Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Most Recent: PC
Chasm will be released for PC, PS4, Vita on July 31
After more than five years in development, Bit Kid has announced that Chasm, their medieval-styled MetroidVania, will be released for the PC, PS4, and Vita on July 31.
In addition to the release date news, Chasm received a new trailer yesterday (embedded above), and Game Director James Petruzzi stopped by the PlayStation Blog to discuss the game’s lengthy development process:
One distinctive feature of Chasm is that the world map is procedurally generated when you start up a new campaign. That feature has led to a lot of questions and confusion, so I’d like to address exactly how it works and why we designed it that way. The latter part is easy to answer. Our entire team is composed of Metroidvania fans. Whether it’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Axiom Verge, we’ve played through our favorite games so often that we’ve long since memorized the maps. We love how those games play but wish we could wipe our memories so we could get that experience of exploration all over again. It’s our hope that people who love Chasm the way we love our favorite games can play it over and over and still have it feel fresh. But at the same time, people who only play the game once should have no idea that there’s anything procedural about it.
But that’s not to say that everything’s completely random; there is a fundamental structure to the game that never changes. If you’re familiar with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night you may recall that first you get the Jewel of Open, then the Leap Stone, then the Soul of Bat – in that order. As you get these upgrades, new areas of the map become accessible. Chasm, like most titles in this vein, follows this structure. When you start up a campaign, the game always has these key upgrades and plot points in the same place.
What’s different is how you get from one key point to the other. Chasm has a bunch of pre-designed rooms that are slotted in modularly in different combinations. So you won’t have any rooms that feel like they were designed by a computer. Instead, you’ll encounter rooms in a different order and even encounter new rooms you never saw the first time, and your path will be different each time you start up a new campaign.
Chasm will be priced at $19.99 when it launches later this month.
The end is nigh… Darksiders III will launch on November 27
The end is almost nigh. Six long years after the release of Darksiders II, THQ Nordic has announced that the franchise’s apocalyptic story will finally continue on November 27 with the launch of Darksiders III.
Darksiders III is currently in the final stages of development for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One at Gunfire Games, and this time around, players will be able to take control of Fury (known as Famine in biblical literature) as she does battle with the Seven Deadly Sins:
Return to an apocalyptic Earth in Darksiders III, a hack-n-slash action-adventure where players assume the role of Fury in her quest to hunt down and dispose of the Seven Deadly Sins. The most unpredictable and enigmatic of the Four Horsemen, Fury must succeed where many have failed… to bring balance to the forces that now ravage Earth.
Players interested in spending a few extra dollars on their Darksiders III experience will also get the chance to purchase one of two limited editions. The publisher will pack the Collector’s Edition ($149.99) with a copy of the game, a Figurine of Fury, an Artbook, a Soundtrack, an Exclusive Armor DLC pack, and a Steelbook case. According to THQ Nordic, all of these items will be housed in a Premium Box.
But those with deep pockets might want to consider the Apocalypse Edition ($399.99), which will include everything from the Collector’s Edition, as well as a Wall Scroll, an Amulet (with necklace), and three additional Figurines (Vulgrim, War, and Death).
A pair of trailers highlighting the contents of the Collector’s Edition and the Apocalypse Edition can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Darksiders III
NASCAR Heat 3’s launch gets the green light on September 7
704 Games has announced that NASCAR Heat 3 is coming back for another lap on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The stock car racing sequel will once again be developed by Monster Games, and it’ll be released on September 7.
In NASCAR Heat 3, players will be able to put the pedal to the metal on eight dirt road tracks in the brand new Xtreme Dirt Tour mode. Other new features set to be included in the game are “a deeper career mode, additional race tracks, and expanded online multiplayer including online tournaments.” Players will also be able to manage their own race teams as an owner in the game for the first time.
The drivers from Hendrick Motorsports (Chase Elliott, William Byron, Jimmie Johnson and Alex Bowman) have been picked as NASCAR Heat 3’s cover athletes, and a debut trailer for the game has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged NASCAR Heat 3
Deep Silver offers a small update on Dead Island 2’s development
Dead Island 2 has been killed and resurrected a few times since it was first announced back in 2014, with Deep Silver originally eyeing a Spring 2015 launch for the first-person sequel. But the game dropped off the radar completely that same year, and the publisher only eventually emerged to reveal that Dead Island 2 was no longer in the hands of original developer Yager.
Since then, Dead Island 2 was brought back to life by Sumo Digital, though concrete details have still been pretty hard to come by. But yesterday, we got a small update (via Twitter) about the sequel alongside the launch of mobile spinoff Dead Island: Survivors…
Dead Island 2 is still in development and we will share more on this at a later stage.
— Dead Island (@deadislandgame) July 4, 2018
That statement doesn’t stray too far from the ones that Deep Silver delivered in 2016 and 2017, but it’s nice to know that the Dead Island 2 is still in development somewhere.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Dead Island 2
New Battle Princess Madelyn trailer shows off the game’s updated stages
The developers at Causal Bit Games are still working hard on Battle Princess Madelyn, their modern-day homage to the retro stylings of Capcom’s Super Ghouls N Ghosts, and earlier this week they unveiled a brand new trailer featuring “updated stages, collecting weaponry, and armor shards from the cursed chests.”
The developer also posted a new update to Battle Princess Madelyn’s Kickstarter campaign, detailing a few more changes and additions that have been made to the game in the last month:
The final boss was redrawn and redesigned a few times. Nothing was feeling epic enough. Following the story too close wasn’t cutting it, it started as a rival sorceress girl the same age and size as Maddi, but the first half of the fight felt too plain and samey. I worked with Maddi a few times on how the last boss should look overall. There was a giant zombie woman head, dragon snake things, and I can’t even remember what else now. This one has been redone over and over for the better part of a year. But finally I got a clear head about it, and we sat down and came up with something amazing! We aren’t going to show that obviously but we’re not that far away from you seeing it yourselves!
Creative Director Christopher Obritsch also discussed rather scary-sounding heath issue towards the end of the post and everyone at Warp Zoned wishes him a speedy recovery.
Battle Princess Madelyn will be released sometime soon (but we don’t know exactly when) for the PC, PS4, Switch, Vita, Wii U, and Xbox One.
The Games of July 2018
What can you say about the month of July? Game publishers routinely put their biggest releases on ice for the Summer months, and gamers are forced to pair hot dogs and fireworks with a handful of B-grade offerings. But there’s always a few titles that rise above the rest, and this July is no different. Whether it’s a new RPG from Square Enix, or a big batch of re-releases on new platforms, there’s actually plenty to discover this month.
What;s the Warp Zoned staff looking forward to this July? You can find out, and view the release schedule for all of this month’s new games, after the break. (more…)
Posted in Features, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged 20XX, Flashback, No Man's Sky, Octopath Traveler
Giannis “The Greek Freak” Antetokounmpo is the cover athlete for NBA 2K19
Giannis Antetokounmpo has been making life difficult for play-by-play announcers since his NBA debut in 2013. But “The Greek Freak” has also built up an impressive highlight reel over the years, and 2K Games had plenty of reasons to select him as the official cover athlete for NBA 2K19. The publisher’s basketball simulation is celebrating its 20th anniversary this Fall, and Antetokounmpo will be the first international player featured on the cover.
“I am honored to be the first international player featured on the cover of NBA 2K19,” said Antetokounmpo. “I love playing NBA 2K so this means a lot to me. I have worked hard to earn recognition in the NBA and being on the cover of NBA 2K19 is a dream come true.”
You can sneak a peek at Antetokounmpo’s NBA 2K19 cover in the short trailer embedded above.
NBA 2K19 will be released for the PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One on September 11. Fans who pre-order the basketball sim will receive a few in-game bonuses including 5,000 Virtual Currency, 10 MyTeam Packs, and a Giannis Antetokounmpo Sapphire MyTeam Card. But players looking to get a head start in MyCareer can download the NBA 2K19: The Prelude demo for the PS4 and Xbox One beginning on August 31.
And in case you missed it, 2K Games previously announced that the Lakers-bound Lebron James will be the cover athlete for the 20th Anniversary Edition, which will come packaged with even more in-game items when it launches on September 7.
Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 remake wins “Best of Show” at E3 2018 from Game Critics Awards
The “media and influencer outlets” represented by the Game Critics Awards have selected this year’s Best of E3 winners. Capcom crawled away with “Best of Show” thanks to the Resident Evil 2 remake.
Meanwhile, Media Molecule’s Dreams won “Best Original Game,” while fellow Sony stablemate Marvel’s Spider-Man won “Best Console Game” and “Best Action/Adventure Game.” The Game Critics Awards honored a rather diverse slate of games this year, giving “Best PC Game” to BioWare’s Anthem, “Best AR/VR Game” to Tetris Effect, and “Best RPG” to Kingdom Hearts III.
Unsurprisingly, the massively-popular Super Smash Bros. Ultimate took home “Best Fighting Game.”
Among non-playable games, a “Special Commendation for Graphics” was awarded to CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II, and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima. The Last of Us Part II also received a “Special Commendation for Sound” and Cyberpunk 2077 also collected a “Special Commendation for Innovation.”
The full list of winners can be found after the break. (more…)