YouTube Video Games Blog – Indie, Switch 2, and More
Back in Time
Author: Jack Boyles
Jack likes to think there is more to his existence, spending most of his days in a sober hallucination. Jack indulges in video gaming: playing, collecting and writing about them. This gives Jack an enormous sense of well-being in the knowledge he is doing good by his fellow man. @ThePnutbean
We humans have become too reliant on technology, to cook, to clean, to contact people; take a teenager away from their mobile phones now and you’ll see how reliant we’ve become. Too reliant.
We need energy for all of this. Energy that’s evaporating and we’re panicking. The chaos. The humanity.
PC shooter Deceiver
On that note, Deceiver is a philosophical shooter from the mind of Evan Todd. In this pre-apocalypse (let’s be honest, post-apocalypse is getting oversaturated) many have left the planet to scourge for money, hoping to find salvation. The quickest way of achieving this is to steal other people’s resources.
The game is a multiplayer shooter in which you deploy spider-like bots to fight and steal these resources. The combat has a verticality to it as these spiders can climb walls (and go on ceilings). There is an overworld too that has you running around doing parkour and uncovering the story. Sound good?
Deceiver features the following:
A five-hour voice acted story campaign
Online multiplayer – up to twelve players
Eight maps
Three game modes
Full gamepad support – up to four split-screen players
The game’s look and feel are what makes it stand out though. Clearly inspired by the looks of Vectrex games, Deceiver is a visually unique shooter we haven’t seen in a while.
Set for release May 2019, for the small sum of $20, could we see a sleeper hit? A demo is available here. Try it out and let us know what you think.
As you can tell from my profile picture and my Echo Night: Beyond piece, I like cats.
Cats know cat people, and cats respect these people. When I was a canvasser, the guys on my team called me ‘the pussycat magnet’ ironically due to the fact every time I saw a cat I could draw it to me for a fuss.
It looks like developer KauerGames shares the same love – as shown in their game Warriors of Ari. KauerGames is the single talent of Justin Kauer, who is not only making the game by himself but is also fighting a brain tumour.
Warriors of Ari is a hack and slash platformer where you play as the Warrior Cats. The game looks like a throwback to the NES/Master System days of video gaming – you can clearly see this homage as the story is extremely detailed and long!
In fact, it’s hilarious how long the backstory lasts, how it just pushes your patience. Then it goes into more dialogue about Cat Naps and Sugar Crashes; very few games satirise and pay homage as good as this game does in its opening seconds.
How long have I been here now? I’m not sure… it feels like an eternity. The trepidation. The perpetual tortures. You’d think you would become custom to pain, conditioned by it; you’d be wrong. Screams of torment and anguish sweep through the ever-darkened sky… those screams… it’s almost transcendental, almost hypnotic. I wish my flesh smelt as good as his, can you smell it?
Feel The Agony
Reminds me of my uncle’s barbeques. Somehow, he got those burgers just right, how he singed the edges of the buns just enough to give it a crispy finish. Ha, those where the days; how long ago was that now? It feels like an eternity…
There have been many interpretations of hell in video gaming, but all have lacked the horror and torment seen in various art pieces from the Renaissance era or the literary works of Clive Barker. Hell, uncensored. Welcome ‘Agony’.
Agony is a first-person survival horror game in which you play a tormented soul with no memory of his past trying to escape from Hell. On your journey, you’ll have to interact with other tormented souls and possess simple-minded demons to survive the hellish environment:
Developed by MadMind Studio; a team of 9 developers who have worked in the AAA gaming industry on such titles as Witcher 3, The Division and Alien Rage to name a few. Leaving the AAA gaming world behind them to work on their own project, Agony.
Agony is an independent game through and through but has the polish you would expect from an AAA Game.
This is great if only the visuals weren’t so grotesque; deformed creatures with breasts out, tormented souls crying to themselves and gore – lots of gore. These visuals aren’t just impressive for an indie game, they are impressive for an AAA game.
So, step into the Heart of Darkness on the 30th March on Xbox, PS4 and Steam. “The Horror! The Horror!”
I had a very close friend in my childhood through to my teens, she got me through thick and thin, she was always someone to rely on. This friend was my pet cat, Thelma.
She may have been out for a day or two, but she always made sure she came back home to let me know she was fine – I knew she had my back. We went on adventures together, pretending that the spare room, which at one point was filled with a broken ship, was an alien land.
Unfortunately, my mother went through a divorce – which resulted in us moving out and giving up Thelma to a new home as we crowded into my grandfather’s house. The following years after that were tough, before I had my trusty companion, now I was alone. Thelma would have died by now, all I can hope for is that she was happy in her new home and that she went peacefully – but that’s something I’ll never know, and will never know. I never got to say goodbye properly. I never got closure.
Past Blast: Echo Night: Beyond
Ok, so. Echo Night: Beyond may sound like a performance but it’s a first-person survival horror adventure game – if released today it would simply be called a Walking Sim. It was developed by From Software (wooooh!) and was published in Europe by Indie Games Production for the PlayStation 2 in 2005.
The game starts you off waking up on a shuttle that has crash landed into a Luna Space station. You were on a trip with your Fiancée who has now disappeared when you regained consciousness. There’s a ring left on the seat next to you and a note opposite the seat saying, ‘Come to The Facility’. It’s from here you explore the space station and the Luna surface to find your loved one.
You quickly realize you are not the only one on this space station as you come across several ghosts who are waiting in purgatory – waiting to pass over. You communicate with these ghosts who will set you tasks in the form of fetch quests – doing this sets their spirit free.
The first spirit you set free warns you to stay clear of the fog: the base has a mysterious fog that makes the ghosts chase you, which then raises your heart rate until it hits a certain point… and then you die. It’s your job to clean the fog by finding the air conditioner terminal to clear it. This stops the ghosts being feral.
As I mentioned, you don’t have a typical health bar as it’s your heart rate instead. Ghosts make the rate go up, as well as running, and the higher it goes the less you can see. This is a strange mechanic because when you see a ghost you heart rate goes up, so you run away, that makes your heart rate go faster and thus diminishes your visibility… Yeah.
You are not that hopeless though, as you have Monitor Rooms that act as save rooms. You can also use the consoles to see through various cameras, so you can see where the ghosts and items are before you enter.
Echo Night: Beyond
Visually, the game has that basic PlayStation 2 3D environment, but there some nice features like the occasional flickering light or various signs around the space station. There is a great sense of depth too, as corridors look like you are staring into a black hole – because they are that dark.
The sense of isolation is an ode to the audio though, being accompanied by your breathing, footsteps and the faint echoing voices of the dead repeating the same sentence – due to hardware limitations, but here it gives an unsettling and haunting feeling to the game. The main theme is a rendition of ‘Moonlight Sonata’, but with electronic instruments and a female vocal chorus that captures the game’s slow-paced and mournful tone.
So, would I recommend Echo Night: Beyond?
It’s not for everyone. The game’s pace is that slow, it’s drooling all over itself. There are no boss fights and no way of arming yourself; adventure game fans would appreciate it, but don’t worry, there aren’t any bizarre puzzles – like making a fake key out of soap and plaster.
Echo Night: Beyond
At times Echo Night: Beyond is a beautiful experience because what it gets right, it really gets right. Like the brief encounters with the ghosts, you really get a sense of their personalities and why they are stuck in purgatory. There is a section in which you find a ghost looking at his dead body, remembering he was left alone and all he wanted was to be found; it’s a brief moment, but with the believable voice acting the moment really sticks with you and makes you feel sorry for the character.
The game is something you experience, not play. You experience these little beautiful moments, moments of Sorrow met with moments of Hope as you help these lost souls finally get some closure.
After playing Echo Night: Beyond it got me thinking about the afterlife, it gave me hope too; the hope in seeing my granddad again and having a conversation about The Beatles, the hope in seeing my grandma so I can show her some Krautrock, the hope in seeing my friend Jamie to reminisce about times in the flat, and the hope of seeing Thelma again, to give her a big fuss and pretend we were in that spacecraft again.
I’m not much of a dancer, but then again, when I see the pop stars of today flailing their arms about like someone who is having a seizure, maybe I don’t give myself as much credit as I deserve. When you see someone bust some moves, you can’t help but feel entranced by the power of dance.
Meet Felix The Reaper – A Grim Reaper With Groove
Felix The Reaper is a 3D puzzle game in which you play as Felix, a member of ‘The Ministry of Death’ – you set elaborate plans for people’s deaths… In doing this job, Felix has access to the Human Realm in which he hopes to meet Betty the Maiden who works for the ‘Ministry of Life’ – so he can ask her out for a dance!
As Felix you’ll groove your way through the levels, using objects and the scenery to make a shadow path so you can traverse the landscapes. You’ll need to collect items and place them in certain spots to trigger your plans of death:
With the art style like an early Tim Burton, the story and humour of Terry Pratchett, a groovy disco soundtrack with the developers attending dance workshops so the animations have real polish to them; Felix The Reaper could become a cult classic.
So, slap on your headphones, have a dance and keep your eye out for this upcoming indie title due for release this year.
I remember first grabbing an N64 controller and thinking: “What the hell do I do with this?”. The very first game I saw running on the N64 was GoldenEye, beating my family over and over again on the multiplayer mode, and there is only one way to play GoldenEye multiplayer. One shot kill.
40 Winks Nintendo 64
For some, the N64 remains the Golden Age of video gaming, with Rare being an unstoppable force, great multiplayer experiences and Ocarina of Time.
Like all consoles before and after, not every game gets to shine on a platform; one of the N64 games being 40 Winks. Published on the PlayStation, a port was set to release on the N64 by GT Interactive, but when the company had financial problems, it ended up being bought out by Infogrames.
40 Winks
Infogrames saw fit to downsize a lot of projects, cancelling projects such as the N64 port of 40 Winks.
It’s now been found after 17 years and brought back from the dead by Piko Interactive. With Piko Interactive hitting its Kickstarter pledge and still having 12 days left, finally, 40 Winks will be pressed onto a cartridge for the Nintendo 64 and will feature the co-op mode which was exclusive to the N64 version.
40 Winks
This will be the very first video game to be published after the N64 was discontinued; so, could this be the start of N64 homebrews or indies developed for the N64? We can hope. Piko Interactive will be pressing two editions of the game:
Regular Version
40 Winks grey cartridge compatible with the N64 console.
Colour cardboard box and inserts.
Colour manual.
Special Edition
40 Winks coloured cartridge compatible with the N64 console.
Special edition box and inserts.
Colour manual.
Special edition poster.
A POG featuring special edition artwork.
What was it like on PS1? Well, look no further:
So yeah, this is a must buy for any Nintendo 64 collectors out there. Are you excited by the news? Let us know below.
When I was a kid me and my older brother had a Proton Pack that had a foam tube as the stream and trap that worked by air popping it open. It was fantastic, running around our dingy front room flat and back garden; catching ghosts and letting our imaginations go wild.
Ghostbusters World – Bringing Back The Past
Now with technology being stuff from a 1980’s cyberpunk movie, there’s no need for a foam tube.
With that said, Sony, Ghost Corps and publisher FourThirtyThree Inc have created an Augmented Reality experience for mobile phones.
Ghostbusters World is set to feature ghosts not only from the movie but the TV Show, comics, theme parks, video games as well as featuring all new ghosts for you to capture.
Ivan Reitman, the original movie’s director said the following:
“The Ghostbusters Universe is rich in characters and Ghostbusters World is the perfect medium to get to know these characters in a whole new dimension”.
Today is the 28th February 2018 and today is a very sad day. It’s the day that the Demon’s Souls server(s) officially shuts down. The unsuspecting phenomenon that not only created a sub-genre but changed the landscape of gaming forever. Once a niche title, now a more popular than ever series – it wasn’t always like that.
R.I.P. Demon’s Souls Servers
Demon’s Souls was developed by From Software and is a spiritual successor to their King’s Field series. Development started in 2006 but word got around the office that the project was turning into a failure, one coder got wind of this, and that coder was none other than Hidetaka Miyazaki.
With little experience working on games and with From Software already deeming the project a failure, the company was happy for Miyazaki to have creative control over the project. In an interview with The Guardian back in 2015, Miyazaki had this to say:
“The project had problems and the team had been unable to create a compelling prototype. But when I heard it was a fantasy-action role-playing game, I was excited. I figured if I could find a way to take control of the game, I could turn it into anything I wanted.
Best of all, if my ideas failed, nobody would care – it was already a failure.”
With no one at From Software caring and Miyazaki heading the project, this ‘failure’ would turn out to be one of the most original titles of the Seventh Generation. It’s a fine example of ‘Videogames as Art’.
Demon’s Souls
The game is bold, uncompromising and took decades of game design, scrunched it up and threw it at a wall. With dynamic difficulty being introduced to more and more games around this time, Demon’s Souls took that concept, but instead of the game getting easier when you die, the game got harder.
The title features some of the best boss battles in any game: the Fool’s Idle being more of a puzzle, Maiden Astraea committing suicide, False King Allant having a move that de-levels your character and King Allant, the final boss being a sorrowful blob. Messages left by other players either helping you or sending you to death. Vendors being murdered by an NPC when you are not within the Nexus (the hub). The ability to aide, invade or be invaded by other players. A story that’s ambiguous, told through snippets of dialogue and item descriptions; all these ideas and mechanics cement a sense of dread and a forbidding atmosphere.
Servers come and go, so why is it a big deal that the Demon’s Souls one is getting shut down?
The game is single-player with online components within it, but the online component is actually integral to the experience. Hitting a sword on a random wall because a message told you it was an illusion. The fear when someone invades your game. The scattered Red Blood signs showing you other players’ demise or the ghostly glimpses of other players that fade in and out of view. Memories.
Demon’s Souls
The World Tendencies will no longer function that change events within the game either. Finally, there is The Old Monk Boss, which forces you in a PVP match; now it will just be a Black Phantom instead. The game is still enjoyable without the above sure, but it will now be like a flower without petals.
It’s not just the experience though, it feels like the end of the beginning. The end of the start of something new, something original and something now that’s been imitated.
So, goodbye Demon’s Souls server; the game is there, but your soul has gone.
The problem with free money is that it’s so easy to spend. You can get easily comfortable and before you know it, the rug has come from underneath and you have nothing.
System Shock Remake
A hard truth developer Nightdive Studios have found out this week by holding development on the much-anticipated remake of System Shock – due to using up the Kickstarter funds.
CEO Stephen Kick wrote in a letter to backers the following:
“Maybe we were too successful. Maybe we lost our focus. The vision began to change. We moved from a Remaster to a completely new game. As our concept grew and as our team changed, so did the scope of what we were doing and with that the budget for the game. We began a long series of conversations with potential publishing partners. The more that we worked on the game, the more that we wanted to do, and the further we got from the original concepts that made System Shock so great.
Ultimately the responsibility for the decisions rests with me. I let things get out of control. I can tell you that I did it for all the right reasons, that I was totally committed to making a great game, but it has become clear to me that we took the wrong path, that we turned our backs on the very people who made this possible, our Kickstarter backers.”
Nightdive Studios Kickstarter goal was $900,000, but they were surprised when they ended up raising $1.35m. Did their ambitions get in the way? Hopefully there’s a silver lining on the way for everyone.
When I was in college, my friends and I broke into an old, abandoned insane asylum for children. Even with the company of friends, we all couldn’t deny the haunting feeling in there.
The Padre On Early Access
The damp floor absorbing each footstep as we tenderly inspected the empty corridors and rooms. There was foliage growing from the walls and the various discarded artefacts sporadically laying around that we had intruded on. The sense of exploration, curiosity and ambiguity of what happened within those walls made for a frightful yet delightful experience.
Developer Shotgun with Glitters‘ upcoming game ‘The Padre’ has you play as Catholic Priest isolated in a haunted mansion. You must navigate through his flashbacks to find the meaning of the sacrifice he has made in this Lovecraftian-inspired horror:
Coined as a ‘Point ‘n Click Survival Adventure Game’ and marketed as a game not for everyone due to the difficulty of the puzzles, this game already leaves an impression. With its blocky, expressionless aesthetic adding more ambiguity than clarity, it seems like an unusual choice, yet perfectly fitting for a Lovecraftian horror.
If this game captures anything like my journey inside the insane asylum, this will be an adventure that will stick with you – you will tell your grandchildren.
The Padre is coming to Early Access on 22nd of February and if the game is successful enough, console ports will follow.
If you’re an old git like me, you’ll know of Oddworld Inhabitants and the excellent work they have done. Abe’s Oddysee became a quintessential title on the PS1 and Stranger’s Wrath is regarded as a hidden gem on the original Xbox. Sadly, due to the lacklustre sales of Stranger’s Wrath, Oddworld Inhabitants seemed to disappear overnight.
Munch’s Oddysee PS Vita
That was until 2014 when the excellent New ‘n’ Tasty came out, a remake of the beloved adventure with Abe. Since then, the developer has re-released their classics with HD graphics and now they are working on a brand new title.
With their games mainly being distributed digitally, Oddworld Inhabitants haven’t ignored the collector’s market and the outcry for physical releases. So, along with game publisher Limited Run, they now intend to press several of their titles physically (and in limited quantities).
Limited Run has become one of the top indie publishers releasing physical versions of previously digital-only indie games. But, as the companies’ name suggests, they only print a limited amount of copies. This has made Limited Run the publisher for video game collectors.
Good news then. Limited Run will be pressing Oddworld Munch’s Oddysee on the PS Vita on the 23rd of February. No details on quantities have been released as of yet, but this will be a must buy for any Vita collectors out there:
I’m a guy who loves detective crime thrillers. The lighting, disjointed narratives, the dialogue, the Dutch tilt, it’s all serving a purpose to draw you, the viewer, into that dark and dangerous world.
Pixel Noir – Just Another Bad Day
It’s that world many developers have tried to create in their video games, Team Bondi’s LA Noire, Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain and the first two Max Payne games by Remedy.
Now developer SWDTech Games are creating their own film noir-inspired game, Pixel Noir. A 16-bit, isometric, turn-based RPG, detective game, taking inspiration from western and eastern, new and old video games. Pixel Noir is shaping up to be an original and ambitious indie game that may garner a cult following.
You play as an ex-cop who has been in jail for 10 years – you burned a hospital to a crisp. With your old partner dead and your sanity at stake, you are now a private eye trying to clear your name.
That means investigating missing pets to murders, with your choices earning you riches or stitches. You won’t fight alone though, as you’ll assemble a team of characters to help you in fights, along with customizable weapons, to give you an advantage over opponents:
Pixel Noir will be released digitally in the first quarter of this year (2018) and a physical date is due. BadLand Publishing will be releasing the game, and no doubt when the physical version is released, it will be complete with a manual and soundtrack – at least.
Pixel Noir will be released on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita.
