Indie developer Red Hook Studios revealed that its turn-based roguelike role-playing game Darkest Dungeon will get its first major expansion with the launch of The Crimson Court in early 2017.
A promotional image released alongside this week’s announcement hints that vampires will play a significant role in the forthcoming expansion and players can expect to see many new items, afflictions, and challenges in the months ahead.
Darkest Dungeon debuted in 2014 via Kickstarter, where it managed to quadruple its initial funding goal. Promising backers a turn-based RPG inspired by genre classics like The Bard’s Tale and Ultima Underworld, Darkest Dungeon went on to earn more than $300,000 in crowdsourced pledges and development soon kicked off in earnest.
Launching first via Steam Early Access, Darkest Dungeon saw numerous updates and improvements throughout 2015. A feature-complete Steam release debuted earlier this year and ports for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita premiered in September.
Backed by a bleak, Gothic atmosphere, Darkest Dungeon features turn-based battles bridged by dungeon exploration sequences. Players search each floor of a seemingly endless dungeon for weapons and resources, killing any creatures they encounter throughout. As they progress through each floor, players encounter random events that can either benefit their party members or lead them to their doom.
Darkest Dungeon also features several ‘afflictions’ that party members suffer after extended dungeon dives. As characters buckle under the stress of exploration, they earn permanent status effects that can either help their chances of survival or make them liabilities in battle. Players must carefully gauge the risks involved in various character afflictions in order to survive encounters that become more difficult as gameplay progresses.
Darkest Dungeon‘s The Crimson Court downloadable content launches for the PlayStation 4, PS Vita, Windows, Mac, and Linux PC platforms in early 2017.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.