Into The Breach: FTL follow-up is smart, tense and surprising

Within a couple of minutes of sitting down with Justin Ma and a build of his new game, Into the Breach [official site], preconceptions are torn to shreds. Ma is one half of the team behind FTL and when Into the Breach was announced, I wasn’t alone in thinking it looked like tactical skirmisher Advance Wars, with added monsters. It is that game, to an extent, but its most notable feature isn’t tied to the setting at all – it’s that this is a tactical combat game in which the enemy is entirely predictable. Everything is explained below, but in short, this might be the smartest turn-based design I’ve seen since Invisible, Inc.

… [visit site to read more]

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Ark: Survival Evolved now paying modders to mod

The makers of dinosaur-y sandbox survival game Ark: Survival Evolved [official site] have launched a scheme sponsoring mod development with actual real cash money. Every month they’ll pay fifteen modders (and teams) $4,000 (£3.2k), with a view to potentially including their finished mods in the full game – as they have with others before. The first round includes everything from moonbases to islands inspired by albums. Mods can be huge for the long-term health of games, benefitting players and developers, so slinging them a big bag of bucks is a pretty great move. … [visit site to read more]

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Have You Played… Batman?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Not Arkham Asylum, City, Knight or Origins. Just plain old Batman. Based on Tim Burton’s film of the same name, Ocean Software’s game was typical of licensed products of the time, taking key scenes from the film and turning them into tidy little sections of game. So there’s some platforming, with a tricky-to-master grappling hook, then a Batmobile bit, then a Batwing bit, then a Batcave bit, and then a gothic cathedral bit that’s actually quite a lot like the chemical processing plant bit at the beginning. … [visit site to read more]

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Nvidia’s new $700 1080 Ti in theory beats $1200 Titan X

With Nvidia‘s long dominance of the top end of the graphics card market potentially under threat from AMD’s upcoming RX Vega line, they’ve just offered a speculative riposte. The Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti is a buffed-up take on the year-old 1080, and though conventional wisdom (i.e. Nvidia naming traditions) would place it between that card and their $1200 Titan X, the claim is that their $700 new’un actually beats the X.

… [visit site to read more]

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Tenderfoot is a window into another world

Take a deep breath — in through the nose, and hold two three, then out through the mouth — and open a window into another world with Tenderfoot [official site]. It’s a small virtual scene staring out a window in a futuristic (and possibly post-apocalyptic?) city. Green creeps up glass-fronted buildings, wind turbines rotate slowly on rooftops, a creature snoozes on a leaf, flocks of birds loop around the city, thick green clouds pass by, and occasionally a putrid sun brightens the mood, all while chill music plays. We can look around a bit, but we’re really there to stare. It’s very pleasant. … [visit site to read more]

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80 Days devs announce the sci-fi Heaven’s Vault

After travelling around the world in the fantastic 80 Days and to Fantasyland in Sorcery!, Inkle have announced their next game will go into space. Heaven’s Vault [official site] will see an archaeologist and her robot buddy travelling the mysterious rivers which connect moons, trying to uncover their secrets. Meet people! Chat! Solve puzzles! Translate languages! Travel an open world! Experience consequences! It sounds pret-ty great. I’ve a nagging suspicion that working with existing stories and worlds has kept Inkle from reaching the huge and fawning audience they deserve, so maybe this here all-new tale will do it. … [visit site to read more]

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Life on the Death Road To Canada

Last week I asked you: which of the games I had installed should I play and write about? The overwhelming winner was Death Road To Canada [official site], a zombie shooter that I’ve been listening to RPS staff talk about for months but that we’ve never written a feature about before.

Things were going pretty well. We had wheels, fuel, food, our health and morale was high. A recent scavenging trip had turned up a shotgun with plenty of shells, which was my first experience at killing the undead with something other than frying pans and wrenches. Perhaps things would have continued to go well, if Gina, our leader – me, in other words – hadn’t decided it was a good idea to try to steal from one of the traders at a rest stop.

… [visit site to read more]

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