Inscryption And Unpacking Lead In Independent Games Festival Award Nominations

The 24th annual Independent Games Festival is just around the corner and after a year filled with countless critically acclaimed indie games, the competition is pretty fierce. However, after sifting through a catalog of over 400 entries, the organizers behind the 2022 Game Developers Conference have revealed which independent titles are up for some of the festival’s most prestigious awards.

Leading the pack in award nominations are Daniel Mullins Games’ eerie deck-builder Inscryption and Witch Beam’s heartfelt puzzle game Unpacking, two games very different in content but both celebrated for their unique mechanics and interesting narrative. Both titles have four nomination each in the same categories: excellence in audio, excellence in design, excellence in narrative, and, last but not least, the Seumas McNally grand prize.

In addition to Inscryption and Unpacking, Overboard!, Jett: The Far Shore, and The Eternal Cylinder all have multiple nomination across award categories. Up for the festival’s grand prize–the Seumus McNally Award–are Inscryption, Unpacking, Loop Hero, The Eternal Cylinder, Cruelty Squad, and Unsighted.

You can read up on every game nominated for an IGF award–as well as all the honorable mentions–over on the festival’s official webpage. Here’s a list of the contenders for the showcase’s top five categories:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)Unpacking (Witch Beam)Loop Hero (Four Quarters)The Eternal Cylinder (ACE Team)Cruelty Squad (Consumer Softproducts)Unsighted (Studio Pixel Punk)

Excellence in Audio

Toem (Something We Made)Unpacking (Witch Beam)Jett: The Far Shore (Superbrothers A/V + Pine Scented)Mini Motorways (Dinosaur Polo Club)Sable (Shedworks)Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)

Excellence in Design

Inscryption (Daniel Mullins GamesUnpacking (Witch Beam)Overboard! (inkle)Strange Horticulture (Bad Viking)Webbed (Sbug Games)Midnight Protocol (LuGus Studios)

Excellence in Narrative

Last Call (Nina Freeman and Jake Jefferies)Neurocracy (Playthroughline)Closed Hands (Passenger)Overboard! (inkle)Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)Unpacking (Witch Beam)

Excellence in Visual Art

The Eternal Cylinder (ACE Team)Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery (Silver Lining Studio)Papetura (Petums)Fuzz Dungeon (Jeremy Couillard)The Wild at Heart (Moonlight Kids)Jett: The Far Shore (Superbrothers A/V + Pine Scented)Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

CES 2022: Colorful Announces Three Micro-ATX B660 Motherboards

During CES 2022, Colorful has unveiled three new micro-ATX motherboards based on Intel’s latest B660 chipset. Featuring support for Intel’s 12th generation Alder Lake processors, the Colorful CVN B660M Gaming Pro V20 and B660M Gaming Frozen offer PCIe 5.0 support, 2.5 GbE, Wi-Fi 6, and dual M.2 slots. The other model is the Colorful Battle-Ax B660M HD Deluxe V20 which offers a more budget-focused feature set, with PCIe 4.0 and Gigabit Ethernet.

Both the Colorful CVN B660M Gaming Pro V20 and B660M Gaming Frozen V20 share an identical feature set, with the only differences coming in the design. The design follows a military theme based on the US CVN aircraft carriers.

Colorful CVN B660M Gaming Pro V20 and B660M Gaming Frozen V20

The Gaming Frozen V20 has a white PCB with a silver rear panel cover and silver heatsinks, while the Gaming Pro V20 has a black PCB. Both models include RGB LEDs integrated on the right-hand side edge of the board and underneath the chipset heatsink. The feature set of both models includes one full-length PCIe 5.0 x16, one half-length PCIe 3.0 x4, and one smaller PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. Colorful also lists support for DDR4 memory, with support for up to 128 GB across four slots.


The Colorful CVN B660M Gaming Frozen micro-ATX motherboard with white PCB

For storage, there’s one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot that includes an M.2 heatsink, while the boards also have one PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot and four SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. In terms of networking, the CVN Pro V20 models both include an Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller with an unspecified Intel Wi-FI 6 CNVi. Colorful also doesn’t specify which HD audio codec it is using. Also on the rear panel is one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, four USB 2.0 ports, with a DisplayPort and HDMI video output pairing.

Colorful Battle-Ax B660M-HD Deluxe V20

The Colorful Battle-Ax B660M-HD Deluxe V20 has a more modest feature set and aesthetic than the CVN branded models, with no rear panel cover, no power delivery heatsinks, and just a tiny chipset heatsink. Designed as an entry-level option onto Intel’s Alder Lake, Colorful includes one full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot and one smaller PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. There are also two memory slots with support for DDR4 and capacities of up to 64 GB.


The Colorful Battle-Ax B660M-HD Deluxe V20 micro-ATX motherboard

Other features of the Battle-Ax B660M-HD Deluxe V20 include two M.2 slots, both with support for PCIe 4.0 x4 drives, with a total of four SATA ports capable of supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. The board has an Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet controller, although Colorful doesn’t specify which HD audio codec it uses. In terms of rear panel connectivity, Colorful includes four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, two USB 2.0 ports, three video outputs consisting of a DisplayPort, D-sub, and HDMI, with a PS/2 combo port for legacy keyboard and mice.

Colorful hasn’t informed us of pricing or availability at this time.

Source: Colorful

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My Hero Ultra Impact Pre-Registration Goes Live For iOS And Android

My Hero Academia fans rejoice, as the English transition of the popular anime’s Japanese mobile game My Hero Ultra Impact has begun pre-registration on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

The English version of the mobile RPG will include all of the characters, updates, and events of the Japanese version, which has amassed three million downloads since its May 2021 debut. In-game Hero Gems will be rewarded to those who pre-register, with the number of Hero Gems increasing with each milestone (up to 500 Gems per player).

My Hero Ultra Impact lets you relive the events of the anime through touch-based RPG gameplay, with each hero’s individual Quirks accessible with one tap. The game also features a PvP mode where players can customize and create teams of heroes and villains, as well as the Hero Base, a customizable area where players can invite characters from the anime, according to the official release, to “take a break from the strains of battle and relax.”

My Hero Ultra Impact is slated for a 2022 release, though a specific release date has not been announced. Ultra Impact is not the only MHA game available for mobile devices, with My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero also on the App Store and Google Play now.

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Valorant Gears Up For Episode 4 Act I With Electric Agent Neon, New Battle Pass and Skins

Riot Games is getting ready for the arrival of Episode 4 Act I with a new agent, battle pass, and a new line of skins. On January 5, Neon was revealed via a trailer, and it has since been revealed that Act I will also introduce a new battle pass packed with Valentine’s Day-themed rewards, and a new line of sci-fi skins named Protocol 781-A.

Neon’s abilities are listed below (as described by Riot), alongside a peek at the new range of skins. Everything surrounding Act I of Valorant’s latest Episode feels very dark sci-fi and dystopian. So, it’ll be interesting to see where the lore takes us over the coming months, as well as how Neon may impact the balance of the game. So far, her abilities seem to revolve around speed and precision primarily.

Neon’s Abilities

Ability 1: High Gear – Instantly channel Neon’s power for increased speed. When charged, Alt fire to trigger an electric slide. Slide charge resets every two kills.

Ability 2: Relay Bolt – Instantly throw an energy bolt that bounces once. Upon hitting each surface, the bolt electrifies the ground below with a concussive blast.

Ability 3: Fast Lane – Fire two energy lines forward on the ground that extend a short distance or until they hit a surface. The lines rise into walls of static electricity that block vision and damage enemies passing through them.

Ultimate: Overdrive – Unleash Neon’s full power and speed for a short duration. Fire to channel the power into a deadly lightning beam with high movement accuracy. The duration resets on each kill.

When it came to designing Neon, two words were at the tip of developer’s tongues, “fast and frenetic,” says Ryan ‘rycou’ Cousart. “The goal we had aligned on for Neon was that she would move fast, and her utility should supplement,” they continued. If there is anything that players could’ve assumed about Neon from her trailer, it is that she would be speedy.

Protocol 781-A Skins

The latest bundle from Riot has themes of dark sci-fi and high-tech in its look. The bundle includes Personal Administrative Melee Unit, Phantom, Spectre, Bulldog, Sheriff, a Gun Buddy, a Card, and a Spray. Like previous bundles, Protocol will cost players 9,900 Valorant Points (approximately $104.98).

Riot senior producer Preeti Khanolkar stated “our goal was to create a sci-fi skin like that would be very appealing but unlike any other sci-fi skins we’d created so far,” when designing Protocol. “We ended up with a backstory that the skins exist in another world where large cities have seen explosive growth, resulting in overcrowding and chaos, so an oppressive shadow government attempts to control the disorder. As a result, a law known as Protocol 781-A dictates that all government personnel are issued a weapon which provides combat assistance, monitors performance, and ensures compliance,” said Preeti.

Thinking of the new bundle as a form of artificial intelligence program certainly adds a sinister element to how Valorant’s agents may be controlled. Yet, it’s undeniable that Riot have nailed its dystopian dream with the skins, Neon, and the accompanying battle pass for Episode 4 Act I.

Valorant’s current Act ends on January 10, with Episode 4 Act I being due to go live any day after that.

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New World PTR Is Now Testing Its New Expedition Mutator System

Endgame Expeditions in Amazon’s MMO New World are about to get a whole lot harder, if players are willing to accept the challenge. Expedition modifiers called Mutators, and 10 additional difficulty levels for each Mutated Expedition, are currently being tested on the game’s public test realm.

As detailed by Amazon in a new blog post, Mutators augment enemies within Expeditions–New World’s versions of dungeons–with various affixes in a system that isn’t all that dissimilar to World of Warcraft’s Mythic+ dungeon system. Upon completing a Mutated Expedition, players are scored based on speed, the number of enemies killed, and how many times players died or wiped during the Expedition. Players can unlock higher difficulty levels (and earn better rewards) by earning a high enough score.

Amazon states that it expects higher difficulties to be “extremely difficult.” Given that more than a few players have complained about New World’s lack of endgame content, the introduction of Mutators and multiple difficulty levels will hopefully give New World’s most dedicated fans more goals to work towards.

The other major addition being tested on the PTR is the new Umbral Shard system. This new resource provides a means for players with items of 600 gear score to increase the power of those items up to 625, with Amazon stating that doing so will be “critical if you want to dive into higher-difficulty Mutated Expeditions or gain a competitive edge in PvP.” The shards can be acquired in a number of ways, including completing lower level Mutated Expeditions. Players will need a corresponding Expertise level of 600 to apply an Umbral Shard to a given piece of gear.

While Mutated Expeditions and the Umbral Shard system are the big talking points, the PTR does feature a few other changes as well. The Azoth cost for fast traveling long distances is being reduced significantly and Expeditions are also seeing their loot tables adjusted, alongside other minor changes.

No word yet on when Mutated Expeditions or Umbral Shards will be arriving in the live version of the game, but it’s likely to be within the next few weeks. New World received its first holiday event in the form of the Winter Convergence Festival last month. Amazon has recently started merging low population New World servers into one another in an effort to create servers with healthier populations.

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Intel Teases NUC12 Extreme Dragon Canyon: Socketed Alder Lake and 10GbE in Q1 2022

Intel provided a teaser of their upcoming NUC12 Extreme product at CES 2022. Complete specifications have been promised closer to launch, but the components layout in their virtual presentation points to a follow-up very similar to the Beast Canyon NUC in terms of form-factor and sizing.

The key update from the Beast Canyon seems to be the use of a socketed processor, which should allow for a wider range of processor choices for the end user. The vapor chamber / CPU blower continues to be the cooling system for the components in the Compute Element ‘add-in card’. The allowed TDP range for the supported processors is something that would be interesting to note while building systems based on the Dragon Canyon platform. Other aspects such as the use of DDR4 SODIMMs and a separate front panel connector board seem to be similar to the Beast Canyon NUC platform introduced last year.

From the I/O perspective, we have Thunderbolt 4 (as expected with Alder Lake) and Wi-Fi 6E. Networking enthusiasts should be quite happy with Intel’s promise of delivering 10GbE LAN in the product. The absence of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 appears to be a slight dampener in what otherwise seems to be an exciting SFF platform expected to launch in the next few months.

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New Minecraft Beta Introduces Blocks Made By Frogs

Mojang is back to updating Minecraft with the game’s first beta of the new year. Minecraft: Bedrock Edition Beta 1.18.10.26 is a small one, introducing a smattering of new features and bug fixes. The beta’s most notable feature, though, is the addition of three new Froglight blocks, which players can only get by using frogs.

Froglight blocks come in three colors: pearlescent, verdant, and ochre, and emit light of that color. However, actually getting the new blocks will likely be a challenge to anyone who doesn’t just spawn them in. Froglight blocks are, as the name suggests, made by frogs. Players will somehow have to lead a frog to a small Magma Cube, which the frog will then eat and summarily spawn a Froglight block.

The challenge there is getting the two entities close to one another. Magma Cubes only spawn in the Nether, so getting a frog from its native swamp into the Hellish biome will likely take some time. Likewise, small Magma Cubes are spawned after defeating larger ones, adding another step to the process.

Along with Froglight blocks, Minecraft’s latest beta adds a number of other changes, including visible damage on Iron Golems and Blast Furnaces and Smokers giving players XP again. A full list of the beta’s changes can be found below.

Minecraft beta 1.18.10.26 patch notes

Frogs

Frogs and Tadpoles now have soundsFrog panic speed is now appropriateTadpoles now have the panic goal

Frog Egg

Glow Lichen can no longer be placed on top of Frog Egg

Froglight

Three new Froglight blocks have been added (Pearlescent, Verdant, Ochre)The Froglight blocks emit lightThe blocks are obtained by luring a Frog close to a small Magma Cube. The Frog will eat the Magma Cube and a Froglight block will drop. Each Frog variant will cause a different Froglight block to drop

Features and Bug Fixes

Stability and Performance

Fixed an issue that could cause the entities in a chunk to not save when exiting a worldThe game now loads certain seeds and worlds around Mesa biomes without crashing

Vanilla Parity

Iron Golems now show different degrees of cracking depending on their health. Iron Ingots can be used on damaged Iron Golems to repair themGlow Lichen now has similar brightness as on Java EditionFoxes now aim downwards when they pounceRemoved the emerald icon above a Villager’s head when tradingUpdated trade tables for Butchers, Cartographers, Librarians, and Wandering TradersIron Golems now only attack players with a very bad standing in a village after attacking a villager

Accessibility

Text-to-speech (TTS) now correctly reads the names of experimental toggles

Commands

Added a new ‘/damage’ command to allow players to deal damage to entitiesPlacing Cocoa Beans with ‘/setblock’ or ‘/fill’ commands no longer results in an error

Feature placement

Large Dripstone feature does not generate floating on top of lava anymorePointed Dripstone clusters no longer have a chance of spawning only stalagmites of height one

Furnaces

Blast Furnaces and Smokers once again give XP

Gameplay

Pointed Dripstone now sometimes generate on large stalactites and stalagmitesLava pools now only generate in positive Y coordinates Lava pools that generate close to Y=0 will have Deepslate and Stone blocks casingCoral now generates in the deeper depths of Warm OceansThe Grove biome now has more variety of treesFixed Light Block’s brightness not being adjustable when playing in VRFixed Light Block not being continuously placed while holding right-click and movingLight Blocks can now be waterloggedFixed issue where breaking blocks, opening chests, and entering portals would be delayed/not work when there are lots of mobs nearbyGrass and double flowers now have proper animations when breakingFlower blocks are now properly destroyed by explosions when inside snow layersSkeleton Horsemen now pathfind correctly

World Generation

Iceberg features no longer replace Snow Blocks of Igloo structures (MCPE-147690)Water in open air mountain caves no longer generates unevenlyAquifers no longer generate with missing water blocks

Technical Updates

GameTest Framework (Experimental)

Entity Added function teleport(location: Location, dimension: Dimension, xRotation (optional): float, yRotation (optional): float)Added function teleportFacing(location: Location, dimension: Dimension, facingLocation: Location)Added registerAsyncmethod to register and properly track the state of GameTests using async functions

General

Reapplied changes to use “allowlist” instead of “whitelist”

JumpToBlockGoal

JumpToBlockGoal now correctly searches the same distance upwards and downwards when looking for jumpblockcandidates, allowing a mobs that use the goal to jump equally high as low

Blocks

Added support for blocks having the same name as long as they belong to different namespaces

Animations

Fixed animation controller recursion checks from falsely disallowing normal repeat usage of a controller

User-Interface

Fixed issue where up and down arrow buttons in the Resource Pack Settings screen became bigger when highlightedRead MoreGameSpot – Game News

Rainbow Six Extraction Trailer Breaks Down A Dire Threat To Humanity

Ahead of its release later this month, Ubisoft has released a new trailer for cooperative multiplayer shooter Rainbow Six Extraction, breaking down some of the game’s establishing lore.

The trailer kicks off with some striking imagery of the effect the Chimera parasite has had globally, with the black tendrils of the threat decapitating the statue of liberty. In response, the Rainbow Six team has established a new unit, called React, to go out into the field and study the parasite and its evolving threat. Only in this way can React develop tools needed to push back the threat and ultimately save humanity.

The trailer also provides new looks at two of the game’s special enemy types. The Lurker is an elite enemy that can turn itself and nearby allies invisible, while the Apex can spawn lesser enemies to the field and overrun your team quickly. As a member of React, you’ll be given access to special weapons to combat these threats, each of which you’ll need to strategically use with your teammates to survive.

Rainbow Six Extraction launches on January 20 and will come to Xbox Game Pass for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Ubisoft has also announced plans to bring its own subscription service, Ubisoft+, to Xbox soon.

In our recent hands-on preview of Rainbow Six Extraction, editor Jordan Ramée praised the game’s overall gunplay, but lamented the lack of some elements that make Rainbow Six Siege’s maps so dynamic, writing, “The game has some cool-looking maps that dwarf the size of those found in Siege, but without an easy means of regularly bending that environment to your will in order to create new pathways and sightlines, it loses out on what I find most fulfilling about Siege’s gameplay.”

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Rust Devs Tease What’s In Store For 2022 Updates

Rust servers have been wiped, but no new content was pushed in the latest update. Instead, Rust devs Facepunch released a blog post recapping Rust’s 2021 and promised to keep providing updates on the first Thursday of each month in 2022.

As for what new things the new year will bring, Facepunch devs didn’t reveal much, but did comment that players “can expect to see new weapons, deployables, events, vehicles, animals and so much more.” The studio released two teaser images–one of a future arctic monument and a new animal, the polar bear.

In February, Rust will also get a “heap load” of quality-of-life changes. From January 1-14, Twitch Drops are enabled–which means if you catch one of the specific Twitch streamers mentioned on Facepunch’s list, you can get select in-game rewards. For the aforementioned January period, by watching the Spanish creators Egolands, you can get weapons, garage doors, and more.

This week’s limited edition skins are also available on Rust’s Steam page, including a frosty set of armor (’tis the season).

Rust had a pretty good 2021. The survival game received a surge of popularity and attention from Twitch streamers and viewers, and to this date, Rust has sold almost 12.5 million copies.

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CES 2022: AMD’s Next-Gen AM5 Platform to Have Long Term Support

One of the key aspects of AMD’s offering in the consumer desktop space is the longevity of its socket and platform. Throughout the years, AMD has leveraged a single socket for multiple generations, providing users the ability to keep the same motherboard year in and year out, while the competition changes the socket every couple of generations at best. To keep that mantra, AMD has stated that its next-generation platform coming later this year, AM5, will also be a multi-generational platform.

Going back in AMD’s history we can see just how long various platforms have lasted, from first processor launch to last processor launch:

Socket 939 from 2004 to 2006
AM2/2+ socket from 2006 to 2009
AM3/3+ socket from 2009 to 2013
FM2/2+ socket from 2012 to 2015
AM4 socket from 2016 to 2021
AM5 socket from 2021 to …

Within that time there have been chipset updates to allow for better IO, however usually the socket change has happened because of DDR version changes, interconnect, and PCIe. In this instance, the move from AM4 to AM5 comes with a change from DDR4 to DDR5 and PCIe 4.0 to PCIe 5.0.

In a roundtable with Dr. Lisa Su, the question was asked about how long AM5 would be around – now that AMD has a sustainable position again in the desktop, and by many measures a leading position, would AMD continue its tradition of longer-lived desktop platforms. Dr. Su stated that AM4 ‘has been good for the community and … it’s been good for us as well’. She confirmed that a change was required with the new standards, but on strategy it was put that ‘I don’t have an exact number of years but I would say that you should expect that AM5 will be a long-lived platform as AM4 has been’. Dr. Su also stated that even with the introduction of AM5, the company expects AM4 to stay in the marketplace for some years, with overlap between the two depending on the market.

For users wondering how far AM5 can go before it needs to change again, it’s worth looking at roadmaps for the two usual elements that cause socket updates: memory and PCIe. We’re only just on the transition to DDR5, and DDR6 is a long way away – in a recent Samsung presentation, for example, it listed DDR6 as a 2028 technology. Similarly with PCIe 5.0, the same presentation puts PCIe 6.0 as a 2026 technology, and PCIe 7.0 as a 2029 technology. So unless AMD wants to increase the pin count on the CPUs for more memory channels or more PCIe lanes, the PCIe 5.0+DDR5 combination looks set until at least 2026.

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