Calico, Onsen Master, & We should talk. Teased Ahead of 2020 Launch Dates

June 16th, 2020 — Whitethorn Games is excited to announce Peachy Keen Games’ cat café simulator Calico, Waking Oni’s hot spring customer management game Onsen Master, and Insatiable Cycle’s short-form narrative title We should talk. as part of the Steam Summer Festival and Wholesome Direct virtual events ahead of their respective launches later this year!

Calico — due out this Fall for console and PC platforms — is a day-in-the-life community sim game where you are given an important and adorable task: rebuild the town’s cat café and fill it with cute and cuddly creatures! You will journey to a small village filled with magical girls and other fantastical friends, where you are placed in charge of a run down cat café. Build up your café by filling it with cute furniture, fun decorations, yummy pastries, and get it bustling with animals again!

Calico is meant to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The gameplay reflects that with a laid back, low stress creative environment to explore and play in. A demo is temporarily available to play on Steam during the Summer Festival, and the game was highlighted in last month’s inaugural Wholesome Direct event as well.

Calico on Steam:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1112890/Calico/

Onsen Master — also due out this Fall for console and PC platforms — is a hot spring customer management game where players must revitalize various hot springs across the fantasy island of Izajima! Create ingredients to match the various customer ailments, reconnect the communities that surround each onsen, and discover the supernatural world that they’ve long since been disconnected from.

Dive into a 1-2 player story mode, or take on others in a competitive couch multiplayer mode where you must each work to manage your customers within the same hot spring. Onsen Master was featured in last month’s inaugural Wholesome Direct event.

Onsen Master on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1334780/Onsen_Master/

It’s not what you say — it’s how you say it. We should talk. is a game about relationships and the nuance of communication that will make you think carefully about the words you choose. We should talk. will launch this July on Steam for PC and Mac platforms, as well as Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One consoles for $6.99.

A Kickstarter campaign for the short-form narrative game is active through 7:00a PDT on June 11th — having reached the initial funding goal on its first day and hovering around twice that amount heading into its final days. Kickstarter funds will go towards providing the game with a budget for post-launch marketing and promotional efforts. A demo is temporarily available to play on Steam during the Summer Festival. 

We should talk. on Steam:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1255990/We_should_talk/

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.

To find out more, visit:https://whitethorndigital.com

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Full Release Planned for 2021 on PC & Mac

June 16th, 2020 — Developer Maccima Games and publisher Squeaky Wheel Studio announce upcoming evil overlord simulator Ruinarch is now available to demo for a limited time as part of the Summer Festival on Steam! The pre-release preview arrives ahead of the Early Access launch of Ruinarch set for August 2020.

Ruinarch is a devilishly fun simulation game featuring procedural story generation. As an evil demon overlord creating havoc and invading fantasy worlds, a rich and fertile land lies before you; ripe for the picking. Take over regions one by one, spreading your influence inexorably towards the heart of the kingdom. Poison people’s food, raise the dead, and inflict endless misery. Turn heroic defenders into pitiful wretches by unleashing an array of demonic spells upon them and create a hellish chronicle for the ages.

Weaving tales of anguish and woe are central to Ruinarch. You could simply summon a pack of wolves to attack the region, but a true evil overlord toys with his prey first. Turn the local village idiot into a cultist that secretly works on your behalf, and watch as he eagerly turns the tables on the villagers that mercilessly mocked him for his deficiencies. Inflict the local hero with lycanthropy and watch as his once loyal followers turn on him when the full moon rises. Or if you’re feeling lazy and don’t want to come up with anything creative, just start a zombie apocalypse!

Each playthrough generates a random fantasy world for you to conquer, and different worlds offer varied situations for you to exploit, manipulate and corrupt — providing unlimited replayability!

Features

• Generate an infinite number of procedural fantasy worlds
• Invade elven villages, human towns, bandit camps, ancient ruins, monster lairs, and much more!
• Build demonic structures with various world corrupting capabilities
• Summon minions and recruit cultists to assist in world domination
• Unleash powerful spells, dangerous monsters and mystical artifacts upon the world and watch the mayhem unfold
• Fracture the kingdom into multiple competing subfactions to weaken them from inside
• Wipe out the world’s defenders – each one equipped with complex AI that takes into account its needs, traits and relationships.

Ruinarch will debut in August for $19.99 on PC and Mac platforms. A full release is currently planned for 2021.

Why Early Access?
Ruinarch is a highly experimental game with emergent storytelling and gameplay at its core. As a small indie team, we have a lot of ambitious ideas but we need the help of the community to test them out and provide feedback and critique to guide our development in the right direction. While we have a clear road map for the upcoming year, we are also very open to adjusting and pivoting based on what the community really wants.

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
The current game includes a random world generator that produces procedurally-generated maps with multiple factions and regions that interact to produce emergent ever-changing worlds. The player will have access to seven different demon-type minions, eight demonic structures, dozens of Spells, along with a handful of Summons and Artifacts.

To learn more, visit: https://www.ruinarch.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruinarch_game
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruinarch/

About Maccima Games
Maccima Games is a small Indie Studio founded in 2016 and based out of Jersey City and Manila. We make experimental PC strategy/sim games.

About Squeaky Wheel Studio
Squeaky Wheel Studio is an independent game development company based in the Philippines that aims to be a developer of thematically unique PC strategy and simulation games.

Milky Tea Studios revealed that its high-adrenaline arcade style sports brawler HyperBrawl Tournament, now has a free demo available as part of Steam Game Festival. The demo is available from June 16th-22nd. To celebrate the demo, Milky Tea Studios just released a developer walkthrough offering an overview of HyperBrawl Tournament’s ruleset, game modes, characters, classes and weapons. It’s everything you need to understand how HyperBrawl Tournament works in five minutes!

In the demo, players can take control of one of four characters (Shade, Tristan, Ti and Go-Zen), across four game modes (Arcade, Blitz, The Trials and Advanced Trials) as they brawl it out across two arenas  (Court of Azdritch and Base 27).

HyperBrawl Tournament is a beautiful and fast-paced PvP experience, optimised for skill-based on-line or local ‘party’ play. Smash, brawl and score your way to victory in relentless, high-adrenaline, 1-4 PvP arena battles. Master the HyperCurve, that allows you to seize control of the ball mid-flight to score legendary goals and channel the HyperForce, with its devastating, game-changing, power.

In a combination of sports and brawling, the heroes can choose different abilities and awesome weapons to bring into the arena as they fight for control of the ball.

Our heroes have eight mythical weapons to choose from, including the earth-shattering Slam Hammer, the lightning-quick Turbo Thruster, or the deadly, deadly and decisive Grapple Gun. As players learn the intricacies of Hyperbrawl Tournament they can experiment with over 4,000 different hero and weapon combos to create their own unique playstyle, along with a custom designed hero decked out with your choice of unlockable weapon skins, goal blazes and ball trails.

HyperBrawl Tournament has 7 Game Modes including:

• ARCADE – Jump into instant local multiplayer or single-player matches for 1-4 players, earn XP and level up.
• CAMPAIGN – Challenge for glory in the single-player campaign mode. Conquer the Galaxy League and the Cosmic Cup to become the greatest team in the universe.
• BLITZ – Compete online with players across the world for the ultimate accolade – ‘The HyperBrawl Champion!’ The longer the win streak, the greater the rewards from cups to Artifacts.

HyperBrawl Tournament launches this summer on Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. 

Visit the official HyperBrawl Tournament website: https://www.hyperbrawl.com/
Check out the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/591760/HyperBrawl_Tournament/
Like HyperBrawl Tournament on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HyperBrawlTournament
Follow HyperBrawl Tournament on Twitter: @HyperBrawl

About Milky Tea Studios
Milky Tea is a UK Game Development Studio. Established in Liverpool in 2005, the studio designs, makes and publishes its own video game intellectual property as well as offering “work for hire” game development services.

Over the years the studio has won or been nominated for nearly every major award in its industry, including prestigious awards from BAFTA, EMMY, Banff and TIGA. In 2017 the studio was shortlisted by Creative England as one of the top 50 best up and coming, innovative and disruptive companies across film, games and digital technology.

In 2017, a leading integrated Internet services provider in China, Tencent, made an investment into the company. With this new partnership in place, Milky Tea has expanded the team in Liverpool and is now working on exciting new gaming IPs.

A new trailer has been released for SCARLET NEXUS; a new action RPG franchise developed by BANDAI NAMCO Studios. Take on the role of Yuito Sumeragi and uncover the mysteries of a Brain Punk future caught between technology and psychic abilities. The new trailer highlights animation from world renowned Japanese animation studio Sunrise Inc. The trailer can be found below:

In the far distant future, a psionic hormone has been discovered in the human brain, granting people extra-sensory powers, and changing the world as we know it. As humanity enters this new era, deranged mutants known as Others begin to descend from the sky with a hunger for human brains. Impervious to conventional weapons, those with acute extra-sensory abilities, known as psychics, are our only chance to fight the onslaught from above and preserve humanity. Since that fateful day psychics have been scouted for their talents and recruited to the Other Suppression Force, humanity’s last line of defense.

SCARLET NEXUS will be available for the Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PlayStation®5 (or 4) console, and PC via STEAM®.

Take on new night maps, weapons and gear today in New World Interactive & Focus Home Interactive’s team-based tactical FPS

PARIS — June 16, 2020 — Insurgency: Sandstorm, the hit team-based tactical FPS from New World Interactive and Focus Home Interactive, has just released its biggest update yet with “Nightfall.” Every map in the game now offers* a night variant, including the new Tideway map. There’s also new gear like night vision goggles, flashlights, infrared gadgets and more to help you play in the dark. And to celebrate, Insurgency: Sandstorm is available for 50% off on Steam from now until June 20!

“Nightfall” brings with it five free new weapons, including two modern subsonic stealth weapons for the Breacher class, the AS Val for Insurgents, and the Honey Badger for Security. In addition, the Breacher has gained two new classic weapon choices: the Sterling submachine gun for Insurgents and the Grease Gun for Security. The Insurgents also get a new integrally suppressed bolt-action pistol: the Welrod. This is alongside new night-themed cosmetics for all players on both sides.

Insurgency: Sandstorm’s first paid cosmetic DLC packs also arrive with today’s update. Become the night with the Ghillie pack for the Security forces or the dark-themed Nightstalker pack for Insurgents. Both factions also have several weapon skins available, with a dark red digital theme for Insurgents and midnight blue for Security. These four DLC can be purchased at a lower price with the Night Ops set.

Insurgency: Sandstorm is coming to PlayStation®4 and Xbox One on Aug. 25, 2020. For more information, visit https://insurgency-sandstorm.com.

*The new night mode is available in official co-op (with modified enemy AI responsive to light), as well as PvP in limited-time playlists and on community servers.

Designed to deliver a new global competition for players and fans, the one-off, online only, the special season is revealed with an adjusted format made up of East and West leagues

Watch the PMWL Season Zero reveal here, and see a sneak peak of the PUBG MOBILE Esports Studio in Katowice, Poland created in partnership with ESL

To be in with a chance to compete, teams can sign up for the PUBG MOBILE Club Open (PMCO) 2020 Fall Split, with registration opening on June 24

LOS ANGELES – June 14, 2020 – Ahead of the PUBG MOBILE Pro League (PMPL) South Asia Finals, James Yang, Director of Global Esports, PUBG MOBILE, has revealed the PUBG MOBILE World League Season Zero, a unique season created to deliver the best possible global competition in the current climate ahead. The online series offers an $850,000 prize pool and increases the number of team slots to 40, offering more teams than ever the chance to compete. It has also been revealed that the sign-ups for the PMCO 2020 Fall Split will open on June 24. Registration information can be found here.

PUBG MOBILE has also shared a new sneak peak of the PUBG MOBILE Esports Studio in Katowice, Poland created in partnership with ESL. The studio will become the home of offline matches when it’s safe to resume offline competition.

In response to COVID-19 and to ensure the health and safety of players and fans, PUBG MOBILE has moved the entirety of the PMPL Season 1 online, and delayed schedules to make these changes. PUBG MOBILE World League, the crowned jewel of the new competitive ecosystem has meant that PUBG MOBILE had to create something truly unique.

PUBG MOBILE World League Season Zero will be held from 10^th July to 9^th August. The East League will begin at 6 PM IST for Asia, and the West League will begin at 12:30 AM IST for Europe and Americas. Community members can witness the livestream at PUBG MOBILE Esports YouTube channel.

For more information about upcoming PUBG MOBILE esports news, stay tuned at Facebook.

PUBG MOBILE is available to download for free on the App Store and Google Play.

About PUBG MOBILE:

PUBG MOBILE is based on PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS, the phenomenon that took the world of interactive entertainment by storm in 2017. Up to 100 players parachute onto a remote island to battle in a winner-takes-all showdown. Players must locate and scavenge their own weapons, vehicles and supplies, and defeat every player in a visually and tactically rich battleground that forces players into a shrinking play zone.

For more information, please visit the official PUBG MOBILE accounts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Stand your ground! A beam of light is your only salvation!

Saskatchewan, Canada – June 16th, 2020 – Sunnyside Games and Noodlecake Studios are proud to reveal the Steam release of Towaga: Among Shadows is getting a demo from June 16th-22nd as part of the Steam Game Festival. During this time you’ll be able to play through the game’s first chapter, experiencing Towaga: Among Shadows‘ unique blend of twin-stick shooting and frantic defensive gameplay.

In Towaga: Among Shadows players take on the role of Chimù who needs to harness the power of light to save his island from the nefarious Metnal the Voidmonger and his Legion of Darkness. This plays out in a unique take on the twin-stick shooter where ground-based combat sees you planted in a fixed position, aiming an endless beam of light to vaporize your opponents. Take to the skies, however, and you’ll have full control over Chimu as you fly between opponents.

Explore an enchanted land with graphics and cinematics inspired by animation great Genndy Tartakovsky, all the while enjoying an immersive soundtrack accompanying your every move in this mystical world where defeat is simply not an option.

As you battle through more than 70 unique stages you’ll unlock new spells, gear, outfits and lore diaries. Gain XP to to deal more damage, increase your magic potency, and expand your HP. Towaga: Among Shadows includes four single-player game modes, including the narrative-based Story Mode, bite-sized Trial challenges, and Endless Mode where you survive as long as you can to attain a high high-score. With over 60 unlockables, 50 Achievements, and online leaderboards, there’s always something to come back to in Towaga: Among Shadows. Will you be the one to vanquish the shadows and return peace to the island?

“We wanted to make a fluid arcade action game that made players feel simultaneously powerful and vulnerable,” said Ryan Granville, Producer at Sunnyside Games. “Towaga: Among Shadows‘ unique blend of giving you an all powerful superweapon, but then locking you into position with it, captured that feeling of an epic last stand. We then implemented the free-wheeling flight sections to give players a sense of variety and freedom as they switch between these modes. You’ll get a taste for all of it when you try this demo.”

Key Features:

• Immersive 2D graphics
• Intense modes made for scoring
• Challenging difficulty
• Local multiplayer mode
• Items, relics and spells to unlock
• Various game modes
• Mysterious back-story
• Original blend between genres
• Runs smoothly in 60 FPS

Wishlist Towaga: Among Shadows on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/907600/Towaga_Among_Shadows/
Noodlecake Studios website: https://noodlecake.com/
Sunnyside Games website: https://www.sunnysidegames.ch/

About Sunnyside Games
Sunnyside Games is a Swiss-based company founded in 2013 and composed of sorcerers, artists and engineers that are working hand-in-hand to create challenging, immersive and well hand-crafted 2D games for mobile devices, PCs and consoles. 

About Noodlecake Studios
Noodlecake Studios is a small indie game studio based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Founded in early 2011, Noodlecake found success with its first game, Super Stickman Golf, and has since expanded into publishing, releasing games on multiple platforms.

Superbright – former Dying Light, Dead Island and Cyberpunk 2077 devs – fill the rogue-lite void on the Oculus Quest with their platform debut | Coming July 2020

16 June 2020 | Wroclaw, Poland – Today during the UploadVR Summer Showcase, Superbright announced their debut Oculus Quest title – In Death: Unchained.

In Death: Unchained brings the rogue-lite experience screaming onto the Oculus Quest as few other games have done before for the platform. Grab your longbow and rain down arrows against the forsaken souls, angelic creatures and demons that have taken over the afterlife as you battle through the procedurally generated levels of Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. 

Initially created by Solfar Studios as In Death, Superbright develops the IP further to give Oculus Quest the rogue-lite the platform needs. The game is thoroughly extended with a new content, experience, and love that the title deserves.

A Medieval VR Shooter with a Rogue-lite Twist:

In Death: Unchained takes the classic rogue-lite experience and finally puts it into the highly responsive and immersive world of VR. Procedural generation randomizes the map layout, enemy spawn points and loot locations, while modifiers based on your previous run ensure each new attempt is different. 

Fight Like Hell

Manoeuvre and outthink your enemies to gain the upper hand. Muster precise accuracy for long range longbow attacks. Tap into your reflexes to dodge incoming arrows or use your shield to block ranged and melee threats. Upgrade your bow with a host of special arrows gained by looting monsters, finding pick-ups or by visiting in-level Reliquaries where you can power up with a range of special arrows to help you blast through ever harsher enemy encounters.

Death is Not Defeat

Game progression is driven by an achievement system that persists across each run and scales the difficulty level of the game to players as they master the game. But death does not mean defeat as each run earns you special abilities or modifiers that carry over to the start of your next run.

Custom Forged for the Oculus Quest

In Death: Unchained has been purposefully built to use all the features of the Oculus Quest and take full advantage of a VR experience that is unchained and untethered to a PC. Locomotion, aiming, shooting, dodging incoming fire, using the environment for cover, head and arm tracking etc are all tweaked and tuned to work fully in tandem with the freedom the Quest offers. 

Just who exactly are Superbright?

Superbright is a collective of veteran AAA and Silicon Valley developers whose previous work includes Dead Island, Dying Light and Cyberpunk 2077. Launched in 2016 with a sole focus on VR, Superbright has a history of launch projects and cooperation with companies like Oculus, Google, Sony, or Varjo. 

In Death: Unchained will launch in July 2020 and is Superbright’s first exclusive title for the Oculus Quest joining the few games to be approved for the platform this year as Oculus continues with their carefully curated, quality games only, approach.

Blackbird Interactive & Focus Home Interactive’s zero-g sandbox game debuts on PC with multiple ships, tools and Act I of the story campaign

PARIS — June 16, 2020 — Blackbird Interactive and Focus Home Interactive’s sandbox spaceship salvaging game Hardspace: Shipbreaker is now available for PC on Steam Early Access. Equipped with cutting-edge, zero-g, physics-based salvaging tech, you’ll carve up massive vessels — each a puzzle for you to take apart how you choose — for the bounty of materials inside. But watch out: one wrong cut can blow it all up in your face spectacularly!

Hardspace: Shipbreaker arrives in early access with plenty of features to discover, including two classes of spaceship to salvage, multiple upgradable tools and perks, and the first act of the story campaign. Over the course of early access, the team is committed to releasing additional ship classes, missions, game modes, leaderboards, modding support and more with feedback from the community.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker is also in development for PlayStation®4 and Xbox One for future release.