Almost every day, we see waves of online users replying to game reveals with something along the lines of “yeah, but is it coming to Switch”, desperate for another game on their platform of choice. Isn’t it about time we started asking new questions instead of simply port-begging for more games on Nintendo’s newest machine? How about, “yeah, but is it coming to NES” instead? Much better.

That’s right, Soko Banana is a new game currently in development for the trusty Nintendo Entertainment System – a console which was discontinued almost 25 years ago. The game is a puzzler said to “bring hours of fun and challenge” as you make your way through dozens of levels. You visit banana warehouses on different islands, aiming to get all the banana crates to the exit using the environment to your advantage. Traps and enemies are also there to hinder your progress.

We’ve got a feature list for you below.

Features
– A brand new game for the NES, playable on real hardware
– Fun and challenging gameplay mechanics
– 4 different islands – each one will have its own distinct feel, with unique graphics, music and environments
– 10 regular and 2 bonus levels for each island (for a total of 48+ levels)
– A bonus island

The team behind the game are generating funds on Kickstarter as we speak, aiming to make around £4,000. Anyone backing 300 SEK (approx. £24) or higher will receive a physical NES cartridge, with tiers below that getting a digital copy instead.

The project has already generated more than half of the total it’s hoping to raise with 20 days still to go. If you’re interested in learning more or pledging your support, make sure to head over to the Kickstarter page here.

Before you go, though, make sure to leave us a comment letting us know what you think? Do you like the sound of picking up a brand new NES game in 2019?

Finnish developer 10tons has shared the news that its upcoming Switch release Undead Horde will arrive later this week on 15th May.

Receiving “very positive” reviews on Steam since its launch this March, Undead Horde is a combination of action-RPG, real-time strategy, and hack’n’slash genres. As you can see in the trailer above, this one stands out by having players resurrect the dead, going on to command them in all of their evil bidding.

There are true RPG-style features present, too, such as loot collecting, levelling up and questing. This synopsis should fill you in nicely:

You’re a necromancer – a re-animator of the dead. Undead Horde is a necromantic action game with elements from action RPG, strategy and hack’n’slash. Re-animate almost any enemy and build an army of dozens of undead minions. Take command and send your undead war machine against the living and their leader King Paladin Benevictor. Equip your necromancer with endless amounts of loot and lead your army to ultimate victory!

Available in just two days’ time, you’ll be able to snag Undead Horde for $16.99 / £14.99.

Will you be raising an army of the undead this week? Let us know in the comments.

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To try it out, start by searching for something on the map.

Next time you click in the search box on the map, you’ll see suggestions for your most recent searches.

Not the search you were looking for? As you start typing, we’ll look across your recent searches and present suggestions that match your search.

Want to view or delete your search history? Just go to https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/ and sign in to manage your search history.

– The Bing Team

Co-opting a board game motif is small-budget strategy video game design 101. What’s Chess but a strategy game, right? But Chess makes the most of the few pieces, and limited spaces it has. Every piece has a unique movement pattern, and when mixed together, the tactical possibilities are truly enormous. Shattered Plane, the fantasy war game by Eremite Games, is more like Checkers. Units are effectively homogeneous, all playing by similar rules, putting more weight on the player’s every move.

If it wanted to just be Checkers, it may have succeeded.

It’s in its noble attempts to spice up the formula that Shattered Plane loses me. Which is ironic, because my first handful of missions had me wishing there was more to it than what was in front of me. Nodes that represent towns or temples or monuments spawn troops for your team. These troops can be combined together in a single space to up their hitting power, to a max of 99. Everyone moves at the same two space pace, so each turn tends to be a slow trek towards an objective node, or a special unit that must be eliminated. You only have a limited amount of moves per turn, though. So even if you have seven units on the board, you might not be able to move all of them before you pass to the next player.

Together, these simple rules actually make for an easy to grasp game that can be a soft challenge at times. The move limit per turn really makes you think about grander strategy just as often as you might ponder the moment-to-moment tactics. When it’s at its best, I’m struggling to make decisive advances on important targets on one side of the map, while trying to keep important landmarks under control on the opposite side. Great war games can get you thinking on all fronts, and this has flashes of that.

The flash is temporary, of course. Many of Shattered Plane’s other features get in its way. For example, the second state per unit besides troop number it morale. Morale goes up as that unit wins battles or is nearby when an ally attacks someone. They lose it when they lose battles or when their numbers grow. It’s supposed to act like a sort of luck modifier, where higher morale might find your unit doing better in combat then you thought. If unit size is close, morale becomes a difference maker.

The problem arises when morale seems to be doing way more heaving lifting in a combat exchange than you’d think. There were several occasions where my troop totals were significantly higher than an enemy’s, who had higher morale than mine. When my guys got crushed in battle, I was left scratching my head. If there was some sort of transparency surrounding the relationship between morale and battle, that would be one thing. If you’re going to add visible numbers to a game where numbers matter, you have to spell out how they matter more explicitly

Each army is part of a faction that worships a patron that gives them a special ability. These abilities add a little spice to your arsenal, and can change the state of play drastically. Playing through the campaign will get you acquainted with them, and it will also teach you that some are just absolutely more useful than others. This unbalance is also felt pretty heavily in the campaign. The difference between struggling and dominance on two maps with similar objectives is having a ability that lowers the morale of all the enemies, or having the one that adds troops to all your bases. The former is shrug worthy, while the latter is clearly powerful. The AI will introduce some, like one that can obliterate a unit outright, no matter the size or morale. That never feels like anything more than cheating.

There is a Ranked and a Quick Play mode, but these are more score attack leaderboards than multiplayer modes. It’s also where Shattered Plane feels most like a puzzle game. You must select a board, and take control of it from AI opponents in a few moves as you can. It lacks the environmental elements from the campaign mode (the very few that existed), so the boards themselves can feel pretty bland and basic, but it’s a more intense way to play the game.

Shattered Plane doesn’t do anything wrong, necessarily. It’s art is passable and sometimes really cool. It’s story is forgettable but not terribly offensive. The combat gets in its own way by doing too much, yet at the same time, not enough. There’s some enjoyment to be had with this simple strategy game, but it’s inconsistent and won’t last very long.

Another Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, this one is the Humble Book Bundle: Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning by Packt bundle.  This is a collection of e-books (and 3 videos) in mobi, epub and PDF formats around the topics of AI and machine learning from the publisher Packt.  As always, the Humble Bundle is broken up into tiers, where you get all of the books at and below the current tier you purchased.

The tiers in this bundle are:

1$

• Machine Learning For Mobile
• Python Deep Learning
• Unity Artificial Intelligence Programming
• Python Machine Learning By Example
• Mathematical Foundations for AI and Machine Learning

8$

• Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python
• Hands-On Artificial Intelligence for IoT
• Artificial Intelligence by Example
• Hands-On Machine Learning for Algorithmic Trading
• Python Machine Learning Cookbook
• Deep Learning with PyTorch
• Advanced Artificial Intelligence Projects with Python
• Hands-On Python Deep Learning

15$

• Deep Learning for Computer Vision
• Natural Language Processing with TensorFlow
• Advanced Deep Learning with Keras
• Mastering Machine Learning Algorithms
• Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On
• Deep Learning with TensorFLow
• Hands-On Transfer Learning with Python
• Hands-On Deep Learning for Games
• Python Deep Learning Projects
• Deep Learning Architecture for Building Artificial Neural Networks (Video)
• AI For Finance (Video)
• The Complete Machine Learning Course with Python (Video)

As with all Humble Bundles, you can decide how your money is allocated, between the publisher, charity, Humble and even help support GFS (thanks!)  The bundle is available here or learn more in the video below.

GameDev News Book