This snapshot brings some exciting new changes for custom world and dimension settings.  Piglins still really like their gold, so don’t hurt them when admiring it.  As always, have fun and report any bugs to Mojang Studios and consider giving them feedback on the new settings.

• Added the ability to toggle redstone wire between a cross and a dot
• Added import/export world settings functionality
• Added a new disableMultiplayer command line option – when used, the Multiplayer button is disabled
• Added a new disableChat command line option – when used, receiving and sending online chat is disabled

REDSTONE TOGGLE

• When right clicking a single piece of redstone, it toggles between a the cross and the dot
• A dot of redstone will not power its surrounding blocks

• Piglins no longer walk around when admiring gold
• If you hurt a piglin while it is admiring an ingot, the ingot will now disappear
• Increased the chance of ores to generate in the Basalt Deltas to balance against the reduced amount of Netherrack in this biome
• Lily pads are now considered junk fishing loot rather than treasure
• Updated logos for Mojang Studios and Minecraft
• Temporarily removed structure settings from flat level preset strings (workaround: use import/export settings functionality)

• Added the ability to control the height of the spreadplayers command
• Added custom worlds and custom dimensions

SPREADPLAYERS

Added an optional argument to specify maximum height.

New syntax: spreadplayers <center> <spreadDistance> <maxRange> [under <maxHeight>] <respectTeams> <targets>

• maxHeight – Specifies the maximum height for resulting positions

LOCATE

• Structure names are now specified as lowercase

CUSTOM WORLDS

• Added experimental support for new custom worlds
• Edit world screen now has an option to export world settings to a JSON file
• During world creation you can import previously exported world settings
• A bunch of new parameters are exposed, but marked as experimental, meaning you can play with them, but there is no guarantee that any of them will continue working (even in the next snapshot!)
• Flat level preset string lost structure settings (they are now stored in a common format for all worlds), we will restore some form of this functionality soon
• Buffet world can no longer be created from server.properties, flat level settings changed a bit; better support for custom world creation on the server is coming soon

• MC-97247 – Map making sound uses equipment sound subtitle
• MC-97507 – Using item which modifies the held item shows “Gear equips” subtitle
• MC-107103 – Trying to interact with entity 3 or more blocks away without seeing its eyes only interacts client-side
• MC-113068 – Zombie banging on door subtitle is called “Block broken”
• MC-123155 – When any non-player entity enters an End portal the obsidian platform is not regenerated and the entity can fall into the void
• MC-147516 – Hostile mobs will sometimes stop attacking/following their target when directly next to it
• MC-166292 – Subtitle from foxes eating chorus fruit: “Player teleports”
• MC-169764 – Fish flopping sound shows ‘Footsteps’ subtitles
• MC-170930 – Nether Sprouts item not visible when held in the hand in first person
• MC-172090 – Piglins would rather hold a golden item instead of a crossbow
• MC-172207 – Parrots don’t imitate hoglins, zoglins and piglins
• MC-172255 – Piglins immediately dismount any entity that they are riding
• MC-177075 – Taking product out of stonecutter produces no subtitle
• MC-177088 – Polar bear step sound does not have subtitles
• MC-177438 – Turtle egg’s name inconsistently capitalized across different subtitles
• MC-177830 – Blackstone and basalt prevent Ancient Debris and other Nether ores from generating
• MC-178130 – Zombie Villagers are called “Zombie” in some subtitles
• MC-178212 – Nether planks, their variants, and hyphae are harder than stems
• MC-178298 – Ancient debris and nether gold ore can’t generate in Basalt Deltas
• MC-180257 – Crash when setting LodestonePos of compass to something other than NBT compound
• MC-180852 – There is no space on the beacon’s secondary power effects in the UI
• MC-181270 – Trying to open old worlds (in Region format?) without version information in snapshots does not show warning screen
• MC-181298 – Game crashes when trying to generate a nether biome superflat world with ruined portals
• MC-181463 – The buttons are not selected in the right order using Tab in the new world creation menus
• MC-181499 – Buckets cannot be emptied into a source block, but still produce a sound when trying
• MC-181511 – Chunks with redstone are removed
• MC-181522 – Chunks that haven’t been explored since 1.13 are resetting
• MC-181611 – Vindicators stop attacking you when they are standing really close to you
• MC-182514 – 15 Block States per SubChunk Limit during World Upgrade
• MC-182743 – Wither skeletons don’t spawn inside of wither roses
• MC-182912 – Piglins still do not change their current crossbow for a new enchanted one
• MC-183249 – Carving Mask BitSets created for lower chunk statuses
• MC-183786 – Named seeds that are not numbers are not being recognized

Epic, Highly-Anticipated First DLC Pack Offers Fans New Multiplayer Maps, War Mode Mission and Nazi Zombies Experience

Global Call of Duty Community Event Featuring New Content, New Gear and Return of Fan-Favorite Game Modes Continues for Fans

SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Players can join the Resistance starting today as Call of Duty®: WWII – The Resistance, the first DLC pack for the No. 1 top-selling console video game of 2017 in North America, is out now, available first on PlayStation®4. Packed with new multiplayer content, The Resistance DLC pack delivers three new Multiplayer maps and an all-new War Mode multiplayer mission themed to reflect the spirit of the citizen soldiers who fought for freedom during World War II. The DLC pack also features The Darkest Shore, the terrifying new chapter in the twisted Nazi Zombies saga. In addition, this first DLC pack from Call of Duty: WWII, lands during The Resistance community event (January 23 through February 27), a five-week celebration that features new gear, game modes and Supply Drop content available to all players.

In The Resistance DLC pack, players will fight in iconic World War II locations, from Paris to Prague, all centered around historic uprisings in three new Multiplayer maps and an all-new high-octane War Mode map.

Valkyrie – Located in the Masurian Woods, East Prussia, this map was inspired by The Wolf’s Lair – The Fuhrer’s Eastern-front headquarters during Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. This is a medium-sized map with multiple overwatch positions and mounted machine guns.

Anthropoid – Based in Prague, Czechoslovakia, this map is inspired by Operation Anthropoid – the famous assassination attempt on a high-ranking German officer during World War II. This map is divided by a river, with long-flanking paths that can be used by snipers for ranged attacks.

Occupation – In this remake of a classic Call of Duty® map, players battle through the streets and shops of German-occupied Paris during WWII. Nearby homes and storefronts lend defensive positions for ambush and recovery.

Operation Intercept – Outside of St Lo, France, the next War Mode experience, developed in partnership with Raven Software, leads you on an urban rescue mission to save Resistance fighters being transported by train. The first objective on the Allied side is freeing the fighters, followed by the destruction of key communication equipment, and ends with stopping a train.

The Resistance DLC pack also features the newest horror-filled chapter in the co-operative Nazi Zombies saga, The Darkest Shore. Only days after the horrific disaster of Mittelburg, the crew has received intel that suggests Doktor Straub is on an island just north of Germany. Blanketed in fog, this island is surrounded by enemy air and sea power – and crawling with the Undead. Marie, Drostan, Olivia and Jefferson will need to battle all this and more to uncover the mysteries hidden within.

As part of The Resistance community event, which kicked off on Jan. 23 and runs through Feb. 27, all Call of Duty: WWII players will have access to the new “Resistance Division.” The new Resistance Division embodies the skills and experience of citizen soldiers from across Europe, and features the new Tactical Knife Skill, a new Division-specific 9mm SAP Pistol, as well as perks that can alter the tide of battle, such as the ability to scramble enemy maps.

The Resistance community event offers players new Supply Drop content and new weapons and uniforms used in Resistance uprisings across war-torn Europe during World War II. Fans can also participate in new game mode events, including the limited-time return of Prop Hunt and Demolition game modes, along with rotating 2XP playlists across Multiplayer, War Mode and Zombies. Resistance Supply Drops can be earned for free simply by playing Call of Duty: WWII during the event. Players can return to Headquarters each week of the event for a free Resistance Supply Drop, as well as receive special Orders and Contracts that grant new weapons, Supply Drops, XP boosts, Armory Credits and more. Players can also purchase Resistance Supply Drops using Call of Duty Points in-game currency. The Resistance community event features all-new, limited-time Resistance-themed Collection Rewards.

Call of Duty: WWII – The Resistance DLC pack is available now, first on PlayStation®4 for a suggested retail price of $14.99. The Resistance DLC Pack is also included in Call of Duty: WWII DLC Season Pass*, featuring all four DLC Packs planned for the year, as part of the discounted bundle offered at a suggested retail price of $49.99 – a discount of $10 off the individual purchase of all four DLC Map Packs. Season Pass content is available first on PlayStation®4.

*Season Pass purchasers receive 2018 Call of Duty: WWII Season Pass content. Season Pass content is not final, is subject to change, and may not include all downloadable content available for the game. Season Pass content may not be available in all countries, and pricing and release dates may vary by platform. Season Pass content should be downloaded from the in-game store only; do not purchase separately, or you will be charged again. Season Pass content may be sold separately.

Call of Duty: WWIIis rated M for Mature and is available for PlayStation®4, Xbox One, and Steam. The title is published by Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), and developed by Sledgehammer Games, with additional development support from Raven Software. For the latest intel, check out: www.callofduty.com, www.youtube.com/callofduty or follow @CallofDuty and @SHGames on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

About Activision Publishing, Inc.

Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Publishing, Inc. is a leading global producer and publisher of interactive entertainment. Activision maintains operations throughout the world and is a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), an S&P 500 company. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company’s website, www.activision.com or by following @Activision.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Activision Publishing’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements about the dates and features of the Resistance community event, the WWII DLC Season Pass and The Resistance DLC Pack, are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Activision Publishing’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Activision Publishing and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Activision Publishing nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Activision Publishing or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

© 2018 Activision Publishing, Inc. ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY, and CALL OF DUTY WWII are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180130005457/en/

Activision Publishing, Inc.
Alan Johnson
Manager, Public Relations
310.255.2757
alan.johnson@activision.com

Source: Activision Publishing, Inc.

News Provided by Acquire Media

Chinese game company NetEase has opened a next generation game development studio in Tokyo, Japan.

Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad highlighted the news on Twitter, and said the new ‘Sakura Studio’ branch will be focused on creating console titles — although it’ll be hiring folks with experience working across console, PC, and mobile platforms.

It’s notable to see NetEase funneling recourses into the console space, with the Chinese company having largely focused on developing and publishing PC and mobile titles.

For those unfamiliar with the name, NetEase is one of the biggest players in the Asian market, and has partnered with Blizzard, CCP Games, and Mojang to bring popular titles like Diablo Immortal, EVE Online, and Minecraft to China.

The company has also recently invested in other developers including Bossa Studios and Behaviour Interactive, and last year opened an R&D division in Canada to further its ambition of becoming a global business.

I started my career in game industry with Ubi Soft’s Shanghai studio in 1998 as a producer. During my five-year adventure with Ubi Soft, I’ve worked on a number of different games, but Splinter Cell for the PS2 was the most challenging one. The technical breakthroughs we needed to achieve and the tight project schedule we faced were almost overwhelming. When we set the schedule in November 2002, almost no one believed we would make it. To add even more pressure, the success of the Xbox port of the game made everyone realize that there was no way to make just average-quality PS2 port of Splinter Cell. We had to match that quality.

Fortunately, we achieved satisfactory results. The port of Splinter Cell to the PS2 certainly wasn’t an ideal project (especially in terms of cost effectiveness), but it’s a good example of applying extra resources to hit milestones.

The project was your typical porting job. With the success of Splinter Cell for the Xbox, we had a solid starting point and a very clear vision of what we had to achieve. Thus the challenges were technical and schedule-related, and weren’t related to content creation.

As producer on the project, I mainly focused primarily on planning, personnel management, risk management, team coaching, and establishing good working processes. In this postmortem, I’ll share my experience as it relates to these aspects of the project:

• Prototyping and pre-production
• Personnel management on a huge and multi-cultured development team
• Planning and production management
• Quality assurance

We started working on the port of Splinter Cell in April 2002, with a small team that focused on prototyping and technical research. The full production began from the second week of October. Between that time and February 2003, when Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) approved the first master, the team grew to around 90 people. People from other Ubi Soft studios joined the project at different phases, including some developers of the original Xbox version from Canada. We also had developers from France and Italy.

What Went Right

1. A prototype that helped determine resources and scheduling. Compared to the full production team, our prototype team was tiny. We started with five people, comprising two engineers, one level designer, a 3D artist and myself. We added four more engineers and an animator two months later.

Besides proving to upper management that we are able to solve the technical issues of porting, the prototype we first worked on was supposed to provide a solid base for production. By August 2002, we were quite confident of the outcome: The systems for generating Splinter Cell‘s lighting and shadows on PS2 were integrated into the engine, as were other special effects. What made us even more confident was that we had to create these systems from scratch; it wasn’t possible to re-use this code from Xbox version.

We studied how best to allocate hardware resources between the CPU, GPU and memory under the Unreal engine. By the time we completed the prototype, our team had a detailed list of how much memory was allocated to each part of the game (map data, character/animation, engine, UI, textures, and so on), and understood how to work with the constraints of the map data to ensure the good frame rate. We tried to be pessimistic while setting those constraints, which turned out to be a good decision — later on we encountered some bad surprises related to system resources, but because of our earlier estimates, we had built in a sufficient margin of error to deal with them.

The prototype also proved crucial for organizing the production schedule and estimating the necessary project resources. The effort required to port one map was split into several steps, and we used our experience creating the prototype to accurately define the data flow between steps and estimate the overall resource costs.

Here is an example of how we defined the data flow:

After this chart was created, we could estimate how long each step would take for 1 person, from which we could generate accurate plans that took into account the schedule and quantity of maps. That would in turn help us determine how many people we needed on the project.

2. Pre-production documentation and staffing decisions. The pre-production phase started three months before the production. It was during this stage that we formed the team, trained people, set up the production model, and made project schedule.

One of the most important steps we took during the pre-production stage was to create Technical Design Documents (TDD), into which we poured all the knowledge we gleaned from our prototype. It wasn’t easy to create the TDDs, though. The prototype development team was so busy that nobody had time to document what we were learning. Ultimately I had to force the team to devote time to creating the TDDs by asking people stop their work for 1-2 days to concentrate on writing it. It proved to be a worthwhile exercise, though, since it saved us even more time later on in the project. The TDDs were used to train new people who just joined the team, and helped everyone understand the major technical issues.

The TDDs also included a detailed analysis of all the maps in the original Xbox version of Splinter Cell. The level design team, which had grown to seven people during pre-production, took the in-progress Xbox map data and rehearsed how we’d port them over to the PS2, given what we knew about the process and constraints after working on the prototype. At the same time, level designers made an optimization plan for each map. With those rehearsals and documentation, the workflow between teams and the production workload was better understood before we started on the real production. We even had a good idea of which maps would be more challenging to optimize, which enabled us to allocate the appropriate resources to them. The most difficult tasks were assigned to the most skilled developers to try to prevent bottlenecks in process.

On the personnel management side, besides adding more people to the team, we also made adjustments to the team leader’s position. When we established the prototype team, we expected those team members to later become the leaders of the functional teams in the main production stage. With their knowledge of the project and experience working on the prototype, they were expected to be good coaches for the rest of the team. What we didn’t foresee was that the production team would eventually turn into the biggest team ever in Ubi Soft’s history, requiring some team leaders to manage 20-30 people. As such, management skills were actually more valuable than technical skills and experience, so we appointed new leaders for some teams. These people weren’t on the original prototype team, but they were experienced team managers. That let the supplanted team leaders focus on technical issues, rather than spending time on administrative tasks.

3. Emphasis on accurate scheduling. The production of Splinter Cell for the PS2 took no more than four months. We didn’t have much say when it came to setting the due date for master; Ubi Soft was adamant that the game be released by the end of its 2003 fiscal year. Yet we couldn’t start production early, since the Xbox version was still under development.

A four-month production cycle is obviously very short for a game, which is expected to be of AAA caliber and up to the standards set by the Xbox version. Our milestones were naturally aggressive to satisfy these constraints. Here’s what our schedule looked like:

• From beginning of production to Alpha: 9 weeks
• From Alpha to Beta: 5 weeks
• From Beta to Master: 4 weeks

This schedule appeared very unrealistic, yet we tried to be extremely realistic when we were considering what it would take to achieve it.

Everyone understood that the objective of the project was to make the game by a specified date and of a given quality. To achieve this, we had much more freedom to get the required resources than “normal” projects – the company was willing to dedicate people and spend money to gain time. From the beginning, everyone understood this strategy.

Prior to the start of production, we worked hard to round up the resources we knew we’d need for the project. The Shanghai studio made Splinter Cell its primary focus on by allocating many experienced developers to the game and recruiting new people. In addition, Ubi Soft’s studios in France and Italy also sent development teams to Shanghai.

We could have had those teams stay in their respective countries and work remotely on Splinter Cell, but we gave up this idea. We decided it would be difficult to manage multiple teams across several countries – it added big risks to the project, and we didn’t have enough time in our schedule to accommodate that. Having people come to China was obviously more expensive, but it was absolutely necessary to minimize our scheduling risks.

We tried our best to make the production plans as detailed and as accurate as possible, but we realized that the schedule was apt to change for unforeseen reasons. So we regularly followed up on our schedule and made adjustments to it as necessary to ensure we always had an up-to-date “vision” of the project. We had project status meeting every two weeks in which we discussed our current major problems and analyzed their effects on the schedule. We also explored actions we could take to offset these problems.

Before each important milestone, we re-checked the schedule using a system that focused on the critical path to reach the target. For example, say there are 10 tasks to complete to reach the Alpha, and of those the 10, five tasks can be done in parallel. The other five tasks must be done in a specific order, and assigning more people to those tasks won’t necessarily save much time. In this example, these five tasks are the critical path to reach Alpha. Estimating how long those five tasks will take helps us know if we have a scheduling problem.

4. Matrix management, frequent personnel evaluations. Splinter Cell for the PS2 had the shortest development schedule in Ubi Soft Shanghai’s history, not only because we had the biggest team, but also because the team was the most efficient. The development team was made up of six functional teams: engine, gameplay programming, animation, graphics, level design and sound. We also had a data manager who was dedicated to database management.

The graphic artists and level designers had to work closely on data production. So inter-team groups were established in a matrix-management fashion. Each group consisted of a level designer and two or three artists, and each group was responsible for the maps they worked on, and the individuals were physically located close to each other in our office to ensure good communication.

The graphics team was the biggest team, made up of over 20 people. Besides the team leader, we had a graphics technical director to ensure the whole team’s technical skill and he is also responsible for communication with other team on technical issue.

Team leaders were given the full responsibility of his team and reported to producer. To bolster the efficiency and morale of the whole team, we conducted evaluations of team members frequently throughout the production cycle. The evaluation was result-oriented, which means we evaluated people only according to the outcome of his/her work. The result-oriented evaluation has two advantages over a traditional personnel evaluation:

• It is simple. There’s less to consider since the evaluations are so frequent. It was possible to do evaluations very rapidly – every two weeks.
• The evaluation helps the managers keep track of the project’s progress.

People with good evaluation results were rewarded by monthly bonus. Management talked to those who received bad evaluations, to apply the appropriate pressure. In the middle of the production, there was so much pressure on us that we considered setting a more severe work policy, in which each team had to assign the “improvement needed” rank to at least one person during each evaluation period. We also we talked about punishing people who continually received this rank. While harsh, the goal of these rules was to spur people to improve their work no matter how good their team was. By having to single out at least one person on each team, everyone would be under pressure to improve to avoid being that person. In the end, though, we never implemented these rules – we knew it would adversely affect morale, and we preferred more positive atmosphere for the project.

Throughout the whole production schedule, the team worked very hard, and the team leaders played an important role in ensuring the best performance from their teams. For project with huge teams, it is critical to choose good team leaders from the beginning.

5. QA management. The Xbox version of Splinter Cell provided a benchmark for how good the PS2 version should be. Yet it was a challenge to ensure game quality with more than 70 developers working under such a tight schedule.

Our regular team evaluations helped us to closely track our quality, and in addition to those, we also had more formal evaluations that served as a quality check-up prior to milestones like Alpha and Beta. These milestone meetings usually took two or three days and were split into two parts: engine evaluation and data evaluation.

During the game data evaluation meetings, we arranged a meeting room and gathered all the team leaders. We checked each map with the level designer and artist who worked on this map. We generally checked four aspects of the map:

• Memory use
• Frame rate
• Gameplay
• Graphics

These topics covered the major risks that concern game quality. If certain map was below the quality standard, the team working on that map might be asked to re-work it, using overtime. Another evaluation would be arranged shortly thereafter to check it again.

Engine evaluation was not so straightforward. Since many engine features cannot be visualized, we had the game’s lead programmer and the studio’s programming director (the latter of whom wasn’t working on the project and could provide an objective opinion) to check the quality and progress of each programmer’s work.

We also appointed an art director after we reached the Alpha stage, who was responsible for ensuring that all the maps had the same artistic style – the Splinter Cell style. We realized that with lots of people working on their own maps, we might get some maps that looked like another game, and this promoted artistic consistency.

Prior to the Beta stage, we found it difficult to control the quality and stability of the game. We had a huge team with people operating at different skill levels. The quality improvements became so detailed that team leaders had to spend more time supervising team members. When we started debugging, the situation deteriorated even more, as less-skilled developers sometimes introduced new bugs as they tried to fix existing ones. To remedy the situation, we started the “SWAT team” organization.

SWAT team is a concept we picked up from the Splinter Cell Xbox development team. The idea is to reduce the team size after a certain stage of production. Only the best people continue to work on the project, and their expertise is fully leveraged. A side effect of this is that it’s also easier for managers to control quality; they don’t have to deal with lots of people at different skill levels.

This organization was implemented with the graphics team (the biggest team with approximately 30 people). The SWAT team was made of the six best artists who worked closely with art director and technical director to improve the quality of the graphics.

During the final debugging stage, when the reported bugs were small in quantity but very complicated to fix, the whole graphics team was reduced to just two people-the graphics team leader and the technical director – to minimize the risk of generating more bugs.

Another month has been and gone, with plenty of new games to choose from on the Nintendo eShop. If you’re hoping to check out the best latest releases, you’ve certainly come to the right place.

These awards aim to celebrate the best of Nintendo’s digital store, giving some love and attention to the games that could so easily be missed in the Switch’s ever-growing library.

So, let’s get started! Here are the best Switch eShop games of May 2020!

Honourable Mentions:

While these titles didn’t quite make our top three this month, they’re still certainly worth checking out.

Publisher: TribandProductions / Developer: Triband

Release Date: 21st May 2020 (USA) / 21st May 2020 (UK/EU)

Taking third place this month is What The Golf?, a wonderfully quirky golf-like game that is ironically marketed as “the golf game for people who hate golf”. In our review, we said that this one has clearly had enormous amounts of love poured into it and, most importantly, is super fun.

Full of some of the most bizarre golf-inspired courses and ideas we’ve ever seen, the game’s a great laugh with plenty of genuinely funny ideas presented throughout. The controls work really nicely, too, which is exactly what you’d want with a game like this. It’s worth a look, for sure.

Publisher: Coffee Stain Studios / Developer: Easy Trigger

Release Date: 12th May 2020 (USA) / 12th May 2020 (UK/EU)

In second place we have Huntdown, a delightfully detailed and expertly crafted throwback to old-school run n’ gun arcade shooters. We awarded this one a mighty 9/10 in our review, praising its beautiful art style, excellently varied boss battles, its great soundtrack and more.

If you’re not a fan of boss battles, it might not be for you – there are a lot of them – but we’d urge any fans of classic 16-bit shooters to give this a go.

Publisher: DANGEN Entertainment / Developer: Moonsprout Games

Release Date: 28th May 2020 (USA) / 28th May 2020 (UK/EU)

Our top pick this month, though, is the wonderful Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling. If you haven’t heard about this one already, the game’s a lovely throwback to the early days of Paper Mario, almost serving as a spiritual successor to the elements of the series most adored by its fans.

In our review, we said, “A bit of a triumph, Bug Fables is a superbly polished independent tribute to the first two Paper Mario games – but that’s not to say it doesn’t have its own, strong identity.” With particularly strong writing, great music, a challenging battle system and more, any fans of Paper Mario should absolutely check this out, even if the odd bit of platforming doesn’t quite hit the mark.

< Nintendo Life eShop Selects – April 2020

How we decide our eShop Selects top three: As we reach the end of every month, the Nintendo Life staff vote on their favourite titles from a list of games selected by the editorial team. To qualify for this list, these games must have been released primarily as a digital Nintendo Switch eShop title in that particular month, and must have been reviewed on Nintendo Life; we select the qualifying games based on their review scores.

Staff are then asked to vote for three games that they think deserve to sit right at the very top of that list; first choice gets 3 points, second choice gets 2 points, and third choice gets 1 point. These votes are then tallied to create a top three list, with the overall winner taking that month’s top prize.