Category: Technology

vampire survivors is a very simple gothic roguelike that snuck onto Steam Early Access at the end of 2021. By the start of this year it had begun blowing up, and the game that lets you “be the bullet hell” has since racked up over 100,000 positive reviews. Now it has a spiritual sibling out called 20 Minutes Till Dawn that asks the all important question: what if vampire survivors had guns? The answer is it would be another Steam hit.

While not nearly as big as vampire survivors, 20 Minutes Till Dawn managed to draft off of the former’s success thanks to small but significant tweaks to its core formula. Both games are about maneuvering around a 2D map trying to survive a horde of enemies while negotiating a steady stream of random upgrade trade-offs. But where combat in vampire survivors is 99% automated, 20 Minutes Till Dawn functions like a twin-stick shooter complete with limited bullets in the chamber and regular reload animations.

Created in just a few months by solo developer Flanne and released in June, it’s horror-based but trades 8-bit-style pixel art for lo-fi anime vibes. Its difficulty curve is also steeper. You move slower while shooting, reloading takes time, and rather than a hit point meter your life is represented by just a few discrete heart icons (complete with veins and regular pulsing). In this case more challenge equals more agency, and where vampire survivors can occasionally feel like an auto-battler, 20 Minutes Till Dawn requires more constant vigilance, especially early on in each new run.

Initially you’re mowing down swarms of baby Cthulhu-looking creatures and demonic trees. Later serpentine gargoyles join the mix as well as mini-boss encounters that require you to switch up your tactics. Collecting the runes they leave behind lets you level up and earn upgrades like magical ice daggers, baby dragons, and, of course, more bullets and wider spreads for your guns (the runes are also spent outside of each run on permeant unlockable and upgrades) . Enemies take longer to kill at first, and sometimes 20 Minutes Till Dawn can feel a bit rougher around the edges than the smooth dopamine drip of vampire survivorsbut the greater sense of control over my character and each run keeps me coming back.

the Hades-like meta progression is still where the most fun is, and level-ups come early and often. There’s also an array of extra characters and starting guns to unlock that offer even more room for experimentation. As the name suggests, you’re trying to survive against a clock counting down from 20 minutes (vampire survivors last till minute 30). There’s even a compressed 10-minute mode where you can experience the full cycle of horde survival in half the time.

It’s common for certain sub-genres of games to consistently do very well on Steam. even still, 20 Minutes Till Dawn‘s meteoric rise is noteworthy. Chris Zukowski reported on the whole mini-cycle at his blog, showing how it made all the right moves to capitalize on a trail blazed by vampire survivors. He’s quick to point out, though, that it only worked because 20 Minutes Till Dawn is a fun game that delivers its own smart spin on the formula. Flanne had been working on an homage to Final Fantasy Tactics called Spiritlink Tactics for five years when he pivoted, and now he’s devoting all of his time to continuing to update his surprise hit.

Update 0.7.4 just came on July 30, adding a new character called Luna who can use black holes to crowd-control enemy mobs. Like its Early Access inspiration, it feels as if 20 Minutes Till Dawn is only going to keep getting better.

Blizzard and Chinese gaming giant NetEase have reportedly canceled an unannounced World of Warcraft mobile game following a financial dispute.

According to Bloomberg, the game was going to be a massively multiplayer online role-playing title set in the same universe as World of Warcraft.

Codenamed Neptune, it was reportedly planned as a spin-off of Blizzard’s long-running PC title set in a different time period.

It’s claimed the game was in the works for three years, with a team of over 100 NetEase developers attached to the project prior to its cancellation.

Blizzard and NetEase, which publishes World of Warcraft in China and is also a co-creator of Diablo Immortal, are said to have canceled the mobile game following a dispute over financial terms for the title.

Warcraft Arclight Rumble, a free-to-play action strategy game for mobile, was announced by Blizzard in May.

Last week the studio confirmed a World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic release date of September 26, 2022.

The upcoming recreation of the game’s second expansion will be free to be for any player with an active World of Warcraft subscription.

World of Warcraft’s next new expansion, Dragonflight, will also be released later this year.

A few weeks ago, EA made some unfortunate headlines when the company’s social media account tweeted a joke seemingly dissing people who are only into single-player games.

The reaction was swift and harsh, not just from the public but from game developers, including some of EA’s own employees. During a recent earnings call this week, EA CEO Andrew Wilson reassured investors that single-player games are still a major part of the company’s output.

When asked about how single-player games fit into the company’s portfolio, he said:

“As we think about single-player games, we think it’s a really, really important part of the overall portfolio that we deliver in fulfillment of those core motivations.

The way we plan for it over time is really just looking at our community, and looking at how they’re spending their time, and looking at where motivations may or may not be fulfilled. And we’ll look to supplement that with the addition of new online games, new multiplayer games, and new single-player games.”

EA’s CFO Chris Suh followed that up with a more sobering statement, noting that live services account for the easy majority of EA’s total business and thus easily the long-term priority:

“If we think about the model impact and the financial impact of it, I think the first thing to always keep in mind is that live services still encompass, on a trailing 12-month basis, over 70% of our business, and that has been a proven, very reliable, highly reoccurring revenue stream, and that will still be the predominant driver in our P&L [profit and loss] long-term.

Second, we’ve talked a lot about the areas of investment that we’re making, and that’s both in the live service as well as some of the single[-player] title launches that you’ve seen. And so over the course of time, we’ll continue to invest, our long-term growth will continue to invest in the ongoing, stable performance of our live services business and there’ll be some puts and takes along the way.”

EA has primarily grown over the past decade-and-a-half by doubling down on multiplayer live-service games and monetization methods (microtransactions, loot boxes, tons of DLC) that have been profitable and at times controversial.

At the same time, they’ve shied away from single-player titles despite plenty of the studio’s most acclaimed works being that kind of game including the “Mass Effect,” “Dead Space,” “Dragon Age,” “Crysis” and “ Mirror’s Edge” franchises along with titles like “Titanfall 2” and “Jedi: Fallen Order”.

Of course, not every multi-player or live service title by EA has been a hit. Recently copies of 2019’s high-profile multiplayer game failure “Anthem” were spotted on sale for a penny each with a Reddit user posting videos of themselves using copies of the game as drinks coasters.

Source: VGC, IGN

Pokemon Go’s Bug Out returns next week. The bug-themed event begins Aug. 10 and you introduce a handful of new bug Pokemon to catch, including Mega Scizor, shiny Venipede, and Grubbin. In addition, there will be new challenges and research tasks to complete, along with various in-game bonuses to earn.

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s Bug Out.

Bug out schedule

The Bug Out event kicks off 10 am local time on Aug. 10 and ends 8 pm local time on Aug. 16.

Featured Pokemon

Several new bug Pokemon will be making their debut during this year’s Bug Out, including Mega Scizor. You’ll be able to encounter the Mega-Evolved Pokemon in Mega raids throughout the event, and each time you defeat it, you’ll earn energy to Mega Evolve your own Scizor.

On top of that, the Alolan Pokemon Grubbin will be appearing in the wild throughout the event. Once you’ve amassed 25 Grubbin candy, you can evolve it into Charjabug, which can then be evolved into Vikavolt if you feed it 100 Grubbin candy near an active Magnetic Lure Module.

Various other bug Pokemon will also be appearing more frequently during the event, including shiny Venipede, marking your first chance to catch one in the game. You can see the full list of featured Pokemon below:

wild spawns

• Caterpie
• weedle
• Ledyba
• Spinarak
• Yanma
• Pineco
• Wurmple
• Surskit
• kricketot
• Skorupi
• Coming
• Karrablast
• Joltic
• Dwebble
• Shelmet
• grubbin
• dewpider

One star raid

three-star raids

• Venomoth
• Pinsir
• Forretress
• Shuckle

five-star raids

mega raid

bonuses

Along with the featured Pokemon, a few bonuses will be active during the Bug Out event. You’ll earn twice as much XP as usual each time you successfully catch a Pokemon with a Nice, Great or Excellent throw.

Additionally, certain bug Pokemon will spawn in much greater numbers around a gym if three or more players join an in-person raid. The Pokemon that will appear will differ depending on the day. You can see the full schedule below:

• Aug. 10 – Wurmple
• Aug. 11 – Caterpie
• Aug. 12 – Spinarak
• Aug. 13 – Coming
• Aug. 14 – Kricketot
• Aug. 15 – Weedle
• Aug. 16 – Ledyba

Pokemon Go has many other events lined up for this month. The legendary Pokemon Palkia is appearing in raids until Aug. 10, while August’s Community Day is set for Aug. 13. You can see everything else going on in our August events roundup.

The iconic action RPG franchise, Grand Theft Auto, is now confirmed to be incubating its next installment, almost a decade after GTA 5’s release. Earlier this year, the Rockstar Games had declared the ongoing production of GTA 6, to end years of speculations. However, fans still await a concrete release window.

While the game has received an official mention, informants never stop giving out more. In fact, the plot of the game alongside some location details were leaked earlier. The updates, until now, were quite satiating to anticipating fans. However, an informant ran into some new information that could upset a lot of fans.

Considering the new speculation, Grand Theft Auto’s upcoming game could face further delay. So, as some fans were expecting, GTA 6 may not release next year. A more likely year could be 2024!

GTA 6 reportedly faced a lot of hindrances

According to an industry informant, Rockstar Games has had a lot of trouble with GTA 6’s production, both financially and development-wise. Although a speculation, this information comes from a figure who has been consistent with his revelations from him.

As it happens, the informant of the name ‘Matheusvictorbr’ claimed the situation of GTA 6’s production in Portuguese.

When translated, the tweet reads, “Rockstar Games faced several issues in the development of its next title Grand Theft Auto. As well as the ambitions left on paper, which appeared to be promising, but in practice was a nightmare, both as Financial and in its development itself.”

A second tweet from him read, “Rockstar games now tend to keep their current version of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto title’s goal of following the caliber of RDRII.”

As fans can decipher, Rockstar Games’ faced a major dilemma during GTA 6 production. While Rockstar Games didn’t make it apparent on paper during the announcement, the company struggled financially and with the game’s development. As a result, the company is now aiming for the upcoming game to match the caliber of its other successful action RPG game, Red Dead Redemption 2.

With the developmental and financial dilemma in question, GTA 6’s release may not happen soon. However, officials have confirmed nothing related to Matheusvictorbr’s tweets, so fans may want to take the same with a grain of salt. Moreover, it’s likely that Rockstar Games has figured out a way to tackle the issues by now.

The upcoming GTA game will feature a female playable protagonist for the first time, according to a report. In fact, the game’s story takes inspiration from Bonnie and Clyde, a real-life criminal couple from the 1900s.

What do you think about Rockstar Games facing financial and developmental problems with GTA 6? Let us know in the comments!

WATCH THIS STORY: Biggest celebrities who lent their voices to the popular GTA franchise

The enduring appeal of Lego comes not from the complexity of the sets, nor the adorable minifigure versions of pop culture icons, but from the build process itself, and turning a box of seemingly random pieces into a completed model. It’s a satisfying experience, and another one that robots might steal from you one day, thanks to researchers at Stanford University.

Lego’s instruction manuals are a masterclass in how to visually convey an assembly process to a builder, no matter what their background is, their experience level, or what language they speak. Pay close attention to the required pieces and the differences between one image of the partly-assembled model and the next, and you can figure out where all the pieces need to go before moving on to the next step. Lego has refined and polished the design of its instruction manuals over the years, but as easy as they are for humans to follow, machines are only just learning how to interpret the step-by-step guides.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to machines learning to build with Lego is interpreting the two-dimensional images of the 3D models in the traditional printed instruction manuals (although, several Lego models can now be assembled through the company’s mobile app, which provides full 3D models of each step that can be rotated and examined from any angle). Humans can look at a picture of a Lego brick and instantly determine its 3D structure in order to find it in a pile of bricks, but for robots to do that, the researchers at Stanford University had to develop a new learning-based framework they call the Manual-to-Executable-Plan Network — or, MEPNet, for short — as detailed in a recently published paper.

Not only does the neural network have to extrapolate the 3D shape, form, and structure of the individual pieces identified in the manual for each step, it also needs to interpret the overall shape of the semi-assembled models featured in every step, no matter their orientation. Depending on where a piece needs to be added, Lego manuals will often provide an image of a semi-assembled model from a completely different perspective than the previous step did. The MEPNet framework has to decipher what it’s seeing, and how it correlates to the 3D model it generated as illustrated in previous steps.

Screenshot: Ruocheng Wang, Yunzhi Zhang, Jiayuan Mao, Chin-Yi Cheng, and Jiajun Wu

The framework then needs to determine where the new pieces in each step fit into the previously generated 3D model by comparing the next iteration of the semi-assembled model to previous ones. Lego manuals don’t use arrows to indicate part placement, and at the most will use a slightly different color to indicate where new pieces need to be placed — which may be too subtle to detect from a scanned image of a printed page. The MEPNet framework has to figure this out on its own, but what makes the process slightly easier is a feature unique to Lego bricks: the studs on top, and the anti-studs on the underside that allow them to be securely attached to each other . MEPNet understands the positional limitations of how Lego bricks can actually be stacked and attached based on the location of a piece’s studs, which helps narrow down where on the semi-assembled model they can be attached.

So can you drop a pile of plastic bricks and a manual in front of a robot arm and expect to come back to a completed model in a few hours? Not quite yet. The goal of this research was to simply translate the 2D images of a Lego manual into assembly steps a machine can functionally understand. Teaching a robot to manipulate and assemble Lego bricks is a whole other challenge — this is just the first step — although we’re not sure if there are any Lego fans out there who want to pawn off the actual building process on a machine.

Where this research could have more interesting applications is potentially automatically converting old Lego instruction manuals into the interactive 3D build guides included in the Lego mobile app now. And with a better understanding of translating 2D images into three-dimensional brick-built structures, this framework could potentially be used to develop software that could translate images of any object and spit out instructions on how to turn it into a Lego model.

Samsung and iFixit have finally launched their self-repair program, allowing owners of a phone from the Galaxy S20 and S21 lines as well as the Tab S7 Plus to buy replacement parts.

The initial announcement of the self-repair program was made back in late Marchand not much has changed since. Across the three product lines (opens in new tab), you’ll be able to purchase repair kits for the screen and battery, charging port, and back glass; standalone batteries are not included. What’s new is access to free online repair guides that tell you how to fix the phone via step-by-step guidance that includes images.

repair packages

At absolutely every turn, I’m looking for ways to support my fellow indie game devs, and today’s news does bring a smile to my face (insert meme here, I guess). A project called Outbreak: Contagious Memories is launching on Kickstarter soon, and its loyal fans have taken to swarm the Stadia Community blog to show support.

The game launches soon, and with it, a Stadia click-to-play demo for anyone who wants to try it out. It’s an impressive strategy – launching a Kickstarter and gaining support from Google via its new and awesome zero friction demo system during the campaign’s lifespan. This means that anyone potentially looking to back the project can do more than just look at GIFs and text, they can play it!

In addition to Outbreak, Stadia has announced the upcoming release of The Dungeons of Naheulbeuk: The amulet of Chaos and ‘From Space’, an appropriately named sequel to ‘It Came From Space and Ate Our Brains’.

All three of these games look pretty fun, and I’m personally most excited for The Dungeons of Naheulbeuk (and yes, I had to look at the word to properly spell it each time) as it has a quirky and humorous take on something like Dungeons & Dragons. I wish the best of luck to the developers of Outbreak, and I hope their strategy garners a ton of support. Please be sure to check the game out and play a free 60 minute demo of it before heading over to their Kickstarter page!

Outbreak: Contagious Memories

Outbreak: Contagious Memories is a chilling love letter to classic 90’s horror games where your survival will be determined by moment-to-moment decisions, what you decide to carry, and how good you are at spotting conveniently written notes.

You’re trapped in a city ravaged by the undead – can you make it out alive? Join Lydia in her desperate struggle to escape, either alone or with a friend in co-op play. With plenty of unlockable bonus content like Operation: Rabid Wolf, work with your friends or compete against them, whether it’s fighting through the city to rescue survivors, or to beat the main game in record time with nothing but your fists.

Release Date: Coming soon

The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos

Step into the wacky heroic fantasy universe of the Dungeon of Naheulbeuk. Lead a team of unlikely and clumsy heroes in an epic and challenging tactical RPG. Live an adventure filled with humor, surprises and silly encounters.

The Naheulbeuk universe is an original creation by French author John Lang. It started as a very popular audio comedy series parodying role-playing games and heroic fantasy tropes. Now the story is available in English and as a video game for the first time!

Release Date: Coming soon

FromSpace

From Space is a solo and co-op action-shooter for squads up to four players. Take on the challenge of liberating the earth from an alien infestation with your friends, using over-the-top weaponry in a post-apocalyptic world with awesomely stylized graphics. The apocalypse has never been so much fun!

That’s no bubblegum army, that’s an endless horde of menacingly pink aliens taking over our planet! Enough sweet talk, grab your gear, we need you and your squad to defeat the pink pests! Explore the world and help the human resistance regain ground against the invaders, improving skills and building your arsenal of weapons as you explore every corner of this post-apocalyptic world.

Release Date: Autumn 2022