- By Ash
- in Indie Games
In celebration of Risk of Rain's tenth anniversary, Hopoo Games have unleashed Risk of Rain Returns. This comprehensive remaster brings with it greatly improved visuals, three new Survivors, dozens of new stage variants, a brand new challenge mode, as well as a whole bunch of new items and enemies to mess around with.
Besides all of the new content, Risk of Rain Returns has also freshened up a bunch of the old stuff. You can look forward to a revamped multiplayer mode, alternate abilities for all of the original Survivors, extra lore to uncover, and perhaps most importantly of all, a large array of quality of life changes to make everything just a bit smoother.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Windblown has now launched into Early Access, and I'm happy to say things are looking quite good so far!
Instead of just playing it safe and creating Dead Cells 2, the Motion Twin team has decided to take their next game Windblown in a bit of a different direction. As such, not only will Windblown be fully 3D and give you a lot more room to maneuver than Dead Cells, but you'll also be able to tackle its many challenges alongside friends in 3-player co-op!
As for the actual gameplay, it should come as little surprise to hear that Windblown is going to be a fast-paced roguelite. Much like its predecessor, Windblown will arm you with a variety of different weapons and abilities, and then throw you against a massive amount of tricky enemies and bosses. Needless to say you'll likely be dying a whole bunch while learning the ropes, but that's all part of the fun as the greater the challenge, the better it feels once you finally stomp it into the ground!
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Even in its current unfinished state, the map in Project Zomboid is absolutely massive. Nowhere is this more apparent than if you simply try to zoom out as your character very quickly transforms into an insignificant and nearly invisible spec somewhere in the Kentucky wilderness.
Things are only going to get more absurd in the future as the Project Zomboid team is planning another massive world expansion for Build 42! The exact details are currently still few and far between, but as you can see on the image above, they're aiming to extend the world in every direction except beyond the Ohio river boundary.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
While it's still under heavy development, Project Zomboid's Update 42 is already looking mighty impressive. Not only will it bring with it the first iteration of the long-requested NPC system, but it'll also greatly extend the world map by adding a bunch of new cities and locations to explore, and even bring in a new light propagation system to make wandering through the apocalyptic wasteland a much moodier affair.
The good news doesn't end there, however, as the Project Zomboid team has just revealed that Update 42 will also expand the world vertically! Buildings will no longer be limited to 8 floors as each chunk will extend up to 32 levels, which also allows for underground areas like basements, bunkers and military labs to lie hidden beneath the surface.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Project Zomboid updates are few and far between, but when they do finally arrive they tend to bring with them an absurd amount of new mechanics and items to mess around with. The upcoming Update 42 is no different in this regard as the Project Zomboid team is aiming to pack it to the brim with all sorts of fan-favorite features.
Before I give you a quick rundown of what exactly these features are, it's important to mention that everything is currently still a work in progress. As such, while all of these ideas and mechanics are being worked on and will arrive at some point in the future, there is no guarantee they'll be done by the time Update 42 is ready to launch. With that said, here's what the Project Zomboid team is trying to cram into Update 42:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
After messing around with everything from fast-paced shooty action to squirrel stapling, Dusk creator David Szymanski has now decided to once dive into a new genre. In this case, with Butcher's Creek he'll be attempting to tackle a Manhunt and Condemned: Criminal Origins inspired first-person horror/action game.
“A troubled loner with a hunger for cinematic gore finds himself on the other side of the camera when rumors of authentic snuff videotapes lead him to an abandoned cabin near Butcher's Creek, Pennsylvania,” reads the brief description. “What starts as illicit urban exploration quickly becomes a fight for survival when he's captured by a gang of sadistic killers. Now his only option is to pick up a box cutter, a hammer, a pickaxe, or whatever else is at hand, and unleash a little video violence of his own.”
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for roaming the world in search of monsters to catch, and perhaps even creating a couple of your own, you might want to give Cassette Beasts a look. To put it quite simply, Cassette Beasts is a Pokemon inspired turn-based tactics game where you can fuse literally any two monsters together to amplify their abilities and hopefully get an upper hand over your opponents. Best of all, each one is fully animated, so discovering all of the combinations should be a nice bit of fun!
Besides smashing monsters together, Cassette Beasts will also task you with exploring an open world, solving puzzles, and delving trough dungeons. In true Pokemon fashion, certain monster abilities can also be used outside of combat in order to aid with exploration, so you'll definitely want to revisit old areas every once in a while in order to see what new secrets or shortcuts you can uncover.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
The original Deep Rock Galactic is all about mining for precious minerals, annihilating bugs in the most irresponsible ways possible, and naturally, taking literal years off from mission control's life due to the sheer madness he's forced to witness on a daily basis. As such, I'm sure it'll come as a massive surprise to hear that's also what the somewhat recently released Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, a roguelite auto-shooter spin-off, is all about!
There are some differences since this is a highly challenging singleplayer game, but the concept is mostly the same. You're still mining for minerals, except they're now used to purchase both temporary and permanent upgrades. Similarly, you're still smashing hordes of bugs, except now you also get to loot all sorts of new weapons and weapon upgrades while doing so.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
To say that Dead Cells has had a lot of support over the years would be quite an understatement. Between the crossover updates, paid DLC and numerous free additions, the number of weapons, locations and potential builds increased significantly since launch, and the game is much better for it.
Alas, all good things must eventually come to an end, and the same goes for Dead Cells. So after five years of updates, it looks like the upcoming Patch 35 will be the very last one. A real shame since I truly believe Dead Cells could've easily sustained many more updates and DLCs given how fun the core gameplay is, but I certainly won't fault the Evil Empire team for wanting to move onto something new after all this time.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: My review for Harvest Hunt is now live, so if you're curious how well a survival-horror and a roguelike mesh together, I welcome you to give it a look.
In a bit of an interesting twist on the usual survival horror formula, the upcoming Harvest Hunt has decided to mix in a bunch of different roguelike elements in order to hopefully keep things tense and interesting for a long time to come. As such, not only will you have to contend with an eldritch horror stalking you through a fetid swamp, but also a variety of random modifiers that can drastically shift the balance in either direction and prevent you from getting too comfortable.
Personally, I really like this idea. Fear of the unknown can be a remarkably strong factor in horror games, and what better way to make the monster unknowable than by constantly changing the rules!