Couchpotato's Random RPG News

You know that Spring has sprung when Winter withers and Daffodils dally daily with boisterous bees. It’s the sensational season of fabulous flowers flowing in the blowing, blustering breeze. There’s no snow so go enjoy the show… it’s a Spring thing. Have a Spring fling!

But what has this got to do with games? Well, if Spring has sprung, then Summer will soon sizzle. Summer Daze at Hero-U is on its way. For next Summer, that is. Games grow slowly.

Summer Daze is a interactive adventure tale set the semester before Shawn finds his way to the Hero University. The Summer session is almost over and the Harvest Festival is approaching. Somebody has to be in charge of making sure the festival is a success – whether they want to or not.

You get to play as either a Rogue or a Wizard who is assigned the task of running the festival. There are other students at the school who may or may not help you. You need to find ways to recruit them to your team. It’s all about finding friends, fixing a festival, and having fun.

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The creator of Cyberpunk 2020, Mike Pondsmith, took to Reddit to dispel rumours that Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in a different timeline.

“There’s still an incorrect interview floating around the interwebs that states that Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk 2020 are separate timelines,” Pondsmith posted.

“To clear this up, I am posting RIGHT HERE AND NOW that the timeline is unified, with the path moving from Cyberpunk 2013 thru Cyberpunk 2020, then through Cyberpunk RED and up to Cyberpunk 2077.”

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Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a game that a lot of fans have been looking forward to. Powered by the Dragon Engine, the game’s PC version was handled by QLOC so it’s time now to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.

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Watchers! Josh Sawyer would like to cordially invite you to Patch 5.0, which brings turn-based mode out of beta, several bug fixes, some new features, and the glorious return of the Ultimate Challenge!

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The holy sword that sealed away an ominous power has been drawn out and darkness starts to spill out across the land, mutating people into monsters. The four Tetrarch heroes of ancient times will meet a new band of brave warriors to slash through the darkness with the light of courage! What will they find beyond the chaos?

This is a full-fledged fantasy RPG with thrilling turn-based battles. Throw yourself into command battles with up to 10 allies and your own strategy using skill sets. The beautiful pixel animation and art aren't just present in combats but also while you adventure around the expansive openworld or dungeons! Go on treasure hunting to boost your status, take on side quests and speed up battles to become the legendary new hero! A grand fantasy tale is ready for you to save the world!

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Tremere were not allowed in significant numbers throughout Seattle's history, though that has changed recently. After the fall of the Pyramid, Tremere have sought allies wherever they can find them, offering services and secrets that were once only kept to themselves. At least a few Tremere have managed to settle in the Pacific Northwest. However, not all Kindred in Seattle warmly welcome the warlocks into their city, citing historical precedent and general distrust of their ways. Still, the blood magic of the Tremere cannot be denied as a force to be respected. Whether or not the Tremere are here to stay is another matter entirely…

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Battle Brothers is a strategic tactical RPG where we are at the head of a mercenary company that goes around the world accepting missions and facing often impossible battles. A unique style and an enhanced level of challenge are the elements that I personally appreciated the most.

Over the years, the Overhype Studios project has received many updates and new DLCs that have made it increasingly rich in content and new mechanics and at the new DLC Warriors of The North release, scheduled for May 9, 2019, we had a chat with Jan Taaks managing director at Overhype Studios.

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It would be impossible for an RPG to replicate the severity of these consequences as players would need to survive until the very end. There could be four or five different endings to the game, but that wouldn’t spare the player from being cloaked in plot armour.

Rather than an RPG, the only sort of game that could capture the spirit of Game Of Thrones is something aching to Heavy Rain; a narrative-driven adventure-style title where numerous protagonists can die at any time and therefore drastically change the story. This wouldn’t be as appealing as an open-world RPG where players can wander about the entirety of Westeros, but it’d be truer to what the novels and the series’ early years were about.

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While it is most likely that both EA and BioWare will look to bury Anthem sometime soon and focus on what’s next, they should really take a look at what could be salvaged from this project. If anything has taught us in the past is that for live service games to work, you need to have a dedicated fan base and time to develop the groundwork of these experiences and cannot expect them to grow overnight. By allowing these games to flourish and to become the title that people have asked for from the beginning with their feedback only then would have Anthem been something worth investing into and the biggest mistake that both BioWare and the players can do is to let this title be remembered as a cautionary tale instead of something that definitely could have been something far greater.

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Anniversary Update – Sunken City, Scorpion Den, Content Revamp and More This week we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of the full release of Conan Exiles. To mark the occasion, we’re rolling out the Anniversary Update!

This update has been available on our Testlive branch for a couple of weeks and now we’re finally ready to roll it out to the live branch. This free update adds a whole new dungeon to the game, a new mini-dungeon, new types of pets, and a full revamp of several NPC settlements and cities. This revamp includes population changes, new bosses, and new loot and rewards for those of you brave enough to challenge these new foes.

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The crossroads has received some changes, and while you're there look out for dark tunnels…

A large new area features an all new environment, new creature types, new items and takes advantage of various new level building and engine features. We won't spoil anything, but we hope you enjoy the atmosphere and different pace of gameplay we've introduced here. This also reveals important aspects of the game world.

This level represents the final core set of assets required to complete the game, built using new tools and overcoming various development challenges. This is the first of multiple of its kind, which will begin to play an important role. In coming updates we'll be adding more features, mechanics and creatures to the body of content we're introducing here.

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We're still working on animations and armor, I doubt we'd be able to to wrap it all up before Aug. Ivan's doing a bit better but he has a long way to go before he fully recovers. He'll focus on animations from now on and all armor and clothing tasks will be handled by Maria, our new armor specialist (you can see some of her work in the previous update). We've been working with her for a while and I hope she'll stick around as our next project will be even more "armor-intensive".

In the meantime our programmers have improved the building interior system and map navigation, and added character outlines in combat (you can turn them off if you don't like them) and when your character is blocked by an object or wall. All weapon meshes are in now so each weapon has a unique model. Oscar is working on the Pit, which looks better and better (not to mention bigger) so the delay on one front doesn't affect the rest of the team's progress.

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In the words of Omar Bradley, “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics”. So buckle up for some serious professional talk, because in this week’s blog we'll be covering supply in Bannerlord -- both how to get the food and other materials that you need, and how to deny them to your enemy!

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We sit down with Justin Ma and Matthew Davis of Subset Games to talk about the design of their breakthrough hit FTL: Faster Than Light and their sophomore effort Into The Breach.

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Masquerada is a single-player tactical RPG set in a Renaissance-inspired city of magic, where real-time combat can be paused to set up elemental combos powered by Venetian-styled masks. Come for gorgeous hand-drawn art, and stay for a thoughtful, fully-voiced tale of intrigue & tragedy featuring Matthew Mercer, Jennifer Hale and more.

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Stardock released a major update to its classic fantasy strategy game, Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes today. The new version incorporates many months of fixes, performance optimizations, AI enhancements, balance tweaks and a host of other improvements.

We are really happy to finally be able to get this update out to the fan community. We've been making improvements to the game for many months and been waiting until it reached a critical mass of updates to get it out there.

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May 8, 2019 - Warhorse Studios and Deep Silver announced today that A Woman’s Lot, the fourth expansion for the million-selling medieval roleplaying Game Kingdom Come: Deliverance, will be released on May 28. In order to deliver the highest quality for all players, the release of the console version of this DLC, as well as the Kingdom Come: Deliverance Royal Edition will hit stores both digital and physical on June 11. The Royal Edition includes the base game in its enhanced version as well as all free and paid DLCs released so far.

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Announced at Microsoft‘s E3 2014 media showcase, Scalebound was to be the latest character action game from Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya. Players were to assume the role of Drew, a sword-wielding hero able to issue commands to his dragon companion.

The game was described as a big challenge for Platinum, with the studio delving into genres it was unfamiliar with, such as role-playing games, for influence.

But following a lengthy period in development, Microsoft announced Scalebound’s cancellation in 2017.

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As far as hybrid-genre action games go, Deus Ex is a role playing franchise that deals with relatable themes, especially today, as concerns about the future and thoughts of dystopia may mount. With the difficulty of life in general, the idea found in Deus Ex that conspiracies abound in life, itself already likely depending on whom you speak to, easily finds cache amongst players skeptical about the world around them. But just what is Deus Ex? Why haven’t we heard of anything from the franchise in a couple of years?

Even if you “never asked for this,” we would like to present you with our feature on- what the hell happened to Deus Ex?

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Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord is one of the most anticipated games for several years running now. Warband, the biggest entry in the franchise, has a huge following even today and people have been waiting for a proper new entry in the saga for years. Considering Bannerlord was first announced way back in 2012, I’d say they have been more than patient. Now that it seems that the beta for Bannerlord might be approaching, it may be useful to recap what we know so far about the game.

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The game industry has plenty of horror stories about crunch and poor work/life balance in general -- so it's good to hear a game dev talk about attaining success without sacrificing a studio's collective health and well-being.

Guillaume Boucher-Vidal is CEO at Quebec-based Nine Dots, which recently released the ambitious open world RPG Outward. Games in this genre often require large teams working extra hours at some point in development. But Nine Dots was able to make Outward with 10-15 people, and according to Boucher-Vidal, zero crunch.

And by all indications, it's a commercial success.

"The two main elements that made it possible to make a large game world might sound super obvious, but it's pre-production and not crunching. Those are the main two important elements," he said during a recent GDC Twitch stream.

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We are pleased to announce WARHAMMER 40,000: INQUISITOR – PROPHECY, a stand-alone expansion pack for Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr. It is a brand new action-RPG experience in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and although Inquisitor – Martyr is not required to play, the story is designed to fit both for new and for returning players.

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I’d like to think that my enthusiasm for Dragon Commander at that dinner back in 2016 is the reason behind Divinity: Fallen Heroes’ creation. But let’s face it, the only thing more stupid than that line of thinking is trying to organise a legion of steam-powered tanks while simultaneously controlling a jetpack-powered dragon.

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We want the player to feel like they’re completing missions and experiencing some narrative in between that bring the story forward and that they know that their decisions are still making a big impact. They don’t need to go somewhere to find out where this person lives or to find out where the next part of the puzzle is.

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Deck 13’s action-RPG is set in a world where ripping apart cyborgs to obtain their mechanical parts so you can upgrade your own heavy-grade exoskeleton is as routine as having cereal for breakfast. It’s the only way you’re able to fight through the game’s future vision of Earth after it has suffered an ecological collapse, brought on by the effects of pollution and other strains caused by the swelling human population.

In the first Surge game, the megacorp CREO was trying to restore the planet back to health with a number of nanobot-loaded rockets that were blasted into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that plan failed, as the nanobots instead made every technologically enhanced human crazy – a big problem when mechanical body augmentation is the norm. The Surge 2 winds time forward two months after the incident, letting us escape the confines of the first game’s factory and explore what’s left of the outside world.

Your new stomping ground is Jericho City, and it is, predictably, in ruins. But it’s far from abandoned as it’s under the control of an organisation called A.I.D, which is trying to prevent further spread of the techno virus by placing the whole city under strict quarantine. The upgrade from a factory to an entire city is the result of Deck 13 Wanting to push every feature of The Surge further, starting with vastly expanding the world.

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Find out more about the daemons you'll be slaying on your journey in Warhammer: Chaosbane. Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle, all the Chaos Gods have rallied their forces to answer the call to arms on June 4th. See you in Kislev!

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Welcome to Grim Misadventures!

We hope you are thoroughly enjoying the visual updates of v1.1.2.0. We may actually sneak a few more in next patch.

Speaking of the next update, that’s hot in the works over here at Crate, so we’d like to give you a deeper look into what you can look forward to with v1.1.3.0!

First off, this update is actually much closer than you might expect as we’ve been chipping away at it while developing V1.1.2.0. So expect these changes to go into playtesting posthaste, and then soon after that it will be in your hands!

The focus of V1.1.3.0 is to fill in some gaps that currently exist in our selection of sets, and to provide you with some hot new Illusionist options of course!

This update will introduce twenty new items, distributed across five new Legendary quality sets, and you can take a look at them all below!

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SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest will be available May 28th! Do I think we're superior? What a crude question. What we are is different. You, you're an empire of moths, each flapping off on its own, searching for the light - we're hornets, part of a hive. Yes, on our own, you might match us; three of yours against three of ours, and we'll see how the dice fall. A swarm, General, that's what we are: our Sleepers will bleed you for our Twisted feed off your blood… all the while our harvesters reap the souls of your fallen and our emissaries reanimate their hulls as our servants. But above all: You serve yourself. We serve something greater.

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In this 2019 GDC talk, Larian Studios' Swen Vincke takes a look at all the strategies employed to make Divinity: Original Sin 2 a better game than Divinity: Original Sin 1, and how they turned out.

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For this update, we want to address more specific dates relating to our delays, while at the same time giving our backers a much better idea of what to expect. For this gameplay video, we will be focusing on the dialogue and story aspects of Black Geyser, and the systems throughout the game by which players will be able to influence their surroundings while interacting with NPCs. All of the footage you will see in this video is part of the Black Geyser Backer Beta; backers who have pledged for a tier that includes this reward will be able to play through the same sequence of events that we choose in the video, as well as a lot of content before and after what you will see here. The options that go unselected are things our beta backers can choose in the Beta, as they are possible routes in the conversation and may lead to very different results than those you see in this quest.

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Release date for Content Patch 1

The internal date for Content Patch 1 release was set to May 30th. After reviewing our progress and considering the amount of work still needed for the 20 cutscenes and 46 dynamic scenes associated with the Act I, we have decided to set the release date for Content Patch 1 to June 13, 2019. We want to offer you a good game experience and not just settle with an overall “good enough”.

We plan to use this additional time to make the game experience even better by adding a professional voice over for the English version.

Content Patch 1 is a very important release for us and we want to make things right.

Once again, we want to thank you for your support. See you next week for more information about our progress!

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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

One part of game development that is often overlooked or undervalued is Quality Assurance (QA). Testing a game is an integral part of the development process, and with a game of the scale of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, the testing process is paramount in ensuring that the many different features and systems, that more often than not are intertwined and dependant on each other, work as intended to provide players with a fun and enjoyable experience. In this week’s blog, we talk with one of the people responsible for making sure that the game meets the standards that both we and our players expect, QA Tester, Onurcan Dönmez.

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Shane and Matt Barton of Matt Chat celebrate the release of their book Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games 2nd Edition by, what else, talking CRPGs as they break down their favorite CRPGs, their biggest disappointments in the genre and their most anticipated upcoming game! Plus: when did Bioware first disappoint Shane, trolleys vs. buggies, how do you say renaissance, and Survivor: Westeros update.

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Who were the people behind the games at Telltale, and how did its sudden closure affect them? We talk to four former Telltale Games employees about the highs and lows of their time at the studio, and the human cost of games development.

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The magic torches are lit, the monsters are ravenous, and the kingdom is waiting for a new hero. Experience the legendary Wizardry series’ modern rebirth as you traverse perilous dungeons and take on hordes of fantastic enemies. Are you up to the challenge?

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The break doesn't sound amicable. Here's how CI Games announced it in a Polish press release on Wednesday, 15th May (translated for Eurogamer by Daniel Kłosiński - thank you).

"The termination of the agreement was submitted due to inadequate execution by Defiant [of] a key work stage (milestone no. 11), a so-called vertical slice. The quality of the work was lower than expected by the company, as precisely described in the agreement, despite three calls to improve the quality of this stage of work."

Defiant Studios, however, doesn't agree, and was less than thrilled by the portrayal.

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Narrated gameplay footage from early access "Backer Build 4" of Phoenix Point. A quick play-through in one of three different mission scenarios showcased at the EGX Rezzed show in London in April 2019.

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It's been a few months since the release of Outward, an RPG survival game that doesn't hold your hand. What have players on Steam said about it so far? Here's a roundup of some great quotes!

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Couchpotato said:

George R.R. Martin: “I’ve consulted on a video game out of Japan” - Gematsu

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SpoonFULL said:

So From have been working with GRR Martin for three years on an open-world rpg. Excited but bet it will be a Sony PS5 exclusive!

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