Amphibious Narrative Adventure heading to Steam/EGS, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox Platforms
September 15th, 2021 — Smarto Club and Whitethorn Games announce their upcoming narrative adventure game Teacup will launch September 23rd on PC and consoles — help a small and shy frog on her journey to find the ingredients she needs for her tea party!
Teacup is a short and wholesome narrative adventure game with a focus on exploration and non-linear progression. You play as the titular Teacup, a shy and introverted young frog who loves drinking tea and reading. The day before she is to host a tea party at her house, she realizes she is completely out of tea, and thus must venture into the woods around her to find the herbs she needs to restock her pantry.
Explore a Beautifully Illustrated World You are free to tackle the list of ingredients Teacup must gather in any order you wish. Find your own path through the world of Little Pond.
Talk with Whimsical Animals During your adventure you will meet the charming inhabitants of the forest. Some are talkative, some are grumpy, but all of them will lend you an ear on your adventure.
Help Each Other Out Most of the animals you meet will be glad to help Teacup… in exchange for a small favor or some help. Organize a (oddly shaped) market stall, win an underwater race and more! Teacup releases later this month for $9.99 on Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. To learn more, visit:https://whitethorndigital.com/teacupTwitter:@smarto_club Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/smarto_club/
About Smarto Club We are Smarto Club, a novice but determined team of four young developers from Santiago, Chile. Our games aim to provide friendly gameplay and beautiful looking art to anyone who wishes to lose themselves in a digital world.
About Whitethorn Games We’re an indie game publisher focusing on pleasant, cozy games that can be played in pieces, that require no special skills or knowledge, and that anyone can pick up and play. We’re believers in accessibility, inclusion, and widening the audience that gets to play. We like to consider ourselves the defenders of easy games. Join in on the discussion via our Discord.
Growing Up – a story-driven, lighthearted game that cleverly incorporates RPG, strategy, and visual novel mechanics – will launch on PC on October 14th this year. The launch date on consoles and mobile will be announced in the near future.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 15th, Warsaw, Poland.
Embark on a nostalgic journey to the 90s when Dino World was screening in theaters, smartphones weren’t yet in the picture, and you were hanging out with your friends in your favorite arcade. Remember how it felt falling in love for the first time, passing your exams, going through your parents’ divorce, discovering your sexuality, trying to help a friend getting bullied at school, or meeting your first mentor who helped you choose the right path. Were you an overworked perfectionist type, a school football star trying to fulfill parental expectations, or a shy nerd with an unpopular hobby? Whatever it was, you’ll easily find either yourself or one of your childhood friends in Growing Up. Relive your life and try to guide it to where you are now. Or, reinvent your past and see how different one’s life can be depending on the decisions we make, people we meet, and things we experience.
Growing Up is a story-driven, nostalgic, lighthearted journey through the joys and hardships of life, cleverly incorporating RPG, strategy, and visual novel mechanics to deliver a one-of-a-kind gameplay experience.
Rather than following the typical protagonist story, here you’ll be shaping it with the choices you make, skills you master, the knowledge you gain, jobs you take, leisure activities you choose, friendships you cultivate, and relationships you build.
Balancing between doing well in school, meeting your parents’ expectations, working, volunteering, and simply having fun as a kid will be the key to success. Working too hard will put your mental health at risk while ignoring your responsibilities will make you perform badly on your exams and heavily impact your future.
From a branching narrative, through character customization and entertaining minigames, to complex skill trees, character development, and a whole set of colorful NPCs, Growing Up will allow you to see the beauty of life in all its complexity.
GROWING UP – MAIN FEATURES
A branching narrative. Decide on the shape of your future with every decision you make that will echo through your entire journey. What to learn, whom to hang out with, how to react in a challenging situation, where to work, what sort of charity to get involved with, etc. The choices you make will not only result in wildly different outcomes – no two playthroughs will be the same – but will also unlock new locations, characters, and certain features of future offspring.
Socially important topics. School bullying, kids with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, going through your parents’ divorce, poverty, being rejected by a group, and many more experiences we often go through in our lives are mirrored in the game.
An in-depth skill system. With more than 200 skills to acquire and master, you will have the ultimate freedom to shape your character’s future and end up with one of 42 unique careers.
A dynamic gameplay experience. Build your mind and aptitude through entertaining minigames. Master the art of scheduling your daily activities. Ace your way into the best school via challenging exams and build your character by participating in a plethora of extracurricular activities.
Character customization. Use a wide range of items, including clothing and hairstyles, to give your character a more personalized look. The skills you learn will also impact the appearance of your character’s room.
A colorful cast of 19 independent characters. The stories of the friends you meet during your journey will unfold alongside yours. Forge your relationships with them in any way your heart desires and observe the outcomes.
90s nostalgia. Lose yourself in lavishly handcrafted scenery straight from the 90s and discover all the Easter eggs and pop culture references hidden in more than 30 locations ready to explore.
An all-star team. Growing Up is a game with rich storytelling and a unique art style from an all-star team of creators, including Creative Director Daniel Sadowski (director and lead writer on Gardens Inc. & Dr. Cares series), Art Director Gracjana Zielińska (lead artist on Cinders & Solstice), Kacper Kwiatkowski (designer and writer on This War of Mine), Christian Divine (Life is Strange & Captain Spirit), Matthew Ritter (writer on Tales from the Borderlands & Twin Mirror), Emma Vieceli (comic book writer on Doctor Who, Back to the Future), and Composer Jim Guthrie (Planet Coaster & Reigns: Her Majesty).
Growing Up was recently nominated for the BitSummit International Award. The game is being developed by Vile Monarch and will launch on PC on October 14th this year. The launch date on consoles and mobile will be announced in the near future.
More information about the game can be found on Steam.
About Vile Monarch
The Monarch was born in May 2015 and instantly decided to take over the world with the tool he thought most fitting for the task – video games. These include games such as Oh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator, Weedcraft Inc, and Crush Your Enemies, that are a little bit crazy but have a LOT of personality. Vile Monarch’s games have been released on nearly every modern platform, receiving praise both from players and reviewers. Vile’s minions include ruffians partially responsible for such hits as TheWitcher 3, Hard West, and Beat Cop. To make a long story short – Vile Monarch are just a bunch of hardcore gamedev experts who know how to rock. https://vilemonarch.com/
Tribute Games’ 2D Retro Action Platformer Steel Assault Comes to Nintendo Switch & PC on September 28
MONTREAL — Sept. 15, 2021 — Tribute Games has released a new teaser trailer revealing that the ultimate retro arcade throwback platformer, Steel Assault, will launch in parallel on Nintendo Switch & PC (via Steam) on September 28.
Published by Tribute Games and developed by Zenovia Interactive, Steel Assault is a fast-paced, action-packed, 2D platformer in which players punch, whip, and zipline their way through a post-apocalyptic America. It offers a true ‘90s arcade game experience thanks to challenging gameplay tailored for a 4:3 screen resolution with optional arcade bezels. Players will be able to experience the game on “retro hard” or tone it down to a more casual platformer with a variety of different difficulty options.
Steel Assault’s official cover art, also revealed today, was made by prolific illustrator Hungry Clicker and can be seen at the end of the new teaser trailer and on the game’s Steam store page.
Tribute Games is the developer and publisher of beloved pixel games Panzer Paladin, Mercenary Kings, and Flinthook. The studio is currently developing the highly anticipated official TMNT beat-em-up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. The signing of Steel Assault in November 2020 marked Tribute Games’ debut as a publishing partner for other developers.
To learn more about Steel Assault and our other projects:
Tribute Games is a studio developing and publishing video games with a focus on pixel art and classic game design. The Montreal-based studio has been steadily creating entertaining, challenging and retro-inspired games since 2011 using modern game development processes and technology. In 2020, Tribute Games announced the start of a publishing division to help smaller developers publish their games.
ABOUT ZENOVIA INTERACTIVE
Zenovia Interactive is a small game studio currently based in New York City, founded by Sri Kankanahalli in 2019. They specialize in classic 2D genres, namely side-scrollers. Their goal is to create arcade-style games that are beautiful, vibrant, and detailed: games that the present can enjoy, and that the past would be proud of.
Beware of this über-experiment: wicked scientists enhanced Wolfenstein vibes with Duke’s crude humor. Meet Nazi Busters!
Iron Wolf Studio is proud to present Nazi Busters: a first person shooter depicting in retro style an alternate version of WW2. A dastardly mix of Duke’s off-color jokes and relentless Wolfenstein über-violence is set to receive a playable demo in 2021.
The creators of a highly realistic sim, Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter, are taking a detour and want to present WW2 events with a different spin. Man cannot live by realism alone. Nazi Busters is an FPS game, where Nazi dead bodies mix up with the hero’s one-liners so frequently, that even John Rambo himself would blush.
Nazi hordes are literally dying to eat a hail of bullets from your mighty MG42 or get BBQ’d by your trusty flamethrower. Guten Appetit! And if you really get into a blitzkrieg frenzy, you’ll soon realize that tearing out their pixelated, angular hearts is just as effective, if not even more fun. The arsenal at your disposal wouldn’t be complete without several Nazi experimental weapons, known as Wunderwaffe.
Your objective is as straight as a Luger’s barrel: kill as many Nazis as it’s humanly possible, unearth their miraculous technological wonders and change the course of history… and don’t forget to come back with a thousand Nazi scalps.
What lies in the granite corridors of Nazi bunkers?
Experience highly stylized visuals in retro aesthetic akin to Wolfenstein 3D
Listen to a mighty dose of brazen humor, reminiscent of Duke Nukem
Witness the might of the Wunderwaffe: the alternate vision of WW2 has enabled Nazis to fulfill their most whimsical ideas for experimental weaponry
Repel Nazi hordes in an explosive, blitzkrieg-like gameplay
Get to play the demo in 2021
About Iron Wolf Studio S.A.
Iron Wolf Studio S.A. was established when two separate business entities, Iron Wolf Studios and Inimages merged into one. Both companies created U-BOOT the Board Game: a unique mix of a U-Boot sim and a board game with beautifully realized physical components. The project proved to be a massive success (having been awarded with Charles S. Roberts Award: Wargame of the Year) and the studio wanted to leverage its experience in creating WW2 naval sims and take up production of fully-fledged computer sims. Destroyer: The U-boat Hunter is their first video game. At the same time, the company is open to realizing projects in other genres and strives to diversify its portfolio.
Build, design and renovate beautiful homes alone or with friends online: All-new trailer available now with demo coming to Steam Next Fest.
Richmond, VA — September 15, 2021 — Real-life home renovator and longtime game developer couple at The Isn’t Company today announced their upcoming house building PC game, Hometopia, with an official trailer.
Build, design, and renovate beautiful homes across five unique neighborhoods, or freely build dream houses and neighborhoods from scratch alone or with friends online. Hometopia is participating in the Steam Next Fest from October 1st – October 7th with a free playable demo of the game’s Sandbox building mode available on Steam.
Features:
Build entire homes from scratch – foundation to rooftops
Create homes and neighborhoods with others in online multiplayer
Play in First Person or Overview camera modes
Design furniture and change materials for everything for full customization
Grid-less designing and 360 degree item rotation
Lay out the floorplan and designate where every room goes
Create plots of any size
Build entire neighborhoods with roads, street lights, trees and more
Steam Workshop support – share your creations and upload custom items and textures
Renovate, buy and sell homes across 5 unique neighborhoods (Trailer Park, Suburb, City, Beach, Mansions) in Career mode
Free-build in creative Sandbox mode
Multiple biomes (Forest, Lakes, Desert, Beach) to select from
Thousands of items to design and build with at launch with more available through modding
Adjust time of day and sun direction to take the perfect shareable photos
Take before/after photos automatically in-game
Advanced lighting system
Build elaborate gardens and exteriors
Paint color wheel to use any color
Hometopia can be played in First Person or in an Overhead perspective and offers two different modes: Career and Sandbox.
Sandbox:
In Sandbox, build your dream home without the pressure of market conditions or the limit of resources. Create a cozy bungalow in the forest, a modern marble and glass mansion on the beach, or a massive over-the-top palace overlooking estate grounds and share your creation with the world on Steam Workshop. Need even more items to design with? Hometopia offers full modding support for limitless additions. In multiplayer, create entire neighborhoods with other players – from planning the plots and laying down roads to creating parks and designing homes – there’s no limit to the worlds you can build.
Career:
In Career mode, players renovate 30 different homes across five distinct neighborhoods that range from a run-down mobile home park to a posh beachside community with lakefront gated mansions. Buy rundown properties and fix them up to earn top dollar…after cleaning the space, start by improving the layout and flow. Think buyers in this neighborhood would prefer three bedrooms with a garage and nursery instead of a large master closet and sunroom? Use the Floorplanner tool to designate what every space in the home is intended for, then get down to renovating!
Paint the walls, install new flooring and premium appliances, put in new doors and windows, add high end fixtures, or create a beautiful outdoor space for good curb appeal. Feeling ambitious? Build out a fancy multi-car garage, expand the footprint of the home, create a third level, or even demolish the entire property and rebuild it from scratch – foundation all the way up to the roof! Stage the property from a massive collection of over 2,000 unique pieces of furniture, lighting, decor and accent pieces (or make your own unique pieces using hundreds of materials available to customize each item) before putting it on the market. Fulfill all the needs of an ever-changing market and you could have a bidding war on your hands!
“We’re a small, independent team of five, but we’ve been developing games for the past two decades,” said Alex Ahlund, founder of The Isn’t Company. “We had a lot of success with our mobile games; Design This Home and Design This Castle, attracting over 20M players and igniting our love of home design.”
He continued, “After my wife and I fully renovated our 120-year-old former fraternity house by ourselves, we knew we wanted to bring that same experience to others in a more accessible but less exhausting format. There aren’t really any games out there that let you build and renovate realistic homes from scratch with other players online, either, so we knew that was an important feature we wanted to incorporate.“
Builder. Designer. Renovator. What’s your Hometopia?
Hometopia launches in January 2022 and will be available in English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Polish.
Design your own dream home by grabbing the free demo of Hometopia on their Steam page from October 1st to October 7th and wishlist the game to be the first to hear when it launches, and don’t forget to join their active Discord community of passionate home designers, builders and renovators.
About The Isn’t Company:
Founded in 2002, The Isn’t Company has been developing games for nearly two decades. Initially focused on downloadable and retail casual PC/Mac games under their Injoy Games label, the company released titles across every major platform – from RealArcade, Yahoo! and WildTangent to Big Fish and Playfirst. In 2010, the App Minis label was created to build freemium mobile games, netting over 25M downloads across their popular titles like Design This Home and Design This Castle. In 2016, The Isn’t Company started building titles for PC, VR and consoles, with a focus on social and creative games. Having remained entirely independent and self-funded, The Isn’t Company is a core team of five spread across the world.
Enter an alternate version of 1989 Berlin in the cryptic teaser trailer
Cologne, Germany – September 15th, 2021 – Headup Games & Bleakmill are pleased to announce that their surreal narrative first-person shooter INDUSTRIA will be launching September 30th, 2021 on Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG.com, priced at $19.99/€19.99/£16.99. Accompanying the announcement, a new teaser trailer offers a taste of the eerie Lynchian atmosphere that underpins this compelling story-driven shooter.
INDUSTRIA is set in 1989 on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Playing as a scientist named Nora, you set out to search for your missing friend and lover, following a mystery that takes you into a parallel dimension to the city of Hakavik, where East Berlin’s brutalist architecture merges with strange technological apparatuses and futuristic robots.
Inspired by classic narrative FPS titles of the 2000s, INDUSTRIA blends a mind-bending story with satisfying gun combat. Armed with four firearms and a melee weapon to deal with the various mechanical monstrosities roaming the game’s dystopian landscape, you must carefully manage your resources as you gather intel if you hope to survive long enough to decode the mystery at the heart of this intriguing tale.
INDUSTRIA has been in development for 6 years, started out by a two-man team, with four other individuals joining the project, all working on the game in their spare time. INDUSTRIA offers a truly unique vision that combines the imagery and themes of surrealism and science fiction to build an unforgettable world ravaged by an enigmatic menace. INDUSTRIA focuses on story first, with intense FPS action sequences to drive the player through the narrative to save their friend and discover the secrets behind Hakavik and its downfall.
“We’re really excited to give people a peek into the surreal sci-fi world our small team has been working so hard on,” said David Jungnickel, Co-Founder at Bleakmill. “ As our debut title we wanted to make something ambitious in its visuals and narrative, but also streamlined in its mechanics and experience. We can’t wait for everyone to experience all the twists and turns for themselves on September 30th.”
About Headup Games Headup is a hybrid games publishing and development company providing players worldwide with the best content in the independent gaming sector. Established in 2009, it is active on all major platforms such as consoles, mobile devices and PC, and was awarded as “Best Publisher” at the German Developers Awards in 2012, 2013, 2017 and 2019. With over 80 million customers served on mobile and further several million players on the PC and consoles, Headup is always looking to raise awareness and commercial success for developers thinking outside the box.
About Bleakmill Games We, David Jungnickel from Berlin and Steve Chapman from Glasgow, first met each other back in 2014. Working in a big team, we soon decided to do our own passion project: INDUSTRIA. It started as a Silent-Hill-like, was an undefined horror indie game for some time and became a fleshed out, narrative first-person shooter with strong mystery elements. As we both have a past in modding, especially in the Source Engine, a strong similarity to big names like Half-Life 2 and Portal naturally developed itself over the years. Getting supported by our composer Lukas Zepf, sound designer Clemens Ruh, character animator Ben Davis and first person animator Gabriel Kirchner, INDUSTRIA is on a good way to be released in Q3 2021 as our debut title.
AI Voice Platform transforms into a fully featured digital voice studio with major update ‘Project and Scenes’ that enable studios of any size to create and manage voices in their projects.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — September 15, 2021 —Replica Studios, an artificial intelligence (AI) voice technology company, today launched a major update to Replica’s platform called ‘Projects and Scenes’. The update enables game developers, animators, and filmmakers to manage scripts and dialogue with hundreds of lines and multiple characters, in a simple-to-use interface. Additionally, Replica Studios is creating a library of hundreds of AI voice characters with unique sounding voices that developers can license for game and animation narratives. To date, thousands of hours of dialogue have been produced and hundreds of games and short films have been made with Replica’s AI voices.
View a preview video showcasing Projects and Scenes:
Narrative and story-driven games and animations often feature thousands of lines of dialogue spanning dozens of characters, including the main characters as well as non-player characters (NPC). Traditionally, script writers and narrative designers spend a lot of time trying to create the most immersive experience through visuals, sound, voice, and dialogue, as well as the actual story itself. One of the biggest challenges they face through the life cycle of a project is getting buy-in from internal teams, producers, and other stakeholders as they test out different story ideas and scripts. Replica Studios’ Projects and Scenes interface enables narrative designers, writers, and creatives to quickly test out different story ideas easily through their easy to use interface, by simply typing out a script and casting characters from Replica Studios’ growing voice library to perform the lines in the script.
Moreover, teams can export voice lines from Replica Studios into their game engine or animation software of choice with a few clicks and test out their story with visuals and characters in-situ. Rapidly testing new ideas during the pre-production and pre-vis stages of a creative project is a huge advantage, since it gives creators the ability to pitch their ideas to stakeholders with Replica’s high quality AI voice actors.
Shreyas Nivas, Co-Founder and CEO of Replica Studios, said: “With the major update for Projects and Scenes, Replica Studios is now a fully featured digital voice studio, powerful enough for studios of any size to create and manage voices in their projects. Studios and creators can now craft entire stories and narratives, and export entire scenes with 100s of lines of AI voice-enabled dialogue into game engines, animation software, and other creative tools with a few clicks of a button. What can now be achieved in a few minutes using Replica would traditionally have required large studio budgets and would have taken weeks to achieve.”
View a short animation that showcases how Replica’s character voices can be used to rapidly produce a cut-scene for a video game, featuring Unreal Engine Metahumans:
Replica Studios’ Projects and Scenes features enable developers to: – Create unlimited projects and scenes to manage scripts and dialogue for any size of creative game or film project – Audition and Cast character voices from a growing library of 40+ AI voice actors that can express emotion and even shout in the heat of battle – Direct the performance of AI voice actors, tweak the pacing and pitch of words and lines, and keep track of multiple takes for each line so you can choose the best take – Export hundreds of lines of AI voice-enabled dialog directly into Unreal Engine, Unity, iClone, and other game engines and animation software
Nivas added: “Projects and Scenes is just the start of the next series of features that we’re building. Our team is adding hundreds of realistic AI voice actors across multiple languages into our voice library, creating better tools to direct the performance of AI voice actors, and integrating the Replica Studios platform with more game and animation engines and creator platforms. We’re also focused on collaboration and efficiency tools that will streamline workflows for teams. Users can anticipate new subscription plans that will offer unlimited speech generation. There’s much more to come in the next few months.”
Today’s announcement follows on the heels of Replica Studios’ integration launch with Unreal Engine, the world’s most highly regarded Game and Film engine, and iClone Character Creator, a highly popular real-time 3D animation and cinematic storytelling software trusted by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide.
John C Martin II, Vice President of Reallusion, said: “The integration of Replica’s app with iClone Character Creator with AccuLips has been a huge boost for animators and game developers, helping achieve high fidelity lip-synching, and character animation with dialogue in minutes. The latest update from Replica takes this to the next level as animation teams can now sequence multiple cut-scenes and close-up shots with 100s of lines of dialogue in an easy to manage interface. We are excited to see what animators and game developers will create with Replica’s Projects and Scenes and iClone.“
View a showcase of Replica’s integration with Reallusion iClone for character voices and animation:
About Replica Studios Replica Studios was formed by a group of deep learning engineers, designers, and software developers headquartered in the U.S and Australia, Replica Studios has set out to empower creative people globally with its voice AI platform. In 2019, the company launched an AI platform to empower the next generation of creators to produce highly immersive games, movies and entertainment. Replica’s growing AI voice library enables creative talent and voice actors to license and scale their synthetic voice for use in games, streaming content, advertising, films and much more. For more information, visit www.replicastudios.com.
Tweaks to the difficulty levels allows for more fun with friends
Hamburg, Germany, September 15th, 2021 – Released into the wild on August 23rd, 2021, Fling to the Finish from publisher Daedalic Entertainment and developer SplitSide Games, has been ruining friendships and partnerships in the most fun way possible since that day.
After launching into Early Access, the dev team has been hard at work making tweaks and fixes based on early feedback and are now ready to rubber-rope players back into the mayhem.
In addition, the Steam Remote Play Together allows players to play with a friend, even if only one player owns the game. You can find out more on this feature here.
In Fling to the Finish teams of two players race through colorful, chaotic obstacle courses while tethered by a stretchy elastic rope. Depending on your communication skills, this rope can be your greatest asset or your worst enemy – just like the friend you’re tethered to. Because you’re literally attached to your partner, Fling to the Finish is a truly cooperative experience. Masters of the rope use it to swing around perilous obstacles, and fling their partner up ledges seconds before they fall to their doom. When true veterans partner up, prepare for astonishing acrobatic feats.
Daedalic Entertainment publishes and develops high-quality games for all platforms. The company has a diverse line-up of high-quality titles, including classic adventures, RPGs, and strategy and multiplayer games. With over 50 employees, Daedalic is currently developing a new line-up of innovative games across consoles, PC and mobile platforms.
Based in Hamburg, Germany, Daedalic is one of Europe’s most acclaimed publishers and developers. With a total of 32 awards in the German Developers Award (including multiple accolades for ‘Studio of the Year’) and 12 German Computer Game Awards for genre-defining games such as Deponia, Edna & Harvey, Silence, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, The Long Journey Home, and State of Mind, Daedalic is a record holder for the two most prestigious game awards in Germany.
Daedalic is currently developing the AAA title The Lord of the Rings – Gollum. The action-adventure that tells the story of Gollum from a perspective never witnessed before in any storytelling media, all the while staying faithful to the legendary books of J.R.R. Tolkien.
About SplitSide Games (Developer Fling to the Finish)
SplitSide Games is a small team of student developers from Drexel University. When they’re not in classes, they spend all their free time working on their premiere title: Fling to the Finish.
SplitSide’s goal is to create games that make people interact in new and engaging ways, both inside and outside the games they create.
Passion Project from Indie Developer, +Mpact Games, to Remember Those Lost to Cancer Celebrates Completion of 14-Year Journey with Generous 40% Launch Week Discount
ATLANTA, GA – September 15, 2021 –It’s a time for warriors, courage, and above all, the future of a nation… +Mpact Games, a small team of developers united to make a very personal game, today announced that Hanako: Honor & Blade, its immersive online multiplayer combat experience set in Feudal Japan, has launched on Steam for PC. Recently awarded an Epic MegaGrant, the game has been meticulously developed over 14 years as a passion project to remember those lost to cancer. Hanako: Honor & Blade is available for $8.99 during launch week, a massive 40% discount off the normal $14.99 price to reward the first samurai on the battlefield.
In 2007, industry veteran and team lead, Matt Canei, made a teenage vow to honor the memory of his mother, Janie, following her tragic passing after her battle with breast cancer. He co-founded +Mpact in his free time, outside of his full-time roles, to help channel his grief and to commemorate his mother through his passion for creating games. Today, Matt works at ILMxLAB and his dedicated team have fulfilled his vow, with Hanako: Honor & Blade symbolizing the battle between life and death, as embodied by the game’s two warrior clans. The Hanako clan represents health and goodness in the spirit of Matt’s mother, and the Yamai clan symbolize the opposition to life inherent in cancer and other diseases. The natural balance of the opposing forces metaphorically represents real-life tragedies while seeking to honor those lost.
“We created Hanako: Honor & Blade to help us cope with the loss of loved ones through cathartic samurai multiplayer combat representing life and destruction,” said Matt Canei, Team Lead at +Mpact Games. “I know my mother would be proud, and I want to thank our community for sharing the journey with us. I wish all of you strength in your battles—in the game and in life.”
Beyond the symbolism, Hanako: Honor & Blade takes players online for immersive battles in a beautiful recreation of Feudal Japan between up to 24 players. Players can help decide the future of a nation by playing as one of four distinct warrior classes including the capable swordsman, powerful spearman, eagle-eyed archer, or nimble ninja. Each class has different build/skill options and features directionally driven combat, abilities, and spirit-based skills to get an extra edge. Players will play as one of two clans and seek to defeat opponents through multiple game modes and maps, with each game level presenting unique obstacles and mechanics that will require strategy and teamwork to defeat enemies.
Game Key Features
Epic online battles set in Feudal Japan with up to 24 players
A symbolic struggle between the forces of life and death
Five game modes with unique features, including team deathmatch Battle, Capture the Scroll, Village Siege, Castle Raid, and new Duel mode
Directional-driven combat that encourages strategy and precision
Four distinct warrior classes with different skill options for multiple playstyles
Dynamic environment changes
Bots to fill out teams or provide practice opponents
Immersive audio and orchestral soundtrack
Hanako: Honor & Blade is developed and self-published by +Mpact Games. The game is now available on PC via Steam, with the standard edition on sale during launch week for $8.99, discounted from the regular price of $14.99. A Founder’s Pack with exclusive in-game helmet and mask is now available for $39.99 with the game, or $24.99 standalone without the game. To stay up to date on the game, please join the Discord atdiscord.playhanako.com and follow us at @PlayHanako, facebook.com/playhanako, and twitch.tv/hanakogame.
About +Mpact Games
Hanako: Honor & Blade started as an award-winning college project back in 2007 with team co-founders, Matt Canei, Connor McCarthy, and Ajani Thomas. The project originated with Matt’s teenage vow to honor his mother, Janie, following her tragic passing after a five-year battle with breast cancer. Janie was a brilliantly positive and loving mother who raised Matt to always follow his dreams, and Hanako is a passion project that symbolizes the battle between life and destruction, with two samurai clan representing light and darkness. All three co-founders are now experienced developers, with Matt currently at ILMxLAB, and the game has continually evolved as their skills have advanced. Other than an Epic MegaGrant, the game has been made without any funding. Its full release on Steam on September 15, 2021, 14 years after it was conceived, makes it one of the longest independent game launches in history. For more information, visit hanakogame.com.
Retro-Inspired Rhythm FPS Coming to to PS4 and Xbox One on 5th October
Derby, UK – 15th Sept 2021: Playtonic Friends is thrilled to announce that BPM: Bullets Per Minute, first title from it’s new publishing label, will be launching on PS4 and Xbox One on 5th October.
Developed by Awe Interactive and originally released one year ago today, 15th September 2020, BPM: Bullets Per Minute is a fast and frenetic rhythm-based shooter that brings dungeon-based shooter action to the table, but encases it in a world where every single move – every shot, every jump, and every dodge – is pulled off to the beat of an epic rock soundtrack.
Winning praise from critics and plaudits from gamers upon its original release, Screen Rant described it as “engaging and addictive enough to make most titles out right now blush”.
As well as the game that launched on PC last autumn, console gamers will also be treated to all the additional content that has been rolled out by Awe Interactive since, including five brand new characters that let you play in a new unique way, three new weapons to encourage more killing of enemies to the beat, a brand new chapter with its own unique enemies, two new difficulties, and a mixture of brand new items, achievements, and assorted tweaks.
BPM: Bullets Per Minute Console features:
Playable up to 4k @ 60fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S
Shoot, jump and dodge to the beat while battling hordes of enemies.
Fight powerful bosses in challenging boss battles that will push you to the edge.
Explore randomly generated dungeons.
Choose from 10 different characters with unique strengths and weaknesses.
Wield a powerful arsenal of weapons, all with different behaviour for firing and reloading to the beat of the soundtrack.
Battle a diverse array of enemies, each with unique rhythmic behaviours.
Get overpowered and fire shotgun rockets while flying through the air.
Utilise abilities that radically alter the way you play the game, from teleport to freezing bolts.
Equip over 60 items that buff your character in unique and interesting ways.
Experience an epic rock opera soundtrack.
Challenge modes for extra gameplay.
BPM: Bullets Per Minute will launch on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (playable upto 4k @ 60fps on next gen consoles) on 5th October
About Playtonic Friends: Playtonic Friends is the new publishing label from independent video game developer Playtonic. Founded by the creative talent behind some of the most popular platform games of the past (including Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie), Playtonic’s aim is to bring fun games that everyone loves to play to new and old audiences alike across multiple platforms! The core team of veterans mixed with fresh, youthful talent has collectively notched up hundreds of years of video game development. The studio’s first release as Playtonic was Yooka-Laylee, launched in April 2017, and funded as a result of Europe’s biggest video game Kickstarter! Playtonic is based in the heart of the Midlands in the UK near Burton upon Trent, within easy commuting distance of larger cities such as Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Birmingham.
About Awe Interactive: Awe Interactive was founded by David Jones in 2019 to make awe-inspiring games. David was joined by Josh Sullivan, Nathan Knight and Sam Houghton shortly after. We believe our calling is to make the best possible experiences for players like ourselves. We strive to create things that we and our players love. We feel that our calling is to create the next generation of great and ambitious games.
