WODAN” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/wodan”>WODAN, a Japanese studio founded by veteran game designers Kenichi Iwao and Tatsuya Yoshikawa, has announced Shinonome” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/games/shinonome”>Shinonome, a Roguelike [59 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/roguelike”>roguelike game based around the concept of a haunted house from the Edo period. It will launch in Early Access for PC [16,040 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/pc”>PC via Steam on November 11.
Iwao previously worked at Capcom [2,346 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/capcom”>Capcom, Square Enix [5,007 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/square-enix”>Square Enix, Studio 4°C, DeNA, and Oriflamme, while Yoshikawa was previously employed by Capcom, DeNA, Nintendo [17,107 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/nintendo”>Nintendo, Oriflamme, and Sanzigen.
The Early Access version of Shinonome will feature all three main game modes. While each mode shares many commonalities, they will grow more distinct over the course of Early Access. User feedback will allow the developer to offer a more “multifarious experience with improved tutorials, a wider range of enemy types including bosses, additional tools, and a more engaging storyline.” The Early Access period is expected to last two to four months, but may extend further based on feedback.
Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:
About
Shinonome is a roguelike game based around the concept of a haunted house from the Japanese Edo period.
The main character, Yono, in a novice Onyo student. Her main goal is to escape the haunted house alive by escaping from and exorcising the ayakashi (monsters and vengeful spirits).
You don’t need Action [675 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/action”>action techniques to do this; you need to observe the clues left by the ayakashi, like trails and sounds, and using them to formulate strategies.
Shinonome is a new type of escape game, wherein you use your courage and mind to overcome challenges.
Key Features
Japanese Horror [140 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/horror”>Horror – Enjoy a unique and terrifying experience as you explore the old Japanese house, which combines rustic beauty with darkness.
Diverse Ways to Play – Draw them in and trap them. Set up a trick and run. Draw in their natural enemies…There are countless ways to take care of the ayakashi. This game finds its true beginning when you discover your own way to work through it.
Highly Replayable – Overcome to finely detailed haunted house in “Harae.” Escape from a randomly generated haunted house as you work to preserve your tools and food to survive in “Misogi.” Explore the endless dungeons and towers taking short breaks at stores and kitchens inside them in “Gyou.” Each of the games three modes will keep you coming back for more.
Watch the announcement trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.
Despite what Hollywood may have you think running a cult is tough work—or at least it is in Cult of the Lamb. Out now for consoles and PC, Cult of the Lamb is, depending on who you ask, an action roguelike with city-builder elements or a city-builder with action roguelike elements. Either way, it’s astonishingly top-heavy in terms of how many systems it throws your way from the jump. Despite its cute trappings, the game can get real confusing, real fast. Here are 18 things I wish I knew before starting.
Give both parts of the game equal attention
Cult of the Lamb is largely bifurcated into two sections. There’s the city-building part, where you create structures and tend to various needs of your citizens, all of whom are anthropomorphic animals (and members of your cult). Then there’s the dungeon-crawling part, where you beat up occult-themed enemies on a quest to murder old gods and also find a bunch of resources for your budding town. Don’t think of Cult of the Lamb as one or the other; success is contingent on splitting your time, care, and attention evenly between both sections.
Explore every chamber
It’s the first syllabus item in Roguelikes 101: Explore every single screen before moving on. In Cult of the Lumb, you could find tarot cards, which give you temporary stat-boosting buffs for the duration of your run. You could run into a pedestal that boosts your attack in exchange for health. You might even find a new weapon. All of the stuff is helpful, but really, you’re exploring for one thing: When you’re on a crusade—Cult of the Lamb’s cutesy term for “a run”—your goal is simply to find as many specialist resources, like grass and bones, as possible.
Almost everything turns into resources
The only way you’ll earn as many resources as possible, and of as wide a variety as possible, is by smashing literally everything you see. Patches of tall grass obviously turn into grass, a key resource for most food generation, fertilizer, and even buildings. Crates and barrels could hold gold (used for most crafting recipes). But the inconspicuous stuff is worth breaking too. Skeletons turn into bones, which you can sell or burn for certain rituals (cooldown abilities that offer a huge benefit to your citizens). See a fire pit? You can smash that up to sometimes get some meat, valuable for cooking. Just, uh, don’t think too hard about the morals there.
Dying doesn’t wipe out your haul
Usually, when you die in a roguelike, you lose everything you’ve earned and start from scratch. But in Cult of the Lamb, you’ll retain 75 percent of the resources you find over the course of a crusade. That said, if you’re lucky, you can stumble upon an upgrade that’ll let you keep everything you’ve found upon death. (This benefit only lasts for one run.) All the more reason to explore every room!
Screenshot: Devolver
You can’t finish a region in one go
Cult of the Lamb has four regions: the Burton-esque Darkwood, the autumnal Anura, the watery Anchordeep, and the scary AF Silk Cradle. You’ll need to complete multiple crusades throughout each one before you can unlock a run that’ll culminate in the region’s boss. (Also, you need a set number of followers before you can initially access each region. But if you’ve opened up a particular one, and then your flock dips below that requisite, it won’t lock you out. Once you’ve opened up a region, you’re good to go.)
You can turn down the shaking
When you get hit in Cult of the Lamb, the camera shakes. You can tone this down a bit though by opening the settings, going to the accessibility menu, and tweaking the screenshake sensitivity setting. (I’ve found 75 percent to be the sweet spot where you still see some shake but not so much that it throws you off.) The second option, reduce camera motion, is a toggle, but it smooths things out even more. If you’re getting queasy or finding the visuals at all tough to parse, tweak both of these.
Nab your devotion before starting crusades
At the shrine—that giant pillar in the center of your town—followers will worship you, filling up your devotion meter. Every time the devotion meter fills up, you can get a divine intervention (aka, unlock a new type of building to construct). Once the shrine is full, though, it can’t store any more. Best to empty it before heading out on a crusade. And in the early levels, at least, it’s typically full again by the time you return from a crusade. Later on, you can put up mini-shrines that can be used as overflow.
Screenshot: Devolver
Build a farm ASAP
There are a number of meters to keep track of, including faith, which is essentially just the overall happiness of your little community. But the most important thing to keep tabs on is hunger. By creating a farm—an early-level divine intervention—you can automatically ensure you have enough cooking ingredients. Start with the farmer station. That’ll create a small rectangular area, in which you should place a series of farm plots (meant to plant seeds), a scarecrow (prevents birds from stealing your seeds), a seed silo (allows you to store seeds earned on crusades), and a fertilizer silo (where you put your cult’s collective shit). From there, direct one of your followers to “tend farms” and they’ll take care of the planting process automatically.
Note: You still have to manually cook meals, however.
Then build these
After you’ve made a little farm, you’ll want to focus on a number of other helpful divine interventions:
Outhouse: Once you’ve built an outhouse, your followers should no longer relieve themselves all over your god-given parcel of land.
Shelter: It’s essentially just an upgrade of the standard sleeping mat, but it falls apart with way less frequency, so you needn’t constantly waste resources (and time, life’s most precious resource) rebuilding things you’ve already built. Less essential. More a matter of convenience.
Stone mine and lumberyard: You can get a stone of lumber and stone on crusades. But if you make these two buildings, your followers will generate the resources automatically, which allows you to focus on finding other important resources—like grass and bones—while crusading.
Prison: This is really some stocks, into which you can put a dissenting follower, then “re-educate” them over a couple of days until they worship you properly again.
Grow Camellia as soon as you can
At a certain point you’ll be able to build a medical tent, to which you can send sick acolytes for better treatment than simply bedrest. But to deliver this, you’ll need Camellia flowers. Often as many as 15 for a heal, so you’ll definitely want to make sure they’re growing on your farm whenever possible. You can get the seeds on crusades, or buy them from a worm vendor who’ll eventually show up just outside of town.
Don’t forget your daily activities
Once a day (in in-game time), you’ll be able to perform a sermon from the altar in the temple. There are other follower actions you can perform each day, depending on the rituals you’ve unlocked. You can perform a tithe to earn two pieces of gold from every follower. Or you can inspire to increase their individual level, which begets extra devotion. Make sure you remember to do all of these each day, if you’re not on a crusade. It’s free XP!
Screenshot: Devolver / Kotaku
Tasks are marked by a black cloud
If there’s something for you to do with a specific structure—the temple, the shrine, a new building, you name it—there’s an easy tell: It’ll be surrounded by an inky black cloud. That means it has a task for you to tend to.
Invest in Sustenance first
As you defeat mini-bosses and build rapport with your cultists, you’ll earn parts of a commandment stone. For every three pieces you earn, you’ll get a full stone and will be able to declare a new doctrine—basically, a rule all of your followers must abide by. There are five categories, all of which are helpful. But the first one you should invest in is Sustenance. That’ll give you the chance to unlock the feast ritual, easily one of the most helpful in the game. Activate it (75 bones, unless you have the cheaper rituals divine inspiration) and you’ll instantly fill up the hunger meter for all of your followers.
Then go into Law and Order
The Law and Order doctrine’s ascend ritual lets you get rid of a dissenting follower—someone who’s lost faith in you as a leader, and is trying to convince the rest of your flock to lose faith too—without falling back on the easy option: killing them. Morality aside here, if other followers see you murdering one of their fellow cultists, they could lose faith, too. But getting rid of a cultist with the ascend ritual not only rids you of your problem, it also boosts the faith of your entire flock.
You’ve gotta commit to doctrines
Every time you issue a new doctrine, you get to choose between two options. The Feast ritual is good for pretty much all situations, but the rest of the choices come down to a matter of playstyle and preference. Just know this: Whichever one you don’t choose ends up gated off. (You can view your doctrines at the altar.)
Fleece of the Fates is the best fleece
After you complete a few side-quests, you’ll earn holy talisman pieces. Get four of those and you can unlock a fleece. When equipped, a fleece will grant you both a buff and a debuff. The best one is the Fleece of the Fates, which starts you off with four tarot cards at the start of your run, but prevents you from finding any more over the course of the crusade. This is a fair trade, if you ask me. You rarely, if ever, end up finding more than four tarot cards in the early game, so the Fleece of the Fates at least guarantees you get the bare minimum. On the flip-side, you don’t get the luxury of adapting this aspect of your builds on the fly—a key strategy for many action-focused roguelikes.
Yes, time still passes while you’re fighting
Time still passes when you’re on a crusade, which means your followers can still age, grow hungry, get sick, and even die. So be mindful that your flock is in good standing before you head into the dungeons. The game will alert you to these events with pop-up notifications, and there’s an unlockable skill that lets you abandon a run to head straight home, if you think it’s an emergency.
Unlock the body pit
You needn’t do it right away, but you should focus on unlocking the body pit in the divine intervention menu. Eventually, probably sooner than you’d expect, some of your followers are going to die. (Old age strikes cultists, too.) If you leave their corpses lying around, they’ll infect the rest of your followers with sickness, which can cause them to die. The solution, then, is to have the option to build a body pit unlocked and ready to go before a wave of death tears through your town, leaving a stream of corpses in its wake. Wait, were you gonna go with the other option? Eating them?? A member of your loyal flock??? You monster!!! (Make sure to pick the doctrine to convince your followers that this is fine—it’s fine—if you do, though.)
The next No Man’s Sky expansion is all about space whales. Well, okay, there’s a whole new, roguelike-style expedition for players to tackle too but come on. Space whales, baby.
Today’s update, called “Leviathan,” sees the immense No Man’s Sky universe get a little bigger with the introduction of the aforementioned megafauna and a challenging mission that players will need to overcome together. Losing your one life means starting the whole thing over again with a new loadout, but the further into it the No Man’s Sky community gets, the easier reaching the end will be for everyone.
Here’s how No Man’s Sky studio Hello Games describes what the Leviathan update brings to the table:
Difficulty has been turned up in a variety of ways, but every death means a reset of the loop and a new proc-gen loadout. To make it easier to complete the eventual goal of breaking out of the loop with just one life, the community can work together on a persistent, global goal that permanently improves the quality and frequency of upgrade rewards found during each loop. It’s so different to anything players have experienced in No Man’s Sky before and brings a new vibe to the universe.
A story reveals itself as players work together along with Specialist Polo and the “Leviathan,” a large and imposing space creature shrouded in myth and mystery.
No Man’s Sky players who conquer the update’s challenges can look forward to unlocking new cosmetics as well as adding a tentacled space whale to their frigate fleet.
The Leviathan update comes hot on the heels of previous No Man’s Sky update “Outlaws”, which added a host of criminal underworld-related activities and improved the constantly growing game’s space combat in April.
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It’s become something of a cliché these days to talk about how far No Man’s Sky has come since its disappointing 2016 launch, but goddamn. I sure hope the folks at Hello Games are remembering to take breathers and drink water every now and then, because it’s starting to seem like they spend every waking moment working on this impressive space sim.
I strongly believe console and PC gaming is for everyone, but let’s be honest: the jargony way people talk about video games can make it difficult to get into the hobby.
Unless you’re enmeshed in the video game world, a sentence like “the latest patch nerfed HP scaling on end-game mobs but made aggro proc OP” will make zero sense, but lots of gamers talk that way all the time. And it’s hard to get into a new game when every guide, article, YouTube video, or in-game chat message is full of words you don’t understand, from “roguelike” to “metroidvania.”
Thankfully, the folks at PlayStation have recognized this issue and created a “Gamer Dictionary” to help noobs parse all that jargon. Definitely bookmark the dictionary if you’re a new player, or if you’re trying to help someone get into games for the first time.
Screenshot: Brendan Hesse
The dictionary contains an alphabetical sorting of over 100 gaming-specific words, phrases, and acronyms, and they’re all surprisingly helpful, even if you aren’t a total beginner. Some include explanations of technical terms like “Hit Box,” “Judder,” and “I-Frames”; slang phrases such as “gank” or “noob”; and acronyms like “GPU,” “K/D,” “OP,” and more. There are also simple explanations for common video game genres, so you’ll know the difference between an ARPG, a CRPG, and a JRPG.
It’s nice to have a one-stop resource where you can learn what it means to “git gud” or memorize ABCs of the RPG genre, but the list is missing explanations for several popular subgenres with annoyingly obtuse names like the aforementioned “metroidvania,” “roguelike,” and “soulslike.” Luckily, we have a guide that can help demystify these unhelpful video game genre descriptors.
I hope PlayStation continues to add to its Gamer Dictionary, but it’s already a helpful and necessary resource and I’m glad it exists. Recent NPD estimates show that three out of every four people in the United States play video games of some kind. While these figures include mobile and casual gaming, more people than ever are also playing on consoles or PCs, which inevitably means more people will be curious enough to try bigger, more immersive, and more exciting video games for themselves, too.
I’m excited to see companies take steps to make console and PC gaming more approachable—whether that’s Sony’s new gamer dictionary, Microsoft’s commitment to accessibility options, or Nintendo’s ever-broadening appeal via games like Nintendo Switch Sports, Animal Crossing, and Ring Fit Adventure.
Sifu’s got a good pitch. You are a martial arts master, bent on revenge, fighting odds that are impossible to overcome in a lifetime. But you have a secret weapon: Each time you die, you rise again. You race to finish your quest as your avatar grows frail and gray.
It’s a novel concept, so it’s a shame that developer Sloclap wasn’t able to make it work. Sifu is a game full of confusing, inescapable, infuriating shortcomings, and almost all of them are tied to its supernatural twist.
Image: Sloclap via Polygon
Before we get into that, let’s talk about the good stuff: The “badass martial arts master” portion of the pitch is executed with incredible skill. Sifu has the bones of a wonderful action game, giving you all the tools to play out your Hong Kong action fantasies. Light and heavy attacks string into beautifully animated combos that hit with satisfying thwacks and comic book motion lines. You can finish stunned enemies with brutal, speedy environmental executions that will elicit gasps over and over again. From the jump, you’re a force to be reckoned with.
But your enemies put up a fight. They can drop you in a couple of hits, and they use their numbers to surround and overpower you. Sifu’s goons are hardly as polite as the kind we’ve come to expect in a post-Batman: Arkham third-person combat world. They don’t wait their turn, and they don’t broadcast their intent with blinking warning icons. So you’re always on the move, sliding across tables and hopping over furniture — constantly scrambling to deny them the full benefit of their superior numbers.
Image: Sloclap via Polygon
When assailants do catch up to you, you’ve still got tools — maybe too many. Sifu’s defensive resource is called “structure,” and it works a lot like “posture” in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. You can block to absorb attacks, but your structure meter swells. When it fills, it shatters, leaving you vulnerable for a few precious seconds. But if you perfectly time your block, the enemy will take structure damage instead. Sifu adds another layer of technical complexity with its “avoids,” which are executed by holding the block button and flicking the left stick up or down, depending on whether you’re evading a high attack or low attack. With the right timing, you’ll escape damage and recover a bit of structure.
Learning the utility of each of these defensive tools takes a lot of effort, but it comes with its rewards. There’s nothing like perfectly timing a duck under an incoming baseball bat and watching your opponent slug the poor goon behind you.
Sifu is at its very best when it drops you into overwhelming scenarios and asks you to use these offensive and defensive tools to overcome the odds. You’ll shove a foe into a crowd of his allies and then flow through them, parrying, disarming, striking, dodging, sweeping, and having a lovely time. I wish I could say that this is the extent of Sifu’s reach, and that it’s happy to revel in all of this kinetic, violent joy.
Alas!
All the other stuff. When I saw the debut trailer that revealed the nifty “get older every time you die” mechanic, I thought, Oh, neat. I wonder how they’ll massage that concept into an elegant game system. I’m sad to report that the answer to that question is: “They didn’t.” It’s confusing and unwieldy. Its internal logic is hard to follow, and it taints just about everything it touches.
bonkImage: Sloclap via Polygon
So let’s get into it.
You start Sifu as a 20-year-old Pak Mei master. You have to raid the hideouts of five big jerks and kill them in a predetermined order. Every time you die, you rise again with a refilled life bar and a few more gray hairs. The amount of aging you’ll do is a Fibonacci sequence determined by your current death count. After your first death, you’ll be 21; after your second, you’ll be 23; after your third, you’ll be 26; and so forth.
I hope you’re not already confused, because we’re just getting started.
Each passing decade is a milestone. You’ll gain a bit of attack power, but your maximum health will shrink. This is cool. The balance of risk and reward in combat evolves as you age into a glass cannon. Each death will also give you access to a little shop where you can spend experience points on extremely useful combos and skills, like catching thrown projectiles, executing a damaging parry follow-up, or a sliding kick that knocks opponents over. Cool! Simple enough.
But! Each of those skills has a specific age cutoff. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, I suppose. You also have the option to repurchase a skill you already have. You don’t unlock a better version of it, but if you buy it five times, it will be unlocked on all subsequent runs. Hrm.
Image: Sloclap via Polygon
This system is a lot to take in, and even the interface struggles to make sense of it. The upgrade screen is a deluge of black, gray, and pink dots; XP costs; tool tips; and terms and conditions. The process of dumping experience into already-unlocked skills isn’t rewarding. It feels like paying my student loans.
You can also increase your core stats with shrines, which are interspersed throughout each level. While the other upgrades are mostly active skills and attacks, shrines grant you passive benefits: things like increased weapon durability, health recovery on takedowns, or even a chance to reset your death counter. Each shrine lets you invest a point in one of nine of these perks, each of which has three levels. What currency do you use to unlock these perks? Well, it depends on the perk. Some are unlocked with experience, some by simply being under a certain age, and others with the third abstract currency of “level score.”
Right now, you might be saying, “Why are you telling me all this? Lots of games have obtuse, hard-to-grok progression systems. I’ve played Dark Souls.” And you’re right. Complex, prickly progression systems can be really fun when they are elegantly grafted onto gameplay.
But that’s not the case here. Not at all.
I haven’t even dug into how bosses work, or how you have to restart a run once you die after the age of 70. I spent a lot of energy parsing Sifu’s opaque network of rules and systems, and I want to spare you, dear reader, from the same form of exhaustion. Just trust me when I say that no matter the effort you bring to understanding Sifu, it will not meet you halfway.
Like Hades and Returnal, Sifu is a run-based game where each attempt is an opportunity to get further than your last. But unlike those games, its execution is needlessly complex, and it’s really, really hard to tell if you’re making any permanent progress.
In Hades, the weapons and perks you pick on any given run are constantly reinforced on screen with icons and weapon effects. In Sifu, there are no external reminders of the skills you have equipped. I can’t count how many times I mashed the input for a technique, only to realize I hadn’t unlocked it on that particular run. Unless you go through the laborious and annoying process of permanently unlocking a skill, you never get a chance to develop muscle memory. In short: Sifu’s visual language isn’t doing its convoluted systems any favors.
Likewise, the perks you’ve gained from shrines are reset and overwritten with each new attempt, making it just about impossible to easily plan your build, or even hold onto any reliable understanding of your own abilities.
Sifu is a very difficult roguelite, and you will, naturally, have to replay levels ad nauseam. However, it’s worth mentioning that the level layouts and enemy placements are identical on each run. I’ve enjoyed games where this is the case. Part of the Dark Souls experience is learning efficient routes back to boss battles, weaving around enemies and fighting only when necessary. In Sifu, this is impossible. Fights are hard-scripted. Doors stay locked until every lowly goon is defeated. The run back to a boss might take 10-15 minutes if everything goes well for you. The benefit of these surprise-free runs is that they increase your sense of mastery. But when you’ve seen the same scripted events and heard the same unskippable dialogue for the dozenth time, it feels horribly rote, and all that’s left is drudgery.
Image: Sloclap via Polygon
It’s such a shame, because there are some beautiful sequences in this game. You stroll through psychedelic tableaus full of gorgeous colors and haunting sounds. It’s amazing — the first time. But with each repetition, I got more and more frustrated and incredulous. These level designers did a wonderful job, but did nobody tell them what kind of game this was? Did nobody point out that the player would have to wade through this lovely interactive art installation over and over and over again, just for the privilege of being beaten to death by the enemy on the other side?
Sifu is incredibly frustrating because beneath all of its messy, clunky contrivances, there is a fantastic action game that I really, really want to play. But Sifu can’t get out of its own way, and its high-concept ambitions spoil its fundamental pleasures.
Sifu will be released Feb. 8 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC; early access for pre-order customers goes live Feb. 6. The game was reviewed using a PS5 download code provided by Sloclap. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
At least someone’s racking up their frequent flyer miles. Travel restrictions are once again unpredictable, flights are being canceled by the thousands, but Agent 47 is still giving his AMEX Centurion a workout. The bar-coded, Saville-suited assassin is taking another jaunt around the globe, as Hitman 3 is getting a slew of new modes as part of its second year. IO Interactive announced the news on a YouTube stream this morning.
“Elusive Target Arcade” is a new time-sensitive mode for Hitman 3. Elusive targets—marks who only stick around for a limited period of time—have been a mainstay of recent Hitman games. In the arcade twist on the mode, which is added free to Hitman 3 starting January 20, targets are permanent, but you’ll have to take out several in a row. Mess up, and you’ll have to wait a day to try again.
Hitman 3 will also receive a new mode called “Freelancer,” in which you take out targets in a chain of existing Hitman maps, jumping from one level to the next from a gorgeous, mid-century safehouse. Your goal is to take down an unidentified leader, eliminating their subordinates along the way; every target you take out gives you more intel on who the leader might be. Targets are randomized, so you can’t memorize a campaign’s layout. If you bring gear on a mission and die, you lose it. Basically, it’s Hitman by way of roguelike. “Freelancer” is currently slated for the spring.
IO Interactive also announced details about Hitman 3’s forthcoming VR debut on PC, first revealed last November. (Hitman 3 has been playable in virtual reality since launch, but only on PSVR.) The entire World of Assassination trilogy—the three most recent Hitman games—will be available on VR for PC on January 20, with support for any levels you can already access. On the same day, Hitman will receive ray-tracing support on PC, be available on the Steam storefront, and join the Xbox Game Pass library for both console and PC.
Hitman 3, released last January for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, is the culmination of the modern “World of Assassination” trilogy of Hitman games, and the first to be released independently by developer IO Interactive. Ostensibly, Hitman 3 is a stealth game in which you’re set loose in a sandbox and given a target (or three) to eliminate, but Hitman 3 plays a lot like a darkly funny puzzle game, as you spend time trying to concoct unexpected solutions. (See, for reference, the grape press.)
Many of the levels—including an Argentinian vineyard and a Berlin nightclub that flipped the Hitman script—were best-in-class. Others, however, left a sour taste with players, most notoriously the game’s final level, a lengthy shootout on a speeding train. (Though I initially lavished praise on the train level, and still stand by it, now that I’ve actually played through the modern trilogy I can totally see why some fans bristled at its action-focused structure.)
So far, Hitman 3 hasn’t received significant expansions, certainly nothing on the scale of levels that became instant standouts of, say, Hitman 2: a stately bank in New York City, plus a sumptuous beachside resort in the Maldives. Instead, Hitman 3’s post-release content has played out on existing maps, comprising a series of challenges inspired by the seven deadly sins.
That changes this year. On today’s stream, IO Interactive confirmed a new location—ten seconds of footage at the end of the stream panned over a tropical setting—but didn’t reveal any further details.
Sadly, IO Interactive was totally mum about the scant chance of adding the best-possible Hitman setting: a renaissance faire.
As the death bell tolls for 2021, Nintendo and a suite of independent publishers have chosen to give us some final indie game sales before sending this garbage year off into that sweet night. All things considered, it’s a pretty excellent send-off, composed of many of the last few years’ best indie games. If you’re wondering what’s worth grabbing, here are a few choice recommendations I think most of y’all would enjoy.
Subnautica + Subnautica: Below Zero
The cult-classic ocean exploration survival sim and its newish, similarly beloved sequel are on sale for a pleasant 40 percent off, leaving the two-game bundle at only $36. I, for one, will finally be picking these games up, since I am totally unphased by the ocean’s depths.
Cris Tales
Our own Mike Fahey really liked Cris Tales, an indie JRPG about playing with time. For those of you who are fans of the turn-based battling genre, you can pick it up for a pleasing 50 percent discount.
Risk of Rain 2
Risk of Rain 2 is one of the best roguelikes of the last decade, and it only costs $6 right now. It is also getting a new expansion in the first half of 2022, so now is a good time to get in.
OlliOlli: Switch Stance
The OlliOlli games are excellent on their own, but for $3 they’re a total no-brainer. Two stellar side-scrolling skateboarding games for less than a cup of coffee? Yes, I am down.
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a narrative experience about America—and a tremendously cool one at that. While it can be a bit sparse at times, $4 is a steal to experience some of the best writing in all of video games.
Ashen
Ashen is a great souls-like with a simple, Switch-friendly art style that makes it a perfect game for tense combat on the go. It is currently on sale for half off.
Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition
Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition is the other video game that many would describe as having “the best writing in all of video games.” It is also, coincidentally, about America and the brutality of modern capitalism. Purchase it (currently $15) and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine to become mad at the world, and hopeful for the capacity of human connection in spite of a system that does not care about you.
Night in the Woods
The other, other video game that you could reasonably describe as having “some of the best writing in all of video games,” which also, also happens to be about the slow collapse of American capitalism. 10 dollars. If you buy all three of these games, and play through them in the same week, you will become a communist. Sorry, I don’t make the rules (but I do live by them).
Void Bastards
Void Bastards is a roguelike, sci-fi first person shooter popularized by Game Pass, by some of the creators of System Shock 2 and BioShock. if you don’t have a PC or Xbox to play it on, try it here! It, too, is half off.
Slay the Spire
Slay the Spire is a stellar roguelike deck builder that needs no introduction. It is currently $7 dollars and 50 cents. If you haven’t played it already, just buy the damn thing so you can know why everyone else has been raving over it.
These are my favorite games from the current bout of sales—but there are dozens more worth taking a look at! If you wanna see the full suite of sales you’ll have to go to Nintendo’s website to actually see everything, because the eShop’s front page barely surfaces any of it. Oops!
Last year, Supergiant Games’ Hades, the roguelike inspired by Greek mythology about Hades’ son Zagreus escaping the underworld, released to near universal acclaim. If it wasn’t praised for being an inviting step into the roguelike genre, it was praised for its characters and narrative. If it wasn’t for that, it was for the music, you get the idea. Over a year later and now on all the major consoles and PC, the game still has a sizable impact, and it’ll surely grow again because it won a Hugo Award this weekend and is the first video game to do so.
Every year, the Hugo Awards recognize the best brightest literary works of science fiction and fantasy. In recent years, they’ve branched out to include categories such as Best Fanzine or Best Fancast (podcast or video series, basically). For 2021, the Best Video Game category was created after being floated around as an idea for years now, according to the website’s announcement back in 2020. Of course, it likely helped that a lot of people had time to just play video games this past year.
Hades’ writer and creative director Greg Kasavin, who was unable to attend the Hugo Awards, took to Twitter to post an acceptance speech on behalf of Supergiant. “We’re so grateful that our work on Hades has stood out,” he said, “and we hope the Hugo Awards continue to recognize the amazing work being done in the video games space.” In addition to thanking the staff and their family, he gave a shoutout to the Greek gods up high and down low for “inspiring people like us for several thousands of years now, and may they long continue to do so.”
Hades had some pretty good competition to beat out: unsurprisingly, the AAA contenders were The Last of Us Part II, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Final Fantasy VII Remake. And on the indie side, there was the beloved afterlife management darling Spiritfarer and the fake (?) baseball sim Blaseball. This award was created as a one-off, but hopefully it sticks around, since video games are a fairly big part of sci-fi and fantasy at this point.
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For a game about the undying, Dead Cells is really living up to subject matter. The popular roguelike, first released in 2018 for consoles and PC, is getting even more new content, developer Motion Twin announced via press release today. The expansion announcement comes shortly after announcing a different massive content update for the indie game.
The latest content is called The Queen and the Sea, and is scheduled for an early 2022 release. Here’s a (tantalizingly brief) teaser:
Since its release more than three years ago, Dead Cells has earned a reputation as a tough, if fair, side-scrolling roguelike. Tight combat, a rewarding unlock system, and an impressively deep arsenal are selling points on their own. But the true draw is the game’s branching pathway system: At the end of each biome, you can choose-your-own adventure into one of several other biomes, creating a maze-like framework that compels “one more run before bed, okay?”
Dead Cells has slowly expanded since its launch. Last year, the Bad Seed DLC saw the addition of two new biomes—the Dilapidated Arboretum and the Morass of the Banished—as alternative areas that could show up early in a run. It also added a boss fight, plus new enemies and weapons, including a mushroom companion who can sprint headlong into enemies and then explode. Earlier this year, the Fatal Falls expansion did the same, offering the Fractured Shrines and Undying Shores as biomes you can hit in the middle of your runs.
Read More:Here’s Where Dead Cells Is At In 2021
The Queen and the Sea will add alternate biomes that can show up at the end of each run, beefing out the expansion significantly. One biome, Motion Twin says, purportedly is a “twist” that’s not “the standard-issue Dead Cells level you’re used to.” When asked for clarification on what the heck that means, exactly, a representative for Motion Twin declined to offer further details.
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This week, Dead Cells stepped into metaverse territory with its “everyone is here” update, which adds crossovers weapons and outfits from similarly zeitgeisty indie games like Hyper Light Drifter, Hollow Knight, and Curse of the Dead Gods.
Remember that DOOM roguelike, the one that Bethesda posted a cease and desist for? Its creators begrudgingly applied, but not before taking the spirit of that project and injecting it into a modern spiritual successor. That game is Jupiter Hell, it’s finally out of early access, and it’s very good.
In case you’ve forgotten, the game’s name is Jupiter Hell. It’s based off the work done for DoomRL, which was a DOOM-themed roguelike that had been posted online since … well, 2003.
Putting the lengthy delay in Zenimax’s legal team aside, Jupiter Hell always looked sick. From an isometric/top-down view, the game played out an awful lot like the DOOM board game — you moved in a turn-based fashion on a grid, shooting demons along the way. The game got a full release last Friday, and it’s come one hell of a long way.
Here’s the original Kickstarter trailer:
And here’s what Jupiter Hell looks like now.
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The whole game plays like a traditional roguelike, which means no mouse controls. You can play with a controller though, and it works super well with that. But if you’re after a fresh game that runs neatly on a laptop or low-end machines, Jupiter Hell is one hell of a rabbit hole to go down.
Apart from moving with the keyboard/gamepad and picking up items, you also have a whole series of classes you can specialise in. The game gives you a choice of Marine, Scout or Technician from the beginning, and they all have massively different traits and abilities. From there, you can specialise in over 20 roles, or you can even store up points if necessary. All the traits make a massive difference, too.
The design really rewards patience and forethought too. Instead of moving back and forth, you have a wait action which lets you hunker down, improving your aim and reducing your chance to hit. You can then boost that with extra traits, not to mention extra relics, head armour, body armour and other inventory bonuses.
And while it’s all a very traditional roguelike underneath — shotguns have to be reloaded per bullet — you can run around the map in real-time just by holding the arrow keys/controller down. Some levels will institute a lockdown lasting a certain amount of seconds, which basically means you might have 180 or so moves to work through.
The whole curved CRT design is super fitting, too.
Image: ChaosForge
With all the environmental interactions, available weapons, combinations and the low hum of metal in the background, anyone who likes DOOM, traditional roguelikes or tactics-based games like XCOM will get something out of Jupiter Hell. Even the UI harks back to those classic DoomRL, Rogue-era days with the ASCII indicators. Each run will take you about 4 hours once you get accustomed to it, although those runs always have a good amount of intensity throughout.
It’s an absolute gem and one that’s completely flown under the radar. You can still grab it for 20 percent off on Steam, which equates to about $29 for Australians. Super good value for the amount of time you’ll get out of it, especially once you start doing runs on the harder difficulties.
