News! Tech! Tools! Talks! Games! And Stuff Worth Sharing!

[jonaz.dk]

God of War Ragnarök on PS5 - The Digital Foundry Tech Review
(Watch out for spoilers)




Don't know if Mood was also involved in Ragnarök. They did some early work on the last God of War.
A bit can bee seen here:

Environments (Flippin badass shit!)
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/y99EQ

Props
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8QQmQ

[jonaz.dk]

Do’s and don’ts i dit spil-pitch: Hvad har investorerne fokus på?

Amanda Schmidt fra Trophy Games fortæller, hvordan du skal gå til investorer, når du vil pitche din spil-ide.
https://www.version2.dk/holdning/dos-an ... -fokus-paa

[jonaz.dk]

Deep Rock Galactic has a free weekend starting now!


Ladder Larry releasing in a few hours

[jonaz.dk]

Talks from Unreal Fest 2022

Unreal Fest 2022 Opening Session



Making better blueprints


LOT'S more here:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/even ... -fest-2022

[jonaz.dk]

Spilbar reminder.. its today.

I think I have time to drop by.. say hi!

[jonaz.dk]

Why Videogames Want You To Fail

[jonaz.dk]

Why Tunic Hides Its Tutorial

[jonaz.dk]

Oh startup spotting from Aalborg, Cinder Cat Games.. they got some investment from the Invisible Walls founders. Grats!



We're very proud to announce, that we've welcomed our first investors to CinderCat Games - The Founders of Invisible Walls, Sebastian Bevensee, David Jean Heldager and Niels Wetterberg.
https://www.cindercatgames.com/news/fou ... rcat-games

[jonaz.dk]

Steampage for The Magical Mixture Mill (formerly known as 'That Alchemy Game')

From Glowlight Games in Copehagen.

I have a good feeling about this one! Let's hope they can make it happen!
A solid publishing deal or some stronger arms to lift the marketing would be nice to see though. That should be far from impossible to land!
**Adding.. oh yeah I know their investors btw.. they are 'more than wealthy' though there only seems to be a small amount of seed funding in the company so far. Who knows.. might change?!

Older game trailer here for the project:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4775&p=22254&hilit=Alchemy#p22254

The devs were also seated at our shared basement offices for a while. They have gotten real far since last time I saw the game.

[jonaz.dk]

The slightly older project Oxyjet from sparetime team developers Upstairs Digital is coming to Steam soonish this year. Forgot the specifc date. But it's soonish!

The project started as a gamejam project 6 years ago and it's already out on the Switch.

Used to work with one of the devs and got a few updates on the project from time to time.

[jonaz.dk]

Also Nordic Game Jam 2023 has a date! And the ticket sale is open.
April 13th-16th 2023 at Aalborg University.

[jonaz.dk]

Oh man! Sick Blender hard surface trick!

Totally works.. just tested it!

[jonaz.dk]

The World Design of Elden Ring

[jonaz.dk]

Pimax Portal seems like a crazy do it all concept. Handheld, VR, settop, arcade slot-in.. and the list goes on with features and addon things like nothing before it. Let's see where it goes!



The longer corporate presenation
Pimax Frontier 2022 Portal Launch Event - Worlds' First Metaverse Entertainment System (MES)

[jonaz.dk]

Starship Intruder from DK indiedev, Isocube Software is now on itch. A title i missed when it released on Steam in 2020.

Starship Intruder
The interface IS the game. Using your keyboard in a command prompt-style, you will engage in combat with enemy spaceships, raid planets, collect warp cores, draw space cards to obtain advantages (and disadvantages) and much more.
https://isocube.itch.io/starship-intruder

Gave it a quick spin.. ahm. Well I love command typing games like this. But in this instance there is quite a lot to improve before we get there. In the meanwhile I recommend 'Duskers'.

[jonaz.dk]

BetaDwarf has updated their legendary imgur picture journey that was a big part of securing the Forced Kickstarter back in the days. Taking place from the very beginning from classroom squatting to the corporate world of today.

https://imgur.com/gallery/QN6zUT3

[jonaz.dk]

Launch day for Somerville! Not exactly a DK project. But it is the former CEO/co-founder of Playdead, Dino Patti's investment in the British company Jumpship and creative Chris Olsen who is the main force behind the game. Also there are a atleast two dk artists on the project.
Dino is also investing in the Swedish multiplayer tech startup https://www.coherence.io

The art looks amaze!
I think I'll pick it up sooner or later to give it a spin and I'm totally ok with shorter games! Perhaps after some updates, fixing some of the issues people have with the launch version.

Still early days with the reviews so things will change over time! It's a pretty ok reception! But obviously not hitting the big league.

Update: Sadly things are not looking too good for the launch. Numerous serious issues are haunting the project. Sounds like the project could have used more time in the cooker. It could be the financial situation of the former indie studio had lead to a too early launch?! Even with it's quite extended development time. Also the project WILL be brutally compared to the perfectionist works and expectations of Limbo and INSIDE that it just had no chance of reaching, but everyone was hoping it would, me included.
Really sad for Dino's first post-Playdead project to come out like this. I like him a lot just on a personal basis!
But I'm sure (or hope) with the new financial situation at Jumpship the team will be able fix what is there to restore faith in the otherwise talented studio and deliver better and more polished titles in the future.

**Update 2: In a tweet they acknowledge there are some bugs and issues and will be working towards resolving them. So that's great! Let's hope they can turn the tide in good time.
https://twitter.com/jumpshipstudio/stat ... kUHg_3Apg

Mostly positive on Steam.
Update: (Mixed / 53% positive) Ouch!

Currently at 77 on metacritic based on 8 reviews
Update: Metascore: 68 / 13 reviews. Yikes!
https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-se ... lle?ref=hp

IGN is pretty hard on the project.




XBOX + GamePass
https://www.xbox.com/da-DK/games/store/ ... 1PS56BR6VK

Epic (Cheap for 107 DKK)
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/somerville-229529

[jonaz.dk]

Oh!! And boom Jumpship was sold already!
To the Swedish Thunderful Group.

https://thunderfulgroup.com/posts/2022- ... mpship-ltd

[jonaz.dk]

Unreal Engine 5.1 is out!
Looks like a huge release!

Really looking forward to take the lumen improvements for a spin. The current 5.0.3 gets pretty flickery in low light environments, like dark scifi alien infested hallways.
UPDATE: OMFG! Lumen in 5.1 is amazing!! I'm blown away! No more flickering issues.. bam!
Though I get some pretty severe smearing temporal artifacts under the higher Lumen GI quality settings. Lowest setting seems to do ok and the GI is pretty amazeballs still on low, a bit grainy maybe.

Details here
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog ... -available

More:


The quick overview.. there is plenty more updates!

[jonaz.dk]

A bit of work in progress footage from the NFT, free to play game Ember Sword from Brightstar Studio.

They presold land for 1.2 Billion DKK... abolutely insane!!!! Guessing there must have been a lot of speculators burning a lot of Ethereum. The question remains if actual players will be playing the game in sufficient numbers.

Adding: And another question is how affected the project will be by the recent giga crash of FTX and a lot of the whole crypto scam world. Brightstar the company and project will most likely be affected in a negative way to some degree.
And getting actual players into the whole crypto driven game to begin with might prove an even bigger challenge in the long run.

It is certainly a hard sell when the only thing you can trust in the crypto world is that most things are a scam and even if not. When the next scam comes crashing down it will tank the value of whatever you put into the system anyways. Obviously not everyone sees it like that and speculators will always be speculators. We will see what happens!

Ember Sword Pre-Alpha WIP Demo Video


Also an older TV2 Echo interview I missed a year ago.

[jonaz.dk]

And today is launch day for Triband crazy new VR game 'What the bat'! the next game in the 'What the games franchise.

It's been a while since I heard about Triband was fiddling around with some VR project. and now it's here!

Update: Hmmm.. there is a certain split here. Still very early days!
The current (very little) Steam audience is >not< pleased with Oculus Rift exclusivity. As some unfortunate souls did not read the fine print it seems.
The Oculus store owners are happy for the game though. Based on the rather few user reviews currently available.

[Warning: The following contains hopefully informed speculation] (I just find speculating fun,.. take it as usually with a grain of salt)
So let's see where it goes.. the super early projections for the Steam version is unfortunately not so good. But as earlier speculated I did think that Triband would be likely to have done a deal with Oculus. And I can only take it now on available information that this is still the most likely case. So thinking they have some money in the bank while sacrificing the Steam version on the alter of exclusivity. A version that probably wouldn't have sold a lot anyways. So I can see the logic behind it!
That's one way to do business. And they are of cause a business and need to run it like a business. But it's not that player centric thinking and hurting their studio reputation again in the process. Some Steam users did not take the Epic exclusivity deal too well on the last What the Golf release.
The hindsight better way would probably be to do a timed exclusive ONLY on the Oculus store. And release one year later on Steam for everybody else and just be transparent about it. But who knows, maybe this was not possible for reasons.

UPDATE 2
Triband was quick to update the game with support for Steam VR headsets. So I guess the Oculus exclusivity speculation was off. And the cause might have been something else entirely.
Great to see they were quick to fix the issue. Woop woop!
**Adding: Doesn't mean they are not likely to be funded by Oculus/Meta in a non-exclusive deal though.



It will be releasing a bit later today!
Guess I'll drop by the office.. like 100 meters down the street to say grats to the old Tribandits!



And the Oculus store link
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/ques ... 408247712/



Historical note: Actually it's not Triband first VR project. Though the first released one. They were fooling around with the old Danish movie Reptilicus IP in VR using Rokoko's motion capture suit back in 2015. Both Triband and Rokoko had offices here in Gothersgade basement ages ago. The project was never released.



More here:
https://nordicgame.com/reptilicus-to-co ... gen-again/

[jonaz.dk]

Slightly older DK mobile release, Scrap Diver from Gearhead Games ApS.
Good reviews and 10K+ downloads on Android so far.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... vers&pli=1
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrap-div ... s_box_link

[jonaz.dk]

Bramble looks pretty nice! A very nordic cinematic adventure in the vein of INSIDE and Little Nightmares.
Developed by Swedish Dimfrost Studio.

I think I played an early demo a bunch of years ago at Nordic Game. The gameplay was very basic, but the draw is to let you immerse yourself in the cinematic experience.



Playable demo on Steam

[jonaz.dk]

Niantic's (developers of Pokemon GO) upcoming Lightship AR headset has been fully revealed.

I really don't see AR as your next gaming device anytime soon. Though the tech seems to be pretty compact and functional.
I have still to spot any people at all using any kind of "screen" or AR glasses in the wild. Perhaps Apple stands a chance of making a tiny difference in the field with their brand power and "soon'ish?" to be revealed AR device. But it will be an absolute niche product for a long time. But impressive and interesting tech in it's own right and some day AR tech might be mature enough to warrant a real consumer audience. But years of patience is certainly required.
The business to business segment might see a lot more use cases for AR tech in general. And with more availability and convenient devices it could certainly grow for certain applications.



https://www.roadtovr.com/niantic-ar2-he ... nouncement

[jonaz.dk]

Dead Faces Announcement Trailer by (DK) Aza Game Studio.