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Real-time strategy game Age Of Empires 2: Definitive Edition is now exploring the series’ own history with the Return Of Rome expansion pack, bringing back The Roman Empire and every other ancient civilisation from the very first Age Of Empires game. It’s coming on May 16th, and it essentially lets you battle and conquer like it’s 1998 again.
Honkai: Star Rail throws you into the body of an amnesiac protagonist with unknowable hidden powers who has been awakened from a deep slumber by someone called Kafka. This woman is something of a mystery and seems to have a flair for the dramatic as she kicks off the whole game by playing an invisible violin along to the classic Baroque epic Pachelbel’s Canon as massive, intergalactic monsters invade a spaceship.
It’s an incredibly cool opening, the kind of thing that John Wick would watch to get pumped up before, well, John Wick-ing all over the place. It’s pretty clear that Kafka isn’t a hero, but they’ve woken you up, and since you’ve got no memories, you must be one of the good guys. This setup feels familiar, but there are enough changes to make it feel new and get the blood thoroughly pumping.
Ahead of an upcoming open playtest, Blizzard have released their latest developer design video on Diablo 4, this time tackling player choice and the action RPG’s different classes. My favourite detail is that you can become a werewolf and “do werewolf things”. Although getting to that stage may take a while, as associate game director Joseph Piepora recently said it would take around 150+ hours for an average player to hit the Level 100 cap. Sounds like a week’s worth of content then.
For all of Fallout 76’s faults, the multiplayer shooter has fostered one of the most interesting communities in any game, leading to fun mutations such as the theatre company experimenting with performance art in-game. The Wasteland Theatre Company previously tackled Shakespeare and A Christmas Carol, and they’ve now reconvened with a post-apocalyptic performance of Alice In Wonderland, appropriately adapted as Alice In The Wasteland.
There’s something very sweet about playing as a postal carrier. As we’ve seen in games such as Tiny Echo and Lake, it can be a relaxing and enjoyable job delivering mail in a small community, and that’s the pitch-perfect tone that solo developer Kela van der Deijl has managed to capture in their cutesy mail-delivery game Mail Time. After playing the Steam demo, I can tell you that it’s one of the most charming games I’ve played all year, and it looks like I’ll be able to play the rest soon because Mail Time is out this week on Thursday April 27th.
To celebrate Apex Legends’ upcoming Season 17, developer Respawn have announced the newest hero to join the roster: old-timer Ballistic. The battle-royale’s last season had no new Legend, disappointing a few Apexers, but Ballistic is coming out of his comfy wine-fuelled retirement and joining the fight on May 9th, just for you guys.
Employees at Sega Of America’s Irvine offices have announced plans to unionise and have filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board. This means Sega management can now voluntarily recognise the union, or wait for the union election to take place. The newly announced Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS for short) is composed of around 144 employees working across several departments, including QA, marketing, localisation, product development, and live service.
AEGIS have also teamed up with the CWA, the labour union that assisted other studio’s unionisation efforts and who previously filed unfair labour charges against Activision Blizzard.
The EVGA Z20 optical mechanical keyboard is a super-solid option with a boatload of features – and it’s currently 69% off at Amazon UK, bringing it down to a measly £39.98. This is an awesome price for a keyboard of this size and quality, and well worth picking up even if you’ve already got a mechanical keyboard – or if you’ve never tried one before.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, genuinely by chance, my eye was caught mostly by first-person shooters. Come for those, stay for the impressive puppet tech, the giant snake, the cute dog, and the colossal crocodile. Check out all these interesting and attractive indie games!
Steam Puzzle Fest kicks off today, offering tons of discounts on all of your favourite puzzle games. Really, though, one of the best experiences you can have this Steam Puzzle Fest week is by downloading the free demo for upcoming puzzler Viewfinder. Developed by Sad Owl Studios, I had a sneaky peek at this at GDC last month and was properly blown away by it. It might look like just another Witness-like, but don’t be fooled. There are some real smart ideas in here, and I dare you not to go ‘OooOOOooooOOOooooh’ when you see the in-game photos you take come to life in all their full, 3D explorable glory.
