Attend GDC for a postmortem look at the making of Candy Crush Friends Saga!
Happy holidays! It’s a popular season for mobile games, what with so many people traveling for the holidays, and at next year’s Game Developers Conference you’ll get an inside look at how one of King’s latest and greatest was made.
Featuring principal game designer Jeremy Kang, studio lead (narrative design) Tracey John and senior director of visual development Robert Mackenzie, this session will walk through the process of how the development team expanded the game world and built upon this billion-dollar IP to create a more accessible game, including adding collection and other gameplay elements, redesigning the look of the characters, and retrofitting a new narrative foundation.
Make time to attend, and you’re likely to walk away with practical learnings about the game design, art vision, and strategy behind the making of this new Candy Crush game, as well as the goals and challenges of expanding the world of this successful IP.
For more details on this talk (and many more!) check out the GDC 2019 Session Scheduler. There you can begin to lay out your GDC week, which takes place March 18th through the 22nd at the (newly renovated!) Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Bring your team to GDC! Register a group of 10 or more and save 10 percent on conference passes. Learn more here.
10 Things You Didn’t Know About Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is the journey of a broken Celtic warrior on a vision quest to save the soul of her dead lover from Viking Hell. Hellblade was developed and published independently by a small team with a limited budget. As such, our developers had to adopt a more creative approach to problem-solving and making Hellblade how the way we envisioned it.
The award-winning actor who plays Senua in Hellblade wasn’t originally an actor at all. She was Ninja Theory’s Video Editor who was used as a stand-in for technical tests. In her first ever acting role, Melina Juergens went on to win a BAFTA for Best Performance!
Senua’s guide in Hellblade is an old scholar called Druth. The skull he wears on his head was a real animal skull found by Creative Director Tameem Antoniades when walking his dog.
When Senua hears a chorus of voices in the Sea of Corpses area, these are actually the voices of the entire Ninja Theory team – recorded during a company meeting.
A couple of team members created a Hellblade kart racing mode. It never made it into the game (for obvious reasons) and the only remaining trace of it is this .gif:
To make Senua’s costume look battle worn, one of our artists let his dog rough up our material samples before they were scanned and turned into in-game textures.
Melina Juergens played the role of Senua, but her combat was performed in mo-cap by Chloe Bruce, Daisy Ridley’s stunt double from “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.”
Ninja Theory has a development team of around 100 people, but Hellblade was created by a small team of just 20 people.
With a small budget, Ninja Theory couldn’t afford to go and shoot performance capture for Hellblade’s cinematic scenes. Instead, they converted their boardroom into a makeshift performance capture space using a variety of materials including wardrobe poles.
After the release of Hellblade, the team created an Accolades Trailer. Rather than including impressive quotes from press reviews in the trailer like most games do, the Hellblade trailer was created from fan screenshots and touching messages received from fans.
Senua’s blue war paint was actually a cheap supermarket face pack applied to Melina before being scanned and transformed onto a digital character.
The latest Nintendo Download update for North America has arrived, and it’s bringing new games galore to the eShop in your region.As always, be sure to drop a vote in our poll and comment down below with your potential picks for the week. Enjoy!
Switch eShop
Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition(Koei Tecmo, Today, $39.99) Includes the content from DYNASTY WARRIORS 8, as well as the additional features from DYNASTY WARRIORS 8: Xtreme Legends, in a single game.
ACA NEOGEO PUZZLE BOBBLE(Taito, Thu 20th December, $7.99) “PUZZLE BOBBLE” is an action puzzle game released by Taito in 1994. Bub and Bob, the bubble spitting dragons from the action game, BUBBLE BOBBLE, are back in a new bubble-based puzzle! Skillfully bounce bubbles off the walls and match 3 or more bubbles of the same color to erase them! Enjoy the easy to learn, but hard to master, bubble shooter puzzle game!
Arcade Archives Donkey Kong Jr.(HAMSTER, Fri 21st December, $7.99) “DONKEY KONG JR. ” is an action game released by Nintendo in 1982. Donkey Kong has been captured and caged in his latest encounter with Mario. Donkey Kong Jr. is on his way to set him free! Skillfully utilize jumps and the cranes to avoid enemies, get to the top, and steal the cage’s key from Mario.
Diggerman(Forever Entertainment, Mon 24th December, $4.99) Dig, dig, dig! For love, for fame, for money! Fast arcade digging game with story, treasures and boss fight! The world was beautiful some time ago. We lived together in our lovely cottage digging some mud every day. Suddenly everything has changed. HUGE ANGRY MOLE has come and kidnapped my beautiful sweetheart. Will you support me? Will you dig with me and help me saving my beloved?
Jewel Fever 2(Sprakelsoft, Fri 21st December, $4.99) “Jewel Fever 2” is an addictive match-3-puzzle-game!
Mech Rage(Drageus Games, Sun 23rd December, $9.99) The aliens are coming! The life of your crew is in your hands. Can you defend your ship from the pesky invaders? Take control of a powerful Combat Mech and take them head on! Upgrade your abilities and weapons to be able to stand your ground against increasingly more overwhelming enemy assault. Show off your combat skills, reflexes and endurance. Remember: even a smallest mistake can lead to an abrupt end of your adventure!
Revenge of the Bird King(Limited Run Games, Today, $4.99) Plant seeds, grow guns, be the bird-man you always wished you could be. A group of intergalactic super heroes has come to your world, bringing with them a tale of mystery and complete nonsense. Explore, level-up, find secret treasures, and challenge yourself to some good ol’ classic jump’n’shoot action in this retro-inspired action/platformer/RPG-lite.
Xenon Valkyrie+(COWCAT, Tue 1st January, $9.99) Xenon Valkyrie+ is a rogue-like platformer game in which you must fight to the deepest part of a moon and halt the plans of a wicked witch. Obtain many weapons as you fight through a unique, randomly-generated world every time you play.
Switch Demos
Activities
Splatoon 2 Frosty Fest – Fans of the Splatoon 2 game have plenty of reasons to start inkin’ online. Frosty Fest will turn Inkopolis Square into a festive winter wonderland. Inklings and Octolings will even get to use some very fancy glitter-filled ink! In keeping with the season, this special Splatfest asks: Who do you get most excited to spend the holidays with: Friends or Family? Choose a side and battle it out from Jan. 4 at 2 p.m. PT to Jan. 6 at 2 p.m. PT. You can also get seasonal gear that will be distributed via the Splatoon 2 News channel on your Nintendo Switch system. Look for these free gifts in late December. Need a reminder? Redeem your My Nintendo points now for a themed wallpaper featuring the special gear.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Piranha Plant – Don’t forget that My Nintendo users who purchase and register the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game by Jan. 31, 2019, will receive a download code for Piranha Plant, which will join the battle as a playable character when it’s available.
So that’s your lot for this week’s North American Nintendo Download. Go on, be a sport and drop a vote in the poll above, and comment below with your hot picks!
Today we’re unveiling lists of the top selling and top played games on Steam in 2018! Like last year, we’ve built five lists – Top Sellers, Top New Releases, Top Selling VR Titles, Top Early Access Grads, and Most Played Games.
Top Sellers
We started with the basics by looking at overall Top Sellers. This is a list of the games that earned the most revenue in 2018, which includes all different kinds of Steam revenue; game sales, in-game transactions, and DLC. The resulting list includes a mix of free-to-play and premium games.
This page highlights the 150 top-selling games released in 2018, split out by their month of release. To build this list, we looked at a combination of first-week revenue and overall revenue in 2018 to create a list of games that had achieved a sizable level of commercial success, regardless of when during the year each title released.
We find it pretty interesting how much variation there is from month to month. For example, December is a busy month and a lot of activity to compete with, so it’s understandable that it might be a less desirable month to release in. But April only had 5 releases that made our list and July only had 6, whereas February was the busiest month with 22 popular releases.
This year again saw over 1,000 new releases with Virtual Reality support, with almost all of those (over 900) being VR-only experiences. Top VR sellers included new releases such as Beat Saber, Blade & Sorcery, Budget Cuts, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, plus some of last-year’s top hits including Fallout 4 VR and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. There were even some classics appearing in top for the third year in a row, such as RAW DATA and Arizona Sunshine.
Our list this year highlights the leading VR titles by sharing the 100 top selling VR titles of 2018, plus a new section on the page for the top 20 VR releases of 2018.
This year’s batch of notable titles launching through Steam Early Access includes the hugely popular games Raft and SCUM, and the VR-only experience Beat Saber. Meanwhile many popular titles such as DayZ, The Forest, and RimWorld made their transition from Early Access to full release in 2018.
We wanted to recognize the games that have worked hard to build happy communities and make the transition from Early Access to full release this year. So, we’ve put together a list of the top 50 games that transitioned out of Early Access to full release during 2018, as measured by revenue earned during 2018 (during Early Access and after full release).
The Most Played Games list contains games that had more than 15,000 simultaneous players at some point during the year. To fully recognize the games that have built a significant community and player base, we’ve excluded a number of games that only had short-term spikes in player count due to running giveaways.
We don’t disclose specific revenue for the lists, but top sellers are broken into four categories in order to give you an idea of how they placed:
Platinum: 1st – 12th Top Seller Gold: 13th – 24th Top Seller Silver: 25th – 40th Top Seller Bronze: 41st – 100th Top Seller
Thanks for reading, and for another great year on Steam! We’re constantly surprised by the amazing new games that seem to come out of nowhere, delight their audiences and end up on these lists (and in our Steam libraries) by year-end.
Also, don’t forget to check out the Steam Winter Sale, on now through January 3rd. Many of the titles in the lists above are on great discounts, and these lists are a great way to see which games were resonating the most with players this year.
As mentioned last week, This Week at Bungie will be offline through January 10, 2019. Until then, we’ll be keeping you up to date on issues we’re tracking through the holiday season, along with some vital information. Make sure to note the dates below, as we don’t want you to miss out on any fun before the Dawning concludes.
Support Class
Season’s Greetings
As players participate in the final week of the Dawning, Destiny Player Support continues to monitor player-reported issues in the #Help forum. Listed below are the latest issues monitored by the DPS team over the holiday week:
Ace of Spades: We are investigating player reports indicating that Memento Mori is cancelling early when reload is initiated, then interrupted by sprinting.
Braytech RWP Mk. II: We are investigating player reports stating that the Braytech RWP Mk. II Scout Rifle cannot be infused above 600 Power.
Blast Furnace: We are investigating player reports describing Blast Furnace losing extra ammo on trigger pull when its magazine is overloaded by Ambitious Assassin.
Additionally, we’d like to remind players that the Dawning ends on January 1, 2019. At that time, incomplete or unredeemed triumphs will expire, and players will no longer be able to participate in Dawning activities.
Destiny 2: Forsaken and Season of the Forge Vital Information and Known Issues
In addition to the items listed above, Destiny Player Support would like to remind players of the currently tracked vital information and known issues which players should be aware of in Destiny 2.
Claiming Dawning Triumphs: Unearned or unclaimed Triumphs for the Dawning will be removed when the Dawning concludes. Players should claim all completed Dawning Triumphs before the Dawning ends on January 1, 2019.
Weapon Frame Bounties: We are investigating an issue where players are able to purchase weapon frame bounties when a player’s inventory is full, and they don’t go to the postmaster. Additionally, players who carry over weapon frames from prior weeks will lose access to one of the new week’s weapon frames after completion of the old frame in that week.
Dawning Items Already Claimed: We are investigating player reports that some Dawning items in the Winterdrift Engram are showing as claimed even if the player has not yet found or received them.
Radiant Matrix Missing from Inventory: We are investigating an issue where the Radiant Matrix will push out of a player’s postmaster and become unobtainable. It is recommended that players check their postmaster to retrieve their Radiant Matrix if it is missing from their inventory.
Veteran of the Hunt Emblem: We are investigating an issue where the “Veteran of the Hunt” emblem, given to eligible players in the Gratitude Package from Commander Zavala, uses incorrect art assets. This has also caused the “Universal Hero” PC-exclusive promotional emblem to not display correctly.
One Final Reminder
We’d like to take this opportunity to remind players that the Dawning ends on January 1, 2019. At that time, incomplete or unredeemed Triumphs will expire, and players will no longer be able to participate in Dawning activities. Additionally, Dawning ingredients required to create cookies, including those purchased for bright dust from Eververse Trading Co., will be removed from player inventories.
Happy New Year from Player Support!
We’ll be back again next week with another Player Support Report to cover any issues that appear over the remainder of our holiday break. If you encounter any issues during your playtime, be sure to report to our #Help forums. Player Support, Cozmo and I will be here to monitor for any bumps on the path into the new year.
Pocket Tactics Presents: The Year in Strategy Games 2018
By Dick Page28 Dec 2018
2018 wasn’t a great year for mobile strategy until the fall, when a whole cornucopia of real-time and turn-based games hit mobile shelves. What kept you alive through the lean months of spring and summer? Let’s take a look at how things shook out for real-time and turn-based strategy in 2018.
We saw several big names make it to mobile, with a few disappointments, but we also saw the return of some classics, and a lot of newcomers with some exciting new ideas.
Only One Big Name Avoided the Freemium Trap
2018 saw a few high-profile releases. Civilization VI made it to iPad late in 2017 and ended up with a Universal update by October. This was a real treat for serious strategy gamers: the latest iteration of the seminal 4X series adapted for a portable device. The iPad version lost some of the game’s graphical flourishes and voices for the opposing leaders, but otherwise Aspyr managed to squeeze the entire massive PC release into a tablet form. The October expansion to Universal brought the same genre-defining gameplay to smaller screens, with little sacrificed in the bargain.
Several other big names hit stores late in the year but were marred by dependence on IAP for profit. The freemium Command & Conquer: Rivals was the biggest offender. The core strategy gameplay impressed Brandon in his review, being something of a combination between Clash Royale-style card-based gameplay and the classic C&C gathering resources/commanding troops cycle. Long-time fans of the series will be deeply disappointed by the game’s expensive unit cards, despite the promise of equally-matched players.
Likewise, the latest entry in the popular tower defence series Kingdom Rush, Vengeance drew its fair share of criticism for including many towers and over half of its hero roster as premium purchases, on top of the games’ initial cost. While I personally didn’t find these promoted in the game obnoxiously enough to be a deal breaker, for many others, IAP were a red line that put an end to this popular series.
Classics Return
2018 also saw the return of more classic games of yesteryear, successfully updated for today’s gamers. The biggest win was Chaos Reborn: Adventures, an updated version of X-COM creator Julian Gossop’s 1985 Sinclair Spectrum strategy game. True to its name, Chaos Reborn brought bad luck back to strategy, with a maddeningly fun system of spellcasting that has the player manipulating the chances of their spells going off without a hitch, or just going wild. Playing with others just adds to the unpredictability, since illusionary spells let you bluff your way to victory. It’s a throwback, but a welcome one.
We also got the sequel to unexpected mobile hit King of Dragon Pass, the narrative strategy/simulation game Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind. This game came from a time before genres were so rigidly defined, and merges choose-your-own-adventure storytelling with difficult simulation and strategy layer. The real star of the show is the setting: Glorantha, a bronze-age fantasy where survival means understanding the culture of your barbarian tribe, learning its myths, and avoiding antagonizing the ducks. Seriously, don’t mess with the ducks. Six Ages, like its predecessor, can be opaque. Failure can manifest like a thunderbolt, and the arcane rules of your religion may twist your head into knots. For players willing to stick with it, there’s nothing else that quite captures the idea of really being the leader of a people.
Finally, Squids Odyssey isn’t the oldest game on this list, being a sequel to a 2011 iOS game that was ported to Nintendo platforms and back. As a result, it’s really just a rerelease of two older games that no longer work on newer hardware. However, if you missed these the first time around, Odyssey is a good chance to experience a strategy game that’s a little different and tailor-made for touchscreens. You have to fling your squids around the map Angry Birds-style, but also handle different unit types and power-ups.
Strategy with a Twist
The return of the traditional, the well-worn, and the underrated gems was much appreciated, but the biggest trend in mobile strategy for 2018 was a casting off of genre tropes and a greater willingness among designers to try something weirder.
Euclidean Skies merged turn-based tactics with reality-bending Rubik’s Cube levels where the movement of the terrain became as important as the movement of your units. As much puzzle as tactics, this sequel to Euclidean Lands was akin to a spiritual experience for our reviewer Jarrett.
Element placed its real-time strategy on spheres where humans and robots vied for domination. Its strategy was highly abstract and regimented, almost like real-time chess bent around a tiny planetoid. Three levels of three unit types on three different terrains make for an elaborate system of rock-paper-scissors, with unit control limited to placing new stationary towers or setting satellites in orbit. The core goal of mining more element than your opponent forces the player to think on their feet and use different tactics than your average RTS.
On the surface, Farabel looked like one of those more traditional strategy games, even down to its archetypal orcs vs. humans plot. But Farabel did something no other game on this list could do: it started at the end, with a tale told in reverse that saw your general losing abilities with every level, thus increasing the challenge by forcing you to play more carefully. In addition to its time-traveling story, the game also let you reverse and play one unit’s turn again, doubling up its influence.
While increasing reliance on big franchise names and IAP might feel like a threat to core gaming on mobile, the platform’s ability to revive old genres and promote new ideas can give us hope for the future.
What were your mobile strategy highlights for 2018? Let us know in the comments!
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-28-2018, 12:10 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Spider-Man PS4's Silver Lining DLC Is A Cloudy Send-Off For Spidey
A lot of video game stories stumble when it comes to endings, often because the preoccupation to set up sequels works against definitive, satisfying conclusions. Marvel's Spider-Man handled both competing interests pretty deftly, wrapping up its main story while leaving enough plot threads from which to hang a second game, as well as its three-episode DLC expansion The City That Never Sleeps. But while developer Insomniac Games helped Spider-Man stick the landing in the main game, the conclusion of the expansion feels more like it rolls to a slow stop.
Chapter 3 of the expansion, Silver Lining, wraps up the story of Spider-Man battling Hammerhead, a mob boss who consolidated power in New York. He's become a supervillain by stealing tech from the private sci-fi army from the base game, Sable International. Each of the previous chapters saw ancillary characters close to Spider-Man turning into collateral damage in the war against Hammerhead. Black Cat, Peter's former paramour, was caught up in working with Hammerhead in the first episode, and Yuri Watanabe, Peter's friend on the NYPD, was personally devastated by the mob's war on New York in the second. The third episode focuses on yet another woman, Silver Sable, who runs Sable International and returns to New York to try to stop Hammerhead from misappropriating all her ridiculously dangerous military gear.
What made the first two chapters of The City Never Sleeps so engaging was the way they ratcheted up stakes while keeping things personal. Black Cat's episode, The Heist, had Peter trying to save his anti-hero friend from mafia bad guys, while she threw a monkey wrench into his rekindled relationship with Mary Jane Watson. In the second release, Turf Wars, it felt like Spidey was embroiled in a full-on war against Hammerhead's consolidated mafia army as the enemy struck devastating blows against the police, and Yuri in particular, which pushed her character to the brink. The time spent fleshing out Black Cat and Yuri, while putting Spider-Man in a position to fail both his friends, made the story powerful and important, just like the one in the original release.
The trouble with Silver Lining is that the plot threads from the first two episodes never really get resolved in a satisfactory way. Both the women around whom the previous episodes centered have been pretty much removed from the story. Where the first two chapters felt as though they were driving toward putting Peter on his back foot as he struggled to save his friends from Hammerhead's wrath and corrupting influence, the third episode basically drops those ideas in favor of a few fun moments of Peter and Sable warming up to each other a bit. Their goal is to stop Hammerhead, and all the interesting interpersonal stuff gets shoved into underdeveloped hooks for sequels and expansions that may or may not ever exist.
With so much good writing in the first two episodes, Silver Lining is just a letdown. It's interesting, at least, that Silver Sable's character gets rounded out a bit, but after Turf Wars made everything feel so effectively dangerous and personal for Yuri, a character we've been spending time with through the entire base game and much of the DLC, it's incredibly frustrating that her tale gets left for some later potential wrap-up. That's to say nothing of how The City That Never Sleeps resolves what's happened to Black Cat way back in The Heist--because it doesn't.
The rest of Silver Lining also feels a little lackluster compared to previous episodes. Screwball's challenges return one last time before you wrap up that story, but they're another few riffs on things you've done in the past. Neither the challenges, nor Screwball and her story's conclusion, are especially inspired. Along with more Hammerhead bases to clear and more crimes to stop in a few of Manhattan's southern districts, they come off as a little bit of filler to keep you busy for a few more minutes before calling it quits on Spider-Man for good. Unlike in Turf Wars, there aren't really many new story insights to be gleaned from completing the side material. Finishing it all is more rote than rewarding.
On the bright side, Silver Lining is challenging for the seasoned Spidey. Hammerhead's goons are tougher than ever with their Sable gear, and there are now jetpack guys, jetpack guys with shields, mini-gun guys, and machine gun guys all fighting you at the same time. Some of the fights are downright annoying as you get blasted by huge attack after huge attack, but at least Insomniac has continually worked to make the expansion fights harrowing for people who've been continually playing Spider-Man since way back in September and have probably unlocked all of the abilities and gadgets in the game long ago.
For a game as strong as this one, Silver Lining feels like a stumble. The beginning and middle of The City That Never Sleeps were both great reasons to return to Spider-Man in the months after its release. Silver Lining can't pay off that earlier promise, though, and so one of the best games of the year goes out with a whimper. The final chapter of Spider-Man's planned expansions is mostly fine--the core game is strong enough that any chance to revisit its mechanics is going to be fun--but with no other expansions officially on the way, this feels like another classic case of a good game story burdened with propping open the doors for potential sequels. The original version of Marvel's Spider-Man was better than that, and The City That Never Sleeps should have been as well.
Become A Star Player When Luma Joins Mario Tennis Aces In January
Since first appearing in the Super Mario Galaxy games on the Wii, Luma has been featured in many other Mario games. While the star-like creature is probably best known in recent times for fighting alongside Princess Rosalina in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, in the past Luma, has appeared as an unlockable character in the likes of Mario Tennis Open on the 3DS.
Nintendo’s new trailer for Mario Tennis Aces has now revealed Luma will make a return to the court at the start of January. All you’ll have to do is play the in-game tournament between the 1st and 31st day of the month to unlock this player, else you’ll be required to hold out until Feburary. In the brief clip above you can see the technical skills of this character. Luma was previously confirmed for Mario Tennis Aces in November alongside Pauline and Boom Boom.
Are you still working on your game in Mario Tennis Aces? Tell us below.
Score Exclusive Spirits In The New Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Event
The new spirit event “Oh Yeah! Mario Time!” for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate begins on 28th December and will run until 1st January. During this period, three Super Mario Party spirits will appear on the spirit board.
The golden dash mushroom – featured in Mario Party, but also known from other titles such as Mario Kart – is a special ace spirit which can be obtained by defeating a powerful Mii Brawler. Apparently, none of the spirits will be available outside of this event. Below is the full description:
A huge collection of characters from the world of Mario are coming to your Spirit Board! Defeat them in battle to earn more gold than usual!
In this event, three spirits will appear for a limited time only: Golden Dash Mushroom, River Survival and Dice Block. They won’t be available outside of this event, so don’t miss out!
Have you been playing the spirit mode in Smash Bros. Ultimate? Will you be taking on the Mii Brawler to unlock the golden mushroom spirit? Let us know in the comments.
