After nearly seven years of activity across PlayStation 4 and PS5, the PlayStation Tournaments platform is getting its first branded competition, and the name at the top of the screen is smothered in tomatillo-red chili salsa. The Chipotle Challenger Series featuring Tekken 8 will kick off on PS5 Tournaments with a qualifier round from April 15 to 26, open to anyone who wants to test their fighting-game skills — or just score some free snacks. All participants in the qualifier round will receive a code for free chips and guacamole from Chipotle. According to the company's official rules, the freebie must be redeemed alongside a full-priced entrée item, purchased online or in-app only. Also, the offer expires on May 31. But, hey, there's still a clear path to free chips and guac via Tekken 8 playtime here.
The Chipotle Challenger Series continues with the closed qualifier and finals on May 3 and 4. First place takes home $5,000 and a trip for two to Evo 2024 in Las Vegas from July 19 to 21, plus free Chipotle for a year. Looking closer, that offer "consists of Chipotle Rewards credits good for one free regular entrée item per week for a year, or a total of up to fifty-two regular entrée items," which actually sounds much healthier than literally eating Chipotle every day for a year like some of you weirdos were already fantasizing about.
Second place gets $3,500, a trip for two to Evo, and a $300 Chipotle gift card. Third place receives $2,500 plus a $250 gift card. Monetary payouts stop at 16th place ($475), but 17th through 1,250th (!) place will be awarded a free Chipotle entrée code.
There's also an official Tekken 8 Battle Bowl (which sounds like a just-fine chicken situation) that you can order from the Chipotle app or website to be automatically entered for a chance to win a Tekken 8 Premium Collector's Edition signed by director Katsuhiro Harada. This deal is live from April 8 to 16.
Technically, it feels possible to put together a whole-ass Chipotle order for free from these prizes, and the only requirement is that you play Tekken 8 through PlayStation Tournaments on PS5. You'll have to be better than 1,249 people to claim the full bounty, but that sounds worth a shot. Good luck, fighters.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-free-chipotle-chips-and-guac-by-playing-tekken-8-on-ps5-180239947.html?src=rss
After nearly seven years of activity across PlayStation 4 and PS5, the PlayStation Tournaments platform is getting its first branded competition, and the name at the top of the screen is smothered in tomatillo-red chili salsa. The Chipotle Challenger Series featuring Tekken 8 will kick off on PS5 Tournaments with a qualifier round from April 15 to 26, open to anyone who wants to test their fighting-game skills — or just score some free snacks. All participants in the qualifier round will receive a code for free chips and guacamole from Chipotle. According to the company's official rules, the freebie must be redeemed alongside a full-priced entrée item, purchased online or in-app only. Also, the offer expires on May 31. But, hey, there's still a clear path to free chips and guac via Tekken 8 playtime here.
The Chipotle Challenger Series continues with the closed qualifier and finals on May 3 and 4. First place takes home $5,000 and a trip for two to Evo 2024 in Las Vegas from July 19 to 21, plus free Chipotle for a year. Looking closer, that offer "consists of Chipotle Rewards credits good for one free regular entrée item per week for a year, or a total of up to fifty-two regular entrée items," which actually sounds much healthier than literally eating Chipotle every day for a year like some of you weirdos were already fantasizing about.
Second place gets $3,500, a trip for two to Evo, and a $300 Chipotle gift card. Third place receives $2,500 plus a $250 gift card. Monetary payouts stop at 16th place ($475), but 17th through 1,250th (!) place will be awarded a free Chipotle entrée code.
There's also an official Tekken 8 Battle Bowl (which sounds like a just-fine chicken situation) that you can order from the Chipotle app or website to be automatically entered for a chance to win a Tekken 8 Premium Collector's Edition signed by director Katsuhiro Harada. This deal is live from April 8 to 16.
Technically, it feels possible to put together a whole-ass Chipotle order for free from these prizes, and the only requirement is that you play Tekken 8 through PlayStation Tournaments on PS5. You'll have to be better than 1,249 people to claim the full bounty, but that sounds worth a shot. Good luck, fighters.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-free-chipotle-chips-and-guac-by-playing-tekken-8-on-ps5-180239947.html?src=rss
Open Roads is an easy game to get lost in. It tells a twisting tale about generational trauma — the tension, lies and love between mother and daughter — with all the comfort and warmth of an early 2000s network drama like Gilmore Girls or Charmed. As a former suburban teen myself, this game left me feeling equally exposed and understood.
Open Roads is set in 2003, and through environment and character design alone, it captures an authentic slice of life in this post-9/11, pre-Razr era. In the early aughts, I spent my teen years bouncing between Dad’s apartment on the outskirts of the city and Mom’s house in a dusty development site surrounded by grocery stores and Blockbuster Videos, and I had big dreams of escaping both. All this is to say, I relate to Open Roads' main character, Tess, who’s finishing up high school and planning a future in the hot new market of webpage design. Her parents are newly divorced and she’s been living with her mom, Opal, and grandma, Helen, outside of Detroit. Helen recently passed and her home is being sold against Opal’s wishes, so she and Tess are begrudgingly clearing it out and looking for a new place to stay.
Open Roads Team
The details of Tess’ family history are slowly exposed as she explores Grandma Helen’s home, told in old newspapers, photographs, books, postcards, heirlooms, phone calls and pottery-making materials. Tess and Opal eventually discover a suitcase hidden behind a false wall in the house, and it spurs them to embark on a road trip to long-lost locations from Opal’s past. Helen was a popular advice columnist and writer similar to Dear Abby, and her leftover letters, scattered around each environment, steadily peel back the layers of secrets that have enshrouded her, her daughter's and granddaughter's lives.
Every character in Open Roads has something to hide. I actually clocked the big twist about halfway through the game, but there was enough drama, doubt and emotional heft to keep me invested in the narrative regardless. Do yourself a favor and don’t look up any story spoilers — just enjoy the Open Roads ride.
Open Roads Team
This is exceedingly easy to do. Open Roads has expertly written dialogue, and its characters are infused with rich histories and complex motivations. The back and forth between Tess and Opal feels genuine for a teen daughter and her mother who’ve been trapped together in a car for hours on end: They quickly spark to anger and reconciliation, and just as easily act supremely silly around each other. A foundation of tenderness underlies their interactions. The voice acting, provided by mainstream television actors Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever, is superb, adding to the game’s immersive pull.
Open Roads uses a mix of 3D and 2D art — the backgrounds and interactable objects are 3D, while Tess and Opal are animated in hand-drawn 2D, moving in a floaty manner that reminds me of the early Disney classics. The styles work well together, for the most part. I found the visuals jarring in one section, when Tess and Opal were having a conversation in direct sunlight and the brightness of the scene made their 2D avatars look unfinished, unblended with the setting. Generally though, Open Roads is filled with engaging environments and beautiful details, with plenty of items to investigate and small puzzles to solve. The story unfurls naturally with every action prompt, and dialogue choices alter Tess and Opal’s trajectory throughout the game.
Open Roads Team
The sound design in Open Roads is particularly spectacular. Each object that Tess interacts with has a sound specific to its texture and weight. When Tess sets a cookie tin down on a kitchen countertop, it sounds like hollow metal scraping against wood; when she picks up a discarded cigar, the audio cues are soft and papery; Tess’ footsteps sound distinct on bare floorboards, carpet and rugs, with changes in density, bass and sharpness for each new material. Picking up Tess’ flip phone to text her BFF, I can hear the groaning of thick plastic hinges and the padded creaking as she rapidly presses down on the number pad. These sounds are crucial aspects of the game, louder than the bed of acoustic guitar or light synth that make up the soundtrack, and I’m entirely here for it. Open Roads is proof that ASMR exploration games should be a thing.
The features that will stick with me after finishing Open Roads are its sound design and its authenticity. There aren’t many games focused on the everyday lives and conversations of women, let alone mothers and daughters, and Open Roads is a testament to the power of these stories. The game oozes warmth and camaraderie, and its writing displays an abundance of respect toward the characters that drive its narrative. Every person with a voice in Open Roads is a woman, and Tess, Opal, Grandma Helen and Aunt August are each dynamic, sympathetic and flawed in unique ways. Considering the developers of this game broke free from a studio whose co-founder was reportedly hostile toward women, this accomplishment is even more significant.
My suggestion for fully enjoying Open Roads is to set aside a lazy afternoon, grab your favorite drink and some snacks, and make sure your headphones are on nice and tight. Turn up the volume so you can hear every plunk and tap of Tess’ world, and don’t try too hard to decipher the game’s secrets. Trust in the story and take it slow. This is a game worth savoring.
Open Roads is out now on consoles and PC, and it's part of the Xbox Game Pass library. It comes from Open Roads Team, published by Annapurna Interactive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/open-roads-review-take-it-slow-and-savor-the-drama-160925576.html?src=rss
Open Roads is an easy game to get lost in. It tells a twisting tale about generational trauma — the tension, lies and love between mother and daughter — with all the comfort and warmth of an early 2000s network drama like Gilmore Girls or Charmed. As a former suburban teen myself, this game left me feeling equally exposed and understood.
Open Roads is set in 2003, and through environment and character design alone, it captures an authentic slice of life in this post-9/11, pre-Razr era. In the early aughts, I spent my teen years bouncing between Dad’s apartment on the outskirts of the city and Mom’s house in a dusty development site surrounded by grocery stores and Blockbuster Videos, and I had big dreams of escaping both. All this is to say, I relate to Open Roads' main character, Tess, who’s finishing up high school and planning a future in the hot new market of webpage design. Her parents are newly divorced and she’s been living with her mom, Opal, and grandma, Helen, outside of Detroit. Helen recently passed and her home is being sold against Opal’s wishes, so she and Tess are begrudgingly clearing it out and looking for a new place to stay.
Open Roads Team
The details of Tess’ family history are slowly exposed as she explores Grandma Helen’s home, told in old newspapers, photographs, books, postcards, heirlooms, phone calls and pottery-making materials. Tess and Opal eventually discover a suitcase hidden behind a false wall in the house, and it spurs them to embark on a road trip to long-lost locations from Opal’s past. Helen was a popular advice columnist and writer similar to Dear Abby, and her leftover letters, scattered around each environment, steadily peel back the layers of secrets that have enshrouded her, her daughter's and granddaughter's lives.
Every character in Open Roads has something to hide. I actually clocked the big twist about halfway through the game, but there was enough drama, doubt and emotional heft to keep me invested in the narrative regardless. Do yourself a favor and don’t look up any story spoilers — just enjoy the Open Roads ride.
Open Roads Team
This is exceedingly easy to do. Open Roads has expertly written dialogue, and its characters are infused with rich histories and complex motivations. The back and forth between Tess and Opal feels genuine for a teen daughter and her mother who’ve been trapped together in a car for hours on end: They quickly spark to anger and reconciliation, and just as easily act supremely silly around each other. A foundation of tenderness underlies their interactions. The voice acting, provided by mainstream television actors Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever, is superb, adding to the game’s immersive pull.
Open Roads uses a mix of 3D and 2D art — the backgrounds and interactable objects are 3D, while Tess and Opal are animated in hand-drawn 2D, moving in a floaty manner that reminds me of the early Disney classics. The styles work well together, for the most part. I found the visuals jarring in one section, when Tess and Opal were having a conversation in direct sunlight and the brightness of the scene made their 2D avatars look unfinished, unblended with the setting. Generally though, Open Roads is filled with engaging environments and beautiful details, with plenty of items to investigate and small puzzles to solve. The story unfurls naturally with every action prompt, and dialogue choices alter Tess and Opal’s trajectory throughout the game.
Open Roads Team
The sound design in Open Roads is particularly spectacular. Each object that Tess interacts with has a sound specific to its texture and weight. When Tess sets a cookie tin down on a kitchen countertop, it sounds like hollow metal scraping against wood; when she picks up a discarded cigar, the audio cues are soft and papery; Tess’ footsteps sound distinct on bare floorboards, carpet and rugs, with changes in density, bass and sharpness for each new material. Picking up Tess’ flip phone to text her BFF, I can hear the groaning of thick plastic hinges and the padded creaking as she rapidly presses down on the number pad. These sounds are crucial aspects of the game, louder than the bed of acoustic guitar or light synth that make up the soundtrack, and I’m entirely here for it. Open Roads is proof that ASMR exploration games should be a thing.
The features that will stick with me after finishing Open Roads are its sound design and its authenticity. There aren’t many games focused on the everyday lives and conversations of women, let alone mothers and daughters, and Open Roads is a testament to the power of these stories. The game oozes warmth and camaraderie, and its writing displays an abundance of respect toward the characters that drive its narrative. Every person with a voice in Open Roads is a woman, and Tess, Opal, Grandma Helen and Aunt August are each dynamic, sympathetic and flawed in unique ways. Considering the developers of this game broke free from a studio whose co-founder was reportedly hostile toward women, this accomplishment is even more significant.
My suggestion for fully enjoying Open Roads is to set aside a lazy afternoon, grab your favorite drink and some snacks, and make sure your headphones are on nice and tight. Turn up the volume so you can hear every plunk and tap of Tess’ world, and don’t try too hard to decipher the game’s secrets. Trust in the story and take it slow. This is a game worth savoring.
Open Roads is out now on consoles and PC, and it's part of the Xbox Game Pass library. It comes from Open Roads Team, published by Annapurna Interactive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/open-roads-review-take-it-slow-and-savor-the-drama-160925576.html?src=rss
Hyper Light Breaker is a hoverboard sim. Technically, it’s a third-person roguelite adventure set in a luminous fantasy-cyberpunk universe, but after playing a 30-minute preview, it’s clear to me that Hyper Light Breaker is all about the hoverboard. Vicious beasts, secret alcoves and shiny weapons are secondary to the feeling of gliding over green hills and shallow waters on my glowing blue slab, finding joy in narrowly avoiding enemy encounters.
Intentionally skipping battles was probably the opposite of what lead animator Chris Bullock wanted me to do during the first public hands-on opportunity with Hyper Light Breaker — but if that were the case, then he shouldn’t have told me about the hoverboard.
Heart Machine
Hyper Light Breaker is set to go live in early access on Steam this summer, complete with three-player online co-op. Developers at Heart Machine are letting people play it for the first time at Day of the Devs: San Francisco Edition, which is held in conjunction with GDC this week. I played a remote preview of the game at home, solo style, while Bullock watched on Discord (and probably cringed a whole lot).
Breaker is an open-world game with a hub station called the Cursed Outpost, a futuristic strip mall with shops, upgrade stations and NPCs. I briefly explored the outpost, but the bulk of the game plays out in the Overgrowth, a landscape of ever-shifting biomes, and I focused on diving into these. Biomes in the Overgrowth are built with hand-crafted and procedurally generated elements so that players will never enter the same realm twice, and each one has a boss to defeat called a Crown. Despite my desire to peacefully hoverboard through the half-hour demo, I messed around with two loadouts, took out a few slime hordes and twice tried to slay one of those Crowns — a huge bipedal wolf warrior with a golden sword named Dro.
In both of my battles with Dro, she started attacking instantly and with incredible force, swinging her blade wildly as she leapt in a giant arc across a temple and directly onto my head. I dodged and attempted to fill up her stagger meter by landing basic attacks with my sword and firearm, but the wolf was relentless, especially compared with the basic enemies I easily dispatched around the biome.
Heart Machine
Dro defeated me twice. At the end of each fight, I heard the game’s siren song luring me in, making me believe I could beat the big bad wolf next time, if I just employed an updated strategy. Parrying was key in this fight, according to Bullock.
“Her first opening attack, you immediately went for the parry on that,” Bullock said as I prepared to fight the boss again. “I love that you picked that up right away; that was the intention on that one.”
The parry had been an accident on my part, but I’d immediately noticed how effective it was, giving me a half-second at the very beginning of the encounter to step back and strategize. What I’d experienced with the parry was a fury attack, Bullock explained. Some beasts in Hyper Light Breaker glow red and then perform big moves that have to be perfectly parried in order to cancel out the damage, reverse a projectile or stun the enemy. With a fury attack, a non-perfect parry will mitigate some damage only.
“That is definitely the design goal, to make the combat clear, know when you're doing something well,” Bullock said.
These moments of tactical clarity are exactly what makes a roguelike or roguelite addictive. I can see how to beat the boss; now I just have to get good enough at the game to implement those moves before I'm killed.
Heart Machine
There’s no dialogue in Hyper Light Breaker, much like its predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter. Drifter was an incredibly stylish 2D action RPG that came out in 2016 after a few years of crowdfunding and significant hype, and it solidified Heart Machine’s reputation as a stellar indie studio. Hyper Light Breaker is technically a prequel to Drifter, since it's set 15 years before the events of that game.
Drifter co-designer Teddy Dief went on to found Team OFK and release the musical visual novel We Are OFK, while lead developer Alx Preston stuck with Heart Machine and released Solar Ash in 2021. Much like Breaker, Solar Ash is set in the same general universe as Hyper Light Drifter, but it’s a vastly different game and it’s not a direct sequel. Solar Ash is a third-person action platformer built around an incredibly satisfying glide-step mechanic, and its world is filled with alien environments, massive monsters and vaguely threatening deities.
“Hyper Light was a way for me to get started, it was a way for me to be more grounded and put together a crew and understand, can I do this? Can I actually make games?” Preston told me in 2021, during the lead-up to Solar Ash’s release. “And so having answered that question, then the natural next step for me was something in 3D. Can I put something out there that really opens up the world and makes you feel like you can truly escape into something, a creation that is otherworldly, that you otherwise wouldn't have the experience of? A lot of my childhood was spent escaping into those bigger experiences.”
Heart Machine
Breaker feels like the perfect amalgamation of Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash. Replace the Solar Ash ice skates with a hoverboard, add some friends and you’re set. Developers at Heart Machine plan to keep Hyper Light Breaker in early access for about a year, though they noted that this timeline might change with player feedback.
The full release of Hyper Light Breaker will support up to three players in online co-op, and it will have a handful of characters to choose from, each with customizable loadouts. I tried out a basic, slashy blade and a hefty buster sword, plus a standard rifle and a shotgun-type firearm, and they each performed well, though I ran out of ammo quickly and often. The heavy sword was slower than the simple blade, but it moved smoothly and hit hard. In the Cursed Outpost before loading up a new biome, I was also able to select four abilities called Holobytes from about a dozen options, such as increased armor or faster healing. My favorite trait was the blooming corpse seed, which planted an exploding AOE flower on the bodies of slain enemies.
But once Bullock told me that hoverboarding was an option, it was all I wanted to do. I spent a good chunk of my Hyper Light Breaker demo time gliding along the bright green grass, landing small jumps and occasionally falling into a pond. I’m still itching to find Dro again and fine-tune my parrying abilities across a range of weapons (and corpse flowers). Mostly though, I’ll be dreaming of that bright blue board until Hyper Light Breaker hits early access this summer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hyper-light-breaker-hands-on-im-here-for-the-hoverboard-210045970.html?src=rss
Former professional esports player Dennis Fong founded GGWP in 2022, more than a year before companies like Microsoft and Google debuted their natural-language search engines and the AI revolution officially gripped the globe. GGWP is an AI-powered moderation system that identifies and takes action against in-game harassment and hate speech, and after two years on the scene, it’s now integrated into titles at more than 25 studios.
Fong may be a veteran of the Doom and Quake esports scenes, but he’s interested in protecting players from abuse in every genre, especially as social features become easier to implement for studios of all sizes. GGWP is live in thatgamecompany’s social adventure title Sky: Children of the Light, the meditation app TRIPP VR, the kids-focused MMO Toontown Rewritten, the first-person MOBA Predecessor, Fatshark’s action shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, the metaverse platform The Sandbox, and it powers Unity’s anti-abuse toolset.
These aren’t all gritty military sims or hardcore competitive franchises like Counter-Strike or League of Legends, where you might expect emotional outbursts and increased toxicity. One-third of the games that utilize GGWP are co-op and PvE experiences, rather than competitive PvP settings, according to Fong. Turns out, cozy games need moderation too.
“Cozy games tend to see a lot more chat activity when compared to competitive games, so naturally there tend to be far more incidents that are chat-related as compared to gameplay,” Fong said. “That said, users are clever and are always discovering new ways to turn something intended to be positive, like a ‘thank you’ emote, into something negative by using it after a player makes a mistake. We help companies understand what’s happening and then implement tools to help curb that behavior.”
GGWP’s Unity partnership is particularly notable, if only because of its potential scale. GGWP powers Unity’s Safe Text and Safe Voice products, including its Vivox voice chat system, and it’s integrated into the uDash dashboard. Unity developers can activate GGWP in their games with a click and have billing handled through their existing Unity partnerships.
Outside of Unity, it takes just a few lines of code to activate GGWP in a game. There’s a free tier that allows studios to try out the system, and a self-service portal for the truly independent developer. Custom contracts for larger titles aside, GGWP charges based on the volume of API calls a game generates.
"There are companies that do a subset of what we do, but we’re the only comprehensive platform for positive play," Fong said.
In-game moderation is a massive problem for any game with a social feature, and the bigger the audience, the more harassment there is to sift through. One studio executive told Fong in 2022 that their game received more than 200 million player-submitted reports in just one year, and this volume was common among popular online titles. During his research phase, Fong found that most AAA studios addressed just 0.1 percent of all reports they received annually, and some had anti-toxicity teams of fewer than 10 people.
GGWP exists because most game companies, even the largest ones, are awful at moderating their spaces. Clicking the “report” button in many games feels like sending a strongly worded letter to a trash incinerator inside a black hole. Here’s how Fong described it to Engadget in 2022:
“I'm not gonna name names, but some of the biggest games in the world were like, you know, honestly it does go nowhere. It goes to an inbox that no one looks at. You feel that as a gamer, right? You feel despondent because you’re like, I’ve reported the same guy 15 times and nothing’s happened.”
GGWP has successfully blocked hundreds of millions of abusive messages and it’s being used to protect billions of user interactions monthly. Games that use the system have seen a 65 percent reduction in toxic behavior and a 15 percent improvement in player retention — meaning, GGWP is preventing harassment from happening in the first place, and this helps players feel comfortable enough to keep coming back.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/even-cozy-games-can-get-toxic-184517894.html?src=rss
Former professional esports player Dennis Fong founded GGWP in 2022, more than a year before companies like Microsoft and Google debuted their natural-language search engines and the AI revolution officially gripped the globe. GGWP is an AI-powered moderation system that identifies and takes action against in-game harassment and hate speech, and after two years on the scene, it’s now integrated into titles at more than 25 studios.
Fong may be a veteran of the Doom and Quake esports scenes, but he’s interested in protecting players from abuse in every genre, especially as social features become easier to implement for studios of all sizes. GGWP is live in thatgamecompany’s social adventure title Sky: Children of the Light, the meditation app TRIPP VR, the kids-focused MMO Toontown Rewritten, the first-person MOBA Predecessor, Fatshark’s action shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, the metaverse platform The Sandbox, and it powers Unity’s anti-abuse toolset.
These aren’t all gritty military sims or hardcore competitive franchises like Counter-Strike or League of Legends, where you might expect emotional outbursts and increased toxicity. One-third of the games that utilize GGWP are co-op and PvE experiences, rather than competitive PvP settings, according to Fong. Turns out, cozy games need moderation too.
“Cozy games tend to see a lot more chat activity when compared to competitive games, so naturally there tend to be far more incidents that are chat-related as compared to gameplay,” Fong said. “That said, users are clever and are always discovering new ways to turn something intended to be positive, like a ‘thank you’ emote, into something negative by using it after a player makes a mistake. We help companies understand what’s happening and then implement tools to help curb that behavior.”
GGWP’s Unity partnership is particularly notable, if only because of its potential scale. GGWP powers Unity’s Safe Text and Safe Voice products, including its Vivox voice chat system, and it’s integrated into the uDash dashboard. Unity developers can activate GGWP in their games with a click and have billing handled through their existing Unity partnerships.
Outside of Unity, it takes just a few lines of code to activate GGWP in a game. There’s a free tier that allows studios to try out the system, and a self-service portal for the truly independent developer. Custom contracts for larger titles aside, GGWP charges based on the volume of API calls a game generates.
"There are companies that do a subset of what we do, but we’re the only comprehensive platform for positive play," Fong said.
In-game moderation is a massive problem for any game with a social feature, and the bigger the audience, the more harassment there is to sift through. One studio executive told Fong in 2022 that their game received more than 200 million player-submitted reports in just one year, and this volume was common among popular online titles. During his research phase, Fong found that most AAA studios addressed just 0.1 percent of all reports they received annually, and some had anti-toxicity teams of fewer than 10 people.
GGWP exists because most game companies, even the largest ones, are awful at moderating their spaces. Clicking the “report” button in many games feels like sending a strongly worded letter to a trash incinerator inside a black hole. Here’s how Fong described it to Engadget in 2022:
“I'm not gonna name names, but some of the biggest games in the world were like, you know, honestly it does go nowhere. It goes to an inbox that no one looks at. You feel that as a gamer, right? You feel despondent because you’re like, I’ve reported the same guy 15 times and nothing’s happened.”
GGWP has successfully blocked hundreds of millions of abusive messages and it’s being used to protect billions of user interactions monthly. Games that use the system have seen a 65 percent reduction in toxic behavior and a 15 percent improvement in player retention — meaning, GGWP is preventing harassment from happening in the first place, and this helps players feel comfortable enough to keep coming back.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/even-cozy-games-can-get-toxic-184517894.html?src=rss
Children of the Sun is a bullet-bending puzzle game set in a trippy world of cults and revenge, and it's due to hit PC via Steam on April 9. In Children of the Sun, players line up a single sniper shot and then control the bullet as it ricochets among the cultists in their sights. The goal is to take everyone out with the most speed, elegance and creativity, curving the bullet around the environment and through objects as the targets attempt to flee in slow motion. It's a repeatable, satisfying set of mechanics.
It's not all senseless violence, either. The sniper is called The Girl, and she's a former cult member who grew up as a victim of its brainwashing. She's now on a mission to dismantle the cult, member by member and bullet by bullet, before finally taking out The Leader. So yes, there is violence in the game, but it's not completely senseless.
The environments in Children of the Sun have a high-contrast, demonic glow about them, and the enemies appear as thermally lit skeletons as The Girl spies on them, lining up each shot. The visuals alone lend the game an unpredictable, adrenaline-fueled edge.
Children of the Sun comes from René Rother, a developer who's big in the world of game jams. Rother has a history of building minimalistic games with loud messages about violence and death — or, sometimes, chewing gum. Children of the Sun is published by Devolver Digital.
Devolver Digital
The demo for Children of the Sun landed on Steam in early February and offered a seven-course taste of the game's core loop. It was a breakout hit of Steam Next Fest; its demo clocked more than 60,000 players that week.
"It's been a few pretty fun weeks after the first announcement of the game and the release of the demo," Rother said on Steam. "There were lots of really nice words and great feedback coming from you. I appreciate everyone who gave the Demo a moment of their time.... So now that release date is public, I guess I finally need to actually finish the game. Ha!"
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/children-of-the-sun-brings-fps-puzzles-to-steam-on-april-9-184030022.html?src=rss
Game design is a daring and dangerous endeavor for Niklas Åkerblad, who creates under the name El Huervo. When he describes the artistic process behind ULTROS, a neon-speckled platformer set in a demonic cosmic uterus, he talks about pushing against the sharp edges of introspection and sanity, drawing from wells of creativity buried deep in his psyche. It sounds like he could’ve slipped and fallen down any of those wells at any second, never to be seen again.
“I had a pretty rigorous discipline when it came to creating the world of ULTROS,” Åkerblad told Engadget. “It involves deep meditation while working and maintaining 100 percent focus to be able to know when harmony is achieved when working with such a dense flow of shapes and colors. It is almost impossible to cerebrally analyze this process, but it is rather something you have to feel, thus any external disturbance can greatly impact the process. It is perhaps not something I recommend others do without proper experience in creating visual art.”
Niklas Åkerblad
At the same time, Åkerblad is extremely practical about the business of making games. He’s been in the independent scene for years, and he’s enjoyed incredible success as the collaborator who provided the cover art and other assets for Hotline Miami and its sequel. You know the vibe — grizzled but radiant, with the threat of violence in every other pixel. He also composed a handful of songs for those games, including “Daisuke” and “Rust,” and he went on to develop else Heart.Break(), a 3D adventure set in a digital city of hackers, artists and activists that implemented programming as a core mechanic. Else Heart.Break() came out in 2015 and was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival that year.
His latest project, ULTROS,is a 2D exploration of The Sarcophagus, a looping world in a black hole that cycles players through environments overrun by alien plant life and vicious demons. Every scene in ULTROS is packed with detail and brilliant color; the backgrounds are alive with monsters and organic machines. Streaks of black delineate the boundaries of walking paths, ceilings and platforms, contrasted against shifting rainbows of luminosity.
Hadoque
There’s a lot going on in ULTROS at any given moment, but the protagonist stands out with a glowing green helmet, vermilion cloak and an evolving arsenal of platforming gadgets. One lesson from else heartbreak() that Åkerblad fed into ULTROS was the idea that games can have way more fun with color palettes. ULTROS is purposefully packed with visual interest.
“I felt video games tend to not push the boundaries of colors so much beyond ‘green is good’ and ‘red is bad,’ and whatever metrics are used for loot tiers,” he said. “I feel that there is this misunderstanding in design that less is more, and my gut tells me it's the opposite and I worked very hard on ULTROS to prove my theory. Undoubtedly there will be those who do not agree with me, but I feel it has more to do with taste and personal or physical preferences than academic truth — if there is such a thing.”
As a cyclical Metroidvania title, ULTROS is completely different from Åkerblad’s previous projects, but it’s also undeniably El Huervo. Actually, in this case, it’s Hadoque — around 2017, Åkerblad and game director Mårten Bruggemann started building the prototype that would become ULTROS, eventually bringing in composer Oscar “Ratvader” Rydelius and Fe designer Hugo Bille. Other artists joined over the years, and they ended up calling themselves Hadoque, a loose organization of creators who could float in and out as a project called to them.
Hadoque
“We wanted our group to be associated with its own thing, so we decided on Hadoque,” Åkerblad said. “It's a cool name that looks a bit weird and it suits our vibe. Also, it allowed everyone to still have their own thing on the side and not be legally tied to anything if they wished to pursue other venues.”
El Huervo AB remains Åkerblad’s own corporate entity, useful for dealing with the bureaucratic aspects of making video games. Through El Huervo AB, Hadoque received backing in 2019 from the gaming fund Kowloon Nights, which has also supported titles like Sifu, Rollerdrome, We Are OFK, Sea of Stars, Spiritfarer and Tchia.
“El Huervo AB merely functions as a sort of bureaucratic condom, and Hadoque as a name to be used when a group of developers come together to make art as games,” Åkerblad said. “Sort of like a band name. People come and go, but the vision remains.”
ULTROS is a game about life, rebirth, aliens, monsters and peace, and it all plays out in a technicolor dreamscape of vicious creatures and gorgeous foliage. This is the palette of surreal sci-fi, to Åkerblad.
Hadoque
“The themes explored in ULTROS are of an existential and spiritual nature, and I find that surreal sci-fi is a good genre to explore these themes in, as it has a long tradition of doing so,” he said. “In this regard, Ursula K. Le Guin has been a huge inspiration. Hopefully, what we manage to evoke in players is a sense of introspection and comfort.”
Despite the amount of deep thought that he’s done about the nature of art, sci-fi and play, there’s no singular message that Åkerblad is trying to convey with ULTROS. Instead, he and the rest of the developers at Hadoque encourage players to identify their own journey as they cycle through The Sarcophagus. As Åkerblad put it:
“Please enjoy ULTROS any way you want and don't try to look for a ‘true’ interpretation, but rather find your own meaning. This goes for any art, I think, in general. Interpretation is purely subjective and I want to keep telling stories that invoke and allow this subjectivity to exist.”
ULTROS is available now on PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam and the Epic Games Store, published by Kepler Interactive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ultros-and-the-palette-of-surreal-sci-fi-160023230.html?src=rss
Game design is a daring and dangerous endeavor for Niklas Åkerblad, who creates under the name El Huervo. When he describes the artistic process behind ULTROS, a neon-speckled platformer set in a demonic cosmic uterus, he talks about pushing against the sharp edges of introspection and sanity, drawing from wells of creativity buried deep in his psyche. It sounds like he could’ve slipped and fallen down any of those wells at any second, never to be seen again.
“I had a pretty rigorous discipline when it came to creating the world of ULTROS,” Åkerblad told Engadget. “It involves deep meditation while working and maintaining 100 percent focus to be able to know when harmony is achieved when working with such a dense flow of shapes and colors. It is almost impossible to cerebrally analyze this process, but it is rather something you have to feel, thus any external disturbance can greatly impact the process. It is perhaps not something I recommend others do without proper experience in creating visual art.”
Niklas Åkerblad
At the same time, Åkerblad is extremely practical about the business of making games. He’s been in the independent scene for years, and he’s enjoyed incredible success as the collaborator who provided the cover art and other assets for Hotline Miami and its sequel. You know the vibe — grizzled but radiant, with the threat of violence in every other pixel. He also composed a handful of songs for those games, including “Daisuke” and “Rust,” and he went on to develop else Heart.Break(), a 3D adventure set in a digital city of hackers, artists and activists that implemented programming as a core mechanic. Else Heart.Break() came out in 2015 and was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival that year.
His latest project, ULTROS,is a 2D exploration of The Sarcophagus, a looping world in a black hole that cycles players through environments overrun by alien plant life and vicious demons. Every scene in ULTROS is packed with detail and brilliant color; the backgrounds are alive with monsters and organic machines. Streaks of black delineate the boundaries of walking paths, ceilings and platforms, contrasted against shifting rainbows of luminosity.
Hadoque
There’s a lot going on in ULTROS at any given moment, but the protagonist stands out with a glowing green helmet, vermilion cloak and an evolving arsenal of platforming gadgets. One lesson from else heartbreak() that Åkerblad fed into ULTROS was the idea that games can have way more fun with color palettes. ULTROS is purposefully packed with visual interest.
“I felt video games tend to not push the boundaries of colors so much beyond ‘green is good’ and ‘red is bad,’ and whatever metrics are used for loot tiers,” he said. “I feel that there is this misunderstanding in design that less is more, and my gut tells me it's the opposite and I worked very hard on ULTROS to prove my theory. Undoubtedly there will be those who do not agree with me, but I feel it has more to do with taste and personal or physical preferences than academic truth — if there is such a thing.”
As a cyclical Metroidvania title, ULTROS is completely different from Åkerblad’s previous projects, but it’s also undeniably El Huervo. Actually, in this case, it’s Hadoque — around 2017, Åkerblad and game director Mårten Bruggemann started building the prototype that would become ULTROS, eventually bringing in composer Oscar “Ratvader” Rydelius and Fe designer Hugo Bille. Other artists joined over the years, and they ended up calling themselves Hadoque, a loose organization of creators who could float in and out as a project called to them.
Hadoque
“We wanted our group to be associated with its own thing, so we decided on Hadoque,” Åkerblad said. “It's a cool name that looks a bit weird and it suits our vibe. Also, it allowed everyone to still have their own thing on the side and not be legally tied to anything if they wished to pursue other venues.”
El Huervo AB remains Åkerblad’s own corporate entity, useful for dealing with the bureaucratic aspects of making video games. Through El Huervo AB, Hadoque received backing in 2019 from the gaming fund Kowloon Nights, which has also supported titles like Sifu, Rollerdrome, We Are OFK, Sea of Stars, Spiritfarer and Tchia.
“El Huervo AB merely functions as a sort of bureaucratic condom, and Hadoque as a name to be used when a group of developers come together to make art as games,” Åkerblad said. “Sort of like a band name. People come and go, but the vision remains.”
ULTROS is a game about life, rebirth, aliens, monsters and peace, and it all plays out in a technicolor dreamscape of vicious creatures and gorgeous foliage. This is the palette of surreal sci-fi, to Åkerblad.
Hadoque
“The themes explored in ULTROS are of an existential and spiritual nature, and I find that surreal sci-fi is a good genre to explore these themes in, as it has a long tradition of doing so,” he said. “In this regard, Ursula K. Le Guin has been a huge inspiration. Hopefully, what we manage to evoke in players is a sense of introspection and comfort.”
Despite the amount of deep thought that he’s done about the nature of art, sci-fi and play, there’s no singular message that Åkerblad is trying to convey with ULTROS. Instead, he and the rest of the developers at Hadoque encourage players to identify their own journey as they cycle through The Sarcophagus. As Åkerblad put it:
“Please enjoy ULTROS any way you want and don't try to look for a ‘true’ interpretation, but rather find your own meaning. This goes for any art, I think, in general. Interpretation is purely subjective and I want to keep telling stories that invoke and allow this subjectivity to exist.”
ULTROS is available now on PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam and the Epic Games Store, published by Kepler Interactive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ultros-and-the-palette-of-surreal-sci-fi-160023230.html?src=rss