"Like in so many games that have inspired us in the past, motion is key in Second Sun. We got our main inspiration for the movement from old-school shooters like Doom, Quake, and even Hexen."

Second Sun is emphasizing agile movement and quick combat. Can you speak a little bit more about that and how it will impact the moment-to-moment gameplay experience? What should players expect specifically where the movement options are concerned and the role they will play in combat

Like in so many games that have inspired us in the past, motion is key in Second Sun. We got our main inspiration for the movement from old-school shooters like Doom, Quake, and even Hexen. We took that frantic, fast-paced nature and decided to mix it with RPG elements – skills, abilities, loot – which all work together in symbiosis.

Just like in these 90s classics, movement is still key, but so is the viscerality and pace of combat. Item and skill progression contribute to, among other things, a more varied and less static & repetitive experience while also adding another motivation to slaughter hordes of enemies.

What can you tell us about the variety of weapons that players will be able to use in the game? How will skills and abilities come into play?

We tried to go for a unique combination of magic-based combat and more traditional firearms. Weapons range from magic wands and staves to heavy machine guns and crossbows. Just like abilities, some weapons are exclusive to specific classes.

Skills and abilities are very important ways of gaining an edge in combat, especially in hairier situations. These can range from dashing – which is very useful when it comes to dodging enemies – to blasting your foes with a rain of meteors.

Second Sun is promising rewarding progression mechanics. How expansive will these systems be, and how much freedom will players be afforded in tailoring their build, especially with the different classes available?

Each class has a unique skill tree and unique weapons and items, allowing for unique playstyles that all require a slight adaptation of the player’s approach. This means each class will play differently! At the same time, it allows players to figure out what loadout works best for their respective classes and streamline their personal, optimal build.

"The narrative is not the number one focus of the game. We spent most of our attention on getting the combat and loot right. But while that is true, we still put a lot of thought into crafting an interesting world to explore and an intriguing story to follow from start to end."

How much emphasis is Second Sun placing on storytelling? Is the narrative going to be a crucial part of the experience, or is it meant more as background setup for the world in an otherwise gameplay-driven experience?

The narrative is not the number one focus of the game. We spent most of our attention on getting the combat and loot right. But while that is true, we still put a lot of thought into crafting an interesting world to explore and an intriguing story to follow from start to end. Rowen is a vibrant place, full of interesting characters that you’ll get to meet as you unravel Second Sun’s storyline. The same goes for side quests and other, smaller stories found throughout the game.

All this could only be achieved by building a world that was interesting in and of itself.

What should players expect from Second Sun’s open world in terms of its size and the diversity of environments?

Keeping players hooked in an open world is a huge challenge for any team. Our goal with the world of Second Sun was content over scale. We had to take these areas and fill them with interesting things to find, enemies to fight, and plenty of opportunities for more loot.

We also tried to make it as diverse as possible. During your playthrough, you’ll come across different regions and traverse anything from forests to deserts, each with their own unique landmarks and characteristics.

What can you tell us about how the game uses procedural generation in its open world map?

For each new playthrough, different points of interest are randomly generated and placed around the map. Players can therefore experience Second Sun again, with slight tweaks and fresh opportunities for extra loot, XP, and even companions.

"We aim to have at least 12 hours for the main campaign. Additionally, you’ll be able to add several more hours to your playthrough through side quests and other types of side content."

Roughly how long will an average playthrough of the game be?

We aim to have at least 12 hours for the main campaign. Additionally, you’ll be able to add several more hours to your playthrough through side quests and other types of side content. If you’ve made your way through all of that, there will be an endgame, which is virtually infinite.

Do you have any plans to eventually also bring the game to consoles?

At the moment, we’re focusing all of our resources on the PC version of Second Sun. While there are no concrete plans for a console port, we don’t want to rule anything out. We’d love to bring our game to as many players as possible, so if there’s enough demand, who knows?

It’s hard to believe it’s almost been 2 years now since the launch of the Epic Games Store. The storefront was something of a whirlwind of controversy in the beginning due to some of the business practices of its parent company. It also began with giving out free games, and who would think after almost 2 full years they’d still be doing that, but here we are, another week and 2 games for free.

This week we have Abzu, an underwater exploration title that’s all about finding new things under the sea in a calming and bright environment. On the flipside, the second title is Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. The multiplayer shooter is anything but calm as you must navigate the Vietnam War in a variety of different multiplayer modes with up to 64 player matches across 20 maps.

Abzu and Rising Storm 2: Vietnam will be free on the store until October 15th. At that point, they will be replaced by Kingdom New Lands and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.

"Though The Sojourn has a slew of satisfying puzzles and a thought-provoking narrative set in a beautiful world, its inconsistencies make for a messy experience that only shines through in certain bright moments."

You enter the world of The Sojourn contextless and directionless, only guided forward by a small light that enlightens your path forward, taking you through the life of a child in the game’s world. You are the eponymous sojourner, there temporarily to view the world, and you only see this story through baroque-style statues that signify important events throughout this child’s life, from birth to leaving its parents and beyond. Each chapter and, moreover, each puzzle is titled and signified with a certain aspect of life, ramping up to match the story as it culminates by the end.

It’s evident from the beginning that something is different in this world. Characters, though they act like normal people, always wear blindfolds, and, without wishing to spoil, it becomes clearer how and why as it pushes forward. As it does, it poses some interesting questions about power, wealth, and enlightenment with few answers. Because it portrays the player as the sojourner without giving context as to who the person you’re controlling really is, you’re able to fully immerse yourself in the world and formulate your own philosophical answers when you return back to reality.

After the initial entry, though, it’s entirely possible to miss the story. As the story of the people you follow is told only through the statues, there’s no dialogue. As you progress through the levels and the journey, you’re free to move quickly to the next set of puzzles, and if you don’t take the time to analyze the statues, it can become confusing quickly. The only other major method of storytelling is through the environments within the puzzles. Every world has its own environmental style and tells its own story, complemented by a diverse color palette and beautiful score. While you’re in the puzzles, though, the environments in the distance take a back seat to the gameplay and can sometimes fall to the wayside entirely.

"Every world has its own environmental style and tells its own story, complemented by a diverse color palette and beautiful score. While you’re in the puzzles, though, the environments in the distance take a back seat to the gameplay and can sometimes fall to the wayside entirely."

Filling the space between the narrative segments is the puzzle game at the core of The Sojourn. Your task is to traverse each puzzle to free your guiding light by using a set of statues that provide unique benefits to cross the gaps and avoid the obstacles in your way. The only way to interact with the statues is to enter a “dark” version of the world. In this version, you’ll be able to teleport and switch places with one kind of statue, strum a harp and rebuild broken bridges with another, and send a stream of the darkness across the stage with a third. Stages become increasingly complicated as you find new obstacles, like gates that need to be unlocked by putting a statue in a specified location, and new vehicles into the darkness, like a gate that will let you toggle the darkness every time you walk through it.

As puzzle games go, the primary puzzles are mild. Each puzzle is categorized as its own stage, and each stage is compact, giving you everything you need to solve the puzzle immediately at the start of each stage. This puts much more pressure on the complexity of the puzzles themselves, and the stages are usually simple enough to complete. As it progresses there are some roadblock levels that pose a much stiffer challenge, but the real challenges come in optional stages and challenges, which are the star of the show if you want a more difficult experience. Nearly every level will append another, more difficult challenge onto the stage after you release the light, and you can leave the level and progress the story or continue to complete the second puzzle. The harder post-stage challenges award “merits,” which are effectively scrolls with fortune cookie-like sayings on them, but these are the best puzzles in the game because the journey to get to their end is always rewarding.

Across the campaign, however, there are numerous inconsistencies that make The Sojourn feel like it had separate parts developed in a vacuum. Mechanics are often introduced at seemingly random points in the story, with wide ranges of time between introductions, including a multiple hour lull that leaves little time to acclimate to late-game mechanics before the final push. This causes the game to get tedious at points, feeling like you’re doing the same challenges repeatedly without any new elements, and too fast in others with a barrage of new elements. The progression system also changes in each chapter, switching from an elevator to a mountain climb to a portal that brings you to an entirely different area that contains the puzzles that unlock the path forward.

"The Sojourn feels like it had separate parts developed in a vacuum. Mechanics are often introduced at seemingly random points in the story, with wide ranges of time between introductions, including a multiple hour lull that leaves little time to acclimate to late-game mechanics before the final push."

These culminate in a feeling of independence between many of the game’s characteristics, especially between the narrative and the gameplay. Aside from having to free the light at the end of each stage, there is very little reference to the story in any of the puzzles, nor is there any connection between the puzzle elements and the story moments. The puzzles are framed as obstacles that are meant to slow your progress in the story, and it feels as though neither adds anything to the other. The final chapter amplifies this feeling, too, because it stretches its gameplay content to accommodate for the completion of the story. As you progress through the chapter, there are no new elements introduced, and the puzzles do not get significantly longer, more complex, or more difficult. There is no reason for it to continue as long as it does aside from the completion of the story. This makes what is ultimately a 6-8 hour experience feel like it overstays its welcome. While the gameplay itself is usually satisfying, by the end you’re ultimately completing the same task every time, and it doesn’t feel like it has gotten any more difficult or it is paying off the work you’ve put in to get there.

Throughout The Sojourn’s playtime, you’ll find some bright moments, both in the puzzles and in the narrative. If you take the time to delve into the story, it offers some profound questions, and the puzzle gameplay is rewarding, especially in the harder optional challenges. However, to get there, you’ll have to chug through immersion-breaking design inconsistencies and an experience that takes too long to wrap up. The puzzles and narrative are interesting on their own, but, as a full package, The Sojourn has disappointingly independent elements that make it a messy experience.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

It’s that time again, for the free games to refresh on the Epic Games Store. The storefront may be one consumed by controversy online, but hey, you’ve got to love the free games right? This week we get a single game, a puzzle adventure title that promises to unsettle, with a not-so-subtle hint at next week’s offering.

From today until September 19th the free game will be Conarium, a first person adventure/puzzle game about a scientist who wakes up with no memory in an Antarctic base, only knowing he was with a group of other researchers. You must piece together what happened while you’re plagued by visions and nightmares.

The next game isn’t revealed and seems to be a mystery, but they’re not trying too hard to conceal it, as several pictures of Batman are present in a Batman-shaped collage- take a look at the screenshot below. It could be one of the Arkham games (or the Collection), or perhaps the Telltale Batman series is about to be revived, considering a new company has rebooted that brand. We should find out next week.

It’s certainly an interesting pitch, and one that got us quite excited about what The Sojourn might hold for us. As such, we reached out to Shifting Tides to ask them a couple of questions about the game, about everything from its visual imagery and its storytelling style to the games that have influenced them and their general experiences with working on such a title as a small indie studio, and Aria Esrafilian, lead programmer on the game, got in touch with us with a lot of really interesting answers.

"We want to keep The Sojourn meaningful and kind of philosophical, so there is a point and message we have in mind to share with the community."

From what we’ve seen of the game so far, a lot of the game’s story seems symbolic and philosophical. How exactly do you explore these deep themes through gameplay?

You are right! We tried to make almost everything symbolic, so there is a meaning behind every single part of the game, perhaps not all players will know about every meaning, but they will get the whole feeling and the message we want to deliver. We want to keep The Sojourn meaningful and kind of philosophical, so there is a point and message we have in mind to share with the community.

The first and most visible layer of storytelling in The Sojourn that grabs player’s attention on sight, is the story of some statues. They will appear in the form of sceneries followed by narration, which will be in most parts of the game. We chose a deep and complex story with a symbolic and minimal narration as the best approach to tell The Sojourn.

What can you tell us about the worlds of light and darkness and how exactly they fit into the story and gameplay?

We want to show that we all come to this world as an entity of light with pure hearts, but with great potential for darkness, a darkness that lingers in the outside reality. We then explore how this light can be affected and change as we are growing, discovering, knowing and how people can be ignorant about it and how some people might want to fight this routine. In the game world of light is the pure world inside our heart and the dark world resembles the reality around us that we are living in. Players will traverse between these two worlds to solve puzzles and progress into the game and story.

How exactly do you work to ensure that the puzzles, the story, and the visuals all complement one another?

This was one of our biggest wants: to keep everything in harmony. If we wanted to design something, we had to make sure it was lending more meaning to all aspects or at least it was in the same line. For instance, it was really important for us that game mechanics feel organic and natural while playing. It demands lots of meetings and many deep and sometimes philosophical talks to make sure all aspects are perfectly compatible, but we think what we now have is totally worth it!

"Our main goal was to create something that intertwined complementing aspects to create a single unique experience."

What are some of your major sources of inspiration behind this game?

Our main goal was to create something that intertwined complementing aspects to create a single unique experience. For instance, in the puzzle genre, we always admired what Portal 2 did. And that’s what we wanted, a game in which gameplay, visuals and story are all in line and in harmony. Not many games achieved this specially in this genre, but this was what we aimed for.

As for another example, we really liked how The Talos Principle combined simple mechanics to solve complex and evolving solutions. We were also pretty much in love with Journey and how its atmosphere conveyed the different feelings in different stages of the game.

Can you give us an example of what kind of puzzles we can expect to see in this game?

The easiest way to say is how you solve puzzles and how we are introducing and combining mechanics together to make puzzles harder is somehow similar to Portal 2. However, the mechanics and how you should play with them is another world. Just to give you an idea how the game plays, players have access to different sources of power to empower themselves to enter the alternative dark world and there are different mechanics, platforms and bridges that are only available and accessible in that world. We will also have lots of extra mind bending achievements all over the place for those who just can’t get enough.

Are there any particular challenges you’ve faced during the game’s development?

Technically no, but we put a huge amount of time into perfecting our ideas and designing different elements and parts such as puzzles, art styles and story. To be honest, that was the main challenge for us!

"We are able to exercise more creative freedom but it is a common pitfall for ambitious projects to not consider the final deadline."

Would you say that an indie studio is able to exercise more creative freedom in making games such as this one?

Exactly! We are able to exercise more creative freedom but it is a common pitfall for ambitious projects to not consider the final deadline.

Hopefully we were crazy enough to have a similar experience and tried to be more creative! After close to one year of production we completely forgot about the art style we had because we were not so happy with it and started right from scratch to bring something new!

What gives an indie team an edge in my opinion, is how indie teams can tackle different aspect of design. It can be extra time consuming, but the result can become far superior to other games that are made under supervision of a group where money/budget is their first priority.

You’ve stated that there will be four chapters in the game. What kind of progression will there be from one chapter to the next?

The chapters resemble human’s chapters of life, so story-wise players will witness how the world of The Sojourn evolves from a happy and beautiful dream to a mysterious and reality that has to be questioned. Gameplay-wise, each chapter brings new ways to enter the alternative world, with these new tools player find new ways to use the mechanics of the game, new ways to combine them and new interactions between them.

Is there any particular reason why the game hasn’t been announced for the Nintendo Switch?

We would love to see The Sojourn on the Nintendo Switch and I believe is a good fit for the platform. There are no plans at the moment, as having three platforms for the release is a huge amount of work and we need to take our time to have a closer look at the Switch later to see what we can do with it.

Can we expect more games from Shifting Tides in the future?

Definitely! The Sojourn is the very first step for our brand new company and we want to take it as strong as possible, so expect to see more games from Shifting Tides in the future.

"The game doesn’t have a mainstream visual with lots of explosions, destructions and photorealistic environment and characters and delivers its own heavily directed unique and stylish visuals and art styles which might not have huge differences between different machines and configs."

The game will feature Xbox One X specific enhancements. What can players expect if they are playing the game on Xbox One X? Is 4K/60fps on the cards? And how will the PS4 Pro version turn out in terms of resolution and frame rate? How is the game running on the original Xbox One and PS4, frame rate and resolution wise? Finally, From a development perspective, how do you find the Xbox One X to be? With so much GPU power, we are sure you must be doing some amazing things.

It is a bit early for us to consider and talk about these topics in-depth. For porting the game, Iceberg Interactive is helping us and will handle things and thanks to UE4 it shouldn’t be that difficult to achieve a clean and smooth build on consoles. First tries promise strong final builds! The Sojourn has very stylish visuals, we barely used textures and some other memory consuming stuff, so in case of memory the game is in a really good state and we have a smooth framerate on original Xbox One and PS4, considering that the optimization phase has not started yet. The game doesn’t have a mainstream visual with lots of explosions, destructions and photorealistic environment and characters and delivers its own heavily directed unique and stylish visuals and art styles which might not have huge differences between different machines and configs. So we may want to take benefit from more GPU power to deliver higher resolutions and smoother experience on consoles if possible.

Next-gen is coming sooner or later. From a development perspective, what is your biggest expectation from the next PlayStation and next Xbox?

Yeah, rumors are everywhere and we are very excited to see what is going to happen with the next generation. As indie developers, the best thing for us is having a straight forward pipeline for porting the game, same architecture for different platforms and having much higher performance, so we can finally and literally have our imagination as the only limitation! And of course, having more focus on indie publishing programs from console manufacturers would bring the whole industry to another level, as this generation did on its own.

Will the game have any sort of loot boxes or microtransactions?

The answer is no! We are doing our best to deliver an emotional, deep, meaningful, symbolized and kind of philosophical experience, and under any situation we won’t ruin it with any kind of monetization ideas inside the game!

We reached out to Cristian Gonzalez and Daniel Winkler from IguanaBee who answered the following questions about the game.

"Aesthetically speaking, art toys were the primary influence and their infinite possibility to connect with different types of audiences while maintaining their same shape, but changing their content."

What initially inspired the unique concept behind Headsnatchers?

Cristian Gonzalez : Aesthetically speaking, art toys were the primary influence and their infinite possibility to connect with different types of audiences while maintaining their same shape, but changing their content.  I have Kid Robot toys all over my house and office and I’ve always found curious how they connected to such a wide audience, from toy collectors to my mother hahaha. In terms of game mechanics, we wanted to maintain our tradition of mixing violence, dark humor and modern art. Also, we found that ripping heads off was very funny and it lead to making some really gore but hilarious situations.

Were there any particular challenges you faced during the game’s development?

Cristian Gonzalez : I think that, the main challenge was creating a game mechanic and a simple button layout that allowed us to create levels with different themes, but maintaining the humor while playing.

What would you say is a key aspect of a party game?

Cristian Gonzalez : Button layout. The game must be simple enough, so any person can take the controller, learn how to play in a few seconds and let the game generate competition and laughter between the players. I think laughter is the most important factor.

What can you tell us about the gameplay experience in Headsnatchers?

Cristian Gonzalez : You’ve got to be very aware while playing Headsnatchers, because everyone will try to rip the head off of any opponent, so you must fight to survive and win. We also have 25 levels where each one has a different way of winning. For example, in the “Pier” level, you have to take the head off your opponent and throw it to the sea so the shark can eat it. The greatest part is that, even if you lose your head, you can go get it and recover it, because if your head is still in the level, you can still play!

Can you tell us a bit about the ways in which each level is distinctive with its own rules and attributes?

Cristian Gonzalez : As I’ve said before, the central mechanic of the game is to take the head off of your opponent. Now, that’s where each level is different, for example, in the football stage, you must take your opponent’s head and kick it into your field goal to eliminate it, or in another case, you’re escaping prison and you need your opponent’s head to feed the guard dogs and make them fall asleep, so you can escape. So, each level has their own theme, but the button layout is the same in each one, so you don’t have to learn new things for new levels.

What can you tell us about the different weapons and items in the game?

Cristian Gonzalez : In some levels, there are weapons that help you to quickly knock down your opponents. Among these weapons you’ll find shotguns, bow & arrow, axes, swords, guitars, spoons, knifes, bats and many others. Each one has a special move, where you’ll get a flashier and gruesome animation to take the head out of your opponent.

Can you tell us what the single-player mode will be like?

Cristian Gonzalez : We call it “Zombie Castle”, where you must rescue a partner that was kidnapped by the castle’s creatures. You know, a very original and never-seen-before set up. So, you must go through every floor of the castle until you reach the top of the tower. Another interesting thing about this mode, is that each time you play, it’s gonna be a different experience, because each floor will appear in a random manner. It has three difficulty settings, where Hard Mode is too much to handle, even for ourselves. So, each time you finish a castle, you’ll win a new head for you to play in the different modes.

"One of the cool things about the button layout, is the fact that it’s really easy to learn, but if you want to do more moves, some buttons have a second function."

Will there be a high skill ceiling for this game or will it be fairly simple overall?

Cristian Gonzalez : One of the cool things about the button layout, is the fact that it’s really easy to learn, but if you want to do more moves, some buttons have a second function. So, if you hold a button, a new move will be used, so you can use it in more specific settings or time, making the game a bit more competitive and technical.

Will the online component feature some kind of ranking system?

Cristian Gonzalez : We don’t have it planned for launch, but there may be a possibility in the future, who knows.

The game is now confirmed for the PS, which also means it will support the PS4 Pro. Can you please let us know the resolution and frame rate it will run at on the PS4 Pro?

Daniel Winkler: We’re targeting to have the maximum resolution, without lowering the frame rate, but since we’re still working on the polishing and optimization of the game, we don’t want to over nor under compromise yet.

Given that you are now working on both the PS4 Pro and PC, what kind of technical differences did you found between the two?

Daniel Winkler: Headsnatchers is made with Unreal Engine 4, so developing for one platform had made it very straight forward to make everything working well for the other. Only details like the DirectX is not supported by PS4, so, some graphical stuff had to be changed to look similar using Open GL (for example tessellation).

In a recent interview, Mark Cerny, the lead engineer of the PlayStation 4 Pro claimed that converting a base PS4 game to PS4 Pro version is just 0.2 Or 0.3% of the overall effort. What is your take on this? Do you think that the extra work required to develop an additional Pro version will actually be bigger than the number quoted?

Daniel Winkler: Yes, that seems very accurate. Unlike PS3, Sony did a great job at making PS4 an easy to develop for console and that stays true with PS4 Pro. With PS4 Pro, they give us a more powerful console that works with the same architecture. From a developer view, that is awesome!

Is there a specific reason why you are launching your game on the Xbox One?

Daniel Winkler: Actually, we’re not launching for Xbox One yet, but we’re still open to include this platform to our Headsnatchers repertoire in a near future.

"So, as long we have enough people buying the game to have the cost of more content creation covered, we’ll be happily delivering new free content from time to time to the players."

Any chance of a Nintendo Switch version?

Cristian Gonzalez: There’s always a chance, and we think it would work perfectly for it, but for now we’re focused on the PS4 and Steam.

Does the game have any sort of microtransactions or loot boxes?

Cristian Gonzalez: Not at all, you can unlock every extra content we created for the game just by playing the game. Like the old days.

What is your take on the recent trend of Games as a service model and the possible controversial monetization practices arising from it?

Daniel Winkler: It depends a lot on how you are using it on your game. There are cases where it’s very nicely done, like in Overwatch for example. But we all know the dark side of that system. It’s understandable why big companies are trying new models like this one. In an era of abundance of games, making a very noticeable game and also market it in a good way, is more expensive every time. And, people getting used to the mobile schemes and the amount of sales available in every platform, tend to get used to pay less every time, or at least they expect the games to cost less.

So, that puts companies in a hard situation, where they can easily get a lot of money, but in other hand jeopardize the continuity of the whole company depending only on one game. We had very bad times that still stir our stomachs just by remembering, so imagining a similar situation but involving thousands of workers give us shivers.

Well, about Headsnatchers, our main goal is to have the players have an awesome time with our game. And the more people enjoying our game, the happier we’ll be. So, as long we have enough people buying the game to have the cost of more content creation covered, we’ll be happily delivering new free content from time to time to the players.

The current generation of consoles will probably end in the next couple of years. What is your biggest expectation from the next PlayStation and Xbox?

Cristian Gonzalez: We think is very interesting what Nintendo is doing. Doing a portable console, while maintaining the same quality as a household console, that could be a very good goal for others. On the other side of the field, if we continue pushing the power of the consoles, that means fewer things to optimize on and we can just concentrate on creating without any limits. And well, maybe all of the companies will band together to create the one true console, that way we just make one game and don’t worry about ports, hahahaha!

From a developer perspective, do you think the next-gen console era will be the 4K/60fps era?

Cristian Gonzalez: I mean, it’s likely will get to that, but I think players are showing that their interest go more into competing with people around the world and play games that are more ambitious in gameplay and story. Having the latest ultra-mega hyper realistic graphics isn’t that high on players’ lists. Fun over details.

Is there anything more you’d like to tell our readers?

Cristian Gonzalez: We invite you all to play Headsnatchers, so far, we haven’t seen anyone who hasn’t laughed with our game, and all that we want is to see everyone have a blast and fight with your friends in this colorful party of decapitation we’ve made for you.

To learn more about the game’s development and about the future content planned to be released, Gamingbolt spoke to Marketing Manager Igor Gajic, CEO Mario Mihokovic and Chief Technology Officer Zeljko Kos.

"There are actually massive changes in contrast to Starpoint Gemini 2. A whole new layer of gameplay has been added to Warlords, in terms of “light” 4X strategy, more than 60 factions, headquarters upgradeability, economy, diplomacy, etc."

This is the third game in the series. What are some of the changes from previous entries in the series?

Igor Gajic:There are actually massive changes in contrast to Starpoint Gemini 2. A whole new layer of gameplay has been added to Warlords, in terms of “light” 4X strategy, more than 60 factions, headquarters upgradeability, economy, diplomacy, etc. Even though the game may look similar to Starpoint Gemini 2 (from visual standpoint), the Warlords engine is a completely different entity in contrast to SPG2.

Mario Mihokovic:In reality, players actually have a chance to experience two almost separate games mixed together. First part of Warlords resemble previous SPG2, but as you level up, advance and gain in strength, more and more global strategy options open up…

As a game that mixes elements of strategy, role-playing, and action, were there any challenges faced in trying to achieve a balance?

Igor Gajic:Yes, definitely. During the production cycle we had to constantly fine-tune the balance between those genres, which in the end resulted with a game that could be played as a space exploration RPG, or a strategy, or everything altogether. Though, we have to say that everything wasn’t super peachy regarding the game when it got released, but thanks to a very flexible engine, we have fixed some things, and added some new, community-requested features, for free.

Are there plans to bring out a sequel to Starpoint Gemini Warlords? If so, what are some of the changes we can expect to see in this new iteration?

Igor Gajic:Sequels are planned, but it is too early to talk about them at this moment.

Will you be continuing to update the game with new content for a while? Can you tell us anything about what you have planned in the near future?

Igor Gajic:Oh, most definitely. When it comes to Xbox One, we first have to fix some nasty bugs that ended-up in the final build. Thankfully, as I write this, we are sending a new update for certification that should fix most of the issues with freezing and crashing. Additionally, all DLC content that is available for PC, will come to Xbox One as well, as well as all free content that we plan to bring to PC, and vice-versa.

"We love space titles, but we also love deep and engaging gameplay. A combination of those two may not be for everyone, although we were completely aware of that."

What are some of the inspirations behind this game?

Igor Gajic:Well, we all grew-up with timeless classics like Freespace, Freelancer, Wing Commander, and we are big fans of some currently available titles such as Elite: Dangerous, X series, and similar. I believe that it’s pretty obvious that you’d find “parts” of those titles in Starpoint Gemini Warlords.

Games of this genre are usually difficult to get into for newcomers? Have you tried your hand at making this game more accessible, or has the goal been to just reach out to a niche audience?

Igor Gajic:We love space titles, but we also love deep and engaging gameplay. A combination of those two may not be for everyone, although we were completely aware of that. So yes, Starpoint Gemini Warlords can be considered a niche title with strong audience and brilliant community.

Related to the previous question, how do you balance the line between accessibility and complexity?

Igor Gajic:That is a good question. We do understand that games should be fun, accessible and hold hands to some point where you simply have to give the player a freedom to engage with your gameplay mechanics. Basically, if you make a complicated game without a good tutorial, or an overly simplified game, you’ll be making the same mistake. We still believe in that old-school style of gameplay, where you, as a player actually need to make a small effort to understand the game before completely losing yourself into it. So, players will never see a “Press a button to pay respects” mechanics in our future games, that’s for sure.

How important has community interaction been during the game’s development? Would you say there are some important benefits in working closely with the community?

Igor Gajic:Immensely important. A lot of the ideas, mechanics and features that ended-up in Starpoint Gemini Warlords were actually on a community wish-list. So, yeah, it’s safe to say that there are some hugely important benefits in working closely with the community. Even today, when Warlords are already on the market on two platforms, our players on Steam forums and Discord are giving us some great ideas that we try to implement with future updates.

"Warlords is our first game that was almost completely based on community suggestions. Shifting through thousands and thousands of comments, reviews and suggestions finally revealed what type of gameplay our players would like to see."

What are some of the challenges you faced during the development of this game?

Mario Mihokovic:First, most important challenge was to precisely determine what kind of game our fans want. Warlords is our first game that was almost completely based on community suggestions. Shifting through thousands and thousands of comments, reviews and suggestions finally revealed what type of gameplay our players would like to see. And that led us to second greatest challenge – how to make it work? Basically, players suggested a hybrid between space tactical game, RPG system and strategy game. We had to find a way to merge “unmergable” genres. And that was very difficult. Final challenge was finding a way to transfer this unique experience and mechanics to Xbox console. There are a few complex games on consoles, and during this development cycle, we definitely realized why 🙂

Are there any other genres or concepts for games you would like to try out?

Igor Gajic:Well, all I could say right now that you’ll have to wait a bit more, and I bet you’ll be surprised 🙂

Your development team recently stated that the PS4 is a nemesis to your engine. Can you please elaborate on this?

Zeljko Kos: No, not exactly a “nemesis”. It’s really simple actually. Our engine doesn’t support OpenGL API, and basically it’s our fault that we didn’t make it possible so far. Are we considering it? Yes.

The game supports Xbox One X but will it run at native 4K and 60fps?

Zeljko Kos: The game is still being optimized, and 4K is not there yet for Starpoint Gemini Warlords. As soon as we optimize the game enough, it will support 4K on One X. Will it support 60 fps? We’ll see.

The Xbox One X doesn’t feature eSRAM. How did this helped development given the pain it bought on the base Xbox One?

Zeljko Kos: No, it didn’t because the game had to run on both Xbox One and Xbox One X. So yeah, we still had to deal with ESRAM.

While developing this patch, how difficult was it port over the 4K textures, assets etc. from the PC build to the Xbox One X?

Zeljko Kos: We are still working on optimizations for 4K. Since we have an open-world game, textures can take a lot of memory, especially if you play on the highest settings. This should be not an issue on the PC, where you can have a lot of RAM and VRAM. Xbox One X, even though is a powerful console, has its limitations, and we have to be vary of those obstacles.

The Xbox One X features a pretty powerful GPU but a weak CPU. How did you balance this out?

Zeljko Kos: This is a biggest shortcoming for us. Starpoint Gemini Warlords is an optimized game in contrast to Starpoint Gemini 2, but the sheer number of ships and the gameplay scope can make a massive load on the CPU. We didn’t want to cut the gameplay on Xbox One, so we had to use some tricks and heavy optimizations in order to reduce CPU load. Additionally, our main thread is overloaded, which brings issues in big fights; i.e. when you have 100 ships fighting each other. That’s why we are still working on optimizations.

In your opinion, how does the Xbox One X compare against the PS4 Pro?

Zeljko Kos: No opinion on that topic for now, because we didn’t make games for PS4 yet, but we do hope we will.

Do you think the Xbox One X is powerful enough to render high end AAA games at native 4K?

Zeljko Kos: If graphics is optimized, then yes, for sure. We didn’t have issues with rendering, but with GPU and memory in terms of texture size.

"One X is pretty powerful, although top-of-the-line PC gaming rigs will always be more powerful. You simply cannot change that, primarily because PC hardware is always evolving, while console hardware rather quickly need to catch-up."

How does the Xbox One X compare against modern gaming PCs?

Igor Gajic: One X is pretty powerful, although top-of-the-line PC gaming rigs will always be more powerful. You simply cannot change that, primarily because PC hardware is always evolving, while console hardware rather quickly need to catch-up. Actually, that’s exactly why Microsoft and Sony decided to bring more powerful variants of their consoles, with Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, and we expect that the market will see more of those upgrades, in a shorter time span.

Microsoft doesn’t allow Xbox One X exclusives. Do you think this will hold back developers from using the full potential of the system?

Igor Gajic: Probably, but you simply can’t alienate people who still own a weaker system because you would lose a huge part of the market.

Which PC GPU do you think the Xbox One X GPU comes close to in terms of overall performance?

Igor Gajic: That’s rather difficult to answer because there’s no GPU out there even remotely similar to the one that’s in One X. One X has a shared memory between the system and the GPU, so we surely can’t say that One X has a GPU in range of Titan Xp, which has 12 GB of GDDR5X memory. In absolutely ideal cases, One X offers 9 GB of GDDR5 memory for the GPU. So, performance-wise, One X GPU is somewhere in the range of GTX 1060. Then again, you have to consider memory bandwidth, too. One X offers a memory bandwidth of 326 GB/s, which can be seen in GTX 1080. So, it’s an interesting mix, for sure.

Finally, is there anything more you’d like to tell our readers before you go?

Mario Mihokovic:I just wanted to extend huge gratitude to our players out there. We’ve finished our third game and second long Early Access process. And it was exhausting and thrilling at the same time. We truly learned to rely on gamers themselves, and the amount of help, understanding and support we received is incredible. We’d like to invite them to stay with us on this journey, and in response, we promise many more unique games. Just please don’t suggest 5 genre hybrid this time 🙂

Iceberg have announced that they have released a content update for Armada 2526 Supernova.

The f0llowing are the details for the updates:

• Three New races
• Return of PGTC faction with new Trade Ships feature
• Enhanced espionage
• Significant AI improvements
• Many minor fixes and improvements
Iceberg Interactive CEO Erik Schreuder says: “Armada 2526 has been a wonderful addition to our strategy catalogue and is still enjoying strong sales in Europe. Combined with Supernova this really is a deep and addictive game that keeps you busy for countless quiet evenings. The replay value is huge. With this free content update for Supernova, with amongst others 3 new races to battle it out with, we are rewarding our many loyal galaxy conquerors out there.”

You can download the update version of Armada 2526 Supernova 1.04 here.

We recently reviewed the game. You can check that out over here.

Iceberg have announced downloadable content for Starpoint Gemini, the space RPG developed by LGM Games. The DLC named “Gladiators” will be free of cost.

“We feel there’s no better way to thank all fans of Starpoint Gemini, Iceberg Interactive and Little Green Men for their tremendous support than offering a free add-on to the game and we hope gamers like this little gift called SPG Gladiators” , said Mario Mihokovic, CEO of LGM Games.

You can download Gladiators from here.

We had reviewed Starpoint Gemini  a while ago. You can check the full review here.

Iceberg Interactive and InterWave Studios have released launch trailer for the upcoming FPS/RTS hybrid Nuclear Dawn.

In Nuclear Dawn, you take the role of a soldier and explore war-torn post-apocalyptic landscapes, modelled on modern cities. Take the fight to your enemies as armoured, assault or stealth infantry, using various weapons across ten distinct load-outs to accomplish your objectives. The first person shooter action in Nuclear Dawn is hard, fast and unforgiving, with weapons that rely on skill and tactics more than on twitch reflexes and map memorization.