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Blackout explores for items and tools through a house filled with corpses and unsettling creatures, but maybe things aren’t quite what they seem to be. Marilyn is a witch who finds herself...
The post ‘Blackout’ Follows a Teenage Witch Through a Creepy (Maybe?) House appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
Moonstone Island is a slice of life adventure game where you can fly to dozens of islands to gather local oddball creatures, grow gardens, and romance the locals. Moonstone Island is a...
The post ‘Moonstone Island’ is a Creature-Collecting Life Sim appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
From the moment you step into the colorful, enchanting world of Towerborne, it’s clear to see that having fun is the name of the game here. The approachability of the brawler-inspired combat system, the light-hearted dialogue between characters situated in the Belfry – Towerborne invites you to pick up a controller and revel in the world, regardless of how much time or experience you have., regardless of how much time or experience you have.
The better news is that there’s not too long to wait. Towerborne starts in Steam Early Access on September 10. For the furrowed-browed among you, don’t fret; Towerborne will have a phased release starting with Steam Early Access, Xbox Game Preview following, and a full free-to-play launch planned for 2025. Towerborne will also include cross-progression, so your progress will carry over to whichever platform you prefer to play on. Stoic is eager to have players help shape the future of Towerborne by becoming Founders through purchase of either the Silver or Gold Towerborne Founder’s Pack, offering early access to the game and exclusive perks like cosmetics, emotes, and monthly bonuses.
Stoic, known primarily as the maker of Banner Saga, is also more than ready for a change – Towerborne is a seismic and very welcome pivot from its flagship series, which Game Director Daniel McLaren jovially refers to as a “depression simulator.”
“There was some emotional exhaustion at the end of the last Banner Saga game,” McLaren says. “When you write and build something like that for so many years, there’s a huge weight on your shoulders. There was a very real moment where the team sat down and said: ‘I don’t think we can do another one’.”
“Wouldn’t it be great if we made a game that was completely the opposite of [Banner Saga], something fun that we can play on the couch with our friends and family?”
The vibrant, whimsical setting paired with simple but satisfying side-scrolling action makes Towerborne approachable for everyone. Towerborne is intentionally designed to be both accessible and rewarding at any skill level – while simultaneously delivering demanding challenges for those aiming to conquer the game’s toughest content. It doesn’t matter which way you play either – everybody receives the same rewards for taking part.
Banner Saga began as a Kickstarter, and that constant communication with early backers was paramount to the direction that Stoic took with the game’s development.
“Stoic’s history has always been about interacting with our players, and Kickstarter is the promise of something,” McLaren says. “For Stoic, that worked out very well, and now we’re able to say hey, you don’t have to wait for us this time, we can give you a game right now.”
With Early Access, the studio can continue that tradition of building a game with consistent input from players invested in Towerborne‘s journey from the start. As a result, Xbox, PC, and Xbox Game Pass players will immediately feel the benefit of the refinement Towerborne will undergo during the Early Access period and beyond. When Towerborne enters Xbox Game Preview, it will open the floodgates to even more players across these platforms, allowing their feedback to further shape the game’s development.
“It starts with our Founders – players who’ve self-selected to get a first pass at helping us shape the full game,” says Trisha Stouffer, CEO and President of Stoic. “After Steam Early Access, with Xbox Game Preview next and eventually Free-to-Play with the full launch, the gates are thrown so wide for anyone to come in, which makes it harder to discern what is noise versus actionable feedback. So, our goal with Early Access is to position ourselves so the game is stable and feels great to play before we open up to a wider audience.”
Xbox is also wholeheartedly supportive of Stoic’s historic approach to Early Access and working with players directly from the start.
“We all have the same goal – to create a game that people love for a long time,” says Kristofor Mellroth, Executive Producer at Xbox Games Studios Publishing. “From the start, we knew our approach with Towerborne was going to be a little different. By being very targeted at the start and building up to bigger audiences, this allows the team to continue iterating and honing the most complex systems to make them the most fun they can be.”
While Towerborne’s Early Access and Xbox Game Preview periods will grant the team precious time and feedback to build the best release possible, making the full-game free for anyone felt important to Towerborne’s overarching goal of complete approachability.
“The Founder’s pack lets us do two main things: one is that we can slowly see where problems are and get attention onto those areas quickly,” McLaren explains. “The second thing, it invites a group of people that are really invested in the game, that believe in Stoic. They want to be a part of shaping the future of Towerborne.”
The Free-To-Play approach shone brightly through Banner Saga: Factions, a free-to-play spinoff of the main series released in 2013. The idea was to allow players to come in for free and experience the combat elements of Banner Saga ahead of its launch, and Stoic was thrilled with how the process allowed as many people as possible to come in and help shape the game.
“They were helping us building our combat and just making the game better in general, everyday we’d get feedback and do updates, I must have spent three hours a day just talking to the community,” say Arnie Jorgensen, Stoic co-founder. “We really missed that aspect after going back to working on a single player game, so we’re excited to bring it back.”
It’s fair to say that the currency a lot of modern games demand is your time above all else. While Towerborne’s enticing gameplay loop and limitless progression certainly allows you to spend as much time as you want in its world, Stoic, in a refreshing fashion, is pushing back on design elements that keep a player rooted to just one game. Towerborne can be your main game, but it can also be your second game that you can just jump into whenever the mood strikes, with minimal friction.
“You don’t have to invest hundreds of hours every month to keep up with everybody else,” Jorgensen says. “Play as much as you want to, go away and play other games, and then come back. It’s important to acknowledge that everyone plays games differently. You can play for five or ten minutes and still feel like you accomplished something great, or you can play for five hours.”
Stouffer adds: “It really is the manifestation of ‘just one more mission.”
Towerborne is a living game – which means the team will continue to develop the story, add new content and build out its world for as long as they can. As you progress, the world will evolve with your character, and this approach lends itself seamlessly to crafting an expansive, immersive backdrop to the fun you’re having as a player.
“We have a freedom with an ongoing game that feels unattainable inside a single player experience,” McLaren says. “There’s this incredible worldbuilding going on, and if we want to add in new stories, new weapons or classes, we’re able to just focus solely on doing that and getting it into the game quickly.”
Getting that second perspective is also crucial when it comes to seeing what your game can do. Oftentimes, a new set of eyes can be a great asset in scoping for bugs, sparking new ideas, and making an entire team say: “why didn’t we think of that?”
“Players love to push the boundaries, and that’s part of the fun of it all,” Stouffer says. “You have an idea of what players are going to do, but you don’t truly know what will happen until you put it in people’s hands. Even the players who come in with the best intentions, they will do things where we say ‘oh, we didn’t know that could happen’. All bets are off.”
It’s not just technical feedback that Stoic wants to gather from early players either. Stoic has recognized its community’s eye for great storytelling and ideas, and considers players almost as co-developers in its journey to build Towerborne.
“We have ideas of where the story is going, but we’re totally willing to pivot if another idea comes from the community,” Jorgensen says. “We had that happen a lot with Banner Saga, where we’d see a great idea but it’s too late to add it into a single player game.”
“This is our opportunity to really build a game with the players again. We think our ideas are great and hope that players agree, but they are going to have awesome ideas too, and to me, that’s the coolest part about making Towerborne a living game.”
Stoic is cognizant of the fact that Towerborne is a big change from Banner Saga, and the studio is by no means finished with that series. However, the team made a very deliberate decision to create an exciting multiplayer experience that invites everyone to sit down and have a great time.
“Anyone that has been following Stoic for a long time knows we’re making the games that we want to make – that doesn’t mean we’re going to make the same game all the time,” Jorgensen says.
The commitment to fun is notably present throughout our conversation – the team itself is clearly enjoying building Towerborne and that enthusiasm will no doubt shine through the game.
“We know some people will need time to process the change, and that’s totally okay,” McLaren adds. “We’re still the same studio, we’re just applying that passion and focus in a different way, and recharging our creative juices.”
Towerborne begins Steam Early Access on September 10. To keep up to date with the game’s journey, check out the Towerborne website and join the official Discord community for more information about Early Access Founder’s Packs.
The post Towerborne: Why Early Access and a Focus on Fun Means a Better Game for Everyone appeared first on Xbox Wire.
At the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year, fans of 2002’s Age of Mythology came out of the woodwork in droves (us included) to express their excitement for the upcoming remake – Age of Mythology: Retold. The original game is now over 20 years old, and while it’s remained at the forefront of fans’ minds, it’s perhaps less remembered than the Age of Empires series from which it sprung.
Now, however, Retold is one of the most anticipated releases of the season – and that comes, in part, because developer World’s Edge is going beyond the expected, even for a full remake. This isn’t just the game that we all remember with a fresh coat of paint – it’s bringing brand new game modes, tweaks to classic units, and even brand-new playable factions down the road. Age of Mythology: Retold isn’t just for long-time fans, it’s an RTS for everyone.
Ahead of Gamescom, we had the chance to speak with Kristen Pirillo, Senior Game Designer at World’s Edge to uncover why the studio and its partners are poised to deliver a much-anticipated – and incredibly comprehensive – refresh of a classic that could otherwise have been destined to be remembered only by a select few.
While Age of Mythology has been left alone for over two decades, Pirillo shares that there’s a smaller, but deeply passionate community of players still actively invested in the game: “This interest sets Age of Mythology apart from a lot of other games. It may be the least talked about, but it also has the highest brainworm potential.
“The Age of Mythology crowd is just particularly passionate and incredibly inventive – it was just a matter of waiting for the right time, and using all of the learnings from other Age titles.”
Age of Mythology: Retold, at its heart, aims to be the game that these fans have been asking for – a faithful recreation of the original, with all the quality-of-life changes that modern development can offer. Retold called for an ambitious vision – the team really wanted to lean into the larger-than-life elements of huge mythological armies, monsters, and bombastic God Powers in a way that were previously limited by the tech of the time.
This is immediately evident in the game’s visual design, especially when comparing unit models from the original game to their shiny new versions in Retold. The art team had a strong vision of what the game should look like – epic proportions, atmospheric worlds, and of course, horrible monsters. Pirillo describes this process using the Argus as an example, an Atlantean monster unit.
“In Age of Mythology, it’s just a rough sphere with some tentacles, but in Retold, we can do so much more,” Pirillo shares. “Now it’s got a ton of eyeballs that all move independently, it slithers around, and it’s just kind of gross. But the idea is we want to amp everything up and really maximize the mythology.”
Aside from straightforward improvements, Retold also brings significant changes to the original – never clearer than in the use of God Powers. God Powers in the original game are extremely powerful abilities that can only be used once per battle, whether it’s to immediately nuke an enemy from existence or significantly boost your resources. The issue was that they were so powerful, that players often saved them up, and ended up never using them at all. In Retold, these powers are now reusable, more reminiscent of Ultimate abilities in a hero shooter, changing the stakes of a match while letting you indulge.
And the core to all of the team’s work, while it seems obvious, is that modern technology just allows you to have more of absolutely everything at one time. More units, more monsters, more God powers exploding across the map; Age of Mythology: Retold can support the carnage that players have always wanted to unleash.
“One change that is huge for me is the increased population cap, so you can have absolutely massive armies,” Pirillo adds. “These armies can be made up of lots of different types of units. Some armies can just be monsters, and that’s just not something that the original game could handle. Even if you don’t win, it’s extremely satisfying to watch.”
The benefit of 20 years of feedback from such an invested community is that changes can be made to accommodate every type of player for the better. For instance, in the original Age of Mythology, the Norse faction was considered to have a higher bar to entry, and this is something that the team wanted to tweak for Retold to make the faction more approachable for everyone.
“We’ve added more content within the base game for the Norse, new units and buildings, and a lot of the existing things have been rebalanced,” Pirillo says. “It’s also much less punishing if you make a mistake.”
There’s also a new God Pack coming with the premium edition of Age of Mythology: Retold – the Freyr God Pack, which will unlock a major God and several minor Gods, giving players even more avenues to get started with the Norse adventure.
“You’re not locked into one play style if you play as the Norse now,” Pirillo adds. “You’re not stuck just playing offensively or following one build order – there’s a lot more variability on how the match can go, and so many more branches of strategy.”
There’s also now a villager priority system, so if you’d prefer to not have to keep checking on the nitty gritty parts of economy management and focus entirely on the battles and the story, you can set that to run automatically. When Pirillo shares that Age of Mythology has been built with the community, it is meant quite literally. The team sifted through 20 years of feedback shared about the game, trawling old school internet forums to find common frustrations that could be tweaked, as well as creative suggestions from those early days of play that may not have been easily implemented back in 2002.
“Our designers really did their homework, and lots of them are fans of the original game too,” Pirillo says. “It feels like being Indiana Jones, going back to archaeological levels of the internet to find what was good or back then, and bringing it into Retold.”
Age of Mythology: Retold is set to be a welcome and well-planned homecoming for those long-time fans, but it’s also going to be a great starting point for those that have never played the original game too. What’s even better, is that the game will continue to evolve as long as there’s still exciting mythology to add, and as Pirillo notes, there’s about two millenniums worth of it to tap into.
“You don’t have to be good at RTS to enjoy the story,” Pirillo says. “You don’t have to be good at RTS to just enjoy the carnal satisfaction of building 25 huge Stag Beetles and storming through your friend’s town. It’s whimsical fun that anyone will enjoy.”
Age of Mythology: Retold comes to Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Game Pass September 4.
The post Beyond a Remake – How Age of Mythology: Retold Revives and Retools a Beloved Classic appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Welcome back, friends! We have more games for you, new Perks, and a limited time beta to talk about! Available to those who pre-order Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, as well as Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass members, the Early Access Open Beta will be downloadable for Black Ops 6 on Xbox consoles, the Xbox app on PC, or Battle.net starting August 28. Now let’s get to all the games!
Get your first taste of the next-level action coming to Black Ops 6. You can start downloading the Beta on August 28, 2024, before the early access open beta kicks off on August 30, 2024. Feel Omnimovement for yourself, explore several brand-new core 6v6 maps, and try out new weapons and gadgets. Earn in-game rewards playable in the Beta and in Black Ops 6 once the full game launches on day one with PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate.
Atlas Fallen (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – August 22
Unleash the storm in this open world action-RPG adventure, enriched by the recently released major free update, Reign of Sand! Enjoy new voice acting, a reworked campaign, and face even more formidable creatures armed with new Essence Stones. Challenge the gods with the long-awaited “New Game +” difficulty mode.
Core Keeper (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – August 27
Dive into Core Keeper, an underground adventure where you shape your journey. Craft, build, and explore in a dynamic world. Develop your character, uncover ancient secrets, and engage in thrilling co-op or competitive play. Embrace the challenge and unearth the mysteries that await!
Star Trucker (Cloud, Console, and PC) – September 3
Available on day one with Game Pass! Hop into the driver’s seat of your rocket-powered big rig as you haul cargo, scavenge for salvage, and interact with an eclectic cast of star-hopping truckers in this Americana-infused journey on the ultimate open road – space!
Game Pass Core members can look forward to three more games coming to the library on August 21! Build the city of your dreams in Cities: Skylines, experience the award-winning third-person action-adventure in Control: Ultimate Edition, and jump into the driver seat to conquer extreme open environments in SnowRunner.
Vampire Survivors Darkasso Update – Available now
With this update, Vampire Survivors are getting Darkanas! Like Arcanas, but Dark. There’s five to unlock and just like Arcanas, these modifiers can change the outcome of your run significantly. This update also includes Room 1665, a new stage made of 16 rooms that will challenge players to fight their way through all the floors of this devilish room.
New perks are being added every week! Check them out in the Game Pass section of your console, Xbox app for PC, or the Xbox Game Pass mobile app.
Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realm: Five Champions – Available now
Unlock 5 Champions, 80 Gold Champion Chests, a Familiar, and a Skin for Lae’zel to use in Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realm, a strategy management game uniting characters from throughout the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse into a grand adventure.
XDefiant: Crimson Pack – Available now
This combo will have you seeing red! The Crimson Pack includes the Deep Red Samir Character Skin, Deep Red MP5 Weapon Skin, Ember M870 Weapon Skin, Pelagic ACR 6.8 Weapon Skin, and Amber M9 Weapon Skin.
The Elder Scrolls Online: 10-Year Anniversary Pack #3 – Available now
Celebrate 10 years of the Elder Scrolls Online with the 10-Year Anniversary Pack #3! This bundle includes 1x Attribute Respecification Scroll and 3x Gold Coast Experience Scrolls.
The following games will be leaving the Game Pass library soon, so don’t forget to jump back in before they go. Remember to save 20% on your purchase to keep them in your library if you want to keep the fun going!
We’ll be back with more games, but until then be sure to stay tuned to @XboxGamePass, @XboxGamePassPC, and @Xbox for updates when these games are available! Catch you next time.
The post Coming to Game Pass: Atlas Fallen, Core Keeper, and Star Trucker appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Hyper Light Breaker - Heart Machine's fully 3D rogue-lite spin on its acclaimed 2016 action-adventure Hyper Light Drifter - has had its early access launch bumped back a bit, and is now targeting an early 2025 release.
In a post shared on Steam, Heart Machine founder Alx Preston said the team needs a bit more time to ensure the gameplay experience is up to the "polished" standard the studio is aiming for.
"We don't want to ship a project, even in Early Access, that we're not satisfied with on a number of fronts. Especially in the current state of the industry, we need to put as good a foot forward as we can," Preston wrote.
The release date for Unknown 9: Awakening has been announced.
During Gamescom Opening Night Live, developer Reflector Entertainment along with publisher Bandai Namco revealed Unknown 9: Awakening will release on 18th October. It will be available across PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC (Steam).
You can check out the live action trailer for Unknown 9: Awakening, which stars The Witcher's Anya Chalotra as the game's protagonist Haroona, below.
Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024 is done and dusted for another year, but it's certainly kicked off this year's Gamescom with a bang - and we've got all the news, trailers and announcements right here in one handy summary. Whether you missed the show itself or just want a handy reminder of everything announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live this year, read on below.
Of course, alongside the main show, this year's ONL also had a 30-minute pre-show that was stuffed with announcements as well, which we'll quickly run through here before getting into the detail of the main show announcements below. Here, we got new trailers for Dave the Diver's latest crossovers, spooky co-op adventure Begone Beast and construction sim Roadcraft, alongside Italian Soulslike Enotria: The Last Song, Cairn (that shouty, but lovely looking climbing game from Summer Game Fest), life sim Inzoi from PUBG publishers Krafton, as well as a Terry showcase for Street Fighter 6.
There were also new game announcements in the pre-show in the form of Sniper Elite Resistance (coming 2025), the Donkey Kong-esque platformer Nikoderiko: The Magical World (with music from David Wise, no less), "first person farming horror allegory" We Harvest Shadows, the also quite spooky-looking Aila, a tease for the sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet (aptly named Revenge of the Savage Planet), action RPG Tribe Nine from the creators of Danganronpa, and the Lashana Lynch-led Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Game.
It's been two years since Mafia developer Hangar 13 confirmed it was working on a new entry in its open-world crime series, and the time has finally come for it to be revealed to the world. It's called Mafia: The Old Country and is heading to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC next year.
While 2016's Mafia 3 shunted the series forward in time to the late 60s (the first two games spanned the 1930s, 40s, and 50s between them), The Old Country is going backward, presenting players with a "gritty mob story set in the brutal underworld of 1900s Sicily."
"Fight to survive in this dangerous and unforgiving era," teases the scant bit of blurb accompanying today's teaser trailer, "with action brought to life by the authentic realism and rich storytelling that the critically acclaimed Mafia series is known for."
Bethesda's first big expansion to Starfield, Shattered Space, will launch for PC and Xbox Series X/S on 30th September.
We got a quick look at the upcoming addition tonight during Gamescom Opening Night Live, in a trailer that mostly focused on the REV-8 land vehicle included in August's free game update.
Ahead of launch, marketing for Starfield felt fairly sober and dramatic - it's fair to say tonight's video takes a more upbeat tone. Previously, Bethesda's Todd Howard said that the lack of land vehicles was a deliberate choice - but it's now something that's being walked (or driven) back.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, the long-awaited next game from the team behind the original Life is Strange, will arrive in two parts.
The first installment launches for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 18th February 2025, with its concluding slice then a month later on 18th March.
Tonight also brings an initial look at gameplay from Don't Nod's latest teen adventure, which has a dual timeline split between 1995 and 2022, when its young protagonists are now adults - and dealing with the consequences of their/your actions.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - the Microsoft-owned-Bethesda-release set to arrive on Xbox and PC this year - is also coming to PlayStation 5.
At this evening's Gamescom Opening Night Live event, host Geoff Keighley revealed that everyone's favourite fedora sporting professor will be cracking his whip on Sony's platform as well.
In addition to this news, Bethesda announced a release date for the game. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will release across Xbox Series X/S and PC on 9th December. Its PS5 release will then follow a few months later, during the spring of 2025.
To this day, I still hold Indy responsible for my penchant for hats. I have been enthralled by Indiana Jones ever since I was a little girl - but despite this deep affection, coming away from a hands-off preview of MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I just can't let myself get overly excited about the upcoming release just yet.
While I'm still looking forward to playing another narrative-driven adventure game, with that fun 'afternoon popcorn flick' energy Great Circle undoubtedly has, my immediate reaction from this first extended demo is to worry this is all it will be, leaning just a little too heavily on fan nostalgia and a tried and tested formula, but without the innovation to truly set it apart from the rest. (And, given the game is currently set to release this year, I really hoped to see more gameplay than I did.)
The demo, which is also being shown at this year's Gamescom, begins with Indy entering a large room within the Sunsparker Chamber, a mysterious underground temple and one of "several well guarded secrets and hidden ruins" you can expect to discover. With the camera in first-person, our archaeologist - gamely brought to life by a still-recognisable Troy Baker - looks around the ancient room before gameplay switches to a cutscene. Indy approaches a statue set upon a plinth at the back of the room, in a scene immediately reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark - which is fitting, given the Great Circle is set between the events of this film and The Last Crusade.
By the time you read these words, Peter Molyneux will have taken to the Opening Night Live stage at Gamescom and formally announced his new project to the world. Masters of Albion marks Molyneux's return to the genre he is widely credited with creating. It ditches his studio 22cans' previous focus on mobile development to instead target consoles as well as PC. And it's being made with help from several of Molyneux's old colleagues at his previous studios - Lionhead, Bullfrog - whose design CVs, like Molyneux's own, include a litany of 90s and 2000s classics.
On paper, all of this should inspire a positive reception. But, sitting opposite Molyneux a week before today's announcement, in the quiet boardroom of his small Guildford development studio, the veteran video game designer is clearly nervous. Those 90s and 2000s hits are now a long time ago, and much, of course, has changed. It's been 12 years since 22cans was founded and Molyneux's Curiosity cube caught the headlines, for good and bad, and the subsequent decade has not gone smoothly - crowdfunding concerns with Godus, continued accusations of broken promises, a fractured relationship with the media, and, most recently, an odd foray chasing the NFT fad with a blockchain game unfortunately titled Legacy.
Molyneux, now 65, is visibly older, softly-spoken. Last year, on social media, he described his mental health as "fragile". As we sit down, he asks if I mind whether he vapes as we talk - a habit he tells me he's picked up due to stress. He's not been sleeping well, he says, due to the anxiety of talking to the press once again. At times, when we discuss what this new project means to him - what it potentially could still mean for the latter stages of his career - his voice slows, emotion rising. But, at others, when he's discussing game mechanics, or keen to tell me more than he's strictly allowed, his old enthusiasm shines through, at one point swinging back and forth like a child on his chair.
ARC Raiders - the free-to-play PvPvE extraction shooter from The Finals developer Embark Studios - has resurfaced following an extended period of retooling, and is now launching as a premium title for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5 next year.
If you're struggling to remember much about ARC Raiders, that might be because few details have been shared since its announcement back in 2021. It was originally set to release in 2022, but its launch has continued to slip since then - first into 2023 so Embark could focus on The Finals, and latterly while the studio continued to tinker with the title following a genre change.
But it turns out its switch from co-operative third-person shooter to PvPvE extraction shooter (its original form "wasn't really fun", Embark admitted during a recent press event) wasn't to be ARC Raiders' only notable change. It's now been re-announced as a $40 USD premium title, jettisoning its previous free-to-play form, albeit while still remaining a live-service game.
Civilization 7, the very long-awaited latest instalment in developer Firaxis' beloved 4X strategy series, finally has a release date and will be launching for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC on 11th February next year.
But that's not all! As well as providing a date for strategy fans to furiously circle in their 2025 calenders, Firaxis has shared a first look at Civilization 7 in action following June's moody, if ultimately rather uninformative, cinematic trailer. And today's gameplay debut reveals a new aesthetic somewhere between the vibrantly cartoony (and somewhat divise) artstyle of Civilization 6 and the more realistic approach of earlier titles in the series.
And there's more where that came from; Firaxis will be expanding on the features glimpsed in tonight's trailer as part of a 20-minute gameplay showcase set to air at 9.30pm BST/1.30pm PT on Twitch, shortly after Gamescom Opening Night Live is through. And you might also want to stick around Eurogamer, as we'll have plenty to say about Civilization 7 ourselves.
Those Xbox players among us who have been waiting to get their hands on open-world adventure RPG Genshin Impact, I have good news.
At this evening's Gamescom Opening Night Live, the team revealed Genshin Impact will be making its way to Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass on 20th November. It is available to wishlist now on the Microsoft Store.
The news was shared along with a new Natlan gameplay trailer (below). Earlier this year, Genshin Impact was once again accused of cultural appropriation from fans and voice actors in response to the reveal of its new cast of Natlan characters.
Dune: Awakening received a first look at gameplay at this year's Gamescom Opening Night Live, as well as a release window.
The survival-crafting shooter will be out in early 2025 on PC. Console versions for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S do not yet have a release date.
Gameplay features survival mechanics, base building, and warring player factions. Take a look below.
It's been nearly four years since Tarsier Studios waved goodbye to Little Nightmares after being snapped up by Embracer Group, giving developer Supermassive a crack at the much-loved Bandai-Namco-owned horror series. So what's Tarsier been doing since then? Well, it turns out the studio hasn't quite shaken off its fascination with spooky kids in scary places, as one look at its latest project, the newly unveiled Reanimal, makes clear.
Reanimal's gloomy nightmare-fairytale aesthetic, its gangly-limbed monsters, and its two young protagonists - all evident in its announcement trailer - are unquestionably reminiscent of Tarsier's Little Nightmares series. And while that's certainly no bad thing given the studio's oft-brilliant work on those games, it's not entirely clear after a half-hour press briefing, just how substantial a departure - beyond two key features - Reanimal will be from what's come before.
Reanimal tells the story of an orphaned brother and sister trapped in hellish version of the island that used to be their home, as they embark on a quest to rescue their three friends. It's a violent world of gloomy forests and decimated buildings, where empty bags of skins hang from trees and hideous, animalistic creatures roam. It's also one that's aiming for a "darker and grittier" tone compared to Tarsier's previous horror games.
Dying Light developer Techland has shown off a new game in its zombie series that began life as a DLC for Dying Light 2 Stay Human.
Announced during Gamescom Opening Night Live, Dying Light: The Beast is a solo or four-player co-op experience pitched as a "tight" 18-hour ride through a fresh area of the franchise's world.
Dying Light protagonist Kyle Crane, once again voiced by Roger Craig Smith, returns here, a decade on. In-game, Crane has been in captivity, and experimented on. The upside? You have zombie DNA powers to unleash that beast on enemies.
We already knew it was coming, thanks to a post-credits teaser at the end of 2022's The Devil in Me, but developer Supermassive has now confirmed its sci-fi horror outing Directive 8020 will launch for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC next year.
Directive 8020 essentially takes one fist of Alien and another of The Thing then smushes them together, placing players aboard the colony ship Cassiopeia, where its crew must escape an alien organism capable of mimicking its prey.
"Earth is dying and humanity is running out of time," teases Supermassive. "12 light years from home, Tau Ceti f offers a small sliver of hope. When the colony ship Cassiopeia crash lands on the planet, its crew soon realise they are far from being alone... As they battle to survive, they are confronted with the hardest choice of all: to save themselves, they must risk the lives of everyone on Earth."
Amazon Games has announced King of Meat, a new game from ex-Lionhead and Media Molecule developers.
The party game is part co-op action multiplayer and part dungeon builder. Players team up online in the fictional King of Meat TV show to complete dungeons filled with enemies and traps; then dungeons can be created from scratch and shared with the game's community.
Developer Glowmade is led by Jonny Hopper who previously worked for Lionhead on the Fable series and Media Molecule on LittleBigPlanet, along with other staff from those companies.
Bully, Rockstar's enjoyable schoolboy adventure game, is now available as part of the GTA+ subscription on PlayStation, Xbox and "soon" on compatible iPhone and Android devices.
Rockstar announced that Bully would be coming to GTA+ earlier this year, back in April. We've been waiting for word on exactly when ever since.
It's great to have an easier way to play Bully again - though Rockstar describes the GTA+ catalogue as "rotating", so it's unclear how long it'll stick around. Also on GTA+? LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption, and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition.
Microsoft has confirmed the next batch of titles headed to Xbox Game Pass for the latter half of August: Atlas Fallen, Core Keeper, and Star Trucker.
Then there's that little known game called Call of Duty Black Ops 6. You'll be able to participate in the early access open beta when it kicks off for Xbox Game Pass subscribers on 30th August, 2024, with pre-downloading available from 28th August.
"Sure, it takes itself way too seriously and the loot chase can get monotonous, but everything outside of the monster-slaying is just an excuse to get right back to the monster-slaying. Or make the monster-slaying cooler with upgrades," we said in our Atlas Fallen review.
Sony is pulling Horizon Forbidden West from its PS Plus subscription service in the coming weeks.
The first-party Sony game is now listed under the 'Last Chance to Play' section on PS Plus, along with the likes of NieR Replicant, Marvel's Midnight Suns and Alien Isolation.
This upcoming removal of Forbidden West comes just a few months after Horizon Zero Dawn was also removed from the service, which as Tom wrote at the time seemed a surprising move by Sony.
Paradox Interactive's streak of game delays continues with the news its Chinese-Room-developed Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is now targeting a release in the "first half of 2025", rather than its previously announced "late 2024" window.
In a post on its website, Paradox called the delay a "proactive decision" derived from its commitment earlier this year to deliver "high-quality games" to its players. "Though [Bloodlines 2] is in a good enough place that we could have maintained our planned release window," it wrote, "Paradox and The Chinese Room collaboratively decided to prioritise polish."
Paradox says the delay will "create a quality assurance buffer, giving more time between testing and launch, ensuring we release the game when it's ready." More specifically, The Chinese Room will use the time to expand Bloodlines 2's story, providing twice as many endings as its predecessor, and to "adjust certain areas" such as Fabien - the voice in its protagonist's head.
Hunt: Showdown 1896 - the huge new update that necessitated an engine upgrade and introduced all new UI - has just hit an all-new concurrent player peak of over 60,000.
Up until the 1896 update dropped on 15th August, the extraction shooter's simultaneous player record - set back in October 2023 - sat at a modest 42,000ish players.
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Just when Geoff Keighley had started to fade from your memory, he comes rubber-banding back with a vengeance - snap! It's Gamescom week and it kicks off with Opening Night Live this evening from 7pm UK time (other Opening Night Live timings here). A pre-show with additional announcements will begin at 6.30pm UK. We'll be watching and reporting on it live, as always, right here, so you can either keep abreast of announcements while you do something else, or you can join in with your thoughtful and amusing comments. Please keep us company. Please.
What do we expect to see today? Well, probably Geoff Keighley, but also the new Indiana Jones game, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Dune Awakening. We're also expecting Little Nightmares creator Tarsier to unveil its new project, which could be exciting. On top of that: Diablo 4 expansion Vessel of Hatred, Civilization 7, hero shooter Marvel Rivals, Lost Records (the project made by the creators of Life is Strange), Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (which was recently delayed), and Black Ops 6. Keighley's best pal Hideo Kojima has also been tweeting enigmatic silhouetted pictures of actors who are presumably playing roles in Death Stranding 2.
And before you ask, "Yes, there will be new game announcements," Keighley said on X.
The creator of the now-defunct Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 mod, H2M, has opened up about what happened when Activision slapped the mod with a cease and desist, admitting, "the past couple of days have not gone to plan".
Although the mod - which upgraded Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer mode - was announced over a year ago, the cease and desist arrived the day before the mod was scheduled to be released last week, forcing the project to "shut down [...] immediately and permanently".
Shortly thereafter, unhappy Modern Warfare 2 fans jumped onto the Steam page to express their dismay.
Netflix has given us our best look yet at its upcoming animated series, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.
The show is scheduled to make its debut on the streaming service this autumn, and features the vocal talents of the MCU's Hayley Atwell as Lara Croft. It's all set to take place after the events of the Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy, which comprised Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
"Following the events of the Survivor Trilogy, Lara Croft (voiced by Hayley Atwell) has abandoned her friends to embark on increasingly more perilous solo adventures," reads the official blurb. "But she must return home when a dangerous and powerful Chinese artefact is stolen from Croft Manor by a thief with an uncanny personal connection."
UPDATE 2pm UK: Between first publishing this story a few of hours ago and now, Black Myth: Wukong's player numbers have continued to climb.
Now, over two million players have taken to Steam to give the game a whirl. Its concurrent player peak as it stands is currently 2,125,077.
As a result, Black Myth: Wukong is now the second most played game of all time in terms of concurrent player numbers on Steam, having bopped both Counter-Strike 2 and Palworld down a place.
Black Myth: Wukong is nothing if not ambitious. As many of its early trailers and tech demos implied, this was a game punching above its weight. It wasn't just a lavish retelling of the epic Chinese novel Journey to the West, a work that games have rarely engaged with outside of Asia (Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West notwithstanding), but it also seemed to be demonstrating a level of technical mastery and visual pizzazz we hadn't quite seen before. It immediately put developer Game Science on the map, even if it wasn't always for the most savoury of reasons.
But now, after spending upwards of 40 hours retracing the steps of its titular simian hero as the silent but deadly Destined One, Black Myth emerges as a game that frustrates more than it delights. Its plentiful supply of grand, sweeping boss battles set the heart alight at regular intervals, its mythological menagerie bristling with the same kind of malicious energy and intent as their FromSoft equivalents. They are the tentpoles that hold this game aloft, their sharp claws, vicious fangs and powerful hoofs often tearing up the screen in exquisite and sumptuous detail. Indeed, they're the kind of bosses that will probably go down as some of the most dramatic of this generation, with its glistening dragons that rage across icy lakes and rippling pools, muscular tigers that sup in temples of blood, and giant bears, wolves, rats and spiders that command the elements to devastating effect.
But outside of those pulse-racing encounters, Black Myth is an altogether more mind-numbing experience, its thrilling highs undone by baggy world design, an uneven difficulty curve and disjointed storytelling. Ostensibly, this is a quest about reviving the legendary Sun Wukong, who scattered himself to the wind in the form of six relics after being defeated in battle centuries earlier. As the Destined One, you'll travel through forests, sand, ice, ash and more to bring them back to your mountain home, winding your way through its alternately narrow and wide linear environments until you reach the big bad in possession of it.
MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will reportedly launch for PlayStation 5 in the early half of 2025, following an Xbox Series X/S and PC release at the end of this year.
That's according to industry insider Nate the Hate (one of the first people to break the news of Microsoft's multi-platform plans at the start of this year) who made the claim on social media. "MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will release on Xbox & PC this holiday (Dec) as a timed console exclusive," they wrote. "After this timed-exclusive window expires, Indiana Jones & the Great Circle is planned to come to PlayStation 5 in the first half of 2025."
Nate the Hate's claim tallies with a report by The Verge back in February, which said Microsoft was planning to go beyond its initial slate of comparatively low-key multi-platform releases by launching some of its flagship games on competing consoles. These were said to include Starfield and MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, with the latter supposedly due to arrive on PS5 "some months" after its Xbox and PC release.
Ever since its reveal in 2020, Black Myth: Wukong has been an alluring project. Developer Game Science has been surprisingly open in comparison to other AAA studios and the game's apparent ambitions have been reinforced with each and every press release: a hero-focused action game retelling the story of Journey to the West, and a graphical tour de force using the latest Unreal Engine features. In fact, on PC Wukong uses the Nvidia branch of UE5 to enable full ray tracing, promising an even more impressive presentation. With the full game in hand, it's time to see if Game Science has fulfilled the graphical promise of that first trailer, how the RT features work on PC, and what optimised settings can be used to deliver a smooth experience on a range of hardware. Enough monkey business then, let's get right into it.
From the moment the game starts up, it's clear that Game Science has delivered a level of graphical fidelity that surpasses that of the initial trailer. The dazzling intro to the game dazzles, with titanic mythical beings looming over you and an entire area replete with unique volumetric rendering that's unfortunately rare in the modern age.
With each and every dash, staff swipe and bit of movement, the main character and his nemesis distort and move the physical volume of fog that they find themselves in. Beyond Housemarque's Returnal and some legacy PhysX titles, real physicalised particles like this are rare, and Game Science made sure to use this GPU-intensive effect effectively to add a mystical flourish to game moments and character entrances.
Final Fantasy 16 will launch on PC on 17th September across both the Epic Games Store and Steam.
The PC version has been long-awaited since the game was released as a PS5 console exclusive last year.
Today's news comes with a new PC specific trailer, see below. A demo is available to try out now.
The Borderlands film adaptation will seemingly be available to watch digitally from the comfort of your home very soon.
While nothing has been officially announced by Lionsgate itself, multiple sources such The Hollywood Handle, DVD Release Dates, ScreenTime and When to Stream all have the Cate Blanchett-fronted film listed as being made available digitally from as soon as 30th August.
That's less than a month after its cinematic release, with the film only debuting on 9th August.
A flurry of Pokémon news has confirmed a launch date for the long-awaited Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, and a look ahead at what's next for Pokémon Go.
Pokémon TCG Pocket, a digital version of the phenomenally-popular trading card game, will go live via the iPhone App Store and Google Play for Android worldwide on 30th October.
As previously announced, you can open two packs of Pokémon cards for free per day - just enough to get you hooked - and it's interesting to see the pack-opening mechanic front and centre in the game's trailer below.
Modern military shooters are in a strange place at the moment. Battlefield is licking its wounds after stepping on the landmine that was Battlefield 2042, while Call of Duty is running around like the dog that caught the car, the massive success of Warzone leaving the mainline series at a loss with what to do with itself.
It's a chaotic, uncertain time in one of multiplayer gaming's biggest spheres, and the various shenanigans of EA and Activision have left room for something new to make its mark in the genre. Enter Delta Force: Hawk Ops, which you'll be shocked to hear is not a Trauma Team-style game about performing surgery on birds of prey. Instead, it's a free-to-play military shooter in the Battlefield/CoD mould, based on the series that predates either, and it could be the shot of competence and stability that the genre sorely needs.
Currently running a month-long Alpha, Hawk Ops provides access to two of its three game modes. The first of these, Havoc Warfare, is a classic large-scale attack/defence scenario similar to Battlefield's Rush, with the attacking team trying to capture a linear sequence of control points, and the defending team attempting to hold back the tide until the attackers' collective pool of lives runs dry.
Dead Cells today has received its final major update, The End is Near, after seven years of development.
This will be the 35th update to the game, which has received a number of DLCs to expand gameplay and reference other popular games, from Castlevania to Hollow Knight.
The End is Near expands on the curse mechanic, with three new mobs, three new weapons, and three new mutations.
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