Indie developer Grimm Bros opted for a retro, SNES-inspired style for its debut game, Dragon Fin Soup. The developer recently achieved its $24,000 goal on Kickstarter to bring the RPG to PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS3 and Vita.

Sporting turn-based movement and a classic 2D top-down visual style, Dragon Fin Soup is an action RPG with roguelike qualities set in the world of Asura, which rests on the back of a giant "dragon-turtle." Players can learn more about the world through a blend of scripted events and quests as well as procedurally-generated content in the game's story mode, led by Dragon Fin Soup's first playable character, Red Robin. It also features a survival mode marked by permanent death in which players are dropped into a dangerous forest with limited supplies, fighting their way through generated dungeons that increase in difficulty.

Dragon Fin Soup still has roughly three weeks to go before its crowdfunding campaign ends, and is seeking stretch goals to fund expansions and port the game to the Sony platforms. It was among the 75 games recently approved for Steam distribution via Greenlight. Grimm Bros was founded by former Human Head COO Ash Monif and artist Randis Albion in March 2013.

Continuing a trend begun by Assassin's Creed 4, Ubisoft has announced exclusive content earmarked specifically for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 incarnations of its upcoming technofetishistic adventure, Watch Dogs.

According to Ubisoft, the Sony-bound versions of the game will feature four missions not found in their Xbox counterparts. Completing these missions will award players a unique outfit, a special Hacking Boost and a "deeper knowledge of DedSec, a key and powerful faction in the Watch Dogs universe." Ubisoft estimates the missions will roughly translate to an hour of play time.

This additional content will be available to PlayStation owners free of charge and is slated to launch alongside Watch Dogs on May 27.

Continue Reading

The Creative Assembly has been forced to make a number of changes in order to realize the vision for Alien: Isolation. After successful pitches to both Sega and 20th Century Fox, the developer turned to recruitment, ensuring it added new members to its team that were capable of crafting the exact game it pitched, what Creative Lead Al Hope calls: "The Alien game that we always wanted to play." A game completely different from that other Alien game, which his team at The Creative Assembly had no involvement with making, yet keeps coming up, just the same

Its pitch demo for Isolation was built in four weeks and featured two identical medical bays: one with its environment and objects in pristine condition and the other obliterated by an unknown menace. The juxtaposition led to immediate questions: "What happened? What did this?" Soon, an answer invaded the screen as a large xenomorph falls into frame, ending the demo. Sega was immediately interested, Hope says, as was Fox. Adding new talent to execute on the project was necessary. For the better part of a decade, The Creative Assembly has focused its attention on the RTS genre. Once its pitch was green lit, Creative Assembly brought in talent that contributed to a host massive franchises, including Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed. Its team assembled and its concept approved, the developer began its work over three and a half years ago on Alien: Isolation – a survival horror game based on a beloved movie from the late 1970s.

"This is exactly the game we want to make," Hope says.

Continue Reading

Comcept released a new gameplay video of crowdfunded platformer Mighty No. 9 running in alpha, and it showcases some familiar-feeling run-and-gun gameplay along with images of Mighty Numbers 1 to 8. If we had to pick a favorite it would have to be Mighty No. 6, because he's got a cross between a bomber plane and a helicopter for a head, and missiles that launch out of his ankles. He looks like he'd be a lot of fun at a party.

Keiji Inafune's new platformer was one of the most successful gaming fundraisers of 2013, amassing a mighty $3.8 million through Kickstarter alone. While Comcept is starting to show more and more gameplay we're still a good year away from the estimated release date of spring 2015, when the game will rock and roll onto Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360, Vita, 3DS, Windows PC, Mac, and Linux.

Come April, PlayStation fans can enjoy the same masochistic waiting game as Steam users when preloading comes to PS4. Sony itself has yet to confirm the feature but Sucker Punch, the studio behind Infamous: Second Son, said on Twitter that it's on the way this spring.

"No preload until April," said Sucker Punch, responding to Twitter users anxious to play the new Infamous. "[And] for North America, the PS Store will update at midnight PST, so 3AM EST."

Even when pre-ordering a digital copy of PlayStation 4, PS3 or PS Vita games through PSN, users still need to wait for games to actually hit their release dates to download them. Steam and Origin PC users can often download game files ahead of release so they can play the very second a game is officially available. Unfortunately would-be PS4 superheroes will still have to wait a few minutes to scratch their Infamous itch.

Snake! Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes is a sneaking mission, so while wandering around some crazy 1975 military base, try not to get caught. Maybe don't start casual conversations with guards or ask to bum a smoke either.

Joystiq knows not to make these Metal Gear blunders, having dug into Ground Zeroes' guts for its 3.5-star review, but some of the crew has yet to enjoy Kojima Productions' PlayStation 4 and Xbox One debut. Hence why today's stream will involve blithely marching into Metal Gear, pretending Kiefer Sutherland just wants to make some new friends rather than save Paz.

Head on over to the Joystiq Twitch channel at 4PM EST on Thursday to revel in our stealth skill as we play the PlayStation 4 version of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. Anthony John Agnello will be holding the controller, displaying how good he is at hiding behind stuff just as he did in Thief and Outlast. (Note: He's not very good at hiding behind stuff.) Susan Arendt, Joystiq's Managing Editor, will be hanging out in the chat, relaying your questions as we play. Come hang out!

Joystiq Streams broadcasts live every Tuesday and Thursday at 4PM EST.

We saw this scene right at the end of our preview playthrough of the first two hours of Wolfenstein: The New Order, and it introduces Frau Engel to players for the first time. Engel looks to be sadistic bordering on psychopathic, toying with hero B.J. Blaskowicz as he tries to keep his cool and maintain his cover.

For what it's worth (spoilers), when we played this sequence we didn't go for the gun despite how crazy the crazy lady was. Instead, we simply picked the cards. That caused Engel to angrily declare we were impure and point the gun to our head, only for her sultry toy-boy to calm her down and remind her it was all a game.

Bethesda released a separate video interview today (below the break) with MachineGames' Narrative Designer Tommy Tordsson Bjork. In it he describes conceiving the Frau Engel character as his proudest moment because she's "such a cool, female villain, which is not that common in video games."

Engel is just one of the antagonists Blaskowicz faces in MachineGames' alternate vision of a post WW2-world where the Nazis won, and players will get to see the whole lot - possibly including a mech-suited Fuhrer? - when the game hits Xbox One, PS4, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on May 20 in North America, and May 23 in Europe. Bethesda recently revealed pre-orders net players an invite to an upcoming beta for the next Doom game.

Continue Reading

Action RPG Sacred 3 will hack and slash its way to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 systems in North America on August 26. Deep Silver offered a new trailer for the top-down brawling game, which is geared toward both online (four player) and offline (two player) cooperative multiplayer.

Sacred 3 will be accompanied by a Malakhim class, which joins previous characters from the series, Seraphim, Ancarian, Khukuhru and the Safiri. Deep Silver will also offer an "Underworld Story" piece of downloadable content at the game's launch. In the Underworld Story DLC, players will ascend a tower to face Black Seraphim, a rival from the previous game in the series.

Continue Reading

From now until April 2, the European version of Sony's PlayStation Network Store is hosting two sales both focused on massively discounting the prices attached to games bearing the Rockstar Games logo.

The core of the sale is aimed at Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4, though these particular discounts only last until March 26. Max Payne 3 was originally £15.99 but is now £5.99 while Grand Theft Auto 4 has seen a similarly impressive price drop from £19.99 to £5.49. The sale also offers sizable discounts on the Max Payne 3 season pass, as well as the two Liberty City Stories released as DLC for Grand Theft Auto 4.

The remainder of the PSN discounts are valid until April 2 and include games like Canis Canim Edit (aka Bully), Red Dead Revolver and all three of the Grand Theft Auto games released for the PlayStation 2. Grand Theft Auto 4 is again the highlight here, as the game's Complete Edition, which was originally priced at £24.99, can be purchased for £7.99.

For full details and pricing information, visit the European PlayStation.blog.

Designer Lucas Pope came close to apologizing for his frequent appearance on stage at 2014's Indie Games Festival Awards, collecting award after award for Papers, Please. The dystopian game of bureaucracy and hard-earned immigration was recognized by a panel of industry peers for its considered narrative, game design, and ... downloadability? Pope couldn't help but poke fun at the vestigial "Best Downloadable Game" category, noting the distinct advantage of making a game that's a quick 40MB download.

Papers, Please also won for innovation in the Game Developers Choice Awards, the more mainstream half of the evening's show. Naughty Dog's own take on dystopia, The Last of Us, won here for best design, best narrative, and best overall game of the year. (This despite fellow nominee Super Mario 3D World having some pretty sweet overalls.)

For the rest of the winners, including some gongs for Device 6, Risk of Rain and Grand Theft Auto 5, please see below.

Continue Reading

Put your mind at ease, Battlefield 4 players. You can make a stand, lend a hand, protect the motherland and join your fellow man IN THE NAVY in the game's Naval Strike DLC on March 25. The DLC will feature four new maps, five weapons, two gadgets, a hovercraft vehicle, ten assignments and a new Carrier Assault mode where players compete to sink the enemy's aircraft carrier first.

Battlefield 4 Premium members will be the first with access to the content, while non-Premium members will have to wait until April 8 to become a macho, macho man ... in the Navy.

Mojang, development studio behind the wildly-successful Minecraft, has continued its five-year trend of increased profitability. Mojang revenue topped $237 million in 2012, while a Wall Street Journal article reports that number to have hit $326 million for 2013, which in turn translates to almost $128 million in profit.

Roughly 93 percent of the company's money was made from Minecraft, split fairly even across platforms: 38 percent from the PC version, 30 percent from console versions and 25 percent from mobile versions.

Minecraft creator Marcus "Notch" Persson, who still owns the rights to the Minecraft IP, was the single-largest expense for Mojang; the company paid out approximately $129 million in license fees to Persson last year.

As if Sony's support of independent developers hasn't been apparent enough, the console manufacturer will make it easier for indies to bring their games to Sony's platforms. The company announced partnerships today to offer PS4 exporting tools for game development software GameMaker: Studio and MonoGame for free to licensed Sony Computer Entertainment developers.

Sony also made "fully-integrated solutions" for PS3 and Vita available for Unity users, with an early access PS4 version arriving on Unity in April. Lastly, the company opted to offer its Authoring Tools Framework as a free, open source download available on GitHub. SCE uses the framework to help craft games like The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls.

Created by Yo Yo Games, GameMaker was used to create games such as Hyper Light Drifter, Risk of Rain and Nuclear Throne. Conversely, MonoGame is the backbone of games like TowerFall: Ascension, Mercenary Kings and Transistor. One GameMaker-developed game is Savant Ascent, which Yo Yo Games named as its favorite game of 2013 for the development platform. The stylistic shooter was announced for PS4 this morning following its debut on PC, Mac, iOS and Android in December.

It's a shame that words and phrases like "gnarly," "radical" and "totally tubular, dude" aren't considered common these days. If they were, I'd know exactly how to describe Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. I'd know just how to highlight the game's ludicrous, over-the-top tone and obscene jokes. I'd have a word to describe its damn-the-odds combat. I'd be able to precisely encapsulate how it feels to be a cyborg ninja that wields the limbs of undead clowns like they were nunchuks.

Ah, what the heck: Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is one of the most gnarly, radical, <insert '90s slang here> game I've ever played. I just wish it was a little less focused on being Xtreme to the MAX and more focused on remaining consistently fun.

Continue Reading

Though Ridley Scott's classic Alien takes place in a distant future, the film's production values were a product of the late 1970s, with sets and props cobbled together with elements from the era. Rather than evolve the original designs-of-necessity in its upcoming and inspired Alien: Isolation into more modern props and environments, developer The Creative Assembly chose to embrace the "lo-fi sci-fi" concepts found in the horror masterpiece.

"You could say the first part of development was this phase of deconstruction," Creative Lead Al Hope explains. "Kind of taking everything we knew and loved about the film and pulling it apart, so that when we built new content it would still look and feel as though it were from the film."

To achieve an in-game design that would mesh with the original film's aesthetic, The Creative Assembly pored over three terabytes of behind-the-scenes video, photos, handwritten notes on props and continuity photos from the production of Alien, courtesy of the 20th Century Fox archives. The treasure trove even included some rarely seen production pieces, such as detailed blueprints of the cargo vessel Nostromo, which proved vital for creating the spaces within Isolation. Using the source material, the developer made what Hope calls "a brave decision," and began populating its game with objects and environments created by replicating production techniques used for the film's development. Computers are slow, clunky and always seem on the verge of breaking down. And it's all by design.

Continue Reading

The Creative Assembly is clear that its new game, Alien: Isolation, is a survival horror game directly inspired by Ridley Scott's 1979 classic film, Alien. That means there are no big, James Cameron-developed pulse rifles. No gruff marines. Just you, Amanda Ripley, attempting to survive. In Isolation there is only one big bad; one lethal and intelligent xenomorph hunting you down.

But does the horror and tension work? Is a single alien enough to jolt you out of your seat? A few sounds from a recent demo make us think Sega's next alien game is on the right track.

The downloadable music for Activision's rhythm games in the Guitar Hero, DJ Hero and Band Hero series will no longer be available after the end of this month on March 31. The production of DLC for the brands ended in February 2011.

The announcement comes from an update on the publisher's Facebook page, which clarifies that the Guitar Hero servers will remain online and that previously-purchased content will be unaffected. As an encore, selected songs and track packs will be discounted by as much as 50 percent on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii until the end of the month. Additionally, the Guitar Hero game on iOS will be discounted through the end of the month on the App Store.

Just Add Water's upcoming remake of the PSone-era adventure game Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee needs to sell half a million units in order to fund the creation of a new Oddworld game, series creator Lorne Lanning told Eurogamer today.

"If I'm doing a new Oddworld game, I'm not going to do it for $2 million. I might do it for five or six," Lanning explained. "People keep asking me, 'Why don't you Kickstart Oddworld? You could get at least $1 or $2 million.' And I'm like 'What would I do with a couple million on Kickstarter? On a new Oddworld title?' Not much. I could redo Exoddus for a couple million. I could do that. But a new title, which means new characters doing new things and controls that are great - that's where the real time and expenses come from."

Lanning additionally revealed that Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey - New 'n' Tasty will be priced at $30 when it hits digital platforms this spring. He notes that sales in excess of 250,000 will fund the creation of Just Add Water's next planned remake, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus HD. 500,000 copies sold would earn enough revenue to revive the stalled Oddworld series project The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot, which Lanning estimates is "a $5 million title" at minimum.

Lanning is optimistic about hitting the target, given that the self-published Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD has sold around 600,000 units across the PlayStation 3, PS Vita, and PC platforms. Sales for the remake eclipsed the original EA-published Xbox version of Stranger's Wrath, which only "sold about half a million units," according to Lanning.