The Sunday Times has revealed the UK's top 30 wealthiest developers and gamers, including Rockstar's Sam and Dan Houser (#4), Frontiers' David Braben and Wendy Irvin-Braben (#10), and Rebellion's Chris and Jason Kingsley (#14), and Hello Games' Sean Murray (#17).
Other names on The Sunday Times Gaming Rich List include Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg (#25), Alastair "Ali-A" Aiken (#30), and KSI and The Sidemen (=#21).
In the roiling waters of the northern sea, a mysterious oil rig has appeared whose lights can be seen for miles in the darkness. The foreman is a bit jittery, clearly worried about the platform's somewhat shoddy construction and his overbearing boss docking his pay for being behind schedule. When the drilling does begin, it's not oil they strike, but something far more sinister that splinters the sea floor with an ominous red, volcanic glow. And the resident scientist and his corporate suit boss only seem to want to feed this supernatural terror, the safety of their fellow workers be damned.
To some, I've just described the plot of The Chinese Room's recent walking horror, Still Wakes the Deep. But in a strange coincidence, Dredge is now following the same trajectory with its latest DLC, The Iron Rig - albeit with fewer left hooks throwing errant Coke cans to distract wandering nasties and more actual hooks reeling up yet more fresh horrors from the deep. This new chapter in Dredge's faintly cursed archipelago finally puts the spotlight on the mysterious Ironhaven Corporation, whose CEO is a dead ringer for Wake's weaselly boss Rennick, right down to his last-minute escape on the corporate helicopter. It's all profits before people in this unfortunate corner of the ocean, though unlike Wake's poor Caz, at least you can share in some of those benefits this time thanks to the plentiful supply of upgrade opportunities for your boat.
Over the course of three to four hours, The Iron Rig will see you revisit each of Dredge's main island clusters, hunting for fresh fish in new micro-habitats created by pools of ungodly ooze that have sprung up from the fissures created by the rig's drill. Each time one of these clearly very bad cracks opens up, the rig's scientist will task you with collecting various samples to bring back to him for further analysis, but some of these aren't easily won with your default set of equipment. Cue, then, a gentle and well-paced upgrade back and forth that will see you construct new buildings on the rig to unlock enhanced versions of your rods, nets and winches, as well as blueprints for new engine parts, bait types and other gadgets to help speed the process along.
I keep seeing those adverts for that Ray-Ban and Meta collaboration, where like, they're smart glasses that let you browse the web with your eyes? Anyway, yeah, they don't appeal to me at all. Not as much as "Dateviator" glasses, which come courtesy of Sassy Chap Games and their upcoming dating sim Date Everything! As the title suggests: you date everything, from kitchen sponges to lampshades, as they morph into absolute fitties once you've donned the special specs. It looks incredibly dumb but in the best possible way.
I keep seeing those adverts for that Ray-Ban and Meta collaboration, where like, they're smart glasses that let you browse the web with your eyes? Anyway, yeah, they don't appeal to me at all. Not as much as "Dateviator" glasses, which come courtesy of Sassy Chap Games and their upcoming dating sim Date Everything! As the title suggests: you date everything, from kitchen sponges to lampshades, as they morph into absolute fitties once you've donned the special specs. It looks incredibly dumb but in the best possible way.
Developer Black Salt Games has confirmed that Dredge's highly anticipated second DLC, The Iron Rig, will release on 15th August, 2024.
The indie fishing adventure will, ahem, "lure players back in" with new fish, new boat upgrades and gadgets, and a brand-new storyline.
Playable at any time in your Dredge adventure, The Iron Rig sees you join the Ironhaven Corporation to "collect resources to build a formidable base of operations, unlocking new tiers of equipment, abilities, gadgets, and consumables". And as part of the adventure, you'll get to "revisit every area from the base game with renewed purpose".
You've got to love Steam Next Fest. The video team has already put together a list of its must-play Steam Next Fest demos, but there's just so many new and exciting demos to try that we couldn't fit them all into one listicle! Well, OK, I guess we could have done, but that would have been one very long list video indeed...
On the video player above (or over on our YouTube channel if you'd prefer), you'll be able to watch today's livestream, where I took a look at the upcoming Steam Next Fest demo for Conscript. Published by Team17, Conscript is a survival horror experience set in the trenches of the Battle of Verdun. While this isn't the first time we've seen a horror game set during the First World War, Conscript still feels rather unique, even though its developer Jordan Mochi admits that he has drawn a lot of inspiration from classic horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
While I love a good retro-inspired horror game as much as the next person, one of the first things I noticed when I played the demo was how slow and clunky the combat was. This is certainly in keeping with games like the first Resident Evil but modern gamers may be put off by what appears to be a very sluggish and unforgiving control scheme. In Conscript you can only shoot, reload and melee attack whilst standing still and I found this very frustrating during the opening 30 minutes of the demo when I had to single handedly hold off a German trench invasion with only a rifle and a shovel. This mainly involved kiting enemies around the trenches until I could get in the right position to shoot at them or bonk them on the head, something that ended up feeling a bit like being chased around a Pac-Man maze by a bunch of Stahlhelm-wearing ghosts.
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 lean on sailor superstition to scare a boat full of pirates, we voyage across space in vast gothic monasteries, and we learn a hard lesson about communication in an outrageous kitchen.
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.
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."
Přihlásit se