News by Lindsay M. and Matt S.
Welcome to Digitally Downloaded’s regular catch-up news feature. With each issue we will bring you the best news that you may have missed. Grab the biggest mug you’ve got, fill it with your favourite brew, and catch up with us (and our favourite news anchor, Dee Dee)!
THQ Nordic is in real danger of becoming our favourite western publisher with the games it keeps signing up
By Matt S., Editor-in-Chief
THQ Nordic (previously Nordic Games) has gone from being a super niche publisher of very questionable games to a publisher with a real eye for a range of niche and high quality games indeed. After acquiring THQ’s assets it’s brought us de Blob and brought Darksiders back from the brink. It’s experimented with stuff like Elex (which was anything but a well-received game, but I loved it)… and now it has made its biggest signing yet.
Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity was everything that a old school RPG fan like myself could have wanted. In all but name it was Baldur’s Gate, sharing a similar approach to storytelling, similar aesthetics, similar combat style… similar everything, really. And THQ Nordic has signed up to distribute the sequel — Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire — worldwide.
Currently the game is set for release on PC, Mac, and Linux (a PS4 port would be really appreciated!). There’s no release date or price at this stage. Now that the game has a publisher I suspect all that information will come thick and fast now. Good on THQ Nordic for its continued rise.
Downwell creator announces new job in Tweet
News by Lindsay M., News Editor
Despite its initial release being back in 2015, Downwell remains one of the most popular mobile titles; it even got a console release. It is an insanely difficult, twitchy-reflex-needing arcade game that our Editor-in-chief Matt enjoyed despite the genre not being his usual cup of tea. So what’s up next for its creator?
任天堂に就職しました！がんばるぞ〜— もっぴん (@moppppin) January 23, 2018
Translated, Orijo Fumoto’s Tweet says, “I got a job at Nintendo. I’ll do my best!”
Start the rumour mills! Does this mean Downwell is coming to the Switch? Will he be creating a sequel? A brand new title? Who knows!
There’s another Final Fantasy headed to mobile, and this one is… odd
By Matt S., Editor-in-Chief
Final Fantasy Awakening looks like it could be Final Fantasy Type-0… and that’s because in a sense it is. It uses the same characters and same art assets. But this isn’t Final Fantasy Type-0 — it’s a free-to-play mobile Final Fantasy, developed by Chinese developers, Oasis Games.
It’s also a game you probably haven’t played yet, if you’re reading DigitallyDownloaded.net and you’re a native English speaker. To date the game has been available only in China, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. But now — and this is where the news comes in — it’s going global.
It’ll be released for iOS and Android in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, India, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar first up in early 2018, and from there one assumes the rest of the world. There’s a trailer which you can see above which doesn’t offer much by way of gameplay, but from screenshots and the like it looks like it’ll be a fairly pacey action JRPG, but truth be told all I really care about is having another opportunity to play with Rem. Oh Rem…
Death Coming… coming to mobile!
News by Lindsay M., News Editor
I last spoke about Death Coming in a catch-up last September and since then it’s been released on PC via Steam and received well over 1,000 positive reviews. But I had a big problem with that; namely, my PC like to eat its own brains on a regular basis and requires several days and losing a lot of data to get running again. As such, PC games are generally a no-go for me. But I’ve been thinking about Death Coming ever since then, and I am absolutely thrilled to hear/share that the title will be released to mobile platform(s) next month. Here’s a trailer, courtesy of TouchArcade:
In the game, you die. But death is just the beginning, not the end — Death needs you to become a reaper. Reapers are responsible for causing the untimely death of humans by using the environment around them. Juxtaposed with the colourful pixel graphics, such a dark theme becomes bearable and even humourous.
The world in Death Coming is filled with NPCs. You don’t have to kill them all — I think — but if you try and fail their life will now reflect their near-death experience. The deaths must be strategic, as if you’re not careful angels will get in the way and rescue the humans. By examining daily routines, you can determine the best way to complete your task. My fingers are twitching in anticipation!
