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The perpetually scarlet-faced and jovially maladroit folk of Embracer have done their usual vaudeville comedy routine of spinning around with negative-dollar signs in their eyes and trampling on another game development studio – in this case, Pieces Interactive, creators of the recent Alone In The Dark reboot. The Swedish studio’s website is now a tombstone, bearing the dates 2007-2024. Oopsy-daisy!
Scottish petrochemical horror is not exactly a genre, but maybe it ought to be. From the opening moments of Still Wakes The Deep you know life on its 1970s North Sea oil rig is precarious. Leaky ceilings, busted panelling, faulty drill machinery – the omens pile up as you spend your first thirty minutes wandering through the colleague-packed canteen and over the platform into the boss’ office for a severe dressing-down. It’s a classic pre-disaster setup for a mostly traditional monster story, yet the game sticks expertly to the first-person horror form, and its voice actors’ performances are so spot-on, that it’d feel churlish to judge this foaming fear simulator for sticking to type. It also has some markedly unsettling use of the shipping forecast, a famously dull feature of British radio I definitely did not expect to freak me out in a video game.
Well, shovel me timbers! Shovel Knight, the retro platformer that started it all (it all being everything from a roguelike spin-off to a Dead Cells cameo) turns 10 this month, and Yacht Club Games are releasing a ultimate edition to celebrate. Entitled the ‘Shovel Of Hope DX’, this definitive-me-doo bundles in the original game with old and new features like saving and rewinding, over 20 playable characters, local and online co-op, and new modes. Grab your shovel and prepare to dig for the trailer, then look foolish as you realise it’s directly below this paragraph.
“Two’s company, three’s a crowd,” the saying goes, unless the first two are warriors and the third one is a priest, in which case the superior proverb is surely “three’s a moderately balanced squad, two’s a massive liability”? Here to put such kitchen wisdom to the test is BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which “only” allows you to bring two companions into the fray, one fewer than 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s another indication that this will be more biffy action game than thinky party-based RPG. The upside, assuming you find that last sentence disappointing, is that exploration and combat will be more “intimate”, and individual characters will have more screentime to bounce off each other and flourish as personalities. All this comes care of a BioWare Discord Q&A from late last week, which you can watch in full below.
Beloved friends, hated enemies – last week, we let the side down. Due to a shortage of hands at the pump and persistent clouds of Geoff Keighley activity, there was no weekly Maw liveblog, and this has bred disaster. Shaken, stirred and finally ignited for want of two-sentence updates about Dragon Age, the Maw emitted a full 13% of its cosmo-puissance into Mundus and took a grievous bite out of the ailing and fearful lasagne of reality itself. Hated friends, beloved enemies – I am very sad to say that the proud nation of Dimplexland is no more.
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Books obviously come in many different sizes, but did you know that there’s an obscure law that dictates the legal limit for how long a novel can be? It’s measured in ‘George Martins’. If your story is more than three ‘Georges’ wide, you’re swiftly escorted to a cell and made to eat any bits of book that reference more than three characters in a scene with the same surname. This week, it’s developer and writer of the legendarily good Radiator Blog, Robert Yang! Cheers Robert! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
Lollipop Chainsaw RePop, a refresh of the 2012 hack-and-slasher about a cheerleader fighting hordes of zombies, finally has a release date: September 25th. It also has a first trailer, showing it in action with the new, less violent “RePop mode”.
League Of Geeks are going “into hibernation”. The Australian developers behind fantasy strategy games such as the animal-themed Armello and hellish remake Solium Infernum said that their remaining staff are going to take an extended break, and they’re not sure “when (or if)” they will revive the studio.
Former Dragon Age lead writer and Summerfall Games co-founder David Gaider has strung together some opinions on Xitter – the original spawning ground for all opinions – about the full reveal video for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, expressing broad enthusiasm for the new RPG’s narrative tone, combat system and environments, while offering a more ambivalent analysis of BioWare’s decision to let players seduce every last member of their party.
Cities: Skylines 2 has found a delightfully straightforward solution to the very real-world problem of greedy landlords demanding excessive rent payments. The city-builder sequel will simply delete all its virtual leeches in its next patch, helping to bring down the cost of living in your digital metropolis.
