionship, an odyssey of mystifying metamorphosis, and an unexpected journey towards the center of the island, into realms beyond understanding.
Rev your engines, racers, there’s new Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds news that just dropped at Gamescom. Over the past few days, Sonic has dominated the newsfeeds with not one, but two trailer drops, featuring huge reveals.
The first was a crossover no one saw coming – two iconic retro gaming heroes coming together in a universe-shattering collaboration: Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man playable in each other’s upcoming games. Sonic joins Pac-Man in Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac for an explosive birthday celebration, featuring Sonic-inspired levels, costumes, and more.
Then, Pac-Man and Team Ghost put their racing skills to the test in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds as part of the growing roster of guest characters included in the Season Pass. Players can venture through Pac-Village, eat up Pac-Dots, & escape the iconic Maze in the Pac-Man Mobile.
The all-new Competition Trailer showcased even more Sonic Racing action and detailed the various game modes players can look forward to experiencing once the game is released. In Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, there are tons of ways to compete:
Grand Prix – Compete solo or with friends in local splitscreen co-op for first place in one of 7 cups (comprised of 4 races each). Racers are awarded points based on their placements at the end of races, and the racer with the most points at the end wins.
World Match – Test your skills and compete online against 11 other players. Earn Rank Points, increase your World Rank, and aim for the top.
Friend Match – Play with up to 11 other players online in custom lobbies where you can control all aspects of a race such as Speed, Team Size, Course/CrossWorlds, AI Difficulty, Frenzy Gates, Items, and Rule Sets.
Race Park – Change up the rules and teams online and offline in this party mode that features six unique race formats.
Time Trial – Compete for the best time on individual courses and aim for the top of the Leaderboard Rankings.
Custom Match – Play with up to 4 players offline split-screen where you can control all aspects of a race such as Speed, Team Size, Courses/CrossWorlds, AI Difficulty, Frenzy Gates, Items, and Rule Sets.
Eagle-eyed fans will also notice that the trailer revealed a few new tracks based on Sonic’s most recent adventures. Kronos Island from Sonic Frontiers makes its debut, featuring iconic ancient architecture strewn across the open fields. Northstar Island from Sonic Superstars arrives colorfully on the scene, with many nods to stage obstacles, local fauna, and even a… giant mechanical dinosaur whale? And Shadow fans, rejoice. The White Space from Shadow Generations has been recreated in glorious detail, down to the Doom’s Eye looming menacingly overhead.
On the racetrack, there’s no shortage of competitive trash talk. Just as Sonic, Shadow, Espio and Jet are shown jockeying for first place and taking their rivalries to the next level, players can look forward to over a thousand voice lines and interactions between their favorite Sonic characters. Ever wonder what a race between Amy and Big the Cat would sound like? You may find out.
On top of all that, it was announced that fans can get their hands on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds a little sooner than expected during the Open Network Test. This free, limited-time event will take place from August 29 to September 1. Players on PS5 will be able to race online with 12 iconic Sonic characters, compete on 16 courses (9 main courses & 7 CrossWorlds), and mix and match 42 gadgets to create the ultimate racing machine. Put your driving skills to the test against players worldwide. There might even be a couple of surprises in store…
Come Race on our level when Sonic Racing CrossWorlds zooms onto PS5 and PS4 on September 25!
The thunder of bolters repelling an Ork incursion and the distinctive red and white ceramite armor of the Blood Ravens bring me right back to the moment the trailer for the original Dawn of War made me an instant Warhammer 40K fan more than 20 years ago. And it’s that first game in the series that serves as the jumping off point for the upcoming Dawn of War 4. A lot has changed, but a lot remains the same, bringing bigger battles and snazzier graphics to a classic take-and-hold RTS that is equal parts spectacle and tactics. I played through the 1-2 hour demo a few times and it felt like Dark Crusade never left.
The last we heard of this franchise was in 2018 when Relic ended support for the divisive Dawn of War 3, and this next chapter is deploying under different masters. King Art Games, the developer of the alt-history dieselpunk RTS Iron Harvest, has taken up the banner, and I can definitely see a throughline between the big, stompy robots in that game and the classic dreadnoughts and titans in this one. King Art has also elevated the cinematic carnage by adding a synced animation melee system that can simulate a scrape between any two of its many dozens of units.
Like the recent editions of the tabletop game on which it’s based, Dawn of War 4 has jumped 200 years deeper into the 41st Millennium, after the Eye of Terror opened and split the Imperium of Man apart. The Blood Ravens are a scattered and beleaguered chapter trying to put themselves back together, serving as one of the four… and a half playable factions. Their roster reflects the newest Space Marines codex, with Primaris Intercessors and Bladeguard Veterans leading the charge. Older, tracked mainstays like the Rhino and Predator have been swapped for the higher-tech repulsor vehicles. But some classic favorites like the Dreadnought and Terminators have stuck around.
Dawn of War 4 has jumped 200 years deeper into the 41st Millennium, after the Eye of Terror opened and split the Imperium of Man apart.
Space Marines focus on small, elite squads that are expensive to build and reinforce, but outshine most of their opponents pound-for-pound. Their buildings are large and expensive, with defensive structures being fully automated rather than manned. In fact, they barely pay attention to cover at all, which was an adjustment from having replayed Dawn of War 2 fairly recently. They do have a lot of tactical flexibility though, with most infantry squads being trained into a pool of strategic reserves that can be deployed by drop pod to anywhere you have vision. The drop pods are even armed, and will stay on the map as a light defensive turret until destroyed.
ENEMIES OF THE IMPERIUM
The other ubiquitous Dawn of War race from that very first trailer, the Orks, are the second faction, and the primary enemies in the demo I played. They have much more of a horde style of combat, though with a few units like the Meganobz in their petroleum-fueled power armor that can go toe-to-toe with a space marine. Their buildings are cheap, and all of them have some kind of little guy with a machine gun on them, so vomiting production structures across the map is also how you create defensive positions. The animations are especially thematic and entertaining, as it really looks like a giant heap of scrap that was chucked unceremoniously through the atmosphere.
The Orks also, of course, get a WAAAGH! mechanic that lets them earn powerful deployable stratagems for causing all sorts of havoc.
Just as I was coming to grips with the Orks, though, one of my control points was taken by surprise by the other hostile race, the terminator-like Necrons. Hinted at in the epilogue of Dawn of War 3 but never fully materializing, they make a dramatic return with the monolith super unit that can warp in new squads to its location. For balance reasons, Necrons can’t simply get right back up when killed like they can in the tabletop game. But they do get a special building called the Resurrection Chamber that can respawn a certain number of destroyed squads for free.
They play the most differently from the other factions in that they aren’t especially concerned with the requisition and power capture points dotted around the map. Rather, their economy relies on spreading their matrix – like an eerie, cybernetic form of zerg creep from Starcraft – that grants bonuses to their units when fighting on it and provides them with resources the more of the map is covered in it.
STALWART ALLIES
Having barely fought off the Necron incursion and getting pushed back hard by the Orks due to my divided attention, who would arrive at the crucial moment to join the Blood Ravens in turning the tide of battle? Would you believe it’s a faction completely new to the Dawn of War series? The final of the four fully-playable multiplayer factions is the Adeptus Mechanicus, with their swarms of cyborg servitors and impressive, well-kept war machines.
The AdMech have a unique ability to see enemy contacts as blobs of color relative to their size and power on the minimap, even in the fog of war, so it’s almost impossible to surprise them. Their buildings are also networked, providing them with powerful boosts to production for being in range of a network node, which can make them vulnerable to surgical strikes severing the connection. Their super unit is the titanic Imperial Knight, which really shows off Dawn of War 4’s scale next to the puny units it’s stomping over.
The Imperial Guard were present on the mission I played as AI-controlled allies, although with a limited roster of units. They will also be playable in the tutorial mission of the campaign, but not in multiplayer. Not yet, at least.
I did say four and a half factions, though. The Imperial Guard were present on the mission I played as AI-controlled allies, although with a limited roster of units. They will also be playable in the tutorial mission of the campaign, but not in multiplayer. Not yet, at least.
The other four factions will each have their own campaigns with branching story paths, taking us back to the planet Kronus from the Dawn of War: Dark Crusade expansion. The story features more than 40 minutes of CGI cutscenes across all factions, and was written by prolific Black Library author John French, author of the recent Ahriman novels among others.
Dawn of War 4 will also bring back the popular Last Stand mode from Dawn of War 2, though in a way that was described to me as less hero-centric and “less MOBA-like,” focusing more on the classic RTS mechanics like Dawn of War 1. Co-op is also on the slate, and there was a conspicuously greyed-out “Painter” option on the main menu. The devs weren’t ready to talk about this one yet, but told me their goal was to include everything the previous Dawn of War games had in terms of customization and then add a bit more.
I certainly wasn’t expecting a new Dawn of War any time soon, much less from a studio other than Relic. But from the bit of it I’ve played, it seems like King Art Games understands the assignment. As a Dawn of War 2 fan, I miss the emphasis on cover and move-and-fire tactics. But Dawn of War 4 has nevertheless made a big first impression. I can hardly wait to get dug in next year.
This week, dozens of Microsoft employees occupied the company’s east campus in Redmond, Washington in protest against the use of Azure and generative AI technologies by the Israeli military, during their on-going assault on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Developer Positive Concept Games and game management platform indie.io announced at gamescom Wednesday that 16-bit action RPG Shrine’s Legacy will release October 7 on Steam.
If you’re not already familiar with Shrine’s Legacy, it’s inspired by classic RPGs of the SNES era and blends that retro look with more modern real-time combat and puzzle solving. The story takes place in a land called Ardemia, a magical world threatened by a returning evil. It can only be saved by uniting the Sword of the Shrine and the eight elements of magic scattered across the world.
You play as two young heroes, Rio and Reima. Rio is heir to the Sword and a descendant of the last hero to banish the ancient evil, while Reima is a mage who’s been desperately seeking the Sword. The two are brought together by the rise of this evil and will go on a journey to find the eight elements before it’s too late.
That journey will take you across an expansive world full of dungeons to explore, puzzles to solve, and secrets to discover. Investigate its nooks and crannies to find crafting materials and magical jewels, and face down treasure-guarding bosses to earn stat-increasing items and learn powerful spells.
This is a character-focused tale, one that will force its two heroes to deal with pain, tragedy, and loss. Vanquishing an ancient evil isn’t possible without sacrifice, and we won’t go into spoilers here, but you’ll find out just how much Rio and Reima are willing to lose to successfully complete their quest.
You can play all of Shrine’s Legacy either solo or in two-player co-op. As you could probably guess from their descriptions, Rio is a melee fighter and Reima is a ranged magic user. If you play solo, you can swap between them at any time, with AI controlling whichever character you’re not actively playing. For co-op, you can go the old-fashioned way and play with a friend on the couch or pair up online via Steam Remote Play Together or Parsec. Either way, there’s full controller support and customizable keyboard controls.
If you want to try Shrine’s Legacy for yourself, there’s a free demo available on Steam now. It contains about two hours of the game’s story, including two dungeons, two towns, and multiple bosses. Just like the full game, the demo can also be played solo or in co-op. If you want to stay up to date with the latest news and previews, you can also follow the game and developer on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
You’ve read the title, you’ve seen photos of the booths online, so you know it’s coming — six years after its last official public demo, we’ve finally played Hollow Knight: Silksong. And, we’ve played it on Switch 2, too.
Ahead of the game’s special broadcast tomorrow, 21st August, we — or, more specifically, the lovely Felix — has spent some hands-on time with the highly-anticipated sequel to Hollow Knight.
