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Surprising No One, Pathfinder Still Incredibly Confusing In Video Game Form
16.9.2021
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, the recently released character RPG developed by Owlcat Games, seems really neat. I like the writing so far and the character work seems solid. But holy shit, it has possibly the most overwhelming character creator I’ve ever touched. If your game asks me...
The Best Tales Of Arise Character Is This Cat
16.9.2021
The Tales series of RPGs has long been known for starring a compelling cast of main characters. In that regard, the latest entry, last week’s Tales of Arise, doesn’t disappoint. All six party members are deeply fleshed-out, fascinating people. And like those of every previous entry, they’re...
Tales Of Arise: The Kotaku Review
15.9.2021
Dozens of hours into Tales of Arise, a new role-playing game from Bandai Namco, one of your party members asks, “Is it over?”Read more
Everyone Who Worked On A Game Should Be In The Credits
14.9.2021
Deathloop is out, and by all accounts it’s pretty good! It’s a shame, then, that it’s also the reason we’re revisiting the topic of “video games people being weirdly shitty about who makes it into the credits and who doesn’t”.Read more
Wow, This Quake Clone Is Smaller Than A Word Doc
14.9.2021
Games today are massive, taking up dozens of gigabytes. Some recent bigger games, like Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, cracked 250GB in total. That’s too big. But a new free mini-shooter out today, Q1K3, is a blast and only needs 13KB of JavaScript. It’s also part of a contest dedicated to devs...
Shout Out To The Developers Trying More Humane Working Conditions
10.9.2021
Because most major news stories about the culture and environment at video game developers tend to be negative, I thought tonight it would be nice to look at two recent examples of studios who are trying something different.Read more
Some Of The Best Rocks In Video Games Are Actually Real
8.9.2021
I’ve spent years using free rock assets from the Unity Asset Store and the Unreal Engine Marketplace, but never thought too hard about where those assets came from. I just needed rocks in my games. Vox recently published a video about how game developers create photorealistic rocks, and I...
Epic, Bless Its Heart, Is Trying To Sell An Unreal Demo Fortnite Skin
8.9.2021
Behold the Fortnite version of Echo Windwalker! Wait, sorry, Windwalker Echo. You know, the hero from last year’s Unreal Engine 5 demo? The one that was running on a PlayStation 5? Fortnite has been trying to convince me to add Windwalker Echo to my slowly growing collection of game skins since...
Fans Are Pissed About The Switch eShop’s Asset Flip Scourge
7.9.2021
It’s no secret that the Nintendo eShop is awash in “shovelware,” low-quality games that seemingly only exist to take up space (and maybe turn a quick buck for the publisher). But over the past year or so, the eShop is facing an even more insidious publishing tactic: the so-called “asset flip.”Read...
PUBG's Creator Leaves Company To Form New Studio
1.9.2021
Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, the man whose modding and design efforts helped create the Battle Royale genre as we know it, has left PUBG’s parent company Krafton to form his own development studio.Read more
Stardew Valley Creator Holding $40,000 Tournament To Separate Wheat From Chaff
23.8.2021
Every game gets at least 15 minutes of esport fame. Stardew Valley’s competitive time to shine just happens to be coming five years after it was initially released. In a tribute to the game’s biggest speedrunners and content creators, and the passionate farming sim community they’ve helped create...
Sonic Amateur Games Expo Features 150+ Free Fan Games
22.8.2021
Yesterday, the Sonic Amateur Games Expo started, continuing a 21-year tradition of fans coming together to share new community-developed games, demos, mods, and engines. And while the name implies it’s all about Sonic, SAGE is more than just ROM-hacks and fan games based on Sega’s popular mascot....
RuneScape Composer Jailed For Sexual Assault Of Preteen Girl
19.8.2021
Ian Taylor, the composer behind much of the music for free-to-play MMO RuneScape, was sentenced today by the Peterborough Crown Court in England to 22 months in prison after admitting to drunkenly assaulting a girl under the age of 13 last December.Read more
Dev Reveals Exploitative Nature of Most Game Contracts
17.8.2021
Receiving a publishing deal from an indie publisher can be a turning point for an independent developer. But when one-man team Jakefriend was approached with an offer to invest half a million Canadian dollars into his hand-drawn action-adventure game Scrabdackle, he discovered the contract’s terms...
Battle Royale Players Upset Their Early Kills Were Actually Just Bots
13.8.2021
Naraka: Bladepoint, a parkour melee battle royale out today for PC, starts you off in a match against bots. It’s a classic battle royale design choice, one that’s meant to ramp you up to speed, familiarize you with the game’s core mechanics, and maybe even offer a nice if artificial confidence...
I Woke From A Coma Into A Fortnite-Obsessed World
9.8.2021
First things first: In March of 2018 I was rushed to the hospital for a life-saving surgery. There were complications. I woke up in mid-April from a medically induced coma. One of the first things I remember anyone saying is, “Does he play Fortnite?”Read more
PS5 Dev Kits Quickly Pulled From Ebay
5.8.2021
Earlier today, a pair of PlayStation 5 development kits reportedly popped up on eBay before being taken off the auction site within a few hours.Read more
What You Should Know About Solar Ash, From The Makers Of Hyper Light Drifter
4.8.2021
If you played Hyper Light Drifter, you got your ass kicked by Hyper Light Drifter. Heart Machine’s top-down action RPG was a bona fide gauntlet designed to run you through the wringer (a lot) before you acclimated to its resolutely unforgiving peculiarities. So you might be pleased to hear that...
That New Cyberpunk Game Rules, But The Multiplayer’s Kinda Busted
2.8.2021
The Ascent, a cyberpunk-themed twin stick shooter released last week for Xbox and PC, has long been billed as a single- and multiplayer game by developer Neon Giant. Thing is, for some players, the various multiplayer modes aren’t exactly working.Read more
Halo Infinite's Bots Are Impressive (And Making Me Nervous)
1.8.2021
Halo Infinite’s first big multiplayer technical preview started this weekend and the main star are the bots. For the first time in the history of the series, there are online multiplayer bots. I wondered how much of a fight they would put up against teams of human players. Now, after being chased...