Cecilia D'Anastasio

King Art Games just announced Iron Harvest, a real-time strategy game set in the mech-fueled “alternate reality of 1920+,” and it looks gorgeous. “You lead hero characters, mechs, and soldiers in to battle,” Iron Harvest’s website explains, referring to a Great War involving Saxony, Polania and Rusviet nations. It’s slated for 2018 and will be released…

The Biggest Farming Simulator Stream Brings Out Twitch’s Mature Side

Viewers who swear in Squirrel’s Twitch chat are purged. “The Home of Simulation,” Twitch’s biggest stream for simulation games like Farming Simulator 17 or Euro Truck Simulator 2, is PG, intended for Twitch’s lesser-known mature audience. It’s a gaming channel far removed from the sort of youthful irreverence that is commonplace on the streaming service.…

Skyrim: Special Edition Is Too Janky

Skyrim: Special Edition is a buggy mess on consoles. In just a few hours playing on Xbox One, I encountered NPCs floating above chairs, twitchy mammoths, seconds-long pauses in animation, echoing dialogue and other glitches that are unforgivable for a game that came out in 2011 and, in 2016, costs $60 on console. That price…

Popular YouTuber’s Horror Game Sparks Lawsuit Between Creators

Beloved YouTuber Criken is being sued for allegedly backstabbing the co-creator of his upcoming horror game, I.C.U. The suit was filed last Friday, three days before the game closed out its successful Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $82,000. Keenan “Criken” Mosimann’s popular YouTube channel features funny moments from games like Left 4 Dead and Dark…

Katamari Creator Announces Whimsical AR Game [UPDATE]

Katamari creator Keita Takahashi just announced a fanciful new AR game called Woorld. In proper Takahashi style, Woorld is all charm, full of whimsical little items that make me giggle like an idiot. In Woorld, your phone will map the room you’re in and place cartoonish items, from mushrooms to tiny houses, around the space…

Deadly Premonition’s Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro is leaving Access Games after a year-long health break In a tweet, Swery told fans that, although his reactive hypoglycemia is getting better, he will be retiring after 12 years at the company:

An Early Look At  D&D’s Newest Monster Bible

Happy Halloween, geeks and freaks. Today, we have a special preview of the new Dungeons & Dragons monster supplement, Volo’s Guide to Monsters, to satisfy your beastly cravings. Volo’s Guide is a whole new take on the nearly 40-year-old Monster Manual. This time, it’s got some story, framing it more as an academic debate than an…

Latest Sword Art Online Game Lets Twitter ‘Raise’ A Character

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, to be released November 8th, is asking fans for help “raising” one of its protagonists. Premiere, an NPC, will scan and mine Twitter feeds for personality traits and mold her in-game persona in our image, Crunchyroll reports. Premiere is a SAO: Hollow Realization’s protagonist, a teenaged girl who is an…

Critically-acclaimed anime movie Your Name is on a U.S. theatrical run that may qualify it for an Academy Award. It’s the story of a small-town girl and a Tokyo boy switching bodies—and changing each other’s lives—that is the fifth highest-grossing anime film of all time. In 2003, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Best Animated Film Academy Award.…

Imagining Horror Stories Of A Never-Ending Overwatch ARG

Imagine a world in which the Sombra Overwatch ARG never ends—a horror world where there are only unsolved mysteries and the bitter, masochistic masses who hunt them down, forever. Are you picturing it? Here’s a twist: You don’t need to! You’re living it. In a dark browser window called Discord, a spirit haunts the realm…

Final Fantasy XV Reveals DLC Plan, Including Online Co-Op

Final Fantasy XV will have an online multiplayer mode, the game’s teamannouncedtoday at Paris Games Week. Co-op multiplayer DLC will be available for the game after its November 29th release. The mode is a part of FFXV’s season pass, announced in August, which will cost $25 and offer six DLC packs total. The three other…

VR Developers Add ‘Superpower’ To Their Game To Fight Harassment

Over the last few months, several women have reported facing or witnessing sexual harassment online in VR. Most recently, author Jordan Belamire explained on Medium last week that the avatar of someone she didn’t know virtually groped her in the online mulitplayer game QuiVR. Yesterday, QuiVR’s developers responded by modding their game to prevent non-consensual…

What It Was Like To Make The Nintendo Switch Trailer, According To An Actor

A longtime Nintendo fanboy had his big break when he got to act in the Nintendo Switch’s trailer video. And his retelling of the shoot reveals some interesting facts about the production. Last Saturday, Twitch streamer Nicky, who goes by “Dickhiskhan,” posted a video recounting the story behind his first acting gig: playing “European Splatoon…

The Best Dungeons & Dragons Adventures Keep Things Simple

The little-known secret to an extraordinary Dungeons & Dragons session is the tired cliche “less is more.” It’s true, although it may not seem that way to a tabletop culture that traditionally relishes in crowded mechanics and bloated narratives. In a game where veterans trade war stories of arduous, endless dungeons full of idiosyncratic traps,…

GTA V Player Sinks A Yacht With 100 Bodies

Ah, yes, Grand Theft Auto V: where destruction is crowd-sourced. Recently, GTA V player RZED was curious about whether over a hundred people could sink a yacht in-game. With admirable scientific rigor, RZED collected a mass of bodies onto the bow of a large boat. He used a mod to make it drivable. What happens next is…

YouTubers Clash With Visual Novel Developers Over Spoiler Videos

“The Prince of Play” Solon Scott is a YouTuber who plays through visual novels, mostly Japanese dating simulators. It’s his art medium. In his videos, Scott acts out characters’ voices, explains literary devices and offers sharp commentary on visual novels’ plot. He sees himself as a performer and his videos as, in his words, “his…

Drum & bass producer SleepingEggs sampled the dulcet tones of Hyper Light Drifter for this wicked EDM track:

Overwatch’s Upcoming Esports League May Struggle Against Disruptive Patches

Yesterday, Blizzard announced that an official Overwatch League is in the works. It’s an exciting moment for a game that, only six months post-release, already offers million-dollar tournament prize pools. Overwatch, though, is a volatile game. Today, Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan said on Battle.net that hero-balancing will continue to be kinetic, a model that, as…

Soon, you’ll be able to buy indie games, in real life, at a local GameStop. Indie game distribution service IndieBox will be sending physical copies—in actual boxes—to 1,200 GameStops as a part of their GameTrust initiative. Nuclear Throne, Rogue Agency, Axiom Verge and Chariot (all $19.99) and others will be available with instruction manuals, discs, soundtrack…

Nintendo Shows Off New Splatoon Footage, Unclear If It’s A New Game

Today’s trailer for the Nintendo Switch, coming in 2017, showed off some new Splatoon footage that looks a little different from the ink-painting squid game we know and love. Never-before-seen features indicate that Splatoon is due for some fun new additions or a sequel on the Switch. Nintendo has not publicly confirmed either yet. The…