One of my favorite things about Spirit Island, my current favorite solitaire/co-op game, is how R. Eric Reuss’ design isn’t the usual solitaire/co-op paradigm. You know the paradigm from Pandemic, Arkham Horror, Flash Point, Zombicide, Dawn of the Zeds, Nemo’s War, and so on. Four bad things spawn, but you only have three actions to take bad things off the board. Now survive until the game clock runs out. It’s a rote exercise in plugging leaks that arbitrarily ends at some point and you either made it and won or didn’t and lost. The other alternative is punching something with a lot of hit points until you win. Sure, there are some exciting variations in the punching, such as the superhero decks in Sentinels of the Multiverse or the economic engines spooling up to cycle cards in a deck-builder called Aeon’s End. But it still comes down to punching a big bag of hit points.
Enter Unicornus Knights, a refreshingly unique solitaire/co-op game with its own paradigm. Want to play a cool game where secret destinies unite allies and enemies, interesting characters navigate a randomized map, and love conquers all? First, allow me to introduce Princess Cornelia, who is going to screw it all up.
The subscription racing sim iRacing has suspended professional race car driver, Scott Speed, from playing their game. Speed, who gained fame in 2005 for becoming the first American to race full-time in Formula 1 since Michael Andretti left the circuit in 1993, has been a fixture of the iRacing community for years. While originally a positive influence on the virtual racing scene, (even consulting for the developers on the sim) Speed had gained a reputation in recent months as a bad online opponent. Multiple accusations with video evidence emerged showing Speed purposefully crashing into other cars. A big no-no for the serious sim racing crowd. Although Scott accepted the punishment, he did make a distinction between the real world and the virtual.
“This is not real life, it’s a game. The penalty for my action if protested against, is a suspension, which I accept and received. I personally wouldn’t feel like a man protesting a guy who I just accidentally wrecked out of the lead for returning the favor, but that’s me, and I understand that thinking is not treating iRacing with the appropriate amount of respect and is wrong. For that I sincerely apologize.”
Afterwards, Scott Speed announced his intention to sell his gaming gear and return to professional racing. The digital tracks of iRacing are safe once again!
Most of Fup feels like a comedic short story. Like more profane Charles Portis or less absurd George Saunders. Maybe the sort of thing John Kennedy O’Toole might have written if he’d been alive to keep writing. But Fup stands apart for where Jim Dodge goes with his humor. He’s writing to amuse, to be sure. But he’s also writing to bring you someplace philosophical, perhaps even spiritual, but without any of the weight of philosophy or spirituality. It’s ultimately a tangle of homespun wisdom that lapses into folklore. The punchline isn’t really a punchline. It just might be a parable.
Let’s get nautical! We talk a bit of Sea of Thieves and Subnautica. Then we towel off to discuss Dominions 5, Life Is Strange, Empire Deluxe, Scavengers SV-4, and Runewars. Plus a quiz.
It Lurks Below is another upcoming indie pixel-art game which at first glance may elicit more ho-hums than genuine excitement. Diablo loot, monsters, and leveling plus the gameplay of Terraria? Sounds decent. Before you shrug, the developer Graybeard Games is basically just David Brevik. Before he took a liking to Terraria and decided he wanted more ARPG mechanics in that style game, he was the head of Blizzard North and Gazillion Entertainment. This is a guy that knows a little something about making an addictive experience based on procedurally generated assets.
There’s no release date for It Lurks Below, but Brevik told Polygon that he plans on launching it on PC this year.
Todd Rogers’ infamous world record 5.51 second run in the Atari 2600 game Dragster has been revoked after it was proven to be an impossible feat. Literally impossible without cheating thanks to analysis of the game software. Twin Galaxies’ decision to invalidate the record from 1982 marks the end of what was until recently the longest held official video game record. Polygon has a comprehensive breakdown of the years-long drama that lead to the decision. It’s a stunning reversal for the world of old-school video game competition, because Rogers held multiple high scores including, but not limited to, Barnstorming, Wabbit, and Centipede, all of which were disputed and stricken from the record due to the evidence of his deceptions.
The new official record time for Dragster is 5.57 seconds, which is held by four people and represents the minimum time allowed by the software. Time to get practicing on Dragster if you want to join the scoreboard!
The Charterstone box is a nearly perfect expression of the experience of playing. It’s mostly blank. An empty sky. There’s nothing there. It’s unpainted. A canvas. Or rather, it doesn’t even exist yet. Not a void that has swallowed stuff, but an immaculate space waiting for your contribution. Oh, look, there’s a little patch of artwork on one side. A tiny zeppelin hovers over some crates. There are two quaint and assuming buildings behind it. This is how your game of Charterstone will begin. Twelve games later… Well, I’ll get to that in a sec.
10tons Ltd., an indie developer in Finland, has been making twin-stick shooters since 2003, when they released Crimsonland. Since then, they’ve done various workaday projects — anyone for a round of Sparkle 2 on the iPad? — but their heart is clearly in the top-down wholesale slaughter of innumerable dumb enemies. With Tesla vs Lovecraft, they’ve gone back to their first love.
This is the brig. It’s the jail in a naval vessel, used to hold prisoners like enemy combatants or disobedient sailors. In Microsoft’s Sea of Thieves, it’s an option that a ship’s crew can use to isolate troublemakers. It can also be used to troll players. If the ship votes to put you in the brig, you’ll pop behind bars and you’ll be stuck there until the crew decides to let you out or you log out and try a different group.
On a real ship, you’d appear before the captain and he’d snarl for his bosun to toss you in the brig. In Sea of Thieves, you just appear in the cell. Unlike just about every other activity in Sea of Thieves, there are no instructions on how to be a prisoner. There is no minigame. You are just trapped.
That’s how I wound up spending an hour in the brig during this past weekend’s beta. I fumbled around thinking there was some puzzle or activity I had to complete to break out, but that wasn’t the case at all. My sin was being a random swabbie instead of one of the cool kids.
First a little talk about Only the Brave, Lovesong, and whichever one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies Kellywand watched. Then we discuss continuity errors in movies for this week’s 3×3.
This is the early access trailer for PixARK, a more kid-friendly voxel interpretation of ARK: Survival Evolved. It’s still got dino-taming, harvesting, and crafting from big brother ARK, but now in soft pastels and cheery Minecraft blocks. There’s no word yet on whether or not PixARK will follow its namesake’s strategy of selling expansion packs before development of the base game is finished, but we’ll be watching keenly.
Developed by Snail Games, PixARK will launch for early access on PC and Xbox One in March. PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions are also planned for a later release.
Ubisoft’s freewheeling open world shooter is getting loot boxes. Battle Crates, coming with the next Ghost Recon: Wildlands title update, will bring all the vanity item gambling the game was missing. Spec Ops Crates will contain items usable by players in the game’s campaign mode, and Ghost War Crates will have items meant for the player vs player modes. Ghost War Crate items will only be cosmetic, while the Spec Ops items can include exclusive weapons, vehicles, and consumable items.
Just like any good pusher, Ubisoft will give all customers a free hit to start. Everyone will get a Spec Ops and Ghost War crate as a sample when the feature goes live. Additional crates will, of course, be offered for sale.
There have been some terrible years in the modern age. 1939 can’t have been much fun. 1973 must have been a real bummer. 2001 was a sobering experience. But 2017 stands alone. It might be the worst year the world has yet seen.
Microsoft will release new first-party Xbox games on Xbox Game Pass on their global retail launch dates. Subscribers to Microsoft’s buffet game service will play Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, the next Forza, the next Halo, and anything else Microsoft Game Studios publishes on the same day everyone else gets to buy them. Going forward, Xbox Game Pass won’t just be a service for older games, significantly increasing its value to people unwilling to pay for access to titles that may have already gone on deep discount or even been offered as freebies in the Games for Gold program.
Xbox Game Pass launched in June 2017. It costs $9.99 per month to subscribe.
