Category: Video Games

Deathverse Devs Announce Shutdown 3 Months After Launch, Plan to ‘Redevelop’ and Re-Release Game

Developer Supertrick Games and publisher GungHo Online Entertainment announced that Deathverse: Let it Die will temporarily suspend online services on July 18 for the game as they attempt to fix issues such as in-game matchmaking and lag.

“This was a difficult decision for us to make. However, we believe that re-releasing the game with significant improvements will allow it to be enjoyed by a wider audience as well as our current players,” said GungHo in a statement on its website.

GungHo continued, “Considering how much time goes into developing a game–and that there’s a finite number of games one can possibly make in a lifetime–it’s impossible to say at this stage whether this is the right choice. But we love this game and are proud to have developed it together as a team. Therefore, we believe this is the best possible decision at this time.”

The free-to-play multiplayer game has struggled to capture high player count numbers, with its all-time concurrent high on PC being barely above 1000.

The premium currency, Death Metal, will no longer be purchasable starting on February 7. However, the currency can still be used until the game’s suspension in July. Additionally, Season 2’s content is still planned to launch in Spring 2023, which includes features such as tournament matches and new weapons. Season 3’s content will only be partially released during its planned Summer 2023 launch.

Deathverse: Let it Die was first revealed at a PlayStation State of Play presentation back in October 2021. A spinoff of Let It Die, Deathverse took its aesthetics and added a battle royale component to the series.

The game launched on September 28, 2022, for PS4 and PS5, with a PC release on October 5, 2022.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

Random: New Pokémon Cards Tell A Wholesome Evolution Story

It’s super effective!

With the hotly-discussed Pokémon Scarlet and Violet hitting the shelves last year and news of Ash and Pikachu leaving the anime for good, it is sometimes easy to forget that Pokémon cards are one of the most enduring elements of the franchise. While some will have fallen off the collecting bandwagon as the years have gone by, this returning storytelling feature was enough to make us consider getting back to the packs.

Noted on Twitter by YouTuber @Purplecliffe, some of the latest Pokémon cards tell a heartwarming little story when a ‘mon’s evolutions are put side by side. In the example given below, we see little Ralts and its young owner spend their lives together through moving house, childbirth and old age. Check out the following images for yourself, we’ve got a little something in our eye…

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Share of the Year 2022

A new year is upon us, but we still have time to take one final look back at 2022 to visit your Share of the Year moments. Here are this year’s epic highlights:

justinphotomode shares Aloy framed by a machine’s wings in Horizon Forbidden West.

__Auron__ shares a close up of the cat from Stray, with neon reflected in its eye.

i3ecci_ shares Batgirl striking a pose in front of a red light in Gotham Knights.

ChosenVoid shares Ellie enjoying a butterfly in The Last of Us Part I.

nemineminemico shares Akito surrounded by red glowing orbs in Ghostwire: Tokyo.

Tabineco_55 shares the cat in Stray moving past a drain grate.

Kaylem21 shares Aloy perched in a verdant area in Horizon Forbidden West.

toko_luke95 shares Kratos and Freya in the heat of battle in God of War Ragnarök.

m_nt_13 shares Jacob staring out into the darkness of Callisto Protocol.

record_photo shares Jin with his back facing a blooming flower in Ghost of Tsushima.

Defalt368 shares a car moving through a busy city in Gran Turismo 7.

PlaystationSna1 shares Atreus pulling back his bow in God of War Ragnarök.

calisarah1998 shares Aloy leaping across a cresting wave in Horizon Forbidden West.

Morph__1 shares someone applying lipgloss in Cyberpunk 2077.

Vman_95 shares a player lifting their arms towards the Erd Tree in Elden Ring.

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? 

THEME: Unlucky
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on January 11, 2023

Next week, capture unlucky characters or moments from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured on Friday the 13th.

The devs behind 2021’s most interesting visual novel are back with a new game teaser

OPUS: Prism Peak this morning, the latest game from Taiwanese developer Sigono in their loosely-connected series of jaw-droppingly pretty visual novels. Described as a spiritual sibling to their most recent OPUS game, the brilliant Echo Of Starsong, the exact magic combo of words that made my eyes go all wide and saucer-like was “a cross between What Remains Of Edith Finch and Makoto Shinkai films”, which just – you know what, I’m going to shut up now so you can watch the teaser trailer.

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Vampire Survivors Dev Released Mobile Port Itself to Fight Copycats

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle was forced to release its game on mobile “ASAP” after several exact copies began appearing on the market.

As reported by GI.biz, Poncle had initially attempted to bring Vampire Survivors to mobile devices in the wake of its successful 2022 launch on PC and Xbox, but struggled to find a partner that shared its views on monetization.

“Soon after the initial success of VS, I started to look for a business partner to work on a mobile version of the game,” reads a new blog on the game’s Steam page. “Unfortunately, nobody I spoke with was on board with the monetization I had in mind for the platform: non-predatory.”

In the wake of these conversations, however, unlicensed versions of the game started appearing on mobile stores. “Months passed by and a large number of actual clones – not “games like Vampire Survivors”, but actual one to one copies with stolen code, assets, data, progression – started to appear everywhere,” the post continued.

“This forced our hand to release the mobile game ASAP, and put a lot of stress on the dev team that wasn’t even supposed to worry about mobile in the first place.”

The mobile version of Vampire Survivors released on Android and IOS in early December 2022. However, the need to release the game quickly led to some features – including cloud servers and save transfers – being left out of the initial release.

According to the Steam post, Poncle is still looking to implement these features as they work on numerous bug fixes, but in the absence of a backend engineer, they may take “longer than expected” to appear.

As it stands the mobile version of Vampire Survivors is entirely free to play, with gamers having the ability to view optional adverts at the end of a run in order to earn more gold or revive their character.

On December 15, Poncle released the first piece of DLC for Vampire Survivors, Legacy of the Moonspell, on PC and Xbox. In the new blog post the developer admits that it’s still figuring out how to bring the DLC to mobile.

“The problems we’re facing are the same mentioned above: how do we make it fair, but also accessible to players who are only into free games. We’ll figure something out and publish the DLC as soon as possible.”

Moving forward, Poncle has announced that it intends to continue updating Vampire Survivors, and has pledged, in terms of main game mechanics, that “no key-feature will ever be gatekept by a paywall”. The developers also said that more DLC content packs will be released in the future that will bring more characters, weapons, and stages to the game.

In our review, IGN awarded Vampire Survivors a 7/10, stating that “It may look extremely basic, but if you give Vampire Survivors’ clever one-stick shooter idea a chance to sink its teeth into you it might not let go for a while”.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Video game concert conductor Andy Brick will be joining an RPS Discord Q&A tomorrow

RPS Discord is hosting a live Q&A with video game composer and principal Game ON! concert conductor Andy Brick tomorrow, and you are all cordially invited to come and sit in on what’s bound to be an insightful and interesting chat about video game music. Taking place at 7pm GMT on Saturday January 7th, Andy will be chatting to admin Cei about his 25 years in the video game music industry, as well as what’s in store for Game ON!’s UK premiere concert with the Halle Orchestra in Manchester later this month. All participants will also receive a handy discount code for that Manchester concert, so if you live nearby and fancy coming along, make sure you head to the RPS Discord tomorrow evening.

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IGN UK Podcast #678: Wot We Did Over Christmas

Cardy, Dale, and Mat watched and played a lot over the Christmas break, so here’s 15 of their favourites. From big hits like Glass Onion and Avatar: The Way of Water to slightly more hidden gems like The Menu and White Noise, there may well be something you like the sound of.

Got a game for us to play or some feedback you’d like read out on the show? Why not email us: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast #678: Wot We Did Over Christmas

Afrofuturist strategy game We Are The Caretakers leaves early access today

strategy RPG We Are The Caretakers leaves early access today. Caretakers will receive a new patch at launch, adding in the fourth Era of the campaign. This closes out the game’s story with five more missions, an end-game, and other final improvements. If you haven’t checked in with Caretakers since its launch in 2021, a lot has changed through its 10+ patches.

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Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Ranked Battle Series 2 Announced, Paradox Pokémon Allowed

Bring the past and the future.

While Series 1 is underway until the end of the month, The Pokémon Company has revealed plans for Series 2 of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet‘s Ranked Battles, which is due to kick off on 1st February.

As shared by Serebii, Series 2 makes one big change for the Pokémon battling meta — Paradox Pokémon will now be able to be used, and there’s no limit on how many you can bring, either. That means Pokémon like Iron Hands, Great Tusk, Scream Tail, and Iron Valiant can all be added to your competitive teams for Ranked Battle between 1st February to 31st March 2023.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com