Commander Fury

When we first announced Project Athia last year, we were overwhelmed with joy from seeing the excitement and conversations shared by fans online. Now, at long last, we’re ready to share the game’s official title and logo with you: I’m also excited to share a brand-new scene from the game, which you can view here: Play Video Forspoken is an action RPG where you will take on the role of Frey Holland, an ordinary young woman who must harness her magical abilities to survive in a fantastical and dangerous land called Athia. As Frey, you will embark on a thrilling, other-worldly adventure and face treacherous trials to unravel the mystery behind the unknown land of Athia and awaken something much more from within. As you’ll see in the new game clip, Frey is able to traverse the world with incredible speed and fluidity. I can’t wait for players to experience firsthand just how satisfying it feels to move through Athia, scaling cliffs, and leaping across ravines in the future. Frey takes center stage in Forspoken, and we’re delighted to announce that actor, Ella Balinska is performing the character. We were looking for someone who could convincingly portray Frey’s dynamic character, and we knew immediately that Ella was the perfect person to play her. From the beginning, Ella understood the themes and concept of the game and was able to channel this in her performance to bring Frey’s character to life. Not only is Ella talented and well matched to the role of Frey, but she is also extremely passionate about Forspoken as her first video game project. And there it is! On behalf of Square Enix and the entire Luminous Productions team, we hope you enjoyed the sneak peek. The creators are working hard around the world on the development of Forspoken, and we can’t wait for you to experience Frey’s story in 2022. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/Ky9RJcZu99UView the full article

It’s a very exciting time here at Hazelight. We’re about to bring our baby into the world. Next week, on March 26, the wild, funny, and magical co-op action adventure platformer It Takes Two will blow your minds away. I’m not kidding! You’ve never seen anything like it. Play Video Catch up on the latest trailer, then keep scrolling for new gameplay info. Don’t take my word for it though. Just download the Friend’s Pass version of It Takes Two from the PlayStation Store on PS4 or PS5 on March 26. It’s free. Give it a go in local couch co-op – or have a friend download the Friend’s Pass as well to play online – and you can try out the entire first level. If you enjoy it, only one of you needs to buy the full game to keep playing together. One aspect of It Takes Two that I’m really passionate about is the way we’re marrying story and gameplay in innovative ways. I’ve talked a lot about this since we revealed the game. But today, I wanted to dive into the backstories of our two main characters, Cody and May, to give you some more examples of how this comes to life. May wields a sickle against enemies while Cody rams as a tomato. In the beginning of the story, we learn that Cody and May are about to split up. Their daughter, Rose, is devastated. She desperately wants them to stay together. Feeling she can’t share her worries with her parents, she turns to a book titled “Book of Love” and two dolls that she’s created to represent her parents. When she wishes for them to become friends again, Rose unknowingly and magically transforms them into the dolls, teleporting mom and dad into a magical world. Here, they encounter Dr. Hakim, a living version of Rose’s “Book of Love”. He’s a crazy and passionate guy (kinda like me – I actually did the mocap for Dr. Hakim myself!) and claims that he’s promised Rose to fix their broken marriage. Cody steers the growth of a flower as May leaps across the leaves. Before ending up as a doll made out of clay, Cody spent his time as a caring stay-at-home dad. Ever since his nursery garden business went bankrupt, his sense of being a failure grew and the once-strong passion for gardening faded away. May, on the other hand, is a really sharp engineer, working overtime to keep the family economy afloat. She’s also abandoned her passion for music and singing, as a result of not having enough time. This strange world that they now find themselves in is a representation of all of this – of Cody and May’s neglect of their passions, each other, and their surroundings, ultimately leading to a broken marriage. This is something that the two players must tackle throughout the game. At one point they arrive at Cody’s garden. It’s overgrown and overtaken by weeds, insects, animals, and other weird things that have turned against them. Here, Dr. Hakim – always creating challenges and providing new powers and gadgets for them throughout the adventure – grants Cody the ability to “become one” with his gardening again. Quite literally. Cody is now able to shoot a sprout out of his own head to attack enemies or grab onto items in the environment. Or plant himself in certain dirt patches to become a needle-shooting cactus. Or a growing vine with leaves acting as platforms for May to jump on. Or a big tomato that can roll around and smash into enemies! But May needs to support her partner in his passion, and she receives a water hose to help Cody in making the garden blossom again and a scythe to hack-and-slash through the weeds and enemies. Similarly, they must deal with their own difficulties of handling time. As they’re traversing Rose’s room, May gets irritated when she realizes that Cody has used her chess board to build a toy castle. Cody notes that she never uses it anyways, which May then again blames on the lack of time. Just as when she abandoned her passion for singing. In a later level, taking place inside the family’s cuckoo clock, the couple is challenged by Dr. Hakim to finally take care of this issue. May can now clone herself to be in two places at the same time. Another feature of May’s cloning ability is that she can switch places with her clone at will, sometimes being able to pass through objects like maybe a crushing wall. And Cody can control objects in the world and make them travel either backwards or forward in time. Not only does this ability work on static objects but also sometimes on stuff like explosions. Regardless of the challenges (and there’s gonna be A LOT of them) that Cody and May are put up against, the key is always for them – and the players – to work together. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/zw5SnoCj6MAView the full article

Led by Kenji Anabuki and Keita Iizuka of the Tales of Vesperia team, Scarlet Nexus is an intense, story-driven action RPG from Bandai Namco Studios releasing on June 25. Set in a far distant future, the world has entered a dangerous new era where deranged mutants called the Others terrorize and hunt humans. To protect people in this perilous world, the Other Suppression Force (OSF) recruits psionics — special humans with acute extra-sensory talents – and uses their unique psychic powers to exterminate the Others. The Scarlet Nexus combat system provides you with the ability to fully utilize your party’s psionic powers in different ways. The game’s two main playable characters, Yuito and Kasane, both use Psychokinesis. Psychokinesis users can move objects with the power of their mind, so many elements in your immediate environment can be leveraged in battle as a weapon. Scarlet Nexus builds in even more psionic possibilities with the Struggle Arms System (SAS). With SAS, Yuito and Kasane can link with a party member to leverage their psychic ability and combine it with their own. SAS can be activated to boost your party’s battle potential – for example, tapping into Hanabi Ichijo’s Pyrokinesis can enhance both psychokinesis and melee attacks with her pyrokinetic flames. Gemma Garrison’s Sclerokinesis can be used to provide short-term immunity from damage for a temporary defensive advantage. By using SAS strategically, you can connect with party members with different psychic abilities to gain the upper hand in battle. Scarlet Nexus’ combat system also allows for a wide range of options to match different playstyles. Equipping various SAS Plug-Ins to party members can help improve stats, enhance physical attacks, boost psychic abilities, or even upgrade your psychic powers for an even more powerful attack combo in battle. OSF members are not only equipped with special psychic powers and weapons to be battle-ready – they can also customize cosmetic options to fight the Others in style. With hundreds of options for fresh OSF cadets, Yuito, Kasane, and the members of your team can mix and match with different outfits and cosmetic items for a unique look. Pre-orders for Scarlet Nexus are available now. Pre-order either the Standard or Deluxe version of the game now to receive these in-game cosmetics as a bonus: Special Battle Attire Set -Audio- Additional Attachment “Face Vision: Seal” Additional Attachment “Dream Catcher” Additional Attachment Set “Shoulder Baki (11)” Fans who purchase the Deluxe Edition will receive: The full game Battle Attire Set -Red- Digital Soundtrack Digital Artbook Additional Attachment “The Others” Our team is looking forward to bringing Scarlet Nexus to you when it launches June 25. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/71d2_Ignc-QView the full article

Rustler, a medieval take on old-school action sandbox games, is riding to PS4 and PS5 later this year. At Modus Games, we’re excited to share an incredible, historically inaccurate world filled with pop culture references, insane humor, and medieval shenanigans that developer Jutsu Games has crafted. Play Video In Rustler, you’ll play as Guy, a tough-as-nails peasant whose parents were apparently too lazy to give him a proper name. After a typical night of drinking, Guy awakens in a dazed and confused stupor — and this is where his adventures begin. As Guy, you’ll take on absurd quests to steal horses, terrorize townsfolk in disguise, and brawl with the local law enforcing knights. He’ll do whatever it takes to improve his social standing in the world and the coin that comes with it. Your ultimate goal is to win the Grand Tournament and subsequently the princess’s hand. However, to achieve this, you’ll have to scheme your way into the tournament with the help of your trusted buddy, aptly named, Buddy. The medieval gangster lifestyle wouldn’t be complete without the freedom of going off the beaten path. We hope players will also have a blast simply causing mayhem in villages and cities with a number of weapons at your disposal including swords, crossbows, and even holy hand grenades. Got the fuzz hot on your trail? No worries: hire a bard to play a fusion of fresh hip-hop and medieval tunes to aid you in combat. Who knew the Middle Ages also had so many fun distractions to partake in? Throughout the world, you’ll encounter a variety of minigames including Medieval Martial Arts (MMA) cage fights, horse races, and offering your own taxi services. Just remember not to park in a “No Horse Zone.” Live out your medieval thug life dreams when Rustler releases on PS4 and PS5 later in 2021. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/k0XUkOck2FUView the full article

Following the recent reveal of our next-generation virtual reality system for PS5, I’m excited to unveil more details about the new controller that will play a critical role in providing gamers with the VR experience we’re working to deliver. Our new VR controller speaks to our mission of achieving a much deeper sense of presence and stronger feeling of immersion in VR experiences. It will build upon the innovation we introduced with the DualSense wireless controller, which changed how games “feel” on PS5 by unlocking a new way to tap into the sense of touch. Now we’re bringing that innovation to VR gaming. Design The first thing you’ll notice with our next-gen VR controller is the unique design, which takes on an “orb” shape that allows you to hold the controller naturally, while playing with a high degree of freedom. There are no constraints with how you’re moving your hands, providing developers with the ability to create unique gameplay experiences. We also designed the new controller with great ergonomics in mind, so it’s well-balanced and comfortable to hold in each of your hands. We applied learnings from testing users with a range of hand sizes, as well as the decades of insights from controllers across all PlayStation platforms. The result is an iconic design that will change how VR games are played. Features The new VR controller enables players to feel and interact with games in a much more visceral way. There are several features, including key features from the DualSense controller, which match our vision for what next-generation VR games can be. ● Adaptive triggers: Each VR controller (Left and Right) includes an adaptive trigger button that adds palpable tension when pressed, similar to what’s found in the DualSense controller. If you’ve played a PS5 game, you’ll be familiar with the tension in the L2 or R2 buttons when you press them, such as when you’re drawing your bow to fire an arrow. When you take that kind of mechanic and apply it to VR, the experience is amplified to the next level. ● Haptic feedback: The new controller will have haptic feedback optimized for its form factor, making every sensation in the game world more impactful, textured and nuanced. When you’re traversing through rocky desert or trading blows in melee combat, you’ll feel the difference, magnifying the extraordinary visual and audio experience that’s so central to VR. ● Finger touch detection: The controller can detect your fingers without any pressing in the areas where you place your thumb, index, or middle fingers. This enables you to make more natural gestures with your hands during gameplay. ● Tracking: The VR controller is tracked by the new VR headset through a tracking ring across the bottom of the controller. ● Action buttons / analog sticks: The Left controller contains one analog stick, the triangle and square buttons, a “grip” button (L1), trigger button (L2) and Create button. The Right controller contains one analog stick, the cross and circle buttons, a “grip” button (R1), trigger button (R2) and Options button. The “grip” button can be used to pick up in-game objects, as one example. SIE’s Product, Engineering, and Design teams have collaborated to build our new VR controller from the ground up with a goal of making a huge leap from current-gen VR gaming. We’re thrilled with the controller we developed, but what matters now is how game creators will take advantage of the features to design the next generation of VR experiences. Prototypes of our new VR controller will be in the hands of the development community soon, and we can’t wait to see what ideas they come up with and how the controller helps bring their imagination to life! There’s still much more to share about the next-generation of VR on PS5. On behalf of all of us at SIE, I want to thank you for taking this journey with us! http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/hR6MclP2hIYView the full article

Hi again! Last month we revealed our new Play at Home program for 2021, which aims to provide the PlayStation community with free games and entertainment offers to make the next few months a little more fun. The program kicked off earlier this month with access to a free digital copy of the 2016 hit Ratchet & Clank for PS4 — and you can still claim a free digital copy of the game through March 31, 2021 at 8pm PDT* / April 1 at 4am BST / 5am CEST. Now, let’s talk about the next Play at Home content drop, which hits March 25! This time our focus is a selection of free games from some of our top independent partners, and the previously announced extended trial offer for Funimation (or Wakanim) in the countries where they are available. Starting March 25, 2021 PlayStation and some of our favorite indie partners are collaborating to provide more free games to explore while you’re staying safe and staying home: Abzû From the artistic mind behind Journey, Flower, and The Pathless, ABZÛ is a beautiful underwater adventure that evokes the dream of diving. Immerse yourself in a vibrant ocean world full of mystery and bursting with color and life. Enter the Gungeon Enter the Gungeon is a gunfight dungeon crawler following a band of misfits seeking to shoot, loot, dodge roll and table-flip their way to personal absolution by reaching the legendary Gungeon’s ultimate treasure: the gun that can kill the past. Rez Infinite Prepare yourself for the ultimate version of Rez, a thrilling journey of sights and sounds and shooting action, remastered and upgraded by members of the original development team exclusively for PS4 and (optional) PlayStation VR. Subnautica You have crash-landed on an alien ocean world, and the only way to go is down. Subnautica’s oceans range from sun-drenched shallow coral reefs to treacherous deep-sea trenches, lava fields, and bio-luminescent underwater rivers. The water teems with life: Some of it helpful, much of it harmful. The Witness The Witness is a single-player game in an open world with dozens of locations to explore and over 500 puzzles. This game respects you as an intelligent player and it treats your time as precious. There’s no filler: each of those puzzles brings its own new idea into the mix. So, this is a game full of ideas. We’re also proud to serve up a selection of free PlayStation VR games*** starting on March 25: Astro Bot Rescue Mission Get a whole new perspective on platform games, thanks to PlayStation VR, in this daring rescue operation. Take control of Astro in a massive adventure to rescue his crew, where the PS VR headset puts you right in the thick of the action. Judge every jump with accuracy and be curious – there are lots of secrets to discover in your daring quest. Moss Moss is a single-player action-adventure puzzle game and new IP from Polyarc tailor-made for the VR platform. In Moss, players meet Quill, a young mouse with dreams of greatness beyond the confines of her settlement. While exploring the woods, she finds a mysterious Glass Relic and an ancient magic is awakened. Thumper Thumper is rhythm violence: classic rhythm-action, blistering speed, and brutal physicality. You are a space beetle. Brave the hellish void and confront a maniacal giant head from the future. Every crushing impact is interwoven with a pounding original soundtrack. To reach synesthetic bliss, you must go through rhythm hell. Paper Beast Experience a dreamlike odyssey in virtual reality. Discover a wild ecosystem, born from lost Internet data. Be the first to explore a world inhabited by exotic and surprising creatures, and shape your environment to overcome obstacles and puzzles. Unravel the mysteries of Paper Beast, a game born from the imagination of Eric Chahi (Another World, From Dust). This amazing selection of PS4 games and PS VR games will be available for free download from March 25 8:00pm Pacific Time to April 22 8:00pm Pacific Time. Funimation / Wakanim Don’t forget: in participating countries, we’re also offering an extended trial of Funimation (or Wakanim, depending on region), a joint venture of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Aniplex of Japan. The anime-focused subscription service includes shows such as My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Attack on Titan, and Fruits Basket. This extended trial offer kicks off on March 25 and is available through April 22****. Starting April 19, 2021 But there’s more to come later this spring. Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition will be available for free download between April 19 8:00pm Pacific Time and May 14 8:00pm Pacific Time. We’ll have more to share soon. We appreciate the support from the PlayStation community, and hope you enjoy our latest content drop – please stay safe and thanks for playing! * Subnautica, The Witness, Abzu, Rez Infinite, Moss, Thumper and Paper Beast are not available in China. ** Enter the Gungeon is not available in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. ***DualShock 4 wireless controller required to play Moss and Paper Beast. To experience PlayStation VR, you will need the following: PlayStation console system, PlayStation VR headset and PlayStation Camera. PS5 console users will also need the PlayStation Camera adaptor – click here for more information). ****FUNIMATION — On top of the standard 14-day trial, new users can get an additional three months. WAKANIM — New users will get 90 days. Unless you cancel your subscription before the end of the period, your subscription will automatically roll into a paid-for, ongoing subscription with a recurring monthly fee. Age restrictions apply. Offer available from March 25 8pm PDT – April 22 11:59 PDT. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/kD0QWmkRHO4View the full article

Being a detective isn’t easy at the best of times – you have to inhale corpse stink and ask grieving families tough questions, for starters. But imagine waking up with a horrible hangover and no memory of where you are to then find out you’re the lead investigator of a murder case. No warning, no morning coffee; just you in your underwear, sore as hell, splayed awkwardly on the trashed floor of a rented room. That’s what happens to our main character in Disco Elysium – The Final Cut. He’s a man in need of some serious help (even before his hideous tie tries to strangle him). Fortunately, we’ve made sure there is plenty of assistance available throughout the game. Here’s a quick rundown of how to progress from yesterday’s drunken mess to today’s law enforcement superstar. Cure the hangover It’s a good idea to deal with that head-splitting hangover first off. People have suggested all kinds of hangover cures throughout the ages: rubbing lemons on skin, drinking pickle juice, eating raw eels. They won’t help much but they are fun. Luckily, we’ve got a more effective range of cures that you can purchase over the counter at the local Frittte. The most sensible option is a bottle of magnesium. Take this and the detective’s head should stop pounding. You might also want to grab some ammonia to help stop him puking when confronted with any nasty smells – beyond his own beer bottle breath, that is. Painkillers such as Nosaphed and Drouamine are an essential purchase too. Once you have some of these, if you ever find yourself running low on health you can just hit left on the d-pad to instantly feel a bit better. Reconstruct crime scenes With a clear head, one advantage our detective will soon discover he has is being able to reconstruct crime scenes with his mind’s eye. This is done using a skill called Visual Calculus. There are 24 skills in total, all of which can be improved to open up new possibilities in the investigation, but you’ll probably want to focus on the ones that suit your personal policing style – whether that’s calm intellect, physical aggression, or anything in between. This is a role-playing game, after all. Opt to level up Visual Calculus and you might be able to figure out the weight of the person who left a footprint behind in the mud. Or you could even calculate the trajectory of a bullet that’s been shot through a window with mathematical precision. Very smart, very forensic, it may even impress your partner. Tool up Can’t get through a locked door? Unable to see inside a dark room? Need to motivate yourself by blasting some big tunes from your shoulder? This is what the tools in Disco Elysium – The Final Cut are for. These items can be equipped in either of the detective’s hands. From there, just click the L3 button to use the left-hand tool, or the R3 button for the right-hand tool, and voila! You’re a tooled-up funky man of the law that few barriers can stop. Tools include a heavy-duty pry bar that unlocks containers – including any bins you want to rummage around in (yes, we cater to Hobocops). We also have chain cutters, a flashlight, a portable tape player, and a yellow plastic bag. That plastic bag may seem silly now, but you’ll learn to love it once it saves your life on more than one occasion. Gain new thoughts It’s a good idea to talk to the locals to get eye witness reports and to illuminate the background of the case. But that’s not the only advantage of speaking to people as some of them can give you new thoughts for your arsenal. Thoughts in Disco Elysium – The Final Cut give you new dialogue options that can lead to new investigative paths. Once you acquire one, you have the option to develop it in your Thought Cabinet, which is a special inventory just for thoughts. Each thought takes a specific amount of in-game time to develop – one of them takes nearly a whole day! You’ll know when the thought is done as the PS5’s DualSense controller will buzz in your palms. Thoughts become part of your personality and give you a range of bonuses and drawbacks. For example, if you fully develop the Superstar Cop thought, you’ll get -1 Logic as this is the price of self-delusion, but your learning cap for other skills will be raised by your new daring and confidence. Be the fashion police The world is your stage so don’t be afraid to dress up a little. Who says you have to look like a cop, anyway? Not us, that’s for sure. Look out for any opportunity to gain new items of clothing as you explore the cold coastal district as wearing them can give you certain advantages. Gown yourself in a silk kimono complete with a roaring dragon and you’ll get +1 Drama. Or put on the yellow gardening gloves and it’ll make it easier to perform a field autopsy. It’s well worth mixing and matching clothing items to get the bonuses you want at any specific moment in time. For example, at one point in the game, you get the opportunity to sing karaoke in front of a crowd. To reach peak performance you’ll want to wear the silk kimono, a mesh tank top, and a bow tie. It’s quite the look! And one that we fully intended for this superstar moment. Got all that? Now you should be ready to strut your stuff when Disco Elysium – The Final Cut arrives on PS4 and PS5 on March 30, 2021. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/dv9IEjfdm0oView the full article

Hey there! This is Alex – one of the devs in the tiny team at 2pt Interactive. I’m here today to share some new gameplay info on our physics-based spatial puzzler, Heavenly Bodies. Everyone who’s been tuning in so far knows that Heavenly Bodies is a game about cosmonauts, the body, and the absence of gravity. But it still begs the age-old question: What do you do? Today, we have a new gameplay filled trailer which has come to finally provide some answers! Let’s take a look. Play Video We’ve taken a few minutes of gameplay from two of our favorite scenarios – Data, and Minerals. Along with the other 5 missions in Heavenly Bodies, each is a gripping spatial puzzle tasking you to perform great feats of science and engineering in one of the most taxing physical conditions known to human-kind: weightlessness. Using two good arms and a cool head, you’ll use the DualSense wireless controller to control each individual limb of a weightless, physically simulated cosmonaut. These simple, yet tricky controls enable you to move around and interact with a variety of space-station modules that require delicate assembly and maintenance. Each of these scenarios can be played either solo or with a friend via local co-op. In Data, you’ll be tasked to assemble a grand communications tower to establish a link between home and the cosmos. You’ll use your gripping hands to link the giant segments together, and a satellite dish calibration system to tune the tower to optimal frequencies. In Minerals, you’ll take the helm of a rugged mining spacecraft designed to extract non-terrestrial soils from a nearby asteroid belt. Each extraction will require different techniques, and will test your ability to keep a steady head in a space that doesn’t sit still. To some, these scenarios may sound straight-forward; we can guarantee that the heart and mind will be tested. For in a world without gravity, nothing is still, nothing is secure, and nothing is simple. We’re incredibly excited for you to experience Heavenly Bodies later this year! Thanks for tuning in. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/3FbS8pCmvv0View the full article

Hey! I’m Daniel Sproll, cofounder of Realities.io where we’re developing Puzzling Places, a 3D Jigsaw Puzzle game for puzzling beautiful places from around the world. Today, we’re really excited to announce that Puzzling Places is coming to PlayStation VR, set to release in the winter of 2021! Play Video Puzzling Places is a relaxing, meditative, and flow-inducing game built on the age-old concept of jigsaw puzzles – except in VR, the puzzles are no-longer flat! These puzzles are made with super-detailed 3D scans of interesting places from around the globe. Happy little accidents Realities.io was founded in 2016 with the goal to make real world places explorable through VR. We specialized in 3D scanning using a method called Photogrammetry and built our own software pipeline for turning these photorealistic scans into something that can actually run in a real-time game engine. Puzzling Places was a result of a total accident – An error in our pipeline caused the pieces of one of our Photogrammetry models to be jumbled up which sparked a brilliant idea to, you guessed it, puzzle the pieces back together! How does Puzzling Places work? The gameplay works exactly how you’d expect: pick up two pieces that match and put them together until they click! Then, simply continue until the entire puzzle is completed – just like a physical jigsaw puzzle but without blocking your dining room table for days! Being a 3D puzzle in VR, the puzzle pieces are not flat. Each piece is a little chunk of the real world, so it has volume and depth with lots of little details throughout. With every piece you connected, the puzzle also slowly comes to life with an immersive soundscape emerging from throughout the environment, smoothly guiding you all the way to the final satisfying click! Plenty of puzzles! Puzzling Places will have a whole bunch of puzzles to finish, with a lot more content coming after release! Each puzzle will also have multiple difficulty variants, so you have the choice if you just want to jump in for a quick 50 piece session or want to dive deep into the puzzle flow, challenging yourself with hundreds of pieces that could take a few days to finish! Puzzling Places is truly a special project for us, combining the entire team’s passions and skill sets. It’s not only a super fun and relaxing experience, it has also opened up a unique new way for players to explore amazing 3D scans made by creators from around the world. And we are especially excited that it is a game that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds, a game that can bring the magic of VR to the whole family! http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/7ZF7VZ9t7M8View the full article

When husband and father Whit Anderson descends into a sinkhole to save the family dog, he unwittingly tumbles into a journey through time. Suddenly enveloped by visions of his past, present, and future, Whit discovers he can change them, altering the course of his and others’ lives forever. Play Video Memories to make Hi everyone! Thanks for checking out Where the Heart Leads, our game about relationships spanning a lifetime of interactions where you, the player, make choices that change your world. From the jump, our focus was to create a narrative experience that wraps its arms around you—like a well-worn, comfortable couch, or your favorite sweater, or a luxurious van. You get the idea. We’ve built a narrative framework and a subtle incentive, but it’s all to support your journey forward. The decisions are yours to make. And there are lots of decisions. You’ll guide family man Whit Anderson through his past, present, and future as he reflects on his life and the pivotal moments where one choice or another made him who he is. With thousands of choices and dozens of endings, the story is very much yours to write. Along the way, maybe we can learn something about each other. Meaningful moments create a mark on us which we can easily recall at a later time. Our own families and the people we admire provide endless inspiration when making a game like this. And while not directly related, games like Heavy Rain, Oxenfree, Xenogears, and Vagrant Story all contributed to the game’s functionality. We are big action/narrative/puzzle gamers, but also avid filmgoers. Keen-eyed cinephiles may notice influences from the likes of David Lynch, Wes Anderson, and Nicolas Winding Refn. Throughout our careers (shout-out to Metroid Prime fans!), we’ve strived to create worlds that tell their own story, but which you discover by playing. We have been fortunate to connect and collaborate with so many gamers over the years, many of whom have found something emotionally resonant in these worlds. You inspired us to build this game just for you. The result is our first narrative adventure. Paths We have created a huge number of branching paths you could be on, but the order in which you do things, for the most part, is up to you. For instance, in our new trailer, we show an interaction between you and your spouse with two choices, before showing you a tiny glimpse at how those choices create outcomes in the future. In this particular situation, you’ve just had an argument with your landlord. Your rental home has been destroyed by a storm and rather than repair it, your landlord is going to collect insurance money and sell it down the road, forcing you out on your ear. Your spouse Rene owns some land as part of an inheritance but you have your own ideas for how you could live in the meantime… When picking the choice “Sell Your Land” the result is: Going into this choice, your relationship with your wife Rene was pretty good. Jobs were stable, so you agreed that selling Rene’s inherited land makes the most sense. Plus, it gets you and your family out of harm’s way fairly quickly. Although you never saw yourself as part of the upper class, things have worked out well. You moved into an affluent area of West Carthage and began a new chapter of your life. If you had picked the other choice “Get Creative” the result would be this: As a burgeoning artist, you have ideas for how Rene’s land could be used. Looks like living in the woods suits you… and, maybe, only you. The choices you make directly affect the path you and your family are on. Those choices also create new paths to walk down, opening different narrative threads across decades of options. What you will and won’t see, I do not know. Even in testing the game, many of us ask each other, “How did you end up there?” Creatively, it’s been a huge challenge. The game has expanded almost of its own accord, past our original 5-hour goal to now over twice that. Each player might only see a fraction of the game on their original playthrough, and that’s okay, because it’s your story. The differences span chapters, so while not immediately apparent, small things could lead up to huge deviations. Currently over 600,000 words, Where The Heart Leads is narratively larger than “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, or “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace, or “The Stand” by Stephen King. What you uncover will be as much a surprise to us as it hopefully is to you. Finding home takes a lifetime… This game evolved from a desire to let players tell their own story. Along the way, we realized we were sharing bits and pieces of ourselves during this difficult time period for everyone. In the end, I believe our goal has changed—Where the Heart Leads is now more about finding each other than the homes we once knew. Our game is definitely not for everyone, and we never wanted it to be. It walks its own path, and we deliver it to you with the very best of hopes for you and your loved ones this year. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/L5EZIy3ycC8View the full article

No two dishes made in Nour: Play With Your Food are alike. A delicious interactive exploration into the aesthetics of food and drink, Nour lets you play with your food in ways your mother told you not to. This beautiful, chaotic yet comforting game demanded a soundtrack that reflects each player’s unique preparations and plating. What started as a soundtrack ended up as an instrument. Play sweet melodies and manipulate the environment via random acts of cookery, rhythmic prowess, or even your singing voice. Beginner or expert, reckless or meticulous, every chef creates a song to match their pièce de résistance. I’m Maximilian C Mueller, a musician and designer – and today, your maître d’Nour’s music. James Morrison (aka Fluke Nukes) and I cooked up a feast for the ears to accompany this feast for the eyes. Ambience: Season to Taste Adaptive background music to complement your dish. The music heats up, cools down, rises, mixes, and melts. What you hear is a unique combination of ingredients cooked per ever-changing specifications set by the way you play; no two play-throughs will sound the same. Wreak havoc, show restraint, and so too will the audio. Adaptive game music is often categorized as “horizontal” (e.g. the music changes when entering a room), or “vertical” (e.g., tempo increases or an instrumental element is added when entering combat). Nour’s music is diagonal and has a cherry on top. Player actions and their frequency comprise a measure of chaos used to generate a cohesive song from a large pantry of ingredients. Together with a dash of stochasticity and a pinch of salt, this fluctuating measure acts as a conductor, guiding the scene sound. Put simply, the dish you create creates the song. Have a listen to some evolving music captured in-game while you read: Marshmallow Flutes and Noodle Harps Conjure food and make a melody, create a dish and make a song. Each time a food is introduced into the scene, a sound comes with it. What does a marshmallow sound like? An airy flute! An ice cube? The high notes of a grand piano played staccato of course! It was great fun choosing these sounds and even more fun subjecting those sounds to the trials of gameplay. Don’t worry about playing sour notes; every button press is always in tune. Once in the scene, the foods act as percussion instruments, singing the sound that announced them on impact. I love setting up a pile of ice cubes and slamming something into them to create an icy physics music explosion. Perhaps the best example of physical instrumentation in Nour is the noodle harp. Make some noodles, arrange them to form an elegant slope (or monster) using the magnet, and freeze them. While there are many ways you could choose to play the harp, one of my favorites is simply letting a gyoza tumble down the sculpture to create a descending melody. Making a beat in Toaster using a combination of “broken” and working toasters. Each scene in Nour has some unique gameplay mechanics and musical mechanics to match. In Toaster, make toast and conduct an orchestra at the same time. Bread takes to the air upon a swell of violins, bassoons, and timpani. Burn your toast to the degree that the toaster breaks…and what was once a bassoon is a BASS. Appliance destruction triggers a change of temperament in your musicians, turning the smoldering toasters into 808’s, snares, hats, and kicks. Create a fiery beat – but be sure to leave one or two toasters unbroken for a nice orchestral accompaniment. Fire dances to the beat when night falls in Toaster. In Meat Grinder, each food is spawned into a calm but foreboding environment. Things really take a turn when the player rotates the handle to grind a food – not only is the food ground, but its sound is extruded too. There may or may not be heavy-metal involved. Players can look forward to both macro and micro manipulation of game audio via changes they make to the environment. This relationship is reciprocal: they’ll also have the power to change the environment through music. A jazz cover of the Miso Soup music hidden in an easter egg – happy hunting! Sonic Controller: Audio-as-Interface Use music to manipulate food. Music in Nour acts not just as a soundtrack, but an interface. Players can exert influence over the scene and its contents in both familiar and new modes of musical gameplay. The mechanics aim to encourage and reward the exploration and experimentation central to Nour. Fittingly, its rhythm system has no grid. User input is instead processed relatively, allowing the game to recognize and reward melodies ranging from rigid to adventurous. Rhythmic play generates a resource that can be used to activate special powers: freeze foods to create a sculpture (or plate), turn day into night, or compel your food to dance to the music. Combining these effects creates a dizzying number of musical (and physical) possibilities. Lock some dancing sugar cubes in a cage of frozen oranges to create a dynamic physical instrument – the sugar pulses to the music, knocking into itself and the walls confining it. Then activate night mode to really get things bopping! I’m so excited to see what players come up with and hear the sounds they’re able to coax out of the scenes. Secret rhythmic sequences (combos) offer another way to control the game – I’ll give away one to get you started: try slowing down time by playing 4 quarter notes, 2 halves, and a whole. And for balance, an anti-sequence: button mash as fast as your can to activate Warp Mode! We hope such rhythmic mechanics will be fun, familiar, and legible to those who have stomped, shredded, or ocarina-ed their way through a virtual space. The DualSense controller, Sequence effects are triggered by specific note sequences. This sequence, (4, 4, 4, 4, 2, 2, 1), prompts a key change and slows down both the music and gameplay. however, furnished an opportunity for something new. Not only can you play with your food, you can yell, sing, blow, and slurp at it. Sing the root note of the song to levitate objects upon a field of golden energy for as long as you can hold it. Blast away objects with a gust of wind blown into the microphone. Yell to charge up a food and plate it with force! After all that you’ll likely need to take a sip of refreshing soda – just produce a rising pitch with your voice, a cello, or…? Left: Using voice to levitate citrus in Soft Drinks // Right: Blowing a gust of wind in Diner Panic’s previous title, Untitled Goose Game, was praised for its reactive score, so from the start we knew Nour would have to push the audio envelope. This is our first time working on a game, so we didn’t really know what was possible in the key of C# – it turns out a lot is! It’s been a wild ride up a steep learning curve – a big thanks to our very talented, supportive, and patient team for sticking with us while we skilled up. We’re all so excited for you to experience Nour: Play With Your Food this summer. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/FZDBt5BYeDAView the full article

Hi everybody! I’m Greg Lobanov, director of Chicory: A Colorful Tale. I’d like to give you a peek behind the scenes at what inspired us while developing this game and what you can expect when Chicory: A Colorful Tale launches on PS4 and PS5 later this year. When all of the world’s color vanishes in Chicory: A Colorful Tale, it will come down to you to restore it with a magical paintbrush. I’m a game designer and I really love making things; it’s my perfect zen place to be. And a part of that process includes meeting and talking with other creative people and learning about their processes and feelings. I wanted to encourage our players to engage their creativity and play this game in a more personal way. There might not be one right answer for anything, but that’s what makes this world so fun to explore. This game’s unique painting mechanic was the starting point for the entire project. We wanted to center the player’s individual creativity at all times, and that decision had far reaching effects on every aspect of the story, world and puzzle design. The game is generous with giving the player options for personalizing their world. Besides being able to draw on everything all the time, you can also collect decor items and plants which you can place anywhere. All your art and decorating decisions are persistent throughout the adventure, which makes it extra rewarding to come back to an old place along your journey. Most side quests involve you creating something which leaves a permanent mark on the world, too, and often those things will attract the attention of other characters and cause them to gather somewhere new. And by the way, there are a lot of side quests (Chicory is an adventure game after all)! You can get to know some of the 100+ characters in the game as you deliver their mail. Or you can spend some time in art class recreating masterpieces. We’ve taken full advantage of the new DualSense wireless controller to bring a sense of depth to Chicory’s gameplay in a way we’ve never experienced before. You can paint using the touchpad, and the controls are specially arranged to make it easier to do that. There is also an option to flip the controls so left-handed players can draw with their dominant hand if they prefer. Not to mention we’ve added lots of soft texture rumbles which makes the whole thing feel warm and cozy, like petting a cat. Playtesting this game has revealed really interesting diversity in the way players engage with it. Some players come for the adventure, and love discovering new places and solving tough puzzles. Other players soak into the cozy, laid-back world and take their time painting things without worrying too much about what their next task is. Making a game for all kinds of folks was important to us, but also a tricky thing to balance, which is why we wanted to include as many options as possible for players to create their ideal experience. Players can visit a phonebooth at any time and call their in-game parents to get a reminder on what they were doing, or if needed, precise directions to the next goal. But these in-game hints were limited in function; they are only available from some locations and so are generic by necessity. With PS5’s Game Help system, we got to fill in all the gaps, making sure no screen in the game is without some guidance for a player who’s stuck and just needs that little hint – and both systems work together great! Between the in-game hints and the Game Help additions, this game contains a thorough 100% walkthrough of itself. We also included options for players to make action sequences slower and easier, or even to skip them entirely. There are optional content warnings for some of the scarier sequences. And I also want to mention that despite our painting-based gameplay, nothing in the game relies on your ability to distinguish colors for puzzle-solving, so colorblind players can have just as much fun exploring as anyone else. If the consequence of this design work is that anybody and everybody feels comfortable getting lost in the creative coloring in Chicory, well, that’s pretty much the most lovely outcome! Chicory: A Colorful Tale is being published by Finji (Night in the Woods, Overland, Wilmot’s Warehouse) and will be coming to PS5 and PS4 in Spring 2021. You will be able to play the game in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian on launch day. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/k2T-Bd3eGF4View the full article

In Operation: Tango, you and a partner act as either the agent, Angel, or the hacker, Alistair, working together through complex puzzles to help save the world. This asymmetric co-op has you playing in the same world but through completely different views, and no matter which role you play, Operation: Tango ensures that you get to experience all the beauty this near-future world has to offer. Building a world that is seen from two completely different perspectives is not an easy task, but Operation: Tango navigates these waters with ease as you get to explore the “real” world as the agent, or the digital one as the hacker. The shining quality is what you and your partner bring to this experience; having to rely solely on verbal communication to relay what you are seeing to your partner, there are countless ways to have fun in a world you’re working together to save. (Left) The Agent places tiles on the interface to create walkable paths for the hacker. (Right) The Hacker must navigate a virtual labyrinth in order to disable a vault’s security system Whether you are a casual gamer, a seasoned games veteran, or even a speedrunner, Operation: Tango strives to keep the game visually interesting for all ages and skill levels, while also providing unparalleled asymmetric gameplay. Each area of the world is built with unique themes, colors, and inspirations, really lending both the agent and hacker the global feeling of travelling within this near-future world. Balance is key in any asymmetric world, and Operation: Tango makes certain that there is no “main character” but equal partners, and equally interesting worlds to explore. From beautiful natural landscapes to the electronic vibes of the internet, Operation: Tango takes a lot of inspiration for the art style and feeling from Keiichi Matsuda’s short film “Hyper Reality” as well as the style of Canadian animator Robert Valley, who is famous for animating for the band Gorillaz. This blends into a world that is filled with augmented reality and interfaces that feel alive in the hands of either the agent or hacker. (Left) Keichi Matsuda’s “Hyper Reality” overloads the viewer with an extreme portrayal of augmented reality full of advertisements and redundant labelling. (Right) Operation: Tango balances augmented elements with the need to guide players and focus their attention on information relevant to their mission. The art style translates from not just the characters and the landscapes around them, but also to the puzzles themselves. Making it feel like a new technology but with familiar puzzle concepts is one of the things Operation: Tango does best. You and your partner have to really work together to communicate what you’re seeing and this leads to wonderful chaos and memories as the pressure of completing the puzzle grows. From a high-speed chase, to a late night office break-in, color and mood play a large part in the art style of Operation: Tango. The world of espionage in the near future finds players in a world that looks and feels familiar, until you take a closer look. For the hacker, this is evident in the futuristic AR and interfaces that help get your agent through the mission safely, and for the agent, in the high-tech buildings and security systems that are stopping you from getting the information your hacker needs and escaping safely. Ultimately, Operation: Tango aims to give you the power to bring yourself into this not far future world, and save it, with the help of your partner. Whichever role you pick, whoever you choose to be, you’ll be welcome in the beautiful world of Operation: Tango. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/56YkDo6sEHEView the full article

Hi everyone! One of the best parts of working with the indie game developer community is learning what goes into the experiences they are creating. Today, we are excited to have some of them share their stories with reveals and updates on seven indie games coming to PlayStation. Work with a friend to solve complex puzzles, make your own path in a surreal adventure, and experiment with sounds and colors in unexpected ways. The games in today’s announcements bring such a variety of aesthetics and gameplay, I’m confident that everyone will find something to capture their imagination. Keep an eye here on PS Blog as we bring you reveals and updates on indie games every half hour, starting at 7am PT / 2pm GMT / 3pm CET. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/DlyESaUR8doView the full article

Launching Destruction AllStars has been an amazing experience for the team at Lucid. We’re truly humbled by the community’s reception to the game and are extremely grateful for all the support we’ve been seeing on social media. It’s thanks to the community that some of our first patches and hotfixes have been able to target and improve certain areas of the game, as well as improving our direction on future patches. Today, we wanted to run through our progress since launch as well as revealing more about the road ahead for Destruction AllStars, including our first season of content! We’ve been responding to a wide range of community feedback around the game as fast as we can, some of the highlights of these changes include being able to earn Destruction Points from in-game challenges, adding new server regions and adding higher rarity character skins for you to further personalise your AllStars. Community feedback is important to Destruction AllStars as we’re committed to building a game that you’re excited to play, week on week. In our last blog post, we outlined the new content coming to the game in the form of featured playlists. Over the next few months, we’ll be changing up the rules a little on our core game modes and inviting players to try a new perspective during online matches. Our first featured playlist, Mayhem 8v8, went live last week and we’ve been listening to everyone’s thoughts and impressions of the game mode whilst jumping in for a few games ourselves. Stockpile 4v4 is our next featured playlist on the horizon and we’re eager to see how you’ll all tackle the smaller, more focused team size when trying to maintain control of your banks. Alongside our featured playlists, we’re still delivering brand new content each and every month. These include our Challenge Series which are single player experiences based around an AllStar and their Rival. They offer a small cinematic experience along with some gameplay challenges to earn some awesome cosmetics! You can learn more about our Challenge Series in one of our other blog posts. Bluefang’s Challenge Series has just gone live. It’s time to explore more about his backstory and motivations for competing in Destruction AllStars whilst demolishing your way through the arena in his Hero Vehicle, Shredder. Face off against Bluefang’s Rival, Angelo Avello, in seven gameplay challenges and earn exclusive cosmetics including an epic skin and emote. Be sure to let us know which AllStar you’d like to see featured in a Challenge Series in the future. Oh, and we’re hosting a Double XP Weekend starting this Friday. It’s a great chance to earn AllStar Coins and grab some of our Heroic or Legendary skins. Introducing Seasons in Destruction AllStars Destruction AllStars was built from the ground up to deliver content to the community at regular points throughout the year. We knew that we’d always want to be adding to the game and giving you more things to do whilst keeping old game modes fresh and interesting. To achieve this, we’ll be introducing Seasons into Destruction AllStars, starting with Season One: Hotshots. Our first season is all about AllStars who want to be the best of the best, Hotshots who are always headline news or blowing up on social media. To give you an idea of what you can expect from this season, along with future seasons, we wanted to give you a quick rundown of what’s coming your way. We view seasons as a way to permanently enhance Destruction AllStars and leave long-lasting additions for everyone to enjoy, no matter when they choose to pick up the game. We can’t talk about everything just yet, but hopefully there’s enough in here to get you excited about our first season. Competitive Mode We’ll be taking the first steps towards introducing a competitive mode, often referred to as ranked by the community, in Season One! Competitive mode in Destruction AllStars is called Blitz and it’s a brand new game mode, built from the ground up for a competitive experience. It will feature a team-based structure of three players per team and four teams per match (or to simplify: 3v3v3v3). We want to take the time to properly introduce you to this brand new game mode so expect another update with a deeper dive into competitive mode in the future. Battle Pass We’ll be adding a Battle Pass to Destruction AllStars in Season One. As you rank up your Battle Pass, you’ll earn exclusive cosmetic content only available in the current season. With a free tier and a premium tier, you’ll be earning rewards no matter your preference. Photo Mode We’ve seen some fantastic stuff being shared on social media from all the Mayhem that’s been unfolding in the arena. It’s been a great example of the screenshot and sharing tools on the PS5 and we want to give you even more tools to really capture the carnage. Photo Mode will be coming to Destruction AllStars. In single-player modes, you can pause the game at any time and enter a free camera around the arena. The Hotshots behind the camera know how to get a perfect angle on a crash or a vault off a wall and show some personality with a variety of stickers and filters. New AllStar You might have spotted a sneaky teaser in the roadmap above… Hotshots will be adding our first new AllStar to the roster since the game’s launch. We want to wait just a little bit longer to give them a proper introduction and give you a full preview of their Hero Vehicle and abilities whilst answering the questions of who they are and what they’re hoping to achieve this season. That’s just an introduction to our first season in Destruction AllStars. We’re really excited to be talking about the future of the game and what we’ve got in store for you. But as with all of the topics above, we’ll be back with another blog post in the future to really dig deeper into all of these brand new features and more! Digital Deluxe Edition Along with the previous announcement of our Standard Edition, we’re thrilled to announce a Digital Deluxe Edition. This will include: 1100 Destruction Points Lupita Character and Vehicle Skin Lupita Emote Profile banner set In game Avatars set Digital Artbook 8x Challenge Series Both the Standard and Digital Deluxe Edition will be available for purchase from April 6. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/nycjZVp9FBsView the full article

Today, we are very proud to debut our new story trailer for Returnal with you all and reveal more information about the game’s story ahead of next month’s release. This PS5 exclusive combines explosive action, roguelike elements, and cinematic storytelling to create a dark, sci-fi action thriller. Storytelling is a big new feature to Housemarque games and we have a bold story to tell. Our goal with Returnal is to tell a mysterious, layered, and haunting story that – like our explosive action gameplay and roguelike twists – is something you discover, replay, and rethink on every play. Our narrative direction and storytelling philosophy with Returnal is that the story should not compromise the gameplay. Instead it should rationalise, deepen, and blend with it. We’ve already touched upon the game’s combat systems, so in today’s blog post I’ll shed more light on some of Returnal’s mysteries and the challenges Selene faces from a narrative perspective . . First, make sure to watch our Story trailer below. Play Video 1. An unauthorised recon mission gone wrong Our story follows Selene, a Greek-American ASTRA deep space scout who is a complex and layered character that is driven to a fault, intelligent, and resourceful. For the first time in her career she goes against orders to travel to the alien planet Atropos to follow the “White Shadow” broadcast signal. Upon arrival she crash lands in an alien forest. Here she discovers the ruins of an alien civilisation filled with statues, gates, xeno-tech, and alien corpses. But she’s not alone. The planet’s surface is teeming with hostile creatures that attack Selene on sight, as well as other threats left by the world’s former inhabitants Across Atropos everything is hostile, alien or mysterious, leaving Selene to be one of our sole human elements. So it was important for us that our lead was a compelling, complex character that players would root for and want to understand better. I am very happy to share that Selene is voiced in a raw and grounded performance by Jane Perry (recently Diana Burnwood in the Hitman Trilogy), while her visual appearance and facial capture is performed by Anne Beyer. We wanted Selene’s suit to be in stark contrast to the dark and outlandish world she’s stuck in. Bright and clean design is a canvas to show her journey on, and allows you to track her movement in both dark environments and bullet hell combat. The ASTRA Scout Suit is an impressive piece of technology but it does not make Selene impervious to damage, nor do the fighting for her. We did not want the player to feel safe in a suit of armour but survive through skill and fast thinking. 2. How the world changes to challenge you During her first scout, Selene scans xeno-tech, defends herself and finds useful resources, but eventually she succumbs to the elements and dies only to reawaken again in her ship’s cockpit moments before the crash. On leaving the crash site, she discovers the world has changed its layouts, making her journey to the “White Shadow” signal different on every cycle and rebirth. It’s an endless cycle where even death is no escape. With Selene, players uncover this mystery together and have to fight through the hostile creatures, traps, hazards, and more hostile elements of Atropos. It is a story that you have to piece together with Selene and interpret through our environments, sound design and pure story elements. We show some of these environments in our story trailer and there’s even more unique environments and creatures to explore, understand, and overcome during Returnal. Each environment is a special location that has new creatures to encounter, more story to discover and much more. As you can see from the trailer, the Overgrown Ruins is a maze-like oppressive forest, filled with the remnants of the alien civilization that rearranges like a puzzle on every cycle,. In comparison, the Crimson Wastes is an open red desert with new hostile threats and story layers to uncover. Every location on Atropos shuffles and changes on each death and rebirth, giving Selene and players a new challenge with every replay. Fortunately Selene is very resourceful and can utilise the xeno-tech to find shortcuts, while making permanent progress thanks to certain items that withstand the cycle. Other items also allow her to fight longer and harder with every cycle. 3. Relive other cycles that aren’t your own During your journey through Atropos you discover the story of the alien civilization through a set of holographic statues, which are called Xeno-archives, and the disturbed writings found on Xenoglyphs, which tell the same story from another point of view. Xeno-archives are purely visual that need to be deciphered, whereas Xenoglyphs are written and need to be translated via language samples collected across Atropos. It is a new way to tell a story and we’re very excited for players to try to uncover the mysteries of this alien civilization. As shown in our trailer, Selene also discovers her own scout corpses across Atropos. These corpses can feature projections of other players’ deaths (via our online systems), or Scout Audio Logs that are left behind by other versions of Selene, that she cannot remember recording. The projections show other players deaths in Returnal, at the conclusion of which you can decide to scavenge the remains for items or revenge their death, triggering events that are best discovered when you play. Story content from audio logs is handcrafted storytelling, whereas the projections are all created via other players’ deaths and found across all of the environments in Returnal. 4. Uncover a deeper mystery in first-person Last but not least, as you noticed in our trailer, Selene also discovers a mysterious house that is strangely familiar. Returnal is primarily a third-person action experience, but Selene and players can also choose to go inside this house on Atropos in atmospheric first-person story sequences where she confronts strange and familiar events inside that you need to piece together… So Returnal is not just a sci-fi action action thriller and roguelike. We also have a bold, dark cinematic story to tell. It is a mystery to decipher and replay, like our gameplay mechanics come every cycle. For me it’s a story about self-discovery, progress and breaking the cycles we put ourselves in. Thanks for reading and we can’t wait for you all to play Returnal on April 30. Stay well and stay safe all! Learn more about Returnal Returnal combat explained: weapons, equipment and risky buffs Housemarque debut new gameplay from its upcoming sci-fi shooter Returnal. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/4ho5rEiax1IView the full article

The Mega March promotion ushers in a vast boutique of discounted games onto PlayStation Store! Starting Wednesday March 17 and running until Wednesday, March 31* there’s 60% off a bunch of titles. That includes the likes of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Need for Speed Heat: Deluxe Edition and Fallout 4. Below is a select list of games that are part of the promotion. For the full list plus your regional discounts, head here (for EU players) and here (for US players). Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Deluxe Edition Call of Duty: Black Ops III – Zombies Chronicles Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time Control Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Deluxe Edition Dying Light Fallout 4 Far Cry New Dawn FIFA 21 Champions Edition PS4 & PS5 Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition Need for Speed Heat Deluxe Edition The Sims 4 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Deluxe Edition Watch Dogs 2 *Mega March promotion ends at 23.59pm local time on March 31. For regional discounts, please check related product pages on your local PlayStation Store. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/gO5JHPb1fCQView the full article

Greetings Operators. The team at Ubisoft wanted to drop an update on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege’s latest season. Please read on. —- Hello Operators, and welcome to Year 6 Season 1 of Rainbow Six Siege: Crimson Heist. We want to give you an overview of what to expect from the game’s latest update, which is going live today on PS4 and PS5. As well as a look at our new operator and reimagined map, we’ve got details on an upcoming Free Weekend. Play Video Meet Flores, master thief and remote-controlled explosive expert Firstly, let’s introduce you to the game’s newest operator: Flores. This brand-new addition to team Rainbow from Argentina is a food-truck owner by day, and most importantly, a master thief by night. Flores has access to a remote-controlled explosive device: he can deploy this at his feet, and drive it through the map during a limited period. At the end of the timer (or earlier if you choose), the device will arm itself, become bulletproof, and start a short fuze countdown, at the end of which it detonates in a powerful explosion. Flores also comes armed with an AR33 and a SR-25. If you want to make the most out of team Rainbow’s latest recruit, you will need to be sly. His ability makes him a powerful support operator to use from the backline. He has excellent area denial and soft breach capacities. But in Rainbow Six Siege, you can never win alone, and it is especially true for Flores. He is vulnerable while he is guiding his drone, so make sure your friends are protecting you. Oh, and do not forget to check if there is a Mozzie or a Mute in the enemy team. You would not want something bad to happen to your RCE, don’t you? A reimagined Border map You will also have access to a reimagined Border map, which has been newly reworked with an interior balcony connecting the east staircase to the break room. The bathroom has also been extended to be connected to the tellers. It is a new challenging environment with some entry blocked, a reduced number of destructible walls and an additional outside staircase. Rainbow Six Siege Free Weekend If you are waiting to invite your friends to Rainbow Six Siege’s intense close-quarters multiplayer action, there is no better time. Assemble your squad and invite them to play for free on PS4 from March 18 to 24. The free trial is open to PlayStation Plus members and non-members, so it’s time to squad up! Due to technical reasons, you will need to manually switch to the Playstation 4 version of Rainbow Six Siege if you want to play the game for free on Playstation 5. You can do so from your PS5 by going to the Rainbow Six Siege PSN page, then selecting the three dot icon and “PS4 | Full | Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege”. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/l4jsyaiQcwkView the full article

It’s been a strange and difficult past 12 months. The pandemic, social injustice, and job elimination have impacted many of my closest friends, family, and co-workers. All of these factors, paired with an inability to see friends and family face-to-face, lulled me into a kind of self-reflective cocoon where I had to ask myself some tough questions about what really matters. I’ve been making games for a long time — over 25 years now! I’ve had the opportunity to lead the creation of two highly successful original IPs and build multiple teams and studios from the ground up. Some of these adventures have been more successful than I could have ever imagined, and others less so. Several people have asked me recently: “After all of these experiences, do you still want to be in the games industry?” The answer is always an unwavering YES! The games industry is where I belong! Whether it’s playing Settlers of Catan with my kids or Valheim with my team, games continue to bring me joy. They’re a way to relax, connect, and share experiences with people I care about. And the act of making games is, in many ways, even more fulfilling. Getting to bring together experts across so many different creative fields – from music composers, to concept artists, to programmers (yes! programmers are creative too!) into a perfectly synched orchestra that delivers new worlds for players to explore. For me, there is nothing more fulfilling or rewarding I can imagine doing. As I took stock of my career over the last few years and started to think about what to do next, I came to a very simple conclusion: I need to get back to what I love doing most, and do so in a way that gives our team the freedom to explore, inspire, and create. And so today I’m announcing Haven, an independent studio where many of the talented game developers I have worked with for years (and love dearly!) are coming together to do what we are most passionate about. It’s time for us to refocus on GAMES in a place where we can practice our crafts without any barriers or impediments. We want to create worlds where players can escape, have fun, express themselves, and find community. We want to pour our passion into a project. We want to make something wondrous for people to experience. Because we believe in the power of games to bring joy to people’s lives. And Sony does, too. Their commitment to excellence is unmatched. It’s why I couldn’t be happier for their backing and support. Together, we want to create games that are a haven for players, and we want to build a studio that is a haven for developers. So, while we don’t have many details to announce today, I want the PlayStation community to know that Haven Studios is already hard at work on an unannounced IP. We can’t wait to show you more! http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/qbX2WBhKchcView the full article

Gamers’ time is increasingly precious. Be you a parent, student, or working a 9-5 job, you may find yourself having less and less time to sink into 60 hour plus adventures. We here at Alterego Games know this all too well. We know we are not alone in this, so with our latest title, we set out on a mission. Formed in 2014, our small studio – based in the Netherlands – has a love for storytelling. In 2019, we released the relaxing adventure game Woven on PS4. We aim to deliver experiences for the busy gamer who wants to wind down for the evening or weekend. For those with less time on their hands, games need to be shorter, more compact, yet still offer powerful experiences. And that’s our focus with Sanity of Morris. An average playthrough of our new first-person adventure, launching next week, will take you around five hours, or about the length of two good movie nights. Sanity of Morris offers an intriguing story steeped in the best elements of both the detective and psychological horror genres and features stealth mechanics and light puzzles. The game tells the gripping story of Jonathan Morris, who comes to the isolated town of Greenlake in search of his estranged father. On arrival he finds his father missing and nothing is as he expected it to be. Was his father kidnapped, or has he run away? Armed with only a flashlight and notebook, you must piece together the clues as you quickly realise nothing in Greenlake can be taken for granted. Be warned though: your flashlight is essential to reveal secrets, but its light will attract unwanted attention. Curious, and have some spare time in your busy schedule? Or just feeling like playing a psychological horror that’s more than meets the eye? You haven’t long to wait. Sanity of Morris launches March 23 on PS4. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/H8qtA81ULxEView the full article

You were all hunters in Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5, but in Chapter 2 Season 6… well, you’re still hunters, just in a different way. Reality has collapsed in the process of containing the Zero Point, resulting in a Primal biome where modern ways of life are no more. Since the Island has grown wild, so must you, and we’re to help you get started. Battling off the land: Craft your own weapons If you teach someone to fish, they’ll fish for a lifetime. Likewise, even though you can still find weapons as loot, you can now take matters into your own hands and make them yourself. Due to the collapse of Reality, Wildlife is roaming about the Island. Hunt them for not only Health-granting food but also resources for crafting Primal weapons, a new weapon type. Familiar favorites like the Pump Shotgun and Assault Rifle can be crafted as well, but for these, you’ll need resources from the Island’s remaining technology (like cars). A look at the Primal Rifle. Both classic and Primal weapons can be found as loot, but if you have a “Makeshift” weapon and the right resources, you can craft them whenever. If you have a Makeshift Bow, you can also craft either a Primal Bow or a Mechanical Bow. With these, find different things on the Island to craft even more Bow types. Enter the Primal and ascend higher With its advanced technology destroyed, the Island’s center has turned into the aforesaid Primal biome, autumnally orange in its immaculacy. In the middle is the towering Spire and the stucco village that surrounds it, and beyond the village are other primal points of interest like Boney Burbs and Colossal Crops. The Spire and surrounding village. At the outskirts of the biome are Guardian Towers, harboring mysterious orbs whose significance is unknown. Perhaps taking them to a specific place can reveal their true purpose? Play Video Chapter 2 Season 6 Battle Pass In addition to new unlockable Pickaxes, Back Blings, and more, this Season’s Battle Pass features Outfits based on characters unafraid of the primal: Agent Jones: Willing to get rough to save Reality. Lara Croft: The latest member of the Gaming Legends series. Tarana: Embracer of the wild. Raz: Seeker of The Spire’s mysteries. Cluck: Born of the wild. Rebirth Raven: Founding member of the Teen Titans. Spire Assassin: One with The Spire. Neymar Jr: Coming soon to the Island. You can get the Battle Pass for only 950 V-Bucks or as part of your Fortnite Crew subscription, and then earn up to 1,500 V-Bucks by playing. With this Chapter 2 Season 6 primer, you’re now ready to start the Season with an upper hand against the Island’s forces. Also, as the Season progresses, stay tuned for technology advancements like off-roading Chonkers Tires. Now drop in and run wild! http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/BH1UzeAwpbYView the full article

I’m Jeff Hattem, the studio head of Tuque Games. And I’m super excited to share with you all the game my team has poured a lot of passion into – Dark Alliance. Play Video My love for Dungeons & Dragons is why I got into working on video games in the first place and the same is true for many team members here at Tuque. And so, it is a dream-come-true for us to get to bring the world of Icewind Dale to life in an action RPG with explosive combat and dynamic co-op play. In Dark Alliance you and up to three other friends take on the roles of the four most iconic D&D characters created by R.A. Salvatore – Drizzt, Cattie-brie, Bruenor, and Wulfgar – as they beat back an onslaught of monsters that have invaded Icewind Dale in search of a powerful artifact: the Crystal Shard. We like to say that Dark Alliance is D&D after everyone has rolled for initiative. Our game is focused on combat. Each playable character has more than 50 combat abilities to master, giving you a lot of tools at your disposal. That can also be a lot to remember. Which is why we’ve added something to our combat system we like to call Emergent Combat. We want you to feel powerful in combat from the start. But we’ve also set up plenty to master as you learn the strengths and weaknesses of each of your attacks, abilities, and combos. Our systems allows for button-mashers to do just fine and see their hero mow down enemies in epic fashion. But for players who want a more refined experience, the control is there to do specific guard breaks, executions, team attacks, giving them a sense of the depth of our system. Our game is even better when you play with friends. We put the power of progression in the hands of the player, allowing you to largely choose in what order you complete the Dark Alliance missions. This makes it easier for you to jump into your favorite missions with friends without restriction and take down the big bads you want whenever you want. Exploration is encouraged. Sometimes you might find a secret room or a puzzle that grants you new loot. Replaying levels is encouraged too. Up a mission’s Challenge Rating and take on harder enemies to get better loot. So, who will you be fighting in Dark Alliance? Let’s cover one of those armies you’ll need to take on… Introducing the Goblins of Dark Alliance There are more than 30 different enemy types you’ll pulverize in Dark Alliance. The most common are the goblins. The hills of Icewind Dale are riddled with goblin holes, which can be any divot or hollow where a goblin found shelter. Goblins are easy targets one-on-one. They find strength in numbers. Understanding their own weaknesses helps them exploit weakness in others. They travel in deadly packs that together can take on and overwhelm the most hardened hero if you’re not careful. Let’s meet the five types of goblins you’ll be slicing, smashing, hacking, and piercing in Dark Alliance. Goblin Warriors The front-liners that fight with makeshift weapons and armor. They will try to surround and distract you for their heavier-hitting buddies to set up more devastating attacks. Goblin Defenders The tanks of the goblin horde. Their metal armor and shields absorb most attacks and they can counter your attacks with shield bashes. But if you can break their guard and get through their armor, they’re as weak as any other goblin. Goblin Archers These ranged attackers like to keep their distance from you. Along with basic arrow attacks, they can fire volleys of arrows into the sky to rain down on the battlefield. Sometimes their arrows can even be imbued with elemental energies. Goblin Booyahgs The magic users of the goblin horde. They will send a lot of ranged elemental damage your way with the magic they wield or they will buff their allies with a globe of invulnerability. Goblin Captains Every pack needs its leader. The Goblin Captains are the toughest fighters. They can deal more damage than the other goblin enemies and issue orders that make their troops work together more effectively. The banner they wear makes them stand out in the battlefield. It can inspire all the goblins present to keep fighting to the end. But if you can kill the Goblin Captain first, nearby goblin warriors will lose their will to fight and flee. Goblins are just one of the enemies you and your friends will slay together when Dark Alliance releases on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on June 22. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/fOLiXYSypo4View the full article

Hello, everyone. I am Michel Ziegler, the creator and developer behind Mundaun, a folklore-inspired horror game and my first full-length title as a one-man game development studio! Mundaun has been a passion project for me since I began development in 2014. Every character, scene and even environmental textures in the game are hand-pencilled – you can imagine how much drawing I’ve had to do over the years. It’s amazing to finally share the game with you all after working on it for so many years. Creating a game as a solo developer has certainly been an exciting journey, one with plenty of ups and downs. Collecting references for inspiration The Alps hold a special importance to me, and everything from Mundaun’s story to its characters and environments celebrate the remarkable culture of the Swiss region of Grisons. Mundaun is heavily inspired by the Alps’ rich history of myth and culture, and pays homage to the oppressive atmosphere of works like Jeremias Gotthelf’s “The Black Spider”. In order to do so, I tried to gather as many books and references for many of the elements I’ve included in the game. I have been scavenging thrift stores over the years, and must have collected at least 50 books with old photographs from rural life in the Alps, which are my biggest visual inspirations for the look of the game. The atmosphere these black and white pictures have, to me, is a window into almost a different world, and I wanted to immerse myself in the world in a way. Scouting real-life locations The chapel in Mundaun was the very first thing I modeled for the game. I didn’t really have a plan for a game, but I started to create this small piece of a world that featured a chapel, and the ideas continued to flow from there. It’s still one of my favorite places in the game, and one where you can see that the game is entirely drawn by hand. Everything from the ceiling to the windows and the benches were inspired by this chapel in Platenga, which is full of these incredible drawings and paintings. It’s like a drawing inside of the game. Another location in the game is the Painter’s House, which is a real house that was built and used by an artist named Alois Carigiet in the 1950s. He was a very well-known Swiss painter and illustrator of children’s books. He put a variety of drawings on the house walls, one of which inspired a puzzle in the game, which has you trying to get into the mysterious cellar of the painter’s house. There are several real-life references like this in the game, and it was helpful to work off of these locations to make the world feel more real. I would travel to these places around three to four times every year to walk around, gather ideas and create reference photos from interesting things I encountered, including buildings, signs, little objects rocks and sun-scorched wood. Drawing everything by hand I originally studied software engineering and worked in that field for some years. It didn’t really suit me, and I had always wanted to create something, so I decided that I wanted to learn how to draw with the goal of creating comics. I hadn’t drawn anything since I was a child, so I had to learn and got into the Illustration BA in Lucerne, Switzerland. I have this deep passion for drawing because I like the unwieldy process with an element of randomness. Everything, from the sketches, to the smudges and eraser marks, there’s an element of surprise that you discover while working, and they feel natural to the creation process. The process of hand-drawing the textures and the resulting aesthetic is definitely very close to my heart. Real scares in Mundaun There’s this old hotel in Mundaun that I remember as a child that has been abandoned for some time now that reminds me of the one in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”; in fact, the first sequence of the game sees players arriving in Mundaun by bus, which was very much inspired by the film. The whole area around the hotel, with the barns and the surrounding nature, served as an inspiration for the world. While we were filming a special behind-the-scenes documentary for the game, we were exploring the land around the hotel at night – probably not the smartest idea, now that I think about it – when a light in the hotel turned on, and we started to hear children’s voices. It was certainly very eerie. Challenges as a solo developer Early in the game’s development cycle, I reached this point of no return knowing that I had to finish it. But there were always moments of doubt and despair where I felt like I couldn’t finish what I set out to do. Game development, especially as a solo creator, is an emotional roller coaster. But I just really love this world, and seeing it gain depth and become fleshed out was a big motivation over the years. Fortunately, I’ve been able to collaborate with some talented folks to help see the game to its completion and bring it to market, including story co-author Gabrielle Alioth, music composer Michel Barengo, sound design artist Eric Lorenz, Programmers Ryan Miller, Simon Hischier and Petr Karbula, and the wonderful team at MWM Interactive. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/VGQvpKyeteAView the full article

Hi, I’m Matt and I’m thrilled to announce my FPS project Severed Steel. Severed Steel is a single-player shooter featuring a fully destructible voxel environment, loads of bullet time, and a unique one-armed protagonist. Play Video Maybe the most unique aspect of Severed Steel is its protagonist, Steel. Steel loses her arm in an accident just before the start of the game. EdenSys, the gigantic corporation responsible for her injury, decides to abandon her rather than help. The campaign is about Steel liberating others crushed under the boot of EdenSys while seeking revenge for her abandonment. The missing arm concept came to me while thinking a lot about gameplay mechanics. I wanted to subvert the concept of reloading in shooting games, and I liked the concept of players constantly throwing, ditching, and picking up new weapons. I considered the idea of a one-armed character. Someone that would find creative ways to keep well-stocked with ammo in the midst of battle: rather than worry about reloading, they’d use their agility to steal weapons from enemies’ hands. Having a one-armed character who can’t reload opened a lot of unique gameplay. But the decision to have a protagonist with one arm meant I was dealing with a subject outside my own experience. And if the game were to star such a protagonist, it must be playable by people who can relate to Steel’s experience. Before committing to the character design I researched what it is like to be a gamer with one arm. Through that I discovered a lot. For instance: Did you know there is a vibrant community on YouTube of highly skilled console FPS gamers who play with one arm? Taking my learnings from that, I made sure to include a custom button binding option to be dictated by the player. Once I was confident I could realize the character of Steel in an inclusive way, I committed to the design. I knew I wanted Steel to be very nimble. In fact, the first thing I programmed after shooting was her dive ability. From there I added wall running, sliding, and flipping. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to encourage players to use these abilities. How could I nudge players towards enjoying the stunt system and not playing like a more traditional military shooter? The solution to that was in enemy accuracy. While Steel is doing a stunt, all incoming enemy fire misses. Not only does this encourage players to enjoy the movement system, but it also looks great when enemy fire just grazes by the player’s screen as they fly through the air. Bullet time is a natural pair with the stunt system, and the player is given a generous amount to play with. From the start I also knew I wanted a fully destructible voxel environment. I was able to leverage the power of Unreal Engine and Voxel Plugin to create highly stylish and completely destructible environments with super-fast performance. After getting the destruction system up and running, I realized that guns alone weren’t enough to show off what the system could really do. I needed something more. This need helped inspire the idea for Steel’s arm cannon. Over the course of the campaign, Steel gets an arm cannon mounted atop her residual limb. The arm cannon allows the player to exploit the fully destructible voxel environment to open shortcuts and rip apart the floor under enemies. Thanks for taking the time to read about Severed Steel! We are entering the final stretch of development and look forward to sharing more information in the coming months. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/C4BSSgUphIQView the full article

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com! Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google or RSS, or download here This week, the team fielded your listener letters with quality recommendations on games that can be completed in a night or two. Plus, we get the soundtrack from Astro’s Playroom stuck in our heads again.video gamespodcastplaystation Stuff We Talked About Little Nightmares II Sackboy: A Big Adventure Astro’s Playroom Limbo Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture Firewatch We Were Here Outriders The Cast Tim Turi – Senior Content Communications Specialist, SIE Kristen Zitani – Senior Content Communications Specialist, SIE Thanks to Cory Schmitz for our beautiful logo and Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music. [Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.] http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSBlog/~4/vrsxgZrAYzEView the full article