Edmund McMillen, the indie designer behind Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, has teased a new project: The Legend of Bum-bo. McMillen has been working on the game for several months in collaboration with James Id. Isaac music team Ridiculon will be providing audio. Unlike Isaac, Bum-Bo will feature 3D graphics.
The announcement post on the Isaac blog describes Bum-bo as, “a turn-based puzzle RPG type thingy thats [sic] randomly generated.” McMillen acknowledged the significance of announcing the game there, implying that Bum-bo will have some sort of connection to The Binding of Isaac. The coin and turd pile in the logo image included with the announcement are two of the most frequently recurring items in that previous game, corroborating that implication.
In The Binding of Isaac, Bumbo is a collectible power-up added in the recent Afterbirth expansion. It starts as the disembodied head of one of the beggars that occasionally pop up in the game’s randomly generated levels, floating around with Isaac and collecting coins which it consumes to level up and gain new attack abilities that aid Isaac. The “Bum-bo want coin!” slogan in the announcement logo thus suggests that this is likely the same character. Id and McMillen both retweeted an image from artist Tikara, who has created artwork for official Isaac merchandise.
Bumbo finally got coin… now Bumbo want ADVENTURE! @edmundmcmillen @jamesid pic.twitter.com/ZTygMXCt1y
— Tikara (@TikaratheMew) March 22, 2016
First released in 2011, The Binding of Isaac is an action rogue-like game loosely inspired by the Biblical episode of the same name. Isaac is a young boy whose fanatical mother believes that God ordered her to kill him as a test of faith. He escapes into the basement and must descend through a series of procedurally generated levels inspired by dungeons from the original Legend of Zelda, shooting tears as a weapon. An enormous number of power-ups can be found to enhance Isaac’s abilities in ways ranging from subtle to completely absurd.
The game mixes challenging arcade gameplay with grotesque imagery and religious iconography in a uniquely personal cocktail. Despite its theologically offensive nature, it has been massively successful, receiving a series of ports and updates up to as recently as October 2015 with the Afterbirth expansion.
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.