Samurai Gunn 2 got rebuilt from scratch and it's still ferocious
A nippy new engine to die in
It is Sunday night and I am kicking my own severed head around on the paving stones. My brother stands on a filthy platform high above me, hand on his katana, he is grinning precisely as a terrible killer might. He dashes left and turns invisible. Not this time. I focus. An entire second passes - a lifetime. I scan the air for signs of hopping feet.
There! I fire my gun, a flaming bullet strikes a wall, hitting nothing but stone. My two hands freeze with rigor mortis anticipation just as my body is severed into two large pieces. My brother reappears, cackling. I am dead, but at least Samurai Gunn 2 has been reborn.
If you peer back through the bamboo forest of yesteryear you might remember Samurai Gunn 2 coming out in 2021 as an early access couch brawler. It was a high-functioning sequel to one of the most brutally fun multiplayer party fighters this side of Nidhogg. You get three bullets and a sword: fight.
It saw a roster of special guest characters added over a couple of years, including the little guys from Minit, a crewmate from Among Us, and the cast of
The Lie-In
Our weekly roundup of links worth reading.
Good morning, videogames. Stretch at the knees, spread your toes, and feel the brushed cotton ensconcing you like a big toasty cinnamon bun... Uh oh. Gotta read some good reads from across the week.
Obsidian released three games last year - an absurd number from a single studio in the modern era. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier visited the studio in the aftermath as it attempts to change its development processes to make games more quickly and cheaply.
Last year the developer released three games—a rare and impressive achievement for a studio of its size—but two of them failed to meet sales forecasts set by Obsidian’s parent company, Microsoft Corp. “They’re not disasters,” Urquhart says. “I’m not going to say this was a kick in the teeth. It was more like: ‘That sucks. What are we learning?’”
Stardew Valley is ten years old. IGN's Rebekah Valentine spoke to developer ConcernedApe about the game's success and his future.
So I asked you about big positive moments in the last 10 years. What about challenging times? Is there any moment in the last 10 years of Stardew that you recall as being exceptionally difficult or frustrating?
Barone: I think
Jank Mail: BG3TV, indefinite Overwatch, types of quest
Last week in PC gaming
It’s Saturday, which means it’s time to review the week in PC gaming. Chez Jank, Brendy completed his mountain-climbing adventure by being eaten by the developer of Cairn, before killing all his squad members in Menace, reviewing TR-49 and proposing some additional Types of Quest. Graham found the perfect Speed Racer game but can’t play it, and a perfect PICO-8 that he can’t stop playing. The minds at Total Playtime decreed that the Splinter Cell novel and Split Fiction are both bad.
Beyond these walls, we learned that there's a Baldur's Gate 3 TV show in the works, although Larian are not involved which is another little data point on why they're sticking with their own IP for their next game. It's being made by Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin, which I prefer to think of as Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin because that was much better television.
i think in the name of fairness the producers of the baldur's gate tv show should demand that tv writers do at least a year of running around in circles doing unpaid writing tests before they're allowed to write for the show
— Bruno Dias (@brunodias.bsky.
What you should play this weekend
Tell us what you are playing in the comments
Another weekend? So soon? I am not at all prepared for this collision with two days of supposed non-work, but I hope that you are making merry, putting your feet up, and stuffing your gullet with salty, crunchy videogames.
Here what you should or could be playing. Tell us what you actually are playing in the comments.
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined
I am not an RPG guy, but oh how I dream of being. Alas, I tried playing the Dragon Quest VII Reimagined demo and fell asleep on the couch within an hour. I'm like yer da putting the snooker or bowls on TV on a Sunday - I see the colour green and I'm out. If you've greater fortitude than I, this seems like a great modernisation of one of the genre's classics, with lots of fast-forward and automation options to make the combat more fun (and an anthology structure to make the 85-hour runtime less intimidating).
Menace wants you dead
Joke's on you, I love to die
Take a good look at that title font, you'll be seeing this shade of red a lot. Menace is the new XCOM-flavoured turn-based tactics lad who just dropped in from orbit to shoot you in the shinbones and make a mocking crybaby face at you as you bleed out. It is quite difficult.
It's also a very slow burner. I have put nine hours into the brutal early access build and all I have to show for it are three dead friends and a rocket launcher made out of sellotape. If you're familiar with Battle Brothers - the previous tactical death sentence this studio released - you'll know how it goes. You are once again raising a mercenary army, yet are persistently outnumbered, outgunned, and underfunded. There is an element of sci-fi horror to how quickly you can run out of money. In space, no one can give you a small business loan.
A disaster has occurred aboard your military spaceship, and as the highest-ranking officer to survive the catastrophe, you are now in charge. Great timing, as your vessel has arrived in a foreign solar system of pirate scum,
Total Playtime: Bugpunk
In which people become very cross about Split Fiction
Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.
It’s Thursday, so that means a new episode of Total Playtime, and as part of our current partnership I am compelled to bring it to your attention. This week’s episode, after an extended aside about shrimp (real; either annoying or delicious) and ahead of a discussion of Silt Striders (not real; valuable public infrastructure), is anchored by the news that progress has been made on the Split Fiction movie, which Alice cited as a transparent segue into her talking about the fact that she has been playing Split Fiction and is extremely furious about it.
Total Playtime Episode 28: Bugpunk
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I will not attempt to summarise her argument but the topline is that the characters, narrative and game itself are all bad in ways seemingly calculated to enrage. Some of these views are shared by Graham and, to a degree, Brendy - I have not played the game so I will not judge, but that’s okay because Alice offers judgment
I can't stop playing KOLYDR
A new classic from the master craftsman of browser games.
I can't describe KOLYDR more succinctly than it describes itself, as a game in which "you clear out reds by crashing into blues until a green appears." It's a tiny, single screen PICO-8 game you can play in your browser right now. What makes me keep playing is that it's a game of constant risk and reward, one where nearly every moment is a gamble and every death was preventable if only I hadn't pushed my luck.
This is also what makes me yowl in anguish every time I die.
Here's the longer explanation of how KOLYDR works: you move a small craft (using arrow keys, ESDF or gamepad) around a square arena. Blue squares appear which explode when touched, and the explosions destroy red squares, which are otherwise gradually filling the arena. Destroyed red squares drop gold which can be collected and are worth 100 points. After a short while, green squares will begin to appear which allow you to end your run and bank your score.
Naturally, you want your score to be as high as possible, so you don't leave when a green exit first appears. Instead, you keep going, as reds appear at random throughout the
There are only 9 types of quest, says Fallout creator - but what about these?
Let's talk quest this out
How many types of quest are there in an RPG? Shut up, the question has already been answered by Fallout creator Tim Cain, who says there are nine - count 'em - nine types of quest. When you set off as Goblonk the Brave this morning you didn't know it, but you're only going to see these nine familiar missions as you travel the kingdom. At least according to Cain.
I think he might be missing a few. More importantly, the whole idea of taxonomising quests this way risks stripping the flavour out of quest design by limiting everything to a set menu of indivisible "ingredients". We're not making a casserole here. And even if we were, why can't I put some nettles in just to see what happens? There are a lot of quests that just don't fit the mold.
First, you can watch Cain's whole video on the taxonomy here. It's interesting. And to be fair, it's more like a fifteen-minute blast of audible thoughts than any grand theory of quest design. I don't think Cain intends to publish this in a peer-reviewed journal or anything. But that doesn't mean I can't pick a thoughtfight.
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