Abandon Ship foolishly sails to the Spider Islands

I don’t care how great a pirate you are, there are some ideas that are just bad, and sailing to the Spider Islands is one of them. Unfortunately, they’re the next port of call for nautical FTL-alike Abandon Ship, along with two more new, horrible-sounding locales; Cannibal’s Lurk and Peril’s Cauldron. Fireblade Software’s early access game of fantastical ship-management and poor life decisions is still steadily growing, although it doesn’t appear that the game is leaving early access any time soon. You can see the full patch notes for the update here, or the short version with trailer below.

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BitSummit 7 Spirits and its treasure trove of trailers

Post-human martial arts, Paper Mario with bugs, hacking and slashing through Celtic myth and dogfights against gigantic anime sky-fortresses, oh my! We’re a week and change from E3, but that’s where all the big-budget safe-bet games are going. If you’re after something a little more out there, BitSummit 2019: 7 Spirits is where you should be looking. Opening tomorrow in Kyoto, Japan, it’s an eastern-focused but international showcase of independent, weird and experimental games, running through the weekend. Below, a few I’m keeping a close eye on, with trailers. As for the rest, check out the official event page.

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Kerbal Space Program cracks open Breaking Ground expansion

For a game about spaceships, Kerbal Space Program‘s latest expansion has a curiously terrestrial focus not to mention name: Breaking Ground. Out now, it doesn’t do much for spaceflight but does give more to do once you’ve actually landed somewher eout there. Along with new ground-based deployable scientific research gadgets, it adds surface formations to study and, most importantly, robotic pistons and joints and things. Remember: robotics components are for serious scientific expeditions only. Don’t get any ideas about building a giant mechanical tarantula to skitter around mission control. And if you’re using a mod to add multiplayer, don’t you and your pals have any ideas about starting a Robot Wars on the Mun. Science only, okay.

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Katana Zero cuts deep with a brutal Hard Mode update

Katana Zero was a lovely game — a side-scrolling samurai Hotline Miami — but perhaps a little on the short side. Ending on a maddening cliffhanger, developer Askiisoft says there’s more levels and story in the works as free DLC. Until then, they’re putting players through the wringer. Two new modes were added in a big patch yesterday, Speedrun mode and Hard Mode. The former offers a cutscene-lite deterministic playing field. Hard Mode, unlocked after beating the main story, is designed to murder you in a thousand fun new ways. Oh, and you can pet a cat now.

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Turtle Beach Elite Atlas review: The pro headset that drops the ball

Turtle Beach struck best gaming headset gold with their mid-range Atlas Three, and now it’s the turn of their top-end PC headset, the Elite Atlas – and you know it’s the big expensive one because it says things like ‘pro performance’ and ‘designed with leading esports teams’ on the front of the box. Indeed, at a princely £85 / $100, the Elite Atlas is one of the more costly gaming headsets I’ve looked at in some time. But is this esports-ified headset really worth stumping up the extra cash for? Here’s wot I think.

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The Japanese myths and woodblock art behind Sekiro’s creatures

Fantastic creatures are as important to Sekiro as its samurai and shinobi. For every deftly fought duel against a venerable warrior there’s a slug-fest with a headless ape that hurls toxic poo. It’s a fine balance between the real and the romantic. Whereas Dark Souls had everything to do with “lore”, Sekiro more delicately pulls from folklore. Lordran is almost purely imaginative, but Sekiro’s Ashina is set securely in Japan during the Sengoku period, and closely draws from surrounding legends and myths.

Almost all its creatures are a play on yōkai, for example, a diverse group of strange, supernatural creatures. Many can be traced back to ancient tales, but it was the natural history encyclopedias and bestiaries of the Edo period that helped popularise them (most famous is Sekien Toriyama’s The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, which catalogs over two hundred of them). Ever since, Japanese art and literature has built upon this legacy of monsters, demons, gods and animal spirits, especially in Japanese woodblock printing. It’s a rich artistic tradition, and its influence on Sekiro is clear.

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Sigil, John Romero's fifth episode for Doom, is out now for free

Nearly a quarter-century after The Ultimate Doom added episode four — Thy Flesh Consumed — to the genre-defining FPS, original Id developer John Romero gives us a fifth for free; Sigil. Nine new levels for the original Doom, so no super shotguns or (thankfully) Revenants. It’s pointedly old-school demon-slaughter, claustrophobic and dark, with a look that never strays too far from the original game. While free today with a MIDI soundtrack, a commercial version landed last weekend with guitar accompaniment by masked metal maven Buckethead. Below, my thoughts on it.

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SteamWorld Quest hisses onto PC

Image & Form’s ever-changing SteamWorld series continues today with SteamWorld Quest: The Hand Of Gilgamech, this time sending silly steambots on deck-building card battle RPG adventures. It launched on PC this morning following an April debut on Nintendo Switch and, our Katharine said in her SteamWorld Quest review, is another good’un. She said it’s gentle and inviting as deck-building battlers go, and has a regular story campaign unlike the usual random roguelikelikes of the genre.

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Fortnite Fortbyte locations – Fortbyte 88 J3 location, Fortbyte 79 arcade location

Fortnite’s Fortbyte challenges just keep popping up and some have seen some rather lofty requirements. Today’s Fortbyte requires you to find the not-so well hidden Fortbyte at map reference J3. While that one is easy, some of the Fortbytes will need the Battle Pass to be purchased in order to complete those challenges. To make things easier, we’ve updated the table so that it has each of the links to the Fortbyte you’re looking for. There are a hundred in total and I will be going over all of them. Wish me luck.

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Wot I Think: Draugen

Apex Legends Season 2 – new Battle Pass, Wattson, Ranked Mode

Respawn Entertainment have drip-fed us details over the past couple months on the upcoming second Season of Apex Legends, and from what we’ve gleaned so far, a lot of effort is being put into decidedly not repeating the mistakes made with the release of Season 1 and its associated (and rather lackluster) Battle Pass. In this here Apex Legends Season 2 guide we’ll walk you through all the changes to be expected with the new Battle Pass, as well as news of new content to arrive in the coming days or weeks, from weapons to characters and more.

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The Foxer

Roman and Joyce always have a jigsaw puzzle on the go. Their current undertaking is a montage of album covers sliced into 10k pieces by one of Rooksburger’s slightly blunt punching machines. Below are 36 pieces from that puzzle. Identify all the LPs to complete the defox. (more…)

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The Flare Path: A2Z

A is for Another Automobilista. Automobilista, the sim that stormed to victory in the single-player portion of the inaugural Flare Path Grand Prix (a popularity contest for race sims) is to get a sequel in December and interestingly the sequel will rely on an engine last seen in Project CARS 2. As Reiza explained to www.racedepartment.com, the graphical prowess and “smooth as butter” fluency of Slightly Mad’s engine were a major attraction, as was the prospect of unrestricted code access. From statements like “We didn´t actually have access to the rF2 code beyond information that Studio-397 would supply to us on a need-to-know basis to get our content to work in their engine.” it sounds like the Brazilian devs weren’t completely happy with their previous engine provider. (more…)

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