Key Note Gaming

Indie publisher Fellow Traveller is bringing back its digital convention for celebrating narrative games this year. LudoNarraCon 2022 will run from May 5–9 and feature 42 exhibiting games hosting livestreams on their Steam pages. There will be 33 game demos available, as well as more than 100 hours of video, and 12 live panels.  Games being featured with demos you can try include gambling scoundrel simulator Card Shark, café chat-em-up sequel Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly, grim ice-ship survival tale The Pale Beyond, and cosy village herbs-and-harvest grower Witchy Life Story. One of the exhibiting games, dicey cyberpunk RPG Citizen Sleeper, will be launched in full on day one of LudoNarraCon. That's the game where you play a rogue AI working the gig economy on a space station, which Rachel Watts enjoyed when she previewed Citizen Sleeper back in October , calling its writing "incredibly vivid". A couple of highlights from the scheduled panels: one o...

After a successful Kickstarter, Hinterland Games released hardcore survival game The Long Dark via Early Access in 2014, hitting version 1.0 in 2017. It's continued receiving free updates since, both to its episodic story mode Wintermute and its survival mode, but as director Raphael van Lierop explains in this month's developer diary , that's going to change. While previously The Long Dark's survival updates had to be be limited in scope due to both modes being connected, the team has been working since the release of episode four to decouple them. That work is now complete, making more significant additions to survival mode possible—though not for free.  "Last year we ran a community poll," van Lierop writes, "asking how you would like us to dedicate our focus for the future of The Long Dark. Amongst other bits of useful feedback, we discovered that nearly 80% of you wanted us to begin producing paid expansion content for Survival Mode." The L...

The developers over at Iron Gate AB continue work apace on Valheim's Mistlands update, posting a new developer diary on Steam . (Though I'm sure they also took a small break and celebrated when the game hit 10 million copies sold .) The diary, titled "Ancient Ruins Unearthed," includes an impressive look at some cyclopean stone ruins that will populate the Mistlands. We've seen their like before, in the swamps and half-built mountain towers, but those had a decidedly more grounded look. The massive ruins teased for Mistlands, however, are huge stone blocks bound in bronze bands riveted to the stone. They're somehow much more otherworldly than what other ruins Vikings have found around Valheim. For my part, I'm wondering how these big ruins have anything to do with the equally-big spiders lurking about. (Image credit: Iron Gate AB) Alongside that, Valheim's team also posted a tease they stealth-released on social media. It's a little har...

One of the neater games we've had our eye on for the past few years was BlueTwelve Studio's Stray , a game about a lost cat wandering a cyberpunk city's neon streets looking for its family. We've had little on the game, though, besides a beautiful trailer put out by publisher Annapurna Interactive. We still don't have much:, but now we have a release date. Stray is coming this summer. The game has the player as a cat wandering the streets of "a long-forgotten cybercity" inhabited by all kinds of weird robots. Along the way it makes friends with a cute drone. It promises to be a game that lets you "See the world through the eyes of a stray and interact with the environment in playful ways. Be stealthy, nimble, silly, and sometimes as annoying as possible with the strange inhabitants of this foreign world." Which sounds quite nice, really. After the last few years of games from Annapurna Interactive I'll take a look at basically anything t...

Creative Assembly has posted a roadmap of upcoming changes and additions to Total War: Warhammer 3 , AKA Princess Maker for daemons, and the long-awaited Immortal Empires is listed as coming in Q3. Warhammer 3's version of Mortal Empires, it's the mode that will combine the factions of every game in the series and put them together on a single map, but it'll only be added in the July - August - September update. Before then, we should expect update 1.2 in May to include fixes for unit responsiveness, single-entity units standing around when they should be dueling each other, ranged and flying units going idle, AI factions rebuilding towers too fast, and other problems players have experienced. The first free DLC is planned for the same May - June period: a Regiments of Renown pack adding elite units for all the core factions. As well as Immortal Empires entering beta, the July - August - September section of the roadmap notes a second Regiments of Renown pack will be co...

While the Nintendo 64 never got a Metroid game, two fans are working on showing the world what a Metroid 64 could have looked like. As reported by Nintendo Life, Luto Akino took to Twitter to share his Unity 3D project that aims to create what Metroid 64 could have been. Instead of opting for a first-person camera a la Metroid Prime, this version features a third-person perspective and shows Samus running around a purple cave area, using her arm canon, and even using her Morph Ball form and bombs. At last working in #Metroid64 I adjusted small details, and placed a test texture. There is a bug with the beams direction when Samus is flat against the wall that I need to fix #metroid #F2P #n64 #lowpoly #Nintendo64 #Zelda #unity #unity3d #madewithunity #gamedev #3dmodeling #3D pic.twitter.com/sWBYoTbove — Luto Akino (@LutoAkino) April 26, 2022 There are currently no enemies besides static blocks, but it gives a good glimpse into Akino's vision and what a Metroid...

The developers of Dead by Daylight announced on Wednesday that David King, a character introduced to the game in 2017, is gay. Reactions ranged from joyful to outraged, and a Reddit thread discussing the decision was ultimately locked.  "Homophobia will not be tolerated, if you see any, please report it," a mod wrote in the thread. "This post is locked cause it got out of hand, but please check out our megathread on the whole update if you want to discuss anything about the update (including this)." Dead by Daylight is a multiplayer horror game in which a team of survivors attempt to outwit a killer either inspired by or directly pulled from slasher flicks like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. It doesn't need much backstory to work, but in 2019 developer Behaviour Interactive added The Archives, which expanded the game's lore with Tomes that include audio stories and animations. The latest Tome, Devotion, features a new David King story which ...

Galactic Civilizations 4 bills itself as the most accessible game in the series. This is true, in the same way that the tail is the most accessible part of a tiger. Stardock's long running 4X series officially has a tutorial now, in the form of a little robot helper accursedly nicknamed 'Space Clippy.' But Space Clippy doesn't help much when a game explains everything as if it's arrived from another dimension. Need to Know What is it? Colourful, deep space 4X game Expect to pay: £39.99 Developer: Stardock Publisher: Stardock Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, Nvidia GeForce 2080 Super, 32 GB RAM, Multiplayer: Yes Link: GalCiv4.com Take modules as an example. What are modules, you ask? Well, so did I. At first I thought modules were optional extras you could select to tailor your starbases (which act as both resource harvesters and deployable control points, with modules helping improve those functions in various ways). But then I ran out of modules,...

I guess I don't typically associate 2D sidescrollers with base-building, though when I think about it for a minute games like Terraria and Starbound do come to mind. But if I'm gonna compare Sons of Valhalla to something, it'll be a game more like Kingdom . It's a singleplayer action game that's got tons of vicious Viking combat, base-building, strategy, and even RPG elements. Before we get to Vikings swinging axes and lobbing flaming pitch at each other with catapults, I have to point out how utterly beautiful this game is. There's some really tremendous pixel art and finely detailed animation, not to mention a day and night cycle and weather effects ranging from heavy thunderstorms to murky fog. I could just stand in the world and look at it all day if it weren't filled with enemies thirsty for my blood. In Sons of Valhalla, your dad's been killed and your beloved has been abducted by your enemy, a jarl named Valgard, and you swear to rescue her a...

For the first three days of the Overwatch 2 beta , Mercy couldn't heal properly. The game's most popular healer had a bug that prevented her healing beam from chaining to allies during her Valkyrie ultimate, squashing any hope of saving her team during a hectic fight. Blizzard issued a patch that fixed the ability today, but a list of problems remain for the support character, which are detailed in this Reddit post by user ihatemouthwash. I noticed Mercy's wonky behavior myself while playing the beta this week. Valkyrie is supposed to increase the healing rate of Mercy's beam and spread out across your team while also allowing you to freely fly around the map. It's not uncommon for your allies to die during it anyway, but it was hard to tell why Valkyrie was less effective than in the original game. The time-to-kill in Overwatch 2 is noticeably faster without a second tank to turn around and help you out, so I initially attributed it to that. Now that it's fi...

Combining the best of Fallout 3’s 3D open world with the nuanced roleplaying of the original two isometric games, Fallout: New Vegas is one of those classic PC RPGs that must be played—just not in its original form, unless you happen to enjoy suffering, frustration and confusion. Notoriously buggy and unpolished at launch, New Vegas improved a lot through updates and top-notch DLC, but there was still work to do. Thankfully, Fallout fans are a strange and extremely dedicated bunch of rad mutants, and years later they’re still hammering out the minor kinks. Thanks to some recent advances it’s easier than ever to play a properly polished, tuned and debugged version of New Vegas. That said, it’s still a surprisingly convoluted process, so wrap up tight and prepare for sandstorms as I help you chart the course to the very newest New Vegas experience, no gambling required. Install this one (Image credit: Bethesda) What's the best version of Fallout: New Vegas?  There are a...

It’s the weekend! In a week that saw the Mario movie get delayed , the announcement of an Xbox/Bethesda showcase , and the surprise reveal of Disney Dreamlight Valley , we’re ready to kick back and wind down. The Game Informer staff has a variety of activities lined up, from watching sportsball to catching up on the telly to playing those wacky video games. Read on to find out what we’ll be up to and let us know what your plans are too! Brian Shea –  This weekend, I’m continuing my playthrough of Kirby and the Forgotten Land and playing more of MLB The Show 22. With any luck, I'll have some extra time and can start up Lego Star Wars. Wesley LeBlanc – After platinuming Elden Ring a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to finally beat Horizon: Forbidden West and shortly after doing that, I decided to get that platinum trophy too. After 56 hours with Guerrilla’s latest, I’m left feeling a touch empty with the Horizon series. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed both Horizon...

I am the drink consumer that beverage companies love to see walk into the corner store. Several times per week I peruse the back row of fridges with a plan to pick up my usual carbonated can of choice, but then without fail, something colorful will catch my eye—a strange new flavor of a drink I've had before that's just intriguing enough. "I have to try it," I say out loud, to myself, in the gas station. Five familiar words I told myself as I picked up a Flamin' Hot Mountain Dew yesterday. Five words I now regret. Flamin' Hot Mountain Dew does what it says on the tin plastic bottle. The drink concocters at PepsiCo (who I presume come up with new products by swishing different flavors around in a toilet bowl until it turns a solid green, red, or blue) have injected bog-standard Dew with "a blast of heat and citrus." You'll recognize the branding from Mountain Dew's chip-shaped corporate cousin, Flamin' Hot Cheetos. A former love for Fla...