The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

Crate Entertainment, the creators of Grim Dawn, are looking for a 3D tech artist who will be passionate about working with the team to realize the technical and aesthetic goals of our next games. Primary duty will begin on an unannounced game being developed with Unreal Engine. For that reason, the ideal candidate will have expertise with Unreal Engine and tools that can be leveraged for the benefit of other team members.

We currently have multiple projects in the works using both commercial and proprietary engines. Crate is a small but well funded and independent studio with no need for publishers or investors. Our culture is casual and no-BS but we also pride ourselves in efficiency and working hard. Crate has no physical office and has always operated on a remote, work-from-home model.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the creation of 3D art assets on various projects. We do not currently have specific character or environment roles, so you must be willing to work on either or both as needed.
• Help in setting up tools, workflows and materials / shaders for other content creators.
• Work with engineers to maintain and optimize game performance.
• Work with designers and engineers to rapidly iterate and refine gameplay systems and features.

Requirements

• 4+ years industry experience, with experience working in Unreal Engine.
• At least one credit on a released PC / Console game.
• Proficient with 3D Studio Max
• Mastery of UE4 blueprint, material editor, shader graph, cascade and post processes.
• Understanding of UE4 art and animation process and pipelines
• Self-directed, with an ability and initiative to assess your own work and continue to improve it and bring it up to an exceptional level of quality.
• Ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with team members and potentially handle working on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Must be living in or willing to relocate to MA, NH, CA, or FL (due to payroll and tax logistics). Crate can assist with relocation costs.

Desired Qualifications

• Love for RPG and Strategy games.
• The ability to rig, animate and implement character animations is a big plus.
• Experience creating effects
• Enjoy working in a semi-realistic, detailed art style as seen in our existing games.

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

The holidays are a wonderful time for rest and recuperation. For a number of different reasons, you may find yourself spending more time at home than ever over the next two weeks with plenty of time to kill.

Why not spend some of that time catching up on GDC talks you may have missed out on?

For your benefit, we’ve gone ahead and picked out a few particularly worthwhile sessions from GDCs of years past that may help you gear up for 2021.

Whether you’re the kind of developer who likes keeping talks on as background noise, or want to sit down and take notes about something you didn’t know about in game development, these talks should help jog your brain and keep you inspired over your long winter’s rest.

So You’re Ready to Pitch to a Publisher? You’re Not

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In 2021, developers of all sizes will be gearing up to pitch their great ideas to game publishers. But experienced developers know by now that a good game idea does not a pitch make. In this 2019 GDC session, Finji CEO Rebekah Saltsman explains their studio’s pitching process for games they pitch to partners, and explains what Finji looks for from indie developers who pitch to them.

The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Design

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Veteran GDC speaker and GDC Masterclass instructor Celia Hodent began a long series of incredible GDC talks with The Gamer’s Brain, a UX breakdown that can help you better understand the neurological habits of your players and help improve your game’s experience. Hodent’s given a number of great GDC talks on the topic, this one can be the one that helps you kick off your UX journey.

A How-To Guide for Muslim Representation in Video Games

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In 2018, game designer Osama Dorias wowed GDC attendees with a presentation that mixed his own life experience and research to explain the power of Muslim representation in video games. Watching his talk might help you reflect on who you can speak to when developing characters for your next game, and how game developers can tell honest, authentic stories about a group of people who make up nearly a quarter of the world’s population.

Forget Protagonists: Writing NPCs with Agency for 80 Days and Beyond

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Game writers and designers might be spending the holiday dreaming up incredible stories for the next generation of video games. But how can you make your story stand out? What if you gave more agency to the characters your player meets along the way? Game writer Meghna Jayanth broke down her writing process in this excellent 2016 talk for the story behind 80 Days.

If you’re in a rut trying to make players care about your game’s characters, maybe she can help you out.

Owlboy: The Motivational Power of Inspiration

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Sometimes game development takes a long, long time. The 2D platformer Owlboy took the folks at D-Pad Studios about nine years to complete, but the result was an incredibly beautiful game that fused a deep platforming adventure with great characters who took the developers’ indomitable spirit to heart.

You might be finishing 2020 with some doubts about the current state your game is in. If you are, we’d strongly suggest you check out Simon Stafsnes Andersen’s talk to learn from a developer who’s been in the exact same place you’ve been, with the same doubts and worries about the future.

For a deeper dive into a specific part of game development, be sure to check out the different playlists available on our YouTube channel! These cover topics like game design, programming, business, animation, and much much more.

From everyone here at the GDC team, we wish you a safe and happy holiday!

GDC and Gamasutra are sibling organizations under Informa Tech

This year, Pokémon Go’s players had a rather taxing time keeping up. In an age where going outside and interacting with others was not just frowned upon, but downright dangerous, there have been a lot of new events to tide players over, and some essential new features that had to be developed in a very short space of time.

Pokémon Go in 2020 began in much the same way the previous year ended. Shadow Pokémon boss fights, including battles against Giovanni with the legendary dogs, were still a relatively new idea, while events were skewed towards celebrating the dawn of a new year. It seems like a sick and twisted joke now, but yes, there was a time when we looked at 2020 with fresh optimism.

Events weren’t all that spectacular in the first few weeks, though a small wave of Unovan Pokémon were introduced as the months continued. However, soon the world was plunged into lockdown, looming real-life events were cancelled, and the style of in-game events taking place took a while to catch up with the new normal.

For some inexplicable reason, Niantic is still making Pokémon regional exclusive with few ways to make them more widely available. Sure, some people decided to take holidays abroad (why?), but most people were largely confined to their homes. The good news was that lockdown also coincided with the introduction of PVP battles and these have mostly been free to participate in. For a short time, accumulating winning streaks was how you could get legendary Pokémon such as Landorus, but thanks to rampant cheating it was not consistently robust enough for most players. Soon it became apparent that this was a temporary solution.

It wasn’t long before Remote Raid passes debuted, but it was a while before necessary improvements were made (namely to only use the pass when battles begin). The system is still not perfect though, as the countdown timer for raids is too short for most people to comfortably join, and it would be better to get an idea of how many trainers are looking at jumping into a raid.

What Remote Raid passes did allow for the first time was international raiding. The significance of this was not realised until just the Lake Trio event. Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf returned to raids. This time around, thanks to Remote Raid passes, players from around the world could invite players to raids that would be impossible for them to participate in otherwise. The response on social media has been a flooded of people inviting others to raid exclusives with them.

There were costs to raids in the Covid era, namely EX Raids. These haven’t returned since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s not the biggest loss though, as there have been plenty of events for those wanting to catch legendary Pokémon. By far the biggest was Go Fest 2020, which was a worldwide event for the first time in history. There were a few teething problems and it was nowhere near as intimate as a real-life event would have been, but by and large it was a successful event (it brought us Rotom for the first time too, which was nice). We also saw the Today View, which shows off all of the current events and bonuses in the app, which is very handy for those wondering if an event was still on.

There was also a time when getting Pokéballs was challenging for rural players, who were no longer commuting to work. Initially Niantic put out bundles costing one PokéCoin, but eventually free gift boxes were introduced to solve this problem. Changes to the buddy system also allow Pokémon to bring you items such as Gifts to send to friends, and Pokéballs to catch Pokémon. Increased Pokéballs from opening Gifts also encouraged friends to interact with each other, seemingly resolving an immediate problem.

What was less successful out of the gate was the debut of Mega Evolution. Lots of people complained about having very few ways to accumulate Mega Energy, a problem that persists in important ways even now. Since Mega Evolution is temporary, some felt its duration was too short, so Niantic extended the duration a bit. Another more recent controversy was with the much anticipated Pokémon Home integration, as it has its own annoyances with how infrequently you can transfer a shiny legendary Pokémon.

On the whole, Niantic did make one or two big mistakes, but it’s largely kept the ship running in the new normal. Looking to the future, it is somewhat brighter in Pokémon Go thanks to the upcoming ‘Go Beyond’ update. Events will soon be dictated by the seasons, meaning those in the southern hemisphere actually get relevant Pokémon for the weather they have. Increasing the cap to level 50 gives players new challenges, while the debut of Kalos Pokémon, like all new generations, is very exciting indeed.

Niantic can do a bit more though, so we’re asking our Delibird to pass on the message to Niantic for our wishes for next year:

• Kecleon’s introduction is long overdue. That should be fixed immediately! (If it’s not introduced in the Hoenn celebration week)
• Global trade distance, while much better than it was initially, still needs to be extended beyond 50km
• Extend the countdown timers for raids so that people have a chance to join them
• Allow players to express interest in-app to join raids, so that those nervous about joining a raid can feel more comfortable participating in them. There are third-party apps that can do similar things
• Redesign of the Friends list so that you can easily filter ones you don’t have contact with any longer (similarly to tags with Pokémon)
• Make the monthly Community Day events last a weekend rather than one day. You could have a break in-between, but two days is better than one
• More chances for regionals to appear outside their native region worldwide in events, especially elusive ones like Maractus, Relicanth, and Sigilyph
• Events for international players to catch Pokémon like Kangaskhan and Heracross, which are regional Pokémon with Mega Evolutions
• Reduce the number of costumed Pokémon that are introduced next year (except for Cowboy Hat Caterpie, because that one person replying to every official tweet has asked for it for so long)

Tough days are still ahead for all of us, and it’s important that Niantic realises the decisions it makes are key to the survival of Pokémon Go into the next year. It’s highly likely that the new seasonal approach will bring good things and stuff we’ll find frustrating.

As it approaches its fifth birthday, Pokémon Go’s position as the top grossing game on Google Play and third most grossing game on the iOS app store is something Niantic will want to celebrate, so here’s hoping for even bigger things next year.

Pokemon

Think you’re one of the world’s biggest Pokémon fans? Think you know everything there is to know about the world of Pocket Monsters? Then why not prove it with this super-hard, ultra-challenging Christmas crossword?

As has become a Christmas tradition, Joe Merrick of Pokémon fansite Serebii has created a new edition of the site’s annual Advent crossword. There are 400 clues to figure out in total, and you can choose to either fill out the entire thing online or print it out to do it by hand.

Just like in previous years, we should really stress that this is a challenge designed for those with a truly deep love of the series. We consider ourselves pretty knowledgeable on the subject, but even we’re struggling with plenty of the crossword’s tougher clues.

Think you have what it takes? Then try it out using the link below and let us know how you get on in the comments.

Good luck!

The latest Nintendo Download update for North America has arrived, and it’s bringing new games galore to the eShop in your region. As always, be sure to drop a vote in our poll and comment down below with your potential picks for the week. Enjoy!

Switch eShop – Highlights

WINGSPAN (Monster Couch, 29th Dec, $19.99) – In this relaxing strategy card game, the goal is to discover and attract the best birds to a network of wildlife preserves. Many of the 170 unique birds have powers that echo real life: hawks will hunt, pelicans will fish and geese will form a flock. Featuring both single-player and multiplayer modes for up to five players, WINGSPAN is based on the award winning, competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game.

Switch eShop – New Releases

Animal Pals Bubble Pop (Digital Game Group, 18th Dec, $7.99) – Help Kat blast and pop through levels of fun in this bubble shooter puzzle game! Match three or more bubbles and blast your way through each puzzle to rescue your friends! Collect powerups to help shoot the bubbles to pop your way through each challenging puzzle in this AMAZING bubble shooting quest adventure! Simple and easy controls, aim assist and power ups to help you align your bubbles for the perfect shot and shoot bubbles with ease. Over 100 levels of fun!

Arcade Archives VS. TENNIS (HAMSTER, 18th Dec, $7.99) – “VS. Tennis” is a sports game released by Nintendo in 1984. This work can be played this game with up to 4 players. You can compete with each other in singles play or play together in doubles play. The key to victory is to use two different types of hitting balls: shots and lobs. The “Arcade Archives” series has faithfully reproduced many classic Arcade masterpieces. Players can change various game settings such as game difficulty, and also reproduce the atmosphere of arcade display settings at that time. Players can also compete against each other from all over the world with their high scores.

BIT.TRIP BEAT (QubicGames, 25th Dec, $4.99) – From gameplay to visuals to music and imagination, BIT. TRIP BEAT is inspired by classic games in every way. Get sucked into a whole new world of sights and sounds as you juggle beats and ride the vibe in this modern look at the beginning of it all. Originally released for the Nintendo Wii in 2009, BIT. TRIP BEAT makes its triumphant return to Nintendo platforms.

BIT.TRIP CORE (QubicGames, 25th Dec, $4.99) – Dive controller-first into unfamiliar territory, using NES-style controls to blast your way through a barrage of beats in this rhythm-music adventure. – Retro-inspired controls! – Beautiful boss battles! – A thumpin’ chiptune-inspired soundtrack with special guest Bubblyfish! – Easy, medium, and hard difficulty modes – 20 bite-sized challenges separate from the main game – Mind-melting challenges! – Thought-provoking cutscenes!

BIT.TRIP FATE (QubicGames, 25th Dec, $4.99) – CommanderVideo’s journey is nearly complete, but the hardest part has yet to come. Guide our brave hero through a world of twin-stick shooter gameplay, strange and powerful enemies, and environments unlike any you’ve ever seen before.

BIT.TRIP FLUX (QubicGames, 25th Dec, $4.99) – Get ready for classic paddle-based gameplay as CommanderVideo returns to the source. Enjoy new challenges presented within the familiar paddle-based gameplay which started the phenomenon known as BIT. TRIP. New power-ups including the full-screen paddle!

BIT.TRIP RUNNER (QubicGames, 25th Dec, $4.99) – Race across the Moon, kicking down crystal walls and sliding under chomping moon-slugs! Bound through the Robotic Mines and face off against the MinerMech! Dash through the Big City on a quest to find friends and defeat the final boss together! Control CommanderVideo as he runs, jumps, kicks, and slides his way to victory! With exciting modern and retro challenges, you can dash your way through more than 50 levels! Join CommanderVideo in BIT. TRIP RUNNER, his most incredible journey yet!

BIT.TRIP VOID (QubicGames, 25th Dec, $4.99) – BIT. TRIP VOID is a synesthetic exploration of rhythm and music as they pertain to our everyday lives and moods. In a control scheme brand new to the series, yet wholly familiar to gamers, the player is given complete freedom to move about the screen wherever they desire, interacting with the music in brand new ways. The classic gameplay aesthetic remains, as color—and the absence of color—are explored to the fullest.

Candy 2048 Challenge (Mindscape, 25th Dec, $7.99) – Candy 2048 Challenge brings back the iconic 2048 game with a new multiplayer function. Taking the intense fun of the original 2048 and pitting you against one other friend, to really see who is the best! Test your intelligence in this infinite puzzle game.

Candy Jump featuring Frosty (Digital Game Group, 24th Dec, $5.99) – Direct Frosty the jumping snowman through unlimited frozen candyland puzzles as he climbs higher and you reach high scores! Use your snowflake coins to buy design your own snowman or get new frosty friends. Play as Mrs. Frosty, Santa Snowman and Reindeer Snowman! Endless levels plus additional snowman characters make this a never-ending puzzle to jump your way through. Just keep your eyes on the sky for angry candy monsters. Children, as well as adults, will enjoy this simple, yet challenging jump game. Make winter snow and snowmen a year round frozen experience for your family.

Crystal Ortha (Kemco, 17th Dec, $14.99) – Today too, in the town tavern the crystal appraisers devote themselves to their business, in search of a far-off legend. Set off on a journey, with four allies who have the future on their shoulders, to find the legendary crystal mother lode! Enjoy solving puzzles in dungeons, and strike up conversations with the people around the world. Battles with bosses feature conversations, which might even give you some hints about tactics! Fill the skill slots with the skills you like to be prepared for strategic turn-based battles. Find the ores to craft weapons and search around pots and objects to get items for your adventure. Watch over the fate of the crystal seekers until the end of their journey!

Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia, 26th Dec, $14.99) – Explore, build, and craft in a block-building, survival game with Super-Duper realistic graphic. In Survival Mode, the player must maintain health, explore caves, gather resources, and craft tools on an unknown island. Get food, explore and build during the day. Hide, fight, and surive as night falls on the island. In Creative Mode, the game will allow players to build constructions in 3D generated game worlds. There is no limit to your imagination.

Cube Raiders (JanduSoft, 28th Dec, $12.99) – Join Rose and Kirk in this head-breaking Cube Adventure and prove that you are a true Cube Raider. Cube Raiders offers gamers four different game modes for one or two players. Face the dangers and surprises in each temple and solve more than 99 puzzles for just one player. Have fun together and play a joint adventure with more than 59 puzzles created for two players. Get the highest score in “Endless” mode before time runs out or the entire floor gets filled with dice! Put companionship aside and show who the best Cube Raider is in the “Duel” mode.

Door Kickers (QubicGames, 26th Dec, $11.99) – Door Kickers is an innovative real-time strategy game that puts you in charge of a SWAT team and lets you command them during a tactical intervention. Become the commander of an elite anti-terrorist squad and lead them on the most dangerous missions. Remember you are the good guy, but sometimes it’s better to pull the trigger and go home on your own than to be carried. Yours and your men’ssquad life are the most important.

Double Dragon Neon (21st Dec, $14.99) – Brotacular! Legendary martial artists Billy and Jimmy Lee return in this creative re-imagining of the classic beat ’em up! Trained in the special form of martial arts called Sosetsuken it’s up to you to defeat the evil Skullmageddon and his henchmen to rescue the love of your life, Marian!

Dungeon Limbus (TROOOZE, 28th Dec, $14.99) – A young woman who manages a mysterious blacksmith’s shop and a village of resurrection that she meets on the border between death and life. Adventure deep into the dungeon in search of lost memories. Repeated deaths will make you stronger. Different spaces between death and life A mysterious world that stays for a while between death and resurrection. This blacksmith living in a different space will hand over his weapons to you. You can make stronger weapons with the crystal collected in the dungeon. You can request weapons in advance for the next generation.

Dungeonoid (SuperPowerUpGames, 25th Dec, $6.99) – Your mission is to cross the dungeons of the Infernal Castle with the aim of recovering the 3 sacred gems and defeating the Demon Master and his henchmen.

DungeonTop (QubicGames, 26th Dec, $13.99) – DungeonTop is a fresh new take on the roguelike deckbuilding genre, bringing a flavour of tight table top battles into the mix. Employ clever board tactics to gain advantage such as range, flanking, tanking and rushing. A balance of risk to reward greets you both in an out of battle. Progression in DungeonTop could mean two things, grabbing more gold, or defeating more monsters! Play it your way. Will you build for cunning, speed, or power? Your choices in the dungeon directly influence your chance of survival!

Elliot (JanduSoft, 24th Dec, $9.99) – Elliot is a colourful 2D platformer inspired in 16-bit classics yet with a hardcore touch. Don’t be fooled by appearances, it’s a tough game! Run, jump and dash through over 60+ levels to solve the mystery surrounding the World of Elliot, Manuel and the adorable Mombas. Need to know more? Elliot, that loveable little blue ball, is a Momba, a wild, free, musical creature who lives alone in the natural world. Well, not entirely alone: with his friend, Manuel. But one apparently ordinary day, strange things begin to happen.

Hell Sports (Neilo, 28th Dec, $19.99) – 3 min to win. Aim for the top league in Hell! – Simple rules! While protecting your sinners and tank, score goals! – Prevent opponent’s goals by using Hell Sports various skills! – 2 on 2 battle in 3 min! Co-play with your friends or play by yourself! 10 unique characters available! – Unlock adorable characters and let them join your team! – Each character has various different skins! Make a strategy and develop your characters to be Stars! – Become the top team by increasing the fan base! – Challenge higher leagues by increasing each player’s Star level.

JDM Racing – 2 (Nikita Alexeevich, 24th Dec, $4.99) – Drive legendary Japanese cars on various tracks. Beat records, take part in different racing events, rise from Beginner to Pro League driver. Collect, win, tune up, and upgrade your dream cars.

KAUIL’S TREASURE (JanduSoft, 24th Dec, $9.99) – Kauil’s Treasure is a new single-player adventure-puzzle game where you, the father of a teenage girl named Sophie, need to find your daughter before the horrors behind Kauil’s Treasure find her first. Thus, you’ll have to solve the hardest puzzles, avoid the rotten souls corrupted by Kauil, and use your whip to get to the most dangerous places and save your daughter. Do you have what it takes to find the most important treasure of your life? Dr. Goodfall’s skills include moving and jumping around, using his whip to get to other places and activating some mechanisms. He can also pick up, drop, throw and burn certain objects.

Kingdom Tales (Ocean Media, 24th Dec, $9.99) – An ancient prophecy proclaims: “One day, the mighty dragons will seek new territory to claim as their own! The day has come! The prophecy has been fulfilled! ” Now, only the most courageous and just of leaders will be able forge a friendship between mankind and dragons! Step into the role of the steadfast and altruistic leader who’s quests is to ensure the safety and prosperity of all people and creatures in the kingdom! In Kingdom Tales you will explore the land, gather, produce and trade resources, build and repair subjects homes and community structures, and work to increase your subjects level of happiness!

Kolumno (Flynns Arcade, 24th Dec, $1.99) – Behind its apparent simplicity, Kolumno hides really challenging and fun game mechanics. Kolumno, as other puzzle games, requires intelligence, planning, and patience, but the challenge doesn’t stop there. It will also test your reflexes with puzzles that will require you to use special abilities such as: stopping mid-air, falling faster, making smaller or breaking the rings that make up the columns. Don’t let yourself be fooled by its minimalistic style and its relaxing soundtrack, Kolumno is one of the most elegant and challenging games in recent times.

Match Three: Pirates! Heir to Davy Jones (Mindscape, 25th Dec, $9.99) – Davy Jones created a world of never-ending pirating adventure, where no-one gets old and unsuspecting people are tricked into entering Davy Jones’ Locker. Journey through the different stages of this match-3 adventure, lift the curse of Davy Jones and save your friend. What treasures does Match Three Pirates hold within?

NEKOPARA Vol.4 (CFK, 22nd Dec, $14.99) – “NEKOPARA Vol. 4”, the fourth installment of the world-famous NEKOPARA adventure game series, has arrived on Nintendo Switch! The fourth installment of the series again features gorgeous artwork by NEKO WORKs. Characters are brought to life with animated character sprites utilizing the E-mote Engine. All story scenes are fully voiced (except for the protagonist).

PBA Pro Bowling 2021 (Farsight Studios, 21st Dec, $24.99) – PBA Pro Bowling 2021 is the ultimate game for all bowling fans! Now you can bowl as your favorite PBA pro! Play online versus your friends, competing head-to-head and in tournaments, or start your PBA Career in a deep single-player experience. This game has something for everyone with options for both an authentic simulation mode or an explosive arcade-style of gameplay! PBA Pro Bowling 2021 is officially licensed by the Pro Bowlers Association and includes 26 of the top pros in the game today along with in-game commentary from the TV broadcast team of Rob Stone and hall-of-famer Randy Pedersen.

Professor Lupo: Ocean (BeautiFun Games, 28th Dec, $4.99) – You wake up in the middle of a crumbling spaceship and yet, somehow, everything’s flooded. . . You’re at the bottom of the Ocean! The ship computer keeps giving you never-ending tasks to repair the ship and is saying you’re a. . . Clone? The adventure’s only just begun! Welcome to Professor Lupo: Ocean, the epilogue of the Professor Lupo and His Horrible Pets saga. At the end of the original game, we left our heroes at the start of a long journey. Five thousand years later, the Aurora space station has reached its destination. Clone, our new heroine, will need to find out how it ended up underwater and just what happened to all of its crew.

Quell Reflect (Fallen Tree Games , 28th Dec, $7.99) – Quell Reflect has been critically-acclaimed for its 80+ levels of ingenious gameplay, gorgeous art style, and haunting soundtrack. The objective is simple: slide a droplet around a layout of obstacles, traps and pathways, until you have collected all the pearls. Underneath this simple gameplay lies a world of intricacy! Quell Reflect’s appeal lies in its gentle, soothing mood, which makes it a great way to unwind. If you have played the original Quell, you’ll be delighted with the new gameplay features. If not, then now’s the time to find out what you’ve been missing!

Roundout by POWGI (Lightwood Games, 21st Dec, $7.99) – The latest POWGI game is a mash-up of two popular word puzzles. It’s a kross between Word Wheel and Kriss Kross. Yes, it wheely is! Roundout takes the fast and satisfying word-forming action of Word Wheel and gives it a new, visible goal to work towards. Plus, a free bad joke with every puzzle solved!

Suicide Guy Collection (ChubbyPixel, 17th Dec, $10.99) – Suicide Guy and Suicide Guy: Sleepin’ Deeply for the first time together in a mega bundle! Set in the incredibile and extraordinary dreams of its protagonist, this time you’ll have to save not 1, but 2 beers.

Super Sports Blast (Unfinished Pixel, 25th Dec, $24.99) – Get ready for kick-off and play some soccer, own the Tennis court and spike your opponent in the Volley field. Each sport features its own in-depth modes with various tournaments to conquer! Create your own character and grind your way up to be the champion in three of the world’s most popular sports.

The Hong Kong Massacre (Untold Tales, 26th Dec, $19.99) – Inspired by classic action movies, The Hong Kong Massacre places you at the center of a hard-boiled revenge story, filled with brutal, cinematic shootouts and vivid underworld locations. Take on the role of a former police detective bent on exacting vengeance for his partner’s murder and use of a mixture of raw firepower, slow-motion, and dive/dodge mechanics to tear your way through the criminal ranks. Dive through windows or dodge behind cover – every shot is lethal, so stay aware of your surroundings and exploit the environment however you can.

The Last Dead End (JanduSoft, 24th Dec, $9.99) – In this game, we play the role of young scientist Farhad Novruzov, who returned to his homeland to help in filming a documentary movie for an international television channel. Here he faces strange events connected with the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism and the scientist has to find out the reason of these events. The game takes place both from the first person and the third person. Most actions and active research take place in the first-person view. The main action of the game takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Void Source (TERNOX, 28th Dec, $5.99) – Features: – Levels full of non-stop action, including highly hazardous environments: Underwater, Volcano, Space, Dark Cave, Railroad – Huge bosses that pack a punch. Boss rush extra mode. 25 weapons (two same weapons stack up to higher power). – Steam Trading Cards. – Steam Achievements. – Dozens of new weapons, developed via technology tree between the levels.

DLC

• Sephiroth Descends To Battle in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Brace yourself for the arrival of the one-winged angel. Sephiroth, the fan-favorite villain from the FINAL FANTASY series, is descending from the heavens with his gleaming sword in hand to join the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game as its newest playable DLC fighter. Challenger Pack 8 contains Sephiroth as a playable fighter, a new stage based on the Northern Cave setting and nine music tracks, including “One-Winged Angel.” Challenger Pack 8 is part of Fighters Pass Vol. 2, which can be purchased for $29.99 and also includes Min Min from the ARMS game, Steve & Alex from Minecraft and three more yet-to-be announced fighters as they release. Challenger Pack 8 can also be purchased separately for $5.99.

So that’s your lot for this week’s North American Nintendo Download. Go on, be a sport and drop a vote in the poll above, and comment below with your hot picks!

If you are a data scientist or aspire to be one investing your time in learning natural language processing (NLP) will be an investment in your future. 2020 saw a surge in the field of natural language processing. In this blog post you will discover 5 popular NLP libraries, and it’s applications.

Preprocessing Libraries

Preprocessing a crucial step in any machine learning pipeline. If you are building a language model you would have to create a word vector which involves removing stop words, and converting words to its root form.

#1 Spacy

Spacy is a popular Python library for sentence tokenization, lemmatization, and stemming. It is an industry grade library which can be used for text preprocessing and training deep learning based text classifiers.

Getting started with Spacy: Named Entity Recognition is an important task in natural language processing. NER helps in extracting important entities like location, organization names, etc.

import spacy # python -m spacy download en_core_web_sm

nlp = spacy.load('en_core_web_sm') sentences = ['Stockholm is a beautiful city', 'Mumbai is a vibrant city' ] for sentence in sentences: doc = nlp(sentence) for entity in doc.ents: print(entity.text, entity.label_) print(spacy.explain(entity.label_))

The above code processes the two sentences and extracts the location in both sentences.

Let us now see the output

As seen from the output the code was able to extract Stockholm and Mumbai and associated them with the GPE label which indicates countries, cities, or states.

#2 NLTK

NLTK is another popular Python library for text preprocessing. It was started as an academic project and soon became very popular amongst researchers and academicians.

Let us see how we can do Part of Speech Tagging using NLTK. Part of speech tagging is used to extract the important part of speech like nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, etc.

import nltk

import os sentence = "Python is a beautiful programming language."

tokens = nltk.word_tokenize(sentence)

tagged = nltk.pos_tag(tokens)

entities = nltk.chunk.ne_chunk(tagged)

print(entities)

The parts of speech that were extract from the above sentence are

 (S   (GPE Python/NNP)   is/VBZ   a/DT   beautiful/JJ   programming/NN   language/NN   ./.) 

Applications

A popular application of NLP is to categorize a document into a given set of labels. There are a number of Python libraries which can help you to train deep learning based models for topic modeling, text summarization, sentiment analysis etc. Let us have a look at some of these popular libraries

Most deep learning based NLP models rely on pretrained language models using a process called transfer learning. A huge corpus of document is trained and then this model can be fine-tuned for a specific domain. Some popular libraries which help in using pretrained models and building industry grade NLP applications are

#3 FARM

Farm is a popular open source package developed by a Berlin based company. It is used to make the life of developers easier by providing some nice functionalities like experiment tracking, multitask-learning and parallelized processing of documents.

#4 Flair

Flair is a popular PyTorch based framework which helps developers to build state of the NLP applications like named entity recognition, part-of-speech tagging, sense disambiguation and classification.

#5 Transformers

Transformers is a popular Python library to easily access pretrained models and has support for both PyTorch and TensorFlow. If you want to build an entire NLP pipeline by using pretrained models for Natural language understanding and generation tasks transformers will make your life easier.

#6 Gensim

Gensim is another popular Python library widely used for topic modelling and provides an easy-to-use interface for popular algorithms like word2vec to find synonymous words.

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