Here we are once again, seven days later, as if by magic. It’s been a week game-packed with video games of all shapes and sizes. This week we’ve seen Black Friday ‘leaks’ which were too good to be true, news of a Nintendo Store opening in Tokyo (no, amazingly there wasn’t one already) and Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa giving a rare interview to western journalists. Now, though, it’s time to sit back and relax with some of them vidya games.

As ever, Team Nintendo Life has gathered to discuss our weekend plans and we’d love for you to get involved via the comment and poll sections below. Enjoy!

Liam Doolan, news reporter

This weekend I’ll be continuing my adventure in Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. I’ve absolutely loved every single second of this game so far, so I’m looking forward to jumping back in for another prolonged session.

If I manage to rip myself away from this, I plan to spend some more time with The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, as I’m not ready to leave Koholint Island just yet. I’ll also be revisiting Wargroove (which is a game I really need to play more often) and if I get the chance, I might even play some Rocket League.

Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer

No points for anyone guessing that I’m placing (again) two of my GOTYs into my weekend plans: Astral Chain and DAEMON X MACHINA. Feels like I’m purposely not finishing both but the real blame lies with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt which has naturally taken over most of my gaming life. Some multiplayer bouts of River City Melee Mach!! and kaiju-kicking provided by Override: Mech City Brawl round things up nicely for another explosive gaming weekend.

Game of the week is another essential fighting game that arrives fashionably late to the Switch and marks my first time with the series: Skullgirls 2nd Encore feels like an Arc Systems Works fighting game with the animation of Cuphead. If that is not enough to pique your interest, perhaps the incredible soundtrack by the one and only Michiru Yamane might, or the fact my main is a wrestler who fights with a folding chair (cliché!) and an amputated, possessed arm of a giant demon (OK, that’s fresh, even for me!).

Austin Voigt, contributing writer

This weekend, my little brother will be visiting from out of town – so, of course, we’ll be continuing our eternal sibling gaming battle that has been going on since our childhoods – Smash Bros. and Mario Kart will be the deciding factors. After that, he’ll be playing Link’s Awakening for the first time, while I watch and cheerfully withhold any helpful tips from him (I recently received my UK Special Edition in the mail, so I’m bequeathing my Dreamer Edition to him – and he has yet to try it out). I’m sure I’ll also cave and pick up Ring Fit Adventure as well, because it just looks like too much fun. Should make for an entertaining weekend!

Gavin Lane, staff writer

I picked up Xeodrifter for the teeny tiny sum of 99 cents last week, so I’d love to dabble with that if I can wade out of the backlog. I also have a pile of Star Trek games that have been sitting on my desk for a while in preparation for a feature I’ll be cooking up on a month or two. I suppose I should really get started on them. Bit of a shame there are so few decent games set in that universe, really. You could even say that I’ve been hoisted by my own… wait for it… Picard.

Thanks very much – I’ll be here all night. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.

As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to leave a vote in the poll above and a comment below with your gaming choices over the next few days…

Motorsport enthusiasts who own a Switch no longer need to worry about how they’ll get their regular dose of speed on the go now that GRID Autosport has been released. In our review, we gave the Feral Interactive port eight out of ten stars and said it was one of the best racing games on Nintendo’s hybrid system to date.

The tech experts over at Digital Foundry have now gone one step further – praising it as “the best racing sim” they’ve played on the Switch so far. Not to be confused with the reboot GRID on Xbox One, PS4, and PC, GRID Autosport is described as a “deluxe conversion” of the last generation Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title.

So, how does it hold up on Nintendo’s device? The resolution docked runs at 1920 x 1080, or if you play in portable, you’ll get a resolution of 1280 x 720. There’s also a graphics and performance mode to select from within the game menus, and this will further alter the experience. Last of all is a bonus energy saver mode, which is exclusive to handheld play.

On the frame rate front, the game docked in graphics mode runs at a mostly stable 30fps, but can experience the occasional spike and dip. If you play in performance mode while docked, you can expect anywhere between 45 to 60 fps. In portable mode, the energy saver and graphics modes are much the same. As for the performance mode on the go, the frame rate is similar to the fps when docked.

Despite this, DF still considers this to be the best game within this genre that the Switch has to offer right now and it goes far beyond the last generation versions. While it might not be the latest entry in the series, it still does a fantastic job – offering HD texture packs, rumble support, motion controls, hundreds of cars and tracks, and a range of extra options.

Get the full rundown in the video above and tell us how your time on the track has been with GRID Autosport.

News | Bungie.net”> News | Bungie.net”>

PlayStation Xbox Live Battle.net Steam

Jeb has posted a new combat snapshot over on Reddit.

If you missed the original snapshot, you can find it’s Reddit post here.

Below is the post he made, explaining some of the changes made along with how to get this snapshot to try it out.

Feedback for this should be posted on their dedicated feedback page located here: https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/topics/360001335672-Java-Combat-Snapshot

These are the edits in this version:

• Decreased attack speed of swords

• Attacking while crouching will now disable the shield during the attack

• Shields protect against critical attacks again

• Removed auto-attacking by holding the button

• Fixed creative mode bugs

• Fixed scale of the hotbar attack indicator

Some clarifications:

• The theme of the next major update will be announced at MINECON. These combat tests are done in parallel and will be included when they’re good enough (i.e. the next theme is not “combat update”)

• Weapon reach is always active (not only for special attacks), but during special attacks the reach is increased by an additional half a block

• Hold to auto-attack will always be enabled for controller and touch

Installation instructions:

Finding the Minecraft application folder:

• Windows: Press Win+R and type %appdata%.minecraft and press Ok

• Mac OS X: In Finder, in the Go menu, select “Go to Folder” and enter ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft

• Linux: ~/.minecraft or /home/<your username>/.minecraft/

Once you have the launcher set up you can download the server files from there as well.

Cheers!

In site news, you may have noticed that the site is a bit quicker to load (in places). Magic Find has been helping to resolve some of the issues that have plagued the site. They have done some changes which should hopefully mean that the site will load quicker for you and will not have to download as much to get you to your favorite threads.

They have also implemented a change which should fix the long running issue preventing you from viewing your old PMs. If you still have any problems viewing your messages however, please let us know so that we can investigate.

They are still aware of other issues with the site and will be looking at resolving those issues in future updates.

If you notice any problems with the site or have feedback, please let us know in the Forum Discussion and Info section.

Following on from its recent reveal of the Luigi’s Mansion 3 statue, First 4 Figures has now announced its first exclusive PVC statue based on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. As you can see above it’s the princess herself.

Pre-orders for the exclusive edition of this statue are live until 6th December. You’ll have to return to the website to validate your order and confirm your signature edition on Validation Day.

*You must come back to the website on Validation Day, log into your account and VALIDATE your order to confirm your Signature edition.

The estimated release date for this statue is the fourth quarter of this year. Below is a look at all three versions of the statue. The other two will be available at local retailers.

Exclusive Edition – $114.99

The package includes the following:

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Zelda 10″ PVC Painted statue
• Premium Deluxe Box exclusive to First 4 Figures
• Sheikah Slate with LED function
• Base with LED function
• Authentication Card

Product Size:

Statue including base:

• Height – 9.5 inches (24cm)
• Width – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Depth – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Weight – 0.342 KG

Collector’s Edition – $99.99

The package includes the following:-

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Zelda 10″ PVC Painted statue
• Sheikah Slate with LED function
• Base with LED function

Product Size:

• Statue including base:
• Height – 9.5 inches (24cm)
• Width – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Depth – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Weight – 0.342 KG

(Pre-orders available at local retailers)

Standard Edition – $74.99

The package includes the following:-

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Zelda 10″ PVC Painted statue

Product Size:

Statue including base:

• Height – 9 inches (23cm)
• Width – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Depth – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Weight – 0.248 KG

(Pre-orders available at local retailers)

Will you be pre-ordering one of these statues? Leave a comment below.

Athena sprung from the head of Zeus fully-formed. That’s rad. We wish we could say games emerged from our skulls in the same way, but it’s a much more complex, lengthy process. We thought it would be cool to share the inspiration behind our games, to shed some light on the initial ideas that grew into the fully-formed Party Pack 6 that we are thrilled to bring to Xbox One.

The first thing we agreed upon this year was that we wanted to do a reboot of one of our most-loved games, Trivia Murder Party. And like any self-respecting sequel, it needed to be bigger, better, and even spookier. So we set Trivia Murder Party 2 in a haunted murder hotel. Our murderous host is back and this time he’s saddled with the obligation of running his family business and hosting a trivia murder game. (Can men have it all?!) In addition to the new setting, we packed the game with new minigames and mechanics, including bonus, secret scenes that trigger after certain “gifts” come into play. Because we were building on an existing base, we were able to add exciting new layers that transform the original into an even more murderous labyrinth.

In Dictionarium, we wanted to create a word game where you didn’t need a big vocabulary… or really any vocabulary at all. In each game, we give you a gibberish word and you build a whole dictionary entry around it. By the end of the game, you’ll have a winning definition, a synonym, and an example of it being used in a sentence. When designing this game, we made sure to leave all the power in the hands of (gulp) the players. You can get as silly or serious as you want; there are no right answers. We leaned into the idea that a thousand groups could look at the word “qwop” and come up with a thousand different meanings.

Push the Button actually incubated in the Jackbox offices for years before making its debut in Party Pack 6. We knew we wanted to make a hidden identity game and we kicked around multiple iterations before finally pushing the button on Push the Button. In this game, there are aliens hiding in your midst and you have to eject them from the ship before the timer runs out. Personal questions, moral quandaries, writing tasks and drawing games help you slowly sniff out the aliens. We view it as a spiritual successor to Fakin’ It. But in this version, we raised the stakes all the way into space! When we play this game in our office, people yell things like “I actually AM scared of horses, so I’m NOT an alien!” and that’s how we know it’s working.

You know that lively conversation where you and your friends go around sorting each other into wizard boarding school houses? That’s the inspiration behind Role Models. Our dev team wanted to capture the spirit of those lively discussions, but add a Jackbox-twist to them. In Role Models, you sort your friends into oddly specific archetypes, like which kind of ankle tattoo would each of you be? Choose wisely because you get points when you’re in agreement with the group. In the event of a tie, absurd minigames help settle the record. Editorially, we were inspired to explore areas other than pop culture. For example, “Which of your friends would scream HELP ME MOMMY while skydiving?” That is a real question, so start thinking about it now.

For Joke Boat, our inspiration couldn’t have been more simple: make ‘em laugh, baby! It was important for us, when designing this game, to set the player up for success. Since crafting a one-liner from scratch feels daunting, we have players create them in bite-sized steps. After you choose a classic joke structure and topic, you write the punch line. It’s like Build-A-Bear, except appropriate for all ages. There are even funny catchphrases to help buoy you. You can choose to read your joke out loud, or bury your head in your hands while the game presents it for you. But fret not—we intentionally made the stakes very low by placing you on a terrible cruise ship.

So there you have it. That is what inspired us to make The Jackbox Party Pack 6. We hope you have as much fun playing these games as we did making them! Let us know what you think by sharing your thoughts on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Now that you’ve peeked into our brains, we kindly ask you to leave. There are just some thoughts we don’t want you to see.

Thomas Grip thinks a lot about monsters. As the creative director at Frictional Games, developers of horror games including Amnesia: The Dark Descent and most recently Soma, he has substantial sway in how his studio’s creatures look and behave.

Grip shares his fascinating approach to creating the unique monsters of recent existential nightmare, Soma. Not everything went as planned, or came out as expected…

What were some guidelines you had in mind when designing the monsters of Soma?

The first thing about the monster design was that they should relate to the theme somehow—that the monsters were put there for a reason. They should make you think about the story. We also wanted to create monsters that put players on edge, and that boosted their imaginations a bit.

Those were the design cornerstones, but the ideas about the monsters did evolve from the start, because we weren’t really sure how to do the monsters at the start. We weren’t sure how the experience would flow, because there was a lot of testing going on. What we ended up with are monsters that are thematic and put players on edge. That set the framework for the monster design.

Thomas Grip creating horrific monsters

Going through the playtesting, how did playtesters react to the different iterations of monsters, and how did you adapt to that in development?

One of the first ideas that emerged with the monster encounters–around alpha time, or even vertical slice time which is about three years ago–was to get players to feel really uncertain in monsters’ behaviors, as to whether the monsters were hostile or not.

There are some floating robots that we spent weeks on that had this behavior, but they only showed up for a minute or two in the game. [laughs] The idea was that the players would be curious enough to approach monsters, but also be a little bit afraid—that they might keep their distance and watch how [the monsters] reacted.

But it turns out that players didn’t react like that at all. Either they ran straight up to the monsters, which triggered this aggressive behavior, or they’d stay away from them and not really notice them at all.

“It’s that ambiguity that I wanted to convey more in the creatures. But it turned out to be a harder problem than we thought.”

So you didn’t have any of this interesting middle ground where people started to second-guess the monsters at all. So that was all in vain. We then switched gears on the monster design so that they were either really docile or pretty aggressive instead. We had to sort of polarize enemies a little more than before. I’m not sure what went wrong, but I think one thing we missed out on is the narrative bit–that maybe the monsters should’ve spoken clearly, that the monsters should’ve had more foreboding behavior so that players knew what to expect.

But yeah, that was one of the big findings from playtesting, that we had to polarize the monster behavior.

Whether or not the monster design turned out as you initially intended, it’s interesting that you considered prodding a feeling of curiosity about the monsters. I think a lot of times, as a player, you obviously want to stay away from the monsters, or obviously kill them. It’s rare that you’re drawn in by a monster out of curiosity.

Hitting the grey zone of how players approach monsters is a very big part of the game. Not just from an enemy standpoint—which didn’t turn out as good as I hoped—but from a story standpoint, an ethical standpoint, we wanted players to think, “this robot is screaming…am I going to care about it? Or am I ok with that?” Or if you do something that hurts a robot…should you keep doing that?

It’s that ambiguity that I wanted to convey more in the creatures. But it turned out to be a harder problem than we thought.

You said before that the way your team did monster AI in this game was a risky approach. Why was it risky, and what would’ve been a less risky approach?

One aspect that we talked already about was ambiguity [in theme]. But another thing that also has to do with ambiguity is ambiguity in behavior.

The idea was that if you have fast enough behavior that still follows some strict—yet still fuzzy—rules, the player is going to project a lot more intelligence and intent behind the monsters than what actually exists.

We wanted to make sure monster mechanics weren’t like the ghosts from Super Mario where [encounters] became very obvious gameplay objects, in which you try and optimize your path through them as much as possible. Rather, we wanted players to be constantly unsure whether or not they’re doing the right thing.

“If it’s too mechanical, it’s a very uninteresting, systemic feel. And if it’s too random, monster interactions will be a haze that the player can’t make sense of.”

Doing that turned out to be really, really hard! Because the balance you have to have is that if you go to far on the mechanical side, they become gameplay objects. And that’s no fun anymore, because the fear of the unknown is something you want to draw a lot of your horror from. On the other hand, if monster behavior becomes too unknown, then the player has no idea what’s happening with the monsters, and they become an annoyance.

“Can the player make a mental model of them?”: that’s what you always want to be doing, and you always want the richest possible mental models of a monster in a player’s mind as you can have—meaning you want their imagination to be as wild as possible.

But if it’s too mechanical, it’s a very uninteresting, systemic feel. And if it’s too random, monster interactions will be a haze that the player can’t make sense of. So that was the risk.

Some players had one good encounter—some had all good encounters. And it varied which monsters were considered “good” [experience-wise]. Overall, we didn’t hit a good amount of players getting the right kind of experience, even though some players got a perfect experience all the way through.

The thing I’m thinking of is how to fix this. We could’ve made the monsters a little bit better. But then I also think that if we went a safer route, the players who said they had a perfect [monster experience] might not have had such a good experience.

It’s very hard! And it’s an interesting design problem. Am I good with 30 percent of players having a 10 out of 10 experience, or am I ok with no one having a 10 out of 10 experience, but having 60 percent have an 8 out of 10 experience? That’s the risk we took.

Something at the end of the hallway…

How much of this player data that you collected even applicable to future designs?

We’re a bit unsure. One thing that we relied a lot on was to get a lot of gameplay from ‘nothing.’ Just hearing the noises, being in a room wondering where a monster might come from, and seeing the player react told us whether or not we had enough behaviors, enough narrative stuff going on that that would be exciting for players.

Some [long-time horror game] players liked this approach, and some thought, “Auughhh, this is getting boring for me, hiding from monsters is getting old for me!” Whereas other players who’ve not played a horror game since Amnesia thought, “This is awesome!”

“You always want the richest possible mental models of a monster in a player’s mind as you can have—meaning you want their imagination to be as wild as possible.”

Going forward, I think it’s time to leave this “wait-and-run” behavior a bit behind and see what more we can do instead.

You’ve done horror with no combat—do you think you could do horror with no monsters?

Yeah, we kind of already did in Soma. [Ed. note: A certain level in the game plays with this concept.]

Yeah, though I wonder if that’s something sustainable design-wise throughout an entire game, because the fear is still of monsters, although in the anticipation of monsters.

That level was inspired by a staircase simulator, in which all you do is walk down a staircase—that’s the entire game. There’s something about just strolling down that makes it really creepy, especially if you read about the SCP and you know that something’s lurking down there.

But I had trouble getting to the end of that game because nothing happened. My anticipation just kept building and building and building, and it was one of the few games where I’m like, “Fuck, I am not sure if I can handle going down more.” It was just a stupid staircase!

So [in Soma], the idea was to do something similar…where you’re going forward instead. That level was another risk—it was a lot [more difficult] before. From early playtesting we found that players either thought it was the best thing in the whole game, or they hated it. It was almost 50/50.

You brought up that maybe it’s time to move on from this “hide-and-seek” horror game design. Then where does it go?

I have some ideas right now. It’s about expanding upon the things we tried out but that didn’t work. I think we can make them work. The important part is that you don’t want to make things too gameplay-focused.

There are two things that you can do: One, you need to have monsters that still have a lot of unknown to them, but still rely on the player being an active [participant]. The player needs agency in how the encounters play out.

The other thing is that players should have more options in how they go about the way they play. You see it a bit in games like Alien: Isolation where you have crafting and tools to lure the alien in. I think more stuff like that, where the player isn’t just reactive to the horror, but is able to make plans, and have a lot of ways to move forward, [is a design path]. So basically, the players are active in encounters in a way that’s not just about hiding, but also actively encountering monsters—though without fighting them and looking the monster in its face, in order to preserve an element of the unknown.

 It’s about giving more options in these encounters, rather than doing the old hide-in-the-closet trick.

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam!

Monster Hunter: World, the game that brought you a new style of hunting action, is about to get even bigger with the massive Monster Hunter World: Iceborne expansion!

Pre-purchase now to receive the Yukumo Layered Armor Set* free!

*Layered armor only changes your character’s appearance. It does not include any weapons.

NeoAxis 2019.3 was just released.  NeoAxis is a free C# powered 3D game engine with an editor capable of targeting Windows and UWP platforms currently with more planned in the roadmap.  The 2019.3 release brings several major new features such as a new terrain system and a built in 3D building for assembling geometry directly inside the game engine.

Details from the changelog:

• API of the engine and the editor have been updated. Now they are considered complete.
• Terrain.
• Builder 3D. Fast level creation tools, 3D modeling tools, constructive solid geometry operations.
• Three ways to create objects in the scene are now available: Drag & Drop, By Click, By Brush.
• Tools for creation a huge amount of objects.
• Surface component. A definition of surface type which contains material, set of meshes and other objects. Surfaces are used for painting and object creation by means brush.
• Group Of Objects component. An object in a scene designed to store and display a large number of similar objects.
• Decals.
• Material: Advanced blending. The ability to configure which channels to write to the G-Buffer. Used for decals.
• Per-object motion blur.
• Smooth LOD transition.
• Area component. Represents an area in space defined by the set of points.
• Layers in the scene.
• Package manager has been added.
• Support for creating a build for the target platform has been improved. Now scripts and engine add-ons are supported. The process of creating a build is simplified. The page about build in manual has been added.
• Build for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) has been improved.
• Engine DLL assemblies management has been improved. Now unnecessary assemblies are not loaded into the simulation, thereby reducing the load on garbage collector.
• C# Editor: Work with CS files has been improved. Now changes are synchronized between files. Now there are no invalid warning markers.
• C# Editor: The ability to customize the visibility of markers has been added.
• Occlusion query API has been added.
• Lens flares now use occlusion queries to detect visibility on the screen.
• Lens flares now appear and disappear smoothly.
• The ability to change video mode, fullscreen mode, vertical sync in the player app.
• Editor: Tool tips for events.
• Editor: Many small fixes.
• Material Editor: Access to TexCoord 2 and 3 from the shader editor.
• Material Editor: DitherBlending function.
• Objects Window: Search.
• Scene Editor: Select same objects in sphere area by mouse double click.
• Vignetting screen effect: Noise.
• Bug fix: Physics: No collision between soft bodies and rigid mesh shapes.
• Bug fix: Scene Editor: Unable to detach the object when it contains collision body.
• Bug fix: Screen Space Reflection effect fixed.

You can learn more about the release and see NeoAxis in action in the video below.

GameDev News C# Engine