505 Games released some fantastic news regarding a new platforming adventure pixel game coming to Steam on July 18th – Horace. Inspired by Metroidvania classics, a variety of abilities will unlock as the player’s progress, and this will help them overcome puzzles and fight bosses. They also hope to invoke a variety of emotions as the game goes on. But here’s where things get interesting.
505 Games also are giving players an opportunity to set the launch price of Horace on Steam, with a simple call-to-action – Wishlist the game! That’s all you have to do. There are four Wishlist tiers, corresponding with a price. Should the final tier be met before July 16th, Horace will be available to be purchased as low as 3.75 USD at launch for a week. The game will revert to its 14.99 price after the first week. Wishlist Horace here
Talk about a serious crapshoot – Pigeon Simulator was announced by Bossa Studios! More information will be available soon, but here’s a peek at Pigeon Simulator!
Dragon Quest Builders 2 will be more than an exciting single-player adventure – four-player multiplayer will be arriving in this latest Builders title! You can customize your characters, visit friends islands, and build with your friends!
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled has a new load of content coming starting on July 3rd, with Season 1 of the Crash Team Racing Grand Prix. “Nitro Tour” will be pushed onto consoles for free, and will give plenty of new content to explore. It will even include a new track, Twilight Tour. Twilight Tour is a middle east-inspired track, and will shift from day to night during the race. Grand Prix will also feature challenges to tackle, and through this will fill their Nitro Gauge (XP) with Nitro Points. This is how rewards will be unlocked, from a new character (Tawna), new skins, karts, and kart customization items.
Also, as part of the content being offered during the Nitro Tour Grand Prix, the in-game Pit Stop is being updated with new characters, skins, karts, and kart customization items. Players can use the Wumpa Coins that they earn by playing the game to unlock additional cool items, such as the Nitro Squad as playable characters for the first time. Formerly known as the Trophy Girls in the original CTR, the Nitro Squad have come to compete as some of the fiercest racers around!
Creepy Jar announced today that their upcoming Amazon-based survival game, Green Hell will be launching into its 1.0 full release in September 2019. On September 5th, 2019, the Steam Early Access will end, and with it will come the Story Mode, where players do more than simply survive – they embark on a desperate mission to save their lost love, Mia.
Releasing into Early Access in August of 2018, Green Hell comes full circle just over one year later as it launches into version 1.0. Expanding with regular updates fueled by both the studio’s own internal creativity and based on feedback from the game’s active community, Green Hell has seen a lot of changes in that time. From an expanded map to new camp options and the addition of various plants, animals, and tribal enemies, the Amazon rainforest of Green Hell is more dangerous than ever. Creepy Jar also gave a list of content coming in the 1.0 Update, which is listed below.
Story Mode and 1.0 Update Additions
Story Mode! — How did you end up in the Amazon? What happened to your love, Mia? How can you escape? How can you survive? Seeking answers to these questions will take you to the brink of sanity as you rediscover well-known areas and discover new areas for the first time.
New Map Areas — The lush rainforest of Green Hell gets even bigger with new Wetlands to explore.
Perma-Death Difficulty — Gear up for the most ruthless challenge yet. There’s no coming back from death.
New Graphics Options — Optimize your experience with new FOV, Vsync, antialiasing, texture quality, and shadow distance options.
New Plants and Animals — Introducing the psychosis-inducing Psychotria Viridis, the Banisterposis Caapi, and the lethally poisonous Dart Frog.
Decay Timer— Many items in the game will now start to wither and decay. Players will have to be vigilant learning to use their items before they expire.
Custom Game Settings — Have a problem with snakes? Maybe spiders? Introducing new options to turn tribes, predators, spiders, snakes, and the sanity meter on or off! Hate managing macroelements? Green Hell is also adding a depletion speed slider to adjust how quickly you need to replenish yourself.
This is a video from Rikudo, to show off one of the weapons in Second Hand: Frankie’s Revenge
Unfortunately, I don’t always have time to do in-depth reviews of things that come across my desk, try as I might. So I thought maybe I’d also do brief highlights of things I think are interesting, and are certainly worth taking a peek at, whether they are Steam, mobile, or otherwise. I will probably do this for both sites as it becomes possible. But the first of these, I want to take a peek at an indie game from Rikodu, called Second Hand: Frankie’s Revenge. Who or what are Frankies, though? Frankies are awesome customized robots, that you can attach a variety of weapons to, from the dull and dusty, to the overwhelmingly mighty and powerful. You have a main attack and a secondary attack, the first generating energy, and the second using it. You can control them with keyboard/mouse, or a controller but personally, the controller felt better to me. Completing missions unlocks new parts for your Frankie, from the Glue Gun to a Chainsaw!
The camera angle is a little awkward, I’ll admit, and I do sort of wish I could zoom in/out (preferably out), but I love the visuals of this game anyway. The art is bright and colorful, and it has plenty of mechanical violence without being filled with ultra-violence and gore (even though I love ultra-violence, don’t get me wrong). This makes me think though that it’s able to be played by a much wider audience without causing any parents to freak out. At least insofar as I’ve been. The core gameplay is pretty simple. You customize your Frankie, and head into a variety of missions, where you have different goals, but the one constant will be hacking into terminals, and hacking other robots into bits and pieces.
Your team has three lives to spare, and yes, you can definitely play this online co-op. That’s one of the real drawbacks right now, is it was very hard to find people to play with. I think that the more people are aware of it, that could become less of a drawback. You need to be aware of things blowing up though because they damage you, but many bigger enemies also seem to drop med kits to bring back some of that help. Hacking and Escaping use the same mechanic, hitting the E button at the right time a few times to trigger the proper event. When you’ve done everything, you can call jetpacks to escape, and once you have them, you mash E to get them to activate. Now, if you left enemies behind, they can still chase and try to kill you while you’re escaping, so be careful.
At least you can adjust the difficulty if the gameplay is too easy or too hard for you. As you complete missions, depending on how you do you gain from 1-3 stars, and the more stars you collect, the more campaigns you can go on. There are two campaigns with at least 7 missions right now, but there’s one “Coming Soon” that I see on the main Campaign screen. I love the chaos and pure madness of this game, and running around, bashing things to bits is very satisfying, I honestly have to say. A little more variety could be had in the enemy designs, but I’m sure that’s something that can be addressed in future updates. It has plenty of difficulties and would be an absolute blast to play with people online, just running around with awesome bots and kicking the stuffing out of other robots. If it blew up if you’ll pardon the expression, an Arena PVP mode would be sort of interesting, just as a casual way for friends to beat each other up as their bots. It can feel very very difficult when playing solo. I had a hard time getting through most of the missions alone, but I did it, usually by playing smart and taking my time. But it’s still a very fun game for its price. It can be found on Steam, and I thought it was pretty charming and challenging for its price point.