Strange things are afoot in steamgamesland. A powerful new force has begun to show its face on Western shores. Hailing from the tiny island nation of China, a wave of intrepid indie developers are shaking off a variety of undeserved reputations and delivering a solid fifth* of the shortlist of games we consider for Unknown Pleasures, the roundup of the best new games too few people are playing. But did any of them make the final cut? Is this the beginning of a bright new era following Steam’s recent controversies? And are any of them bloody roguelikes? Adhering to the rule of three this week: non-dwarven fortresses, kindhearted fireflies, and China, China, CHINA. Odd Realm £7.19 / 8.19€ / $9.99, Early Access Dwarf Fortress continues to inspire games that are meant to be played by humans. Odd Realm includes the procedurally generated worlds, AI factions, digging and building across multiple Z-levels, and some of the organisational challenges and tools that make the less … [Read more...] about Unknown Pleasures: A Chinese New Year
9 year old weight chart
EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Black review
When the GeForce RTX 20-series was announced, everyone was excited to see what the new GPUs would deliver in performance and features. Then we saw the prices and our enthusiasm was greatly diminished. The best graphics cards aren't just fast, they're a great value, and with little real competition Nvidia has priced the new RTX line out of reach for many gamers.The Founders Edition models are a particularly painful pill to swallow, with a $100 to $200 premium over the reference models. But when will we actually see referenced priced cards? The RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti remain largely out of stock, but thankfully the RTX 2070 appears to be doing much better in overall supply. That brings us to today's EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Black review, a card priced at Nvidia's base $499 and sporting reference clocks.GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition SpecificationsGPU: Turing TU106Streaming Multiprocessors: 36CUDA Cores: 2,304Tensor Cores: 288RT Cores: 36Base Clock: 1410MHzBoost Clock: 1620MHzMemory Speed: … [Read more...] about EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Black review
Why Life is Strange 2 is ditching Arcadia Bay for its radically different roadtrip
After numerous teases, a free tie-in game and what feels like a very long wait, we finally got an in-depth look at Life is Strange 2 last night at a pre-Gamescom showcase. Two early sequences from the game were shown, one of which will be playable on the show floor, giving us our first (proper) look at Life is Strange 2's main characters and teasing what the long road has in store for them. We're not in Arcadia Bay anymore, everything looks very different, and really, that's a very good thing indeed. Life is Strange 2 focuses on the journey of two brothers, Sean and Daniel Diaz, who are on a dangerous road trip after a series of tragic events near the beginning of the game force them to go on the run from police under threat of separation and arrest. It's set three years after the events of Life is Strange 1 - so, 2016 - and begins a few nights before Halloween. Sean is the older brother and the playable character, a talented 16 year old would-be artist who hates parties, has a … [Read more...] about Why Life is Strange 2 is ditching Arcadia Bay for its radically different roadtrip
2018.1 is now available – Unity Blog
Unity 2018.1 marks the start of a new cycle that introduces a major upgrade to our core technology, which gives artists, developers and engineers the power to express their talents and collaborate more efficiently to make their AAA dreams a reality. Let’s start with a few of the highlights, and then you can dig into the details of all the features. The first two highlights described below, the Scriptable Render Pipeline and the C# Job System, represent the first versions of two major features, which will continue to evolve to help you unlock beautiful graphics and increase the runtime performance of Unity. While you go through the list of new features, you can download Unity 2018.1 here. Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) Available in Preview with Unity 2018.1, the new Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) places the power of modern hardware and GPUs directly into the hands of developers and technical artists, without having to digest millions of lines of C++ engine code. SRP makes it … [Read more...] about 2018.1 is now available – Unity Blog
Data and Insights from a Month on Steam
So last month Cogmind “launched” … for the second time :P It’s now on Steam EA and doing fairly well. Not like indie smash hit amazingly well, but that’s a given considering it’s way too niche for that kind of attention. Still, the relatively unexciting screenshots and two-year-old alpha trailer are apparently sufficient to attract the type of player who will enjoy Cogmind, and that’s all that really matters. To be honest, going into Steam I had zero expectations, which from a sanity point of view is probably the safest way to do this sort of thing. Cogmind’s “first launch” was Alpha 1 back in 2015 (see the comprehensive month-1 postmortem), and at the time I was pretty nervous/excited, but also had more savings remaining to fund work on it (regardless of sales), plus the project was flexible enough that if necessary it could be completed in a short while. (In gamedev time, a “short while” means a year or less ;D) … [Read more...] about Data and Insights from a Month on Steam