Category: Game Releases

New game releases.

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Pixelmash 2020 Hands-On

Included in the currently running Humble Game Creator Bundle, today we go hands-on with Pixelmash, a pixel art graphics application for Windows and Mac OS.  Pixelmash is described as:

A New, Easier Way To Make Pixel Art and Animated Sprites

Pixelmash is a new kind of pixel art and animation tool that makes quick work of many of the hardest parts of pixel art. Paint or import high-resolution artwork and then non-destructively pixelize it, animate layers using transforms, and apply advanced layer effects to create stunning art in no time. Mix and match hi-res layers with traditional hand-drawn pixel-by-pixel layers for incredible flexibility!

Pixelmash was recently updated to 2020 version, with new features including:

  • Added save and load custom layer effects
  • Added save project as template (saves all layer effects)
  • Added color profile support and management
  • Added gradient effect
  • Added reference image/layer support
  • Added ability to make parent layer effects not affect children
  • Added ability to paint anywhere in tiled view
  • Bug fixes

In the video below we showcase the features and functionality of this interesting pixel art application.

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Spike Chunsoft announces the release date for Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

Spike Chunsoft has announced the launch of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair on August 20 in Japan. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is the second installment of the Danganronpa series. The franchise is best described as a murder mystery adventure game, but it can be compared to Agatha Christie’s best-selling novel, Murder on the Orient Express. There are a lot of Japanese detective games on mobile, but few of which compares to the Danganronpa series.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair takes place on Jabberwock island, as part of your School Trip. The once-bustling tourist paradise is now uninhabited, but yet somehow in pristine condition. The students of Hope’s Peak Academy are all having fun until Monokuma returns to begin his diabolical game. Now, trapped on an island with a killer on the loose, it’s up to you to solve the mystery: if you want to escape.

As your classmates drop like flies, you must examine the crime scene for clues, interview suspects, and determining the motive for each despicable murder. If Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair sounds like a game you would enjoy, you can check out the trailer included below for more details.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair release date: When will it launch?

Famitsu has confirmed that Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair will launch on iOS and Android on August 20. It will list for 1960 yen, which equates to around $18.

DANGANRONPA 2: GOODBYE DESPAIR trailer: what does the gameplay look like?

If you are yet to play any of the Danganronpa series, then you should check out the trailer below. It shows how you will go about investigating the murders by interviewing your classmates.

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If you are looking for something to play now, why not check out Tales of Crestoria?

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Blender Tools For Unreal Engine Released

Epic Games have just released a new set of tools aimed at making the lives of Blender users easier when working with Unreal Engine.  The tools consist of two projects, Send to Unreal and UE to Rigify.  Both are available on the Epic Games Github page, although you need to link your GitHub to your Epic account before it will work, instructions are available here.

Send to Unreal is a set of tools enabling you to easy export from Blender completely rigged, textured and animated meshes with a single menu selection.  Send To Unreal documentation is available here.

UE to Rigify goes in the other direction and enables you to import Unreal Engine rigs into Blender and make them compatible with Rigify (which needs to be enabled separately).  UE to Rigidy documentation is available here.

You can see the new Blender Tools in action, including a step by step tutorial on using Send To Unreal, in the video below.  It should be noted that you need to configure Blender to use Unreal Engine 0.01 scale, which I personally found extremely buggy in the current release.  Details on scene scale are available here, however at time of writing following these instructions caused Blender to crash every time I copied an armature into the Rig folder.  There is a good chance I did this part incorrectly in the tutorial, but it’s the only way I found to successfully export while not crashing Blender!

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Game Creator Humble Bundle

The Game Creator Humble Bundle is currently running over at Humble.  The bundle contains dozens of game assets including sprites, 2.5D art, battler images and music assets for use in your game, as well as the 001 Game Creator game engine and PixelMash, a pixel graphics application previously covered here.

As with all Bundles this one is organized into tiers, buy a higher value tier and you get all of the content from the tiers below it.

1$ Tier

  • Tales Of The Far East
  • 2.5D Character Pieces Vol. 3
  • Sci-Fi Backgrounds
  • Seraph Circle Monster Pack 1
  • PVGames Sci-Fi Game Assets
  • 2.5D Character Pieces Vol. 2
  • RPG Battlers 2nd 50 Monsters
  • Horror City Sprite Pack 1
  • CyberPop Interior Tiles

15$ Tier

  • Japanese School Interior Game Assets
  • Battling Center Game Assets
  • Inspirational Music Pack Vol 1
  • Seraph Circle Monster Pack 2
  • RPG Battlers 3rd 50 Monsters
  • RPG Battlers 5th 50 Monsters Shades of Battle
  • Horror City Sprite Pack 2
  • Forest Graveyard Game Assets
  • Retro Music Pack
  • 2.5D Character Pieces Vol. 1
  • RPG Battlers 1st 50 Monsters
  • Pixel Animations and Effects

25$ Tier

  • Train Station Game Assets
  • RPG Battlers 4th 50 Monsters
  • RPG Battlers 6th 50 Monsters
  • Horror City Sewer & Factory Tiles
  • Inspirational Music Pack Vol 2
  • Badass Bosses Monster Pack
  • Survival Horror Music Mega-Pack Vol 2
  • 2.5D Medieval Buildings Vol. 2
  • Medieval Music Pack
  • 2.5D Medieval Buildings Vol 1
  • Sci-Fi Foes Monster Pack
  • Japanese Urban Accessories Pack
  • Creature Feature SFX
  • Classical Adventure
  • Kanagawa Game Assets

30$ Tier

  • Omega Modern Graphics Pack
  • Japanese Arcade Game Assets + Music
  • Nightmare Music Pack
  • Dragon’s Den Resource Pack
  • 001 Game Creator
  • Inspirational Music Pack Vol 3
  • Inspirational Music Pack Vol 4
  • Fantasy Beasts Monster Pack
  • Madness Music Pack
  • Mythos: Reawakening
  • Grand Adventure Music Mega Pack
  • 2.5D Monsters: Daemonum Infernum
  • Horror City Tile Pack
  • Seraph Circle Monster Pack 3
  • 2.5D Nature Pack Vol 1
  • Pixelmash
  • PV Games Humble Bundle Exclusive Pack
  • 16Bit Fantasy Action Music Pack

In terms of license details, be sure to note the following:

ATTENTION: These assets are cleared for noncommercial and commercial use in your games and projects, but cannot be resold as standalone game assets.

As with all Humble Bundles, you get to decide how your money is allocated, including the option to support GFS using this link (Thanks so much if you do!).  You can learn more about the pack in the video below.  Stay tuned for a video on 001 Game Creator coming soon.

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Get free in-game goodies for demon-slaying RPG Darkness Rises!

If you’re a person who enjoys the simple things, like running through a dungeon, blending your foes with whirling blades, or facing off against fearsome bosses, then we might have something for you. After our giveaway of the JRPG, Emergent Fates last week, we are now giving away a fair few Android treasure codes for the action-packed, Darkness Rises. It’s a great looking RPG, crossing the hack-n-slash of games like Diablo with challenging boss battles, as you hold the line against a seemingly endless wave of demonic incursions.

Sounds like fun, right? Darkness Rises also has great character customisation options to give you that authentic RPG experience, and some elements of dungeon crawling. You don’t have delve dungeons alone either, as you can join a guild with your adventurer pals, and form a party to take the fight to those demon scoundrels.

Though Darkness Rises launched last year, it still feels pretty chipper with its graphical realism and gorgeous fantasy visuals. If you’re going to murder demons, why not do it in style?

If you’d like to get your hands on an Android code, simply fill in the Gleam form below. We do need your full name and email address so we can contact you in a week’s time if you win though, and we also require that you read our full terms and conditions before you enter. You can find them right here.

PT – Darkness Rises – Android giveaway

Each Android code lets you get your hands on the following in-game:

  • 5 x Costume Chest (Rank A – S++)
  • 500 x Adventure Key
  • 20,000,000 Gold
  • 20 x EXP Boost Ticket
  • 20 x Choice Dye Ticket
  • 10 Costume Deco Chest (Rank A – S++)

Be sure to enter if you want the free stuff! You can find Darkness Rises on Google Play and the App Store. If you also want some other games to sink your teeth into, try out list of the best mobile RPGs.

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Unity Power Tools Bundle

Over on the Unity Asset Store, Unity are running the Power Tools bundle, a collection of addons for the Unity game engine providing functionality from dialog support, to advanced terrain tools and even in game painting capabilities.  This bundle is organized into tiers, buying a higher dollar value tier gives you access to all the lower tiers.

The tiers of this bundle include:

$9.99

  • Editor Console Pro
  • Rainbow Folders 2
  • Tail Animator

$29.99

  • Dynamic Bone
  • The Vegetation Engine
  • Nice Vibrations Haptic Feedback
  • Path Painter
  • Obi Rope
  • Lean Touch+

$59.99

  • Enhanced Scroller
  • Microsplat Terrain Collection
  • Paint in 3D
  • TerraWorld – Automatic Level Designer
  • DoozyUI: Complete UI Management System
  • Poly Few Mesh Simplifier and Auto LOD Generation
  • Dialog System for Unity

If you purchase the bundle using this link, GFS receives a small commission (and thanks if you do!).  You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.  The bundle runs until August 1st, 2020.

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FamiStudio–NES Style Music Editor

Today we are checking out FamiStudio, a lighter weight alternative to programs like FamiTracker, that make it easy to create 8bit style musical scores.  Features of FamiStudio include:

  • Modern DAW-style UI with sequencer and piano roll, no hexadecimal anywhere
  • Instrument & Envelope edition
  • NSF import
  • Full Undo/Redo support
  • Copy & Paste support
  • Note drag & drop with audio preview
  • Import from FamiTracker FTM & Text (official 0.4.6)
  • Export to various formats (WAV, ROM, NSF, FamiTone2, FamiStudio Text, FamiTracker Text)
  • Volume, fine pitch, vibrato effect tracks
  • Slide notes (portamento)
  • Basic MIDI input support
  • Audio expansions supported: VRC6, VRC7, FDS, MMC5, Namco 163 & Sunsoft S5B.
  • Low CPU usage (Direct2D for graphics, XAudio2 for audio)

FamiStudio is open source under the MIT source license, with the C# based code available on GitHub.  You can learn more about FamiStudio in the video below.

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Dust3D Modeling Application

Dust3D is an open source 3D modeling application we first looked at back in April of 2018.  Since that time Dust has improved a great deal, including winning a Epic MegaGrant award.  Dust3D is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and is open source on GitHub under the MIT open source library.  Key features of Dust3D include:

Free and Open-Source

Yes, it’s free. And it’s cross-Platform, no matter you are on Windows, Linux, or MacOS, the same experience you’ll get.

The Easiest Game Asset Pipeline

With Dust3D, you’ll see yourself finish a game asset in a blink! Dust3D also supports export your model as FBX and glTF format, so that you can then import the files into softwares like Unreal Engine, Unity, and Godot for further development.

Start Modeling with Zero Experience

Believe it or not, you don’t need any experiences to make a 3D model with Dust3D, all you’ll need are good reference photos. There’re more videos on this.

You can learn more about Dust3D and see it in action in the video below.  You can download several example Dust3D projects here.

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Nier Reincarnation is getting a closed beta later this month

Square Enix recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of the cult JRPG Nier’s launch on PS3 and Xbox 360 with an exciting livestream that detailed the series’ future. Not only was a remake of the original announced in the form of Nier Replicant (for PS4, Xbox One, and PC) but a mobile exclusive entry is also in the works.

Nier Reincarnation launches a closed beta across Android and iOS later this month, though it’s only open to people in Japan right now. There are 10,000 spots available for both platforms, and registrations are open until July 26. However, if the closed beta is oversubscribed, who gets to play is decided with a lottery draw. Sounds fair to us!

We don’t know that much about Nier Reincarnation just yet, but we’re able to surmise some details from the most recent trailer. Reincarnation seems to feature a young female protagonist, with a ghost-like companion, and in the trailer we see her wandering through expansive open locations, such as a stone city in the sky. The game also shows some party-based combat, and pretty fancy side-scrolling 2D sections.

It’s not a whole lot to go on, but you can check out the trailer below for more visual details on the game:

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Aside from what we see in the trailer, we know Square Enix is producing while Applibot is tasked with development duties. Cydesignation is also working on character design, and we know that Reincarnation takes place in a new Nier location called ‘The Cage’.

Square Enix has launched an official website dedicated to the game in Japan, so you can bookmark that if you’re desperate to learn more. It’s pretty bare bones, but chances are it will receive regular updates as we head towards launch. If you’re the social media type, you can also follow the official Twitter and Facebook pages to receive updates directly.

If you need something Nier-ish to play in the mean time, be sure to check in with our list of the best mobile RPGs, and the best mobile MMORPGs.