Culture

Supergiant’s Hades Is Coming To Switch

To kick off today’s Nintendo Indie World showcase, Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre developer Supergiant announced that its most recent game, Hades, is coming to Switch this fall. Hades is a narrative-driven roguelike rooted in Greek mythology. The Switch version will have cross save functionality with the PC version, so if you—like me—have already sunk countless…

How’s It Going? Flight Stick Edition

Dammit, Microsoft Flight Simulator. Welcome back to our daily open thread. Good morning. I’ve spent the opening hours of my day on the website of one Thrustmaster because Microsoft Flight Simulator demands it. I own more than three dozen mechanical keyboards, but none of them are adequate to control a Cessna. They work okay, and…

Next-Gen Arkane Game Deathloop Delayed To 2021

Deathloop, Arkane’s upcoming time-based immersive sim, has been delayed to spring of 2021, the studio tweeted today. And just like that another next-gen game falls out of this year’s lineup. The studio cites work-from-home and “the health and safety” of staff as reasons for the delay, writing, “This extra time will allow our team to…

Fall Guys Creators Incite Twitter Brand Bidding War For Charity, And It’s Beautiful To Watch

Since the launch of wildly successful battle royale Fall Guys, Twitter brands have been falling over themselves to get their products and/or services represented as in-game costumes. Yesterday developer Mediatonic launched a two-week “Battle of the Brands” event, with the brand that donates the most to gamer charity Special Effect securing the coveted tie-in. As…

Report: Batman Developer Rocksteady Accused Of Failing To Address Sexual Harassment [Update]

Female staffmembers at Rocksteady Studios, best known for the Batman: Arkham series, sent a letter to management back in 2018 complaining about sexual harassment, according to a new report by the Guardian The letter, reportedly signed by 10 of the 16 women on staff at the time, cited a number of persistant issues including transphobic…

This Cassette Tape Made Double Dragon Sound Awesome

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s new, daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Double Dragon’s super-famous 1987 soundtrack interests me for two reasons: It kind of sucked on its original arcade hardware, and a much better version came out on a cassette tape! Okay, “sucked” is a bit…

Now That’s A Treehouse

Rebecca On is an artist at Wizards of the Coast, where she works on Magic The Gathering You can see more of Rebecca’s stuff at her personal site and ArtStation page

Some Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Mysteries, Solved

The older Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games had some weird hidden stuff tucked away, which over the years have inspired countless urban myths and tall tales. Now Ralph D’Amato has tried to set the record straight on some of them D’Amato, who worked on the series from its inception, all the way through to 2007,…

The Reigns Team Are Making An Animal Farm Game

Nerial, the team behind the excellent Reigns, are now working on a game based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm It’ll be a “narrative” game, where you can, “Throw out exploitative farmers. Found a new Republic. Guide its leaders. All animals are equal. You decide which animals are most equal of all.” The game is being…

Tera Publisher En Masse Is Shutting Down

Publisher En Masse Entertainment, which has overseen MMORPG Tera in the West for nearly a decade, announced today on Facebook that it will soon be shutting down. “Today, it is with a heavy heart that we begin the process of discontinuing the business of En Masse Entertainment,” En Masse wrote. “Our focus in the coming…

Halo 5 Forge Experts Are Remaking Halo Infinite Demo

Halo Infinite may have been delayed until next year, but Halo fans are busy trying to recreate the world shown in its first gameplay trailer inside of the last Halo game. Halo 5: Guardians is five years old at this point and hasn’t gotten a major update in quite some time. But its map making…

Epic Asks Court To Prevent Apple From Blocking Fortnite And The Unreal Engine

Even if you’ve been living under a rock with only your computer-illiterate grandparents and the TI-84 calculator you all huddle around each night for warmth, you’ve probably heard that Apple is removing Fortnite from the App Store. Now developer Epic says that Apple is going after every part of its App Store presence, including the…

How Microsoft Flight Simulator Makes The Ground Look So Good

While in-air screenshots and footage from the latest installment of Microsoft Flight Simulator are gorgeous, it’s not too shabby at ground level either, depending on which of the three different cityscape rendering types the game uses. YouTuber ObsidianAnt shows us the difference between handcrafted, auto-generated, and photogrammetry-built cities. In their video, ObsidianAnt uses the game’s…

Streamer Dances Sephiroth To Death In Kingdom Hearts

One of the hardest boss battles in the original Kingdom Hearts is the secret platinum match featuring Sephiroth. He has hard-to-dodge attacks that deal massive amounts of damage. Many players struggle to beat him. But streamer and YouTuber SarahKey not only beat the optional boss fight, she did it using a dance pad. A tweeted…

Help! Fall Guys Is Ruining My Relationship

My partner hates playing online games, but this weekend I made him try Fall Guys and now our relationship is in peril. Online games just aren’t for him. He doesn’t think interaction with or dependence on strangers should be a requirement to finish a game. Plus, he’s social enough in his offline life to not…

Florida Tourist Attraction Sues Fortnite Over Aquaman Castle

The Florida-based Coral Castle Museum, said to be built by a lovesick man in the early 20th century, is suing Fortnite maker Epic Games over the game’s recent addition of a new Coral Castle location, which the museum’s owners claim infringes on their trademark. Located just south of Miami, the Coral Castle Museum is a…

How’s It Going? Back To School Edition

Shhh, my children are in the other room doing school. Welcome back to our daily open thread. Thank goodness I live in Fulton, one of Georgia’s more sensible counties. Instead of having our children plastered all over CNN as two of the hundreds who contracted covid-19 on the first day back to class, my Seamus…

Ghost of Tsushima Is Getting Free Online Co-op Later This Year

Today, Sucker Punch announced Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, a brand new co-op experience coming to Ghost of Tsushima for free. The new mode will let up to four folks play together in a story separate from the original game, featuring new enemies and characters based on Japanese mythology. Darren Bridges, the senior game designer at…

Pokémon Masters Shall Soon Become Pokémon Masters EX

Collectable Pokémon trainer game Pokémon Masters has come a long way since it launched last year, adding new content and features, and holding regular special events to keep players from getting bored. Celebrating the game’s myriad changes and those yet to come, DeNA is changing the name of the mobile game to Pokémon Masters EX.…

Hey kids, Nintendo’s streaming another Indie World presentation tomorrow. Tune in at noon Eastern for 20 minutes of indie games for the Nintendo Switch. Expect to say “That looks cool” a lot.