Author: sick skills

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DeepMind wants to answer the big ethical questions posed by AI

Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) division has established a new research group to learn more about the ethical questions posed by the dawn of AI.

The British artificial intelligence outfit was acquired by Google in 2014, and often uses video games as part of its projects.

For instance, back in 2016 the company partnered with Blizzard to create an API tailored for research environments based in StarCraft II, and prior to that the DeepMind team developed an artificial agent capable of learning how to play Atari 2600 games from scratch. 

Now, the DeepMind Ethics & Society unit hopes to unravel some of the biggest ethical quandaries posed by the creation of artificial intelligence to pave the way for “truly beneficial and responsible AI.” 

“We believe AI can be of extraordinary benefit to the world, but only if held to the highest ethical standards. Technology is not value neutral, and technologists must take responsibility for the ethical and social impact of their work,” reads a blog post on the DeepMind website. 

“The development of AI creates important and complex questions. Its impact on society — and on all our lives — is not something that should be left to chance. Beneficial outcomes and protections against harms must be actively fought for and built-in from the beginning. But in a field as complex as AI, this is easier said than done.

“As scientists developing AI technologies, we have a responsibility to conduct and support open research and investigation into the wider implications of our work. At DeepMind, we start from the premise that all AI applications should remain under meaningful human control, and be used for socially beneficial purposes.”

DeepMind isn’t the only institution asking looking into this area. Other research projects, such as Julia Angwin’s study of racism in criminal justice algorithms, and Kate Crawford and Ryan Calo’s examination of the broader consequences of AI for social systems, have also begun to peel back the curtain. 

For DeepMind, the hope is that its new unit will achieve two primary aims: to help technologists puts ethics into practice when the time comes, and to ensure society is sufficiently prepared for the day AI becomes part of the wider world.

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Nintendo Switch Surges in Japanese Charts as Fire Emblem Warriors Makes Debut

The Media Create results are in for the Japanese charts, and last week was relatively busy – it’s was also another solid seven days for Nintendo.

Every title missed out to The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III on PS4 in first place, but it was a mixed debut for Fire Emblem Warriors; on Switch it secured third place with 41,491 sales, while on New Nintendo 3DS / New 2DS it only shifted 18,357 copies. The combined total is less than Hyrule Warriors managed in its debut week, while Hyrule Warriors Legends shifted 54,479 copies when it arrived in early 2016.

Moving on, Splatoon 2 keeps ticking along while Pokkén Tournament DX had a relatively modest second week. Also of note is FIFA 18; the PS4 version secured second spot, while the Switch iteration (admittedly working with a smaller userbase) only managed less than a quarter of the PS4 sales with 12,616 units. FIFA was given a big push for Switch in Japan; in fact the earliest real footage of the game earlier this year was in a Japanese commercial.

The top 20 is below with lifetime sales in brackets.

  1. [PS4] The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III (Limited Edition Included) (09/28/17) – 87,261 (New)
  2. [PS4] FIFA 18 (Electronic Arts, 09/29/17) – 55,919 (New)
  3. [NSW] Fire Emblem Warriors (Nintendo, 09/28/17) – 41,491 (New)
  4. [NSW] Splatoon 2 (Nintendo, 07/21/17) – 29,704 (1,190,563)
  5. [NSW] Pokken Tournament DX (Nintendo, 09/22/17) – 23,543 (76,938)
  6. [NEW 3DS] Fire Emblem Warriors (Nintendo, 09/28/17) – 18,357 (New)
  7. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 04,28,17) – 15,098 (720,741)
  8. [NSW] FIFA 18 (Electronic Arts, 09/29/17) – 12,616 (New)
  9. [PS4] Genkai Tokki: Castle Panzers (Compile Heart, 09/28/17) – 10,389 (New)
  10. [PS4] Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 (Konami, 09/14/17) – 10,250 (91,446)
  11. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Limited Edition Included) (Nintendo, 03/03/17) – 7,615 (598,670)
  12. [PS4] Destiny 2 (SIE, 09/06/17) – 7,371 (88,688)
  13. [PS4] Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition (Bethesda Softworks, 09/28/17) – 6,507 (New)
  14. [NSW] Monster Hunter XX (Capcom, 08/25/17) – 6,350 (146,883)
  15. [PS4] Coven and Labyrinth of Refrain (NIS, 09/28/17) – 5,681 (New)
  16. [3DS] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (Square Enix, 07/29/17) – 5,639 (1,733,552)
  17. [3DS] The Snack World: Trejarers (Level-5, 08/10/17) – 5,073 (172,833)
  18. [PSV] Shinobi, Koi Utsutsu: Kanmitsu Hana Emaki (Idea Factory, 09/28/17) – 4,629 (New)
  19. [NSW] Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 for Nintendo Switch (Bandai Namco, 09/07/17) – 4,419 (36,085)
  20. [PS4] Everybody’s Golf (SIE, 08/31/17) – 4,213 (148,645)

Moving on to hardware sales, the Switch saw a healthy boost to increase its already sizeable lead. The New 3DS LL (XL) also saw a small jump, and it was closely followed by the New 2DS LL; results are below with last week’s sales in brackets.

  1. Switch – 73,231 (43,426)
  2. PlayStation 4 – 22,822 (18,396)
  3. New 3DS LL – 9,915 (8,726)
  4. New 2DS LL – 8,359 (8,508)
  5. PlayStation 4 Pro – 6,547 (5,418)
  6. PlayStation Vita – 3,732 (3,707)
  7. 2DS – 1,655 (1,659)
  8. New 3DS – 392 (379)
  9. Xbox One – 71 (76)
  10. Wii U – 68 (56)
  11. PlayStation 3 – 64 (87)

A solid week for Nintendo all around, with no sign yet of the Switch hardware momentum dropping away.

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Guide: Getting Started With The Pokémon Trading Card Game

Since launching way back in December 1996, the Pokémon Trading Card Game has been an ongoing concern ever since and is the most popular and played aspect of competitive Pokémon – even more so than the video games, incredibly. However, while it’s beloved of youngster in playgrounds all over the world, it’s a game of surprising tactical depth and complexity, which has led to many fans simply collecting the cards rather than playing with them. If you’re intimidated by the sheer scope of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, don’t feel downhearted – you’re not the only one out there.

What follows below is a very basic beginner’s guide to the Pokémon Trading Card Game which will explain the core foundations of the game and hopefully allow you to overcome your nerves and get stuck in. This won’t give you all the intricacies of the game, but it’s a good starting point to get you on your way to understanding the mechanics.

Pokémon Trading Card Game: The Basics

The Pokémon Trading Card Game is much like the video games in which Pokémon types come into play. Pretty much every Pokémon card has got a Weakness, and many have got a Resistances. 

There are 11 different types of Pokémon cards in the game: Colorless, Darkness, Dragon, Fairy, Fire, Fighting, Grass, Lightning, Metal, Psychic and Water, with the Pokémon’s type typically representing the Pokémon in game but as there are fewer, some types are combined into one such as Ground, Rock and Fighting all being Fighting. So, for example, you will find both Fire and Psychic cards for Salazzle. 

Each Pokémon has specific Hit Points, which determine its health and some Pokémon can only be played by evolving their lower evolutions.

You can only have 4 of each card with the same name in your deck, but if the Pokémon has a suffix or prefix, you can have additional ones; so you can only have 4 Celebi in your deck, or you can have 4 Celebi & 4 Celebi EX or 4 Vulpix & 4 Alolan Vulpix, and so forth.

Energy cards are key. They are essential for allowing your Pokémon to use Attacks. Each attack has a cost of how many Energy you need attached to the Pokémon in order to use it, and typically the better the attack, the higher the cost. You can have any amount of Basic Energy cards in your deck, but there are also Special Energy cards, which you can only have 4 of each kind. These Special Energy cards typically have special effects such as Rainbow Energy which can be used as any type of Energy, or Warp Energy which allows you to switch your Pokémon when you attach it.

There are also Trainer cards. There are multiple different kinds of Trainer cards that can be used. First are Item cards; these typically have simple effects and you can use any amount of them per turn. Next are Supporter cards. These cards are based on characters from the games and other prominent characters and have a useful effect such as allowing you to manipulate your hand. You can play one of these per turn. Finally, there are the Stadium cards. These cards are placed on the table and have an overall effect that affects both players cards, such as increasing damage from Water Pokémon.

The goal of the game is obviously to win the match. This can be done through multiple methods:

  • Prize Cards – Each player, at the start of the game, places the top 6 cards from their deck face down on the table as prize cards. If a player collects all six, they win.
  • Deck out – If a player runs out of cards in their deck, then they lose a game.
  • Defeated Pokémon – If a player defeats the opponent’s Pokémon and there are no Pokémon on the player’s bench to replace it, the game is won.
  • Time Limit – If the match is in an official event, then when the time runs out, the player with the least amount of prize cards (after a few turns to round the game out) wins the match.

Pokémon Trading Card Game: The Flow Of Play

The structure of each turn goes as follows:

  • Draw a card from your deck

Then, perform the following actions in any order:

  • Put any number of Basic Pokémon from your hand to your Bench until you have 5 (or amount set by abilities or trainer cards) on your Bench
  • Evolve a Pokémon. With the exception of some abilities and Trainer cards, you can’t evolve a Pokémon on the turn you played it
  • Use Abilities. Some Pokémon have got abilities. Some activate when you play the card, others are latent and are always active and others activate when you wish them to
  • Attach an Energy. You can attach one Energy from your hand per turn. There are Abilities & Trainer cards that can alter this
  • Retreat your Pokémon. You may retreat your Active Pokémon and switch it with one from your Bench. You may need to discard a required amount of Energy from your Pokémon to do this. This is called Retreat Cost and can be found on each Pokémon’s card and is typically between 0 and 4
  • Use Trainer cards. As stated above, you can use Item cards and Pokémon Tools any number of times during your turn but can only use Supporter cards once per turn
  • Attack. Attacking requires you to have the required energy. You then put the correct amount of damage counters on the opponent after factoring in Weakness, Resistance and any other effects on the Pokémon

When you attack, your turn ends so make sure you have done everything you want to do before attacking. You can also end the turn without attacking either by your choice or through the effects of other cards.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Formats

Even though there have been over 70 Pokémon Trading Card Game sets released in the west since the first Base set, not all the cards are usable. This means you don’t have to go way back to get cards with certain effects. In official competitive play, there are two different formats:

Standard Format – This is the main format and rotates every year. At time of writing, all card sets from XY BreakThrough onwards are legal. New sets get allowed in Standard on the third Friday of the month the set was released in. Same goes for three weeks after a Promotional Card is released through various means.

Expanded Format – This format allows for more open play, allowing for all cards from the Black & White series onwards. Like Standard, it does rotate in time, but it is far more flexible.

With the two formats, it keeps the game fresh and stops players relying on specific strategies. For example, Shaymin EX from Roaring Skies was legal in Standard Format from 2014 up until September 2017 and was a staple of so many decks, but now that it cannot be used in Standard, players have to look for new strategies.

Over time, The Pokémon Company reviews cards to see if they are broken and some may get banned or corrected. You can find a banned card list on the official site. For full details on the rules, check out the official site here and here.

Pokémon Trading Card Game: Deck Building

Deck building is something for which perfect advice simply doesn’t exist. Each deck depends on your style of play, whether you want to be a more offensive player or more strategic.

Each deck can only have 60 cards in it, but there are no limits to how many are Pokémon, Trainer or Energy cards you have, other than the limit of no 4 cards with the same name in a deck. In theory, you could have 4 Pokémon cards, 30 Energy and 26 Trainer Cards, if you really wanted to.

When making a deck, you need to think about what you want to do with it. With Trainer cards, you will want to focus on those which allow for you to find the cards you need to win, such as cards that let you search for Pokémon or other Trainers – such as Ultra Ball and Vs. Seeker. This might sound like strange advice but don’t try to fill a deck up with Pokémon as that’ll prevent you from doing what you want it to do. Focus on just a few species or evolution chains and work from there. There are lots of resources around the Internet that can help with team building, but it’s often situational and there is no such thing as a “perfect” deck.

Pokémon Trading Card Game: Getting Started

A good way to get started is to find one of the many Trainer Kits you can find, such as the current Alolan Raichu Vs. Lycanroc. These kits are designed for people who are totally new to the game and provide two 30 card decks which are ordered in a perfect way to showcase how to play the game, with all the rules and various effects.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links. If you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale which helps support the site. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.

There are also Theme Decks. Theme Decks come out with each set and provide a full 60 card deck utilising cards from the new set and previous sets, and are often themed around certain Pokémon and/or types. These are a step up from the Trainer Kits in that they are fully fledged decks which mean you can get started right away, but they are typically not of much competitive value. You’ll need to invest on booster packs to obtain rare cards, a process which is costly and time consuming. However, if you’re simply interested in having fun with friends and don’t want to play at a competitive level, then Theme Decks are a good place to begin.

Pokémon Trading Card Game: Places to Play

While playing with friends is fun, there are lots of local tournaments being held in card shops around the globe, not to mention the official Play! Pokémon events that lead up to the Pokémon World Championships. However, there is another way. Each Pokémon booster pack comes with a code to redeem in the PC and Tablet game, Pokémon Trading Card Game Online. Here, you can build decks using virtual cards and play with other players around the world. It’s a great way of getting into the game and testing to see if your strategies will work.

As we said at the start of this piece, it’s not intended to be an exhaustive guide to the Pokémon Trading Card Game – it’s such a deep and involved experience that we’d need many more words to do that. Hopefully this taster guide has given you some idea about how to get started though, and there’s always scope for more detailed guides in the future – so let us know what you think by posting a comment below.

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Blog: The running joke behind my un-streamlined controls

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Press “O” to open: the running joke behind my un-streamlined controls

This weekend I traveled to Clujotronic — an arts and entertainment event — in Cluj, Romania, where I demoed my new game: Ebony Spire: Heresy. The audience of the event had very little in common with my target audience for the game but I learned a whole lot of from the people who tried the demo. Let’s take a look what people who never tried a old school RPG with un-conventional button mappings had to say.

Showing the game to a fellow designer who did not understand how to open doors.

The audience at Clujotronic was mostly young people in their 20’s. Most of them electronic fans with a taste for artsy stuff. A few of them were actual gamers of the mainstream kind (think AAA games). Most games featured at the venue (like Black the Fall, Second Hand: Frankie’s Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Island) were Indie games and it was great seeing people interacting with them for the first time. They all featured controller support and most players had little problems figuring out what to do. In my case there was only a screen and a keyboard and, for a few hours after setting up my “booth”, a mouse.

Arrow keys and Mouse are the first thing players look for in a game they know nothing about.

My target audience are technical, slightly older gamers who enjoyed dungeon crawling classics like Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master or fans of the roguelike genre that are looking for a more graphical game in the vein of the previously mentioned titles. The game relies heavily on the keyboard and breaks the conventional streamlined controls. I promised myself I won’t intervene and describe the game’s control to players until they all but gave up on trying. A good way to get data and see how much time they are willing to sacrifice before giving up.

What I noticed is that in the absence of a controller, when faced with a unfamiliar games, the first thing people gravitate towards is the mouse and arrow keys. If the game does not respond to those two types of inputs well… let’s just say that 70% of the people who tried the game gave up, assumed it froze/crashed and just left it at that. The remaining 30% are split between randomly pressing keys until something happens, checking out the monitor to see if it’s touch enabled (it wasn’t) or, those more interested in experiencing it, asking people around them for information. Touch screen-ers were more common than those willing to ask for information

First batch of players pre-key update

So after a few hours of me staring at people’s fingers gravitating towards the arrow keys I was faced with two decisions:

  • The easy way out: Print the controls on paper and stick it to the side of the screen
  • The slightly less harder way: Add support for the Arrow Keys and the Enter button.

I wanted as much data as I could get from the players and I didn’t feel like cheating and sticking a piece of paper in their face so I added support for the aformentioned keys in the Menu’s and the retention rate grew. I also hid the mouse from view.

 

Now that the “standard” way of navigating through the in-game menus was solved I almost had a full 100% retention rate until gameplay started (A few gave up once they entered the help menu and saw a wall of text). The first big hitch was met when the game started and arrow keys were once again useless. Here things took a weird turn.

Most players (a bit over 50%) went straight for W,A,S and D controls once the arrow keys were deemed useless. Twelve people asked if the mouse is missing. Around 25% of them moved on without wanting to hear any explanation about the controls. Slightly less than that asked for help immediately after the arrow keys failed to do anything.

The “O”gh moment when it all clicked

Once they figured out you can move around with WASD and turn the camera with Q+E they started exploring the first level. After experiencing the grid-based movement a few of them asked if the game was turn based. Spotting the first NPC made them want to grab a mouse out of instinct to shoot. This was a big amount of players (sadly I did not record this data). Others moved next to him and asked how to engage and attack. But the controls did not click with them until two more buttons were revealed: “I” to access the Inventory and “T” to throw items at the enemies. Quite a few of them questioned the decision to interact with the environment (here doors) by using the “O” key. They expected to press E or F. But as soon as they found their first items on the floor, and thinking about the previous keybindings it all clicked. More than once I heard: “How do I pick up an item.. Wait? Is IT P? Oh it is P! I GET IT NOW”. And then, suddenly, O to open doors, I to open the inventory, T to throw, P to pickup, L to access the log suddenly made sense for them. And after playing the game and noticing other people trying to figure it out they chimed in and helped excitedly. It even became a running gag around the venue. When people would ask if the bathroom is occupied some would answer: “Press O to open and see for yourself” or the now classic at the bar: “Should I press B for beer?”.

Let’s look at the facts for a minute

People figuring out the controls and being excited for the discovery was a great thing to witness however there’s a problem here hiding in plain sight: out of all progress data I recorded while the game was demoed the following things stand out:

  • Less than 3% of the total players reached the final (3rd) level of the demo
  • Only 15% explored the first level and its two portals
  • A whooping 40% of all people that tried the game gave up at the main menu

I cannot stress the last part enough: Because the default input method WAS NOT the norm almost half of the people who tried the game never even got to the game part. Imagine this data wasn’t picked up during the demo and I would have only found out about it after doing the steam release. A 40% refund rate would have killed me, my game and my business. Now I can argue that the drop rate would have been lower because of my target audience and their experience, because people that invest money in the game would stick around more and learn how to play it but it would still have dented my income and review scores.

The amount of polish before I launch next month is huge. I need to get a tutorial system in the game. Or a better way to present the controls. I am sticking to them but I learned that learning them through pure discovery, even if rewarding, can potentially put people off. People who are to be my customers and supporters.

I also learned that players who expect a mouse and do not find it will touch, press and even shake a regular monitor. Even when there is someone nearby to explain the game to them.

 

Ebony Spire: Heresy was demoed at Clujotronic. It’s a first person, dungeon crawling, turn based rpg inspired by roguelikes. The main mechanic revolves around picking up items and using them against your enemies. And the enemies can do the same things you can do. And you need to press “O” to open doors. It will release on steam in November. You can pick-up and play the Clujotronic 3 level demo for Linux and Windows from itch.io. And even buy the game at half-the-release price if you want to throw mean words about the controls at me. 

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Cyber Gadget Reveals The Retro Freak Basic, For All Your SNES And Super Famicom Needs

Cyber Gadget – the company behind the Retro Freak console – has revealed the Retro Freak Basic, a new model which only plays SNES and Super Famicom cartridges out of the box.

The Retro Freak Basic comes in two packs – the Economy set (10,778 Yen, around $96) is just the unit itself with no controller or HDMI cable, while the Standard set (14,018 Yen, around $125) comes with one pad and a HDMI lead.

While this unit is focused on Nintendo’s famous 16-bit system, cartridge adapters (like those already available) are in the works which will allow it to play games for other consoles, which suggests that the internal tech is basically identical to the original Retro Freak.

But that’s not all! Cyber Gadget is also releasing an arcade stick, which launches in the winter.

Do either of these products interest you? Share your thoughts with a comment.

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Review: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions (3DS)

Nintendo’s portable gaming has a special place in the industry, a challenge the company will need to tackle in the years to come should it stick with a single ‘hybrid’ device in the form of the Switch. Nintendo’s dedicated handhelds have consistently had games unique to that on-the-go space, with the Mario & Luigi series among them. It’s graced the Game Boy Advance, DS and 3DS with multiple bizarre and quirky games, full of daft premises, witty gameplay and oodles of charm.

It all started with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and so it’s somewhat fitting that the grand original by AlphaDream gets a second life with the slightly awkwardly titled Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions. It’s a full remaster in that, aesthetically, it’s a complete overhaul from the original, bringing it up to current-day standards while retaining its defining qualities. We’ll start off with a fresh look at what makes this game tick before getting to what this 3DS version does differently.

Considered by some to be a spiritual successor to Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, this first game in the Mario & Luigi series establishes some key things – the dual button control scheme, timing-based combat, and that villains are comedy gold. Though to be fair, the whole game is about humour. The cast of the Mushroom Kingdom and Beanbean Kingdom (where the game mostly plays out) are straight out of a comedy show, full of snappy lines and laugh-out-loud dialogue. Superstar Saga set the tone for all of the gems that followed and, in terms of its storytelling in particular, hasn’t aged a bit.

The plot here, and its structure, arguably place it among the best the series has offered. New foes Cackletta and fan-favourite Fawful supposedly steal Princess Peach’s voice; the famous Bros. and the intensely arrogant – and funny – Bowser team up (briefly) to tackle the new menace. Over the course of 20 hours+ they get split up, reunite in strange ways, and go through more twists and turns than a race car in Monaco. We meet some memorable new characters, and are also introduced to AlphaDream’s spin on familiar mascots, with this game throwing in plenty of cameos along with fresh faces. It’s clever writing, too, as it has the visual hooks and silliness to amuse young players, but also the self-referential wit to make big kids like this reviewer laugh.

As for the actual gameplay, it takes shape as any logical Mario RPG would. You explore the overworld, picking fights or dodging them if you prefer, gradually solving puzzles to explore the world and advance the story. Naturally the series has its own spins – first and foremost is the dual control mechanic. For the most part Mario & Luigi move together but jump independently with the A and B buttons, with X conveniently making them jump together. When you go into battle they operate independently, but you use timed button presses for a combination of attacks, dodges and counter-attacks. The centrepiece set of moves in combat are called Bros. Attacks, in which the two heroes work together on extravagant, powerful and goofy assaults.

It’s a formula that was evidently nailed on day one, as it works as well here as it does in its various sequels. Those that have only played more recent entries in the series will also recognise a number of the overworld / exploration moves the brothers can pull off. Early on they’re simple things like a high jump, but by the end Luigi will be electrocuting Mario to get through small spaces, or they’ll hammer each other into smaller or mole-like forms. The design is fantastic, as moves and abilities are gradually unlocked to match circumstances; they feel easy and intuitive to execute.

It all unfolds over a fairly lengthy adventure, though those that felt more recent entries like Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam were padded out or thin on engaging characters will enjoy the relative brevity and diversity here. As is now the series’ style it likes to pull the old “this is the end, nah it isn’t!” trick a few times, but always in a way to raise a smile. Its new characters – now familiar to series veterans – are also superstars in their own right, with Fawful’s iffy understanding of language comprehension being a particular high point. It’s a world packed to the brim with charm, all wrapped around a clever spin on RPG exploration and combat norms.

Of course, plenty know this game well from the GBA original and its relatively recent inclusion in the Wii U Virtual Console library. With that Wii U release quite fresh in the memory, how can Nintendo justify this as a retail release?

For one thing, this is a genuine remaster, not a simple upscale. The entire game has been transplanted and reproduced in the 3DS-era engine for the series, which retains the eccentric animations and facial expressions of the older games but within colourful polygons. We’ve always been fans of the look, and purists seeking the ‘original’ should by all means play it on Game Boy Advance or the Wii U at a push; for the purposes of this new release the updated visuals look terrific. As a whole the game is a looker by 3DS standards.

Other aspects of the 3DS functionality are less important, and there’s one major omission. To start with the touchscreen, it’s used as a means to alternate between a minimap or touch buttons to access various moves and abilities; you can also place pins on the map to remind yourself of landmarks, though we generally went through the game only needing the most basic of pointers. The letdown, though, is a complete absence of the 3D effect.

There’s no real justification for this beyond time- and cost-cutting. Both previous 3DS entries supported 3D with improving results, and it added a diorama-like appeal to the visuals, but here the experience is resolutely 2D. It ties into Nintendo’s focus on the New Nintendo 2DS XL model, in particular, but after the recent joys of auto-stereoscopic 3D in Metroid: Samus Returns this feels like a snub to those of us that leave the slider all the way up. It’s not a dealbreaker by any stretch, but considering the fact the action is almost exclusively on the top screen it’s a lazy omission.

We do have amiibo implementation, too, in which you scan figures for a stamp book that you show to a merchant a little way through the game. On a superficial level this is one of the most fun ways we’ve seen amiibo implemented on the New 3DS / 2DS touchscreen, as you scan the amiibo by essentially ‘stamping’ the page. Standard Super Mario characters (though the pixel Mario and Yarn Yoshi worked for us) give you rewards, and the Goomba / Koopa Troopa / Boo amiibo do something ‘special’. We didn’t have those particular figures but, as is often the case for amiibo, you can enjoy the functionality or enjoy the game just fine without it.

The biggest new feature here, of course, is the Bowser’s Minions campaign. It unlocks a short way into the story and follows an alternate path in which Bowser’s much put-upon grunts seek to rescue their master. Initially a Goomba is made captain in order to be a fall guy, and what evolves is a real-time strategy-lite experience in a storyline that loosely follows along with the main adventure.

It offers a relatively lengthy campaign, though not all may see it through to completion due to the limited hook on offer. Employing a rock-paper-scissors approach to combat, before each stage you can see which kind of units the opposition will have and then build your squad and formation to counter that. Where you place units matters as much as type, and some are strong against particular opposition, with more joining your squad as you progress. As your numbers grow the challenging part is rotating enough to level up a broad range of fighters while also keeping each team’s overall level moving in the right direction.

The actual battles themselves are extremely simplistic – you watch as the units scrap it out, occasionally using the A button when prompted for special attacks. You also have commands that you can issue (limited by a points system) to block enemy specials, rally the troops and more. Though you form the team and strategise a little behind the scenes the battles aren’t very engaging. Grinding also comes into play as the challenge mounts, as you can go back and replay cleared stages if your units need more experience to level up.

The story told is charming, and the humour from the main game carries across. That’s the saving grace of this mode, as the cast are certainly amusing enough to make the grind worth it. This add-on is competent enough, then, but not overly diverting; in terms of quality it’s not really close to the design of the main adventure.

Overall, when you combine the remastered classic and the light-touch diversion of Bowser’s Minions, you get a lot of playtime out of this one. It’s also guaranteed to be some of the funniest and most unique gaming you experience this year, as the Mario & Luigi formula still shines brightly. For those that feel the latest entries on 3DS became bloated, meanwhile, this offers good value with a little more snap, though numerous extra hours can be spent on optional exploration and sidequests. It’s just a shame, in the end, that Nintendo didn’t implement the 3D effect, but that’s one of our only complaints.

Conclusion

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a classic, and this new version is arguably the definitive version. Yes, Bowser’s Minions is a harmless but shallow add-on, but the Superstars are the real attraction.

This is a series that has a distinct and special place within Nintendo gaming, and after experimentation and not-always-popular approaches in the 3DS era of games, this takes us back to the IP’s roots. What a treat it is, too – funny, smartly designed and pure unpretentious joy, this is a great start point for those that missed the original in the Game Boy Advance era, and should also be tempting to those with fond memories of the adventure.

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Unity Working to Optimise Engine on Switch, Talks Up Success on Platform

If you’ve played a lot of Indie games, you’ve played a lot of Unity games. Some major developers and publishers (including Nintendo) have also used the engine, but it’s often employed by smaller studios seeking to realise their vision on a limited budget. For those that can’t produce their own bespoke technology it’s a valuable tool.

Reliance on it can lead to problems, though. In the Wii U era we spoke to developers that had to produce multiple builds of their game due to Nintendo’s hardware only supporting older versions of Unity. Now a few developers have encountered delays on Switch due to a similar problem, with Yooka-Laylee developers Playtonic Games citing the issue.

For its part Unity says it’s continually working to optimise the engine on Switch; in response to some recent concerns Hiroki Omae, Unity’s Japan Regional Director, said the following the GamesIndustry.biz.

Unity has been providing developer support for Nintendo Switch since day one, and we’re proud to report that more than 30% of games released on Switch to-date are made with Unity.

We continue to partner closely with Nintendo to optimize Unity on Switch, and are happy to see our developers finding great success on the system.

Hopefully the platform will get to the stage where its various updates and adjustments roll-out quickly on Nintendo’s hardware. The easier it is for developers to bring their games to Switch, the more its library will grow.

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Review: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Switch eShop)

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a multiplayer experience that finds itself sitting somewhere between the action and party genres. Developed by Toronto-based indie studio Asteroid Base, the game has received a lot of love and attention across its PC and other console releases with its use of colour, imagination, and pure fun often being praised. Now, thanks to the game being released on the Switch’s eShop, it is time for us to see what all the fuss is about. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime has been designed with co-op play in mind but you can also play the entire thing on your own, if you prefer. When your team has been assembled (up to a total of four players), your job is to work together to guide a spaceship around enemy-infested levels. The ship has controls for driving, operating a shield, four independent turrets, a map, and a really powerful weapon that has limited use. The trick here is that each player can only operate one of these things at a time; each team member must dart back and forth across the ship to use whichever controls are necessary to progress, communicating with each other as they go. To be truly successful, teams must have either a solid plan for each member’s role before heading into a level, or be incredibly efficient at ad-lib instructions during play.

The goal of most levels is to find a minimum of five space-bunnies to unlock a giant love heart in the sky. By travelling to this unlocked heart you are able to head to the next stage of your current campaign – the game has four campaigns in total, each containing four normal stages and a boss stage. Along the way there are several enemy types that can hurt you in different ways and variations on the scenery that can impact how you fly, how your weapons work, or even affect your shooting strategies. As well as this, upgrades for your ship will become available as you progress (as long as you find them within the levels), allowing you to beef up your set of controls. Whether you want to use these power-ups on your turrets for added fire power, your shield for extra defence, or even your engine for added bonuses is completely up to you (or your team at least!).

If you decide to go it alone, you will be buddied up with an AI-controlled pet for company on your quest (we went with Kepler the cat because he was just too cute to resist). Instead of communicating with your real, human friends, you will be presented with an extra control option that is for your new found pet-friend; by holding down ‘X’ and selecting a control within the ship, you are able to tell your pet to take control of the engine, man the turrets, or just sit about idly doing nothing, if you like. The AI does a surprisingly good job of shooting at the targets you would hope for, which is great; it really doesn’t feel like you are at any disadvantage being on your own. In fact, playing this way feels like a whole new game and we actually found ourselves enjoying this play-style just as much as, if not more than, playing in multiplayer. If you have the time we’d recommend playing through the entire campaign both alone, and with friends – the game is good enough to justify the second trip.

Everything is rather beautiful to look at, too. This is a wonderfully polished product, always looking bright and cheerful, always feeling smooth and precise. At first, it seems like there will be quite a lot to take in – running around the spaceship can get rather hectic as you have to navigate ladders and platforms inside just to reach your desired control, never mind then operating said control before the swarm of space-bug-things come to eat your face off. Somehow, though, everything seems to gel instantly and you’ll soon be commanding your team around with as much self-confidence and conviction as a slightly tipsy Captain Olimar. It’s marvellously done.

The campaigns get surprisingly challenging for a game that is based around the theme of love and cute little bunnies. This is a never a real problem, though; at any time (even between each individual stage) you are able to change the difficulty as you see fit. We aren’t ashamed to admit that a particularly tough level which had us fending off waves of enemies approaching our ship was a bit much on the standard difficulty – dropping down to an easier setting to catch our breath couldn’t have been easier.

It isn’t too often that a game built around multiplayer is equally enjoyable when playing alone, yet Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime has nailed the concept for both methods. It isn’t the longest game in the world and, aside from those “wave” type stages and the bosses, the main set of levels can feel quite similar but it even goes some way to make up for this too. If you wish, you can aim to collect every single space-bunny and work towards a glowing 100% on your save file and each level is randomly generated so you won’t see the exact same layout twice. A lot of ‘love’ has been put into this game and it really does get almost everything right.

Conclusion

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime caught us by surprise; we were expecting a great multiplayer party experience but ended up with something much more than that. If you have a great bunch of friends and the necessary controllers, be sure to gather everyone round for some challenging but hilarious teamwork. If you don’t, or if you prefer playing alone, load the game up anyway and enjoy an intense, strategically-minded campaign with a warm and welcoming exterior. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime deserves to be played and should most definitely be on your eShop wishlist – we’re in love, for sure. 

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Don’t Knock Twice Is Bringing Supernatural Horror To Switch

Halloween is on the way and our chums over at Wales Interactive are ready to embrace the scary season with their upcoming supernatural horror game Don’t Knock Twice, which is coming to Switch eShop on 17th October priced at £9.99 / €12.49 / $12.49.

Here’s some blurb from the PR to get you up to speed on the game:

Don’t Knock Twice is a first-person horror game based on a psychologically terrifying urban legend. To save her estranged daughter, a guilt-ridden mother must uncover the frightening truth behind the urban tale of a vengeful, demonic witch. One knock to wake her from her bed, twice to raise her from the dead.
 
To find and save your daughter, you will explore all depths of a grand manor house, searching for hidden clues and wield items to escape the terror that surrounds you.
 
The game was developed alongside the 2017 horror film, Don’t Knock Twice, starring Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) and directed by Caradog James (The Machine).

It all sounds like a ruddy good time to us. Do you plan to check this one out later in the month, or are you too scared?

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Getting the message right in Another Lost Phone

Accidental Queens is a game company you might not be familiar with because they’ve only been releasing games this year. Earlier in 2017, they released the game A Normal Lost Phone in which plays found a smart phone, unlocked it, and began to piece together the life of the person who owned it.

There’s a degree of voyeuristic delight the propels the player forward. There are puzzles, mostly consisting of investing your time and attention into the assorted texts, emails, and other information on the device. It doesn’t feel like puzzles because it doesn’t feel like a game. There isn’t even a suggestion that the game has natural start or end points, much less a story, until one begins to emerge within the context of what you put together yourself. It’s a small game with a big message, and it has sold 100k units, and is won numerous accolades. 

Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story is the pseudo-sequel just released by Accidental Queens, is available on Steam and on Android phones. This time, you explore a phone owned by a young professional woman named Laura. Again, there’s some very complicated messages and themes at play here. Miryam Houali and Diane Landais from Accidental Queens explain how you do a message game but make sure to get the message right.

In Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story, players are tasked to find out what happened to Laura, a young woman who has apparently vanished without a trace. Stumbling on her lost phone, they need to discover what happened to her by uncovering crucial pieces of information and hidden passwords scattered among texts, apps, photo gallery and social networks.

This builds upon the basic system that Accidental Queens developed originally during a game jam. At this point, it’s a fully realized phone operating system, complete with music playing in the background via the iTunes comparative app and even requiring you to toggle various in phone systems like Wi-Fi and GPS. 

Or you can just delete all the data on the phone right from the start. I did to see if I could. And you can. 

Asked about transitioning the original title to this more elaborate version, art director Houali said that the impact the first game made upon players seemed to be something they could easily build upon because there were so many other subjects the team wanted to tackle. Diane Landais shared that the team through this would be easy to accomplish by simply adding a few new apps. Then Landais laughs because, of course, nothing is that simple. 

“The first game was mostly finding a password or guessing it,” Landais says. “This is more about piecing things together and deducing a password or how to advance the game. This design shift meant from a design and technical standpoint we had to redesign. One that was hard to do right was the recovery app which unlocks content within the messages and notes apps. In the original, each app had one bit of content. Now we have apps talking to each other.”

Miryam Houali points out that there were mistakes me in the first game, from a design perspective, that needed to be corrected — especially after getting some negative feedback. And that’s where Accidental Queens moved into territory that they knew required outside help.

“We know what we want to talk about, but it takes asking people how they felt after playing and why.”

In the original game, there is a puzzle in which you must forward a photo from the phone to someone else. There are numerous photos to choose from, but there are also images of the phone’s owner presenting as male instead of female in a game that doesn’t give you any heads-up that it is entering into trans-issues territory.

This puzzle solution resulted in Accidental Queens getting criticism for not fully thinking through their issue. While they wanted to make people feel uncomfortable in certain privacy violation ways, there were unforeseen issues that made a percentage of their audience too uncomfortable to continue. 

“We tried not to do that again on this one,” Landais says. “Any potential problem, we asked ourselves if it was useful to have it make people uncomfortable. What are the bigger complications of that?”

So for the sequel, which takes on a number of emotionally and politically complicated issues, the team decided it was best to ask someone else to answer these questions. In a game about complicated emotional and psychological abuse, the team didn’t want to risk hammering anyone over the head with their message but also wanted to make sure they presented a human, realistic portrayal of these events. So they turned to the professionals.

Houali says, “We had domestic abuse survivor groups play to point out any abuse mistakes we didn’t spot. There was four different organizations, all French based, helping us with the subjects and we sent them prototypes. We sent them beta versions. They pointed out mistakes in dialogues or how the message was conveyed. Our production time was very short, but at each big milestone we had a playtest station.”

As very small scale developers on a short production timeline, using so much of their resources and time to make sure that every detail about their message is conveyed accurately, seems sort of breathtaking. Especially when there are groups out there willing to help with work like this, why aren’t more larger-scale studios putting this much care into their product?

There was also considerable playtesting with individuals. “As developers we know what we want to talk about and how we imagine it being an entertaining game to play,” Landais says, “but it takes asking people how they felt after playing and why. That’s the only way to get this right. 

There’s a sort of trigger warning device at the beginning of Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story which gives you different depths of plot and theme analysis, depending on how much you’re willing to have spoiled.

This is a delicate balancing act that both Accidental Queens games have had to straddle: if people know The Message of a game, it changes how you play and what you’re looking for. How do you put that out into the world without changing how others approach what you’ve made?

Landais says, “We wanted to spoil as little as we can, and going in there was a vague idea of those subjects. We don’t want to say those messages up front because they are more efficient way to play. For example, we wanted to share that psychological manipulation was coming from multiple sources. And if you know that at the start of the game that was still too much.”

But how do you let people know what your game is about? For Landais, the best route for games right now seems to be keeping that a kind of open secret. There are enough people in games-space right now complaining about too much politics in their games.

“I understand where they’re coming from,” Landais says. “We could’ve marketed this as “Oh look at these good LGBTQ people” and look — first of all, if you’re going to market a game like that you’d better deliver. But second, if you announce like that you’re going to drive away the people the need to hear your message. Some people who had “problematic” visions wound up empathizing with characters in our game before they realized what they were reading. You are trying to change someone’s perspective, and telling that in the sale of the idea is not going to let them understand your point better.

Miryam Houali agrees. “Some people say that the game was still too preachy. We wanted players to have their own opinions. We don’t think that people disagreeing with us makes them bad people, we just want to give them the tools to reflect on their beliefs. We can try to touch a lot more people with this approach instead of making overly political games.”

And that’s how Accidental Queens are using a subtle marketing push that leaves all the themes in the background, mixed with spending a majority of their time making sure those same themes are done beyond reproach, to turn out something truly special in Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story.