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HiRez Studios has been pretty successful with their third person action MOBA, SMITE. The game is headed to its World Championship tournament soon, and recently celebrated 10 million players. As a game that focuses on playable gods and demigods from various pantheons around the world, the characters in SMITE are at once familiar and unique. However, they all fall into one of seven pantheons: Chinese, Egyptuan, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Mayan and Norse. That may be about to change however. Recently, Scott Ghandi who works on the Xbox One side of SMITE tweeted out that everyone should tune in to the patch notes today at 4 PM EST for a special surprise. Along with that rather cryptic tweet, he posted this picture:
Each symbol is the emblem of one of the pantheons currently in SMITE. Speculation, of course is that the giant question mark heralds the reveal of a new pantheon to be added to the game. Speculation about a new pantheon has been going on for months, with Smitedatamining.com claiming to have unearthed references to the Celtic pantheon and Morrigan way back in March of this year. While this is, of course, still speculation, signs seem to indicate big changes coming to SMITE.
I know I’ll be tuned in today at 4 PM. You can catch the patch notes HERE.
In case you haven’t heard yet, Fallout 4 is releasing soon. I know right; they kept that quiet didn’t they?
Anyway, with such a big and very anticipated title releasing some other games are obviously getting into the spirit of travelling and playing in the post-nuclear wasteland. Even if you’re playing car football.
The people who made Rocket League, Psyonix are releasing a little update for the game at the same time as Fallout 4 releases that adds a single new cosmetic element to the game to go with the others you can use to deck your car out before you go flying off walls smashing a giant metal ball about a field: a Vault Boy antenna.
Sure, like all the cosmetic bits it makes no change to your car’s performance but who doesn’t love customising options in games? It’s a freebie to boot, so even if you’re not a fan you still don’t lose anything. Win-win situation all around.
With Fallout 4 now releasing, gamers are beginning to look around to other franchises to hope for sequels from. Yesterday Take-Two reported they were working on some new games in existing IPs, and now Crystal Dynamics’ senior designer, Michael Brinker, has said that he believes there’s a 50/50 chance of a new Legacy of Kain game in this generation.
“It’s a 50/50 chance,” Brinker said. “We have in-house developers who really want to make that game. It’s interesting because people look back at our history and our franchises and see that we have some really great iconic IPs. So gamers wonder; ‘where are they and what are they doing?’ Well we’re always tossing around and talking about ideas [of bringing them back]. It really is 50/50.”
Of course, right now Crystal Dynamics are working on that other major frnahcise Tomb Raider, with the newest game Rise of the Tomb Raider due to launch on Xbox One tomorrow. There’s also a PC version coming, but that’s not until next year. So if we do get a new Legacy of Kain game, it probably won’t be coming soon.
Still, they won’t make it if there’s no demand for it right?
Company president of Take-Two, Karl Slatoff, has confirmed that the development studios in established franchises as well as new IP in the publisher’s latest earnings call.
“Our worldwide development teams are working on numerous unannounced projects, including new intellectual properties, and offerings from our established franchises,” Slatoff said. One of these projects was also confirmed to be coming in 2016 by the CEO Strauss Zelnick.
We already know that XCOM 2 is coming in 2016, but as this is talking about unannounced projects that we don’t yet know about, it’s a fair bet to say this one that is coming next year could be coming in the second half of the year rather than the first. That’s not for sure though obviously.
With plenty of franchises having had games that involved Take-Two being released in the past, fans of those franchises now have a tiny little bit to go on if they were hoping for a sequel to their favourite game. Of course, we will have to wait and see what is coming and probably we won’t be told until 2016 some time.
It’s time for the weekly little catch-up on what cool stuff is going on in the world of gaming Kickstarters, and I will start with a summary of previous coverage.
Unfortunately Solar Hideout has seen funding cancelled because of the developer’s health issues, which made me sad as I’d backed this one myself. However the website for the game is still up with the demo version and the creator has said further updates will be posted up there so the game itself is not dead. Scribbled Arena is another campaign that has seen funding cancelled by the developer, owing to a lack of funding. Cold Blooded is also having a little trouble getting going with less than 200 euros of its goal having been made so far. Meanwhile Doko Roko has reached its target with 11 more days to go, GOAT ARMY has 13 days to go having reached its goal, and GOTY the card game has reached a halfway point with plenty more time to make up the rest. Wanderer is almost at its target but has less than 3 days to go to finish it off, but they seem at a point where it is going to be funded.
Starting this week with the card game, and its yet another based around video gaming.
Game Over borrows from gaming history to form a game that sees you using expies of known video game characters to fight for victory. Each character has their own method of winning though and as the player you need to guide them to victory together. As well as character cards, there are cards for attacks, blocks, items, crowbars and even a chance that as the game goes on longer the ‘game’ will fight back against your characters itself. This is actually a second version of the game as well, so you know that the maker has had some success with this game before.
Game Over Remix has 42 days to go and has made $3,383 of its $8,250 goal so far.
Vanity’s Dawn borrows from English history, and lore. History has always interested me so this game sounded good.
Vanity’s Dawn is set in 1604 in England, a time of change when Elizabeth the First had only recently passed away and people’s fears and worries were leading to more sightings of worrying evil creatures. You play as the Anglian Chapter of Vanity, an order of an unknown age that sends out those rejected by society to fight these evils. Whether they want to or not. You manage the people in your Chapter, keep up their faith in their religious beliefs and then send out people on Hunts to take down the evils that lurk in the shadows.
Vanity’s Dawn has made £306 of a £30,000 goal and has 18 days to go.
A Princess To Save Me is a turn-based RPG that asks the question: what if the rescuer of the princess dies on their way back home and leaves the princess alone?
Play as the damsel in distress as you are left alone in the middle of nowhere and must learn to survive and travel back to your home, meeting and interacting with people along the way and having an effect on them as well. The game apparently has branching storylines and multiple endings which sounds pretty good to me. You’ll also pick up companions to join you in battle too.
If this sounds like your sort of thing the game has 24 days to go to make $10,000 of which it has already pulled in $1,042. So it’s already on its way to funded.
I’ll admit, my eye was drawn to this one because the graphic style of the characters is clearly Powerpuff Girls-inspired. I was a child of the 90s, I loved that cartoon.
Econia is a mobile and browser casual game where you start as a sole farmer growing crops to survive and eventually grow your farm into a village, then town, and bring in a population. Eventually you get to a point where you are a city and laws are being passed, and you as a wealthy person can choose to use your financial sway to get your way. Which actually is the entire point that the developers are trying to make with this game – money is controlling democracy right now. The game will also be free and open-source upon release, and possibly might come to Android and Steam based on how well the campaign goes.
Econia has a $25,000 goal of which it has made $3,595 with 15 days to go.
