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After a little break, the Kickstarter round-up returns to the Sanitarium.FM! We’ve got some wonderful looking game campaigns to choose from, so let’s dive in shall we?
First up is a graphic novel that is the first in a series that’s come from a working team-up between Penny Arcade and Lone Shark Games.
Thornwatch is the first in the “Eyrewood Adventures” set in the Eyrewood, a magical forest. Players take the role of the ‘Thornwatch’, sworn guardians of the Eyrewood and are called to the scene of an ongoing crisis in the game. One player acts as the Judge and the other players as the Thornwatch can be playing any number of different creatures, each with their own deck of actions cards and trait cards.
Thornwatch has already been funded past its $78,000 goal, having reached $216,237 already and still having 31 days to go. Check it out for more information and if you’d like to back it.
This one is described as a “negative space puzzle-platformer” and graphically it looks amazing already.
The game sees you playing as both the Rabbit (who can move through dark areas) and the Owl (who can move through the light areas) in a world that has long ago shattered into showing only monochrome, leaving behind ruins in its wake. Using both characters, you must figure out ways to progress, using all of the areas provided – literally walking inside of platforms your partner might be stood upon above you.
The Rabbit and the Owl has made $3,213 of its $5,000 goal, with 26 days to go. Try out the demo to see if you’d be interested in this game!
This one was chosen because the idea of a multiplayer game with changing rooms sounds promising at least.
Dimension Door is on its second campaign now, having streamlined and learned from their last shot. The game is turn-based and sees you and your fellow players inside a mansion inhabited by beings who might not mean you well. Unfortunately the rooms also keep shifting around you so you need to somehow ride the chaos and escape before some terrible fate befalls you…
Dimension Door has a goal of $45,000 with 28 days to go, it has so far made $1,035. Go check it out if you too are curious what the game might hold for you.
Because I was always going to choose one with cats in, wasn’t I? Bonus is that this looks like a well-made little retro platformer to boot.
This is another game with two animal partners working side by side, with a cat (obviously) and a rabbit working together to get home, and the campaign says that you can “Run, jump, climb, bounce, claw, and shoot your way through a huge, immersive world filled with traps, ziplines, puzzles, teleporters, and deadly enemies!” with some mention of learning new abilities as well. Graphically it too looks delightfully retro.
Cat Story has a goal of $10,000 of which it has made $259 with 29 days still to go. Go check out the game’s demo, this one looks good!
Rocket League’s been wildly successful as a game, and among other things the latest update will finally allow for people to play the game on both Mac and SteamOS at long last.
However, the big things about this update are the addition of a new game mode, as well as Psyonix seemingly having borrowed a couple of tricks from other games in an attempt to try and fund the game’s growing eSports scene. All available from September 8th.
To talk about the latter first, Rocket League will now have random crate drops after matches after which you can purchase keys at $1.49 each to open up the crates and retrieve the cosmetic goodies inside, with packs of 5, 10 or 20 keys also being available for about a dollar a key. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the way CSGO has used to fund their eSports scene for years now and we all know where that’s recently led. Let’s hope that Rocket League doesn’t end up going down the same path. It’s worth noting though that there is the option to disable the crate drops entirely.
Further to this is that player trading will allow you to swap these cosmetic pieces to your hearts content, with the exception of some DLC pieces. Players can set their own exchange rates too for items for more control.
Onto the new mode, called Rumble. It’s basically roughly the same game of rocket-powered car football, but with mutators and powerups thrown onto the field too for extra hilarity and challenge. Such game modes tend to be a lot of fun, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. It’ll all depend on just how well these powerups get implemented along with what they actually do and for how long. Hopefully any balancing that is needed will be done quickly.
Other smaller features include party chat and a new map, Octagon.
When Paradox announced their city building game’s next expansion, with a trailer showing off the first of the titular Natural Disasters, we also got a few hints about other upcoming content. One of those was that Paradox had reached out to prominent mod creators to get new content added to the game.
Now the first of these little side-projects seems to have released, and with the help of Matt “Shroomblaze” Crux Cities Skylines now has an Art Deco DLC pack with a number of new buildings to liven up your city a little from the standard buildings.
Contained within the pack are some unique buildings, including Pinoa Street; new commercial buildings including the Chirpcinema and some art deco designed residental buildings too for a total of 15 new buildings on offer.
The pack can be purchased from Paradox’s Paradoxplaza.com site, and some of the £3.99 price tag will be headed back to Shroomblaze to support his work.
It’s always nice to see companies embracing the love and time modders of their games put into making their stuff.
Finally Star Trek Online is coming to console! For someone who doesn’t have a gaming PC, this is great news. I have wanted to play this game for years. With how much I love Neverwinter, I am looking forward to Star Trek Online by Cryptic, due Fall of 2016.
The console version will have new features, new missions, controller support and improved graphics. Your story will begin from the faction you choose from, Federation, Romulans or Klingon. But this will include 32 species for customisation, to create your captain. The video below is the official developer walkthrough.
The console version will release with new content. As quoted by Arc’s website, there is exclusive content for console.
‘Players on the Xbox One console version of STO will receive a free Tier 1 Blockade Runner Escort Steamrunner-class Starship. On the PlayStation 4 console version, players will receive a free Tier 1 Andorian Light Escort. Note that these items will be available for free for two weeks after launch!’
This game has currently been running for six years on the PC, and I for one am looking forward to finally being able to play it, on my own or with my friends.
About a decade has passed since Sony released the third Playstation, and now Sony are looking to bring some of its best titles to PC officially.
Sony have announced that they are planning to release a PC- compatible version of their cloud gaming service, Playstation Now. Playstation Now already bosts a sizeable game library from Playstation’s past, with around 400 of them being from the PS3 and Sony have said that the PC-compatible version is due a release in the UK, as well as the US and Canada. All that will be needed is a PC, a decent broadband connection and, of course, a subscription to Playstation Now to get access to the back catalogue on offer. The program will be available for download from www.psnow.com.
As for gamepads, you will of course need to be using the Sony Dualshock 4 for your gaming. You can choose to use a USB cable, or if you’d rather something wireless, Sony have said that they’ll be offering a DualShock 4 USB Wireless Adaptor in September for around $24.99 – one that supports both PC and Mac which hints that Sony might be considering the move of bringing the service to Mac users as well in the future. For the moment Sony is recommending the use of Remote Play, an app that allows for the streaming of content from Playstation 4’s to PCs, Macs, Playstation TV, Xperia smartphones and tablets.
PS Now was launched back in May 2015 as Sony’s answer to Microsoft’s Xbox One actually being able to support games from the Xbox 360 natively via emulation. Playstation Now allows for select smart TVs, Playstation 3, 4 and the Vita to play many PS3 games for a monthly subscription fee of $19.99.
