Fans of Donut Country creator Ben Esposito won’t have to wait much longer to play his new game. At Summer Game Fest, Annapurna Interactive announced Neon White is launching on June 16th on both PC and Nintendo Switch. Alongside news of a release date, the publisher also shared a new gameplay trailer, showcasing the game’s unusual mix of platforming and card-based shooting. Engadget senior editor Jessica Conditt interviewed Esposito about the game last March and came away excited to play it.
NASA plans to study unidentified objects in the sky
NASA wants a deeper understanding of the many unexplained, flying objects that appear in the sky. The agency is assembling a study team this fall to observe UFOs, now known as UAPS (unidentified aerial phenomena). While it may be tempting to think of U…
‘Goat Simulator 3’ is coming to PC, Xbox and PlayStation this fall
Publisher Coffee Stain is dipping its hooves back into the world of livestock-based chaos. Goat Simulator 3 was announced during Thursday’s Summer Game Fest showcase. It’s coming to Xbox, PlayStation and Epic Games Store this fall.
As fans of the series will expect, it’s an open-world adventure game. You’ll headbutt and lick anything and everything as you triple-jump across the island of San Angora, which is packed with fresh areas, challenges and events. There’s four-player couch and online co-op. You’ll be able to explore the island together and butt heads in seven minigames.
You’ll be able to customize your goat with gear that enhances their abilities. You can kit them out with questionable fashion choices like tea trays and toilet rolls, or skip to the inevitable and slap a jetpack on their back.
‘Stormgate’ is a new free-to-play RTS from the director of ‘Starcraft 2’
In 2020, Starcraft 2 production director Tim Morten left Blizzard to start Frost Giant Studios. At Summer Game Fest, he finally showed off what he and his team have been working on for the past two years. We got our first look at Stormgate, a new free-to-play real-time strategy game that runs on Unreal Engine 5. Morten didn’t share too many details on the project but said the game would feature two races at launch.
Frost Giant features some serious talent. In addition to Morten, former Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne campaign designer Tim Campbell is part of the team working on Stormgate. Frost Giant plans to begin beta testing the game next year.
‘Routine’ is back from the dead to murder you with robots
Nearly full, honest decade after it was first shown off at Gamescom 2012, Lunar Software and Raw Fury made an appearance at Summer Game Fest 2022 to show off the new trailer for the long-awaited space survival horror, Routine.Set in an abandoned and de…
Twitter’s new tweet reporting tools are now available to everyone
Twitter’s newly improved tweet-reporting tools are now available to everyone on the platform. The company first began testing the new process for reporting harmful tweets in December, saying it was trying to take a “people first” approach that would make it easier to flag tweets.
Previously, Twitter’s reporting process required users to navigate a series of menus in order to identify the specific rule they believed had been broken. The process was confusing, even for those familiar with Twitter’s policies, and often resulted in problematic tweets not being properly flagged.
The revamped process instead begins each report by asking users to describe “what happened,” rather than prompting them to guess which rule may have been broken. It also makes it easier to report tweets in which someone else is being targeted, and gives users more options for reporting hate speech.
That simplified approach is already paying off, according to Twitter. The company says the new reporting process has resulted in a 50 percent increase in “actionable reports” since it began testing six months ago.
‘The Callisto Protocol’ gameplay trailer is as bloody as you’d expect
After a moody first trailer, Striking Distance Studios, a team made up of former Dead Space developers, has released new gameplay footage from its upcoming survival horror title, The Callisto Protocol. Shown off during Summer Game Fest, the clip was captured on current generation hardware, according to host Geoff Keighley. The trailer sees the game’s protagonist fight their way through a claustrophobic environment using an arsenal that will be familiar to any Dead Space fan. Their primary weapon maims enemies in much the same way Isaac’s Plasma Cutter did Necromorphs. The protagonist also has access to a telekinesis ability that allows them to use the environment to deadly effect.
Striking Distance Studios will release The Callisto Protocol on December 2nd, about two months before EA’s Dead Space remake arrives on January 27th, 2023.
‘Aliens: Dark Descent’ is a single-player, squad-based action game coming in 2023
There’s a new entry in the xenomorph video game catalog, this one called Aliens: Dark Descent. It’s due out in 2023 from French studio Tindalos Interactive, Focus Entertainment and 20th Century Games. It’ll come to PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series consoles and PC.
Aliens: Dark Descent is a single-player, squad-based action game. Here’s how the game’s YouTube description reads: “Drop into an original Alien story where players will lead a squad of marines in real-time combat against the deadliest creature mankind has ever faced.”
Players will be able to customize their team’s weapons, armor and abilities, but the xenomorphs will adapt to these decisions. These space monsters are no idle threat, either — in this game, death is permanent for your squad.
“Embark on high stakes missions in treacherous territory, all the while gathering resources to fix up the stranded Otago spacecraft and researching tech upgrades for your crew,” the description continues. “Players will command a squad as one unit thanks to intuitive controls, allowing their Marines to automatically prioritize and execute complex actions in real-time, based on their respective skill sets and the environment around them.”
The new game made its debut with a cinematic trailer during the Summer Game Fest kickoff stream. In fact, it was the first game shown off in the entire show, which must make it feel nice and special.
The trailer shows a squad of Marines hunting and being hunted by a handful of xenomorphs, complete with plenty of gunfire, creeping monsters and interpersonal betrayal.
Polestar begins delivery on 65,000 rental vehicle order for Hertz
Hertz customers in select cities nationwide will soon have the opportunity to rent a Polestar 2. The EV automaker announced Thursday that it has delivered the first batch of some 65,000 vehicles to the Rental corporation as part of a deal struck between the two in April.
“Our partnership with Hertz is an exciting milestone that provides the opportunity for a significant number of potential new customers to experience an EV for the first time, and it will be in a Polestar,” Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO, said in a prepared statement. “With over 55,000 Polestar cars already on the road across our 25 live markets there is no doubt that our brand is growing at an incredible pace.”
Polestar is quick to point out that this deal is one of the largest single EV purchases in history, a not so subtle dig at rival Tesla which, last October, supposedly had its own deal with Hertz for a whopping 100,000 Model 3s. However, that agreement failed to get beyond Hertz’ press release as Tesla CEO Elon Musk subsequently tweeted that “no contract has been signed yet” and the whole deal fizzled from there.
In addition to the Polestar 2s, Hertz will also be acquiring a select number of Polestar 1s, giving its customers a hybrid option to choose from as well. As a Polestar rep told Engadget, the metro areas of “Seattle, LA, Burbank and Orange County CA, San Diego, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Miami, Islip NY, and Newark NJ” will all be among the first to receive the new EVs.
The makers of ‘What the Golf’ are back with VR game ‘What the Bat’
Triband, the studio behind early Apple Arcade standout What the Golf, is back with a new game on a completely different platform. What the Bat is a virtual reality title that’s coming to Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR headsets later this year
It looks like another ridiculous physics-based game where part of the fun is in figuring out what exactly is going on in each of the more than 100 levels. This time around, you’ll have baseball bats for hands and you’ll use them for cooking, petting a dog, painting, playing pinball, pickling, parking and brushing your teeth. Although What the Bat isn’t really a baseball game, you will still get to do some batting too.