Move Over, TMNT, The Time Of The Ultra Mega Cats Has Arrived!

A Major Co-Op Roguelike Shooter Ex-purr-ience Launches This Summer

[Warsaw, Poland - March 6th, 2024] – Fans of 90’s Saturday morning cartoons take heed! Imagine if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Biker Mice from Mars had a feline makeover and decided to embark on an epic, rogue-like adventure. That’s precisely the kind of radical ride you’re in for with Ultra Mega Cats, the latest roguelike multiplayer shooter from Fallen Leaf. Set to pounce onto Steam in summer 2024, this game is all about clawing and shooting your way through hordes of enemies in chaotic combat with a purr-pose. After all, who doesn’t love cats in mechs?

Dive whisker-first into Ultra Mega Cats and join the feline frenzy as you take on the role of the Mega Cats. These aren’t your average kitties; they’re on a mission to free the three Ancient feline gods from the clutches of corporate prisons. With Kagero’s ninja stealth and BBkat’s tank-like resilience, you’ll navigate through a labyrinth of randomly generated rooms, each more challenging than the last. And that’s just the beginning – more characters are set to join the fray, each bringing their own unique flair and abilities to the table.

But Ultra Mega Cats isn’t just about flexing those claws and pouncing on enemies. No, sir! It’s a story-rich journey that delves deep into the personalities and tales of each Mega Cat, setting it apart from other roguelikes. This game has heart, soul, and plenty of cat-itude, offering players not just a game, but a fun and chaotic experience where every playthrough is a step closer to restoring cat-topia.

Fear not, for you won’t have to face the dangers alone! Ultra Mega Cats is all about sharing the thrill with your pals, featuring two-player co-op play at Early Access launch, with plans to expand to four by full release. Imagine tearing through enemies with your fur-ever friends by your side, each of you complementing the other’s strengths and weaknesses. Together, you'll work like a well-oiled machine – or should we say, a well-groomed clowder of cats – on your quest to topple the rodent, reptile, and wolf adversaries standing in your way.

 

Key Features:

• Five cat-tastic characters: Choose from five different ultra cats (two at Early Access launch) with different playstyles and personalities. Each cat has 50 different M.O.D.S that can be unlocked, offering more variety.

• Friends fur-ever: Streamlined, arena-based co-op PvE combat. For two players in Early Access with up to 4 players co-op planned.

• Paw-crafted combat arenas: Each arena is arranged into ever-changing biomes through level generation. Thanks to different Coalitions (each consisting of different Aspects), all playthroughs are different.

• It’s purrdy: The game’s stunning, vibrant art style packs as much punch as your cat hero will, ka-pow!

• Create a claw-some cat haven: Work together to free the three Ancient Cats from their enslavement and create a new cattopia for felines everywhere.

Get ready to mark your calendars and wishlist Ultra Mega Cats on Steam for a 2024 Early Access release that promises to be nothing short of a feline frenzy. With its vibrant art, dynamic gameplay, and a whole litter of characters to choose from, this game is set to be the cat’s meow of the gaming world. Stay up to date by following Ultra Mega Cats on Twitter and Facebook.

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About Unseen Silence

Unseen Silence is an independent Warsaw-based Polish studio founded in 2020 with the aim to deliver games that a lot of people can enjoy. Unseen Silence is currently developing Ultra Mega Cats and Terror: Endless Night to be released in 2024 while working on two more unannounced projects.

About Fallen Leaf

Fallen Leaf is an independent Polish studio that aims to deliver games that combine great visuals with outstanding stories. Fallen Leaf’s first game – science fiction narrative thriller Fort Solis – was released in 2023. Alongside Ultra Mega Cats, Fallen Leaf is working on a new immersive game.

About Black Drakkar Games

Black Drakkar Games is a Polish studio founded by industry veterans. The team co-develops various game projects, including Ultra Mega Cats and an unannounced sci-fi project. The company's portfolio includes the co-development of Fort Solis, which is available on PC and PlayStation 5. 

 

Article by: Susan N.

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Ripout - PC Preview

Ripout by developer Pet Project Games and publisher 3D Realms—PC(Steam) preview written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

 
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Rip and tear, it's time to dismantle some mutants! Taking you through a first-person shooter through overrun spaceships full of mutants, Ripout is a weird combination of FPS, horror, and a co-op functionality.

Now in Early Access after the demo that Pierre-Yves and myself covered, we get to take a look at a more fleshed out (pun intended) version of Ripout.

Ripout is set in a world in the future, where a mutagen has proliferated through the human race, forcing them to take to the stars to escape. Unfortunately, outbreaks start occurring on the spaceships. What you need to do is discover what went wrong while making your way to Sanctuary. In order to do so, you need to explore the derelict spacecrafts in order to find clues on how you're going to survive.

Your task won't exactly be the easiest, but luckily you'll have an assortment of tools at your disposal. Traipsing through the overrun spacecrafts take place as a sort of roguelike-ish deal, as you'll be able to collect enhancements as you make your way through a series of rooms, performing the requirements to "clear" the room, until you end up back at the ship you rode in on. There are certain required missions you need to do, as well as a certain number of "free" missions, before you can progress to the next sector, leading up to the end of the campaign. You can select from a number of missions, more as your sector progresses, and clearing one will introduce a new one.

While you're out going through the procedurally generated ships, you will be shooting your way through mutant creatures, capable of having smaller mutant creatures attach themselves to the larger mutants. These smaller critters can either be torn or shot off the mutants, or collected for yourself with your very own pet gun! Now, what is a pet gun you may ask? Well, of the three weapons you can bring, one is your primary weapon which is a pet gun of some type, another is a sidearm, and the last is a melee weapon. The pet gun can be sic'd on enemies, stunning them and biting them for damage as well as to rip off attachments. Alternatively, you can use it on lone small mutant creatures to turn them into attachments for yourself that you can use until they run out of energy.

When you send off the pet gun however, you are restricted to your other weapons until the pet gun comes back, and then there is a recharge period before you can send the gun out again. Now, an interesting point to this is that there are roguelike type enhancements. When you enter a room, you can find an upgrade terminal that offers three possible upgrades, and you can take one. Sometimes this is really handy, like reducing cooldown for pet attacks, or causing an explosion on a pet attack.

Enemies are a very interesting type, as they are mutants with weak points and limbs you can shoot off. If a small addition type creature attaches to them, you can also rip those off or shoot them off, meaning that enemies can be a weird amalgamation of different parts. The ones with a shield, claw to prevent pet attacks, and the sticky web combo are wretched though, so keep your eyes on those. On the plus side, all the attachments the enemies can get, you can too! Only one at a time though, so sometimes it's tough to choose what the best partner for the current situation is.

So, now that you're aware of how things are gonna go down, how does it feel playing through the game? Well, I can definitely say it's a lot more fun with friends, especially since you can revive your teammates, but it's still pretty fun on your own. Point and case, each room you go through has a different objective, sometimes involving killing things, and sometimes finding things. Now, if you turn on the lights, which help visibility a lot and allow you to open certain doors and access the enhancement stations, it also activates electrical wires on the ground. These things will shock the life out of you in less than 2 seconds flat. Like, good god man it's brutal if you stand on them by accident. Luckily, if you're in co-op, a buddy can bring you back up.

As you're exploring the areas you're running through and killing mutants, you'll find that enemies, as well as boxes found around the area, will contain health, ammo, as well as materials and sometimes blueprints. The materials and blueprints can be used after finishing a mission. In your spaceship hub area, you can use the materials and blueprints to make weapons, garments, and mods, and then you can equip them in your loadout before heading off on a new mission. Also, pro tip but there's a revival token dispenser in the hub ship. Don't forget to renew that. Also, on the top floor there's a gatcha machine that will dispense random blueprints for you. Duplicates return some cash for you, but the price will go up as you continue to roll for blueprints.

Fair warning, there is a bit of jank to go around in Ripout. While most of the time it runs alright, there are the occasional lag, sometimes corners and hit detection are not very player friendly, some railings you can shoot through and some you can't. Also, reloading can decide to not complete fully, especially for sidearms during a pet attack, and explosive barrels have a weird tenuous grasp on what their effective range actually is. Enemies are not immune to this either, as they are sometimes super smart or aggressive, and sometimes just sit there and let you kill them without a struggle. Hopefully most of this will get sorted out as Ripout progresses through its Early Access phase.

One thing Ripout does quite well is its atmospheric horror aspect. The grotesque monsters, vents exploding, enemies popping out of nowhere, or sneaking up on you, only to turn around to find a mass of flesh barreling towards you, definitely gave both me and P.Y. some startles while we were playing. Pretty sure P.Y. got a good chuckle out of me freaking out occasionally. The atmosphere and monsters really do come together in a horrifying way that's sure to give you the occasional start!

The whole game doesn't take too long to get through, somewhere between 8 to 10 hours, but does have multiple difficulties and you can reset the campaign. Admittedly it does get pretty repetitive pretty quickly, but it's still a lot of fun, whether with friends or by yourself. There are a bunch of different weapon types to try as well, which can add some much-needed variation to the mix. It's an easy game to pick up for a few rounds here and there, making it a nice title if you don't have a lot of time, but still want to do something with friends.

Score: N/A

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Mothergunship: Forge is Available for Purchase on Steam VR and Quest 2!

BOSTON — June 16, 2022 — MOTHERGUNSHIP: FORGE, a VR reimagining of the acclaimed roguelike first-person shooter with more than 750,000 veterans, welcomes new recruits on Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR for Valve Index and HTC Vive today.

Let imaginations run wild by combining crazy weapon parts to forge outlandish creations. Developer Terrible Posture Games checks the laws of physics at the door to give players an arsenal worthy of the MOTHERGUNSHIP’S robot alien minions. The possibilities? Unfathomable. The jelly mines? Sticky. The rubber ducks? Menacing, of course.

Experiment with trillions of combinations and create a ridiculous weapon chimera to make your inner Victor Frankgunstein proud. Physically snap together barrels, caps, connectors, and more, all in VR’s immersive first-person view. Attachments can affect both the weapons and the procedurally generated world around you, like tesla coils to chain damage, a skeleton key unlocking every room, coffee ammo to speed up fire rate, or glowing mushrooms for punching projectiles out of the sky. As you do.

One madcap concoction not enough? Bring in a buddy and face the alien armada together in a two-player co-op. Dodge incoming volleys through ducking, diving, dipping, and other gesticulations. Take on punishing stages and colossal bosses to reap plentiful rewards, like money, more gun parts, energy shields to weather the storm, and crystal… purple stuff?

In the belly of the MOTHERGUNSHIP, dozens of hours of roguelike adventure await: each new run generates threatening encounters and heretofore-unseen attachments.

“Bringing MOTHERGUNSHIP to VR is something we’ve been intrigued about for years, and now we get to see our game through a new LENS,” said Joe Mirabello, Creative Director at Terrible Posture Games. “Kyle from PR didn’t want me to use that pun, but PR doesn’t always get what PR wants, DO YOU, KYLE? Puns are glorious, just like slapping a Biscuit Trophy on the weapon of your dreams and unloading sticky spike balls at robot invaders with a buddy.”

MOTHERGUNSHIP: FORGE launches today on Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR for Valve Index and HTC Vive for $19.99 USD. Stay updated with the latest missions from Terrible Posture Games on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Discord.

About Terrible Posture Games

Terrible Posture Games is an independent studio founded by veterans of game development on the idea that great talent is global, so studios should be completely remote. Responsible for the creation of “lunch break FPS” Tower of Guns, the bullet-hell craftstravaganza MOTHERGUNSHIP, and the world’s first playable sitcom in 3 out of 10, the studio aims to be a compassionate place for developers to grow and make fun things. Their latest projects include MOTHERGUNSHIP: FORGE and writing support for interactive survival thriller The Walking Dead: Last Mile.

Article by: Susan N.

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Returnal - PS5 Review

Returnal by developer Housemarque OY and publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Jim with a purchased copy.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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The tagline for the 2014 Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow was Live Die Repeat. You could use the same lines to describe Returnal, first-party Sony exclusive developed by Housemarque who are known for their smaller indie games like Resogun and Nex Machina, which is a game where you will live, die, and repeat. With Returnal being their first big-budget game but does it stand up to Sony's other big titles?

Returnal tells the story of Selene who crash lands on an alien planet while following a white shadow signal. Selene sets out from her busted ship to find this signal but along the way, you will die and then you learn that the planet changes and you have to start over from your ship. You also learn that there used to be sentient life forms that inhabit this planet. You will see statues and bodies of these "xenotypes" and now Selene not only is trying to make her way to the signal she now tries to figure out what happened to these aliens and why when you die you start over and the world changes. This makes the story a science fiction thriller with a tiny bit of horror mixed in mostly in the atmosphere the game gives but I would be lying if I said I didn't jump at least once.

Returnal's gameplay is a mix of third-person shooter, roguelike, and bullet hell. The shooting feels good and even pressing the L2 trigger halfway to aim feels right thanks to the adaptive triggers. Pressing the L2 button all the way ready the alt-fire. All the guns you find will have an alt-fire and each time you find a gun even if it is the same you are already carrying could have a different alt-fire. While talking about the Dual Sense control the Haptic feedback in this game is amazing I could feel pretty much everything Selene does from running to getting hit. Now the roguelike comes in from the world-changing every time you die. You will always start in the same place but the layout will be different every time. You also lose everything you have collected in your last run only starting with your handgun.

Guns do not have to be reloaded but they can overheat after firing so many shots without a rest. Each gun has varying numbers of shots. When you overheat a gun you can press the trigger at the right time to overload the gun and you can use it faster. It's much like when you reload a gun in Gears of War with pressing at the right time for a quicker reload. As you use your gun you will gain proficiency making any new gun you find have better stats. And finally, we have bullet hell for a third-person shooter there can be a ton of enemy fire coming at you at one time making combat hectic and fun.

The boss fights are hard and will have you running from a ton of colorful shots coming at you. Even with having to start over so many times I never got tired of playing Returnal on each run you never know what you may find in the way of upgrades, items, and parasites. Parasites are well parasites you can attach to yourself for one buff and one debuff you can only have five at one time before it will randomly detach one of them for a new one. You can get rid of them only with a certain item or a machine that I rarely see. You can find items from chests and defeated enemies you can also find fabricators that use Obolites that you collect from enemies and find around the environment to buy items and or upgrades.

The other type of currency in the game is Ether, Ether is a permanent currency that you keep even after dying. You can use these at Reconstructors that let you respawn once without starting over and at a Cthonos that shows up near the crash site shortly in the game the Cthonos makes a random item that you have yet to discover. Ether also can be used to cleanse malignant items and chests. Malignant items and chests can be picked up without being cleansed but will cause a suit malfunction. Suit malfunction will add a random debuff and a condition to get rid of the malfunction like opening so many chests or doing so many Melee kills. getting three malfunctions will cause a critical malfunction where you will not trigger another ill effect but will destroy a random item you have.

As you explore the planet you will find other dead Selene's and you will find a voice recording slowly telling the story of what is going on on this strange planet. You will also find Selene's house that you can enter once in a while and tells more backstory on Selene. These segments are short but are played in first-person giving you an emersion that seems right at home in a horror game. The game was is also best played with headphones on. I have a 3D audio set that sounds amazing. The rain hitting Selene's helmet, the enemies, sounds in the environment are all so well done.

The game being a PS5 game is beautiful there can be so much going on at one time on the screen with no slow down or lag. The enemy designs are cool to look and the xeno lifeforms that lived there before have a unique design. I liked finding the Xenoglyph Ciphers that let you translate Xenoglyphs. Xenoglyphs are writings the Xeno's left long ago that tells what happened to them.

There is real satisfaction when you can finally beat a boss and advance. It's like a souls game but with lots of shooting and running. There is some mild platforming but nothing too hard you will find a much harder time in the enemies than anything.

Summary

Overall Returnal is another amazing first-party Sony title that hits all the right notes. Although the game crashed on me once and that makes you start from the crash site again I did enjoy my time. Just make sure you have a few hours to play if you don't use the PS5's rest feature you will have to start a new cycle when reloading the game. It may be early still but Returnal is definitely on my game of the year list as of this writing.

Score: 9.5 / 10

 

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