17 years ago, Akira Toriyama provided art for the cult classic Xbox 360 JRPG Blue Dragon, and after the Dragon Ball creator's death, Microsoft is paying tribute with a piece of dynamic background art for modern Xbox consoles.
13.03.2024 - 15:23 / polygon.com
Sometimes a game makes you feel soothed just by looking at a screenshot, even if it’s not that pretty. So it is with Brighter Shores, the new project from Andrew Gower, creator of hoary old massively multiplayer role-playing game RuneScape.
Along with his brother Paul, Gower did most of the early development work on RuneScape (which launched in 2001) and founded the studio that made it, Jagex. The Gowers cashed out and left Jagex back in 2010, and little has been heard of what Andrew has been up to since. Now we know: He’s spent much of that time — 10 years, apparently — making another old-school MMO with a comfortingly nerdy grid-based design. (The press release justifiably calls these orderly isometric dioramas Gower’s “instantly recognisable style.”)
Brighter Shores will be a free-to-play game with a “cozy, relaxing atmosphere.” It’s set in and around a peaceful coastal town in the fantasy land of Adothria. There’s a heavy focus on crafting, as well as three new character classes to try: Cryoknight, Hammermage, and Guardian. Gower says he aims to reduce the grind typical of this kind of game, and his studio Fen Research plans to offer an “all-inclusive” premium pass unlocking additional content rather than a lot of microtransactions.
After all this time, Gower has also finally left Java behind. RuneScape was launched as a browser game written in this humble programming language, and didn’t transition to its own client until 2016, after the Gowers had left. But Fen Research has built its own custom engine and programming language for Brighter Shores, called Fenforge. (Geographical trivia: both studio and engine are likely named after the Fens, a marshy flatland area in the east of England that extends north of Cambridge, where both Jagex and Fen Research are based.)
Brighter Shores will be coming to PC and Mac via Steam later this year.
17 years ago, Akira Toriyama provided art for the cult classic Xbox 360 JRPG Blue Dragon, and after the Dragon Ball creator's death, Microsoft is paying tribute with a piece of dynamic background art for modern Xbox consoles.
Some enemies in Honkai: Star Rail will reportedly have multiple layers of Toughness, as stated by a prominent leaker. Honkai: Star Rail has a combat mechanic that requires players to deplete the enemy's Toughness bar, which is displayed above its HP bar, to trigger the Break Effect. When this bar is fully exhausted, the enemy enters the Broken state, and players can utilize its elemental weakness to deliver a massive amount of damage.
I've not played Hellgate: London, but I'm sure I must've passed it on the shelves in Gamestation (I'll never forget you, friend) way back when. Apparently, the original was a dark fantasy action RPG with roguelike elements and MMO subscription models before developer Flagship Studios shut down. Then it was re-released a bunch of times, with London giving way to Tokyo in one expansion. Now, Hellgate's original creator Bill Roper has announced he's working on a brand new Hellgate game under his new studio Lunacy Games.
Judas, the new game from Bioshock creator Ken Levine and Ghost Story Games, will be a single-player FPS and feature a «pseudo-procedural» narrative.
The latest update to added a lot of changes, including even a new farm, and among the list of content that was added were many new items for players to discover in the game. From decorative things such as new wallpapers and furniture, to impressive new machinery to make a farm into a high-profit operation, 1.6 has a bit of everything. Of course, players are also now able to put hats on cats and dogs, which should deserve at least a mention among the coolest items in the new 1.6 update.
Legendary game developer Shinji Mikami – best known as the creator of Resident Evil and The Evil Within – has established a new independent game development studio named KAMUY. Interestingly enough, the studio’s existence has emerged not from an official announcement, but through the official website of the upcoming Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered.
Still Wakes the Deep finally exclusively reveals a release date at the Future Games Show in an all-new trailer. The new footage also details more of the gameplay and environments of this mysterious and atmospheric horror game, set on a disaster-stricken 1970s oil rig called the Beira D.
Well, the Future Games Show is always full of surprises, but we've not had one quite like this before. We've just had the reveal of a game that's currently codenamed Project Mango, and it's a collaboration between Toukana Interactive - aka the developers behind chill puzzle game Dorfromantik - and kurzgesagt, the hugely popular animated science storytellers of YouTube fame.
Names like Skyrim and Morrowind are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget they were once ideas on a whiteboard. But in 1993, the world of Elder Scrolls was still very much a blank slate.
Some of 's creators have talked about the challenges they faced when developing the game, and how they pulled off the impressive technical feat of making the entire game world physics-driven. Ultimately, such an idea paid off, with Link's Ultrahand ability becoming one of the more entertaining elements of the game, as players could essentially build anything they wanted, with many items ranging from genius to bizarre being shared on social media following the game's launch.
Skydance shared a trailer for Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra during Epic Games’ State of Unreal showcase on Wednesday. The trailer teased the game’s story, showing the tension between Captain America and Black Panther, and revealed its 2025 release window.
Brighter Shores, the upcoming MMO from original RuneScape creator and Jagex founder Andrew Gower, loosely channels RuneScape in its focus on relaxing grinds, a mix of idle gameplay, and branching professions. In an interview with GamesRadar+, Gower touched on another similarity with Old School RuneScape especially: "It is more about the journey than it is about the endgame."