‘Distant’ is the next game from the ‘Alto’s Adventure’ team

Built By Snowman, creator of Alto’s Adventure, has revealed the first trailer for Distant, a game it’s creating in partnership with Australian indie firm Slingshot & Satchel. The video (below) shows a caped, glowing hero leaping from column-like structures through a massive cave, with a waterfall, glowing pyramid and blue fauna in the background. The company didn’t give a launch date or price, but said it’s coming to Mac, PC, consoles and Apple TV.

In it’s press kit, Snowman says that “Distant takes you on a wondrous voyage through pastel dreamscapes, to prevent a calamity from consuming the world you once knew. Along the way, you’ll confront an inescapable past, and learn how much you’re willing to sacrifice in your search for solace.”

While vague about gameplay, Snowman told Kill Screen that Distant “focuses on the elegance of movement,” and aims to “marry traditionally disparate concepts like ‘zen play’ and tight, satisfying challenge[s].” Thematically, it was guided by “that feeling of searching for home and trying to satiate the desire to belong,” says Slingshot & Satchel’s Megan Campbell, adding that the original title, Hiraeth, roughly translates to homesickness and grief for things past.

Snowman says that while it’s publishing the game and acting as a “creative partner,” it was originally conceived by Slingshot & Satchel. Nevertheless, it bears some similarities to Snowman’s Alto’s Adventure, the ski game with addictive gameplay, clever artwork and a zen-like soundtrack.

Source: Snowman Games

‘League of Legends’ is about to change and it’s all your fault

League of Legends players should probably give up on the idea of a game editor. Riot Games lead designer Greg Street hates to slam the door on any particular idea, but he’s fairly confident that players will never be allowed to mess around with the game’s core mechanics. Riot simply doesn’t want players to create 1,000 new versions of League of Legends in the hope that one new game mode might stick.

“Philosophically, that’s something we’re really reluctant to do,” Street says.

This doesn’t mean Riot is afraid of change. League of Legends patch 6.24 goes live on December 7th, and it should be game-changing enough to satiate fans hungry for something new. For example, the 2017 season update introduces a practice mode where players can try out tricky maneuvers over and over again, with the option to instantly reset cooldowns, test out new paths through the jungle, play around with infinite gold and lock champions at specific levels.

Players have been clamoring for this feature for a while, but Riot was initially reluctant to introduce a dedicated League of Legends practice space, Street says.

“We had always resisted that, saying League is a team game and we really want, if players only have a couple hours to play, we’d rather they were playing League of Legends and not practicing League of Legends,” he explains.

But players responded with a strong argument for practice mode: Riot kept saying that League of Legends was a sport, and sports have training facilities. If this were soccer, players could hit the pitch and practice dribbling; if it were basketball, they could shoot free throws at a local court until their arms were numb. If Riot ever wanted League of Legends to be taken seriously as a sport, it needed a practice space.

Street and his team eventually agreed with this logic, and on December 7th practice mode will be here to stay.

Riot learned a lot about listening to players in 2016. As the eSports industry has boomed, plenty of League of Legends professionals have become massively popular, and a handful of coaches and players have publicly expressed concern over the way Riot handles updates and splits revenue for major tournaments. For example, Riot rolled out a major patch just before the regional playoffs of this year’s World Championships, drastically altering the way players had to approach the early game. Plenty of pros were upset that months of practice were now partly moot.

Street is the person in charge of changes like this one.

“And we knew that was going to cause some pain for the pros,” Street says. “On the other hand, we knew that people not watching their games would also cause them a lot of pain.” He says that games were simply too boring until 15 or 20 minutes in, meaning fewer viewers were tuning in to the early game. Ideally, Riot would have rolled out the update months ahead of time, Street says.

“But the finals were really good. Even the final Worlds game was really tight, so we feel like it was the right change to make,” he explains. “We’d do it again — we’d make that same decision again. Hopefully in 2017 we can detect any big, systemic changes that need to occur and make them earlier.”

Riot has also learned how to better deal with real-life money issues on the professional scene. Studio co-founder Mark “Tryndamere” Merrill answered one accusation of unfair revenue sharing in August with a Reddit post that suggested the owner of TSM, one of the top North American teams, was withholding millions of dollars from his players. It didn’t paint Riot in the best light, and Merrill edited the post shortly after publication.

.@MarcMerrill responded to @TSMReginald’s remarks about patch timing. That opening line … pic.twitter.com/v8ujQvC9WR

—Travis Gafford (@TravisGafford) August 22, 2016

One month later, Riot outlined new opportunities for revenue sharing among eSports teams, aimed at making the game more profitable for professional League of Legends coaches, players and owners. This represents a deeper philosophical shift for Riot. Street says that the eSports and development teams used to keep each other at arm’s length, like the separation of church and state.

“More recently, we’ve realized that’s silly and we’re just hurting ourselves,” Street says. “So now we coordinate much more tightly with those guys in eSports. We realized that the pros could be enormous advocates for the game, and if they’re not advocating for it, if they have concerns, that’s stuff we want to hear and act on.”

Now Riot runs some potential new features by eSports pros. Street’s team is floating around the idea of an updated ban system that would allow players to disable a total of 10 champions at the beginning of a game, rather than the current six. The development team has asked professional players and coaches for their feedback on this particular potential feature.

Even with a renewed focus on professional League of Legends, Street hasn’t forgotten about everyday players. He says Riot’s goal is to build a game that’s fun and balanced for everyone, from casuals to professionals. With 103 million people logging on every month all across the globe, that’s a tall order.

“It is a gigantic challenge,” Street says. “We’re kind of stupid, because we want to create a balanced environment for all of our players. It would be really easy to say, ‘Look, we designed for the pro players, and the rest of the community is just going to have to keep up …’ That isn’t our approach. Instead we’re like, no, we want to create a good environment for all players. And to make it even harder on ourselves, we want to use the same ruleset for all players.”

The 2017 patch includes a handful of major updates, including massive changes to the jungle, assassin buffs, new highlight and sharing functions, and the ability to watch post-game replays. Some of these changes are driven by professional demands, and some of them are an attempt to make the game more engaging for everyday players — all 103 million of them. The ability to share gameplay clips, for example, has been a long time coming, Street says.

“It’s a feature that literally we have been working on — not steadily working on — but was on our list for years,” he says. “It was this long-standing player promise that we just kept punting down the road. And we felt like this was finally a time just to do it and ship it, and try to give something to players that they’ve been asking for for years.”

Patch 6.24 isn’t the end of League of Legends, of course. There are still plenty of changes to implement and new champions to introduce (the current champion total is 134, with no plans to slow down new releases anytime soon).

Riot remains interested in implementing oft-requested features — like native voice chat, Street says.

“For Riot to take on voice and build it into League of Legends, we have to offer something that’s better than Discord, better than Skype, better than Curse, better than whatever players are already using … We definitely agree that if we’re saying this is a team game, if we’re saying coordination is important, then yeah, we do need to eventually provide an in-game voice system. It will happen at some point — I don’t know if it’ll be this year or next year, or down the road.”

12 gifts for tireless tinkerers

They say the best gifts are the ones you make yourself. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you, the gifter, needs to be doing the assembly. Sometimes the giftee will enjoy building their own present. Over the last several years the maker movement has really taken off. And whether you’re shopping for an accomplished builder or someone just looking to get their toes wet, we’ve got a few suggestions.

If there’s someone in your life that’s super into making everything themselves (and you love them enough to drop $1,000 on a gift for them) consider a 3D printer like the Replicator Mini+ from MakerBot. If a grand is a little extreme for you, consider a simple driver set, like 64-piece one from iFixIt. They’ll be able to open up and (hopefully) put anything back together with it. If the creator in your life is more into coding than building, consider a tool like RPG Maker, or for the wee one in your life Ozobot’s Evo is an excellent place to start teaching programming skills.

For our full list of recommendations in all categories, don’t forget to stop by our main Holiday Gift Guide hub.

‘No Man’s Sky’ cleared in false advertising investigation

No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games has emerged from a marketing investigation unscathed. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has spent the last two months examining claims that the game’s steam page is misleading. Disgruntled players had taken issue with screenshots, videos and text which, in their opinion, showed the game with better visuals, performance and planetary exploration. These covered warping, ship battles and the complexity of extraterrestrial life. The ASA disagreed, however, concluding that the materials were largely representative of the final product and “unlikely to mislead” consumers.

To assess the claims, the regulator examined the game’s Steam store page and footage provided by Hello Games. Investigators also played the game to check whether the features could be easily replicated, or experienced within the confines of an average playthrough. Regarding large-scale space battles, Hello Games admitted these “were more unusual” but provided footage of a similar conflict occurring in the game. “In relation to these features, we considered that the ad did not depict gameplay that differed materially from the footage provided by Hello Games, and that it was therefore unlikely to mislead,” the ASA said.

The regulator did, however, notice some differences between the trailers and the final game. It couldn’t reproduce a shot, for instance, of a ship flying underneath a rock formation. Investigators also noted differences in animal behavior — one clip showed some large creatures moving large trees — but decided this was a “fleeting and incidental scene” and ultimately “not misleading.” Complainants had taken issue with the game’s graphical performance, but the ASA stressed that the experience would differ depending on the user’s PC. While a couple of screenshots showed water “in higher fidelity than we had seen in the footage or during gameplay,” it was not deemed to be significant.

In its ruling, the ASA said it acknowledged Hello Games had tried to show No Man’s Sky “in the best light.” The materials were taken from game footage (even if certain elements, such as the interface, had been “amended” prior to release) and showed what was possible in the procedurally generated universe. As such, it believes “the overall impression of the ad was consistent with gameplay and the footage provided, both in terms of that captured by Hello Games and by third parties, and that it did not exaggerate the expected player experience of the game.” Hello Games has, in short, been cleared of any wrongdoing.

The decision will come as a relief to the small British video game developer. No Man’s Sky was a hugely anticipated release that failed to meet fan expectations. Trailers showed beautiful worlds that could be explored and mined at the player’s leisure. But the gameplay loop felt shallow to many players, devolving into little more than a resource collectathon. Players were angry and Hello Games went silent, preferring to work on updates than deal with the community’s wrath. Earlier this week it released a new “Foundation Update” which adds base-building and two additional gameplay modes, Creative and Survival. While not enough to save the game’s tarnished reputation, it’s a considerable improvement that could win back a slither of the public’s trust.

Via: Eurogamer

Source: ASA

Steam will tell you what games work with OSVR

Steam has added an official badge to games on the platform that will work with Razer’s OSVR headset. Much like the visual designation for titles compatible with Oculus Rift and the company’s own HTC Vive headsets, it’s a simple icon. In this case it looks like a rounded square set inside a bigger square (below). Valve says that you’ll find it next to some 200 games at the moment, and that while OSVR is the first headset it’s slapped a compatibility badge on since this spring, it won’t be the last.

“As the industry keeps growing, changing and experimenting, Steam will be there to help you experience the latest VR content on whatever device you choose,” the post on Steam Community reads. This type of openness will only help VR grow, versus trying to operate the PC like a closed platform. Ahem, Oculus.

Source: Steam Community, Steam