A handful of games have tried to take a bite of Smash Bros’ slice of the fighting game pie. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, released in 2021, was one of the more successful – although criticism seemed to focus on its high price and relative paucity of characters and stages.
Does that make it a good or a bad thing that Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is in development, then? It’ll feature new stages and new characters, while revamping the look and layouts from the original. Among the new characters is Spongebob’s perma-frustrated neighbour Squidward, who you can see in the announcement trailer below.
Summer In Mara was a pleasant crafting, farming, exploring mash-up, but its follow-up is steering the ship in a slightly different direction. Koa And The Five Pirates Of Mara isn’t the snappiest name, but the trailer below might get stuck in your noggin if you’re a sucker for: high-speed collectathoning, tropical summer settings, 3D platforming classics from the noughties, or any combination of those three things. And the game’s happily out right now.
Next month is absolutely packed with games big and small, but hopefully your hard drive has space for another fantastic-looking one because Jumplight Odyssey is zooming into early access on August 21st. It’s a mix between starship management and roguelike planet hopping from developer League Of Geeks, the studio behind strategy gem Armello. Check out its pretty ‘70s anime-inspired trailer below.
Most racing fans daydream about being Lewis Hamilton rather than Toto Wolff, and there are tons of games that cater to that majority. If you’d rather be signing cheques and contemplating tyre strategy, though, there are only a handful of games out there for you, and F1 Manager is one of the big ones.
After their death and sort of resurrection in 2019, the new incarnation of Telltale Games have released their first game today, The Expanse: A Telltale Series. Acting as a prequel to the great Amazon Prime show, its first episode debuts today on the Epic Games Store, with its remaining four episodes dropping every two weeks after that. That means all episodes should be available to binge on September 21st.
The Sims has gone unchallenged in the life simulation genre for a quarter century and the wait for a challenger is about to get a few months longer. Developers Paradox Tectonic have pushed back the early access launch for their human dollhouse rival Life By You to March 5th 2024. Rod Humble, the studio’s general manager and former Sims boss, said the game will be “a more robust experience out the gate” thanks to the six-month delay.
Humble Bundle’s latest collection of good games for a good price and a good cause is a whopping instant library of classic Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs, including both original Baldur’s Gate games, some similarly legendary classics and some more modern additions to the genre. It’s quite the deal.
World of Warcraft has launched a new pack of companion pets that will donate all of its proceeds towards helping those in Ukraine. The Pet Pack for Ukraine will benefit BlueCheck, an organisation that works to support a variety of NGOs in the war-struck country offering everything from vital medical supplies and power generators to humanitarian aid.
Realms of Ruin, the first RTS set in the world of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar – that’s the shiny fantasy sibling to Warhammer 40k’s gritty sci-fi universe – will see a host of improvements and fixes in the wake of its recent open beta, developers Frontier have promised. Among the biggest incoming changes are better balancing, UI polish and a fix to its most annoying issue of accidental retreats caused by shared key bindings.
Under the new rights holders Studio 2.21, cult classic series Little Big Adventure was set to make a comeback after three decades off-grid, with original creator Didier Chanfray attached to the projects. The comeback plans included an all-new reboot, plus remasters for the two 1990s action-adventure games. But today, the studio announced that they were “unsuccessful in securing a publisher,” which has led to the reboot’s cancellation and layoffs at the developer.
“Despite our earnest efforts,” CEO Ben Limare wrote in a blog post, “we were unsuccessful in securing a publisher for the reboot of Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure.” According to Limare, the reasons for this are threefold: genre appeal, the series’ limited recognition, and the planned costs. “Despite a passionate, albeit small, community of fans, Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure isn’t globally recognized, which added to the hesitations of potential publishers,” wrote Limare.
“While indie game studios can often deliver remarkable games with lean teams (as we’ve seen with Death’s Door and Tunic), our vision for this project involved a team of 15 to 20 people, echoing the original game’s size,” he continued. “This considerable investment, juxtaposed with the risk inherent to the genre and IP, was a factor in the decision.”
