Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor brought a demonstration of it’s flagship Nemesis system to EGX today, and it was thoroughly impressive. Shadow of Mordor has been developed by Monolith studios and is set somewhere between the events of the Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring where you play as a ranger of Gondor resurrected by one of the most powerful elves to ever live after your death to exact your revenge and his own against Sauron and the forces of despair.

Possibly one of the most amazing things is that in a completely single player game it looks distinctly like no two play throughs of Shadow of Mordor will feel the same or yield the same tales, this is a game to talk about but it seems like gamers will rarely if ever be talking about the same things! When I tell you that it looks like every single orc will be different to one another and even the lowly grunts if left alone long enough can rise to become warlords then you will understand exactly why this game is so exciting and full of promise.

With all the enemies being randomly generated from a list of traits and evolving as they perform actions within the world this system will bring an interesting challenge to an already expansive and lovingly crafted game. It will be interesting what this system can do and we will find out over time no doubt hearing some amazing tales.

Looking forwards to ? Tell us if you are below and why!

We’ll be bringing you more on this promising title in the very near future.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt took the stage today at EGX in London, showing off the open world of the game. They began by reintroducing us to the concept of a Witcher, the game’s titular adventurer’s and monster slayers. Another key theme in the beginning of the presentation was the idea of landmarks, as well as the fact that everything you see in the distance can be travelled to. This point was quickly followed with the fact that while the game will let you go where you want, it might slaughter you mercilessly if you do. The flip side of this is that the game will also reward you for skill, meaning that if you can survive an encounter that is nominally above your level, the game will reward you for that skilled play.

Moving on, the developers talked a bit about the organic nature of the world. If you defeat a group of bandits that have taken over a village, the villagers will come back. But, the rotting bodies of the bandits may also attract monsters. This could lead to a situation where the villagers are killed by the monsters as a direct result of your actions. This type of cause and effect is indicated to be a significant factor in the world of Witcher 3. This even carries to the interactions between enemies later down the line. Actions that might effect characters early on will also have repercussions further into the game. This could determine when and where enemies spawn, boss encounters, etc. If you’ve helped a leader of this group, they might be neutral or friendly to you. Branching is a main theme of the game, and it seems to have more wide reaching implications than many previous games that have experimented with the idea.

Moving a bit further, it was revealed that what we had seen was only a tiny portion of a much larger map, which was then revealed to be only half of the full map in the game. The effects you have on one area of the game will affect other areas around the wider world. The game also has more armors than the previous games, including ones which can be crafted. When asked about the idea of good and bad in the game, the developer also responded with the idea that actions are more shades of gray in Witcher 3.

Also, the presenter was HILARIOUS. Watch this space, once the presentation is up, I’ll add it to this article

Volume is a game we’ve seen before on stage, but today at EGX Mike Bithell talked more about the game and what we can expect from it.

Firstly, the game itself is a combination of the typical ‘Robin Hood’ legend and cyperpunk elements. You play as a character with an AI who has hacked into a training ground for evil types, and is using it to teach the people of England how to steal from the rich around them. It’s basically your typical stealth game but with one big difference to most: you cannot use lethal force on anything. You have to rely entirely on your reflexes, your gadgets and your stealth skills to get past each level.

Within levels you will encounter single rooms full of corridors with patrolling guards with cone-of-sight in front of them. You can sneak around out of their sight, use gadgets (Masquerade to disguise as a guard character for example) to fool them or hide in places such as trapdoors. If you are seen you have time to escape, it isn’t an instant game over and use of certain gadgets when seen will confuse and eventually de-alarm guards. The guards are entirely stupid though, for example if you hover around them too long in Masquerade they will see through the disguise eventually, even faster if there’s more staring at you.

We were also told that the voice for the main villain in the game has been cast, although we won’t get more information on that until the end of October. The release date was also pushed back from the ‘2014ish’ previous date to sometime in the first half of 2015.

A new game was shown off today on the stage at EGX 2014, a game about shaping your own solutions to puzzles called The Magic Circle.

Set in a vaporware game, The Magic Circle is about the hero of this incomplete game, supposed to be a typical RPG, growing tired of waiting for his ‘gods’ (the game developers) and setting out to change the game’s environment. Either to finish the game or completely break it, it’s unclear and both might be possible. The hero is also driven by a ‘trickster spirit’ who has also grown tired of the game developers’ messing around. The hero’s in-game weapons have been locked out from him, so what the hero can do instead is interact with the very fabric of the game with the titular ‘Magic Circle’ which creates glitch-like spaces that makes it possible to interact with entities or objects caught in its field. But only those in colour mind you, easily spotted in the game because the vast majority of what is around you is rendered in a whiteboard-esque style.

Once caught in your field you can steal, add and change properties to do with the entity or object, including movement style, attack style, special abilities (such as Flameproof), enemies and allies. Use it to make monsters your pets, or suicide bombers to clear a path for you past obstacles. Even turn objects into your own bodyguards! As you play through the game you accumulate ‘memory’ which is a cache of what was called ‘wasted potential’ in the presentation. Using this, you can restore ghosted out things in the game. This includes entities and parts of the game itself, bringing back ‘abandoned concepts’ for the game that the developer ‘deleted’ before you came along to restore it.

The main point of this game we were told, was that we as the player were allowed to ‘steal the tools of authorship’ and maybe gain a little perspective of how a game developer’s mind works. Maybe.

Vlambeer showed off the latest version of their procedurely generated game, Nuclear Throne today on-stage at EGX.

The talk was mainly on how the game did ‘random’ and how it worked to make the game what it was. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with mutants, the game itself has been many years in development, originally conceived during a MoJam and having been called Wasteland Kings originally until last year when they announced a name change. There are currently eleven different characters to play and unlock and each stage is randomly generated, as are the loot, the enemies, the power-ups/mutations available when enough radiation is collected from drops and fallen enemies.

The levels themselves are generated through programs called ‘workers’ who perform actions based on a series of numbers fed to them to carve out the levels for the players. They also determine where loot gets placed and chests, with enemy and explosive barrel placement happening after the ‘workers’ have done their job. There are 7 worlds, over 30 different mutations which can benefit or hinder, and the game has so far been updated most Saturdays for the last 40 or so weeks.

Vlambeer said at the end of their panel that a new character called Rogue was coming soon, as well as a new Oasis world type. There will also be leaderboards added, after-game (or after-Throne) content and more to come.