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Untitled Goose Game and Slay the Spire lead the nominees at 2020 IGF Awards
The Independent Games Festival, the scrappier sibling to the Game Developer Conference, has announced the nominees for this year’s Independent Games Festival Awards.
Not surprisingly, House House’s Untitled Goose Game stole the spotlight, earning two total nominations (for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize” and “Excellence In Audio”). However, it was Die Gute Fabrik’s Mutazione that lead the pack. In addition to a nomination for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize,” the mutant soap opera is also in competition for “Excellence In Visual Art,” “Excellence In Audio,” and “Excellence In Narrative.”
Other games in the running for the IGF’s top prize this year are Mega Crit’s Slay the Spire, Adam Robinson-Yu’s A Short Hike, Zachtronics’s Eliza, and Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s Anodyne 2: Return to Dust.
The winners of the Independent Games Festival Awards will be revealed on Wednesday, March 18, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. League of Geeks’s Trent Kusters will serve as the host of the ceremony, which will be livestreamed for viewers at home on the GDC’s Twitch channel.
The complete list of nominees (and Honorable Mentions) from the 2020 Independent Games Festival Awards can be found after the break. (more…)
Dodge Roll confirms that Exit the Gungeon will be released for PC and consoles in Early 2020
Dodge Roll Games started 2020 off with a big news drop (on Twitter) about all their current and upcoming projects.
First up, Exit the Gungeon will escape its exclusivity deal with Apple Arcade and make its way to “PC and consoles” in Early 2020. The developer didn’t specify which consoles the game would appear on, but Enter the Gungeon has found a lot of success on the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, so a wide release strategy seems likely for this pseudo-sequel.
Speaking of Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll also announced that their first game has now sold more than three million copies across all platforms. Congratulations to the team on reaching that milestone.
Finally, Dodge Roll revealed that Enter the Gungeon: House of the Gundead, a lightgun-powered arcade cabinet developed by Griffin Aerotech, will also be available in Early 2020. The spinoff will offer two-player simultaneous shooting against the “adorable” Gundead horde when it launches sometime in the next few months.
Dodge Roll recently overhauled their website at EnterTheGungeon.com, and you’ll be able to find future updates about all of these games over there.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Enter the Gungeon, Exit the Gungeon
Sony unveils logo for PlayStation 5
Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s President and CEO, took the stage at CES yesterday to talk a bit about the PlayStation 5. During his speech, the executive even unveiled the console’s logo… and it looks about how you’d expect.
But if you’re looking for more substantial PS5 news, you’re going to have to keep waiting. Though Ryan did reconfirm that the console will launch this Fall, and he briefly mentioned that the PS5 will support 3D Audio Sound, Haptic/Adaptive Triggers, Hardware-Based Ray Tracing, an Ultra High Speed SSD, and an Ultra HD Disc Drive.
Ryan actually had more to say about the PS4, and he was happy to report some great numbers for Sony. More than 106 million PS4 consoles have been sold since its launch in 2013, along with 1.15 billion games (for an average, or tie ratio, of 10.84 per console). Sony has also sold more than five million PlayStation VR headsets since the peripheral debuted in 2016. Finally, Ryan revealed that Sony has signed up more than 38.8 million users for their PlayStation Plus subscription service.
Will the PS5 be able to match those figures? Perhaps, but we’ll have to wait until this year to learn more about the next-generation console.
NIS America will release Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories on April 7
NIS America has announced that Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories will be released for the PC, PS4, and Switch on April 7. If you’re unfamiliar with the Disaster Report series, the publisher also passed along a few new details about the game, which was originally released in Japan in 2018:
About Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories
A calm summer day turns into catastrophe when a massive earthquake strikes your city, throwing buildings and lives into chaos. In order to survive, you must navigate familiar locations under unfamiliar circumstances. The fellow survivors you meet and crucial decisions you make will affect the course of your experience and ultimately determine how your journey through this crisis will end.Features
- Stop! Think! Then Act! – Evaluate each perilous situation and make decisions that will impact your own safety as well as that of others.
- Torn From the Headlines – Interact with realistic scenarios within a Japanese city devastated by an earthquake, including scenarios designed in collaboration with the Kobe City Fire Bureau.
- Danger Around Every Corner – Navigate a multitude of crises—from collapsing buildings to raging fires—in a city aplomb with peril.
The Disaster Report series has had something of a shaky history in the US (the third game was never released outside of Japan), but hardcore fans will be able to pick up a special Limited Edition of Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories for the PS4 and Switch. The Limited Edition will be available exclusively through the NIS America Store, and include a copy of the game, the Official Soundtrack, an Emergency Backpack, and an Identification Tag.
In addition to announcing a release date and the Limited Edition, NIS America also revealed a brand new Gameplay Trailer for the survival sim, and it’s been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Switch
Tagged Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories
Space Invaders: Invincible Collection launches in Japan on March 26… here’s a new trailer
While Space Invaders found fame all across the world, it was an absolute phenomenon in its homeland of Japan. Aside from making bucketfuls of money for Taito, it was also believed that Japanese fans were causing a monetary shortage by pumping coins into the game cabinets at such a furious rate.
Thankfully, you won’t need to continuously feed coins into an arcade cabinet to play the upcoming Space Invaders: Invincible Collection. Set to launch for the Switch in Japan on March 26, the Invincible Collection will bring the original Space Invaders, and its “Color Version” variant, to Nintendo’s hybrid console, along with several other sequels and spinoffs.
The Standard Edition will come packed with 1979’s Space Invaders Part II, 1990’s Majestic Twelve: The Space Invaders Part IV, 1991’s Super Space Invaders ’91, 2008’s Space Invaders Extreme, 2017’s Arkanoid Vs Space Invaders, and 2018’s Space Invaders Gigamax 4 SE.
A Special Edition planned for launch the same day will include three additional games (1979’s Lunar Rescue, 1980’s Space Cyclone, and 1994’s Space Invaders DX), as well as a huge amount of physical goodies (a copy of the Space Invaders board game, an artbook, a drawstring bag, and more).
A North American release for Space Invaders: Invincible Collection has yet to be announced, but the compilation’s first trailer has been embedded above.
Posted in News, Switch
Tagged Arkanoid Vs Space Invaders, Space Invaders
Say hello to Oddity, an upcoming RPG that was inspired by Earthbound
Shigesato Itoi’s Mother 2 (better known as EarthBound in the US) has inspired countless retro-styled RPGs over the years, and it looks like the franchise will continue to motivate game developers as we enter the third decade of the 2000s.
The word “decade” in that last paragraph is rather fitting, as that’s about how long an unofficial sequel known as Mother 4 has been in development by a group of fans that goes by The Mother 4 Team. Yesterday, they confirmed that their fangame will now stand on its own as an original RPG known as Oddity.
Set in the swingin’ seventies, Oddity features a look that is clearly inspired by EarthBound, as well as a quirky cast of characters that just might end up saving the world:
Oddity is a surreal urban fantasy role playing game set in the Seventies. Play as Travis Fields, an ordinary boy who leaves home in a bid to save the world Travis takes to the field armed with a baseball bat and pellet gun… Along with powers he’s only now discovering. It might have something to do with that “Gate” thing that blew up on an impromptu camping trip…
…Whatever the case, the world’s in danger! People are crabby, demons run amok, the moon’s covered in creepy ooze, a bear did something… And to top it all off, there’s even a secret society called the “Modern Men” popping up lately. They might be behind all the recent kidnappings… But don’t worry! You’ll make plenty of friends as you fight your way through this weird and groovy world!
Oddity is currently in development for the PC, and it’ll be released “when it’s ready,” which hopefully won’t take another decade.
Travis Knight is no longer directing Sony’s film adaptation of Uncharted
Another One Bites the Dust!
Another One Bites the Dust!
Owwwwww!
Another One Bites the Dust!
Hey Hey!
Another One Bites the Dust!
Heeeeeeeeyyy!
Deadline is reporting that yet another director has been dropped from Sony Pictures’s film adaptation of Uncharted. This time around, Bumblebee‘s Travis Knight has been ousted from the position due to scheduling conflicts caused by star Tom Holland’s participation in the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home sequel:
Uncharted extends Holland’s relationship with the studio. It remains a priority project for the studio, which has seen several directors come and go. The actor will next shoot the next Spider-Man installment in the summer.
Even with this setback, Holland is still set to star as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted film, which will serve as a prequel to the video game franchise. Mark Wahlberg is also still under contract to portray Drake’s mentor, Victor “Sully” Sullivan. However, the film’s previously-announced December 2020 release date has been pushed back yet again as Sony renews their search for a director willing to take it on.
Knight is the sixth director to leave the Uncharted adaptation, and it’s very possible I already made that Queen joke up top in a previous update to this story.
Posted in News, PS3, PS4
Tagged Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Untitled Goose Game stole our hearts in 2019… and sold more than one million copies
Thanks to fun gameplay, a beautiful art style, and an absolutely inspired title choice, House House’s Untitled Goose Game managed to charm the entire Internet in 2019.
But while all the memes are nice, the game’s publisher confirmed yesterday that Untitled Goose Game also a massive hit. According to Panic’s Cabel Sasser (via Twitter), the game has sold more than one million copies in the last three months:
It seems impossible, but last week, three months after launch, Untitled Goose Game passed one million copies sold.
From the bottom of our hearts: thank you for playing our videogame.
— Cabel (@cabel) December 30, 2019
Sassler would go on to thanks the Goose’s many fans in a subsequent tweet: “The reaction was beyond anything we could have imagined. The fan art, the writing, yes the memes, protest signs, Chrissy Teigen, Muppets?! It feels once-in-a-lifetime. We hope we brought some joy into your life, because you brought so much into ours. And we’ll never forget it.”
Untitled Goose Game was originally released for the PC and Switch back in September, but the final push to become a million-seller likely came from it’s recent launch on the PS4 and Xbox One on December 17 (it was also added to the Xbox Game Pass library on the same day).
Presumably, “Sell Two Million Copies” is next on the Goose’s To-Do List.