Jul 25, 2019
What we learned from the most recent addition to the developers journal for Planet Zoo.
The same amazing developers that brought us the Tycoon series, Frontier Developments, have been working super hard on their new project, Planet Zoo. In case you missed it, Planet Zoo is a massive simulation game where players will get to create and run their very own zoo. We’ve already touched a bit on this title, with our coverage of how you will manage your animals behavior in Planet Zoo. Now, the developers have gone into a bit more detail with their discussion of the Zookeepers and the Staff Paths.
Staff Paths and Zookeepers in Planet Zoo
Zookeepers in Planet Zoo will function exactly as they do in real life. They will help you maintain your zoo and keep your animals happy. They will feed them, keep them hydrated, and even clean up after they defecate. The game is set so that you not only need to employ the zookeepers, you must also keep them happy. This way they will be more inclined to keep your animals happy. Negative treatment toward your employees will surely impact your business in the same regard.
Much of the games difficulty is experienced through your relationship with your crew. Manage them wisely, lest you face the consequences. The developers have mentioned quite an in-depth interaction system between the players and the employees of the park. The relationships you have with your employees will directly affect the visitors to your zoo. Having proper zones for them to function will be a key aspect in keeping the flow going. Staff paths are the zones that only your employees can traverse, giving them opportunity to avoid congestion of visitors, and meet the needs of animals in the most expedient manner. This will also prevent visitors from accessing zones that will negatively impact their opinion of the park.
For more in-depth information on the topic, you can check out the developers journal at Frontier Developments Forum site.
- Jul 25, 2019
As reported a few days ago, Marvelous has held its livestream today. While the main focus of the stream was on Rune Factory 4 Special coming to Switch this year, Marvelous managed to surprised its fans with a short but beautiful Rune Factory 5 Teaser.
Rune Factory 5 is the sequel to the much beloved and extremely popular Rune Factory 4 – a game initially released on the Nintendo 3DS and now coming to Nintendo Switch with all new visuals and game features.
Fans of the series are excited to learn more about Rune Factory 5 for Nintendo Switch. To satisfy the need and hunger for more details on the sequel, Marvelous released a a short Rune Factory 5 Teaser at the end of todays stream. Check out the adorable little video below!
If you missed the event, you can watch the entire 2.5 hours of todays stream right here.
Don’t miss out on Critter Cove a relaxing village simulator set on a remote island.
- Jul 25, 2019
Imagine a giant inflatable waterpark on the sea. You’re with your friends racing through an obstacle course to rescue an inflatable mascot. Your only “weapon?” A Q-tip style joust pole. Now imagine it’s all virtual – with a customizable character and house. That’s UMI – a game currently in development by Another Coffee Games.
About UMI:
Online combat games have been popular for years and there’s no slowing them down. Despite the concept of these games being fun, the content isn’t really what we’re into here at MyPotatoGames. That’s where UMI steps in and solves the problem in an incredibly fun, colorful way.
UMI will be a multiplayer online game. Set on inflatable obstacle courses on the sea, it’s “capture the flag” style. You’ll be on a team trying to rescue a cute mascot before the other team can. The matches will be 10 to 15 minutes long.
There are currently 5 different sponsors in Umiland. There’s the minty stingray Stinray, the pink narwhal Sochi, the red and white whale Vanilla, the pink and black octopus Oktirome, and the black and yellow sea urchin Eridon. Assumedly, you’ll be choosing one of these teams to represent – or maybe vying to be chosen for one!
In between matches, you’ll be at The Hub. The Hub is a place where you can play around, hang out with friends, decorate your own house, and even adopt an inflatable pet.
You’ll also be able to customize your character. There will be accessories and a wide variety of colors to choose from.
Watch the Gameplay Trailer:
There’s no release date, yet, but UMI will be at Gamescom on August 21-24 so look for any potential news then! For now, you can sign up for the Beta Waitlist. You can also follow game development on Twitter or Instagram.
There are more wholesome competitive games coming! Take a look at Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout coming out next year. Can’t wait? Splatoon may be just the thing for you.
- Jul 24, 2019
Dinkum, an RPG and simulation game is currently being developed by James Bendon and published by The Irregular Corporation. The release is marked as “coming soon” on Steam where you can wishlist right here. Essentially, Dinkum is a life simulator with town building elements. In Dinkum you will arrive with a group of explorers to a previously unexplored island. You will be tasked with building a home for yourself as well as helping the other explorers build their homes and businesses as well. The developer also mentions that you can attract more people to come live in your town.
Dinkum has a very unique premise as the environment is entirely Australian with Australian wildlife. This mean you’ll be dealing with a lot of crocodiles and kangaroos in the wild, and raising farm animals such as giant wombats and turkeys! There will also be several different biomes to explore such as a desert biome, a tropical biome with palm trees, banana trees and ferns, bush-land biome with swamps, etc. The term “dinkum” is even slang in Australia and New Zealand for meaning “genuine, honest, or true”.
About Dinkum
G’Day there! Get ready to start a new fair Dinkum life and build a home on an Island inspired by the wild Australian outback. Explore tropical eucalyptus forests, survive scorching deserts, relax at cool billabongs and discover scrubland filled with adorable Aussie inspired wildlife. Collect valuable resources by hunting, mining, fishing and foraging to expand and customize your town and attract new townsfolk and businesses. Share your new home with friends and protect each other as you explore beautiful landscapes filled with dangerous predators.
Key Features
- Build your town, your way.
- Craft items to help organize and decorate your town.
- Play co-op with friends.
- Go fishing, bug catching, and treasure hunting.
- Start a farm with crops and animals.
- Hunt animals for food and defend yourself from deadly predators.
- Customize your house and character.
If you want to know more about the game you can go to the official website here. For more unique farming simulation aspects, check out our article here: Boundless Gets a Large Update: The Harvest Era.
- Jul 24, 2019
Since our last article on Critter Cove, which was the interview we had with Gentleman Rat including all three members behind the indie studio, there has been a lot more development to the game! You can get the full details from their blog post right here or get the highlights below. We’d like to thank Gentleman Rat for giving myPotatoGames a shout-out on their website and can’t wait for their playable demo to be ready! We’d absolutely love to be a captain of our own ship and go treasure hunting, salvaging shipwrecks, and exploring with the most adorable crew members!
The Main Island
The main island of Critter Cove is the first location that the player will see when starting the game. Therefore, the developers wanted to make sure that it would immediately catch our attention and give us the urge to explore. You can see below that the vast and varied layout is perfect for long-term building of homes and shops, which is a large part of what we are looking forward to at myPotatoGames. This central location is the perfect balance of mountains and lush greenery with large empty spaces for customization. Moreover, the more you build-up this port, the more bustling it will become with more friendly NPCs!
Swimming with the Fishes
In Critter Cove you’ll be spending quite a bit of time on your ship and sailing to new locations such as other islands. You’ll also be diving underwater to explore the depths below. The developers mentioned in their interview with myPotatoGames that the player character will have the chance to stay underwater longer with the help of equipment like re-breathers and diving suits so it should be quite the experience! The sea has many resources and treasure so the creators have made sure the environments down there are fun and interesting. Their blog goes on to say: ” The world of Critter Cove is built on top of the sunken ruins of the old world, so expect to find sunken ships, buildings, monuments, cars, planes, and much more. “
Character Customization
All the characters in Critter Cove have very unique looks and personalities so the developers decided to give us the option to not only be humans but to be critters as well! We now also have the option to mix and match various body parts, to choose new patterns, and to alter colors. This will be a highly creative experience with more plans to include fantasy style characters such as griffons and dragons. Want a human body with a blue fox’s head? Well you can do just that! On that note, players will be able to customize and change the colors of their clothing which can even be gifted to your animal friends.
You can continue to follow Critter Cove’s progress via Twitter here or join the Discord channel here. You can also stay tuned with us here at myPotatoGames as we look forward to more content for this grand adventure on the high-seas!
- Jul 24, 2019
A recent in-game notification informs us of a doubling in the allowance for uploading levels.
Super Mario Maker 2 has been in the lime-light since its release on June 28th. Everyone who is anyone has a Super Mario Maker 2 level just waiting for us to jump into. Even Arby’s got in on the action for a bit of shamless promotion. Who can blame them? Customizing your own maps for others to try out hasn’t been this fun since Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 (personal opinion). Now, we can create and share even more thanks to the recent update in SMM2.
Not only has the amount of uploads increased from 32 to 64, but there is also a promise of another increase in the future. Not that we really need another increase after this one, but hey, the more the merrier. Especially since this is most likely a response to the community backlash regarding the low upload limit in the first place. We are super stoked to see that SMM2 is still growing, and the sharing is off the charts.
For more information about Super Maker Maker 2, be sure to check out the official Nintendo website.
- Jul 24, 2019
The Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers have been revolutionary when the Switch first came out, with HD Rumble and other unique features making the small detachable controllers even more special. Unfortunetaly a small portion of those tiny collectible controllers have had a drifting issue that Nintendo is now generously addressing.
Players were increasingly complaining about the Joy-Con controllers starting to drift. This issue becomes more prominent and noticeable in games such as Mario Kart that heavily rely on accuracy.
As the problem became more wide spread, some lawyers have come together to kick off an action lawsuit against Nintendo for not addressing the problem correctly. The big N responded to this claim by asking Switch owners to check out the Nintendo Switch support page.
“At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help.”
However, as the pressure increased Nintendo finally acknowledged the problem more accurately and is now offering free repairs to any affected Switch owners with no proof of warranty needed.
So if you have a Joy-Con that is indeed affected by the drifting issue, you should qualify for a free repair from Nintendo. You can head to the support page to submit your claim right here.
Nintendo also recently announced four new new Joy-Con colors, as well as Nintendo Switch Lite.
- Jul 23, 2019
Them Bombs is a digital cooperative “boardgame” for 2-4 players. It’s just you, your friends, and a ticking bomb (gasp)! Work together and communicate efficiently to save lives! Them Bombs is created by Yellow Dot, an indie developer based in Poland, and is available now for PC (Steam), the Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices (iOS and Android). It also seems to be “coming soon” to PS4 and Xbox One. For the purpose of this review, I played on Steam here with one other person locally using the manual on their tablet. Also, this time we have no gameplay footage as we feel that would give too much away and spoil the game. Therefore, we won’t be going into detail about the puzzles.
Unlikely Hero or Expert Team
First you need to decide if you’ll be the only player on the PC physically doing the puzzles in order to defuse the bomb. You’ll need to hide the screen from the other players and try to explain and describe exactly what you see so they know which puzzles you are dealing with. The other 1 or 2 players can either print or grab a digital copy of the manual here to use on another PC, tablet, or mobile device. I highly recommend printing if the fact that the manual is several pages long doesn’t bother you, or to do it on another PC to be able to scroll faster and find everything a lot easier.
Know that the players reading the manual need to quickly go through all of the pages to find the proper security modules that are standing between you and the deactivation of the bomb. There are 12 different modules meaning there are 12 different types of puzzles that will appear at random. All puzzles will have a related decoder in the appendix section to help you solve them. Therefore, the Unlikely Hero needs to pay attention to their type of battery, type of explosive, and the cover of the bomb (amount of screws and color) which will change every playthrough!
Getting Started
“A crazy scientist called Dr. TiNT (still pronounced TNT) plants deadly bombs in various public spaces. Each time, minutes before the explosion, a random person within the blast radius receives a message from him. Only this person – the Unlikely Hero – can defuse the bomb… given they get the right help.” At the beginning of every session you’ll be told where Dr. TiNT planted his bomb such as the mall or a hospital and what that civilian toll would be.
As a first time player, you’ll automatically be thrown into the Tutorial puzzles to get you used to playing. Once you’ve completed your first try, you’ll then get to decide your difficulty: Beginner, Normal, Hard, and Custom. Afterward, choose who is playing what role as mentioned above, and go! Pay attention to your ticking timer as on Beginner you’ll have roughly 10 minutes to solve 3 random puzzles.
Gameplay and Puzzles
My first time playing was an absolute massive failure because the Tutorial puzzles don’t help you at all, at least not for the Unlikely Hero. The one reading through the manual however needs to go through a ton of text which isn’t all that easy to understand at first. Although to be fair, most boardgames start out this way in order to understand the rules and such and I find that always to be quite the chore. If I were to tell you anything important at all during this review, it would be to go through the manual before any attempt at actually playing. I’m not sure if that’s what you are supposed to do but I know this will keep your frustration to a minimum.
Make sure you understand each puzzle in a more stress-free environment instead of us fools that tried it while the timer was on. The puzzles can be fairly intricate but once you know what to look for, the game will be a lot more fun. I like that you’ll start to recognize the same puzzles and develop a way between you and your friends on how to explain which ones they are. Even if this happens, the answers will change quite often due to all of the variables in place. For example, this time your bomb cover is blue, you have 6 screws, your batteries are type 6LS05 with a voltage of 9.2 V and are zinc manganese dioxide in the form of one piece.
They Were the Best of Times and the Worst of Times
The main focus here is communication and cooperation so you can definitely become better the more often you play. It’s also a great exercise for your brain as the puzzles will have you dealing with Morse code, musical symbols, Greek letters, etc. I’m sure if you know your music notes, and your alpha and omega, you’ll be a lot better at this game than I was. My partner (a musician) had the greatest patience when I was trying to explain certain things like the ‘rest’ note being a “backwards squiggly 3 trying to take flight”.
Some puzzles relied on your memory skills and button-timing which I didn’t like as much as the others. I suppose this could take up a lot of your time if you fail so maybe that’s the point. I prefer just simply clicking and then choosing the right answers which is hard enough already. If you get an answer wrong, your timer will drop by quite a bit and those minutes are precious. The game will try to freak out the Unlikely Hero by occasionally making you “switch out your flashlight batteries” in order to get rid of your blackened screen or “breathe” in order to regain your composure all while the timer is still going.
Graphics and Content
The design of the overall game is where Them Bombs falls extremely short. I appreciate that the game is more about the puzzles and less and about the graphics but I feel like the developers were still very lazy in that department. Blank black and white screens with some stick figure icons is the absolute bare minimum one can put in either a videogame, boardgame, or this mixture of both. The title of this game could also have been a little more creative.
The most interesting element that they added is that of the funny newspaper clipping they give you when you succeed where you can add your name to the headline and body. Not only can you share this to social media and probably get some raised eyebrows from your friends, but the feature goes as far as a fully detailed article. There aren’t that many different pieces to read from what I’ve seen but it still sets the scene and makes the game more enjoyable.
Them Bombs is perfect for anyone that wants a quick party game when they have company over or something you can play as passengers in a vehicle while traveling. Each session is short but the game offers a lot of replayability. Once you get the hang of it, the puzzles are actually quite fun. Even if the graphics before and after are quite boring, the graphics for the actual puzzles do the job. The price of the game is fair so if you want to check it out for yourselves, you can go to the official website here.
