Mirage: Arcane Warfare Gets Official Trailer

Toronto developer Torn Banner Studios had previous announced Mirage: Arcane Warfare earlier this month with a teaser trailer, and now we have a  full fledge trailer which you can check out below.  They've also released a Community Diary, which I've also posted below, but make sure to keep an eye on the website to stay up to date on the community videos.

Obliterate your enemies with powerful magic or silence them with a sword in Mirage: Arcane Warfare, a multiplayer FPS from the creators of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. Mirage is a skill-based multiplayer FPS that lets you tear your enemies limb from limb with destructive magic and melee combat.

In Mirage, the calm of a strange fantasy world is shattered by ruthless civil war. Warriors armed with steel and magic bring violence and death as they do battle across a fantastical Arabian and Persian-inspired setting of desert sands, market bazaars and grand palaces.

Mirage is a skill-based multiplayer FPS that lets you tear your enemies limb from limb with destructive magic and melee combat. Experiment and find your perfect playstyle between six diverse classes including stealthy assassins, hulking brutes, powerful mages and more. With an unparalleled focus on truly feeling in control of your magic and sword, Mirage demands combat creativity and will challenge you like never before.

Hyped for Mirage: Arcane Warfare? So are we! Check in with our first Community Diary, featuring Torn Banner Studios President / Game Designer Steve Piggott, and Senior Brand Manager Alex Hayter. Announce Trailer: https://youtu.be/0rBFSkJELuw Teaser Trailer: https://youtu.be/HZp54AnzcRE Mirage: Arcane Warfare is a magic and melee-focused multiplayer FPS from the creators of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, coming in 2016.

Make sure to also check out Chivalry on Steam, and follow the developer on Twitter.

Robo's World: The Zarnok Fortress Out Now - 10% Launch Week Discount

As discussed last week, Throw Away Games and Bluish Green Productions action platformer Robo's World: The Zarnok Fortress is out now.  You can check out the games Steam page here where you can buy for the discounted price of $9.89. Make sure to check out the trailer below!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/436360/ Robo's World: The Zarnok Fortress is a Free Roaming Tactical Action Platformer. Take on the vast, interconnected Fortress, and battle an ever learning foe who seeks to repair each zone you sabotage. Can you master your abilities to put an end to the dark reign of the Zarnok once and for all?

New World Interactive Announces Insurgency: Sandstorm

New World Interactive, a developer with roots in Hamilton, but other parts of the world, have announced Insurgency: Sandstorm coming in 2017 to PS4, Xbox One, Windows, OS X, and Linux.  They made the announcement last month, partnering with publisher Focus Home Interactive.  

“Considering our indie background, it was not easy finding a publisher we felt compatible with. We decided to work with Focus because they understand our game and they believe in our vision.” Jeremy Blum – Founder and Game Director of New World Interactive The decision to collaborate with a publisher is primarily for their expertise in console distribution and broader marketing reach. New World Interactive retains full ownership of the Insurgency brand and creative direction on the project.

Insurgency: Sandstorm will also have a story mode, as well as an eSports framework. "The game is being built from the ground up with competitive multiplayer, console split-screen, and singleplayer in mind. The story mode will focus on a squad of characters as they face increasingly challenging chapters, from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 through the insurrection period and leading to the present day."

You can check out the full story over on the official website, and follow the developer on Twitter.  There is also GameDev Drinks happening this month where you'll get the chance to meet Creative Director Andrew Spearin.

What Was Ubisoft Toronto's Contribution To Far Cry Primal? Now We Know!

I've wondered for a while what specifically Ubisoft Toronto did for Far Cry Primal.  The first person shooter was released last week, and as I mentioned on the podcast I've been enjoying it quite a bit. Thanks to the Toronto Star, we now know what our favourite Ubisoft studio contributed to the game:

"You have to hunt animals, craft together tools and find your fellow tribesman, and thanks to the addition of Beast Master abilities, you don't have to do it alone.

"The Montreal team . . . gave us a lot of stuff that was related to the Beast Master powers, so the taming, giving (your animal) orders and creating the many great beast quests later on in the game were led by the team here," said Maxime Beland, creative director, Ubisoft Toronto.

The Toronto team also worked on your pet owl, another new feature that almost operates as a prehistoric drone. You can call your owl and see from its perspective, which lets you survey the surrounding area, mark targets and eventually, with upgrades, attack enemies for you."

You can check out the full story over on the Toronto Star website.  A big congrats again to the team over at Ubisoft Toronto. My review for the game will be up sometime this week.

Robo's World: The Zarnok Fortress Releases March 7th

Throw Away Games let me know that Robo's World: The Zarnok Fortress will be coming to Steam March 7th. You can check out the trailer below:

Robo's World: The Zarnok Fortress is a Free Roaming Tactical Action Platformer. Take on the vast, interconnected Fortress, and battle an ever learning foe who seeks to repair each zone you sabotage. Can you master your abilities to put an end to the dark reign of the Zarnok once and for all?

Robo's World is a collaboration with Bluish-Green Productions in which you help Robo defeat the Zarnok robots by sabotaging their ship:

Robo’s World: The Zarnok Fortress is an Open World 2D Tactical Action Platformer. Take on the massive, interconnected Zarnok Fortress, and sabotage its crucial systems to halt its advance on your world. Your foe remains ever vigilant, learning from its mistakes and actively repairing sabotaged zones. Play as Robo, who’s about the most nimble machine you’ve ever seen sporting tank treads, and the acting guardian of the planet Saphirium. Master your abilities to take the Fortress offline, dynamically affecting every other zone as you work towards your goal of dealing the finishing blow to cripple the Fortress beyond repair and put an end to the dark reign of the Zarnok.

You can add the game to your Steam wishlist here, and follow both developers on Twitter.

Far Cry Primal Out Now

A little late on this one, but Ubisoft has released Far Cry Primal for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, with the PC version coming March 1st.  The first person open world shooter takes players to 10000 BC to control Takkar, as he tries to rebuild his tribe in the land of Oros.

Watch the all-new 101 trailer for a gameplay overview of Far Cry Primal in 5 minutes. Discover all you need to know about Far Cry Primal's weapons, powerful Beast Master abilities, and vicious human foes. Available February 23, 2016.

Ubisoft Toronto assisted with this one, along with other Ubisoft teams.  A big congrats to all of those involved.  As I've mentioned on the podcast, I'll be reviewing the game for the website soon. Until, let us know in the comments what you think of the game!

Thrive Games Relaunches Kickstarter For Dragon of Legends

A few weeks ago we wrote about Dragon of Legends launching on Kickstarter. The game got to about 20% funded before Thrive Games pulled the plug.

"During our last campaign an investment firm has stepped forward and presented an offer which would cover up to 80% of development expenses for this project, provided we can account for the other 20% in cash. As indicated in our last Kickstarter $60k would be enough money to create a functional version of the game - but now with this new offer if we can raise 20% of that goal ($12k) during this campaign, this investor has agreed to cover the remaining expenses required to make the project a reality"

Dragon of Legends is now LIVE on Kickstarter! Head on over to the campaign page here: http://kck.st/1omOwaE Here you can see our inventory and character sheet in action. Ulfgar is showing off his exclusive founder title and his new gear. Each item's stats immediately affect Ulfgar's character sheet.

The new Kickstarter was launched and as of this morning has already passed the $12,000 dollar mark, making Dragon of Legends funded.  We're now onto Stretch Goals for Dragon of Legends.  At $16,000 the game will have a bonus playable class, and at $20,000 it will have an expanded bestiary and new PVE arenas. You can check out the new Kickstarter here.

Exclusive: Interview With Joe Woynillowicz Producer At Creoterra

Indie developer Joe Woynillowicz was kind enough to take some time out of working on Darktide to answer a few questions about his history, being a game developer, and finding talent in Ontario. Check it out below!

TorontoGameDevs.com: Thanks for doing the interview Joe! Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Your history as a developer, and history of Creoterra.

Joe: Well to start from the beginning I started writing code around my 12th birthday after I found QBasic, and then moved on to learning C so that I could code BBS door games and customizations. From there I’ve worked as an engineer in a variety of industries such as finance, GIS, and of course games. I had mainly worked in a completely technical capacity as an engineer or technical director, then after work I would spend time learning game design, story telling, and continually learning more tech. Along with working at various game studios I’ve been part of the indie game development community really ever since the launch of Gamedev.net back in 1999. Creoterra was born based on a game idea that I had quite awhile ago and I played with over the years in my spare time. Before starting the company Darktide was actually meant to be a tiny little multiplayer tactics game with minimal art and world design that really was just a hobby project. Over the course of a few years on and off I nailed down the core gameplay and various ideas for the races, although they weren’t fleshed out and were really just ways to group units and abilities. At that point I decided there really was enough there to go into full production on the game, bring more people onboard, and really focus on building out the world and storylines. 

TorontoGameDevs.com: Can you describe Darktide? What made you want to work on a strategy RPG? What are your influences?

Joe: Darktide is a turn-based strategy RPG where we’ve focused heavily on world design and storylines and trying to bring some new ideas to the genre. There are actually two full campaigns, one for each major faction, which allow you to play through the story from either side. Along with that we’ve built our dynamic campaign system and really worked on weaving the storyline based on the choices a player makes and their outcomes in battle. So not only are there two campaigns to play through but you’ll have a different experience each time. This has been a tremendous amount of work as we wanted choices to actually matter and affect the main story, rather than just small decisions that really don’t affect how the story moves along. I guess one way to describe it would be like a choose your own adventure book where you can take various paths and come out with different endings. Now along with that we’ve also built a full range of features for playing multiplayer, so you can take to the battlefield against others and compete in, tournaments, leaderboards, and really fight to see who is truly the most feared in Aeloria. The decision to build a strategy RPG was mainly due to my background in gaming which has always been in strategy and RPGs, as well as one of my main hobbies being boardgaming, and that is where the original idea for building the prototype came from. There have been a variety of influences some in the genre such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Tactics, Pox Nora, XCom, and Disgaea. Mind you there are also many outside of tactical strategy which really pushed us to how we think about world design and story such as Planescape: Torment, Shadowbane, Pillars of Eternity, and countless others. 

TorontoGameDevs.com: What's the story of Darktide? It sounds like characters choices will guide it a bit? How is that going to work?

Joe: In Darktide when you start the campaign you choose which faction you want to experience the story as, and as I mentioned you can play through each as separate campaigns. Each faction includes four races which have formed alliances and pacts, some stronger and some loosely knit, each having their own objectives and enemies. The campaigns are dynamic, in that there are many times where you will have to make a decision on which battle you are going to send your guild to fight in. Are you going to defend the Dvergar auralite mines from the Lithos invaders? Or join forces with the Aduro in pushing the Az’modai back into the desert and away from the borderlands? You’ll be presented with both options but you’ll have to decide which one you’ll take part in, and this will affect your guild’s reputation and the way the story progresses. It’s something that we have spent an insane amount of development time on, as we really wanted to make your decisions and the outcomes of battle actually matter, rather than just have some one-off choices that add a bit of side story but don’t alter the overall course of the story. Some decisions that you make and battles you take part in have major consequences, even causing the deaths of major characters! 

TorontoGameDevs.com: Probably the two biggest Strategy RPG's now-a-days are Fire Emblem, and Disgaea - both Japanese titles. Why do you think it isn't a genre that a lot of North American studios tackle?  

Joe: Well on the console those would likely be the two largest right now, but at the same time we’ve seen a lot of studios stepping up and building games in the genre. Over the last few years we’ve seen XCom and The Banner Saga really hit it out of the park, and there are really numerous games that have released on steam that are quite high quality from the Blackguards series, to King’s Bounty, to newer indie titles like Armello. 

TorontoGameDevs.com: What's it like developing a game in Toronto? How has it been getting things like funding, or talent?

Joe: While we’re based in Toronto our development has really been an international effort. Our art director is based in Sweden, and our sound and music has been worked on by multiple people in the US. We’re looking at ramping up our in-house talent over the course of this year as we continue development on Darktide and look towards supporting the game into the future. We’ve been self-funded right from the get-go as we wanted to really build out the core idea before approaching gamers on Kickstarter. One thing we didn’t want to do was crowdfund the title before we had the core gameplay, world design, and how the campaign systems work and basic stories nailed down, otherwise that would be insanely hard to budget and I like to be really open and honest with the player base. By building out the core we’ve really eliminated any risk aspects and at the point we’re at now we’re extremely confident in what we need to finish things in a very high quality. Regarding location over the past few months we’ve actually been looking at studio space in Waterloo region. For the entirety of development we’ve been in Toronto, but being such a small self-funded studio the costs are quite high in comparison, and KW has an amazing talent pool to tap into as well as a few other game studios. 

TorontoGameDevs.com: What's next for Darktide? Do you have a release date in mind for the game?

Joe: Right now we have the core gameplay built out but there is still a lot of work to do. We just recently finished replacing the entirety of the art as we unified everything and really upped the details and quality. There is still a lot of work to do polishing environments, effects, and character animations, but we’ve got a lot of the core complete. Also we used to have more of a rigid linear storyline before really keying in on the dynamic campaign system during our initial alpha testing. People really liked the system but wanted to see deeper interaction and consequences, and so we went back to the drawing board and have been spending a massive amount of time on the story rewriting components and writing a ton of new pathways the story can take. We’re very close to a point where we’re going to launch a Square Enix Collective campaign to get a lot more eyeballs on the game and let people see what we’ve been building, and then later in the year we’re looking at launching a campaign on Kickstarter. 

TorontoGameDevs.com: Any last things you want to say about the game, or Creoterra in general?

Joe: I really think we’ve been working towards something with a lot of depth that really hasn’t been done in the genre. We have a heavy focus on the world and story, but also the core of our combat with such a variety completely unique units at launch with each having three very distinct abilities, it plays out much different than anything we’ve played in the past. When I’m gaming I’m heavily into multiplayer and so that has been a core focus from the beginning and I really think Darktide will have a really great competitive side to it online.

Thanks to Joe for taking the time to answer these questions. Make sure to follow him on Twitter, as well as Creoterra.  You can check out their site here and follow along the development of Darktide.

Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime Out Now On PlayStation 4

Indie developer Asteroid Base announced last month that Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime was headed to PlayStation 4, and that day has finally arrived!  Players can download the game on the PlayStation Store right now, which is currently on a 30% sale. Let us know in the comments if you've picked up the game!

Coming to PS4 on February 9, 2016 http://LoversInADangerousSpacetime.com Explore a neon galaxy in your very own battleship in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, a thrilling 1- or 2-player couch co-op adventure. Use turrets, shields, engines and super-lasers to triumph over the evil forces of Anti-Love, rescue kidnapped space-bunnies, and avoid a vacuumy demise.

N++ Is Coming To Steam

N++, the ninja platformer from Metanet Software has announced they'll be bringing N++ over to Steam (PC, Mac, and Linux). It will have all controller support be everything that is in the PlayStation 4 version, "and more".

Number of levels? who knows! Rest assured, we’ve got some surprises planned and some new stuff that will debut on Steam (and make it’s way to the PS4 as well). You’re gonna love it. So for all of you who have been enjoying the series for years and chomping (champing?) at the bit to see this game on Steam, get in on the ground floor and start up the hype machine! And for those of you who have never heard of this game before, we’re so excited for you! Especially if you like challenging platformers, you’re in for a treat :)

N++ was originally released on PS4 last year, and was our fan voted Game of the Year for 2015.  While no release date is known right now, you can check out the Steam page to add it to your Wishlist and stay up to date.

Make sure to follow the developer on Twitter, and make sure to sue the hashtag #NPlusPlus. We'll have more on the game when Metanet is ready to share.

Blot Interactive Releases PlanktOs on Steam

Indie developer Blot Interactive, the developer behind Bloxiq, has released their underwater exploration game PlanktOs on Steam.  You can out the trailer, and screenshots below.

Planktos is a beautiful underwater exploration experience. Possess and cleanse a variety of fish that have become corrupted by an unknown evil. Solve challenging puzzles and discover the unique abilities of the marine life. Help the little spirit navigate an enchanting realm and release Elders trapped in crystal prisons. Avoid fearsome predators and traps in your attempt to rescue all of the Elders

planktOS

The game goes for $5.49 on Steam, which you can download right here, while also following the developer on Twitter. The game is also published by Red Meat Games over in Kitchener, so be sure to give them a follow.

What Did Patreons Get In January?

Okay, so I missed this in December (Patreons did get rewards, I just didn't write the post), so we're back with a recap for what they got in January.  Remember, you can become a Patreon by going here. Anything you can help with is much appreciated.  

There actually wasn't any interview in January, but we got one lined up for February already.  The podcast is recorded on either Saturday, or Sunday by Dan, Bret and myself and Patreons always get that early on the weekend, while I post it for the general public on Monday.

On the game front, there were two games.  Cally's Cave's 3 released on Steam in January, and Patreon's were given a copy of the game.  Matt Kap also donated some codes for Castle In The Darkness for Patreons on Steam.  

Thanks again to everyone who help grow TorontoGameDevs.com everyday.  If you can spare a few dollars a month, Patreon money goes a long way (all money goes to the site, it's not a revenue generator for me).  So check out the page if you can.  If you can't, that's 100% fine, I understand! But Tweeting/FaceBooking/Reddit'ing about the site goes a long way too :)

- Steve

Fortified Out Now On Xbox One and Steam

Clapfoot Games has released Fortified to the masses on Xbox One and Steam.  You can download the game on Steam here (currently 20% discount), and Xbox One here.

Watch the official launch trailer for Fortified, available worldwide on Wednesday, February 3rd 2016 for Xbox One and Steam. Invasion is imminent! Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/334210 Twitter http://www.twitter.com/clapfoot Facebook https://facebook.com/clapfoot

Make sure to let the developer know what you think on Steam, or on Twitter.  Patreon's, keep an eye out on your email as well.

New Screenshots For FutureGrind

Indie developer Milkbag Games released a couple more screenshots for their skate-like game FutureGrind, and I wanted to share them.  Owen took to the company's Tumblr to show them off:

In December we took FutureGrind to PlayStation Experience in San Francisco. We showed a whole new environment of the game in our demo, and we spent a lot of time polishing the visuals of the game. These are some screenshots I took from that build of the game showing the latest.

The game is looking really slick, and you can follow the developer on Twitter, and Tumblr.  Not release date yet for FutureGrind, but we'll be sure to have it for you when we find out.

Vertex Pop Releasing We Are Doomed To PlayStation Vita Next Month

Indie developer Vertex Pop announced that their twin-stick shooter We Are Doomed will be releasing on PlayStation Vita on February 9th.  The game was previously released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam last year.  The game is also cross-buy with the PS4 version, so if you already own that one, then you own the Vita version.

Above all, We Are Doomed is a skill based game. There is no levelling and no upgrades, just your skills improving over time. If you want to get better, you need to get better! And that takes practice. So it’s a good thing you’ll have your PS Vita on you all the time, eh?

You can check out the full details and tips for playing over at the PlayStation blog, and make sure to follow the developer on Twitter. Let us know in the comments if you plan on picking up We Are Doomed.