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What would it look like if you took the fast-paced arena shooter stylings of Doom Eternal and flipped the gory, grimdark aesthetics upside down? You might end up with something like Incolatus: Don't Stop, Girlypop!. It's a "Y2K girly-pop arena-style movement shooter where standing still is not an option," as game director Jane Fiona of Funny Fintan Softworks put it during the Day of the Devs showcase on Wednesday. "The faster you go, the more damage you deal and the more you heal." In Incolatus, a mining corp is trying to drain the world of love, its most precious resource. Trees are dying and fairies have been ejected into the world at large, and it's up to you to save their homes so you might argue that it's even darker than Doom Eternal. Thanks, capitalism. Funny Fintan Softworks After you (a revolutionary eco warrior) eliminate an enemy robot, you can grab the remaining love that it was running on to power up your weapons and deliver more damage. The love that you collect also plays a factor in the dress-up metagame. You can change the look of your character's arms to personalize things a bit. If you donate love to fairies you encounter, you'll get more customization options for your arms and guns. Five cool points to anyone who correctly guessed that movement is a critical aspect of Incolatus. The quicker you move, the more your guns expand with additional barrels and scopes. Funny Fintan has incorporated its own take on bunny hopping (a classic arena shooter movement technique that a player can use to boost their speed). It's called wavehopping, and you'll need to slam to the ground, double jump and dash oddly enough, mimicking the form of a wave to take advantage of it. Incolatus, which is coming to Steam "soon," immediately stands out thanks to its hyperpop vibe with bright pinks and greens, as well as the era-appropriate soundtrack. As it happens, the "don't stop moving" mantra has lodged that one S Club song firmly in my brain.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/incolatus-dont-stop-girlypop-may-be-the-y2k-fever-dream-arena-shooter-you-never-knew-you-needed-182348483.html?src=rss
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Since its announcement in March, it's sounded like Sleight of Hand should be a fantastic stealth-action game in a magical noir setting and now it looks that way, too. Its latest trailer, revealed in the Day of the Devs 2024: Game Awards Edition stream, showcases witchy card-slinging gameplay on the gritty streets of Steeple City for the first time. In the stream, creator Joshua Boggs describes Sleight of Hand as, "If you took Metal Gear Solid and replaced the guns and tools with cards." This is followed by a shot of the protagonist, Lady Luck, trying to sneak past a guard, only to trigger a brass-backed exclamation point as she's spotted. The classic stealth references don't end there, either: Lady Luck is voiced by Debi Mae West, who played Meryl Silverburgh in Metal Gear Solid. (The new trailer begins at 37:20 in the below video). Lady Luck is a retired occult detective who takes on one last case in order to destroy her former coven, which has a stranglehold on Steeple City. The game combines third-person stealth action with card-based strategy, and in the new trailer, these mechanics appear to work in hardboiled harmony. Cards in Sleight of Hand allow Lady Luck to see through walls, deploy smoke bombs, blind enemies, teleport, sling hexes and crush all the bones in someone's body, to name a few abilities. Side note: On its face, Sleight of Hand's premise is eerily similar to Deconstructeam's The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, a fabulous 2023 game starring an exiled witch who enacts revenge on her former coven by reading and building tarot decks. The games are entirely different otherwise Sleight of Hand is third-person stealth action and Cosmic Wheel is an isometric narrative affair and I don't point this out because I think anything nefarious is going on. I just thought it was interesting. Clearly there was something in the zeitgeist that made card-wielding witchy women a hot concept at both studios, and it's fascinating to see how the same conceit can be interpreted in such vastly different ways. Sleight of Hand looks like a stylish new entry in the stealth-action genre, and its witchy noir universe seems to support a variety of approaches in each encounter. It's developed and published by New Zealand studio RiffRaff Games. RiffRaff was originally founded by Boggs in 2019 under the name MayDay, following the success of his spy-comic game, Framed. Tencent threw down an undisclosed amount to become a minority investor in the team in 2022, which is when it changed names to RiffRaff and hired up talent from around the globe. Sleight of Hand doesn't have a firm release date, but it's on track to hit Steam, Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass in 2025.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/sleight-of-hand-gameplay-trailer-showcases-occult-card-strategy-in-a-noir-world-182341033.html?src=rss
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The much-anticipated follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter has a new early access date. At Day of the Devs, Heart Machine announced that Hyper Light Breaker will enter Steam early access on January 14. The project is a co-op action game where you can play alone or with up to two allies to face down enemies and bosses in the colorful biomes of the Overgrowth. In classic roguelike fashion, players can try different builds, weapons and abilities on each run, and it should be interesting to see how those skills combine when multiple people are in battle. There is also, and this is very important, a hoverboard. Hyper Light Breaker was first announced back in 2022 as a spiritual successor to the team's original indie hit. Since then, there have been a couple of delays slowing the game's arrival in early access, but today's announcement seems like the real deal. The studio hasn't shared any additional details yet about a full release date or additional platform support, but we're excited to see this latest installment of the neon universe Heart Machine has created.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/hyper-light-breaker-will-begin-steam-early-access-on-january-14-180858877.html?src=rss
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