- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Dead Cells' first 2023 expansion will be a rather ambitious crossover with Castlevania.
[Update]: Dead Cells' second big indie crossover update has added Terraria, Slay the Spire and Risk of Rain themed items, among others.
Instead of adding a brand new biome or a whole assortment of weapons to toy around with, Dead Cells' latest Boss Rush update has gone for a more focused approach. As such, it brings with it a couple of new items to experiment with, as well as a Boss Rush mode that lets you fight against both basic and enhanced versions of bosses, the latter of which come with things like "extra limbs, healing powers, or buddies to help them kill you!"
You can access the Boss Rosh through a basement door in the Prisoner's Quarters, the same place you can find the Training Room and the Tailor. Once you're inside you will find four additional doors to choose from, each one essentially representing a difficulty setting. The first two will have you fight against three basic and enhanced bosses respectively, while the second pair will up the ante and have you fight five one after another.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Choo-Choo Charles has now arrived, and as you would expect it's really short, a bit janky, yet also quite fascinating.
Despite the name making it sound like one of those Thomas the Tank Engine Skyrim mods, Choo-Choo Charles is a surprisingly serious survival-horror game about trying to escape, outmaneuver and eventually destroy a demonic train. In order to do so you'll have to frequently leave the safety of your cabin to search for resources and bizarre artifacts, carefully drive your train and plan your routes in order to avoid the evil glare of Charles, take further risks to help the locals in exchange for new weaponry, and slowly but surely upgrade your own train to the point where you can attempt to challenge the forces of darkness directly.
If this kind of insanity sounds like it's right up your alley, you'll be happy to hear that you won't have to wait all that long in order to dive in. According to the latest developer update, Choo-Choo Charles will be launching onto PC via Steam on December 9th, 2022!
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Just like its predecessor Boneworks, the freshly released Bonelab is a VR, physics-based action game that mostly serves as a wacky sandbox for you to mess around with. As such, one of the things you can do in Bonelab is import a custom avatar to play as, with your characters' stats reshaping themselves to match your new form! This means you can be an extremely small and nimble character that exclusively punches people in the shins, or an absolute monstrosity that more than compensates for its slow speed with sheer damage.
What all of this nonsense looks like in game, that you can get a pretty good idea of through the launch trailer below. Have a peek:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for slicing and dicing your way through hordes of enemies as you explore a nonlinear 2D world, you might want to take a peek at the recently released Moonscars. To put it quite simply, it's a grim and dreary yet highly atmospheric Souls-like Metroidvania that will task you with overcoming countless challenges in an effort to save yourself from the relentless darkness.
What all of this looks like in actual gameplay, however, that you can get a pretty good idea of through the launch trailer below. Have a gander, it's a rather stylish one:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Vampire Survivors' Legacy of the Moonspell expansion has now arrived with a massive new map, 8 characters and 13 weapons.
[Update]: Vampire Survivors has now been unleashed from Early Access alongside a sizable content update.
In the single year it has spent in Early Access, the Vampire Survivors team has released an absurd amount of content updates that have brought in everything from new characters to new enemies, maps, weapons, gameplay mechanics, and ever-more elaborate secrets. This epic journey will be reaching another major milestone on October 20th, as that's Vampire Survivors will be officially launching from Steam Early Access!
Naturally, it'll do so alongside a chunky content update. The exact details have not been revealed just yet, though you can expect to see "a little something for everyone" in terms of new toys, as well as a bunch of new achievements and balance tweaks to mess around with. It's also worth mentioning that all of your save files will remain intact, so don't worry about having to collect all of the many, many items all over again.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
After spending about a year exclusively available on the Epic Games Store, the PC version of the adorable action-adventure Kena: Bridge of Spirits has now made its way over to Steam as well. It has not done so empty-handed, however, as the Steam version brings with it a sizable (and free) Anniversary Update.
The definite highlight is the New Game+ mode that lets you restart the game with all of your previously earned abilities and upgrades in order to square off against new combat encounters, extra challenges and new enemies. You can also expect to see new trials to overcome, new outfits to accessorize with, a photo mode to share your style with everyone, as well as Charmstones that can be equipped to provide a variety of positive and negative effects in order to help you further customize your playstyle.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: The Terraria team is working on a Dead Cells crossover, new content and cross-platform multiplayer
After quite a few teasers and previews, Terraria's final (and this time seemingly for real) update has now arrived. True to its name, the Labor of Love update brings with it a variety of quality-of-life improvements based on player feedback, a couple of pieces of new content to mess around with, and naturally, a plethora of fanservice and cross-over items to celebrate Terraria and the impact it's had on gaming as a whole.
Expect to see the ability to switch between three different gear loadouts, a much more functional void bag to help you hoard thousands of items, as well as new world seeds to explore along with fresh improvements to old ones. There's also a cast of friendly town slimes to catch, an amulet that transforms you into a spirit wolf, an assortment of balance changes, and the list goes on for a while.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Bonelab has now arrived, and just as expected, it's as janky as it's fascinating.
Much like its predecessor Boneworks, the upcoming Bonelab is a VR, physics-based action game featuring levels filled with all sorts of doodads for you to mess around with, or even utilize in combat. As you would expect from a 'sequel', Bonelab will bring with it a greatly improved physics system, a larger variety of weapons and toys to chuck at enemies, as well as a brand new batch of arenas, obstacles courses and sandboxes to experiment with.
The most exciting feature by far is the ability to import a custom avatar in order to play through the game looking however you want... with the physical stats and viewpoint to match! As such, you can transform yourself into everything from an extremely small, fast and nimble character to someone so massive and bulky they could probably knock out Executioner Smough from Dark Souls without breaking a sweat.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
A fair bit of time has gone by since Satisfactory's Update 5, so it should come as little surprise to hear that the newly unleashed Update 6 is quite the chunky one! It brings with it a massive rework of the Spire Coast biome, a variety of visual enhancements for the Swamp biome, as well as a boom box that can also double as a powerful weapon if you can figure out a way to overcharge it!
You can also expect to see an assortment of ammunition types for your ranged weaponry, including fancy things like homing bullets for the rifle. And if you want to go completely absurd, there's even a mini nuke to play around with. I'm sure that's never going to end in disaster for everyone involved!
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for a shooter that defies any and all expectations, you might want to give the freshly released Hyper Demon a try. It comes to us from the team behind the simplistic yet highly focused Devil Daggers, and much like its predecessor Hyper Demon is all about taking a couple of very simple gameplay mechanics and creating some incredibly tight gameplay around them.
What makes Hyper Demon so bizarre, however, is that it uses spherical projection to give you a massive peripheral vision without shrinking the center of the screen. Combine that with a holographic warning system that lets you know when you're being attacked, and you end up with a game that looks like complete and utter chaos. Yet despite how insane it all looks, it actually makes a surprising amount of sense once you really get into it and embrace the madness.
