According to Fisch, the story of Kingmakers revolves around a modern-day soldier being sent back in time to 1401 to take part in the Welsh Rebellion of the time. While the real-world version of the rebellion was defeated, with its leader Owain Glyndŵr disappearing under mysterious circumstances, Kingmakers will have players, armed with assault rifles and tanks, lead the rebellion to victory in their quest to conquer England.

Fisch points out that one of the key features of Kingmakers will be that the thousands of soldiers that players take on in any of the game’s levels will all be fully simulated. He compared this to a game like Dynasty Warriors, which tends to spawn in fresh soldiers to fight when players get close. Instead, all the soldiers will be in the battlefield right from the beginning of the level, with each one playing their part in the fight.

Buildings will also be fully navigable and destructible. This can lead to hordes of soldiers being able to storm a massive castle which features complex architecture across its multiple floors. Fisch promises the same level of pathfinding and fidelity that players expect from modern shooters.

“Originally, we thought Kingmakers was going to be a cool simulation of what it would be like to go back in time with modern weapons,” says Fisch in the trailer. “Would you be able to defeat a medieval army with an AK-47? Then we realised that if we’re going to do this, we’ve got to do it right. Medieval battles involve thousands of soldiers, so we’re going to simulate thousands of soldiers.”

He also revealed that the idea to add real-time strategy game mechanics to Kingmakers came about because the studio figured that, with battles of massive scopes taking place, players would want to command their own armies. This led to the studio adding building and army recruitment mechanics to what was originally going to be a more standard action game.

Fisch goes on to describe Kingmakers as “a shooter with real-time strategy mechanics that rival Age of Empires, and shooting gameplay that rivals Helldivers and Space Marine.”

When it comes to the destructible buildings in Kingmakers, Fisch mentions that players have a wide range of ways in how they can raze the structures. Players can use grenade launchers, call in airstrikes, or even just drive through buildings in a heavily-armoured tank. The destruction is all supposed to be dynamic, with no strictly-scripted building collapses in the game.

Fisch notes that the studio decided to develop Kingmakers using Unreal Engine 4 over its more recent iterations primarily because of how the engine handles physics. While Unreal Engine 5 has plenty of new features that developers could use, according to Fisch, none of the newer versions of the engine could match the processing speed required for the physics simulation in Kingmakers that was provided by Unreal Engine 4.

Along with all of this, Kingmakers will also feature co-op multiplayer for up to four players for the entirety of the campaign. This includes all mechanics, including the RTS ones where each player will be able to field their own armies.

Kingmakers will be coming to PC as an Early Access game. While there is no release date, Fisch also notes that the title will eventually also come to consoles.

Despite Broken Roads tapping into some classical role-playing game ideas like in its turn-based combat system and character morality system, the way the game uses these ideas reveal a much more modern take on the genre than one would expect. I will talk about exactly how the game modernizes these classical RPG concepts throughout the review, but it is important to note that the studio clearly loves the genre. Even the game’s Steam page cites the games from the opening sentence of this review as clear inspirations.

One of the most central features of Broken Roads is how it handles the player character’s morality. Rather than offering up simple choices between “good” and “evil”, where your options don’t really vary much between “save someone” and “kill that someone”, the game instead opts to use a more complex system that can be likened more to a compass. A circle divided into multiple quadrants represents your character’s choices.

"It is important to note that the studio clearly loves the genre."

It’s rare that you’ll ever find yourself going down a single path in this compass, and even the game makes it clear that your character’s viewpoint of the world will embody multiple quadrants of the moral compass. It certainly helps that dialogue choices that are going to influence your moral compass are clearly labeled, removing any ambiguity that might come about, and you’ll always have a handle on just how your character looks at the world.

After going through character creation and answering a few questions that set your character’s stats, abilities, and moral compass, nothing is really written in stone, and your character will definitely evolve as the game goes on. Broken Roads doesn’t really use a class system like other RPGs might, and instead things are left more freeform so that you can adapt to situations as they come up. While it might be helpful, for example, to start out as a hired gunman that is a highly-skilled marksman, you might also find yourself investing skill points into some of the more social skills, raising your charisma or even your situational awareness in the process. Similarly, even your moral compass is likely to change depending on the hard choices you’ll often find yourself making; this is the post-apocalypse after all. Resources are scarce and you’ll often be the one deciding who gets food and water, and who gets a bullet in their head for their trouble.

Even the combat in Broken Roads feels like a more modern take on the classic turn-based systems we’ve seen from RPGs with guns, like in Wasteland and other classic titles. While still hanging on to the action points system that you’d find in the genre, the game ditches the use of any hex or grid, instead allowing you to more freely decide where you’re going to go and who you’re going to attack. Just about every action you can take in a fight costs action points, from moving and shooting to throwing grenades, punching someone, or even reloading your gun.

"Even your moral compass is likely to change depending on the hard choices you’ll often find yourself making."

As a whole, however, the combat certainly feels rather simplistic when compared to heavyweights in the genre, and you’re not going to be able to mix and match elemental effects, for example. Most of the fighting is going to revolve around just moving, taking cover, shooting, and tossing the occasional grenade. Thankfully, the combat is incredibly fast-paced, and tends to get wrapped up incredibly quickly.

Aside from the moral compass, the other biggest feature of the game is undoubtedly its setting. A post-apocalyptic Australia is a rare setting to find in video games, after all, and Broken Roads definitely feels like it was made by people who not only live there but are also steeped in its culture. A simple but obvious example is in how slang is handled and how it features tips to learn them.

The story in Broken Roads isn’t too central to its core structure, and the game allows you quite a bit more freedom than you would expect in what order you might want to tackle your objectives. The story is pretty grand, and involves quite a few elements, ranging from political intrigue amongst the various factions and settlements you’ll meet, to more simplistic tasks like keeping settlements safe from some of the more unsavory elements of the post-apocalyptic world, like bandits. Things start off simple enough, with you being tasked with protecting an NPC as they travel between settlements.

"Aside from the moral compass, the other biggest feature of the game is undoubtedly its setting."

Interacting with various characters along the way, however, uncovers a much larger plot that Broken Roads doesn’t really feel like it’s equipped to handle well enough. The game’s central focus is always on what your character is doing, and as such, you don’t really get any other perspective on the narrative as it happens. Because of this, while the story is largely happening in the background, the strength of Broken Roads lies in some of the smaller vignettes it presents. For example, one of the first things you’ll come across is a child in shock, along with a woman looking over a seemingly fresh corpse of a man. The clearly traumatized child also has a gun, and it’s going to be up to you and your companions to figure out how you’ll handle this situation.

If I had to offer up a comparison, Broken Roads feels incredibly close in structure to Wasteland 2. While you do certainly have a clear goal in mind, you’re given quite a bit of freedom, and are in fact outright encouraged to explore the world around you and take on as many different side-quests and smaller tasks as you can as you get to learn more about the post-apocalyptic world. All of this is helped by the fact that the writing is quite good, and aside from a couple of characters, the voice acting is able to hold its own as well in presenting the game’s grim but beautiful world.

All in all, Broken Roads is a fantastic way for Drop Bear Bytes to make its debut. The game taps into classical RPGs for its vibes, but when it comes to gameplay mechanics, offers up a more modern take on various aspects like its morality system. Even the combat system, while feeling overly simplistic at times, still feels like it was streamlined in a good way; animations are quick and fights don’t take too long to get through. Instead, Broken Roads puts its best aspects, the choice mechanics and its beautifully realized setting, front and center.

This game was reviewed on PC.

On top of that, previously announced for Xbox platforms and PC, Hello Neighbor 2 will now also be dropping on PS4 and PS5- as revealed in a new trailer, which you can check out below. Hello Neighbor 2 will be expanding upon the foundations of the original, with a much more fleshed-out narrative where players will be assuming the role of a reporter investigating missing persons cases.

Additionally, there’s also the fully explorable open-world of Raven Brooks, which should provide many opportunities of snooping around restricted areas, with a persistent stalker character always looking to chase you down.

As detailed in a recent PlayStation blog, tinyBuild has a rather unconventional yet intriguing way of doing horror: “We approach horror in a more delicate way, doing away with the straight in-your-face classic horror aspects of the grown-up world. We’re working with more subtle things; creepy neighbors that you cannot trust, mysterious things that go bump in the night, a rural town with a secret, and the feeling of unease when you may be just about to uncover a skeleton in somebody’s closet,” the developer writes.

It’s also been announced that Hello Neighbor 2‘s beta releases on April 7, and pre-orders for the game are now live. Make sure to also can check out our interview with lead designer and series creator Nikita Kolesnikov through here.

There’s a lot of Dark Souls inspired games out there nowadays, and I do mean a lot, so it takes quite something for one of them to stand out. Hellpoint is one of those stand outs with a unique and striking art direction, as well as an interesting setting of a space station in the far future that has merged with an inter-dimensional hellscape. The game was set to come at the end of this week for all current systems, but seems you’ll have to wait a bit longer for the Switch version.

On the game’s official Twitter, it was announced that the port for Nintendo’s system will be pushed back a bit. Developer Cradle Games say they want to do all they can to deliver the best version possible for the system, so they’ll need a little extra time. The new date is not determined, but they are still aiming for 2020.

Hellpoint will still release on July 30th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. We got to chat with the game’s developers earlier in the year for a detailed look at the game, which you can check out here.

https://twitter.com/CradleGames/status/1286021793464164355?s=20

Ice-Pick Lodge’s Pathologic 2 – or at least the first part – is out now on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The story sees players traveling to a rural town that’s besieged by a plague. It’s up to you as a healer to try and save as many people as possible. Check out the newest trailer below to get a glimpse of some of the creepiness inherent.

Pathologic 2 isn’t quite a sequel to the original. Instead, it’s more of a remake that pushes the player to interact with NPCs, choose who to trust, and survive by any means necessary. The kicker is that not everyone can be trusted, and sometimes, key characters can die.

You have 12 days to manage the ordeal, and during that time, it’s possible to idle by and watch the town fall into ruin. There’s a larger narrative at play, especially concerning the local children, but you’ll need to explore the game world and uncover secrets to find out. Stay tuned for more information on the other parts of Pathologic 2 as they release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2fAbqT5GWg

tinyBuild games announced today that they will be partnering with Ice-Pick Lodge to have the latest Pathologic game, Pathologic 2, published. The game will work as an open world survival horror reimagining of the original game- and the original game’s developers are on board, too, so you don’t have to worry about the essence of that title being lost or anything.

The game was originally announced on Kickstarter- however, tinyBuild have confirmed that anyone who backed the game’s KickStarter will still be getting their backer rewards, even though they are now publishing the game.

We got a brand new five minute long gameplay video for the title, which shows us what we can expect, and which also looks appropriately creepy. We also got some brand new screenshots for the game. You can see the screenshots and the video for yourself below. Pathologic 2 is currently scheduled to release on consoles sometime in 2018.

Dynamic Pixel’s stealth horror game, Hello Neighbor, will be launching later this year, towards the end of Summer- the developer confirmed, along with publisher tinyBuild Games today, that the game is set for a release on PC and Xbox One on August 29.

The game, which has you break into your neighbors’ houses to try and figure out what horrors they are hiding, has an incredibly smart AI that works against you constantly. That, plus its sandbox style, physics based interactions and differing surroundings, make for some incredibly divergent, emergent gameplay, which should make this game a huge success among a certain demographic that enjoys that kind of a game.

If you don’t want to wait till August to play it, however, you are in luck- Hello Neighbor is currently available in Steam Early Access for $29.99 USD. If you don’t want to pay but still want to check it out, you can play a free Pre-Alpha version of the game here.