By Jaime Skelton (MissyS)

If you haven’t heard of tinyBuild, you’ve still probably heard of a few of their titles, particularly Boid and SpeedRunners. Think of tinyBuild as a curator, a sort of orange box (pardon, we wouldn’t want to get your hopes up for Half Life 3) full of fun and engaging indie games. While these games may not necessarily be “big names,” they certainly stand out in a crowd – just like tinyBuild’s bright orange booth on the PAX South floor, where I met up with the team to talk briefly about their upcoming title Check In Knock Out, and their sleeper hit SpeedRunners. (tinyBuild also publishes BOID, which you can read more about here.)

We first talked about Check In, Knock Out, the first student game that tinyBuild has added to its growing portfolio. The premise behind this game is an all-out brawl to figure out who gets to claim hotel rooms in a double-booked hotel (something many of the PAX attendees could certainly relate to.) Each match is played to “last man standing,” a challenge for all players as everything on the screen is a destructible platform. To win, you have to not only knock your opponents off a platform to see them fall to their fate, but must also be clever enough to avoid losing your footing yourself. It’s that kind of simple, fun brawl experience that lends itself well to local multiplayer.

Check In, Knock Out was made in GameMaker, which means it’s joining the company of other games built on the engine – including Hotline Miami, Nidhogg, Risk of Rain, and Spelunky. Still, its future is relatively nebulous in terms of platform, pricing, additional features, and eventual release, only because tinyBuild has recently acquired the game and hasn’t had an opportunity to look into its possibilities in depth.

Speaking of multiplayer, tinyBuild has another game (besides the RTS hit Boid) that is becoming rather well-known, especially thanks to YouTube stars: SpeedRunners. Like Check In Knock Out, SpeedRunners has a rather simple and straightforward gameplay to it: you race other players on a looping map in a 2D Mario Kart style match. With its Steam Workshop integration, the game now boasts over 9,000 (no meme intended) community items. As the game is finishing up the final polishing touches in beta, we may see SpeedRunners launch later this year.

By Andy Skelton

After the cliffhanger left from the Amazon Fury DLC, DC Universe Online players have been clamoring to find out what happens next. Their anticipation will soon be rewarded, as Amazon Fury II, the 13th DLC for the game launches soon. We had a chance to see some of the upcoming update ourselves, with special thanks to the DCUO staff, and what is coming is on quite an epic scale.

Senior Creative Director Jens Andersen and Design Director Jesse Benjamin gave us a little background on what players are going to see in the DLC, and it’s quite the list! Right off the bat, players are going to be able to experience two new four-player operations, and three new eight player raids. There is also an additional open world operation to accomplish. Additionally, we finally figure out what has happened to Hippolyta, as well as her reasoning for beginning the war against the realm of mortals.

The team mentioned how important it was to try and capture the feel of a comic book style by revisiting common areas for the major characters. In fact, part of Themyscira should be familiar to players, as it was a part of the third DLC. This interconnectivity has been part of the DCUO story for the past four years, and players will even get to experience a hint of things to come as it pertains to Brainiac.

Jens and Jesse then took us on a tour of one of the new operations, Act of Defiance. Right off the bat, you’re treated to a boss fight against Hippolyta herself, with mechanics designed to ensure players are working together as a cohesive unit. Once defeated, you’ll begin a chase to figure out what has been affecting the Queen of the Amazons, facing off against loyalists to the queen, and an all new NPC type called shades. These lost souls of Tartarus seem to be pouring out of the gates to the underworld, and without too many spoilers, you’ll figure out precisely who is behind it and why.

The final encounter in the operation is against a hydra, and it heralds the release of the big creature tech the team has been working on for some time. They’ve really done a great job with how a large creature would move, and you’ll have to watch out for flame breath, falling rocks, tail whips, and more. The hydra isn’t the only creature to display this technology, however, as the mighty Cerberus awaits players in future dungeons, and plays a very deadly game of cat-and-mouse with you.

One new feature being presented are elite raids. Long sought after by players, the elite raid is unlocked after players have cleared the Throne of the Dead. The elite version of Throne of the Dead functions similar to survival mode, with enemy stats increasing as players down bosses. Boss mechanics themselves don’t just get stronger, though; some boss mechanics outright change, lending even more difficulty. Plus, you’re only allowed two deaths and one rally per boss, unlike being able to rally indefinitely in a normal dungeon. Of course, with the greater risk comes fantastic rewards, stronger than anything else in the game so far. Keep in mind that the elite raid only remains unlocked for 14 days after it’s been opened, when you’ll need to unlock it yet again.

Speaking of gear, four new styles will become available — two for heroes, and two for villains. Unsurprisingly, heroes get two comics inspired Wonder Woman styles, while villains receive two Circe styles. Plenty of individual pieces are also available to allow a great deal of customization for all.

There’s quite a bit more to this DLC than what we’ve seen, but rest assured, Amazon Fury II is much longer in both story and content than its predecessor. It also strongly hints at the direction part 3 will take as well, getting players involved in something much bigger with the Olympian gods. Fans of DC Universe Online will definitely not want to miss this one!

By Jaime Skelton (MissyS)

Maybe it’s the demands of my job, but at the end of a long day, I prefer to load up an indie game. My Steam library’s stuffed so full of indie titles I feel like an accidental gaming hipster. So while the big screens were flashing at the front of the PAX South halls showcasing some admittedly awesome games like Gigantic and Dreadnought, I was often scouting along the back of the halls looking for those low-profile games that pack the potential to explode overnight. One of those games was Broken Bots, a top-down shooter from a Belgian developer called Bunnycopter.

Broken Bots looks simple enough. My first impression of it, visually speaking, was of a top-down shooter mini game like you might find on Kongregate. It has that arcade appeal: bright contrasty colors, pixel graphics, an upbeat soundtrack. But while it may look the stuff of Flash game legend, Broken Bots is not your browser-based bulletfest.

For starters, it’s a competitive multiplayer shooter. The game currently offers a Capture the Flag map that supports up to 32 players. Since it’s in beta, though, this is but a small taste of what’s to come: there’s already talk about 64- and 128-player maps as a possibility, plus additional modes like Deathmatch.

Then there’s bot customization. Broken Bots is loosely class based, in that you may choose between different weapon types (six available now, including flamethrower and rocket launcher). You also have 100 energy to allocate across your choice of special skills and passive abilities. Special skills are useable on cooldown, and include turrets, mines, EMPs, and a heal. Passive abilities meanwhile currently offer common boosts like health, speed, and fire rate. You’re free to experiment with these choices throughout a match, too, as you can at any time choose to change your bot and respawn with your new loadout.

But the final touch on Broken Bots that makes it stand out is the malfunction mechanic. Sure, large maps, team combat, and on the fly customization is cool and all, but the randomized chaos that malfunctions bring amps the gameplay from average to addictive. The malfunction mechanic happens frequently when bots take damage, sending the screen into an 80’s style color fritz and granting a random and temporary effect to the bot. Many of these effects are negative or difficult to deal with, such as reversed steering or slowed movement. Some, however, are actually a power-up. Take, for instance, the spread fire malfunction, which turns your small frontal line of attack into an almost 180 degree cone of destruction. As a result, malfunctions act as a constant factor in team play and require thinking on your treads.

The end result is a game that, while relatively simple, is capable of hooking you in quickly. It’s simple to learn (I watched several people walk up and figure out the controls and objectives in a matter of a minute), and implements a variable reward type gameplay that keeps you invested once you’ve started playing. The worst issue I had with the game was the graphics, particularly the malfunction mechanic, which felt like it strained my eyes a little more than necessary to get its point across.

Broken Bots is light, crazy, and fun. It’s currently in public beta and is on Steam Greenlight. It will initially be for PC, Mac, and Linux, with the possibility of launching on PS4 and Xbox One in the future. So if that trailer gives you the itch to destroy, go download the beta and prepare for malfunction!