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The full letter was posted in collaboration between digital advocacy group Fight For The Future and several developers of blockchain games and platforms, including Enjin, the Blockchain Game Alliance, and the creators of Age Of Rust. Age Of Rust was pulled from Steam earlier this month when Valve contacted makers SpacePirate Games to say that “they don’t allow items that can have real-world value on their platform.” “Considered as pioneers for changing how gamers sell and trade digital game items over a decade ago, Valve likely understands the impact that a more concrete medium would facilitate,” reads the open letter....

Several artists take the reins in the blog post, talking about their area of focus in turn, but it’s art director Chris Ryder who first explains “return to darkness” as one of the pillars of their art style. You can decide for yourself how successful it is. There are several short video clips in the post, showing the player running combat-free through various environments. Here’s one: It certainly is dark and foreboding....

Can’t believe that priest is wasting all those ears in an earcupboard. You wanna string them together to make a belt, pal, get yourself some tidy damage reduction perks. Rogues in Diablo IV will be able to use bows and crossbows, swords and daggers. Looks like a mix of archery and sneaky stabbing, and far more mobile than they were back in the day. She’ll also be able to imbue her attacks with different elements, jazzing them up with ice and poison and such to apply secondary effects....

In an interview with GameSpot, Kurvitz explains that contrary to the hand-wringing we’re all subject to about young ‘uns these days, people really do like reading. They read Twitter, text messages, chat apps, and Reddit among so many others. It’s just a matter of making the text “snappy” enough and displaying it well. Kurvitz explains how Disco Elysium’s text is displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen where players may already be used to looking at their operating system’s dash, rather than in the center bottom the way that so many other RPGs display dialogue....

Disco Elysium’s new “dyslexic font” option uses OpenDyslexic for (most) text in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese-Brazilian, and Polish. As the font’s website explains, it was created to “help with some of the symptoms of dyslexia,” with letters shaped to help readers recognise the correct letter and prevent swapping or flipping letters. OpenDyslexic does help me a bit but I do find it looks similar enough to the Team Fortress 2 font that part of me always imagines I’m reading the words of a TF2 character....

For now. An update coming this summer will add what I’ve been clamouring for: a creative mode. The news came as part of a revised early access roadmap shared in a Steam news post. Dorfromantik’s student developers have been focused on quality of life features since the game’s release in March, but are now turning their attention to two previously announced content updates. The first, due this summer, will contain the creative mode....

El Shaddai’s game director Sawaki Takeyasu confirmed the news over on Twitter, although he didn’t say when they might release it. He also mentions a new launcher will serve as a way to switch between Japanese and English audio and subtitles. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings — 竹安佐和記(サワゴン)(サワキエル) (@Sawaki_Takeyasu) December 7, 2020 For those unfamiliar with El Shaddai, it’s very loosely based on the Book of Enoch, an ancient Hebrew religious text....

Frontier’s Steam news post addressed two areas: the game’s Apex Interstellar taxi system, and murderous on-foot players. The Odyssey expansion adds on-foot travel and combat to Elite Danverous for the first time, on space stations and planet surfaces. Taking on-foot missions will now sometimes require you to take a taxi service to the mission location, and as per usual for Elite Dangerous, the journeys are long. The difference is that sitting in the Apex Interstellar taxi service is even less interactive than a journey you pilot yourself....

Embracer’s deal with Square Enix was revealed to the world on May 2nd, and also included intellectual property ranging from Tomb Raider and Deus Ex to Thief. The Swedish supergroup now own more than 50 “back-catalog” games that used to belong to Square Enix Holdings. You can read the full deets of the deal’s closure announced by Embracer today here. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find something that Embracer Group hasn’t acquired yet....

It’s the first time Duke’s dad and step-dads have been in the same room since 2014. Duke Nukem Forever spent 15 years in development at 3D Realms before Gearbox bought the IP and worked with them to release it in 2011. 3D Realms were then themselves purchased in 2014 by Interceptor Entertainment. They tried to revive Duke there, until Gearbox politely reminded them that they still own the IP, leaving them Duke-free....

Here’s the announcement trailer for Make It Count from earlier this year: The DLC adds Maxim Zelnick, a crime boss and “fixer” with the ability to call in two reinforcements during combat. It also brings the Fixer gangster profession, who can bribe their way out of combat, and a new loan shark racket with unique events. Make It Count will cost £11.39/€15/$15 when it launches, but in some ways the free update is the more exciting part....

Big fan of the low-poly version of the character at 2 minutes and 23 seconds into this: In a news post, Epic explained that, since the tool is cloud-based, they’re letting people in slowly over the course of a few days. There doesn’t seem to be a limit or a criteria to qualify for access, however, so if you want to have a go yourself you can sign up here....

So, pick from your usual dungeon-crawling classes (Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, Ranger, Wizard, and Cleric, each doing what you’d expect from a fantasy dungeon-crawler), and set out to dungeon-crawl in the traditional dungeon-crawling way. Swing swords, throw knives, cast spells, pling arrows, use abilities, loot corpses, dodge environmental traps, pick locks, chug potions, open chests, and grab new swords and hats and shoes and such. The combat did not feel interesting or good to me, but this is still relatively early in development....

It’s a tricky deck to play, and expensive to build, so don’t jump in without being prepared. There’s a lot of synergies and combos to understand, as well as a specific gameplan you’ll want to follow, so read on to understand the deck a bit better. ETC OTK Warrior deck list and strategy Here is the best version of ETC OTK Warrior available to play in Hearthstone right now. Select and copy the long ID string below, then create a deck in Hearthstone to export this deck into your game....

It helps that Ether Loop really doesn’t break the roguelite mould in any significant way, so I don’t need to spend time explaining how it all works. You start with nothing but a little crossbow, and proceed from room to room and floor to floor, killing monsters, opening chests, collecting weapons, collecting power-ups, defeating bosses, and so on. You get the idea. Let’s instead dive right into some specific moments from an hour of Ether Looping - each picked to illustrate either just how fun the game is, or how hopelessly shite I am at it....

It’s a pared-back roguelike with a pixel artist’s heart. You are a warrior’s spirit, brought to this tower to climb ever upwards and fight monsters on a big tile board. There’s a bunch of different enemy types, from exploding ghost wolves to gas-spewing slimers, each with particular movement and attack rules. You hop around or dash (moving two spaces instead of one) and kill all to proceed to the next floor....

A few weeks back I got my paws on the preview build of FixFox (aka to me, personally, FikFok), and honestly it’s a really lovely game about being a mechanic who is also a furry a distant-future human gene-spliced to have fox fur. The world of FixFox is a pleasingly analogue version of the future, where you fix old fans with bananas and postage stamps for friendly robots. And these robots will reward you with a feather duster, or perhaps a lovely meal....

Here’s a new trailer, which shows some of the lovely scenery in Greece and Rome: Expeditions: Rome is a historical RPG, but in which you play a fictional character able to chart an original path for yourself and for Rome. You also take command of a Roman legion, leading battles across several continents in between chatting and politicking. Nate saw it earlier this year, finding it a far more detailed and ambitious games than its predecessor, Expeditions: Vikings....

The company announced the new name last night. Facebook the social network is still named Facebook, but now it’s part of the parent company Meta, along with Instagram and the rest. Though they do plan to rebrand Oculus goggles to Meta goggles. The metaverse, according to nerks who read too many bad cyberpunk novels (or feel they’ve as good as read the novels because it’s part of the zeitgeist, y’know, everyone knows it, no need to read a book), is the next step of Internet evolution....

It’s a simple premise. You line up with a huge group of other players and rush towards the finish line. The levels will try to buck you off, block your progress, tilt and warp all around you, and you’ll bumble along like a drunken bee. It’s like a combination of a playground and a brutal Netflix game show. And it was fun. But, God, it was tough being last. I watched as people ran over rising and falling barricades, but when I tried it my timing was perfectly off, bouncing away and returning just as the wall raised again....