In years past, the weekend following Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards is home to one of the biggest PlayStation-centered fan events of the year, PlayStation Experience. Fans from around the globe will gather together with members from Sony’s gaming ecosystem to celebrate all things PlayStation, and get a look at games ranging from large AAA publishers/developers, to small independent experiences. This past September however, Sony decided to take a year off from hosting PlayStation Experience, due to a lack of new content justifiable enough to host a major press event. With many small studios and development teams relying on the Sony event to showcase their upcoming projects, it looked as if there would be no metaphoric podium to spread the word.
Enter Kinda Funny. For those who aren’t familiar with the San Francisco based content creators, Kinda Funny is composed of multiple former IGN hosts and producers, including Greg Miller, Tim Gettys, and Nick Scarpino. Being so rooted with the PlayStation brand from his days as one of IGN’s PlayStation leads, Miller knew how important the fan event was to so many teams, big and small. This led him and his team to pick up the ball and run with it, creating their own showcase called the ‘Kinda Funny Games Showcase’ in hopes that smaller teams get the exposure they hoped to get from the annual PSX event.
The Kinda Funny Games Showcase aired yesterday, December 8th, advertising just under 70 games, from studios of all sizes. No restrictions were made on showcasing specific console exclusive games, resulting in a wide array of install bases being represented. With that being said, here are five games from the showcase that tickled our fancy and can’t wait to try out:
Operencia: The Stolen Sun
Developed by Zen Studios, known for their successful and quite popular Pinball FX series, comes Operencia: the Stolen Sun; a modern take on classic first-person dungeon-crawlers. With sprawling environments, and a vibrant art style, players will explore the mystical land of Operencia, solving puzzles and fighting their way through creatures and enemies of all shapes and sizes. Players will have the ability to grow their party of characters, with a multitude of specializations for each one. Turn-based combat gives players an element of strategy through various spells and skills, while also being paired with tile-based movement that encourages players to thoroughly explore each area. Operencia: The Stolen Sun is scheduled for a 2019 release date on Steam, with users being able to wishlist the game now. For more information, visit the game’s official site.
Falcon Age
From OuterLoop Games, comes Falcon Age; a first-person single-player action adventure title for PlayStation VR. Players will experiences Ara’s story, who is wrongfully thrown in jail for a minor offense during an invasion of machines. While serving her sentence, she befriends a young hawk, and together they find a way to escape imprisonment, and set off on a journey to reclaim humanity’s freedom from the machine overlords. You will learn to hunt, gather, and fight using the lost art of falcon hunting, using the PlayStation’s Move controllers. The game is built from the ground up with PlayStation VR technology in mind, but also offers a traditional playstyle on the PlayStation 4 with FPS controls. Falcon Age is set for a 2019 release window. For more information, check out their official website and official PlayStation page for updates on the upcoming release.
The Church in the Darkness
Can you find the truth behind the Collective Justice Mission? The Church in the Darkness, developed by Paranoid Productions, takes top-tier storytelling and combines it with the stealth, top-down combat from games such as Metal Gear Solid, and gives players complete control of almost every outcome. You play as Vic, a former police officer, who travels to South Africa to find his nephew Alex, who as joined the cult that is now stationed in Freedom Town. Your mission? Break into the compound and uncover what the Collective Justice Mission is truly up to. Players are granted complete control on how to handle encounters. Should you stealthy take out each guard, or intimidate your way through the village? The choice is yours; but remember, you must live with the consequences. The Church in the Darkness is scheduled for a 2019 release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC/Mac (Steam). For more information, visit Paranoid Production’s official page.
It Lurks Below
From David Brevik, the creator of the iconic Diablo series, comes It Lurks Below; a retro-styled, 2D, action-oriented, survival RPG. Think Terraria meets Diablo. Players will have the ability to create custom characters with a plethora of class choices to fit anyone’s playstyle. Whether you enjoy slashing your way through hordes of enemies, to summoning magic to fend off fiend, to long ranged attacks; there’s a character for you. The procedurally generated dungeons, multitude of seasons and depth below provide players hours upon hours of content, with randomized weapons and enemies to keep even the most grizzled of players on their toes. It Lurks Below is now available in an Early Access build on Steam. For more information, check out the game’s official page.
The Wild Eight
The Wild Eight, from HypeTrain Digital, provides a unique twist on the survival genre, giving players a compelling plot with a reliance on cooperating together. Pitting players in a top-down perspective in the frigid temperature of the Alaskan wilderness pushes players to work together to survive the night, along with uncover the mysterious plane crash that threw you into this predicament. The wilderness and wildlife aren’t your only worry; abandoned government labs and military bunkers sprinkle the environment, filled with fatal surprises. With traces and clues of experiments gone wrong, maybe the plane crash doesn’t seem so accidental. Can you uncover the secrets while trying to survive? The Wild Eight is available now in an Early Access build on Steam, with a full release set for March 2019, along with a console release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in August 2019. For more information, visit the game’s official site.
These are only a handful of the unique and interesting titles announced/updated in yesterday’s showcase that we are excited for. From surprise showings such titles as Sega’s Judgement coming to the west for the first time this summer and Skybound Game’s completion of Telltale’s the Walking Dead: the Final Season being updated, the Kinda Funny Games Showcase was one that truly is a major milestone for not only indie developers, but for content creators and their impact on the industry. To watch the showcase in its entirety, head over to Kinda Funny Games’s YouTube page to get filled in on all of the awesome projects shown yesterday.
For updates and coverage on the game’s announced this week, at both the Kinda Funny Games Showcase and the Game Awards 2018 , follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and keep it locked in at Bonus Accessory.
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