CYBERPUNK THRILLER ‘THE RED STRINGS CLUB’ LAUNCHES JAN. 22
– Preorder Now and Get ‘Gods Will Be Watching’ for Free –
VALENCIA – Independent developer Deconstructeam and amateur bartenders Devolver Digital announced that point and click thriller The Red Strings Club will launch Jan. 22. Eager cyberpunk fans can preorder now on Steam to receive 20 percent off and a free copy of Deconstructeam’s debut game, Gods Will Be Watching, for free or as a giftable copy if they already own it.
The Red Strings Club is a cyberpunk narrative experience about fate and happiness featuring the extensive use of pottery, bartending and impersonating people on the phone to take down a corporate conspiracy. The professed altruistic corporation Supercontinent Ltd. is on the verge of releasing Social Psyche Welfare, a system which will eliminate depression, anger and fear from society. However, the bartender of a clandestine club and a freelance hacker don’t regard this evolution as an improvement, but as brainwashing. Alongside unwitting company employees and a rogue empathy android, the duo will pull all the strings they can to bring down this scheme.
Deconstructeam first splashed on the indie game scene with 2014’s Gods Will Be Watching, a game jam project turned debut release with partner Devolver Digital. The team’s first effort went on to gain critical acclaim for its bold narrative and unorthodox approach to the point and click adventure genre. The team has continued their work with notable entries in the world’s largest game jam competitions, with a few of these experiments coming together to assemble The Red Strings Club.
Spearhead Games (Tiny Brains) revealed their newest title ahead of PAX South 2018. Omensight is an adventure game about the consequences of changing fates that are already written.
Players take on the role of the Harbinger, a skilled warrior capable of seeing the future and changing fate itself. The Harbinger has been called upon to stop the events that will lead to the destruction of Urralia. Players will meet the characters whose actions will eventually lead to the end of Urralia and make tough decisions in hopes of changing Urralia’s fate. Once choices about who lives and who dies have been made, players will wade into battle with sword in one hand and time controlling abilities in the other.
Omensight does not have a solid release date, but it is expected to launch on Steam sometime this year. Those who are heading to PAX South this weekend can be among the first to try out Omensight at Spearhead Games’ booth at #10458.
Kickstarted in mid-2017, My Time at Portia is the latest title from Chinese developers Pathea Games, whose previous work includes Planet Explorers. Visually inspired by the legendary Studio Ghibli, My Time at Portia channels games like Rune Factory, Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and Dark Cloud 2. Players will arrive to the town of Portia where they will rebuild their father’s workshop and win the hearts of the townsfolk.
My Time at Portia is set in a second age of humans, only a couple of generations past a near apocalyptic event. The Church of Light and Research Council are now in a tug of war with what to do with old knowledge recovered in the ruins. Beyond the ideological struggle is Portia, a small frontier town filled with charming villagers to befriend and just maybe fall in love. The game’s writing is light hearted, considering the oddly grim backdrop. I do hope the developers add more conversation possibilities with the townspeople as the early access phase continues. Talking with villagers daily is a quick way of improving relationships, and reading the same couple of lines every day gets boring rather quick. There are some minor spelling and grammar errors that still need to be fixed, but nothing that can’t be addressed during the early access phase.
My Time at Portia is a buffet of casual simulation and RPG mechanics. It lets gamers sample a little bit of everything with a gentle learning curve and simple, accessible mechanics. The game’s two foundations are manufacturing items and socializing with the townspeople. Almost all the farming, mining, gathering, and fighting in My Time at Portia is done to collect the necessary raw materials to fulfill commissions, complete quests, or simply turning a profit. There is already a weighty tech tree that will have players trying everything the game has to offer. I really like how the game splits crafting into small projects on work tables and machines and larger, multi-step projects on the assembly pad.
The gathering and farming mechanics in the game are solid so far. The game’s way of repopulating the map is well thought out and works great. I think allowing players to reset the Ancient Ruins by having players “travel” to a new level of the mine is a creative explanation. The farming is a little less intense compared to Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but still ticks all the boxes to deliver a basic, yet enjoyable experience.
The game’s social aspects are very similar to Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing games. To build a relationship with the townspeople, players will need to finish quests, fulfill commissions, socialize, and give gifts. Players need to constantly interact with people to maintain their relationships. I think the decay rate needs some tweaking still, as the decay feels a little too severe right now.
Combat is definitely not the first and foremost activity in My Time at Portia, but the game can put up a surprising challenge at times. The only two moves players need to know is attack and dodge, which makes combat easily accessible to players of all skill levels. The execution of the dodge mechanic is excellent. A well-timed dodge can negate all incoming damage without moving the player too far out of position, and dodge spamming is discouraged by tying it to the endurance meter. The game includes dungeons with some great boss fights. Even though combat has to share time with more peaceful activities like farming and mining, Pathea Games has done a great job creating a fulfilling combat experience.
The first one or two weeks in game is a little rough right now and needs a bit of balancing. Mining for ore and relics will send players into the Ancient Ruins, which require an entrance fee. The fee is pretty onerous in the early days as the daily stamina pool is limited and food is tough to come by. Once players are able to expand their stamina pool and start accessing the Ancient Ruins regularly, the pace of progression feels about right.
In the short term, I hope Pathea Games puts in a little work on the controls. The options for keybinds only allow players to modify certain actions in the game. The controller support is excellent for the most part, but there are some game elements that are still optimized for the mouse and keyboard. The commission board and the fishing mini-game come to mind as the worst offenders so far.
The audio/visual experience is absolutely stunning. The sound effects are solid and there is the odd bit of voice acting thrown into the game. The soundtrack is lighthearted and channels Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing. The music pairs well with the casual nature of the game, though I hope the developers plan on adding more songs as development continues. The game’s Studio Ghibli inspired art is eye catching. The character design lives up to the lofty goal Pathea Games set for itself, with memorable characters and creative monsters.
I really enjoyed My Time at Portia. It is a beautiful love letter to the titles that inspired the game. My Time at Portia is well on its way towards a full release that is going to win the hearts of gamers.
The Switch isn’t the only platform breaking gaming records. SteamDB is reporting Steam has set a new internal record for players online at over 18.5 million players. At the same time, over seven millions gamers were playing at the same time. PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds alone contributed over three million players in this period.
Steam reaches 18 million concurrent users for the first time, along with 7 million users currently in-game. https://t.co/D6WDHbz0B4
Steam’s growth has been fueled in recent times by an explosion of users from China and the highly popular battle royale game PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds.Steam has come a long way in the last 14 years, starting as a platform for Valve’s games on PC to offering almost 40,000 video games, videos, and software on its storefront plus releasing a controller, TV set top box, and partnering with HTC to release the Vive..
The fixes for the Meltdown CPU vulnerability are currently going out, with experts expecting a noticeable CPU performance hit as a result. Meltdown is one of two major CPU vulnerabilities revealed by Google’s Project Zero. The vulnerability allows a program to read the content of a computer’s memory, including passwords and sensitive data. Unfortunately for gamers, the vulnerability is related to how CPUs squeeze out better performance out of the chips, which means the fix won’t be pretty for those who rely on CPU power, like gamers, video editors, and server owners. Almost all modern Intel CPUs and a handful of ARM chips are affected.
Epic announced the cloud services used by Fortnite were updated yesterday with the Meltdown patch, and the result is an increase of over 50% CPU utilization. The spike in CPU usage is wreaking havoc on the user experience, with login and server stability problems being reported by the community. Epic expects Fortnite’snext few days to be rocky as their cloud services providers make changes to their services in response to the Meltdown fix.
PSA: Our cloud services were affected by updates required to mitigate the Meltdown vulnerability. We rely on cloud services to run our backend and we may experience further service issues in the next few days due to ongoing updates.
The Nintendo Switch has been dominating the sales chart, thanks to some incredibly strong exclusives that prove you don’t need sheer graphic power to be the best. Nintendo announced that they have broken their own record for fastest selling console in the US by shipping over 4.8 million Switch consoles in only 10 months. The sales number easily beats the previous record held by the Wii, which sold four million units in 10 months.
The Switch has had a strong backing from third party developers porting their games over to the new system; however, Nintendo’s first party titles have absolutely dominated the Switch sales chart. The highly regarded titles Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild have been top sellers for Nintendo, and the company has several new Switch exclusives on the horizon.
Monster Hunter: WorldProducer Ryozo Tsujimoto took to Twitter to deliver a New Year’s greeting and an update on the game via video. Currently, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions are on schedule for release on January 26. More importantly, Tsujimoto announced that the PC version of the game is currently undergoing optimization and will be released in Autumn 2018 (Spring 2018 in the Southern Hemisphere). This is disappointing news for PC fans who were expecting a smaller delay between the console and PC release.
Additionally, Tsujimoto revealed the developers have a series of free updates planned for Monster Hunter: World. The content will include new monsters to battle, though none have been revealed so far. It is unknown if the content updates will be available on the PC versions launch, or if the updates will also be delayed.
Valve capped off the holidays with a massive wave of banhammer strikes targeting users of the Team Fortress 2 botting software catbot. Initial reports onGitHub alleged that anyone running Linux with username catbot would be issued a VAC ban. The username is commonly used in tutorials for setting up the botting software on Linux.
New Year’s Day was marred with a bit of confusion and understandable fury at the possibility that Valve’s anti-cheat software would issue bans on the basis on username and operating system.
Like most companies, Valve is being tight lipped with exactly how their anti-cheat software work. Valve has closed the bug report on GitHub and posted a clarification on the situation, saying the ban is not strictly based on username, including Steam or Linux usernames, and alleging that the reports are part of a disinformation campaign by cheaters.
Shibuya Productions President and Shenmue 3Producer Cedric Biscay added an interesting tidbit to his New Year greeting on Twitter. He assured readers that Shenmue 3is on track for release on PlayStation 4 and PC for 2018 and promised that some surprises were in store.
Shenmue 3 was kickstarted back in 2015; however, development did not hit full speed until early 2016. The gamehas missed its original projected release date of December 2017, an all too common occurrence for all video games, not just crowdfunded ones.
As part of the Christmas update, Director Yu Suzuki and Animation Producer Hiroaki Takeuchi looked back on the road travelled so far and what is in store for the game in the coming year. The pair cover a variety of topics, such as Takeuchi’s experience with Unreal Engine 4 and the progress on casting Japanese voice actors. The interview is available in Japanese with English subtitles on the Shemue 3 YouTube channel.
Chinese gamers are waking up to find that the Steam Community has been disabled in China. All Steam Community features including wish lists and Steam Trading Cards are affected.
Capsule Computers have reached out to contacts in China to find out more details who report that Valve themselves blocked Steam Community, not the Chinese government. The Steam Community is home to several groups supporting politically sensitive topics, such as Tibetan independence, that are highly restricted or banned in China
Like many large companies operating in China, Valve likely found itself in the difficult position of either adhering to local content rules by limiting access in China or risking a ban by Chinese government regulators. Valve has opted for the first option for good reason. Many gamers in China are PC gamers, likely a result of China’s recent lift of a decade long gaming console ban, and now make up a large part of Steam’s user base. Chinese services like WeGame would be more than happy to fill the void left by Steam, similar to how Weibo and Baidu provide similar services as Twitter and Google in China.
Steam has yet to partner with a local Chinese company in China to ensure better operational certainty in the country. Several other gaming companies have opted to do so, including Blizzard’s partnership with NetEase and Bluehole’s recent partnership with Tencent. Valve’s aggressive actions with Steam Community likely ensures that Valve will be able to keep all their profits in China for themselves a little longer.
