We have two Battletech Steam keys that we want to give away. The keys are from the standard pre-order, which includes the alternate Shadowhawk skin. These keys have been made available by Darkheart.

Here are the rules for participation in this giveaway:

• You have registered an acount at RPGWatch before March 1, 2018
• You have a minimum of 10 posts
• You have added a comment to this post, of which the contents makes clear that you want to participate
• You have added your comment before this giveaway closes, which is on the 24th of April

TechRaptor looks back at Origin:

35 Years Of Influence - A Look Back at Origin Systems, Creators of Ultima and More

There was a whole lot going on in the world of computers and games in the years leading up to the founding of Origin Systems in 1983. It was the golden age of the arcades, and Dungeons & Dragons was probably more popular than ever with the release of the accessible Basic Sets. As the Apple II approached obsolescence and the Apple III was touted as purely a business computer, the IBM PC was launched in 1981 and the Commodore 64 in 1982. With these computers available to a wider audience, homebrew games became a more tangible cottage industry. It was in this environment that Richard Garriott self-published Akalabeth: World of Doom in 1979, famously using Ziploc bags as packaging for the floppy disks.

[...]

The strategic RPG For the King has been released:

For the King

Full Release is here!

Yes that’s right, Adventurers: Full Release is here!

"Is it everything we’ve dreamed?!"

We sure hope so, Joe Player. We’re so excited and thankful for our wonderful helpful community throughout Early Access.

We’ve experienced the trials and tribulations of all that Early Access had to offer. From great feedback, amazing stories of victory, to terrible bugs that had to be quashed and everything between.

"It was an adventure all on its own"

It sure was. And we’re happy say that we’re not done yet. Of course, we’re going to be in full on support mode for the next while. But once things level off, we will start scheming internally on the next best way to make you all party wipe.

For now, enjoy our three adventures!

Again, thank you so much to our Kickstarter Backers, Early Access Community, and to all you newcomers joining the quest. We wouldn’t be here without you.

Sincerely IronOak Games

p.s. - Keep those discussions coming in on the Discussion forums, and Discord!

A major update for the ATOM RPG has been released:

0.7 Krasnoznamenny!

Dear friends!

It is time for another update of ATOM RPG! And we're not talking about bugfixes... Our April update is quite huge as it touches most aspects of the game. As soon as you update ATOM, you will be getting new quests, new characters, new stories, and new gameplay mechanics from all around. According to your wishes - part of Krasnoznamenny is now open, and many other locations are now filled with interactive content. You will also get to play the first of many backer quests we promised during our Kickstarter campaign. This time we made our good friend Rojson's ( youtube.com/user/ROJOV13 ) creation come to life in a long and arduous journey through the Wastes.
Working on this update took most of the last two months and we really hope that you guys will like it. Please, share your opinions and caught bugs on our Steam page. But speaking of bugs - this time we won't be able to fix them before next week, since on April 21st, our whole team (plus a very special Backer) is moving out to Chernobyl! As you can remember, this was one of the top-tier rewards on our Kickstarter page. We're also doing it to catch some glimpses of a true post-nuclear landscape. This will surely help us make the game better in the long run, and once we're back those bugs won't stand a chance! As for the time while we're gone - check on the progress of our adventure using the social media of your choice:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atomrpg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/atomrpg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atomrpg

• 15+ new characters with unique dialogue;
• 28 new and renewed portraits;
• 15+ quests;
• up to 2000+ lines of new dialogue and system text;
• new weapons, such as the APS pistol;
• new headgear;
• new clothes;
• new loot;
• new books;
• new maps for both quests and random encounters;
• new use for the Amanita mushrooms...
• some empty maps are now settled;
• new crafting recipes;
• new traders;
• new Easter eggs;
• new interaction with an in-game fraction;
• previously incomplete quest is now finishable!
• new companion screen, to help manage your fellowship better;
• advanced tactics for the Follower NPCs
• updated combat and AI;
• a possibility of becoming a slaver;
• many long-term problems, including the one with the intro movie are now solved;

...and many, many more new things await!

A new blog post for Fallen Gods explains all about them.

Before you stands a man warped by time and wrath, crook-backed and bitter, barely able to heft the sword in his hand. Others crowd about, like and yet unlike the first, each twisted in his own way, smeared on stones so smooth and bright that they are like looking glasses. It is a maze made of you, and staring into it, you seem to see into your self.

The titular hero (or anti-hero) of our game may be fallen, but he is still a god. And even when cut off from Orm's great soul-hoard in Skyhold, a son of the Cloudlands has many gifts that set him apart from mortal men.

The first is that he is very hard to kill for good. Only a few things are strong enough to make his soul abandon his flesh and bones. Most deaths merely mangle his body, and a few days and a bit of soul-strength are enough to heal even the ghastliest wounds. (Of course, every day is precious to a fallen god who must make it home within three months.)

Indeed, Ormfolk are very hard to kill at all, for even the most bumbling of them has a strength and skill with the sword that outstrips most hardened earthly fighters. And a god can grow even greater in might and wits by drawing on his soul-strength-"leveling up" in RPG parlance, though here at the cost of the same hard-won "mana" (i.e., soul) pool that feeds his greatest skills.

For a god, even a fallen god, has skills beyond swordplay. The player's god has two out of the following five such skills: Soulfire (by which he can kindle souls into a holy blaze that can burn away curses or burn up foes); Healing Hands (by which he can heal wounds and cure sickness in himself and others); Death Lore (by which he can speak to the dead, calling on their wisdom or driving off restless undead draugar); Wild Heart (by which he can bend beasts to his will or cause the woods themselves to hasten him on his way); and Foresight (by which he can see what lies in distant lands or times to come). These too draw on soul-strength.

[...]

Iratus: Lord of the Dead is an upcoming tactical roguelike RPG.

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Please Enjoy our story trailer into the lore of Iratus! Allow Iratus himself (voiced by the fantastic S. Weyte) to tell you of the events that led to his imprisonment and eventual liberation! Iratus: Lord of the Dead is upcoming tactical roguelike RPG greatly inspired by Darkest Dungeon, Dungeon Keeper, and Disciples.

http://www.iratus.org

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/807...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Iratus_Game

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iratusgamers/

VK: https://vk.com/iratus_game

Gamespot had a early look at Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus. Video is at the link.

Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus Brings XCOM To 40K

Our resident Warhammer: 40,000 nerd Dave got a very early look at the new squad-based Warhammer game, Mechanicus.

by Dave Jewitt and Patrick Faller on April 18, 2018 at 1:00PM

Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus delves deep into the lore of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, melding the story with Xcom gameplay mechanics into a turn-based strategy experience that fans of either series will find familiar. The game is coming some time this year, and not much is known about it, but GameSpot did get an early look at Mechanicus. Check out the latest gameplay in the video above, wherein Dave and Tam talk about how the game is very XCOM on the surface, but filled with deep, nerdy, Warhammer lore within.

[...]

Gamespot took a look at how espionage plays out in Phantom Doctrine.

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Phantom Doctrine is like X-COM, but with the "spy thriller" meter cranked up to 11. Pulling off your secret missions in this tactical game won't be easy.

Today is the release day of Knight Bewitched:

Knight Bewitched

After slaying a dragon, fearless knight Ruth and her companions are tasked with hunting the witch Gwendolyn. In an unfortunate turn of events, Ruth collapses from illness and is nursed back to health by no other than the witch she was tasked to kill. Unable to slay the woman who saved her life, Ruth is jailed on suspicion of bewitchment and later saved by her comrades.

As a new threat looms over the horizon, Ruth and Gwen, together with young orphaned companion Stray and mysterious rogue Uno, rise to the occasion. As they journey, a flame slowly ignites between the hearts of Ruth and Gwen.

But is this true love, or is Ruth truly bewitched?

Features

• An LGBT-positive story-driven adventure
• Four difficulty modes: Play on Casual for a story-focused experience or Heroic for RPG veterans
• Crisp, vibrant graphics
• Gameplay reminiscent of classic RPGs
• Steam Achievements

Today is the release day of Healer's Quest:

Healer's Quest

When evil forces awaken in the darkness, the world needs a team of heroes… But when these heroes are a ragtag bunch of unskilled jerks, only the healer can save the day.

Healer’s Quest is a lighthearted Comedy RPG where you take on the role of the most underappreciated party member in any fantasy realm: the Healer. Joining a band of inept misfits - a bossy tank, a handsome archer, a depraved mage, and a raging barbarian - you must keep your party’s health topped up whilst simultaneously managing dwindling mana reserves.

Not only can your party be taken down when their health ebbs away, they can also be hit with a range of debilitating status effects. It’s like juggling with magic, and the crowd hates you. If you let party members die, they may well go into a sulk in subsequent encounters. Manage moods with magical curatives, death prevention, and witty dialogue choices.

Features:

• Master 22 different spells to successfully buff your party to victory
• Use in-depth skill trees and upgrades to carve out your own playstyle
• Choose your karma alignment, each with its own dialogue options (Good, Evil, or Victim)
• Secure legendary loot for your allies
• Heal, buff, and cure ailments
• Keep everyone alive to avoid moody party members

Soldak Entertainment announced Din's Legacy for Q4 2018:

Din's Legacy

Din's Legacy is an action RPG with mutating characters, set in a dynamic, evolving, fantasy world for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

During the Orc Schism, the entire Orc race was violently split into Dark Orcs, Zombielords, and the Mutated. The Mutated are tainted with Orc blood, a zombie parasite, and necromancer magic. This makes people seriously mistrust and even fear them. The fact that they slowly mutate over time makes it even worse. Who is going to trust you when you grow horns overnight?

Despite all of this, the Mutated are actually more closely related to the Elves, both their behavior and physically. They want to prove this to the world, but they are facing a tremendous uphill battle.

The trickster god Din was intrigued by their chaotic mutations and burning desire to prove themselves to the world. Always in need of champions, he made a pact with the Mutated. Each volunteer would become one of his champions trying to save the world wherever Din sends them. In return, each time they die in his service he resurrects them to continue their service.

Din's Legacy, as well as the Mutated's and yours, are all in your hands! Can you be the Champion that is needed?
 
Features

• Experience your character mutating over time for good and bad
• Guide your character's evolution (choosing/improving skills, suppressing unwanted mutations, etc)
• Use mutation points to mutate your character towards another character or sub-class
• Uniquely created worlds for every game, with different scenario, win/lose conditions, areas, monsters, items, and quests, give the player a new experience every time
• Explore a dynamic, evolving, living world
• Your choices truly impact the game
• Co-op multiplayer to adventure with friends

COG has reviewed the RPG Tower of Time:

Tower of Time Review

I don’t have any experience with traditional CRPGs. To that end, I was pretty sure this game was gonna be a murderous slog, one that I would have to endure rather than enjoy. Turns out I was only half-right. Tower of Time is still a savage journey, but it’s one that compels me to keep coming back for more.

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[...]
Great RPGs make every battle feel necessary. At no point in my journey did I ever feel like I was grinding away or wasting time. Instead, my victories were hard-fought and properly savored. Although I’ve little experience with CRPGs in general, I did my level best to keep the difficulty at normal. My only concession was the portal battles. More so than even the boss fights, these stages felt like a brick wall against my forehead. After hours of suffering, I gave up and lowered it to the easy difficulty. Just for that battle, though! Afterward, I notched it right back up to normal. Even this felt like a personal failing, rather than some issue with the game’s design. In spite of these stages, the loot and the leveling system, I was never discouraged or bored. Between the pitched battles and the beautiful level layouts, I was always itching to get just a little further. If you’re a fan of CRPGs or just RPGs in general, you can’t go wrong with Tower of Time.

Last Epoch is on Kickstarter seeking US 210K and is described as a loot-based action RPG featuring time travel. There is a free demo of the game available to download.

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What is Last Epoch?

Last Epoch is a loot-based Action RPG that combines time travel, deep character customization, crafting, and an engrossing item system that guarantees endless replayability.

Featuring

• Offline and online multiplayer action
• Time travel and high fantasy world 
• 5 base classes that advance into 10 powerful mastery classes
• A deep skill system with augment trees for each skill 
• Engrossing loot and crafting system 
• Massive end-game content and replayability, trading, PvP, Cycles(seasons), Ladders, and Achievements 
• Epic storytelling, memorable characters and environments, voice acting, journals, and hidden secrets

Story

Last Epoch has a rich world and an engrossing story that is woven into every aspect of the game from environments to items and more. Throughout the story, you will travel to four distinct eras in time and see how each zone changes throughout the ages, each change bearing lore implications that will keep you invested in the setting.

[..]

Thanks Rhawka!

Copper Dreams has a new update that illustrates the effects of different tiles on the combat simulation.

Detonating the room with tile effects

  In the distant future, the year 2000, pills and computers are wicked cool.

We wanted to follow up the last update to show off something else we've been finishing up on: the framework for the tile effects for environmental hazards.

Tiles in Copper Dreams are part of the active simulation in and out of combat, and one of the last big systems we needed for the alpha to add to the sandbox of rules and systems for the player to abuse.

All the tiles on a map can have quite a few variables that change during gameplay:

• Occupied/Unoccupied
• Lit / unlit / shadow
• Sound emission
• Light color
• Line-of-sight hidden or visible
• Projectile or Damage range traveling through

And now featuring state effects like:

• fire
• blood
• water
• smoke
• electricity

There was a lot of reactive parts to these effects to work into the wide variety of other sensory systems, not just medical ailments but sound emission and enemy AI paths so they can track effects like dripping water or unusual noises.

Stunning an entire room with smoke or fire works as you'd expect it to with our ailment system, so players should make as good of use of that as enemies will on them. A smart tactic for fire-fights is luring opponent(s) around the corner until out of sight, where they will last-known-position you, and then track you blindly — allowing you to get the upper hand pretty easily. To counter that, if they have grenades of some sort, an AI path for certain enemies for the alpha will be to just flush you out. The tick-tile movement coordinates well with that. If you see a grenade coming toward you and can ready your turn, you can get a chance to run from it. And you'll want to. This guard survived the initial blast and courageously ran through fire to hunt our agent down. He'd later go on to regret this.
  Bravery.

Trackable and Ailment Tiles

Should you (or an NPC) walk over water or blood tiles, the character will get a 'wet' or 'bloody' ailment, and track that liquid for ~10 tiles. If these footsteps are seen by an NPC faction who is hostile against another NPC (Guards at a compound see thug patrolling), they'll initiate an AI path similar to last-known-position, and track those footprints until the last one, and then do a wary-state check of the area. They obviously also do this to you, so watch where you step! You can also use this to your advantage, toy with NPCs by luring them away from an area, out of sight and hearing of others.

  Water Tracking

  Blood Tile

Running over smoke causes your character to take on a coughing ailment, which interrupts them for a ~tick (more if you have other chest ailments) and causes them to cough, making noise. Not great for being sneaky or on-the-run. This ailment re-rolls every 10 ticks.

  Smoke Tile

Electrical tiles on the ground stun your character for 3 ticks, and re-rolls that every 6. There are low and high-voltage electrical tiles, the former just stuns you, and higher ones can drain batteries on equipment, short-out cybernetics temporarily, or on higher rolls cause burn damage. That kind of electrical damage is caused by weapons, while environmental ones are less lethal.

  Electrical Tile

Fire damage takes its ailments from the FIRE damage spreadsheet, and that's not a table you want associated with your character's health. For fire-grenades you'll take an initial blast-damage ailment, and that could cause a burning wound which procs every 4 ticks for a duration.

  Fire Grenade

This was also the first ailment to cause more ailments we've readied for the alpha, and it's a pretty slick system. Another one for alpha is impact weapon damage causing bones to break and getting bone-splinters which proc a bleeding damage.

Causality 

Tile effects are automatically caused by some weapons. Like displayed in the previous update, shooting a gun causes tiles around you to light up for a light mod, as well as cause the sound of the gun, and lastly firing some bullet. Adding to those systems, weapons like flamethrowers can pour fire down hallways and leave fire tiles on the ground, and smoke grenades fill a room with smoke tiles.

Since the Burning Candle ruleset leans simulationist, there's no balance needed for things like this, but there are some odd ways we can allow to deter it. For the alpha we'll have fire extinguishers for clearing fire tiles or dousing yourself. For tactical drying action, keep a one-time-use hanky or towel on hand to pat your butt dry.

If you've caught on fire, you can use your roll action (if you have the Grace for it) or our very own implementation of stop-drop-and-roll to extinguish flames by crawling/crouch and standing in sequence. Each of those stance changes take a tick, and burning damage procs frequently, so you'll want to exclusively and quickly do a dance like that or extinguish yourself other ways if you want to keep yourself from getting too well-done.

Stacking Tile Effects

At the moment tiles are tiered to only have one per tile, like you can't have fire tiles on water. After the alpha is released we'll work on the final step for them which is just augmenting them together — fire on water tiles converts the two to vapor (which will just dissipate), an electrical attack on a water tile can travel to all other touching water tiles, and so on. It isn't a design focus nor are we trying to make this into chemistry class, but there is room for some puzzles and fun gameplay for that, so we'll be getting to it later.

BACKPACK

We also added the backpack into the main HUD on the right side. This allows the player to instantly swap active items without needing to go into the backpack first and equip them into quickslots. You've also got all the tools your character does at your disposal up front and center now in a full, glorious frame.

More updates to come soon!

Cheers

IndieGraze interviewed studio producer Mark Parker about Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden.

As a child of the ’80s, the notion that a team of anthropomorphic animals must work together to vanquish evil feels like second nature, and in The Bearded Ladies’ Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, players guide an unlikely trio through post-apocalyptic terrain in the search for answers. With FUNCOM on board as the publisher, I chatted with studio producer Mark Parker.

 

Erik Meyer: MYZRTE guides players through XCOM-inspired turn-based tactical combat, with mutations, specialized equipment, and unique character abilities leading the way through a post-apocalyptic setting, so from a mechanics and an experience POV, what aspects of the project set it apart from games with a similar perspective, and as designers, how do you go from solid assets to a well-oiled machine?

Mark Parker: Whilst of course there are comparable elements to XCOM and other tactical games, we wanted to stand out from the crowd somewhat by incorporating a solid feeling of adventure, not just a succession of tactical encounters. Therefore, we have a real-time element that allows the player to employ stealth and a certain degree of pre-planning before entering combat, and the transition between real-time and tactical gameplay is smooth and dynamic. It’s about giving the player a choice of how they tackle each situation (something we know about from working on Hitman) and also allowing them to explore the rich world we have created. Regarding the process of making it a slick-feeling and satisfying experience, it’s mainly down to playing, tweaking and playing some more. In addition, Rui (CEO of FUNCOM) is a hardcore player of tactical games, and he regularly gives us feedback regarding difficulty, timings, visual cues, etc.

EM: Long before the announcement of MYZ as a videogame, the pen-and-paper RPG already had a devoted following, so can you speak to the bridge between what you’re doing and the traditions it comes out of? Additionally, what expectations come with a universe that people already know and love?

MP: Well firstly, it’s impossible to please everyone, and whilst the temptation was there to add a lot more of the RPG elements from the books into our game, we knew that attempting to replicate a pen and paper experience in a videogame is never really going to satisfy everybody; by its very nature, a pen and paper game is a very free-form social experience where (besides the core ruleset) the players’ imaginations are literally the limit. So we decided to make a tactical adventure game set within the rich world from the books, and we felt that this genre fit the universe nicely and that there is a certain degree of ‘dice rolling’ in this type of game. As for the universe, we try to make sure everything we include fits well with the books; there are obviously some things we wanted to explore or add that the books don’t cover entirely, so there is a small amount of ‘artistic license’, and many of the team members have been long-time players of the Mutant games, so they also keep to canon.

EM: In the gameplay footage that has been released, devs spoke to characters misunderstanding history, so a statue of a high school mascot might be mistaken for a demon, for example. As the game’s narrative has developed, how do you see the setting informing the storyline, and what other things have come from this process that either surprised you or provided depth to the culture of the PCs?

MP: The idea of everyday items or locations from our ‘current’ age being misconstrued by peoples living far in the future is very appealing. We tried to avoid ‘obvious’ humor in the dialogue in favor of more ironic moments that would entertain the player but be deadly serious from the characters’ perspective. A good example of this irony is early on in the game where Dux and Bormin discover a functioning ‘Boom Box’ radio and naturally misinterpret it as a bomb. The ghouls are also supposed to talk and act quite a bit differently than the mutants; there is a good reason for this which we won’t go into at this time.

[...]

PC Invasion reports that the first screenshots for the Forgotten Gods expansion to Grim Dawn have been revealed, as well as some backstory.

Crate Entertainment’s second expansion for their ARPG Grim Dawn is called Forgotten Gods and today the revealed the first shots for the Korvan Plateau.

This new desert area looks great and Crate has shared some backstory along with the first shots as seen below.

[...]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a new update which announces a new race has been unlocked. A forum poll will determine which race is added.

New Race Unlocked - Join The Forum Poll!

Dear Pathfinders,

When our Kickstarter campaign ended, we promised that all funds generated by pre-orders and pledge upgrades on https://owlcatgames.com/preorder would go towards unlocking new stretchgoals. And we are happy to announce that the next milestone, a crowdfunding sum of over $1 million, has been reached thanks to your generous help and support! Thank you so much for believing in us!

Our exact crowdfunding sum is now at $1.026.681

This means that we now have the resources to add one more playable race to Pathfinder: Kingmaker. And you get to help us decide which race it's going to be! We have opened a poll on our forums, where all backers get to vote for one of three possible new races. The three options are as follows:

1. Aasimar
2. Dhampir
3. Elemental*

*Humans, whose family trees include elemental beings. If elementals win the vote, we will add playable Sylphs, Undines, Ifrits and Oreads.

You can vote right now by visiting this thread on our dev forums:

https://owlcatgames.com/forums/showthread.php?4221-The-Extra-Race-Poll

Please note - you can only see this thread if you have transferred your Kickstarter pledge to our backer portal or if you are a preorder backer. If you need help transferring your pledge, send a message to [email protected]

Thank you once again for making this possible! And who knows - perhaps we can even reach the next milestone of $1.1 million and unlock a new playable class - Hellknights.  

They are intimidation, relentlessness, and unwavering conviction. They are the black-gauntleted fist of absolute order. They are the Hellknights! Provide your character with even more options to choose from, including unique abilities and items for the Hellknights, as well as the quest line dedicated to the their presence in the Stolen Lands. Face them on the field of battle or fight by their side - the choice is yours to make. 

The Mac Beta is here!

Our first beta build went live a few days ago for everyone who pledged at the $95 level or higher and everyone who pre-ordered the $110 Early Access tier. Unfortunately, there was a technical issue, which delayed the start of the beta version for Mac users. We are happy to announce that the issue has been found and is now fixed. The Mac beta is now live! Sorry for the extra wait, dear Mac users.

Hail to the Kings!

Owlcats

Greenman Gaming previewed Disco Elysium at EGX Rezzed and think it is going to shake up the RPG genre.

...

Think it Over

You have an inventory in Disco Elysium where you can manage the items you pick up. It doesn’t end there though, you can also pick up ideas as you proceed through your case. For example, at the start of the game you are asked to investigate a corpse, swinging softly in the breeze from a nearby tree. As part of its narrative structure you can attempt actions or attempt to succeed at challenges through the dialogue options, and it’s possible to fail this particular challenge a few times simply because the body has been hanging there several days, and you’re quite hungover.

So even after using something to take the smell away, you might find yourself needing a new option. In comes an idea your partner gives you, to get your shit together. You see, in Disco Elysium you have a second inventory related to ideas and concepts that you come across. Slotting this idea about getting your shit together in there, you are given a small in-world timer which passes as you talk to people. After thirty in-game minutes, the idea ripens and bursts into…the shit singularity, meaning that you do indeed have your shit together.

[...]

A lengthy Fig update for Wasteland 3 talks about the road to Alpha.

Production Greetings with Stewart Spilkin, Senior Producer

Stewart here!   

As we roll on into 2018, Wasteland 3 has been in full production for a while and I’m happy to say we’re hitting all our major milestones on design, art, and engineering. Long-time fans of inXile may know our production philosophy puts a heavy emphasis on iteration. Practically speaking, that means we want to have levels and systems in so we can test and improve on our ideas.  This allows us to find out sooner rather than later what works and doesn’t work.

At this point, over 90% of the scenes in the game have first pass scripting as well as first pass art. We have Rangers killing stuff, vehicles driving around (and also killing stuff), multiplayer working on consoles and PC, the works! This allows our level and systems designers to experience and polish up their scenes, and for our Design Lead George Ziets to do playthroughs and take (very meticulous) notes. The value of getting this kind of revision time early on can’t be overstated.

We have a few new team members to mention. On the Environment Art side is Yong-Ha Hwang, recently on the Blizzard cinematics team, and Josh Deeb, who is joining us from Daybreak. In our NOLA studio, we've also picked up Germ Revoso as a concept artist, and Greg Roberts is doing some great animation work for us. On the writing team, author Cassandra Khaw has been doing some amazingly twisted dialog work for us, and Nathan Long, the principal writer on Wasteland 2, is cranking out volumes of great material too.

Checking In On: Gameplay Systems with Eric Schwarz, Systems Designer

Hi everyone! The last several months of development have seen huge strides as far as our gameplay goes. As we barrel forward on development, we're continuing to refine the feature set and details of our character system, skills, abilities, weapon types, gameplay styles, and more. Being system designer on the game means ensuring that the game is fun to play, that the user interface and experience is as smooth as possible, and that I advocate for (and design) as many features as we can possibly get in. Most of my efforts lately have been focused both on ensuring our core combat and exploration systems are at a level where we feel there are no major unknowns left to solve, and are in a good state for iteration, balancing, and, later, polishing up.

In addition to making the core gameplay as good as it can be, I've also been working heavily with George so that our area design is in sync with our gameplay mechanics and makes the best possible use of them. This also means working on content design for all of our enemies, whether those are our different factions of NPCs, robots, animals, and even bigger, meaner things, so that each of them has a distinct gameplay identity, weapon types, and in some cases, abilities they use in combat. We're spending considerable effort to ensure that our combat encounters and enemy types have plenty of variety, and fitting personality for our post-apocalyptic version of Colorado.

Of course, all that high-level stuff is important, but what matters is getting those features directly in the game to play and experience first-hand. As such, a bunch of my time also involves coordinating with the level design team to implement all our features in all the locations you'll explore. Jeremy, Zack, Ben, Alex, Leland, Jeffrey, and others have been working hard to not only build the gameplay scenes and missions, but also do passes on combat implementation, loot, skill interactions, and more. It's a huge undertaking for the team, but with each and every revision, our scenes and gameplay get better and more fleshed out.

While we're still building on the foundation of Wasteland 2, there are also dozens of little tweaks, changes, improvements, and quality-of-life updates, many of which came directly out of feedback from our previous games. In future updates, we hope to be able to go into more detail about these. Until next time!

Eric Schwarz
Systems Designer

Checking In On: Content Design with George Ziets, Lead Designer

Hello all, Ziets here. The writers and level designers are working hard to get the whole game to a first draft state - especially the critical path. By the end of next month, we should be able to start the game at the tutorial and follow the critical path all the way to the end. It won’t be bug-free, of course, but getting to a solid first draft (as early as possible) is a critical step.

Some of our zones are already at an alpha state, which means that first-pass dialogue and level scripting are done, and combat, missions, and exploration all exist in some form. I’ve been playing through our zones and sending long lists of feedback to the design team. Our current focus is the city of Colorado Springs and Ranger HQ, our main hubs that contain the most reactivity to events that occur elsewhere. We’re also developing the endgame sequence and writing some of the most important characters in the game, like the Patriarch (the ruler of Colorado) and a returning Ranger from Wasteland 2 (who will, for the moment, remain nameless).

Once we're satisfied that all our zones have reached alpha, we’ll shift our emphasis toward playtesting, bug-fixing, and iterating. The iteration phase is the moment when a game really begins to shine, so the more time we can spend in iteration, the better the final product will be.

Final note: When we reach the final installment of our "Building the Everest" series of updates, we'll give you an early look at how our mission system will actually work in game.

George Ziets
Lead Designer

Checking In On: Art Design with Charlie Bloomer, Art Director

Hi all, I'm here to give you some news about what the Art team has been up to lately. The pace of production has been astounding! As with any production cycle, as the design becomes more and more fleshed out, the remaining questions begin to melt away, leaving a relatively clear path for artists to move in.

This is probably most evident with our environments. Every scene in our game has passed the blockout stage by Design, which means there is nothing stopping the Environment Art team from moving forward on first pass treatments for every scene in the game. We even took scenes from three different zones to a finished (polished) state before Alpha, since doing so would allow us to test assumptions about overall aesthetic approach, performance, and about how well our special shader solutions for snow etc. will work across ALL platforms. The other aspect of environments that we switched into high gear was props. We have a mix of in-house and outsourcing resources cranking through a long list of carefully vetted assets that include props, interactables, items, and weapons.

In January we made the decision to focus our Character Art effort leading up to Alpha on the assets that would have the most wide-reaching impact on our game - namely our factions. The world of Wasteland 3 is populated by many distinct groups! Each faction character is constructed out of a collection of "parts" - chests, legs, hands, feet, heads - that results in a large amount of variation across the Wasteland 3 landscape. By focusing all of our resources on these character factions, we've developed an excellent visual language for each group and a firm foundation for the next stage - characters with more unique appearances that will play a specific role in conversations and/or gameplay. Here's an example of a Scar Collector outfit, kitted out for the harsh winter enviornment:

Speaking of conversations, we've fully tested our pipeline for generating facial animation and the accompanying full-body gestures that will make up our cinematic conversations! We've settled on a system of processing audio tracks, combined with motion capture, that yields the quality we have been aiming for. As we work toward Alpha, the last piece of the puzzle is being addressed. That has to do with how our tools for managing the complex conversation system in Wasteland 3 can actually drive the animation and audio at runtime as well. In the end, it's a cleverly automated system that handles the heavy lifting with relatively little hand-holding required by us mortals.

Our Animation team has been focusing on establishing really nice idle poses that will serve as the starting and stopping points for all of our combat animations. The end result is animations across all our weapons sets that demonstrate excellent readability and also personality! The same can be said for our new fidgets and reaction animations as well. And the most recent leap forward has to do with a clever way of using additive layers for our damage animations so they now take into account both the direction and severity of an attack and then randomize the result. We really like how it's coming together and hope you will, too.

The Wasteland 3 UI departs in appearance from that of its predecessor. While the functionality has been improved in many spots, visually we've moved toward a look that is intended to provide the same information in a less "physical" shell. Part of the change is aesthetic - we tie into the game's themes with shades of blue and with hints at ice and frost. Beyond that, we're keeping the interface elements clean and easier to read. We've established our visual language and now it is simply a matter of executing on the plan.

Across the whole project, the excellent pace of art creation in the last several months has been exhilarating and positions us well to dive into the part of the project I like best - that time after Alpha where our focus shifts from getting things in and functional to making things beautiful! Things like the Meat Clown!

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Gameinformer checked out Underworld Ascendant:

Underworld Ascendant

Choosing Your Own Path In The Abyss

Underworld Ascendant is a game that, for better or worse, has the chains of history shackled to it. The new immersive sim from OtherSide Entertainment is a spiritual successor to Ultima Underworld, a 1992 game by many of the same developers who were more than happy to explain that it is often considered the first ever first-person action game. With that kind of precedent, the kind of pressure Underworld Ascendant is under starts to take form, though the game definitely seems willing and able to hold that weight.

To say the gameplay in Underworld Ascendant is player-authored might be selling it short. When we talked to OtherSide Entertainment cofounder and immersive sim luminary Paul Neurath earlier this year, he emphasized a desire to take the immersive sim genre further beyond its limitations. Circumventing limitations is the underlying foundation of the genre, after all.

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Thanks Farflame!

Farflame spotted some Conan Exiles previews:

Gamereactor: Conan Exiles - A Sneak Peek at Funcom's Future

COGconnected: Conan Exiles is Rich, Barbaric and Dripping With Potential

PCGamesN: Conan Exiles gets a volcano with its full release next month

The Express has reviewed the J-RPG Ni No Kuni 2:

Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom review: RPG series soars to new heights on PS4

Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is a charming RPG that successfully brings together lots of different ideas.

Ni No Kuni 2 Revenant Kingdom is out now on PS4 and PC.

Developed by legendary studio Level-5, the follow-up to the PS3's Wrath of the White Witch is positively bursting with fresh ideas.

The game revolves around a young ruler named Evan, who sets out to found a new kingdom after falling foul of a coup.

But there's more to Ni No Kuni 2 than wondering from village to village battling monsters and exploring dungeons.

You'll have to expand and manage your kingdom, recruit citizens, fight in large-scale skirmishes and much more.

Does Ni No Kuni 2 successfully integrate all of these different gameplay ideas? Check out our review gallery to find out more...

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Score: 5/5 - Masterpiece

The Geekiary has reviewed Azure Saga: Pathfinder:

Azure Saga: Pathfinder – Review: Blending Sci-Fi And Fantasy In An Enjoyable RPG

Azure Saga: Pathfinder, while bringing nothing new to the RPG genre, still offers beautiful graphics, an interesting story, and simple yet fun gameplay mechanics to keep you busy for hours.

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The combat system is easy to understand and is turn-based. Each character has specific skills. You can create a party of three, utilizing specific skills to take down enemies. Depending on the characters in your party, there’s a lot for you to choose from. You can go for physical attacks, various spells, taunts, and debuffs to create a winning strategy. Combining certain abilities unlocks powerful combo attacks. Every character also has a Fury attack which you can use when their Fury meter is full. Leveling up characters unlocks passive skills. You’re also allowed to use Items during battle. Characters can also wear certain items to increase their stats.

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The J-RPG Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA has been released today:

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA - Opening Movie Trailer

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Julian Gollop presented Phoenix Point at EGX Rezzed recently.

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X-Com creator Julian Gollop demonstrates new Turn-Based Tactical Game, Phoenix Point. -- EGX Rezzed gathers together the best PC, indie & console games for your enjoyment. With a strong focus on indie titles, in many cases you'll be able to chat with the game creators as you play. We also have presentations from world-renowned game designers, the GamesIndustry.biz Career Fair, tabletop games and loads more. -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/egx

DSOGaming reports on a new historically inspired open world RPG called Knights of Light.

Rumbling Games Studio is working on a new open world third-person action adventure game that is set during the medieval era, called Knights of Light. The game takes place during the battles between the Sasanian Empire and Arab forces and its main character will be based on a historical figure.

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Kordanor spotted an interesting Kickstarter update for Xenonauts 2:

Xenonauts-2 April & Kickstarter Update

This update will cover what we've been working on in the last two months, and our plans for our Kickstarter - which is provisionally expected to happen on 4th May. Our plans for the Kickstarter are summarized in brief at the bottom of this article but there'll be a proper announcement and full details of what we're planning in the near future.

The most visible thing we've produced in the past two months has been the new map in the public builds, which I consider a significant step up in visual quality from what we had before. Our plan is to use that map in our Kickstarter public build demo and we've been iterating and refining it with the subsequent releases - it's now on its third incarnation and we've got another couple of builds before the Kickstarter date for us to make more progress. If you're reading this and haven't yet played the new map, it'd be great if you could give it a try and then give us some feedback on the experience because we're hoping a lot of people will play the build during the Kickstarter and we want to make as good an impression as possible!

Less visible but no less important has been our work on the strategy layer. I think we've now pretty much reached the point where Xenonauts-2 is playable as a game (at least in the early stages of the invasion). Obviously the functionality and visuals are still very rough in certain areas and we've got a lot more work to do before we can call it a finished product, but about a month ago I finally had the lightbulb moment where I realized that I was actually playing the game and making decisions and having fun. It's not a good game yet, but it's definitely a game, and I consider that a pretty big milestone.

We've also made enough progress with the level editor and game tiles that we've nailed down the all the different combat map biomes we're going to support and which mission types each will be used for. We've also started blocking out one or two example maps in each biome to give us a better idea of what art assets we'll need by the end of the project, so I've been doing a lot of map design recently. Some of these maps look quite polished whilst other ones still look pretty primitive, but having a "proper" map to play for each mission makes properly testing the game much more efficient even if the maps repeat quickly and some of them don't look great.

The mission types we settled on are:

• UFO Crash Site: these take place in wilderness areas with only a few buildings, and are good for getting research artifacts and Alloys
• Abduction Missions: these take place in isolated inhabited areas with densely packed buildings such as farms  / polar outposts / dockyards etc, and allow you to capture Alenium
• DEFCON / VIP Elimination: a new mission type against human opponents where you have to capture / kill a VIP in order to lower global tensions, but you suffer relations penalties in the region based on how many people you kill (stunning them is fine). These take place in either a NATO or Soviet military base.
• Terror Attack: very similar to X1, still takes place in either a NATO or Soviet town
• Alien Base Attack: as in X1
• Xenonaut Base Defence: broadly the same as in X1 (although there's a few differences that aren't worth explaining until everyone understands how the new Geoscape works!)

As you can see all the familiar faces from X1 have returned, with the "standard" missions split out into the fairly open Crash Sites and much denser Abduction missions that have slightly different strategic goals (Alloys are good for mass-producing weaker advanced tech, whereas Alenium is used to "power-up" individual items) and the addition of the DEFCON mission to spice things up a bit.

The biomes we settled on are:

• Polar / Research Outpost
• Boreal / Logging Camp
• Temperate / Farm
• Tropical / Dockyard
• Arid / Village
• Desert / Junkyard
• NATO Town / Military Base
• Soviet Town / Military Base
• Alien Base
• Xenonaut Base

There's not a 1-to-1 mapping versus what we had in the first game (e.g. the Farm was its own tileset and the military base was part of the Desert tileset in X1), I think we'll have quite a lot more map than X1 variety once the game is finished. We've produced quite a lot of assets since the start of the project and we're still in the process of sorting and retouching the older stuff as we set up each new biome, but I think things are coming together nicely.

Finally, the Kickstarter - as mentioned at the top of the post we're planning to launch this on Friday 4th May (although as always this may slip a little). This will be your first chance to buy the game and the full game including the strategy layer will be available to play at the end of the Kickstarter, assuming you've backed at the appropriate tier.

I'm working on the Kickstarter page and the reward structure at the moment and I'll hopefully post that up for general comment in the next couple of weeks as it's always useful to have community feedback on that sort of thing. A few key things to mention:

• We're not planning any physical rewards because unfortunately we don't actually make any profit from them and organising the production / shipping is very time consuming, and I'd rather spend that time polishing the game instead
• $25 gets you a copy of Xenonauts-2 on Steam / GOG when we launch into Early Access (planned for three months after the end of the Kickstarter)
• $35 also gives you access to the closed beta which will start immediately after the end of the Kickstarter (this is limited to 2000 backers)
• The higher reward tiers get you closed beta access plus an additional key of X2, a custom soldier with a portrait from our portrait editor, and eventually a unique portrait painted from a photo of you by our portrait artist

I'll hopefully be posting up a version of the custom portrait editor for people to play with and give us feedback on in our Kickstarter discussion thread, which I'll probably put up next week.

The $35 reward tier exists because the game is going to be rather rough in the closed beta period, so we want to limit it to the people who are most interested in the project and prepared to give us useful feedback. What I want to avoid is too many people seeing the game in its worst form and having lots of people bounce off it; I expect us to make a LOT of progress in three months in terms of gameplay balance and visual polish and usability. Personally I don't think asking the average backer to wait three months after the end of the Kickstarter is unreasonable, but I also know that many people have a strong reaction to being asked to pay extra to get the earliest access to a game (although I feel it's become the norm these days).

Sirius Gaming reviewed the survival management game Dead In Vinland:

Dead in Vinland Review – Settle, Develop, and Fight to Survive!

As what Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering”. In the case of Dead in Vinland, you have a whole Norse family to deal with. You go through each day trying to figure out why they ended up in this weird hell hole and figure out how they will survive.

Dead in Vinland is a survival management game with RPG and adventure elements. The “Dead in” part of the name is due to it being the sequel/prequel/spin-off to Dead In Bermuda which is a good game in its own right. It is 2D and much of the game is turn-based. The game gives you a lot of options while you try to make the best of what you’ve got.

The story of Dead in Vinland is about a family of Vikings that was ambushed. The family barely manages to escape in a boat. They weathered a storm while out in the sea. When all seemed lost, they landed on the shore of some island. With renewed determination to live, they set out to stay alive no matter what happens.
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At first, I didn’t really like the art style. However, it grew on me as I kept playing. It was a good contrast to the background. I also realized how expressive the faces were and the attention to detail it had for all the characters that you unlock. I liked the transition effects between the different times of the day and the effects during combat.

About the banter between your characters, it’s as mature as you can get. It’s not truly ye olde English and not boring either. I can see how some people will get offended but it’s all about how you play the game!

I love how the decision making is crucial to all aspects of the game, being it during combat, during harvesting, gathering, exploring, everything! I just hope that they make an option to skip the first cut scene and fast forward through scenes you have unlocked or read before, just like in visual novels.

Dead in Vinland is fun, engaging, complex and totally worth your money.

Score: 8/10 - Great

GOG tweeted that they are holding a most wishlisted games deal on Monday.

Many out of ten gamers agree: a healthy wishlist means a happy lifestyle. Especially on Monday. Here's why:
💜We're granting thousands of wishes to GOG users for #free!
❤️The most wishlisted games will get super cheap!

Awesome, right? But we're not mind readers, so you know... pic.twitter.com/7ZcmdrOlkp

— GOG.com (@GOGcom) April 13, 2018

A new update explains that the expansion content will connect with the existing areas in Underrail.

The Rig

Friday, 13 April 2018 12:36

Hi guys, here's a quick update on what we've been up to in the past few months.

Underrail - Lower Caves Global Map

In order to wrap up the geographical consistency of the base game, we had to create a number of water maps that connect SGS, Junkyard, Core City, Camp Hathor, and the Black Sea. In the expansion the player will be able to traverse and explore these maps with his jet ski, but he won't be the only one as a number of factions also utilize these waters, such as Protectorate, Black Eels, and Black Sea pirates. Also encounters with random sea bandits are not uncommon.

Underrail - The Rig
Underrail - Scrappy Narrow
Underrail - Port Zenith

The most powerful naval faction in the South Underrail is, of course, the Black Eels. Their naval platform The Rig is perfectly positioned to facilitate the trade between different stations as well as their own scrap exporting business. The Rig is also used to control the central body of water of the Lower Caves in order to fend off pirates. This place will be vital for pirate missions that the player will be able to take part in if he chooses to ally with the them in the expansion.

The Rig missions are not 100% complete yet, but will be soon. After that we'll be returning to the Black Sea to wrap up and polish off the maps we made so far and integrate them into the global map. And then we still have two more areas to develop - the villages of the savage natives and the final dungeon.

Let us know how you like the aesthetics of the new areas.

Cheers.

As shared by 'you' a new trailer for Underworld Ascendant has been released.

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Discover The Stygian Abyss! Underworld Ascendant’s newly released trailer gives fans a deeper look into the game’s deadly environment, featuring panoramic shots of dungeon-esque surroundings and bubbling magma – not to mention varying weapons and skill sets players will have at their disposal to cleverly best lurking creatures and overcome physics-based traps. Featuring in-game character, enigmatic advisor Cabirus (Stephen Russell - Thief) and the voice of rogish ally Aelita (Fryda Wolff - XCOM 2, Fallout 4) – it shows off unique gameplay in the highly interactive dungeon, The Stygian Abyss. Coming to Steam 2018

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