Arcade Typing Games 'OUTSHINE' Redefines the Keyboard Warrior November 3rd!

Mons, Belgium, October 12, 2022 — Developer Fishing Cactus and Publisher Plug In Digital have announced fast-paced arcade typing game Outshine will launch for PC via Steam on October 3. Glide across the keyboard and use words to trounce enemies, topple bosses, and enact your vengeance. Master the keys and use Hue’s powers wisely to accumulate points, multipliers, and a coveted place on the leaderboard.

In Outshine, players dash across virtual highways as a glowing humanoid named Hue on a quest to dismantle the Shards and their cruel experiments. Dodge traps and incoming attacks while monitoring your environment for new words to type. Input keys swiftly and precisely to unlock special moves, like the ability to unleash lightning bolts onto foes.

Customize the experience with modifiers like auto-pilot, infinite abilities, and mirror words and replay runs with new rules. Type to the top with a variety of key layouts: Qwerty, Azerty, Qwertz, Dvorak, Colemak, BÉPO, and more are supported. From menus to combat, Outshine can be enjoyed with just a keyboard - no mice necessary!

Key Features

●     Enjoy breakneck arcade-stylized typing gameplay with just your keyboard

●     Plug into a journey of retribution set in a digitized universe

●     Improve your input speed to decimate enemies, collect points, and climb the leaderboard

●     Bolt across 18 visually dynamic levels spread across three virtual worlds

●     Master new keyboard layouts or customize the experience with modifiers

●     Explore accessibility features like Open Dyslexic Font and Colorblind Mode

●     Experience the game with English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish text localizations

●     Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, and Polish text support is on the way!

Outshine launches for PC via Steam on November 3rd. To keep up to date with the latest information on the title, please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, join our Discord, visit our website, and wishlist the game on Steam.

Fishing Cactus is an independent game developer based in Mons, Belgium. The company strives to showcase that original game ideas can thrive in a nation without many studios. Fishing Cactus is the creator behind the award-winning, positively received typing game Epistory - Typing Chronicles, an atmospheric adventure folded in an origami world. For more information on the developer and its portfolio, please visit http://www.fishingcactus.com/

About Plug In Digital

Plug In Digital is one of the world’s largest independent video game distributors and helps studios and publishers distribute their games worldwide on PC, cloud, console and mobile platforms. Plug In Digital supports companies like Bandai Namco, Paradox Interactive, Konami, Focus Home Interactive, Raw Fury, Curve Digital, and Nacon, and is a key partner in indie success stories like Dead Cells, Human Fall Flat, and Ghost of a Tale. For more information, please visit www.plugindigital.com

Article by: Susan N.

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Algo Bot - PC Review

If you're a part of the admittedly small group of people that is attracted to the idea of a "programming-puzzle" game, leave your expectations at the door. All done? Good, let us proceed.

AlgoBot is a charming and quirky puzzle game that puts you in control of a fairly basic robotic AI in charge of menial tasks related to ship labour. All of the humans are frozen for deep-space transport, and it is your job to… essentially fix the problems that you created to begin with. It's not much of a story, but it is a basic premise to get you started, and it's generic enough to let you fill in as much as you need to tackle the scores of puzzles that are to be arrayed before you.

While the idea is that you solve these problems with 'programming', the reality is that you aren't truly programming anything. Imagine playing through a level of Mario Bros where you have to put all of your button-presses in at the beginning of the level, then hit play and watch it play out before your eyes. If you did it correctly, you advance… and if not, then you restart and adjust your command queue with no penalty. It's rather much the same premise as the old DOS and early-windows era game series; The Incredible Machine, if your hand was stuck to a certain track.

The difficulty is easy if you're a procedural-minded person, and fair if you're just a puzzle nut, with added complexity and maneuvers thrown in just when you feel like you've attained 'mastery' with the last command put in. The commands are varied to let you do things like advance forward, turn 90 degrees, turn 180 degrees, press a button, pick something up, drop something, Wrapping this all up into a visual package is a fairly simple UI. It doesn't need to be complex, and it's all done in a way that uses images instead of words to transcend language-barriers.

The music and sound effects are spot-on, but for a puzzle game, that really doesn't really say all that much, and they're both fairly forgettable… but we all have different music preferences, and we all have different things that help put us in the puzzlin' mindset.

Now what isn't forgettable about this game isn't the story, or the gameplay, or even the music. No, it's the dialogue. The narrator/guide of the story, a smarmy robot that goes by PAL. PAL has a dry sarcasm that took me off guard when I first played, and I enjoyed every single interaction with the pest, even when he was telling me how I had messed up my command-queue.

In short, this is a fun game, and it's easily worth what they're asking for it. Just don't expect any programming.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Fishing Cactus
Publisher(s):
Fishing Cactus
Plug in Digital
Genre(s):
Puzzle
Programming
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Marc H.

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Post Human W.A.R. - PC Review

Before getting into anything gameplay specific, the concept behind this turned based strategy is a good one. While maybe not being the most original as most science fiction has us blowing up the planet or ourselves in one fashion or another, Post Human W.A.R is all about the creatures and the robots that we left behind after we died out. The ensuing turf war? It's good.

So basically the Human race is toast. We are long gone having left our machines and an interesting parasitic creature behind. Wanting to keep things as they were, the Robots fight to keep what used to be Humanity’s stuff in order while indiscriminately removing everything in their way. In an interesting spin on things, the parasitic creatures split into two factions. The first that is kinder of heart and just wants to be left the hell alone decided to co-exist with the remaining primates. The other however will take control of just about anything in order to wipe everything off of the face of the planet. Apparently just because we left didn’t mean that our tendencies did. The poor planet.

After running through a brief tutorial that also acts as an introduction to the available factions, what you do from there is up to you. Do you move into the single player campaigns for each faction or do you take your newfound knowledge online against other players? Choice is completely up to you though I was glad to see that there were no restrictions from one or the other because you hadn’t progressed far enough.

From the outset, Post Human W.A.R can seem like it’s just another strategy versus into the long running sets that have been around for a while. The formula would also indicate this as gameplay plays out in a your turn, their turn, your turn until there is only one side left standing. Where things start to get interesting is that each faction has to promote a unit as their leader and if they die? Then that’s game even if the rest of your forces are more than capable of continuing.

This one factor alone can change how you decide to play out your moves. Did they move their leader unit up pretending that the unit in the back is the leader because it’s safe? Or did they leave their leader unit all the way back there because of that reason, that it should be safe. You never really know until you’ve defeated it unless of course you taunt your enemy in the best way possible. Essentially saying “Come at me bro” you can unveil your lead unit for a boost to their performance. The downside is that your opponent may simply decide to try to bypass your forces to take them out all the faster.

Also an added boost is that each faction has a lot of units to choose from to cover any number of situations that you could find yourself within. Did the set you chose last match not quite work out? Try another variation. Each unit has a cost against your total amount so as long as you stay within that margin you’re good to go. Not everything will work against everything as each faction has their own particular strengths on top of having a crazy amount of choice for your forces. This honestly keeps things interesting!

Finally, while it may not be the grandest of things, I was extremely impressed with how smooth the experience flows. Unlike a lot of titles where you move one unit, then the next, then the next, you can just move them all at about the same time and then worry about their actions later. While one unit is moving another can be selected to do the same which saves on a lot of time and even the CPU can do the same. It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things but it’s a bit feature when you think of how much time it can save.

Post Human W.A.R is a great strategy title that has a lot going for it. Putting strategies into place can take some time as you need to worry about how to keep your leader unit alive while also maximizing their use in order to achieve victory. With the amount of choice that each of the three factions provides, single player campaigns and multiplayer, there’s a good deal of content just waiting to be explored.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):

Studio Chahut

Publisher(s):

Playdius
Plug In Digital

Genre(s):
Turn Based Strategy
Mode(s):
Single Player
Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
N/A

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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