Edmund McMillen on assembling Mewgenics’ meow cameo list: “the inclusion of people with clashing ideologies felt appropriate”

Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s cat breeding roguelike Mewgenics came out earlier this week to an overwhelmingly positive reception and plenty of early success. However, one aspect of the game has left folks on the fence – this list of pretty… complicated internet personalities who’ve voiced the copious amounts of meows emitted by in-game cats. So, to get a better picture of how those cameos came to be, I reached out to developer McMillen.

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Highguard studio Wildlight confirm layoffs, after level designer claims “most of the team” have been let go

Wildlight, the studio behind recently released shooter Highguard, have confirmed that they’ve “parted ways” with an unspecified number of staff. This confirmation follows a former Wildlight level designer affected by the cuts claiming in a LinkedIn post that “most of the team” at the studio have been laid off.

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1200 Ubisoft staff go on strike against Assassin’s Creed company’s massive cutbacks

At least 1,200 Ubisoft developers have gone on strike across Paris and Milan in response to the company’s recent massive cutbacks and change of policy towards remote-working. That’s the figure given for yesterday’s bout of strike action by Marc Rutschlé, Ubisoft Paris staffer and a representative of the union Solidaires Informatique, in a statement to the socialist agitators of GamesIndustry.biz.

The primary inspiration for this week’s strike is Ubisoft’s cancellation or closure of several games and studios, with total job losses still to be confirmed but likely to be in the hundreds. The strikers are also pissed off about delayed or inadequate pay rises, together with Ubisoft’s new ban on remote or hybrid working (employees will get a yearly allowance of homeworking days instead). In general, they incline to the belief that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot is a big smelly bumface who should be looking for a new job.

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Cyberpunk platformer Replaced has a demo out, and it’s wonderfully atmospheric when you’re not plummeting a short distance

Warren! Warren! Warren!

ARRGGHHH! WHAAAA! HUHHHH! Replaced, the long-in-development dystopian platformer from Sad Cat Studios, keeps shouting my last name at me. It might because the game’s main character, a jacketed gap jumper and baddie shooter, is called Warren. It might also because I did plenty of falling and accidentally got shot by a robo-sniper in Replaced’s demo, which is now live ahead of the full thing’s release next month.

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Romeo is a Dead Man’s most beguiling spectacle is its astral fish tank menu

Romeo is a Dead Man, Grasshopper Manufacture’s eccentric new hack ‘n’ slash, is out today. I quite like it. I especially like its main menu screen, a strangely hypnotic fish tank in which captive planets float alongside a coral ballet trophy, and the menu’s text strings try to escape when you’re not looking. There is, precisely, one fish.

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“This is the best case scenario”: Microsoft withdraw DMCA takedown notice on voxel sandbox Allumeria

The developer behind voxel sandbox Allumeria claims Microsoft have withdrawn a DMCA takedown filed against the game over alleged copyright infringement. According to an email posted on Discord by Allumeria developer Unomelon on February 10th, the strike accused their work of using content from Minecraft without Microsoft’s permission.

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“Unleash the Kraken,” bellows Skull and Bones, which somehow still exists

I still haven’t left the starting area in Skull and Bones, but it’s a relief to know that as and when I do, I’ll have some big molluscs to bombard alongside those boring galleons. Ubisoft’s open world Jolly Rogerer forges bravely on with another season of updates, Eye of the Beast, despite Ubisoft recently jettisoning a bunch of games and studios in their efforts to buoy up the share price. Yes, this is the same Skull and Bones that has 320 in-game players on Steam as of writing, and a worryingly Biblical user review average of 66.60%.

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For its first anniversary, Monster Hunter Wilds gets a collab with its kid friendly cousin, and the promise of some DLC

Monster Hunter Wilds is fast approaching its first anniversary, meaning if it were a real human baby it would be legally unable to do anything really because have you met a one year old? Still, ahead of that anniversary, Capcom has outlined the game’s next big update which, shock horror, includes a new monster to hunt, a new weapon to hunt with, a collab with basically itself, and more coming on February 18th. Oh, and there’s DLC coming! But once again, the horror, the shock.

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