A game of aerospace industry and interplanetary exploration
Between Starbound, Elite: Dangerous, Evochron Legacy, and of course the upcoming No Man's Sky, those looking for procedurally-generated space exploration have a wealth of games to scratch that itch. Astroneer is another game to watch, promising gorgeous low-poly landscapes to explore and survive.
Alone or with friends, Astroneer's worlds will be a challenge to conquer. While there's no combat, there will be hazards, and often the greatest one is nature itself. Looming clouds of dust on the horizon mean a sandstorm is coming your way, bringing strong winds that can tear your structures apart. Unstable terrain can cave in as you dig underground. Acid rain and other inclement weather, as well as dangerous flora and fauna such as hungry sand worms entrenched in the dunes, make surviving in Astroneer a taxing endeavor.
But not an impossible endeavor: through research, crafting technology, and planning, your traveler will be able to brave the storms and other dangers. Guidelines and tethers help you not get lost as you explore and keep you from getting blow away by the storm gusts. Using terraforming technology, you can carve barriers and shelters from the deformable terrain and tunnel deep into a planet's depths.
Research is important not just for survival but for profit. You're not braving these conditions and dangers for fun, but to extract materials and make money. As you gather funds, new equipment becomes available, from rovers and trailers to crane-armed diggers and automated rail systems, to spacecraft that allow you to leave one world and travel to countless others.
Astroneer is slated to release on Steam Early Access this fall. You can learn more about the game on its website and Twitter page.
A snowboarding game on an infinite mountainscape that evolves and changes as you ride it
If you've played Fract OSC, it's a game you can probably recognize in an instant. Its low-poly, vibrant, cyberpunk-esque landscape was a unique world to explore, especially when brought to musical life. So seeing Fulcrum, you might get flashbacks. The slick aesthetic remains, now with colder wintry palette, as the game revolves around first-person snowboarding rather than music-driven puzzles.
This isn't SSX or Snow. While you're grinding along rails, speeding through passes, and flipping through the air, Fulcrum promises a slower more exploration-driven experience, as you chase evasive lights through the world. Each region loops, letting you gain a lay of the land and master its secret areas and enjoy the architecture, before moving onto another area.
Steep drops through angular boulders. Neon-lit caves that would fit nicely in Fract's world. Serpentine rails around obsidian ruins. Fulcrum offers both skillful challenge on obstacle-strewn descents and zen-paced exploration, measured at your pace as you travel across the terrain. Fluid movement, big jumps, and wind-whistling speed opens up a moveset that you tackle any of Fulcrum's abstract slopes.
Fulcrum is currently in development, with no release date slated at the moment. You can learn more about the game on its Tumblr and TIGSource devlog.
Live as a dinosaur in a dynamic open world through intense, survival-based gameplay
Dinosaurs tend to show up in two forms in games: the monstrous enemies of Ark, Tomb Raiders, and Turok, or a playable faction in games like Dino D-day, Primal Carnage, and Orion. But Saurian is taking a different approach, doing what no game has done before: present dinosaurs through a completely realistic, scientifically-accurate lenses and let you survive as one in that world.
Informed by some of the field's leading paleontologists and most current discoveries, Saurian promises an accurate recreation of Dakota's Hell Creek 66 million years ago. This is a world in some ways familiar, thick with swamps and woodlands, and others ways alien to us, from the continent-spanning Interior Seaway and of course the thunderous footsteps of dinosaurs.
Saurian lets you play as a several different species, from the heavy-skulled Pachycephalosaurus and frilled Triceratops to everyone's favorite Tyrannosaurus. These aren't your movie monsters or even the big reptiles popularized by Jurassic Park, but feathered creatures living in a dynamic ecosystem, with movement based off the dev team's own emu.
Choosing a dinosaur drops you into a sprawling wilderness as a young hatchling in a world filled with hungry predators and elusive prey. As you survive, through maintaining your health and feeding, your dinosaur will grow into adult, find a mate, and breed. With age comes new challenges: a young tyrannosaurus may need to avoid the jaws of older males, but as an grown adult, you'll be able to act as the hunter. Each species will have unique skills, such as the sickle-clawed Dakotaraptor's ability to climb trees and pounce from above.
Saurian has been in development since 2013, and is expected to release in 2017, currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. Depending on stretch goals, future plans will include environmental dangers such as wildfires and floods, additional playable species, multiplayer, and a special mode that challenges you to survive after the fateful impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Cyberpunk usually brings to mind the neon-lit streets of Blade Runner and the megacorp-run cities of Deus Ex. But those futuristic metropolises have a dark side, explored in fiction like KOP, Altered Carbon, or Human Revolution's lower Hong Kong. The places those megacorps build on top of and leave to decay into crime-ridden slums. In-development cRPG Copper Dreams explores a world like that, the distant island colony of Calitana, left to fester and rot far from earth, where crime syndicates rule and food is a scarcity.
Inspired by the decrepit future of Escape From New York and other works of 80s science fiction, Copper Dreams is a gritty cyberpunk cRPG, focusing on open world traversal, stealth, and augmented tactics. Among the grimy streets and dark rooftops, you control an agent for the department of Asset Inquiries, engaging in acts of espionage and incursion. A vast array of upgrades let you customize your playstyle and tactics, from the typical customization like a suppressor for your weapon to exotic augmentations like chainsaw hands, grappling hooks, detachable eyes to spy around corners, and more.
Much like Klei's Invisible Inc, turn-based tactical stealth is a major aspect of Copper Dreams. Your agents can peek around cover and crouch in the shadows, avoid line of sight, listen for telltale footsteps, create distractions, hack electric grids, and more. Stealth won't merely be useful to avoid and evade tougher patrols, but also to get into strategically advantageous positions before attacking.
Smart positioning will be critical to surviving Copper Dreams' combat, due to its unique twists to the typical cRPG format. Your party doesn't have HP, but rather suffers from injuries and effects to individual body parts, so cover and an efficient offense will keep your crew healthy and in one piece. Enemies can summon reinforcements and investigate suspicious sounds and last known positions. Attacks take time to occur, allowing for tactics such as cooking grenades. Being aware of your environment, using the 3D world to gain a height advantage, will be the difference between life and death in Copper Dreams' complex encounters.
Copper Dreams is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter, and is expected to release in March 2017. You can learn more about the game on its site.
"It's like Rocket League meets Gang Beasts," That practically sells itself. Super Footbrawl is an arcade soccer game that's a self-described hybrid of the two aforementioned games: the aggressive, tumbling, collision-heavy action soccer of the former with the ridiculous ragdoll physics and combat of the latter,
Super Footbrawl is soccer with no rules. As you and other players, either AI or friends in local multiplayer, tumble and roll into each other, you can also engage in brutal melee combat, unless punches and kicks and even grabbed debris to use improvised weapons. A damage system will keep track of your body, so a damaged leg will reduce your speed and a broken arm means weaker punches.
But Footbrawl isn't just a silly game with a soccer skin; it's shaping up to be an actual soccer game, with power kicks that send the ball crashing through opponents like bowling pins, dribbling, and solid team AI. Of course it's still a ridiculous spectacle of a soccer game so there'll be arenas in obstacle-strewn offices and the African plains.
Super Footbrawl is expected to release in late 2016; you can follow its development on the game's blog and TIGSource devlog.
The end has come and gone. Charred corpses litter the ground. Insectoid beings emerge from below. Abandoned vehicles rust on the roadside. Aliens? A tear in reality? Some unknown species released from the bowels of the earth? Whatever calamity ravaged the planet, the only thing that matters now is survival, in the tactical cross-country roguelike Overland.
Overland blends resource-managing map travel, reminiscent of games like FTL and Convoy, with strategic turn-based scavenging on low-poly dioramic stages. Your goal is westward, as you and a companion, either human or canine depending on your luck, travel the roads across America. Considering the focus on travel, fuel is perhaps the most important resource: each stop on the map costs varying amount of gas, and the promise of finding more can tempt you to take on a risky encounter.
Choosing an destination on the map screen drops you into a self-contained isometric encounter, bisected by the road and populated with randomized arrays of enemies, supplies, environmental features, and other elements. At the strategic level, you soon learn that the most crucial tool at your disposal is your vehicle. Your car is your means of escape, your transport through the stage, able to store extra supplies and ram through creatures, and explode in spectacular fashion in the worst case scenario. Lose your car to the encroaching horde, and you'd better hope that there's another vehicle on the map to commandeer.
Playing the recently-released private alpha, the game that I was most reminded of was actually the mobile roguelike Hoplite. Hoplite is often praised for its very almost puzzle-like combat, where you can use the knowledge of enemy's range and attacks to meticulously plan out your strategy and remain unscathed. Similarly, Overland's turn-based encounters are more tactical puzzles than classic roguelike combat. With only two action points per character, and only able to hold one item, each action must be economical, efficient, and carefully considered.
The tactical puzzles grow more complex as you travel from the east-coast fields to dry-grass plains, temperate forests, and beyond. Characters may start with special traits or develop new ones over days, such as improved stamina (extra action point) or CPR training (reviving survivors), You can pick up new passengers if you have empty seats in your car...or leave them to act as a distraction for creatures. The environment is as important to consider as your own strategies. Prairie grass can be set aflame (or may already be burning when you arrive), creating a useful barrier that could turn deadly as the fire spreads across the map. Fuel can be used to fill your gas tank, or poured on adjacent tiles to create a flammable surface. Dumpsters and other debris can block the roadway, forcing you to divide your group between clearing a path, driving the car, and scavenging the map simultaneously.
That juggling act defines Overland's challenge. This isn't a game of clearing out an area to safely loot; it's an ever-tightening vise of tension and danger, as each loud rummaging through dumpsters and derelict cars draws more skittering creatures. as you choose which supplies to gather, as you drive the car to the exit while maneuvering everyone back to the vehicle safely. Killing is your absolute last resort, as the dying screech of a monster will only attract more. Playing aggressively but cautiously is your best strategy, always being aware of where enemies are in relation to your characters and your car, always weighing the risk and reward of each action.
Overland may already have a solid and compelling foundation, but it's still only an alpha, and the developers have plans for many interesting features in the future, ranging from customizing your vehicle with armor and other additions to groups of survivors that you can trade with...or brutally murder (a choice that come back to haunt you).
Title: 2Dark Developer: Gloomywood Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One Releasing 2016 ---
A unique mix of stealth, horror and adventure game conceived by the creative force behind Alone in the Dark
Games have taken us to all manner of terrifying places, filled with every kind of monster. The twisted fusions of human and machine deep under the sea in SOMA, the ravenous undead of Resident Evil and fungal infected of The Last of Us, the psychological scars made flesh in the fog-choked streets of Silent Hill. 2Dark revolves around a very different horror, almost banal in comparison to the creatures and places of other games: serial killers and kidnapped children.
2Dark picks up 17 years after the protagonist Mr. Smith lost his wife and children in a brutal attack. Hardened and devastated by the incident, he's now a broken man driven to hunt down the sadistic killers inhabiting the streets and outskirts of Gloomywood, But these aren't your everyday realistic human monsters, but more akin to the psychos found in an episode Hannibal or Dexter or lurking in the alleys of Gotham. Killers with grimy vermin-infested buildings, murderous clowns in dilapidated carnivals, pig-headed butchers.
Scared children hidden away in cages await in the lairs of those killers, and that's where 2Dark combines its dark disturbing horror with stealth, strategy, and action. Creeping through the shadows, you'll need to avoid attracting the attention of killers, their henchmen, and other dangers, avoiding line of sight, and carefully using lights to find your way through oppressively dark basements and corridors. A gun is your last loud resort, so evading or hacking enemies into bloody voxel pieces with a blade and blunt objects are the best options.
But getting in is the easy part. Getting out leading a group of terrified children is quite another challenge. This is where 2Dark introduces some puzzle and strategy aspects to the stealth horror, as you plan the most efficient exit, trying to avoid gruesome sights or the gory remains of your kills as not to cause the kids to scream and cry in horror.
2Dark is expected to release later this year; you can learn more about the game here.
An intense multiplayer flight game which introduces FPS controls to the flight genre in exotic, epic landscapes
Set against a backdrop of futuristic cityscapes, gargantuan alien arches, and lightning-streaked skies, Voidrunner promises relentless aerial combat, combining the precision of a first-person shooter with the agility and mobility of a flight game.
Voidrunner focuses on high-flying multiplayer combat, as fighters, hunters, and other ship classes wage furious war in the sky. From performing full-out assaults on sprawling cities to classic modes like deathmatch, Voidrunner plans to deliver a varied array of modes to please both single- and multiplayer fans.
Additional depth comes from the inclusion of RPG elements ranging experience and levels to extensive parts to modify your ship. While pre-existing designs will let you jump straight into the action, customizing your loadout and design will allow for a wide spectrum of playstyles, from fast evasive snipers to weapons-heavy fighters.
From the intricate cockpit of your ship, Voidrunner launches you into gorgeous Unreal Engine 4-powered aerial warzones. Buildings burn and belch thick smoke into skies sliced by furious laser fire, as combatants shriek by and larger carriers hover among the dogfighting. The lavish graphics give the sci-fi battlefields an impressive sense of scale and chaos.
Voidrunner is expected to arrive on Steam Early Access this year. You can learn more and follow the game's development on its site and Twitter page.
Two years ago, 10tons surprised me with their blood-soaked dual stick Crimsonland, a furious shooter that throw massive hordes of enemies at you and mixed up the action with weapon unlocks and perks. Neon Chrome follows the same basic structure of dual stick action, unlocks, and sci-fi, but with a new focus on cyberpunk megacorps, stealth, and a more cautious approach before the explosions start.
Waging war against the massive tower of the titular megacorporation and its Overseer, you remotely control augmented "assets", divided between classes like assassin or hacker. As you battle through each procedurally-generated levels, you unlock new cybernetic enhancements, more weapons, and skill buffs, to face survive increasingly dangerous defenses.
I've been playing the beta for the past week or so, and Neon Chrome feels like quite change from the instant non-stop action of Crimsonland. The pacing is easily the biggest difference, as enemies aren't aware of your presence when you first arrive, If you're a hacker, you might be able to disable some lasers or turrets, while an assassin with a cloaking augment could even the odds before going on the offensive. New enhancements, ranging from an armed drone to stronger melee and increased speed, can be chosen as you move between levels, while more offensive power-ups let you unleash area-clearing lasers and missile strikes.
You'll need those tools because the enemies in Neon Chrome are more advanced than the charging hordes of Crimsonland. Rotating turrets, mines, and security drones defend rooms, and heavily-armed soldiers patrol, wielding shotguns, machines, or even riot shields which force you to flank and attack enemies' exposed backs. Alerted foes can call in devastating reinforcements that only give you a couple of seconds to prepare, and powerful bosses will test your shooting prowess.
Neon Chrome is still in beta, and will be releasing later this year. You can learn more about the game here.
Title: Ludus Developer: useful slug Platforms: PC In development ---
Play as the head of a gladiator school
If you've seen Starz's bloody stylized Spartacus, you're well versed in the concept of a ludus. The ruthless brutal training, the wealthy domini overlooking their warriors, the practice duels, the blades and shields and helms. The in-development Ludus places you in control of a titular school, as you manage your gladiators and train incredible fighters to appease the bloodlust of the crowd.
Ludus is essentially a blend of business management and RPG. The Coliseum, fame, and favor await, but first you must purchase, train, and equip your gladiators. The game is turn-based, divided between a management phase and battle phase. In the former, you can acquire new fighters, improve your training staff, gather better weapons and armor from shops.
But most importantly, you must navigate the social spiderweb that is the Roman elite. Friends and foes, allies and rivals, wealthy sponsors, Ludus will let you develop relationships and react to events that can affect your ludus, gladiators, or your own reputation. And much like in Spartacus, sometimes success in the arena requires some backstabbing outside.
The arena combat will be akin to the bouts of games like Punch Club and other management games. As trainer and owner, you won't be controlling your gladiator directly, but rather giving orders regarding stance and intensity of attacks. The aptitude and performance of a gladiator will depend on your training and their equipment, from sword and shield to crushing sledgehammer to trident.
But winning isn't enough; you want to give the crowd a show, and also make sure your pre-fight hype and behind-the-scenes machinations make the battle a pleasing spectacle. Gladiators will even have personalities, basically hero or villain, to further enhance the crowd-pleasing elements of a fight.
You can learn more about Ludus and follow its development on the game's blog.
After years of relatively quiet, space shooters are pretty common nowadays. From the realistic sim combat of Elite to the arcade-y action of Zigfrak or the upcoming Everspace, a lot of games have you blasting away at enemy fighters in the endless abyss. But how many let you take down foes with ship-mounted battle axes? Fabular blends the tropes of medieval fantasy with top-down sci-fi action.
As a space knight with a armored and heavily-armed mount, you traverse Fabular's unusual sci-fi medieval world, engaging in a mix of text adventure-style encounters and direct real-time battles. Traveling the game's starmap is a test of resource management, with fuel always a concern, while text encounters will offer tough and intriguing choices inspired by storybook tales like The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs.
But while Fabular's medieval world is certainly quite fascinating, its combat is equally interesting. The classic fantasy RPG archetypes are all avaible through customizing your loadout with different ships, skills, upgrades, and weapons. Warriors can wield fierce axes and shield plating, or draw enemies in range of blades with a grappling hook. Unleashing automaton tech transforms you into a sci-fi mage, bending enemy shots around you with repulse field or swarming enemies with homing mines. Lasers, rockets, energy projects can destroy enemies from a distance, but be careful, as the factions you encounter can just as well-equipped and formidable as your own space knight.
Information is power. It can fuel new discoveries and breakthroughs, promote change, change the tide of a battle. Need To Know takes that central conceit, along with the themes and ideas brought to the forefront by games like Papers Please and The Westport Independent, and places them in the very relevant context of modern-day surveillance.
Need To Know put in the shoes of a young talented analyst in the employ of the Department of Liberty, an NSA-style agency fighting a digital war against terrorism. This means your job is to go through your daily allotment of profiles and decide if these people are valid threats. That decision rests on your research into each person's life, digging through text messages and financial records and browser histories and other means to determine guilt.
With each successful job, your reputation improves, security clearances open up, more advanced tools and more complex operations becomes available. Operations to locate fugitives and expose cults, operations where your the options are "assault" and "neutralize",
But with those more advanced tools come more power. The world is your oyster, so to speak. The information-gathering means used to spy on suspected terrorists can just as easily let you learn more about the woman you're in a relationship with. Or to blackmail and sabotage a co-worker. Or to make a fortune on the stock market. Or manipulate an election. If you can cover your tracks, you can use information and skills for your own personal gain and perhaps for other more corrupt agendas.
If the immoral path isn't your goal, Need To Know also lets you take other road and expose the illicit actions of the Department to the world. Act as a whistle blower, leak information to secret partners, and you'll be able to undermine the agency from within.
Need To Know will follow a relative linear narrative, with hefty amount of side jobs and the means to use your powers to pry how you see fit. The choices you make will affect the story, and while some suspects will be the same every time, other missions have new suspects to track and investigate. Post-launch, the developers will also be adding an Arcade mode, which will test your skills with increasingly challenging missions and randomly-generated suspects.
Need To Know is currently on Kickstarter, and is already 380% funded with all stretch goals achieved. The campaign has seven days left; you can support it here, and learn more about the game on its site.
A real-time physics-based strategy game of construction and destruction
Many games revolve around building architecturally-sound structures or powerful vehicles, while probably an equal amount challenge you to level buildings and unleash destruction. The upcoming Forts combines both elements, as you construct an imposing weapon-laden base that can withstand devastating barrages and decimate opposing bases.
On craggy canyon walls, across hilly terrain, withing tight caverns, players construct their fort from wall struts and supports, carefully to only make sure their structure won't collapse due to a weight unbalance but also can support weapons and withstand onslaughts from opponents. Each player build their structures in real time, so a game in Forts is a race against time, researching tech trees and establishing both offense and defense.
Forts' arsenal is a careful balance, making each weapon useful and able to countered. Anti-air fire protects your tower from incoming missiles, but the swarm missile lets you fling a collecting of rockets to slip through the anti-air defense. The missile launcher is devastating but requires a sniper to paint its target. Laser, cannon, mortars, and more can be grouped together and fired manually, letting you fire tactical weapon combos or just shell your enemy with overwhelming artillery.
But defense and resource management is just as important as building a powerful array of weapons. Redundant layers of shielding can be a lifesaver against a cannon round, while smart construction can save your fort once fires start spreading. Wind turbines and reactors can produce energy, mines can draw useful minerals from the earth.
Forts will feature a single player campaign against an AI that can intelligently build and repair fortresses, as well as competitive and cooperative multiplayer with up to 8 players.
Forts will be releasing on Steam Early Access later this year. You can find more information about the game and its development here.
Since the days of Snatcher and Syndicate, the cyberpunk setting has been popular in games. Just last year, we got Dex, Satellite Reign, Read Only Memories, and more. But most cyberpunk games put you in the shoes of the street-level soldier, fighting for or against powerful megacorporations. Spinnortality plans to tackle the other end of that spectrum, placing you in control of one of those megacorps.
In a future where nations have combined into sprawling continent-states, you control a rising company with aspirations to seize control of the world's markets. Of course, products that shatter the public's privacy and bend their will to your own goals aren't exactly going to be easy sells, so deciding how to sell software and tech to society will be a major part of Spinnortality's management gameplay.
Powerful governments and equally powerful rival corporations all stand in the way, but as seen so often seen in cyberpunk fiction, there's no tool in your arsenal more effective than corporate espionage. In between spreading your global influence, expanding your workforce, and researching new technology, you'll also be able to work in secret to destabilize nations and secure other advantages. Those tactics include inciting riots, rigging elections, blackmailing officials, or even the direct option of assassination. Manipulating nations through your infamous means can tip your rivals into chaos and financial collapse.
Spinnortality is still early in development and doesn't have a definite release date yet. You can learn more about the game here, and follow its progress on Twitter.
James Patton's previous game was the Renaissance vengeance simulator Masques & Murder; it's available to play as a Pay-What-You-Want download on itch.io.
Title: Scorn Developer: Ebb Software Platforms: PC Releasing 2017 ---
An atmospheric first person horror adventure
No doubt that HR Giger's unsettling blend of organic and mechanical is one of the most fascinating aesthetic in science fiction. Many games have been inspired by it, and besides Alien: Isolation, the upcoming Scorn looks it's capturing those influences with great and grotesque sucess.
Scorn drops you into a nightmarish world of twisted gnarled fleshy structures. The world will be spread across interconnected regions, each with its own stories and secrets to uncover, unique puzzles to solve, and characters to meet.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Scorn is that you aren't defenseless. Monstrous beings roam the regions, and you'll be able to fight back with a selection of weird and powerful weapons. But Scorn is no action game. Combat is influenced by old-school horror games like Resident Evil; supplies will be scare and ammo limited, focusing on carefully choosing battles if you want to survive enemy encounters.
Scorn is expected to release on PC in early 2017; you can follow its development on TIGSource and Twitter.
An open-world, dual-stick action game which showcases a beautifully painted, storybook world
From Limbo to the upcoming Orphan, there's something compelling about a child enduring a harsh and dangerous world. Anew: The Distant Light follows a child on a distant moon, light-years from home and on a critical mission.
Set on a sprawling world, extending from rocky barren surface to subterranean lakes, you'll shoot and leap your way through dangerous beings and deadly hazards. A high-tech suit enhances your mobility, granting you the skills to gracefully dive beneath the water or use jet boosters for augmented jumps.
As you explore farther, new technology will expand your options, letting you solve puzzles and speed across the moon in alien vehicles. But agility alone isn't enough to survive this ruthless landscape, and an arsenal of powerful energy guns, grenades, and more lets you hold your own against hordes of alien creatures, lurking predators. and heavily-armed inhabitants.
Anew brings this alien moon to life with a vibrant art style and smooth animations. Snow coats the dimly lit surface around your landing site, water sloshes and splashes as you fight under the surface, and lasers fly across the screen in furious neon streaks.
Anew: The Distant Light is still early in development, and is slated to release on PC and consoles. You can learn more about the game and find more screenshots here.
The ultimate single player first-person immersive sim. Explore, talk, fight or sneak through The Churchill Tower in 2042
The immersive sim. It's a small subgenre of games, an eclectic mix of themes and gameplay all bound by a goal of letting you role-play as a character in believable reactive worlds that mold to your choices and actions. Deus Ex, STALKER, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a few others, but perhaps most recently, Consortium. An ambitious sci-fi game set in the confines of a single plane, yet feeling like an expansive experience thanks to the depth of its narrative, relationships, and gameplay freedom.
Now developer IDGI is back with Consortium: The Tower, an even more ambitious sequel that takes what worked in the first game and evolving those elements on an impressive scale and scope.
Consortium: The Tower takes place in a near-future London, in the massive Churchill Tower, now controlled by a mysterious terrorist faction. You play as Bishop Six, an agent of the titular organization, on a mission to observe, report, and handle the situation. How you accomplish those goals are up to you. The tower is home to a whole array of different groups - terrorists, police, civilians, Consortium and other more enigmatic individuals - each with their plans and agendas. You can sky-dive to flank enemies from above and unleash devastating firepower, cloak and sneak through unseen, explore the tower for better routes and hack into terminals for useful data and hidden secrets.
But Consortium wouldn't be an immersive sim if it doesn't offer choices beyond the shooting and sneaking. The spoken word here is as powerful as any weapon or piece of technology; in fact, it'll be possible to be complete a playthrough without firing a shot. Find yourself in a tense standoff with an enemy squad and you can press the talk button (that lets you engage in conversation anytime, anywhere), throw down your gun to defuse the tension, and convince the group that you're not a threat or even to fight alongside you.
Going further than that, disobey your orders, go against the Consortium's wishes, and you're be disavowed by the agency. In another game, that would be a game over, but here, The Tower continues along, except now you're a rogue agent. That status may make you very valuable to other factions and individuals in the game.
While the game is already ambitious, the developers have even bigger plans if budget allows. Their vision for The Tower is one of a nearly fully-explorable environment, with areas ranging from malls and apartments to museums and industrial areas, essentially what you'd imagine an actual skyscraper of this magnitude would contain.
Consortium: The Tower is expected to release late next year and is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. You can learn about the game here.
Title: Fara & The Eye of Darkness Developer: Spaceboy Games Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux In development ---
A roguelike with a card-based spell/combat system
Fara & The Eye of Darkness is an upcoming action roguelike that combines fast-paced arena combat with deck-building/card game mechanics, as you face fierce enemies with an arsenal of powerful spells.
As the titular demon witch, you're determined to cure your world of an insidious corruption that's twisting the good animals and inhabitants into aggressive monsters. To defeat this evil and her malevolent siblings, Fara must use an expansive array of spells, ranging from speedy dashes and devastating energy blasts that scar the battleground as they barrel through enemies to fiery sprays and crackling bursts of magic that strike multiple foes at once.
Enemy encounters transports you to smaller arenas that truly test your agility and smart use of the cards in hand. Between fights, you'll explore a procedural overworld filled with towns, shops, and NPCs, and building your deck from defeated enemies, shops, and looting chests throughout the world.
Fara & The Eye of Darkness is still quite early in development, and is expected to release sometime next year. You can find more spell GIFs and follow the game's progress on Twitter.
Become a powerful mage in a world shattered by magic
In RPGs and other fantasy games, there's perhaps nothing more satisfying than unleashing mystical chaos on your enemies as a mage. In Dragon's Dogma, you can conjure tornadoes and call down meteors. In Magicka, you bend the elements to your whim. And Fictorum enhances that mage power fantasy by letting you adjust your spells on the fly and literally raze the environments to the ground with your magic.
Fictorum takes place in a world ravaged by a magical apocalypse that left millions dead and the land shrouded in a killing mist. The remnants of society have retreated to the highest peaks and travel by portals and ley lines to avoid the mist-choked lands. It's in this ruined civilization that you enter, the descendant of the infamous Fictorum, the order that destroyed the world. Hunted by the Inquisition, you travel from city to city, increasing your strength and embarking on a quest for vengeance.
While other games like Lichdom and Skyrim have featured flashy first-person magic, Fictorum turns each spells a spectacle of destruction. Ice spikes shear buildings in half. Lighting storms leave gaping holes in structures or reduce them to rubble. Houses are set aflame by streams of fire unleashed from your hands. Entire squads of enemy soldiers can be destroyed with a gesture, frozen solid or slaughtered by destructive explosives.
Fictorum lets you adapt and alter your spells in real-time through a unique spell-shaping mechanic. With a button press, time slows and you can select the attributes of each spell based on three pre-selected runes. A simple fireball can be changed to an explosive multi-shot blast or a focused attack to unleash increased damage on a single foe. Randomly-generated runes, artifacts, and equipment can further enhance the effects and potency of your magic.
Fictorum is currently in development; a Kickstarter is slated for May. You can learn more about the game and follows its progress on the main site and Twitter page.
Reach the end of each level without falling off trucks driven by terrible drivers
Jumping. A whole stampede of trucks. Tight tracks and levels littered with obstacles. That formula is the DNA of upcoming first-person platformer Clustertruck. It's definitely a simple formula, but sometimes that's all you need for some chaotic over-the-top fun and Clustertruck looks like it delivers that in ample spades.
Your goal in Clustertruck's levels is easier said than done: survive till the end. You're riding on the back of a massive truck convoy as it recklessly careens through the stages, crashing, tumbling, and jackknifing in glorious pile-ups. And through it all, you need to deftly run and leap through the physics-based vehicular chaos.
Planning your route through the mayhem would be tough even if that's all Clustertruck threw at you. But the levels themselves are just as hectic, ranging from dense forests and boulder-strewn deserts to multi-tiered crisscrossing roadways and passages between towering towers that threaten to crush you as they draw inward. Destructible structures crumble and litter the ground with debris. Laser grids slice the air and rotating obstacles offer only the narrowest of gaps to pass through, forcing you to time your leaps. Thankfully, you have trusty slow-motion to activate at those tense moments when you need to stick a landing or precisely angle your descent.
Clustertuck will include 100 hazard-filled levels across 10 different worlds, but if those aren't enough, there'll also be an endless mode to truly test your skills and even a level editor to design your own hellish highways.
Clustertuck is expected to release around April 2016. You can learn more about the game here and see a plethora of footage on the developer's Youtube page.
