Cult of the Lamb‘s first free update of 2023 is landing next week on 24th April. Called Relics of the Old Faith, tons of new features will be introduced to the bloodthirsty roguelike.
Challenge is the name of the game here in Relics of the Old Faith, with a new Boss Rush mode and a permadeath mode to help get you acquainted with the taste of death. But new relics, such as ones that help you freeze time or gamble all or nothing for a strong attack (or bad results), and new attacks mean that you’ll have plenty at your woolly arsenal.
Composing for video games requires many things — musical skill, an understanding of modern scoring techniques, an awareness of player experience, and perhaps even a hint of sorcery. Rhythm title God of Rock is *all about* the music (and then some), and weaving together notes and melodies than can invoke a spectrum of emotion often goes beyond skill and into the arcane, according to its creators.
God of Rock’s 48 music tracks were masterfully curated by a talented team of five indie composers: Marina Ryan, DeBisco, Whitetail, Tyson Wernli, and Fotts. Each composer brings unique perspectives from their experience in the industry and from working on this unique project. Check out the full interview with the composers here, or click the link above.
”Music has always felt like a sort of magic to me,” says Wernli. “The fact that I can put notes on a page and make someone I’ve never met feel sad or feel powerful…it’s an amazing feeling.”
Storytelling Through Music
Composing for video games is not just about creating catchy songs but also about helping the developers share the game’s story. The composers work closely with the developers to familiarize themselves with the narrative, setting, characters, and overall atmosphere of the game to deliver music that enhances the gameplay experience rather than distract from or clash with it.
“With video games, it’s an interactive medium, and so you’re constantly telling a story,” says Ryan. “But it’s also a dance between [the composer] and the player. What I love about it is you have to be aware of what that player experience looks like to ultimately create something beautiful.”
Composing For God Of Rock Created New Opportunities
Working on God of Rock created unique opportunities and challenges for the composers. For example, it was a chance for some of them to break away from their usual genres and try something new.
“What excited me most about composing for God of Rock was the opportunity to make rock music,” shares Debisco. “I’m mostly an electronic music artist…so I had to do a lot of research. In addition to that, I’ve always wanted to make music for fighting games, so it was an incredible opportunity overall.”
The project also posed an extra challenge for the composers, stretching each of them to pull from their knowledge of many different genres and fuse them with rock.
“The thing I appreciated about working on God of Rock was that it gave me a unique challenge to try and compose in as many genres as possible,” says Tyson. “So being able to write rock n’ roll tracks, but also experiment with other genres— EDM tracks, folk-inspired tracks, fusion tracks. I really tried as best I could to stretch with each piece that I wrote and do something a little different…And a game like God of Rock gave me that opportunity, which I feel like is pretty unique for video games.”
Become a NoteChart Artist With The Custom Beat Builder
You can take the center stage as an artist with the Custom Beat Builder game mode in God of Rock. Try your own hand at composing a fight chart to craft your very own battle to the beat. Then share them with friends as you play locally or online.
“If you are thinking of picking up God of Rock or maybe you already have, I just wanted you to know that we poured so much love into this,” Ryan shares. “And I hope you love it as much as we loved making it.”
The mysterious God of Rock has revived the souls of the universe’s greatest musicians to clash for his entertainment. Revitalized with new bodies and new powers, each musician will become a contestant in his game, battling it out with each other for musical supremacy on a global stage.
God of Rock blends rhythm-based gameplay with fighting game mechanics in tense 1v1 matches. Choose from a dozen unique fighters, each with their own design, mechanics, and harmonic attacks. Soften up your opponent by executing normal moves and building meter by hitting notes to the beat of the song, then spend your meter to unleash EX and special moves do damage and add complexity to their tracks. Finally, finish them off with a devastating Super attack! As the battle progresses, the music track will continue to grow in complexity and difficulty until only one fighter is left standing!
Key Features
• Battle to the Beat – Engage in over-the-top musical battles in this competitive rhythm-based fighter.
• Limitless Skill Ceiling – Tracks will continue to scale in difficulty until only one fighter remains.
• Over 40 Original Songs – Each with their own unique and challenging tracks to master.
• The Universe is Your Stage – Control 12 wildly different characters each with their own playstyle across 8 dynamic stages set across the universe.
Game Modes
• Story Mode – Follow your favorite character through a branching story mode, battling against other musicians to become the last one standing.
• Training Mode – Master the most challenging segments each song and practice executing special moves to the beat.
• Track Editor – Put your own spin on your favorite tracks by adding and removing notes to your liking.
• Local & Ranked Online Multiplayer – Go head-to-head against players at home or around the globe in casual and ranked multiplayer.
Seven years after the original Oxenfree debuted its radio tuning, time looping coming-of-age story on PX and consoles, the sequel is at last upon us. During today’s Nintendo Indie World showcase, we at last saw Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals get a release date of July 12.
Oxenfree 2 follows a character who didn’t appear in the original Oxenfree, Riley. Riley is an environmental researcher who returns to Camena after noticing strange radio transmissions, five years after the events of Oxenfree. While Riley wasn’t part of Oxenfree’s story, an update to the game in 2021 ties the two together, so we’re likely to see plenty of references or even meet some of the original group of teens, now young adults.
The new trailer shown today for Oxenfree 2 shows off some new elements, such as a strange tilting house, weird supernatural beings, and a new walkie-talkie system to help the characters communicate.
We actually saw quite a bit of Oxenfree 2 back in 2021 in our hands-on preview, and were optimistic about its expanded potential and sense of choice. It’s been a while since then, as Oxenfree 2 was delayed from a 2021 release to this year to add more localized languages and make the game “truly special.” During that time, developer Night School Studio was acquired by Netflix, and Oxenfree brought to Netflix Games. Unshockingly the sequel will also be on Netflix, as well as Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and mobile.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
Post-apocalyptic survival is an enduring theme in city builder games. In Oxygen Earth has, once again, experienced an environmental disaster with the help of human beings. The Earth’s crust has cracked, releasing toxic gas that has spread globally with the wind, and nly a little oxygen is left. Unfortunately it’s also me who again decided to take on the responsibility of leading the survivors, to guide them to build a city in this dire situation. This is the destiny of a city builder lover.
Resident Evil 4 Remake was the best selling game in the U.S. in March 2023, while the PlayStation 5 remained the best selling hardware.
Revealed through the latest data from Circana (formerly NPD), Capcom’s remaster of the classic horror game outperformed March’s other new releases including MLB: The Show 23 and WWE 2K23.
Both of these titles were also outperformed by last month’s Hogwarts Legacy, which placed second overall in March but remains the best selling game of 2023 so far. MLB: The Show 23 placed third, followed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, The Last of Us: Part 1, FIFA 23, WWE 2K23, Elden Ring, Madden NFL 23, and Mario Kart 8.
Video game hardware spending increased 10% year over year, with PS5’s increased availability leading the push as the best-selling console in both units sold and dollars made. The Xbox Series X and S placed second in dollars made while the Nintendo Switch placed second in units sold.
In our 10/10 review, IGN said: “The Resident Evil 4 remake is the series’ most relentlessly exciting adventure rebuilt, refined, and realised to the full extent of its enormous potential.”
Our resident experts are also hard at work uncovering Resident Evil 4 Remake’s secrets in our Resident Evil 4 Remake Strategy Guide. Here are some of the most helpful links:
After bingeing the Netflix show Arcane and getting hooked on the world of League Of Legends, I was disappointed to find there weren’t too many single-player games for those who aren’t the MOBA-type of keyboard mashers. The top-down action RPG The Mageseeker: A League Of Legends Story is looking to fix that, though, letting you play as the ex-convict and buff mage Sylas while he’s busy running a revolution. It comes from the developers behind the Zelda-like shop roguelite Moonlighter, and it’s out now.
Back in the mists of time (January 2020), I was absolutely transfixed by a Japanese novel called Before The Coffee Gets Cold. It’s about a small, cosy café where customers can travel back in time by sitting in a very particular chair, for the length of time it takes for a cup of coffee to go cold. It’s not long by any means, but it affords its cast of regulars the chance to get some closure on an issue that’s often been plaguing them throughout their lives. It’s heart-warming, soppy stuff, but very feel-good. That January was also about the same time I slurped up every last episode of Midnight Diner on Netflix, where a chill Japanese man known only as The Master serves up delicious looking dishes in a tiny, 10-person izakaya from midnight onwards. Put these two things together, and it’s probably no surprise that I liked the original Coffee Talk more than most.
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly is a continuation of that story, set three years later in the same, alternate version of Seattle where elves, werewolves, orcs, mermaids and other fantastical creatures all rub shoulders as city-dwelling citizens in need of a good cuppa. Once again, you play as the owner of the titular late-night coffee shop, brewing up a multitude of exotic hot drinks that you’ll need to match to each customer’s request that night as they tell you their woes.
Publisher Atlus has revealed a brand new trailer for its upcoming Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection on Nintendo Switch, which launches later this year on June 1st, 2023.
The trailer dives into a heap of dungeon-crawling gameplay from all three titles and also shows off a bunch of “party customization, mapmaking, battles, exploration and more”.
VR Skater is a highly immersive street Skateboarding game coming to PlayStation VR2 this Summer! It’s a finely tuned mix of both arcade and simulation. Easy to learn but hard to master, the feeling you get after landing a difficult trick is like no other!
Today we’re talking new features, experiences, and everything PlayStation VR2!
One thing all Skaters need to experience in VR is the Mega Ramp! From a gameplay point of view, the mega ramp allows Players to catch air like never before, pulling off insane flip tricks and huge grabs over the iconic Mega Ramp, made famous by Skateboarding Legend Danny Way. Usually, the key gameplay dynamic of VR Skater is all about street skating. So, as well as being highly impressive and something the community wants, it offers a different gameplay mechanic in this separate immersive experience. Something completely new to the world of VR.
Adaptive triggers
Announced first today on the PlayStation Blog, VR Skater will use the power of the PS VR2 to push immersion further! We plan to use the adaptive triggers to adjust tension when steering in-game. Giving the sensation of resistance you’d feel in a skateboard’s trucks and bushings in real life. VR fans and skaters will love this announcement as we’re trying to replicate even the most minor details of skating.
The controls replicate how tricks would be performed in real life. Swiping and scooping your hands as if they were feet to perform iconic skate tricks like kickflips, tre flips, hardflips, and many more! Feeling intuitive if you’ve ever stepped foot on a skateboard before. To perform grinds and slides, the player will hold buttons to apply rotation and pressure to individual sides of the board, giving players the freedom to skate how they want to. Whether it be tail or nose slides, 50-50 grinds, or many more. You can also work a series of grabs and the finger flip into your combos.
Customization
Skateboarding is a very creative outlet. From the tricks you perform, to the fashion and music embedded in the sport’s history. Customizing your board is an essential part of Skateboarding. Announced first here on the PlayStation blog, players will be able to customize their boards and grip tape using the Print Tablet! Reach a certain XP level and you’ll unlock the Print Tablet, allowing you to upload custom textures, and arrange them however you desire. This is a highly requested feature that we’re stoked to announce today!
But how does customization in VR Skater work? Head to the VR Skate shop where you can find all new decks, trucks, wheels, and grip tapes that you physically apply to create your perfect setup. You’ll be able to unlock new coloured decks, trucks, wheels & grip tapes by completing challenges and levelling up in-game. A feature that all skate fans are sure to love.
Who are Deficit Games?
Deficit Games is a small indie VR game studio from the Bavarian countryside founded in 2017. Before VR Skater, they released smaller mobile VR titles. Since founder and VR enthusiast Andi has strong roots in the skate and punk rock scene, looking at possible designs for a VR skateboarding game was a very organic decision. Then everything took its course and in 2022 the Early Access version of VR Skater was nominated for the German Games Award in the category of Technology and Innovation.
Both Perp Games and Deficit Games can’t wait to release VR Skater into the wild this Summer on PlayStation VR2!
You can Wishlist the game now on PlayStation Store.
While many gaming companies largely got the hint last year that gamers aren’t keen on blockchain, NFTs, and all that web3 entails, Square Enix doesn’t seem to have absorbed the message yet. And it’s demonstrating this today via a partnership with web3 gaming platform Elixir, with the intent of “generating visibility and adoption of web3 games among traditional gamers.”
The official announcement is light on details as to what, exactly, these two companies will be doing together, calling this a “strategic partnership” intended to “drive mass adoption [of web3 gaming] during 2023.” Elixir itself is a PC games distribution platform that puts web3 games and regular games side-by-side, with little to distinguish between them.
Notably, Elixir partnered earlier this year with Epic Games to allow users to play any game in their Epic library “next to your fav web3 games“. Basically, the idea seems to be that if it stuffs enough non-web3 games next to web3 games, players won’t be able to tell the difference and will get really, really into web3 gaming.
Square Enix digs in its heels
Given its recent activities, it’s unsurprising that Square Enix is digging its heels in on this. At the start of the year, then-president Yosuke Matsuda said that the company’s vision for 2023 included “aggressive investment” into blockchain technology and NFTs. While Matsuda himself stepped down last month, his vision appears to have remained intact, as demonstrated by a recent set of Final Fantasy 7 NFT trading cards. It’s an ironic choice given the themes at play in Final Fantasy 7, but that didn’t bother Square Enix last year either when it made a Cloud Strife action figure that was also an NFT.
Web3, blockchain, and NFTs have remained deeply controversial in gaming, though enthusiastic support from major gaming companies has cooled significantly after multiplestudios and publishers faced intense criticism for suggesting they were using the technology. Valve has banned the technology on Steam outright, noting its overwhelming use for scams, as has itch.io. And a handful of studios signed an anti-NFT pledge last year set up by Climate Replay in a commitment to avoid the serious, ongoing issues involved with blockchain systems, which demand massive amounts of energy to run and can cause serious environmental harm.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
