Amazon Game Studios announced earlier this year that they were launching a new mythical sports themed action MOBA style experience known as Breakaway. Fast forward a few months, and the Alpha for the game has just ended. I had a chance to put in quite a bit of time with the game, and my first impressions were positive. Being an alpha, there were of course performance and matchmaking problems. Lonesamurai for example, was never able to even play the game, an issue we still haven’t found the root case of. That being said, the game looks promising, and we’ve put together a little video detailing the game, it’s positives and negatives for you.

Sources have apparently come forward to Kotaku from inside of Warner Bros Montreal that suggest that a Suicide Squad game that been rumoured and even teased at the end of their last Batman game (Arkham Origins) had been scrapped after it failed to impress studio executives.

The game had apparently been a co-op game which had been in development for about two years, however as it failed to impress the decision was taken to scrap it entirely and replace it instead with a new Batman game that focuses on the son of the Dark Knight – Damian Wayne.

For those who don’t keep up with the story of the comics (hey, me too), Damian Wayne is the current Robin and Bruce Wayne’s actual blood son. Born to antiheroine Talia al Ghul, daughter of bad guy Ra’s al Ghul, Damian was raised by his grandfather in his organisation the League of Assassins before being sent to Batman. A violent 10 year old with no hesitation in killing, Damian and Wayne had to learn to bond before Wayne let Damian don the mantle of Batman’s sidekick Robin.

There are apparently some good stories that exist around Damian, if his origin story wasn’t badass enough – so hopefully if WB Montreal do well, this new game could be something to look forward to. It doesn’t really seem like the Suicide Squad game will be much mourned because of it anyway, especially after how badly some people received the Suicide Squad film.

Hopefully we’ll get an official announcement for the new game in the months to come, so that we know we’ll be seeing it for certain.

Welcome to your weekly update to the things going on in Kickstarter gaming campaigns, your last one of the year, as there will be a little break until 2017 after this.

We’ll start with the previously covered, and there’s an awful lot of bad news to get through, so we’ll go through it first. Firstly, Return to Earth has unfortunately not reached its target, although the team behind it say that thanks to feedback they’ve received they’ll be back with an improved game and new campaign for it. Then we have a handful of campaigns that haven’t finished yet, but probably will not make it in time. These are Nin, Twin Flames, Arcade Tycoon and Monkeys On Your Back, although the last of those has a full week as opposed to the others all having less than half a week to go.

However, there is also good news to write about. Plague Road is nearing its target with just over a week more to run, and Chessaria has just passed its goal, with only a little time remaining.

Meanwhile, there’s still been no change in Berghain‘s campaign status.

Undermine

This week’s round-up is tabletop game heavy, so we start with a campaign already funded but worth a look.

Undermine is a game about miners, resources and… well, undermining. Obviously. Each player must recruit miners to work for them, operate their mines to find and harvest resources, buy equipment to help with your efforts and sabotage others player’s effort. The point of the game is to be the first to reach 7 points with your cards. Each set of cards is for 2 players, with each extra set allowing for up to 2 more players to be added to a game. So keep that in mind if you want to add this one to your gaming nights with friends.

Undermine has a target of $4,000 which it has already surpassed. There are 27 more days to go on its campaign if you wish to give it a look.

Renegade Line

Secondly, we have the only non-tabletop of our round-up this week – a third-person shooter.

Renegade Line will be a shooter with four different classes to play and apparently some MMORPG elements to boot. Remnegade Line sees players of 2 different factions facing off against each other over a battlefield. Each single account can create many different characters with classes, customisable appearances and levelling. The game makers seek to keep the game fresh by updating it with new gamemodes and more over time. There will also be skins for items and weapons to collect in game.

Renegade Line has a €50,000 goal, with 26 more days to go. It has made €25,379 so far.

SECTOR 6

This game is a board game with figurines, set in a futuristic prison.

SECTOR 6 challenges players to survive in a decaying stellar prisn where budgets cut mean that survival and resources need to be fought over. This includes food, water and even oxygen. The prison itself is a labyrinth of corridors where players need to be quick enough to grab the most oxygen points they can to survive, while manipulating the labyrinth to hopefully sabotage their rival’s efforts to grab oxygen points too. The game even starts with the players using the provided hex tiles to build the maze they will be running for that game.

SECTOR 6 has made it’s goal of $9,006 already, but has 27 days more of campaign to go if you wish to check it out.

Knock-Out

Finally, we have a game about illegal fighting rings, with unconventional weaponry.

Knock-Out is set within an underground boxing ring, in which players are competing to win the largest amount of trophies possible to win the game. To do this, you use a bunch of strange and wonderful weapons to try and outplay your opponents. There are 10 Fighter characters you can play as, and each one has a different ability that has an effect on how you play the game with that character. Fights are conducted through the hand of cards that each player has at their disposal, with 7 drawn at the start of each match taken from two decks – the Melee and the Ranged with players allowed to take as many from each as they wish to customise their fighting style.

Knock-Out has made $870 of its $34,000 goal so far, and has 26 days to go.

After a delay to add singleplayer to the game after fan demand, the beta for Gun Media’s co-op survival horror game based around the Friday the 13th series is due to start tomorrow and run until December 23rd. Gun Media have now released the details for the various Jasons and camp counselors who will be playable during that beta period, with seven different counselors being available and the Jasons from Part II, Part 3 and Part VII: The New Blood for those who wish to terrorise their friends instead of working together with them.

For those who haven’t heard of the game before, it’s very similar to Dead By Daylight in that it is an asymmetrical multiplayer game in which one player is a serial killer against the team of other players they’re trying to kill. Unlike Dead By Daylight though, the name of the game for the players who aren’t the killer is to survive the night – 7v1 means that there is a chance someone probably will.

Each Jason and each counselor have different strengths and weaknesses too, as well as playstyles so there’s something to suit all players potentially. The counselors need to use their strengths to work together to stay alive and the Jason chosen depends on how the singular player wishes to approach their murdering. Simple really.

If that all sounds like fun, then you’ve got to pre-order the Friday the 13th game in order to get access to this closed beta. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for potential open betas or even until the release, which isn’t all that far away given that it’ll be in the first quarter of 2017.

While the majority of things that have come in the Winter Wonderland event for Overwatch have been well received by the community (seriously, the amount of love I’ve seen on Tumblr for Junkrat and Roadhog’s matching sprays is immense), one particular piece has been widely criticised by fans.

While most of the skins like Yeti Winston and Nutcracker Zenyatta have been quite popular, a lot of people are disappointed with Mei’s new skin. In fact, the negative reaction has been so drastic that Overwatch’s director Jeff Kaplan has felt the need to actually apologise for it on the Overwatch forums.

“We don’t have a specific rule for what makes something Legendary or Epic. We just sort of make a gut call based off of what we think is cool.” Kaplan wrote. “Coolness is very subjective, and based off of the community reaction it seems like our gauge was off on this one. Our reasoning for it being Legendary was that we completely redid the visual effects for Cryo-Freeze (we turned the ice block into a snowman).”

For those who haven’t seen the skin, it looks fairly similar to Mei’s ordinary winter coat skin if in Christmassy colours, with added hat and (as Kaplan says in his post) the ice block ability making Mei a snowman instead. Given that skins that are usually given Legendary status (which this one has been) are usually drastic changes from the norm, this is the main bone of contention.

For those disappointed though, Kaplan says that Mei is due to get something awesome in the early part of 2017.

“Apologies that our “cool meter” was off from yours on this one. We’ll try to align better on future content.”