The special, almost intangible loveliness of the Plucky Squire isn't down to either the game design itself or the way it's presented. It's down to both of these things, combined so thoroughly, and with such imagination, that it's hard to stir them apart.
To put it another way, it's not just that this is a fantasy-action game in which your hero receives a bow and arrow from a beautiful elf. It's that, to win that bow and arrow, the hero first has to venture across the authentic wilderness of a child's cluttered bedroom desk, and into a cardboard castle. There, at the top of a tower formed by a stack of beloved books, the hero and the elf must do battle inside the stiff confines of a knock-off Magic: The Gathering card.
This completely rules. And that's just one moment from the preview build of the game I've been playing over the last few days that has elicited such a gasp of wonder and delight. A battle inside a battling card! And then I walk away from it with a golden bow. Yes please, Plucky Squire. Yes please.
The Plucky Squire, one of Eurogamer's most anticipated games of the year, will launch for PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X/S on 17th September, publisher Devolver Digital has announced.
It'll also be a day one launch via PlayStation Plus, for anyone signed up to Sony's subscription service.
An innovative 2D and 3D platformer based in and around the pages of a picture book, The Plucky Squire is the first project from All Possible Futures, the indie development studio set up by former Pokémon artist James Turner.
We've seen collapsing share prices, redundancies, a reduction in games being signed and entire company closures. Of course, publishers are caught up in the same nightmare that the entire games industry has been dealing with – a drop in game revenue mixed with over-investment and rapidly rising costs. However, there are also some fundamental (and potentially permanent) shifts in the marketplace that are making it harder for publishers to compete.
"I’ve been in publishing for almost ten years and it’s always been uncertain," says Simon Byron, who is currently MD of Yogscast Games. "You can never predict exactly how a game will perform before it’s out. You can have a sense, sure, but accurately forecasting a game’s sales is impossible – I’ve certainly never got it spot on. And that’s tricky for particular companies who have pressures to provide certainty to its shareholders.
The Plucky Squire stars a 2D sword-slashing protagonist so plucky he busts out of his storybook confines and into the fully 3D world of a kid's bedroom. You'll then spend your time hopping between these various planes on a grand, cartoon adventure.
The Plucky Squire stars a 2D sword-slashing protagonist so plucky he busts out of his storybook confines and into the fully 3D world of a kid's bedroom. You'll then spend your time hopping between these various planes on a grand, cartoon adventure.
WolfEye's debut game Weird West attempted to pack a little of Dishonored's immersive sim sorcery into a top-down action-RPG. For the studio's next game, co-founders Raphaël Colantonio and Julien Roby are leaning into comparisons with their old endeavours at Arkane more earnestly. The new game - currently untitled and without a release date - is a first-person sci-fi RPG set in an alternate-1900s North America, which ostensibly combines the ingenuity and gadgetry of Dishonored and Prey with a "real RPG" experience redolent of Skyrim and modern-day Fallout.
WolfEye's debut game Weird West attempted to pack a little of Dishonored's immersive sim sorcery into a top-down action-RPG. For the studio's next game, co-founders Raphaël Colantonio and Julien Roby are leaning into comparisons with their old endeavours at Arkane more earnestly. The new game - currently untitled and without a release date - is a first-person sci-fi RPG set in an alternate-1900s North America, which ostensibly combines the ingenuity and gadgetry of Dishonored and Prey with a "real RPG" experience redolent of Skyrim and modern-day Fallout.
To celebrate the recent release of the Unholy Alliance update, Devolved Digital is giving Cult of the Lamb players the chance to get their hands on in-game items through Twitch drops. There are three décor items to gain through watching others play, and a set available for subbing.
All of the items up for grabs through this Twitch drop campaign will be officially released to players on all platforms further down the line, although there is currently no confirmation about when this will actually happen.
For now, if you’re playing through Steam and want to get yourself any of the following decorative pieces for your Cult of the Lamb playthrough, there are a number of different rewards on offer and you have until September 20 to claim yours.
In order to get any of the following drops, you’ll need to first link your Twitch account with the Devolver Digital codes site. To do this, just head to the website and click on the “Connect your Twitch Account” button at the top.
How long do you need to watch to get Cult of the Lamb Twitch drops?
Image via Devolver Digital
There are three items ready to be claimed by players who tune into any stream on Twitch with the “DropsEnabled” tag (you can find all of the currently live and eligible streams here). The items you stand to gain, and how long you need to watch to get each of them, are as follows:
Goat Effigy (1 hour of watch time)
Goat Statue (2 hours of watch time)
Goat Plant (3 hours of watch time)
In total, you’ll only need to watch someone play for three hours in order to get all of the Twitch drop items.
How to get the Cult of the Lamb Support a Streamer pack
Image via Devolver Digital
The Support a Streamer pack isn’t gained through watch time and instead requires you to do one of the following:
Subscribe to a Twitch streamer with the “DropsEnabled” tag active
Gift a subscription to someone else in a stream with the “DropsEnabled” tag active
For doing this, you’ll get not one, but four items for your playthrough:
You know, when Master Onion was teaching martial arts I’m pretty sure he had a few more instructions besides just “kick”. Anger Foot Developer: Free Lives Price: $24.99 Platform: PC MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review Welcome to Shit City, a hellhole where everyone’s favorite pastime is committing crimes. It’s run by […]
Cult of the Lamb is gearing up for the release of new content, and the Pilgrim Pack was just revealed. The DLC will be live on all platforms, including Switch, on August 12, 2024. On the same day, the previously-announced Unholy Alliance update will be available featuring local co-op and more – read about it here. According to the description,...
Massive Monster and Devolver Digital announced The Pilgrim Pack, which is a new piece of DLC for Cult of the Lamb with additional Follower forms and unique quests. It’ll come out on August 12, 2024 alongside the new update.
The Pilgrim Pack will be a bit different from what people expect from Cult of the Lamb. It’ll be an interactive digital comic, through which you can access new secret quests, Follower forms, outfits, and accessories.
You can check out the Cult of the Lamb new DLC trailer below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY1EYzn_5qY
Instead of playing as a cult leader like you do in the main game, it seems like the Pilgrim story will focus on Followers instead. You’ll be helping Jalala and Rinor journeying in search of a new home, only for dangerous cultists to stalk them in hopes of sacrificing them to their gods. As The Pilgrim Pack will include two unique Follower quests, it’s likely that you’ll be able to further explore Jalala and Rinor’s stories outside of the comic as well.
As a reminder, The Pilgrim Pack will be paid DLC. It will come out on the same date as the Unholy Alliance free update, but if you want to experience it, you’ll need to pay some money. The Pilgrim Pack will cost $6.99 on PC and $8.99 on consoles.
Cult of the Lamb is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC. The Pilgrim Pack will appear in Cult of the Lamb on August 12, 2024, and it will not be part of the free Unholy Alliance update.
Massive Monster and Devolver Digital announced The Pilgrim Pack, which is a new piece of DLC for Cult of the Lamb with additional Follower forms and unique quests. It’ll come out on August 12, 2024 alongside the new update.
The Pilgrim Pack will be a bit different from what people expect from Cult of the Lamb. It’ll be an interactive digital comic, through which you can access new secret quests, Follower forms, outfits, and accessories.
You can check out the Cult of the Lamb new DLC trailer below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY1EYzn_5qY
Instead of playing as a cult leader like you do in the main game, it seems like the Pilgrim story will focus on Followers instead. You’ll be helping Jalala and Rinor journeying in search of a new home, only for dangerous cultists to stalk them in hopes of sacrificing them to their gods. As The Pilgrim Pack will include two unique Follower quests, it’s likely that you’ll be able to further explore Jalala and Rinor’s stories outside of the comic as well.
As a reminder, The Pilgrim Pack will be paid DLC. It will come out on the same date as the Unholy Alliance free update, but if you want to experience it, you’ll need to pay some money. The Pilgrim Pack will cost $6.99 on PC and $8.99 on consoles.
Cult of the Lamb is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC. The Pilgrim Pack will appear in Cult of the Lamb on August 12, 2024, and it will not be part of the free Unholy Alliance update.
In Unholy Alliance, the next major update for Cult of the Lamb, we’re giving our holy hero a playmate: the Goat. Summoned by blood and born in corruption, this wicked new ally can join the Lamb in local co-op. Crawl dungeons, slay heretics, build your cult, and seek new powers—together.
In co-op, one player will inhabit the role of the Lamb and the other will take on the mangy mantle of the Goat. Together, this unholy pair can indulge in new two-player twists on existing minigames like fishing and Knucklebones, as well as discovering and equipping a selection of corrupted weapons, tarot cards, curses, and relics to aid them on their epic cooperative crusades.
That alone is worth your undying worship, but there’s more to Unholy Alliance than just co-op. The update also introduces a vast array of new follower traits to the game, making your flock more diverse, charismatic, and unpredictable than ever before. Cultists can be insomniacs, bust law-breaking friends out of prison, enter a catatonic state after the trauma of a resurrection, wake everyone up with their demonic snoring, or become afflicted with a curse.
Followers sent on missions may return with their mental state altered. They could be inspired by their success, spreading positivity among the flock. Or the horrors they’ve endured may have been too much, leaving them frozen with fear. Followers can even be polyamorous, meaning they’ll never get jealous if the Lamb marries someone else – while others may become jealous enough to kill.
These are just a few of the new follower traits in the Unholy Alliance update, which will make your flock a true cult of personality. As the cult grows and more followers join its ranks, even more quirks, flaws, and eccentricities will emerge. If you thought they were a handful before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Unholy Alliance also adds two new structures to the game. You can build a nursery to care for three babies at once, but be warned: they’re still gonna poop a lot, and you’re still gonna have to clean it up. Hey, at least you’ll never be short on fertilizer. When a baby reaches 14, they’ll outgrow the nursery, opening up a space for more offspring to be nurtured.
Then there’s the new Knucklebones arena. You can only have one of these in your cult at a time, letting you play one match of Knucklebones a day against a follower of your choosing. The difficulty of the match is based on the follower’s level, and winning against them will level them up instantly.
We haven’t forgotten about crusades, either. Unholy Alliance throws a heap of new relics and tarot cards into the mix—some of which have been designed with co-op in mind. The Lamb and the Goat can swap weapons, deal extra damage when fighting back-to-back, or deal a critical hit if their attacks are in sync.
The Ashes of the Mercurial Mun relic detonates a ring of explosives that surrounds both players, while the Wishbone of the Marbais relic grants one player 10 seconds of invincibility – if the other takes damage. Equip the Rivals tarot card, and you’ll both deal 2x weapon damage if you’re fighting far apart. Or how about the Bonds of Battle card, which connects the Lamb and the Goat with a beam of unholy energy that will damage any enemies who stray into it?
Experience all of this and more—including new quests and quality of life improvements—when the free Unholy Alliance update brings the Lamb and the Goat to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on August 12.
In Unholy Alliance, the next major update for Cult of the Lamb, we’re giving our holy hero a playmate: the Goat. Summoned by blood and born in corruption, this wicked new ally can join the Lamb in local co-op. Crawl dungeons, slay heretics, build your cult, and seek new powers—together.
In co-op, one player will inhabit the role of the Lamb and the other will take on the mangy mantle of the Goat. Together, this unholy pair can indulge in new two-player twists on existing minigames like fishing and Knucklebones, as well as discovering and equipping a selection of corrupted weapons, tarot cards, curses, and relics to aid them on their epic cooperative crusades.
That alone is worth your undying worship, but there’s more to Unholy Alliance than just co-op. The update also introduces a vast array of new follower traits to the game, making your flock more diverse, charismatic, and unpredictable than ever before. Cultists can be insomniacs, bust law-breaking friends out of prison, enter a catatonic state after the trauma of a resurrection, wake everyone up with their demonic snoring, or become afflicted with a curse.
Followers sent on missions may return with their mental state altered. They could be inspired by their success, spreading positivity among the flock. Or the horrors they’ve endured may have been too much, leaving them frozen with fear. Followers can even be polyamorous, meaning they’ll never get jealous if the Lamb marries someone else – while others may become jealous enough to kill.
These are just a few of the new follower traits in the Unholy Alliance update, which will make your flock a true cult of personality. As the cult grows and more followers join its ranks, even more quirks, flaws, and eccentricities will emerge. If you thought they were a handful before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Unholy Alliance also adds two new structures to the game. You can build a nursery to care for three babies at once, but be warned: they’re still gonna poop a lot, and you’re still gonna have to clean it up. Hey, at least you’ll never be short on fertilizer. When a baby reaches 14, they’ll outgrow the nursery, opening up a space for more offspring to be nurtured.
Then there’s the new Knucklebones arena. You can only have one of these in your cult at a time, letting you play one match of Knucklebones a day against a follower of your choosing. The difficulty of the match is based on the follower’s level, and winning against them will level them up instantly.
We haven’t forgotten about crusades, either. Unholy Alliance throws a heap of new relics and tarot cards into the mix—some of which have been designed with co-op in mind. The Lamb and the Goat can swap weapons, deal extra damage when fighting back-to-back, or deal a critical hit if their attacks are in sync.
The Ashes of the Mercurial Mun relic detonates a ring of explosives that surrounds both players, while the Wishbone of the Marbais relic grants one player 10 seconds of invincibility – if the other takes damage. Equip the Rivals tarot card, and you’ll both deal 2x weapon damage if you’re fighting far apart. Or how about the Bonds of Battle card, which connects the Lamb and the Goat with a beam of unholy energy that will damage any enemies who stray into it?
Experience all of this and more—including new quests and quality of life improvements—when the free Unholy Alliance update brings the Lamb and the Goat to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on August 12.
You know, when Master Onion was teaching martial arts I’m pretty sure he had a few more instructions besides just “kick”. Anger Foot Developer: Free Lives Price: $24.99 Platform: PC MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review Welcome to Shit City, a hellhole where everyone’s favorite pastime is committing crimes. It’s run by […]
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we drift off reading the world's largest set of patch notes, we drift off flipping through a book of late-night urban pictures, and we drift off as we drop down a well.
What have you been playing?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.
Joy is a bit underrated, I reckon, but at Summer Game Fest this year it felt like the closest thing to a running theme. Astro Bot and Lego Horizon Adventures were both a breeze, playful, ebullient family games that put all their focus on simply being a good time. The Plucky Squire, an action game with a domestic dimension hopping twist, however, probably just pipped them to the position of first, in the race to be the most joyful experience I had all week.
In fact, it was one of the most joyful I've had in video games for a little while. The Plucky Squire is a delight.
The setup here involved an opening sequence in a 2D part of The Plucky Squire, the main storybook. What's striking is how the edges of the pages, while always visible, seem to just melt away here. You are in this, playing a top-down Zelda-like adventure, whacking little enemy blobs with your sword or using a nice little throw-and-recall system for it like a manually-summoned boomerang. You hop ledges and chasms from set, green swirls in the ground, which take you to corresponding green swirls on the other side. Then you hit an obstacle - a big spinning mincer that seems rather gnarly and, frankly, suspiciously out of place for this twee little pastel-hued tale - and hop on another swirl and - oh! - you've jumped right out of the page.
Sumerian Six gets two things immediately right as far as I’m concerned. One, it lets you punch a bunch of Nazis in a pulpy 1930s setting, and two, it’s the kind of old-school, sight-cone-dodging stealth-tactics game I’m a sucker for. These things don’t come around too often, being a niche within a niche and all, and the genre suffered a major blow last year when Mimimi Games - the studio behind the likes of Desperados 3 and Shadow Tactics - announced it was shutting its doors. So you can probably imagine the little happy dance I did when Devolver Digital unveiled Sumerian Six and its paranormally imbued alternate-history WW2 action during Summer Game Fest - even if that excitement was somewhat abated by the knowledge many of the team working on the game will likely no longer have jobs when it’s done.
Sumerian Six, though, gets off to a rip-roaring start as developer Artificer sets the scene with pulp-comic panache. Following The Great War, a military scientist named Alistair Sterling assembles a crack team of "scientist commandos" known as the Enigma Squad to investigate Geistoff, a mysterious substance with seemingly limitless power. After their experiments go devastatingly wrong, the group is disbanded – but former member Hans Kammler betrays them, selling their research to a Third Reich eager to harness Geistoff's power. We join the action in 1944, with WW2 well underway; Sterling's daughter Isabella has gone radio silent while working undercover to infiltrate Kammler's group, and her brother Sid is mounting a rescue mission to find out where she’s gone. Let's go!
If you’re a long-time stealth-tactics fan, playing Sumerian Six should feel just like coming home, given how closely it adheres to the sight-cone dodging, cover seeking, squad juggling template established by the likes of Commandos back in the late 90s. And it’s clearly, wisely, borrowing some of the refinements and ideas from Mimimi’s more modernised take on the genre, too.
What are the best dating sims? These games all feature carousels of cute, courtable characters ready for romance. Whether you’re moving into a sleepy seaside town searching for love or ready to find that spark with a kick-flipping dinosaur schoolmate, players have more options now than ever to date around.
While dating is at the forefront of these simulators, great examples of the genre are feature-rich, captivating settings, underlying intrigue, and unique art direction, some of which could even be considered the best PC games overall. The top dating simulators tend to twist the traditional visual novel style and fork it into a new genre, such as adventure games or dungeon crawling - and, believe it or not, one or two even take inspiration from horror games. Regardless of where you want to look for love, this list has you covered with the best dating sims to play in 2024.
The developers of Wizard With A Gun are closing down. Galvanic Games, who released the sandbox survival game last year, said that ongoing sales of the game were not enough to keep the studio going, and they'd run out of time to find funding for a new project.
The developers of Wizard With A Gun are closing down. Galvanic Games, who released the sandbox survival game last year, said that ongoing sales of the game were not enough to keep the studio going, and they'd run out of time to find funding for a new project.
Tenjutsu is an all-new roguelike action game from the designer of Dead Cells.
While we didn't get a release date when Devolver Digital made the reveal, we did get to see some gameplay courtesy of a comprehensive, if brief, announcement trailer, which you can see below:
"Step into the shoes of a renegade yakuza hellbent on defying her former associates and loosening their grip on the Secret Garden City in this fast and fluid rogue-jutsu from Sébastien Benard, the designer of Dead Cells," teases the Steam description.
Croteam has announced a three-part DLC for The Talos Principle 2, Road to Elysium.
Described as a "three-part coda that allows you to dive deeper into the world of The Talos Principle 2", Road to Elysium will put your puzzle-solving skills to the test when it releases across all platforms on 14th June, 2024.
Consisting of Orpheus Ascending, Isle of the Blessed, and Into the Abyss, the DLC will "reunite you with beloved characters through a series of thought-provoking new stories".
Cult of the Lamb's next free update, Unholy Alliance, introduces a brand new character and couch co-op.
While you won't be able to join friends online, you will be able to buddy up via couch co-op as you "crusade through dungeons, slay heretics, build your cult, and seek new powers together" on 12th August, 2024. One of you can play as Lamb, and the other as Goat.
Hyper Light Drifter developer Heart Machine unveiled its next game at the Devolver Direct showcase.
Called Possessor(s), it's a side-scrolling action game with a beautiful hand-drawn aesthetic set in a devastated mega-city. It's due out in 2025.
Players control two protagonists - Luca and Rehm - with melee combat involving juggles with an array of weapons like swords, bats, and even an electric guitar.
Summer Game Fest 2024's opening livestream has come to a close after bringing us trailers for upcoming games, updates for released titles and a couple of surprises too! No fear if you missed the showcase though as below you'll find everything announced during Summer Game Fest 2024.
Before we get started though - no, there was no new GTA 6 trailer. Sorry, nothing I can do about that. With that out of the way, let's take a look at what did make an appearance.
Summer Game Fest began with Lego Horizon Adventures showing off how you can play as Aloy from the Horizon series and transform the robotic wastelands into a Lego paradise. It will arrive on PC, PlayStation 5 and even Nintendo Switch during "holiday" 2024.
After its intial reveal last year, the sad and beautiful wolf adventure Neva has got its first gameplay trailer. It's the next game from the maker of the equally sad and beautiful Gris, and yep, I'm stocking up on tissues now, this one looks to be a real tear-jerker.
Revealed during tonight's Summer Game Fest, Neva's new gameplay trailer looks properly gorgeous, with sun-dappled landscapes aplenty, as well as cool, midnight blue caves, and hazy swamps where you can practically feel the moss squelching beneath your feet.
You play a young woman named Alba who forms a mysterious bond with your young wolf pal Neva, and together you'll travel across these stunning vistas, encountering other beasts of all shapes and sizes - though not all of them are as friendly as they first appear. I spy some very Spirited Away-inspired No Face creepy crawlies in there, and nope, don't you even think about getting your gloopy mitts on my wolf's bright white coat, matey, how dare you.
A goat or a lamb - which makes the better sacrifice? Trick question, it's neither. The best sacrifices are old rich people. In Cult of the Lamb's next update, Unholy Alliance, you can sacrifice folks with a pal. The upcoming free update will add a co-op goat character so a friend can indoctrinate and stab alongside you. The developers have shown off the two-player update amid the summer news plague that is threatening to tear entire branches off the RPS treehouse this week. "Summoned by blood and born in corruption, this wicked new ally can join the holy Lamb in local co-op," say publishers Devolver. Ah, local co-op. Not online then. I guess this is for real-life people with real-life friends and a proper real-life sofa. Well. Good for them. I'm happy for them. Couldn't be happier. Happy happy happy.
The news panamax has come in and all the shipping containers are spilling off the deck in an uncontrollable catastrophe of trailers. Here's another: you may remember The Crush House, the colourful 90s reality show where you film the cast by day, trying to please the audience, and creep around by night, trying to investigate the unsettling true nature of the show. No? You don't remember? Well, it has been a long year. Never mind, The Crush House now has a release date. But I'm not telling you what it is until you come watch the new trailer.
Wet chunks of summer games news continue to shower down on us like an explosive blast of whale viscera. But look, this bit of news blubber is quite good. Philosophy-obsessed puzzler The Talos Principle 2 is getting a big three-part DLC expansion, and some of the environments look lush. Not least this humongous cube sticking out from the sands of a tropical island at a jaunty angle. It is called the Hexahedron, and its interior constitutes a “large, continuous puzzle cluster” that the player will navigate. As one of those dweebs who has walked around London saying “aha, brutalism” at every insignificant piece of concrete he sees, this pleases me. Come and see it up close in the trailer.
Door-and-peace-minus-the-peace FPSAnger Foot, the best game ever made, has finally got a release date: July 11th 2024. This is spectacular news, mainly because I’d already printed off a load of shirts that said ‘Anger Foot GOTY 2024.’ I was going to do some socks, too, but I do not trust this game anywhere near footwear.
Pow! Biff! Dead! Cells! Catch that plate I just threw you! And this one! Oh no, there’s another plate coming toward you, also thrown by me! And look, you don’t have any free hands left to catch this one! Eat plate! You have been well and truly beaten up, but that’s fine. Here’s something nice to take your mind off the pain. Tenjutsu is a new fluid and frenetic punchy-dudey action game from Dead Cells designer Sébastien Benard.
Neva is immediately recognisable as the next puzzle platformer from the developers behind Gris thanks to its sweeping, overlapping planes and effortlessly natural watercolour art, which were both on show again in tonight’s Geoffest Summer Game Fest show. I was expecting more eye candy from Neva after its announcement last summer, but what caught me by surprise was all the hacking and slashing that ensues in its second trailer.
Amazon has unveiled its Prime Gaming lineup for June, along with the usual monthly bonuses for Prime members.
This month's collection features seven free titles that Prime members can download and keep forever. The most popular of which is Star Wars Battlefront 2, supported by six indie titles including Genesis Noir and Mythforce.
The full list of free games with Prime in June will include:
There is another date to add to your diary for next month's showcase spectacular.
On Satuday 8th June, at 1am UK time, indie publisher Devolver Digital will be hosting its summer showcase, wrapping the presentation up as a 15th birthday party for its tongue-in-cheek mascot Volvy.
The showcase - sorry, birthday party - will last for around 20 minutes, and feature updates, release dates and all-new reveals the company has called "exciting". While Devolver has not stated exactly what games are going to be shown, I am hopeful we will get another look at the delightful looking Plucky Squire, which is currently slated to release some time this year.
Despite many protagonists lacking them entirely, there have been many great feet in first-person shooters. Duke Nukem 3D, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, F.E.A.R.; when the kickers come out, it’s often a spectacle. Anger Foot attempts to outdo all previous feats of feet.
Anger Foot comes to us from Free Lives, a developer whose work has brought us a varied portfolio that includes games like Broforce, Genital Jousting, and Terra Nil. It’s coming sometime later this year, but I got to plant my feet in it today. Or, recently, I guess. What day is it?
Screenshot by Destructoid
Anger Foot takes place in Shit City, a location that makes me grateful that I work for a publication that lets me swear. In Shit City, crime is the law. You heard me. If a person isn’t committing a crime, that’s a red flag. At that point, police step in to ensure that the person gets the help they need to, at the very least, participate in petty larceny.
The city is ruled by four gangs, and you play as the one person who is willing to stand up to them. But only so they can steal some new shoes. However, before you get a single moment to admire your now complete sneaker collection, it’s stolen from under them. There are only two weapons powerful enough to get that footwear back, and their names are “Left” and “Right.”
Actually, there are also guns, but you’ll be getting a lot of mileage out of your two hooves.
Anger Foot is set up like a cross between Mullet MadJack’scorridor killing and Hotline Miami’s die-and-retry formula. Your goal is simply to reach the level’s exit point in the map, and any man, woman, or door that gets in your way needs to be kicked to splinters. One man. Two feet. All anger.
https://youtu.be/FVkDc6u_4GQ?feature=shared
Anger Foot puts its best foot forward with its art style. Its grotesque stylings and use of bright comic-book colors are incredibly striking. The odd proportions and puppet people provide a helpful buffer to some of its gross-out humor. It’s like the Garbage Pail Kids have grown up with a fondness for toilets and swearing.
The music is similarly captivating. It maintains a near-constant, pulsing beat, but when there’s a break in the action, it takes on a reverberating sound, like it’s being played at maximum volume next door.
However, after emerging from the forest of its aesthetic, there’s much less impact. Kicking doors is great. It’s fun to watch them sail across the room before breaking on a thug’s face. And while the actual kicking will send foes flying, it strangely lacks force.
Melee combat is something that first-person shooter games often have trouble with. In Anger Foot you slide about, and when your foot is raised in anger, it doesn’t feel like it connects. There’s only the sensation that there’s a danger zone in front of your character. If you misjudge your timing, you might just pass by your target and glide around the floor to get ready for the next approach. There’s no weight or force in play. Even the drop kick doesn’t feel good to use. A door reacts to your toes in a fun way, but everything else just falls victim to the danger zone.
Screenshot by Destructoid
This is something that bothered me all throughout the sizeable chunk of gameplay I was served. I never felt powerful. It only takes a handful of shots to bring you down, and you’re not really given many options to avoid them in a crowded room. Keep moving, kite enemies, and keep kicking. You can pack yourself full of caffeine using cans of Thirst Fucker you find laying around, or get yourself drunk off of Brewforce if you feel like it, but it’s still just a couple of shots to bring you down.
The safest way to get through a level becomes kicking a door open, backing up, then kicking the enemies as they appear through the choke point. Even when you’re not cheesing, any time you need to be careful about your actions, the all-important momentum dies. Without the momentum, you don’t feel powerful, and that’s something that is crucial to Anger Foot and entirely lacking.
There are guns, but that’s just another problem. Their ammo is so limited, and movement is so important that in the chaos of a firefight, your feet seem more useful. That’s certainly on message, but it doesn’t give a reprieve from its problems.
On the other hand, optional objectives that provide stars give value to repeated playthroughs of levels (even if some are frustrating). More importantly, the stars are used to unlock new shoes, each of which comes with new buffs and abilities. I could see myself getting deeply into collecting new kicks if the gameplay was made more exciting.
Screenshot by Destructoid
Mullet MadJack feels so similar in intention to Anger Foot: Momentum, corridors, movement. However, through the use of systems like dashing and the glory kills of recent Doom games, MadJack feels much more satisfying. It has a series of mechanics that ensure that you never have to stop moving and you’re constantly killing.
Anger Foot is missing something. More accurately, it’s missing a few somethings. There are quite a few approaches that can be taken to alleviate its issues, but it’s probably going to require a few changes. As it stands, the whole experience is just too shallow.
I’m hoping that before launch, Free Lives can implement something to bring everything together. The level design, aesthetic, and even framework are all outstanding. Everything except the core gameplay is exceptional. I love looking at it, but Anger Foot is going to need to do more than just put one foot in front of the other to really nail the landing.
Today I learned Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert is working on a new game, which he describes as "Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park". Well, hello there!
Work on this project actually started several months ago, but it only came to my attention this afternoon thanks to TimeExtension. I have since done more browsing, and come across some posts on Terrible Toybox, as well as Gilbert's own Mastodon page.
Now, admittedly there still isn't a huge amount of information on Gilbert's upcoming project at this time. The game doesn't even have a proper name yet, and rather has been labelled as Game Name TBD on Terrible Toybox's website. Meanwhile, Gilbert has been using the hashtag #rpgtbd to tag his social media posts.
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Did you know that the word ‘book’ is actually an ancient Sumerian greeting, short for: ‘can I have that book back I lent you eight months ago you said you’d have finished in like, two? This is going to be another one of those, isn’t it?.’ Truly, language’s many permutations are a font of limitless wonder. This week, it’s Pony Island, The Hex, and Inscryption maker Daniel Mullins! Cheers Daniel! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
Nigel Lowrie, co-founder of indie game publisher Devolver, believes in "selling games first" over launching in subscription services like Game Pass and PS Plus.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Lowrie provided his stance on the current state of the industry, describing large-scale game development as "crushing under its own weight a little bit".
Further, he noted the growth of subscription services has tapered off and deals for indie developers to be included are getting worse.
Nigel Lowrie, co-founder of indie game publisher Devolver, believes in "selling games first" over launching in subscription services like Game Pass and PS Plus.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Lowrie provided his stance on the current state of the industry, describing large-scale game development as "crushing under its own weight a little bit".
Further, he noted the growth of subscription services has tapered off and deals for indie developers to be included are getting worse.
Nigel Lowrie, co-founder of indie game publisher Devolver, believes in "selling games first" over launching in subscription services like Game Pass and PS Plus.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Lowrie provided his stance on the current state of the industry, describing large-scale game development as "crushing under its own weight a little bit".
Further, he noted the growth of subscription services has tapered off and deals for indie developers to be included are getting worse.
I need to take all the opportunities to write about Fall Guys that I can get, given how much time I spend playing it with my son. This is a pretty good opportunity, too: a set of Star Wars skins are coming to the bean battle royale, as announced yesterday on May 4th, and they coincide with some major changes to Fall Guys' platforming physics.
Nigel Lowrie, the co-founder of indie publisher Devolver Digital (Hotline Miami, Cult of the Lamb), says that indie games do much better on Switch than on other consoles because Nintendo has cultivated a playerbase that is more “open to interesting concepts” and smaller games.
One of the hallmarks of a great studio - I'm deciding this as I type it, but it definitely sounds legit - is that they can take on surprising themes and topics and genres and still feel like themselves. This week's game of the week had to be a Roll7 joint, and while I could have picked literally any of the team's games - they never made anything that was less than glorious - I've gone for Not a Hero, which was published by Devolver Digital back in the day.
For players expecting another skateboarding game after the first two OlliOllis, Not a Hero was both a genuine surprise and something that ultimately felt just right. It's an action game - there aren't many games that cram in more action - and it plays out in a side view as you race through various locations, smashing windows, taking cover, picking your moment and blasting enemies to pieces.
Yes, it's an action game, but it's also a sports game, of the same strain as the OlliOllis that preceded it. You're racing against the clock, but you're also following, or trying to uncover, that magical thread that will take you from the start of the level to the finish. The rules are very clear and the fail states are very obvious. Picking up ammo and stuff like that triggers a little timer, while your rechargeable health is there to separate a one-off mistake from an approach that is just a terrible idea. OlliOlli is yet another one of those action games - there are a lot of tactics games in this category too - that really reminds me of American Football. The full-ahead approach, but with a bit of thought to it. The precision use of non-precision aggression.
I was stunned this morning to read about the sudden closure of award-winning British studio Roll7 by parent company Take-Two, as I'm sure so many of you were. It hasn't been officially confirmed by either company yet but there are reports out there and people talking in all-but-confirmation tones on social media. It seems beyond doubt.
But it was barely a blink of an eye ago - November 2023 - when I was sitting with studio co-founder John Ribbins, and creative director Andreas Yiannikaris, to talk about 15 years of Roll7 and what was coming next. They were each excited about new games they were directing there, with Ribbins hopeful we'd learn more about his one this year. But those games, I expect, are now cancelled. To me at the time they looked as comfortable and content as anyone in game development could be. Belonging to a big company like Take-Two, via its publishing label Private Division, looked good on them.
It makes me cringe to think we even talked about the layoffs ravaging the games industry, which have evidently continued well into this year. I didn't put this quote in my piece but it's pertinent now: when asked about layoffs and whether they'd affected Roll7, Ribbins said, "I don't think anyone feels safe, but I feel very fortunate that we became part of the Take-Two family when we did, and also very fortunate that they still back what we want to do. Obviously there's stuff we're doing we can't really talk about at the moment, because it's early, but to be in a position where that is happening when lots of places around us are struggling - in a position to keep doing what we're doing with the people that were doing it with: we're really lucky to be in that position."
It’s raining on the compound. It’s always raining on the compound. The sound of tires churning through mud coats the nearby forest as men in yellow and black cheer on the drivers as they make large donuts in the grass. Fire crackles from a series of open metal drums a few of the men have […]
Hello Xbox fans! Our co-op sandbox survival game Wizard With a Gun unloads an expanded arsenal of new content today in Bounty of Guns, our newest free update! There’s a crate-load of fresh, awesome stuff in Bounty of Guns, including new enemies, events and fashionable furniture for your refuge in the Tower, but, as the name suggests, there’s one new feature in particular that wizards who love weapons will really get a kick out of.
Lucrative new Bounties offer you the chance to gain special rewards from an assortment of more than 50 firearms, and we’ve picked out five of our favourites to help kickstart your collection.
Fidrow Cultbuster
Favoured for its steady output, larger magazine size, and stronger bullets, the Fidrow Cultbuster is a great way to keep your enemies hiding behind cover. The Cultbuster has been banned on the plains after the Cult of Iron Massacre six years ago, but the contraband wand has found its way on the Shatter in the hands of those same cultists.
Odden’s Pointer
Odden Hammerite is a mechanist craftswoman from the eastern plains whose guns are recognizable from their brutalist designs. She’s a supplier of the Gladwell family, who value the added power the guns generate by charging up shots. Together, her line of guns is known as Odden’s Fist.
Vitriol
The Cult of Lead has developed numerous weapons to better spread poison and corruption. Vitriol is one of their most successful experimental weapons yet. Each shot adds an additional poison dose to its bullet, making it the ideal companion to lethal finisher spells!
Malediction
Draco Scarpath is renowned for his extraordinarily powerful gunmancy. The downside to his obsidian-infused wands is that every shot drains the life from their wielder’s body. The more powerful the gun, the higher a toll it takes. Most wizards stay far away from his cursed weapons… except those who prize power above all else.
Blightspreader
Since discovering the Infinite Well in the Tower, Orion has spent years trying to cleanse its poison. His idea for the Blightspreader came originally as a way to deliver antidotes faster than the Well’s rate of decay, but now his gun too has been corrupted. Orion has infused the minigun with the Well’s poison and wields it as a weapon against those who would attack Hilda and her Riders.
We hope you enjoy racking up Bounties, getting to grips with your new toys, and putting your Gun Racks to good use. Good luck, gunslingers! You’re gonna need it…
Wizard With a Gun is out now for Xbox Series X|S. The Bounty of Guns update arrives for free today.
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