Aug 28, 2019Interviews
Platypus Adventures is an action-adventure, story-driven single-player game currently in early development by solo developer David Richards. We here at myPotatoGames spoke with the creator himself during an interview about some of his future plans and things he is currently working on. David Richards was inspired by the Australian beauty that surrounds him and wanted his artwork to feature that subject matter to which he is deeply passionate. All characters in the game will be anthropomorphic animals based in Australia. The platypus is an extremely iconic animal in his hometown, and since they happen to be his favorite, wanted to raise awareness on these beautiful creatures.
We’d like to thank David Richards for answering our questions and providing us with beautiful screenshots. We’d also like to reiterate that this game is in early development therefore everything mentioned below is subject to change.
You mentioned the animals will be anthropomorphic. Do they speak?
David: The sound they make is a single localisation and not an entire spoken sentence. You’ll see the translation of sorts via speech bubbles above their heads. I’ve effectively recorded a bunch of vocal cues from voice actors to date.
Is there a story? Does this platypus have a long journey ahead?
David: The game has some sci-fi themes and some darker themes which I haven’t touched on yet. It’s a relatively short game that could last about 2.5 hours.
What kind of gameplay mechanics or actions players can perform?
David: There’s swinging, climbing, swimming, sliding and a whole lot more! There’s this whole action side that includes combat, that I haven’t really shown off yet. For the most part, the gameplay consists of environmental hazards which are all completely unique to each area. Exploration is key here as there will be no mini-map or anything like that. Meaning, you have to guide yourself around the world using real visual cues in-game.
Are there any secrets for the players to discover?
David: Yes there are huge secrets! Some are even very hard to find. So hard actually, that I don’t expect people to ever find them. Others are more obvious, and are supposed to be seen. For example: I’ve signed my name in the game, and I’ve got a little shout-out to the love of my life in there too, etched on a rock.
Are planning to release Platypus Adventures on PC?
David: PC for sure. I’m looking into some pretty big prospects, which could allow me to do a console release too however this would probably add at least another year of development time.
Follow the progress of Platypus Adventures on Twitter here and on the Discord channel here. For other interviews with game developers, check out our article here: Critter Cove: An In-Depth Interview on this Cute Adventure on the High-Seas. If you love Australian wildlife, check out these articles here: Dinkum – Explore an Island Inspired by the Wild Australian Outback and TY the Tasmanian Tiger Coming to Switch Thanks to Successful Kickstarter.
Aug 24, 2019News
Thanks to IGN’s live-streaming of Gamescom 2019 all week long, we have 15 minutes of gameplay footage to show you of the “cozy management game about dying” by developer Thunder Lotus Games; Spiritfarer. Today, Saturday, August 24th 2019, is the last day for Gamescom. El Hijo, Genesis Noir, Minute of Islands, Mosaic, and Unheard were nominated for Gamescom “Indie Award” by IGN here. El Hijo, a western stealth game we covered during E3 2019, was the winner! The winners of the expert jury’s decision announced during Opening Night Live can be found here.
Below in the video for Spiritfarer you play as the ferrymaster Stella accompanied by her feline furry friend Daffodil. We get to see a total of three spirit characters that request that their final wishes be fulfilled before they are ready to move on. In order to make them comfortable, you add little tiny homes via the Shipyard. You get to place these homes, according to that particular spirit’s needs, wherever you want on your boat. Example, the snake-like spirit, Summer, asks for a home with “a nice meditation room, with plants, and natural materials”. You advance the game by completing quests as Spirit Requests that consists of getting certain items or exploring new islands. One such island is Hummingberg Village. Also, we find it important to note that you can hug any of your spirit friends because it’s quite precious.
Spiritfarer will be releasing on Steam, Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch sometime in 2020. If you enjoyed watching this gameplay footage from Gamescom 2019, check out our articles here: Link’s Awakening Remake Footage at Gamescom and Two Point Hospital Reveals Close Encounters DLC.
Aug 24, 2019News
ENCODYA is a point-and-click adventure game set in a dystopian future by sole developer Nicola Piovesan, an award-winning filmmaker. What inspired him to create ENCODYA was the “creativity of Studio Ghibli, the setting and atmosphere of Blade Runner and the humor and game style of Monkey Island”. Although this reminds us of the 1999 animated film Iron Giant and we’re loving it. You can back this game on Kickstarter now, and for another 24 days, right here! The game will release for PC, Mac and Linux (Steam and GOG) with a plan to later port it for mobile and consoles.
It’s 2062. Tina – a 9 years old orphan – lives with SAM-53 – her big clumsy robot guardian – on a rooftop makeshift shelter in Neo-Berlin, a dark megalopolis controlled by corporations. The protagonist is an urban jungle kid, which has learned to live alone, scavenging dumpsters of the dystopian city, eking out a living of scraps. Her funny robot always with her, programmed to protect the girl no matter what.
Besides the game itself – with lots of bonus digital features such as wallpapers, concept arts, videos, soundtrack and more – there are many cool extras: film posters, blu-rays, t-shirt and even a retro style physical copy of ENCODYA in a box! But the most attractive rewards are the ones that will place the backers into the game itself! See your name in the Neo Berlin phonebook or on a neon sign, or be in a poster, or even become an NPC with whom the player can interact and talk!
Finally, the stretch goals are as follows: translation to 3 extra languages (Italian, German, Spanish), one extra hour of gameplay (new puzzles, locations, characters), and the last goal having yet to be revealed.
If you’re still unsure about backing this project, you can try out the demo here or see below for more details. For another point-and-click adventure game darker in tone, check out our article here: Roki: Explore A Dark Yet Wonderful World.
Aug 22, 2019News
During Gamescom 2019, publisher SEGA just announced their latest DLC “Close Encounters” for Two Point Hospital and it has aliens! Two Point Hospital is a tongue-in-cheek hospital sim builder developed by Two Point Studios. It’s still coming to all major consoles later this year but for now let’s look into this new Steam DLC which you can pre-purchase for August 29th, 2019! Moreover, you can even get it 10% off now until September 5th, 2019 right here. You won’t want to miss out on this DLC as it includes three new unusual hospitals set in different locations, 34 new illnesses (i.e. Lack of Humanity, Science Friction), three new cure rooms, as well as new challenges, and more!
Down in the town of Goldpan, rumours persist of an out of this world encounter. A fireball, witnessed streaking above the sandy climes of Two Point County’s Eastern reaches, is chief suspect after a range of unusual illnesses have caused strife, commotion and general unrest amongst the inhabitants of this oft-forgotten town. As an all-round medical supremo with a knack for tackling the unreal, your administration has operational access to some key locations in the area… including some areas the public really don’t need to know about. The Two Point Squabbler, the County’s finest journalistic institution, wants to know what’s going on… and you’re their ticket in.
SEGA went live at Gamescom 2019 today at 2PM CEST so you can catch up with their stream below which includes more details and gameplay footage of the Close Encounters DLC. Furthermore, for other gameplay footage from Gamescom this week, check out our articles here: Luigi’s Mansion 3 Gameplay Footage And More and Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated Gameplay Footage.
Aug 19, 2019News
The presentation of Kerbal 2 at Gamescom 2019 Opening Night Live surprised us! We were watching this very realistic-looking video of a rocket ship travelling through the stars, with some very serious music playing…and then all of a sudden these adorable bug-eyed little green dudes started piling out!
Described as a ‘space flight simulation game’, Kerbal Space Program 2 seems like quite the deceptive game. At first glance it appears to be very serious, but no game with a Kerbal in it could be all THAT solemn. They reminded us a little of the minions in Despicable Me. But they’re not minions…they’re Kerbonauts. And you can watch their trailer here:
The game will feature “Improved Onboarding”. We think that rocket science is not something you accidentally learn, but apparently that is how Kerbals do it. Accidentally! The game will have animated tutorials, a better user interface, and revamped assembly and flight instructions to make Kerbal 2 fun for experienced players and beginners alike.
You will also be able to build and use “next-gen” engines, fuel, parts…everything you need to be the best Kerbonaut and explore not only the entire Kerbolar System, but even beyond it! And NEW to the series are colonies. They are a challenge to build, and will also require you to gather resources to build stations, housing and other structures. But your colonies will grow and become advanced enough to support vehicle construction, furthering space exploration even more.
The better your spacecrafts, the more you will be able to explore. You can discover unique celestial bodies, such as “Ovin”, a massive ringed planet with intense gravity. Or perhaps “Rask and Rusk”, a pair of planets “locked in a dance of death” will be more to your interest!
Kerbal 2 will have modding that builds on what was available with the first game. And for the first time, multiplayer is also an option! Not much is known yet about multiplayer in Kerbal 2, but the official site assures us that we will learn more soon. The game will come to PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2020!
If you like seeing cute things in space, then have a look at our Astro Bears Review.
Aug 19, 2019News
We’ve been keeping an eye out for Cat Quest II ever since Gentlebros, the developers, have been teasing an announcement “coming soon” and we assumed it would be during Gamescom 2019. Not long after we’ve posted Nintendo’s Indie World indie games list, showing Cat Quest II coming this fall to the Switch, an announcement on Twitter was made! The game releases later this year in the fall on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on September 24th, 2019 on PC (Steam here)!
Cat Quest II is a fast-paced open-world action RPG where you play as both a cat and a dog cooperatively. Explore a massive world filled with monsters, dungeons and quests, as you strive to bring peace back to your kingdoms during a time of war! See below for the newly released announcement trailer! This sequel returns to the world of Felingard to expand on the original with more explosive spells, expanded weapon options, an exciting new character switch mechanic, and local co-op!
Opening Night Live will be announcing some more great games soon so stay tuned with us here at myPotatoGames! We’d also like to hear from you on what your favorite announcements have been so far and what games you are the most excited to play!
Aug 15, 2019News
TY the Tasmanian Tiger was a platform game developed by Krome Studios and published by EA Games back in 2002 and was available for the Nintendo GameCube, the PS2 and the Xbox. Three sequels were released shortly after on the same consoles and later ported to the Game Boy Advance. In 2016, a remaster was brought to PC (Steam). Now Krome Studios are back and in just three short days successfully completed their Kickstarter campaign and still going strong with over $100,000 in pledges at the time of writing. If you were a fan of these games growing up, head on over for some awesome rewards and stretch goals! We here at myPotatoGames are big fans of the nostalgic platforming games such as Crash Bandicoot/Team Racing and Spyro which already have their own remasters so it’s definitely been a great year for comebacks.
TY the Tasmanian Tiger HD is the remastered port from the PC with the improved the graphics and audio. With the Nintendo Switch digital port, if that’s your console of choice, you can use the new controls which will let you use the joy-cons like boomerangs to throw and glide! The Nintendo Switch version will also include the following (PS4 and Xbox will be getting the same upgrades minus the motion controls):
You are TY, the last of the Tasmanian Tigers. Raised by a family of Bilbies, you can only vaguely recall your real parents. You’ve always thought that all the other Tassie Tigers died a long time ago. But then the Bunyip Elder found you, and told you that your family is alive, but trapped in the Dreaming. Now hold your horses… don’t get upset… you see they’re not stuck there forever, if you’re up for a bit of an adventure! You see, deep in the Outback, there’s this kind of glowy portal thing that is a doorway to the Dreaming. And around that portal there are some carvings in the rock, where five ancient mystical Talismans used to lay. Now, all you have to do is find the five Talismans, put them in the carvings, and the portal to Dreaming will open!
Besides getting a digital copy of the game on the console of your choice and your name in the credits, there are many other exciting rewards to go for such as: a beautiful 155-page artbook, a digital, CD and limited edition LP record of the game’s soundtrack, Sly’s necklace, a mug of Maurie, TY’s sun-patterned board shorts, an animal character of your likeness in the game, and a TY statuette!
We Potatoes feel pretty confident that Krome Studios’ Stretch Goal of the digital PS4 and Xbox port since they’re almost there, but there’s also once last goal that has yet to be announced. Besides that, they’e reached their stretch goals for new TY skins on the Switch and a brand new TY adventure in digital comic form.
The Kickstarter campaign has another 20 days to go but notes that the digital console keys will be distributed to backers sometime during the first quarter of year 2020. If you’re interested in Australian-themed games, check out our article here: Dinkum – Explore an Island Inspired by the Wild Australian Outback.
Aug 9, 2019News
Quench is a story-driven puzzle game set in a colorful world. Help an adorable elephant to guide herds of animals while using the weather to your advantage. Quench is developed by Axon Interactive Inc., an indie studio based in Ontario, Canada. As of August 7th, 2019, you can purchase the game at the following locations: Nintendo Switch (North America), Nintendo Switch (Europe), Steam, and itch.io. Find out more about the game below and how you can help bring clean water to a community in need IRL.
Axon Interactive Inc. has announced on their Steam page the following: “We are proud to announce that $1 from all sales in the month of August will be donated to charity: water, an international non-for-profit organization whose mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. Up to $10,000 will be raised to fund a water project for a community in need, with real-time progress reported back to all players. We’re super excited to see what we can all make happen together.”
Become Shepherd, an avatar of nature, and guide herds of animals on a perilous journey. Each generation, the Elephant Tribe makes a grand pilgrimage. But this time, something is different… Help Shaman, the young Elephant leader, convince the other animal tribes to join her. Protect your herds as they are beset by flood, fire, drought, and the dark smokebeasts that have spread across the land. Control the environment to guide herds of animals and restore their home in this colourful narrative puzzle game!
For another great game with a great real-life cause, check out our article here: To The Rescue: A Little Help For Our Friends. Moreover, you can still make a pledge on their Kickstarter, which has officially been a success and now aiming for their stretch goals. Know that 20% of the profits of the game will go toward actual dog shelters!