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Twin Mirror, The Dark Pictures and The Gardens Between number among the new releases shown, focusing mainly on darker more story based theatrical games while Cat Quest 2: The Lupus Empire is a quirky, bright RPG starring a cat and is the only direct sequel announced so far.
Not exactly sequels, Playlink: Chimparty adds some more games to the Playstation Playlink, while other titles such as Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition takes an existing game world setting with a new art style and story, Fist of the Northstar Lost Paradise sees Kenshiro enter a new play style by the team that brought us the Yakuza series, Persona 3 Dancing in the Moonlight + Persona 5 Dancing in the Sunlight is a new entry in the bizarre dancing spin-offs to the popular Persona RPG series, and lastly everyone’s favourite purple dragon is having his classic adventures updated for the PS4 with the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.
And a quick round up of the games shown ont eh Playstation stream –
You can check out the trailers over in our playlist
That’s it for the day one roundup, a strong first day for lovers of new and classic gaming. make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for live blogging of the developer sessions!
~Sirhc
SAIL THE STARS. BETRAY YOUR QUEEN. MURDER A SUN. Set a course for the heavens in your steam locomotive! Lose yourself in a changing universe where even time can be bought. A Victorian Gothic adventure for PC, Mac and Linux.
Sunless Skies is currently an early access title and is the sequel to Sunless Sea which itself is a sequel and spin off of Fallen London, the browser based text game that started the world of the sunless games. Sunless Skies is one part rogue-lite, one part trader sim, one part narrative focused RPG. The game is built on the Unity game engine and Failbetter’s own narrative platform StoryNexus. Failbetter has once again managed to make a charming game that captures the whimsical humor of their fallen London universe and the Lovecraftian adventures one could find there but now set in space on a steam powered locomotive.
For better or for worse the core of the gameplay remains the same as that of sunless sea, you create a captain, and you navigate your vessel through the dark and dangerous expanses of space trying to make your fortune or become famous. If you die that captain is dead permanently in the legacy mode but your new captain may inherit a higher starting level, money, and star chart. As of writing this I have gone through 6 captains, each having died hilariously and horribly from my own growing pains trying to learn my way around the map. You have to manage your sanity, your fuel, your supplies, and of course your cargo. The farther away from the starting port you get, the more dangerous things become, I was killed in two shots by an enemy locomotive while I was distracted by the beautifully creepy homestead I discovered. Combat is simple with you firing one of two weapons and trying to hit the enemy while at the same time trying not to get hit by said enemy. This usually end up revolving around you flying circles around the enemy to line up a clean shot to their starboard or port broadsides so you can avoid the front of the enemy as all weapons currently fire directly ahead of the locomotive.
Like any good narrative, the meat of the story and immersion is what happens between start and finish, and having the legacy of your previous captains help to make a unique story for each play through. Much like the heirs of your heroes in rogue castle changed gameplay, so too does your next captain. I have had captains that found devils and rats to be officers aboard their locomotive, each with their own story to pursue, and then i have had captains that instead found passengers that lead to their own stories and quests but never found the same officers. This randomness keeps things fresh and unique in between traveling from port to port when travel is getting tedious and the monotonousness of the dark space between ports sets in.
Sunless Skies is a great narrative and a superb time killer. The writing is great and the art is appealing. Failbetter has most assuredly learned from their previous titles and seem to have once again struck gold and I expect them to further tune the gameplay in this early access title as they continue to integrate player feedback. That being said, this game is not for everyone and I can only seriously recommend it to those looking for something slow paced to kill time and wanting to try something different or to fans of the old star trader style games as the game can get tedious and boring during long stretches of exploration if you are not into games like this. I had a blast playing this title and am looking forward to seeing how it progresses from here and have even gone to take a look at the browser based adventure game that started it all, Fallen London. I am giving Sunless Skies a 6 out of 10, I have fallen in love with this universe and can’t get enough of it.
To celebrate the release of World of Warcraft: Battle For Azeroth, Sanitarium.Fm’s patrons received exclusive artwork of Saurfang by our artist in residence, PhaseChan.
Check out the process behind the portrait below:
Love this illustration? Sanitarium.FM patrons get exclusive Game Of The Month artwork every month, support the station today to start receiving your prints.
In Trials of the Gauntlet, You wake up in the courtyard of a Steampunk mansion, your arm replaced with an electric grappling hook. You use your new arm to solve puzzles, traverse the mansion and fight your way to the top of the clock tower where you confront the mad scientist who did this to you.
Trials of the Gauntlet from Broken Dinosaur Studios, a studio formed by students of Full Sail University, is a midterm project for Game Development that has been released as a full game. The setting of the game is a Steampunk mansion, where your character awakens with a grappling hook where one of their arms should be and proceeds to enter the mansion to find the scientist that performed the mad experiment on you.
Gameplay consists of traversing the mansion in an upward fashion, largely using your grappling hook to do so. The grappling hook has another function: an electric hook which is used to activate some electronics and slow down enemies so you can bash them with your other arm.
The graphic style is decidedly retro with large pixels eschewing the need for a lot of detail. The art of the game isn’t bad – but it’s nothing amazing either – with fairly generic looking bad guys and environments. Due to the nature of the project (being a school project) it was developed in a limited time frame and so some of the animations feel a bit floaty at times, with the character and enemies feeling somewhat out of place when moving.
I found the controls of the game to be quite fiddly and using the grappling hook was more cumbersome than fun, which is not a particularly good trait for your main game mechanic, and like most aspects of the game it was largely forgettable.
Overall, the game feels very much like the school project that it is. The runtime of the game is estimated at 90 minutes, but glitches and bugs are frequent, which the developers are aware of – again, due to the limited timeframe for development, only critical game breaking bugs were worked on. Now that the project has been completed the devs can go back and try to neaten up the edges and expand the game, or move on to a new project, but in the current state the game is hard to recommend.
For the first time in history, the long-closed borders of Summerset are open to foreigners by decree of Queen Ayrenn. But darkness looms over the ancestral home of the High Elves, and whispers stir of Daedric followers organizing in the shadows. Rally your allies, brave champions. Summerset awaits.
Explore an all-new zone packed with adventure. Join the mysterious Psijic Order and gain powerful new abilities. Reunite with old friends, forge new alliances, and work together to unravel a conspiracy that threatens Tamriel’s very existence.
Summerset is the newest chapter to the The Elder Scrolls Online, and while it adds much new content, a new crafting skill line and a new skill line focusing on time manipulation from the Psijic order, new mobs, two beautiful zones to explore and an amazing continuation to the main overarching story, it does not do much else, which is a good thing. ZOS stuck with what makes ESO great and avoided trying to reinvent the wheel.
When I do a review I have one main question I always ask myself and set out to answer. Is this fun? And the answer is a resounding OH HELL YEAH. I have long loved the elder scrolls franchise and I love ESO, but the game is not without its flaws, which is true of all games, but I have to say that Summerset is some of the most fun I have had in a long while in an mmo, from new trash mobs with interesting combat mechanics in the open world too the amazing new coral crab mob designs and the quest stories and writing has gone a long way to making this one of the best expansions yet for ESO.
Underneath the beauty of the High Elven island lies a darker side, The high elves prejudice against the “lesser races” is on full display, their political intrigues show up in force in Summerset’s main story as it is both a continuation of the Morrowwind Clock Work City story picking up right where it left off with more daedric cults and daedric princes up to no good and a continuation of the Aldmeri dominion’s story lines surrounding queen Ayrenn’s ascension to the throne. The quests diving deeper into the motivations of the characters around you and not simply praising your prowess as a world-class savior brings a human quality to the game that helps you feel more connected and immersed in the game. One example of this is Razum-dar, a long time fan favorite, he is not just another NPC but a friend to the player. As a result, Summerset is both familiar and foreign. The new Public dungeons are a breath of fresh air in how they are designed and some of the new bosses look amazing. The new trial, Cloud rest, has you taking on one to the ancient long thought extinct sloads, a slug devil toad abomination that just wants to smash your face with the help of mind controlled minions and crazy daedric magic.
Summerset brings a host of new additions to the game, The main story as mentioned previously, 6 new delves, 6 new Fun world bosses, 6 abyssal geysers which function like dolmens. 2 new public dungeons which have farm-able collections that net you prizes such as the new ginger kitten vanity pet. A new trial that can be completed multiple ways. The new psijic order skill line which adds 5 active abilities, a new ultimate, and new passives. It also adds Jewelry crafting which allows you to craft your own jewelry and make set piece jewelry. Both of these new skill lines drastically open up build diversity. The champion point cap was also increased to 750 and the game adds several new interesting gear sets to the game.
If I had to rate Summerset on a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate it a solid 8, it just does so much right in terms of what an expansion should add to the game but it still has old flaws that still need to be addressed from older versions of the game and class balance & build balance issues that continue to still plague the game.
~Darsch
The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset is available now on –
