Steam for Chrome OS on the way, after more than 2 years of a slow drip of news about gaming platform and storefront Steam coming to Google’s Chrome OS, Google has quietly announced a small list of Chromebook models that will support Steam in the future through a project codenamed Borealis. The list primarily consists of Acer and ASUS models with internals on the higher end of the spectrum for Chromebooks, for Steam this is just the latest development in the gradual rollout of support for Linux-based systems. Neither company has announced any kind of release timeline for the feature as of yet.
Aussie game devs at GDC, this year’s Game Developer Conference in San Francisco will feature 4 panels hosted by Australian industry professionals including hometown heroes Witch Beam Games, developers of last year’s indie hit Unpacking. Wren Brier and Tim Dawson from Witch Beam will present a panel on the game’s narrative design while composer and sound designer Jeff Van Dyck hosts a separate panel about the game’s much-lauded foley work. Leena van Deventer, creative producer on upcoming Melbourne game Dead Static Drive, will be part of a talk on preparing students entering the games industry to create a more inclusive and culturally-informed environment. Dr Benjamin Abraham will also be giving a talk on the environmental impact of the games industry.
Capcom accused of recycling stock image Into Street Fighter 6 logo, Capcom announced Street Fighter 6 this week and showed a teaser trailer which features a new logo design with the letters SF in a hexagon. Ars Technica creative director Aurich Lawson pointed out on Twitter that the logo looks nearly identical to an image available on Adobe’s stock image library for US$80. Capcom did take the bold creative risk of making the logo slightly more angular before slapping it on a AAA title however.
Raven Software union and Activision Blizzard enter labour relations hearings, Activision Blizzard and QA workers at subsidiary studio Raven Software have entered a hearing with the US National Labor Review Board to determine which employees will be included in the formation of a union under the new umbrella group Game Workers Alliance. Raven QA workers have accused Activision Blizzard management of using union-busting tactics by reassigning employees to split them up and embed them with other departments and arguing that all Raven employees should be allowed to vote on whether the department should be able to form a union. Activision Blizzard has hired Reed Smith, a law firm that openly advertises their experience supporting anti-union campaigns, and issued a statement to Polygon which openly accuses the union of not understanding the games industry and hints at a potential strategy of circumventing collective negotiations with the union to try to sway the votes of individual employees.
In this weeks podcast, Paul and Jango talk gaming news, Rani reviews Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Elliott takes us into the Aussie bush with a review of Ty Tasmanian Tiger.
The new fantasy MMO by Smilegate has reached over 1.32 million concurrent players on Steam over their launch weekend. This makes Lost Ark the second highest concurrent peak in Steam history, second only to PUBG: Battlegrounds. It’s a pretty impressive feat for a new title beating out the likes of Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and DOTA 2. Originally Lost Ark was released back in South Korea in 2019 and has been brought over to a western audience by Amazon Games. Currently Smilegate have said, “We’re blown away by the number of players that have joined us in Lost Ark since our launch on Friday. Arkesia is filled to the brim with eager players, so we’re working as quickly as possible to set up an entirely new region of servers in Europe.”
The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit for sale!
The rights that is, and not just to the video games. Variety reported recently that the current owner Saul Zaentz Co. has decided to sell its Tolkien holdings, thus giving up the precious merchandising, movie, video game, and live event rights, this includes all titles from J.R.R. Tolkien. This selling of rights happens to come just in time for Amazon to officially announce its long-awaited television series called The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Middle-earth is a very popular place for game developers over the years with many spin-offs and lore link-ins. There are also many projects in the works revolving around The Lord of the Rings franchise. Only time will tell who snaps up the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien with properties expected to sell for a minimum $2 Billion.
Anti-gay law stops Russian fans from The Sims Expansion.
Developers of The Sims have decided to not sell their latest expansion My Wedding Stories in Russia. Russia has strict anti-LGBTIQ “gay propaganda law.” In this latest expansion of The Sims players are allowed to create their dream wedding or a catastrophe, all the marketing for this latest expansion features a lesbian couple of colour Camille and Dominique as they plan their big day. EA have said in an announcement, “As we moved through our development and brand storytelling process, we became aware that the way we wanted to tell Cam and Dom’s story would not be something we could freely share around the world.” “We are steadfast in upholding that commitment by shining a light on and celebrating stories like Dom and Cam’s, so we have made the decision to forgo the release of My Wedding Stories where our storytelling would be subject to changes because of federal laws.”
This week in gaming releases:
Feb 17
Assassin’s Creed the Ezio Collection [Switch]
King of Fighters 15 [PC, PS5, XSX, PS4]
The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories DLC [PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO]
There’s never been a better time to dive into the world of Tabletop Roleplaying Games but there’s so much information out there it can be hard to know where to start. Especially if you want to look beyond the mammoth that is Dungeons and Dragons. We’ve got a list of some great systems you can try to expand your horizons, and a list of tools that can be used with any system to enrich your game experience.
Game System Recommendations
Blades in the Dark
Blades in the Dark is set in a gritty industrial-fantasy world. It boasts a fast-paced system, and requires minimal preparation compared to other games were talking about. Players become a crew of daring scoundrels, seeking their fortunes through whatever means necessary. There are heists, chases, occult mysteries, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, and riches to be claimed.
Pathfinder is a direct descendant of the 1st and 2nd editions of Dungeons and Dragons, splitting off before 4th Edition it’s a cousin of the modern-day phenomena. Pathfinder is now in its own second edition and has carved out its own identity. Paizo provides a great number of choices in character creation, allowing for highly specialised characters (especially compared to D&D’s broader strokes)
Pathfinder is a good choice if:
Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t let you customise characters enough
You want a more involved combat experience than systems like D&D can offer.
You want to try your hand at new systems but don’t want to go too far from the familiar.
World of Darkness is a horror fantasy TTRPG set in our world. Not just modern fantasy, but the real world tinged with supernatural secrets. World of Darkness excel at telling stories about paranormal power struggles, and the edge between mystical and mundane.
In my experience with World of Darkness, I sometimes found myself getting overwhelmed with the mechanics and the rulebook. If you struggle with learning heavy systems like me, you might want to find someone or an online guide to help explain. If you enjoy diving into rich mechanics, this will be a delight for you. Either way, don’t let this be a dealbreaker as they serve as a framework for World of Darkness’s rich gameplay.
World of Darkness is a good choice if:
You want to explore supernatural characters and settings
Now, quite simply, the Fate system is entirely set up with 2 assumptions: you want to roll less dice, and you want to do more roleplaying. I have to say, it accomplishes these things fantastically. The very first session had us a little nervous because there were so few numbers involved, but it was so refreshing to be able to just focus on roleplaying, investigating, settling into our characters. Plus, once you get the hang of the mechanics, it’s a lot more immersive and engaging than you expect.
Essentially, you have a long list of skills and you’re mediocre at all of them, except for a few depending on your character. Each skill can do 1 or more of 4 actions: attacking, defending, overcoming obstacles, or creating an advantage. Aspects is something notable about a character or the scene, and it can be used to give you a bonus to a dice roll, which usually costs a Fate point. For example, if I snuck upon someone on the toilet, then the aspect would be the fact that their pants are down, impairing their movement. So, I get a bonus since my pants are up and secure. It’s flexible, but it has a cost.
Stunts are more mechanical and are pre-defined, but they grant characters a mechanical benefit. For example, you might have established that your character is extremely strong, and once active then you may get a bonus for an arm-wrestling competition, but you underestimate your strength and accidentally break the fragile glass relic. It’s not that it’s simpler, but that it has done away with a lot of frivolous rules and numbers for the sake of allowing you to focus on your character, and to approach all situations from a role-playing and characterisation perspective
FATE is a good choice if:
You want a simple system that wont hold you back with rules.
You’re looking for a highly flexible system to play a atypical setting within.
Now, it’s always tricky getting the party together for a game. It might be a schedule conflict, distance, or finding time and energy, and in these past couple of years that has only become truer. But there are ways to remove some of those issues. Roll20 is one such option, allowing you and your party to play together over the internet, and it can be just as immersive, or even more so! Essentially, it acts as a virtual tabletop.
You can create your characters, put together the maps you need, and make it as detailed or as simple as you want it to be. And it supports just about every tabletop RPG system there is. It’s all in-browser, sign up for free, and you can either create the maps, encounters, everything you need, from scratch, or even buy an adventure with all that already created. For art assets, you can upload your own, or use what’s available from the Roll20 library.
You can manage rolls, roleplay, act out your actions and battles, and there is a tonne of customization that is available. You can even create your own code to make some repetitive tasks a bit easier. Between Roll20 and your own imagination and patience, in a lot of ways it can be more immersive and easier than face-to-face games, but it does take a little bit of time to get the hang of things.
Music and sound effects is probably the easiest way to get some instant immersion in your game, but it can be frustrating to not only maintain the game and do your rolls and roleplaying and keep track of all your NPC voices, but to also manage music from your music app of choice, and you get blasted with an ad right in the middle of the boss fight. Well, a local dev created the perfect little tool: Grandpa’s Audio Helper.
It’s quite simple to use, load it up and you have access to a library of sounds and music for all sorts of settings. Busy village, a quiet night around the campfire, a horde of zombies. But more than that, you can layer the various sounds in order to build the perfect soundscape. On a ship in the middle of a storm and there’s zombies? Sorted. In the middle of a forest, only birds for company, when you hear a strange chanting in the distance? Done.
You can adjust the volume for each aspect individually, and you can even create groups of sounds, allowing you to load the perfect, pre-prepared scene when you need it. Can’t find the sound you need? You can import your own sounds into the app. It just makes building the auditory experience so much easier, whether it needs to be on the fly, or if you’re planning something epic and need the scene to be just right.
Heroforge is a store that sells customisable miniature figurines. While the store is a great option if you’re wanting to purchase one, I want to specifically recommend Heroforge for it’s free-to-use creation tool. You can create a digital 3D model using the hundreds of assets they offer across many genres, pose it dynamically, and paint the whole thing to complete the look. If you aren’t artistically talented this is a great way to design your character and share with others.
There are far more tools available for your TTRPG than we could list here, very few of which are a good fit for all the available systems. With a near endless list, how could they be? This conundrum is why our last recommendation for you is Drive Thru RPG. Drive Thru RPG is a huge online marketplace selling all manner of digital TTRPG content: sourcebooks, supplements, battle maps, and inspiration. The range extends from official Dungeons and Dragons to Homebrew rulesets, to the most obscure, indie title you can imagine. If you’re looking for a way to spice up your TTRPG experience beyond what we’re talking about tonight, I have no doubt you’ll be able to find something that scratches your very specific itch on DriveThruRPG.
Nintendo News This week Nintendo had several announcements with president Shuntaro Furukawa saying the Switch was in the middle of its lifecycle. With the Switch selling more units than all previous generations of Nintendo’s home consoles, with over 100 million units sold so far, the Switch, Switch Lite, and the new OLED version that released last year, it seems the Switch is closing in on Game Boy’s near 120 million console total. Despite this, year-to-year sales in 2021 dropped by 6% and profits were down 9.3% compared to 2020, after Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ exceptional release. Shuntaro Furukawa also announced they would not be participating in the consolidation wars of Microsoft and Sony, and are instead focussing on strengthening their own company. In better news for Nintendo, Pokémon Legends: Arceus has sold 6.5 million copies in its first week, outselling Sword and Shield which sold 6 million collectively in its release week. The announcements of today’s Nintendo Direct was packed with sports and ports. In Sports, Mario Strikers Battle League, a Mario soccer game utilising items, skills, and strategy is coming June 10. Nintendo Switch Sport, a new Wii-like sports game including Bowling (with survival mode), Tennis, Chambara, Badminton, Volleyball, and Soccer complete with leg strap, as well as a future Golf game to come. This comes to Switch April 29 with a playtest for Switch Online members February 18 through 20. Baseball game The Show 22 announced cross play to take your game on the go. Disney Speedstorm, a free-to-play cross platform Disney and Pixar action racer to come midyear. Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival, a rhythm drum game with 76 songs and a future in-game subscription that will give access to over 500 songs is coming this year.
In DLC announcements, Mario Kart 8 is getting a paid DLC with 48 remastered courses to be released over time named Booster Course Pack. This will be included in the Online Expansion Pack or may be purchased separately. And Cuphead – The Delicious Last Course DLC will be available June 30.
In Ports, Star Wars: Force Unleashed is available from today in the online store, also EarthBound and EarthboundBeginnings have been added to Nintendo Switch Online. Assassin’s Creed Enzio Collection is coming Feb 17, Triangle Strategy March 4, Chrono Cross: The Radican Dreamers Addition, a remake with enhanced soundtrack, is coming April 7, Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp April 8, Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series July 8, and Live A Live July 22. No Man’s Sky and Front Mission 1st: Remake are coming to the Switch midyear, and SD Gundam Battle Alliance, and Portal: Companion Collection have been announced for 2022.
Surprising Grand Theft Auto News On February 4th Rockstar surprised fans by announcing in a blog post that they are “actively developing[sic] the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series [and] is well underway.” This same post also confirmed the release date for GTA V and GTA Online coming to PS5 and Xbox series S & X on March 15. In other surprising news, CEO Strauss Zelnick claimed GTA Trilogy, with a user score of 0.6 on metacritic, “significantly exceeded” expectations. In an investor presentation Take Two-claimed they have sold up to an estimated 10 million copies of the game.
Now in some Gaming Bytes:
Mobile Warcraft In 2021’s financial report Activision Blizzard shared that they are planning the release of a Warcraft franchised mobile “content” to be released this year. There is no indication as to what form this may take.
Wordle Madness With the popularity of Wordle and its sale to the New York Times last week, several spinoffs have started to pop-up online. There are both word based options for the Wordle connoisseur with Semantle – a word meaning match, Dordle – a double word match puzzle, Lewdle a humorous addition where only lewd words are allowed, and Gameboy Rom and Wordle Archive for those wanting to take it on the go or check it out historically. For those sick of the word based wordles, Globle has you guessing countries, Squirdle is all Pokémon, and Nerdle is for those math fans. But for those OG Wordle fans… it seems everything is right there on the webpage. So, before the New York Times takes over, don’t forget to right click and save your way to years of offline Wordle. If you have another Wordle spinoff we need to know about, leave a comment on our Facebook news post.
Now for some upcoming games: Friday the 11th free-to-play MMORPG Lost Ark is coming to PC Pixelated action RPG where your choices matter Infernax is coming to PC, Xbox, PS4 and Switch just in time for Valentine’s Day. On Thursday 17th, King of Fighters 15 comes to PC, Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 4 & 5, and Total War: Warhammer 3 comes to PC and Game Pass.
Nobody knows how epic this podcast is… will you take the plunge? Listen in to Ezie and Elliott talk news, while Paul reviews Nobody Saves the World, and Tobi screams incoherently about Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Dual at Mt. Skullzfyre.
Online voting is now open for the 2022 Game Developers Choice Awards and the Independent Games Festival Awards. You have until Friday, February 11th at 5.59pm AEST to submit your vote.
All finalists are eligible for the awards, and casting your vote can determine the winning games, with the winners being announced at the Game Developers Conference in March.
Local game Unpacking by Witch Beam is on the finalist list for GDCA and Unpacking and another local game, Webbed by Sbug Games are both on the list for IGF. These games join the ranks with Sable by Shedworks, Halo Infinite by 343 Industries, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart by Insomniac Games, and so much more.
You can check out our Facebook page @ZedGamesAu for links to vote!
Sony Buys Bungie With More Acquisitions On The Way
Sony has announced a deal to acquire Bungie for $3.6 billion, making it yet another large consolidation deal in the games industry. Bungie will be ‘an independent subsidiary’ of Sony Interactive Entertainment, and will remain a multiplatform studio. They promise that Bungie will have the option to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play, which may come as a relief to current players who have already had to migrate their accounts in the past.
But Sony isn’t stopping there! Jim Ryan has said that we should expect more studio acquisitions in the future, with Sony aiming to expand beyond the PlayStation console, although the timing of the Bungie acquisition has many suggesting it is in response to Microsoft’s recent acquisitions of Activision, although the Bungie deal has been in the works for over 5 months.
New York Times Now Has Wordle
The popular word game that has taken the internet by storm has been acquired by the New York Times for an undisclosed price in ‘the low seven figures’. Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle, says the game will continue to be free to play, however the New York Times statement seems to imply otherwise, stating that Wordle will “initially remain free to new and existing players”.
The New York Times does promise that Wordle will have an interesting future ahead, with a team of designers and engineers to further the user experience.
It’s unclear exactly what this means at this point, but many are cautious for the future of this little world game.
Ubisoft Complains That Players Don’t Get NFTs
After Ubisoft announced Quartz in December 2021, an NFT platform that would allow players to buy and sell virtual goods for real-world cash, they had been met with a wave of concern as to the potential environmental impact such a platform could cause, and what NFTs in video games actually mean for players.
The publisher answers critics by explaining that Quartz would use the Tezos blockchain to circumvent the energy-hungry algorithms, so that a single transaction would use roughly the same amount of energy as a video stream. However, this hasn’t stopped criticism, with many asking ‘what’s the point?’.
“I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them. For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second just a tool for speculation”, said Nicolar Pouard, VP at Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab.
“But what we [at Ubisoft] are seeing first is the end game. The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them or they’re finished playing the game itself. So, it’s really for them. It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now.”
Developer: Light Brick Studio, Light Brick AS Publisher: The Lego Group Music: Hendrik Lindstrand Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X & S, iOS, PC (Windows & Mac) Released: 20th December 2019 Genre: Puzzle, Adventure, Indie
Now you might be thinking, “Oh, a LEGO game similar to the likes of Harry Potter or Star Wars” well you’d be wrong this little gem is a small-time indie development that differs greatly from other games in the LEGO franchise. This story follows a father and son depicted in LEGO where they go on an adventure in a series of different stages using the ability of building LEGOs to reach their destinations. There are no subtitles or dialog to follow, simply the story is told throughout gameplay using its environment to illustrate each challenge and using beautiful level design to instruct the player how to overcome each stage.
There are many different levels with different themes, such as hoping along beaches, climbing mountains, navigating swamp lands as well as some dark industrial style levels. You play as both the parent and child using your third-party abilities to move LEGO pieces around the scene to help build bridges, steps, or make shift ramps to get each character to the end of the puzzle. Some levels are more difficult than others but overall, there is no incorrect way to solve them just the limit of you LEGO building imagination.
LEGO Builder’s Journey is a 3D puzzle platformer that is very kind on the player. LEGO is about building and creating solutions with your imagination and this block building brilliance allows you exactly that. With each puzzle you encounter you are free to move pieces where and how you like. With very intuitive block moving and placing mechanics the game feels smooth and intentional. As you progress through, levels can become a little more challenging with the introduction of sinking mud, larger gaps to cover, weight scales and not to mention some levels that involve making a skate track for your character to ride on.
I played LEGO Builder’s Journey on the Nintendo Switch and found the controls to feel really intuitive, you can even use the touch screen when in handheld mode, my only issue was that you have to use the A button to both rotate and place pieces. The UI is minimalistic and innocuous, I actually consider the UI to be my overall favourite aspect of the game it felt really kind on the user, it also felt totally natural when moving through the main menu as well as understanding narrative without any dialog. I found that the tutorial parts of the game where enhanced buy this seamless UI experience. The UI design is simply phenomenal.
There is exclusively one gameplay mode which is the story, with the PC version of LEGO Builder’s Journey has a couple more levels than the Nintendo Switch version if end up looking for more content, which could happen given that the gameplay time was roughly 2 hours in total. I must say that LEGO Builder’s Journey could definitely have benefited from being much longer as it was kind of sad that the moment, I was getting right into it, it came to an end. In saying that each moment that I did spend in game was well and truly worth it, don’t let the short run time deter you from this fantastic indie experience.
The sound design is calming and simple, using delicate sound effects for each object you interact with as well as nice clinks and clunks from placing blocks. The score of music that plays in the background is the best kind for unwinding after a long day. The composer Hendrik Lindstrand has provided a beautiful soundscape for you to drift away on, as you place LEGO blocks the music gently guides you on your journey and really adds to that feeling of imagination and wonder that we all know and love about LEGO.
I must say that LEGO Builder’s Journey is blocktacular and beautiful. With subtle and effective UI too delightfully calm music, it really is a short and sweet adventure. From around $20 on the Nintendo eShop and $30 on Steam it maybe a little steep so keep an eye out for when it goes on special. Despite how short the duration of play is I found the story captivating and each level I played I was spurred on by the beautifully directed relationship between child and parent. What is LEGO without a heart-warming family building relationship? At least this one you don’t accidentally step on any bricks in the middle of the night… OW!
This week Ezie and Hazel discuss news and focus on the recent acquisition of Activision/Blizzard by Microsoft, then Ezie leads us through the relaxing puzzle block game LEGO Builder’s Journey.
