Don’t Miss: Inside the narrative design of Control, Remedy’s least linear game
Last month Remedy Entertainment launched Control to the world, its latest game in a lineage of narrative-driven experiences, from Max Payne to Quantum Break.
Protagonist Jesse Faden is trapped inside an ever-shifting environment called The Oldest House, looking for answers about the past and current events in the Federal Bureau of Control, an entity dedicated to studying anomalies.
In an effort to better understand the making of the game’s critically-acclaimed narrative Gamasutra chatted with Brooke Maggs, a narrative designer at Remedy who has previously worked on The Gardens Between, Florence, and Paperbark, about her experience working to craft Control‘s eerie setting.
Working in a new IP of this scale opened up an extensive playground for experimentation, and posed some new challenges for the team at Remedy.
Maggs says that previously the studio focused on fairly linear games, where players just followed the story through, getting to know the narrative and engaging in combat from time to time. But this time it was different, since the design of The Oldest House encourages players to plot their own routes through the world. Along with the main story path there are side missions, videos playing on TVs, and audio logs to find, all of which had to be wrapped up neatly alongside Control‘s core narrative.
“We had to make decisions about what key concepts to introduce in the main story, and how to build out the world in the side missions. An example [for this] is getting to know more about characters just by interacting with them, doing favors and helping get things under control with the Bureau,” Maggs explains, noting that the Control team are counting on curiosity driving players to seek out more narrative content in the corners of the game.
“They can choose just to power through the main missions or they can follow it during side missions… and not a lot of the these are actually super clear either, so it encourages discovery,” she adds. “If you’re curious about a red light in a room, that will link to something. And that’s really nice too. We’re encouraging players to be curious and then rewarding that curiosity with narrative, as well as some [character] abilities on the side, things like that.”
Control also relies on environmental objects (think: documents and tapes lying out on desks) to give players the backstory of characters and small details of the world in short doses, but making them available in a game punctuated by room-destroying combat proved to be tricky, considering Jesse can levitate and use telekinesis to rip fixtures off walls, lob desks or other heavy furniture, and generally make a mess of the place.
Maggs explains that, because everything is reactive and dynamic in the environment, they had to plan how to avoid game design pifalls like making a single table in a room static and immovable because it has a valuable narrative document on it. Instead, they worked to place those narrative bits in parts of the game world that weren’t likely to be disrupted, but were also easy to find.
Some of the bigger narrative payoffs were instead transmitted through live-action video of actors that plays during the game (and can also be accessed from an in-game menu), minimizing the odds of players being distracted by combat.
“So when [Director Zachariah] Trench appears to Jesse, that’s happening while the player is still moving around the environment, so we don’t actually take control and show a cinematic in that point,” adds Maggs. “we leave the freedom [to] the player so they can still look around.”
Filling the nooks and crannies
Though Maggs didn’t write them specifically, she was also involved in the design of Control‘s audio logs from the beginning. The Control team had a spreadsheet where they would decide what they wanted to include that wasn’t already covered in the main story, and then go from there. This covered topics like everyday life in the Bureau, objects of interest, and other quotidian day-to-day happenings in a paranormal environment.
Notably, Maggs says the team spent significant time ironing out the reason why characters would record specific audio logs in order to add to the realism, a concern that hasn’t been as significant in some of her prior work.
“[The setting] was really interesting because the world in Control, I guess has a different purpose? So, the world in The Gardens Between is very metaphorically, because the whole fantasy was created by [the characters] memories’ together, and everything that you were doing was uncovering what had happened in this friendship. Whereas the world in Control, first and foremost [during] development we looked at questions like ‘what is the Oldest House, how does it work, how was the Bureau?’ and this was actually creating a realistic narrative world in a much larger scale.”
She compares it to Florence, Mountain’s 2018 mobile hit about the main character’s relationship and the ways it’s reflected in the micro-world arounder. But in Control, the world is much larger and can be considered a character in itself; according Maggs, the same applies to the Oldest House.
On paper, this process involved asking herself questions of what stories each location could tell, about both when the player is traversing such spaces and what happened before. Something as mundane as the game’s safe rooms, for example, required a lot of brainstorming beforehand.
“We’ve had some things put in the safe room by the level designers and we were like ‘that’s a great idea but realistically these would not be in a safe room,” says Maggs while laughing. “All of that was awesome. I remember sitting with environment artists and level designers talking about how to put more of the story into the world.”
Often, these artists and designers would come up with better ideas than the narrative team once they actually had the narrative context for these spaces. “That’s their art form, telling story in the environment and thinking that through,” adds Maggs. “Environment artists know exactly what works, what color to put on the floor in a certain sector, because there was a design document for that… I mean these people don’t mess around. Working with people who have that level of detail to the world was super cool.”
According to Maggs, creativity and attention to detail is common at Remedy. “The Threshold Kids”, a live-action puppet show presented in Control, was hand-crafted by a cinematic designer. The idea came from the narrative team, but it was the designer who actually built the puppets himself, using a studio downstairs as a set to record the scenes present in the game.
A career in narrative design
Maggs’ role intertwines with basically all other sectors at Remedy, as she focuses on the overall story and the player’s experiene of it. While writers have to focus on characters, thinking about the words they use and how they articulate them, or authoring a backbone for a mission and how that’s going to work, Maggs’ job is to bring together all the people who have touched said mission. This involves sound design, lighting, VFX effects, level design, environment art, animation, and writing.
“We all go through a side mission together and say ‘Jesse needs to say something here, we need an animation of her opening a door, we need a sound effect for the door opening, we need lighting on the door so people can see it’ and that’s [usually] what I do,” Maggs explains. “Then, I follow up and answer questions about the story that might help…that’s where we come in, sort of like a walking dictionary for the world [of Control].”
Some of the new skills Maggs picked up while working on Control involve working with actors, recording and pacing dialogue, and getting people inspired to contribute to the story.
“When we were sort of saying like ‘we’ve got this narrative idea’ and people would be ‘that’s very strange, what are you doing?’ we were like ‘well, bear with us!’” she tells Gamasutra. “I think I’ve learned a lot about championing the story and helping guide people to sort of all have the same idea of something in their heads, which is a challenge. I’ve also learned about attention to detail in a world, especially from Sam Lake. He really thinks through everything meticulously, and I thought that’s the kind of craftsmanship that comes from years of working in narrative games. So that was really incredible.”
To anyone wanting to get into narrative design, Maggs’ advice is to understand story and story structure. She adds that her background in writing and editing has been really helpful. Even if she doesn’t directly do those things in her job, she has done a lot of writing regarding design documents. All of it has to be clear to convey an idea, and whether that’s fiction or non-fiction, it’s an important skill to have.
“I’d also encourage people to play games that have a strong narrative design to them, like Her Story, which is a good example of a story that’s told with the way you interact with the game. Understanding game mechanics and what those make players feel it’s important,” she says. In addition, thinking and looking at ways other media tell stories — that it’s not to do with words but rather images, color, and sound — is key. Maggs mentions Journey as a prime example of this, since there is no text or speech in the game, and how they examined that aspect when she was working on The Gardens Between.
“Pursue what you’re really interested in, because narrative design can be a lot of different things, from interactive text games to puzzle or action adventure,” she concludes. “Find the games that you love, dissect them and see how their work.”
Review: Thief of Thieves: Season One – More Of A Snore Than A Score
It’s not hard to see what Rival Games was thinking with Thief of Thieves. Take a long-running comic series by Robert Kirkman, co-creator of The Waking Dead, give it the Telltale Games treatment with fancy cel-shaded comic book stylings, add some Hitman-lite sneaking about in trendy European locations with a gang of smart-mouthed Ocean’s Eleven-esque characters and bingo! You’ve got a surefire thing on your hands.
Except no. Not if you only manage to nail the aesthetic and then proceed to layer it on top of tediously basic gameplay, broken AI, dire acting, a pain-in-the-ass main protagonist and by-the-numbers storyline. We’re sorry to report that Thief of Thieves is a bad game; one that was rough enough on PC but is made even worse here by a shoddy, buggy Switch port that’s an absolute slog to play through.
From the moment we’re introduced to Celia, the central protagonist of the story and protégé of Conrad Paulson, the titular Thief of Thieves from the comic books, things aren’t looking great. Apprehended at an airport and taken away for interview, Celia is immediately unlikable. She’s overly cocky with a terrible line in sarcastic humour which colours the response choices you’re given during her conversations. Almost every time we were presented with a selection of her answers to straightforward questions, we baulked at the fact we had to be so terribly unwitty with our inquisitors, our sassy responses far more cringe-worthy than in any way cool. It’s bad, and in no way enamours you to the character you’re playing, but it’s a situation made much worse once the gameplay kicks in.
Over the course of the handful of short missions included in season one – this is a game you’ll polish off in four hours if you stick around to the ending – you’re forced to partake in some very basic and clunky Hitman-style breaking and entering; gathering info at a fancy cocktail party, blackmailing a train worker, infiltrating the exact same train station twice at different times of the day and doing some sneaking about on a train full of your adversaries.
Every single one of these missions is hamstrung by bad dialogue, clunky controls and constant stuttering and framerate problems. There’s a bug which crashes you to the homescreen, absolutely dumb AI (at one point a guard caught us infiltrating an off-limits area, threw us to the ground then just walked away because they forgot what they were doing as they were doing it) and a terrible camera that can move between two viewpoints in a scene at any one time – both of which often make it impossible to see any of the important elements of the scenario you’re currently embroiled in.
You’ve got an intuition mode, initiated by a press of the L button, which throws up hints, tips and little bits of dialogue – stylishly splashed across the background scenery of the level you’re playing – that take away every single ounce of challenge or actual thinking you might have been expected to do in order to complete your current mission. Intuition will tell you where to walk, what to think and exactly how you should go about retrieving whatever it is you’re in need of at any given time, and you’ll use it, because the nonsensical story does a terrible job of informing you what’s going on for the most part, and you’ll be wanting to get through things as quickly as possible by any means necessary. There’s no feeling of achievement or pride in completing anything here; it’s just a clunky mess that you’ll bumble your way through like Inspector Clouseau, sans the comedy.
Let’s talk about some other aspects of the gameplay. You can vault over walls and other obstacles – except sometimes you can’t, the game picking and choosing at random when it feels like having its most basic mechanics work. There are empty cans that you can throw to distract guards as you sneak around the pixelated and blurry levels, but they’re awkward to use and essentially useless as the guards don’t get distracted for long enough for you to sneak past a lot of the time, often turning around as you’re crouch-walking by – but it’s fine, as there’s a good chance they won’t notice you anyway because somebody forgot to program the AI properly.
On one occasion we fell off the roof of a museum – a very high roof – tumbled down the side, smashing through some scaffolding and crashing noisily into a floodlit area patrolled by a few security guards. Celia didn’t get hurt, perhaps cushioned somehow by her overwhelmingly annoying personality, and the guards still didn’t react; we were free to get on with milling about, pushing and pulling at random bits and pieces until we gave up, hit intuition and proceeded on our merry way, Celia snapping her fingers and giving it “piece of cake” as she waltzed out of the level.
There are QTEs that you’ll fail because speech bubbles pop up in front of the command prompts, horrendous stuttering every time you change camera angles and lots and lots of overly long loading times breaking up the levels, so you have plenty of time to think about all the other games you could have been playing instead of wasting your time with this.
Conclusion
Thief of Thieves is an awful video game. It’s tedious and clunky, has broken AI, awful dialogue, miserable characters and a boring story that has absolutely nothing of interest to say or add to the heist genre. Its cel-shaded, comic-book style graphics are a strong point, but they’re compromised here by a weak Switch port that’s too blurry in handheld mode and horribly pixelated when you dock it to play on a big screen. There are also a handful of unforgivable technical issues; noticeable framerate problems, a bug that crashes you back to your console’s homescreen and overly long loading times that break up the gameplay far too often. In short, this is a crime-heist caper that’s out to rob you of your time and money and is, in every conceivable way, much more of a snore than a score. Avoid.
Pokemon Sword And Shield Had A Record-Breaking Opening Weekend
We recently saw Pokemon Sword and Shield had a striking debut in Japan, but now Nintendo has released worldwide numbers, and they're big. Fat Pikachu big. In fact, the latest from Game Freak has broken a franchise record, and very likely rocketed to a spot among the top-selling Switch games.
According to Nintendo, the game has sold 6 million units worldwide during the launch weekend alone. Nintendo notes this figure is reported sell-through to consumers. Sword and Shield also sold 2 million copies in the first two days in the United States, which makes it the highest-grossing Pokemon launch.
Given the current figures on the Nintendo Switch sales charts, that debut of 6 million already makes Pokemon Sword and Shield the #8 spot in all-time sales. That presumes the others below it--New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Super Mario Maker 2, and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening--remain in their current positions. But given that this is just first-weekend sales for Pokemon we can expect its numbers to grow throughout the holiday season as well. The next Nintendo earnings report will refresh the sales charts early next year, factoring in software sales through the end of the year.
It's not surprising to see Pokemon rise quickly through the charts, however. The all-time 3DS sales charts show Pokemon games composing three of the top five spots. Those are occupied by Pokemon X/Y, Sun/Moon, and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, respectively.
"In collecting, battling, and exploring, Sword and Shield cut out the bloat and focus on what makes these pillars of the Pokemon games so captivating in the first place," Kallie Plagge wrote in GameSpot's review. "You're not held back by overly complicated back-end systems or hoops to jump through; from the outset, you can start wandering the Galar region, seeing its new Pokemon, and trying out its new battle strategies with very little in your way. This leaves you free to enjoy what Pokemon is all about, and that makes for an incredibly strong showing for the series' proper debut on Switch."
Today Epic Games have announced the acquisition of Quixel, the maker of the massive MegaScans PBR texturing library as well as texture creation and management tools Quixel Bridge and Mixer. The acquisition is a gigantic boon for Unreal Engine developers, as they will get access to the massive texture libraries for free! Additionally, even non-UE4 users benefit from this deal, as Megascans subscriptions are being improved and Mixer and Bridge 2020 are both being released for free!
Today we are thrilled to announce that Quixel, creator of the world’s largest photogrammetry asset library and bundled toolset, has joined the Epic Games family! Founded in 2011, Quixel is based in Sweden, and over 100 employees across six countries worldwide are joining the Epic Games team. Quixel’s products include Megascans, an extensive library of 2D and 3D photogrammetry assets, supported by companion applications Bridge and Mixer.
[SNIP]
As part of making the Quixel Megascans library of more than 10,000 assets free for all use with Unreal Engine, ten high-resolution packs have been shared today for free on the Unreal Engine Marketplace, as well as assets from the popular Iceland collection used in the “Rebirth” cinematic short. Additional asset packs will be made available for free on the Marketplace at a future date within the Unreal Engine 4.24 release timeframe.
And more details from the Quixel blog:
Megascans becomes free for use with Unreal Engine
The Megascans library is now completely free for use with Unreal Engine.
That means that if you are using Megascans with UE4, you get free, unlimited, and instant access to all of Megascans through Bridge and Mixer, and a wealth of Megascans packs on the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Ten high-resolution packs have been shared today for free on the Unreal Engine Marketplace, with additional asset packs being made available for free on the Marketplace at a future date within the Unreal Engine 4.24 release timeframe. This way, you can access the content in whatever way you prefer.
If you’re using Megascans only with UE4, we’ll refund all of your subscriptions for 2019. If you have an active subscription, log in to find out how to obtain a refund. If you have made Megascans purchases in 2019, but do not have an active subscription, we’ll reach out to you regarding refunds.
Megascans subscription prices lowered for everyone
Furthermore, with the generous backing of Epic, we’re immediately slashing the pricing of Megascans, giving you nearly twice as much content to download, and removing the resolution cap—for everyone, regardless of what engine, DCC or renderer you love and rely on. We’re also giving you a refund for the remaining duration of your subscription period to allow you to hop onto one of our new plans. If you have an active subscription, log in to find out how to obtain a refund.
Bridge and Mixer 2020 will be 100% free for everyone
But that’s not all. Epic is helping us make the upcoming 2020 versions of Bridge and Mixer 100% free for everyone, with no subscription required and both fully featured. We are releasing these new free versions within a few weeks from now and I’m thrilled to finally be able to share with you the upcoming updates.
Excellent news all around! If you want to learn more, be sure to check out our video below. If you want to see Quixel in action, be sure to check out our earlier hands-on video.
By William Gallagher Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 12:46 pm PT (03:46 pm ET)
The CEO of influential magazine publisher Conde Nast says he hopes Apple News+ will be a success, but so far “the jury is out,” and his company hasn’t seen the expected impact.
Magazines in Apple News+ on an iPad (Source: Apple)
Roger Lynch, CEO of publisher Conde Nast, says its magazines —including Vanity Fair and Conde Nast Traveler —have yet to see the success on Apple News+ that was expected. The company, whose titles regularly reach 84 million readers across print and digital services, had an initial burst of new subscribers but that interest failed to continue.
According to Variety, Lynch was talking at the Recode Code Media conference about issues including both publishing and streaming.
“I hope Apple News+ is wildly successful,” he said. “[However] I think the jury is out.”
Conde Nast was one of the original publishers on Apple News+ when it launched in the US and Canada in March 2019. Lynch says that, as reported on AppleInsider within the first 48 hours of that launch, Apple News+ signed up 200,000 subscribers, but has struggled to grow further.
Apple News+ subscriptions begin with a free month’s trial, but Lynch said he was specifically talking about paying ones, so people who continued after that initial period. Users pay a single subscription and publishers earn part of their revenue through a share of that fee —the rest through advertising and selling direct subscriptions —though Lynch declined to say how much the company had earned.
He did speak to an issue that has previously concerned other publishers, that of the comparatively low price Apple News+ subscription undercutting other firms. Lynch was asked about how it affects publishers trying to build their own services, and whether it meant users could circumvent paywalls.
“We haven’t seen that effect,” he said.
Magazines on Apple News+
Lynch joined Conde Nast in April, so after the firm negotiated terms with Apple for the service, but says the publisher could ultimately quit Apple News+ if necessary. “Over time, we have options,” he said.
While Apple News+ has been available in the US and Canada for most of the year, it only began in the UK and Australia countries in September. Publishers in Europe have reported that the service is paying off for them, if not dramatically.
“We’re seeing quite good traffic from Apple News,” said one unnamed publishing executive, “but the revenue is not show-stopping.”
Nonetheless, rival organisations are seeing the potential value of a news service and CNN is reported to be planning its own competitor to Apple news+, as is Mozilla.
These services are available with a free account from the Fedora Accounts System (FAS). This account is the passport to all things Fedora! This article covers how to get set up with an account and configure Fedora Workstation for browser single sign-on.
Signing up for a Fedora account
To create a FAS account, browse to the account creation page. Here, you will fill out your basic identity data:
Account creation page
Once you enter your data, the account system sends an email to the address you provided, with a temporary password. Pick a strong password and use it.
Password reset page
Next, the account details page appears. If you want to contribute to the Fedora Project, you should complete the Contributor Agreement now. Otherwise, you are done and you can use your account to log into the various Fedora services.
Account details page
Configuring Fedora Workstation for single sign-On
Now that you have your account, you can sign into any of the Fedora Project services. Most of these services support single sign-on (SSO), so you can sign in without re-entering your username and password.
Fedora Workstation provides an easy workflow to add your Fedora credentials. The GNOME Online Accounts tool helps you quickly set up your system to access many popular services. To access it, go to the Settings menu.
Click on the option labeled Fedora. A prompt opens for you to provide your username and password for your Fedora Account.
GNOME Online Accounts stores your password in GNOME Keyring and automatically acquires your single-sign-on credentials for you when you log in.
Single sign-on with a web browser
Today, Fedora Workstation supports three web browsers out of the box with support for single sign-on with the Fedora Project services. These are Mozilla Firefox, GNOME Web, and Google Chrome.
Due to a bug in Chromium, single sign-on doesn’t work currently if you have more than one set of Kerberos (SSO) credentials active on your session. As a result, Fedora doesn’t enable this function out of the box for Chromium in Fedora.
To sign on to a service, browse to it and select the login option for that service. For most Fedora services, this is all you need to do; the browser handles the rest. Some services such as the Fedora mailing lists and Bugzilla support multiple login types. For them, select the Fedora or Fedora Account System login type.
That’s it! You can now log into any of the Fedora Project services without re-entering your password.
Special consideration for Google Chrome
To enable single sign-on out of the box for Google Chrome, Fedora takes advantage of certain features in Chrome that are intended for use in “managed” environments. A managed environment is traditionally a corporate or other organization that sets certain security and/or monitoring requirements on the browser.
Recently, Google Chrome changed its behavior and it now reports Managed by your organization or possibly Managed by fedoraproject.org under the ⋮ menu in Google Chrome. That link leads to a page that says, “If your Chrome browser is managed, your administrator can set up or restrict certain features, install extensions, monitor activity, and control how you use Chrome.” However, Fedora will never monitor your browser activity or restrict your actions.
Enter chrome://policy in the address bar to see exactly what settings Fedora has enabled in the browser. The AuthNegotiateDelegateWhitelist and AuthServerWhitelist options will be set to *.fedoraproject.org. These are the only changes Fedora makes.
Level-5’s Snack World Is Finally Making Its Way To The West
Level-5’s Snack World is finally making its western console debut in Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl – Gold, which is due to launch Nintendo Switch on 14th February 2020.
A fantasy RPG with a storyline that combines humour and technology, Snack World is part of a multimedia franchise which includes toys, TV shows and – of course – video games. The series started on the 3DS with The Snack World: Trejarers in 2017, but it never made it out of Japan. Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl – Gold is an expanded version of the 3DS game, released in Japan under the title The Snack World Trejarers Gold.
Here’s the PR:
What happens when high fantasy, high comedy and a high-tech setting collide? A veritable feast of thrilling action, saucy snark and outrageous food puns! SNACK WORLD: THE DUNGEON CRAWL — GOLD, the one-of-a-kind dungeon crawling RPG from LEVEL-5, arrives on Nintendo Switch on 14th February, 2020. Check out the Announcement trailer on our YouTube channel.
Danger threatens Snack World when the evil mogul Sultan Vinegar attempts to resurrect the Deodragon, Smörg Åsbord. In this quirky adventure, customise your character and join the heroic treasure hunters Chup, Mayonna and the gang as they make their way through a slapstick comedy-filled quest to restore order to the land of Tutti-Frutti.
Before setting out, prepare for the next adventure by shopping at curiously state-of-the-art convenience stores for supplies, optimising your gear and more. During your crawl through each procedurally-generated dungeon, search for rare treasure and loot while dodging treacherous traps and defeating brutal bosses. Use ‘snacks’ to summon special allies that assist in battles; switch up your equipment, called ‘jaras’, on the fly; and capitalize on consumables to gain an edge in combat. Team up with friends to take down big bosses with even bigger attitudes in online* and local co-op for up to four players.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-21-2019, 12:31 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Pokemon Sword And Shield Sell Big In Japan In First Week
Pokemon Sword and Shield are, perhaps unsurprisingly, off to a strong start in Nintendo's native Japan. According to Famitsu (via Gematsu), the pair of Pokemon games sold a combined 1.36 million retail copies within their first three days. That makes it the best-selling opening week for a Switch game in Japan, surpassing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's 1.23 million.
That number is already a strong debut, but even stronger when you consider that the figure only includes physical game copies and download codes, not digital sales directly through the Eshop. When Nintendo factors digital sales, as well as those from other territories, it's bound to grow substantially.
Those strong sales make it likely to appear on a future edition of Nintendo's all-time sales charts. Pokemon games tend to make appearances on those charts. Currently Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee occupy the #5 spot for all-time Switch software sales, with 11.28 million units. For a look at how dominant Pokemon can be, though, the 3DS chart shows a Pokemon game occupying three of the top five, bested only by Mario Kart 7.
"In collecting, battling, and exploring, Sword and Shield cut out the bloat and focus on what makes these pillars of the Pokemon games so captivating in the first place," Kallie Plagge wrote in GameSpot's review. "You're not held back by overly complicated back-end systems or hoops to jump through; from the outset, you can start wandering the Galar region, seeing its new Pokemon, and trying out its new battle strategies with very little in your way. This leaves you free to enjoy what Pokemon is all about, and that makes for an incredibly strong showing for the series' proper debut on Switch."
There is another Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, this one is the Humble Music and Sound Effects for Games, Films, and Content Creators Bundle. It is a collection of audio resources including music packs, special FX and voice overs. As always the bundles are organized into pricing tiers, where if you buy a higher dollar value tier, you get all of the lower value tiers below it.
The tiers of this bundle are:
1$
Cute GUI Sound Set
Christmas Music Pack
Christmas Ambience Pack
Christmas SFX Pack
Sassy Character Sidekick Voicepack
Aggressive Female Celebratory Phrases
Voice Over Young Male
RTS Game Orc Troop Voice
Game Jingles and 8-Bit Sound FX
SHMUP Music Pack
Casino SFX Pack Lite
Home and Office SFX Pack Lite
13$
Pirate Game Sounds Pack
Horror Music Atmospheres
Fantasy Game Sounds
Evil Alien Tech Sound Pack
Horror SFX Pack
Short Female Interjections
Sword & Knife SFX
Horror & Halloween Character Voice Pack
RTS Game Builder Goblin Voice
RTS Game Hero Troop Voice
RTS Game Hero Builder Voice
WW2 Soldier Voices
Retro Platformer SFX Pack
8Bit Brave Adventure 4 Pack
Footstep Sounds
25$
Mega Music Collection
Dark Fantasy Studio Megapack
Puzzle SFX Pack
Puzzle Music Pack
Zombie Voice Samples
Cowboy Voice Samples
Gun Sound Pack
Sci Fi Sounds and Sci Fi Weapons
Aggressive Female MOBA Style Voicepack
Aggressive Female Guiding Voice Voicepack
Fighting Game Announcer With Effects
RPG Magic SFX Pack 2
Casual Game SFX Pack
Fantasy/RPG Music Pack
RPG Battle Themes
Pixel Platformer Music Pack
As with all Humble Bundles, you get to decide how your money is allocated, between the publisher, Humble, charity, or if you so choose (and thanks a ton if you do!) to support GameFromScratch using this link. You can learn more about the bundle in the video below. The license terms of the bundle are available here.
This is the Police spin-off ‘Rebel Cops’ is coming to mobile
By Joe Robinson19 Nov 2019
Admittedly, we weren’t the biggest fans of This is the Police. While the management/tactical strategy series had potential, a lot of it was wasted on terrible characters and a questionable premise, which is something that wasn’t really addressed in the sequel either (despite other improvements).
One thing that always worked well though, regardless of everything around it, were the tactical battles. Perhaps the developers realised this too because in September this year they released Rebel Cops, a spin-off to This is the Police that focuses purely on the tactical strategy elements. To summarize from the official blurb:
Lead a ragtag squad of cops in rebellion against their town’s new criminal power to see how long you can hold out when you’re constantly short on supplies and a single shot can cost a cop their life.
It still sounds like it’s trying to be edgy, but you can forgive a lot with an engaging tactical layer, so on paper this still has potential. As the headline states, this is now coming to mobile, which is why we care:
There’s no release window, other than “soon”, sadly, but we do know that it’ll contain roughly 15 hours of gameplay, will be a premium title, and won’t contain ads or micro-transactions (and it’s not going to Apple Arcade). We’ll let you know more as it comes in.
Keep an eye out for when Rebel Cops releases on iOS and Android.
