John Romero and Adrian Carmack return to their FPS roots with Blackroom 

John Romero’s about make make you his… sorry, force of habit. The Doom co-creator has done more for the image of the “rock star game developer” than almost anybody, and he’s back with Blackroom, a “visceral, action-packed first person shooter set in a holographic simulation gone rogue.”

Blackroom is in development at Romero’s new studio, Night Work Games, and it’ll follow a near-future engineer as he investigates anomalies in his company’s holographic simulator. Because of the ever-changing nature of the Blackroom, players will be able to visit a variety of locales including “military sims, hellish infernos, and interstellar space” in both single-player and co-op campaigns.

Romero launched a Kickstarter campaign and also enlisted fellow id co-founder Adrian Carmack to handle the art design. The developers have already raised $100,000 in pledged funds and they’re seeking a total of only $700,000. After spending millions on the development of Daikatana, Romero has cut way back for Blackroom, but he’s also partnered with an unnamed publisher who will provide addition monetary support if the campaign is fully funded.

Blackroom is still early in development, but Romero already has a vision for how he wants the final game to look and that includes support for online multiplayer, dedicated servers, mods, map creation, and a single-player Challenge Mode. Romero has also promised to spearhead the level design personally and he’s hired guitarist George Lynch to provide a metal-influenced soundtrack.

There is a lot more information about Blackroom’s story and Romero’s plan for the future of the game on the Kickstarter page. And if all goes well, Romero wants to launch Blackroom in Winter 2018 exclusively for the PC. So let’s see if this rock star has one last encore in him.

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I Am Setsuna will be released for PC, PS4 on July 19

Square Enix released a new teaser trailer for I Am Setsuna over the weekend, and they also announced that the Chrono Trigger-inspired RPG will be released for the PC and PS4 on July 19.

Developed by Tokyo RPG Factory, an internal studio at Sqaure Enix tasked with creating new games in classic styles, I Am Setsuna will also explore traditional RPG storytelling techniques:

I Am Setsuna tells the sorrowful story of Setsuna, a young woman of incredible inner strength, and the sacrifice she must undertake to the save the people of her land. Players will be immersed in an emotional and unforgettable story of true bravery as Setsuna leaves her hometown with her bodyguards on a journey to the farthest land.

Square Enix recently released new artwork and screenshots for I Am Setsuna, and they can all be found at the game’s official website.

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Mira will join Killer Instinct Season 3 this week… so here’s a trailer

After adding a skeleton guy, a fire guy, an ice guy, a mummy, and many more to Killer Instinct, Iron Galaxy has finally reached “vampire” on the Great Wheel of Archetypal Characters. But the vampire in question is Mira, and as Maya’s sister, she’s definitely connected to the fighting game’s overarching story.

PAX East 2016 attendees got the chance to try out Mira this weekend at Iron Galaxy’s booth, and the developer was livestreaming new footage of her all weekend long. They also released a brand new trailer for the character, which has been embedded above.

Mira will be available to download sometime this week as part of Killer Instinct’s “Season 3.” Her appearance will be followed by Gargos next month, and two mystery characters in June and July (though one is heavily rumored to be General RAAM from Gears of War.

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See Higgins Haven from Friday the 13th Part 3 in the new Friday the 13th game

Developers from Gun Media and Illfonic were in attendance at PAX East on Friday to give congoers (and the rest of the world) their first real look at Friday the 13th: The Game. So snuggle up in your sleeping bag and sit around the fiery glow of your monitor as you watch Jason knock half a dozen times during a “Door Kill.”

During the one-hour panel, Gun Media’s Randy Greenback said that players should expect this kind of brutality from the slasher icon: “Jason will get stronger as the match progresses… We don’t want this game to be fair at all.”

The trailer also revealed a brand new location for the game… Higgins Haven from Friday the 13th Part 3. If you remember, the Higgins Haven barn is where Jason first became a hockey mask aficionado after replacing his tattered (and rather unfashionable) burlap sack. Because blueprints don’t exist for the farmhouse, the developers rewatched the film “hundreds of times” so they could recreate it exactly for the game.

In development for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One, Friday the 13th: The Game is still on track for an October 2016 release. You can find an extended version of the “Hide and Seek” trailer, which the developers also premiered during the panel, after the break.

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Deathstate is coming to the PS4 and Xbox One

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Deathstate, a “single-stick shooter” with a Lovecraftian motif from Workinman Games, is in development for the PS4 and Xbox One. We learned this little bit of news after stopping by the developer’s booth during this weekend’s PAX East expo, and we were also told it should be out by the end of the year.

Originally released last year for the PC, that is literally all we know about Deathstate’s upcoming move to consoles.

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Weekly Warp-Up: Greetings From PAX East 2016

No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…

The Warp Zoned staff is in Massachusetts this weekend for the biggest gaming expo in the northeast… PAX East. Our dedicated PAX East 2016 page is the best close to go for all the latest news and views from the show floor, and don’t forget to check back in with us next week for the unveiling of this year’s PAXpocalypse List, our annual look at the best games from the Boston show.

And you can find plenty of news from earlier this week after the break.

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20XX will exit Early Access this Summer and come to PS4/Xbox One by end of the year

20XX is currently available on Steam through Early Access (the latest trailer for the beta version is embedded above), but we learned the final version should be finished sometime this Summer. We spoke to Zack Urtes, the Art Director at Batterystaple Games, during this weekend’s PAX East expo, and he shared that the team also plans to bring their Mega Man-like platformer to the PS4 and Xbox One by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the show floor, Capcom continued to ignore the Mega Man franchise.

UPDATE: Urtes may have jumped the arm cannon with his comments. Batterystaple’s Chris King told us the team isn’t ready to confirm a final release date or a possible PS4/Xbox One launch:

We have no official release date, and while we’re very interested in coming to XB1/PS4 and are exploring what it’d take to do so, we’re nowhere near ready to talk about when that might happen.

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New Retail Releases: Tales From the Borderlands, Pokemon Rumble World, Sega 3D Classics Collection, More

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There’s just a handful of new games to close out the month of April, and we’ve seen a lot of them before.

Starting things off this week is a collected edition of Telltale’s Tales From the Borderlands. Bundling together all five episodes, Rhys and Fiona’s excellent Pandoran adventure will be available for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Moving on, this week also features a retail release of Pokemon Rumble World, which was previously available through the 3DS eShop as a “Free-To-Start” title. This new version of the overhead arena brawler will ditch the microtransactions while still including more than 700 Toy Pokemon.

Sticking with the 3DS, Sega has bundled together a number of their 3D Classics re-releases for the retail-only Sega 3D Classics Collection. The package features a ton of Genesis and Master System favorites including Sonic The Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Galaxy Force II, Thunder Blade, Fantasy Zone II, Fantasy Zone II W, Power Drift, Puyo Puyo 2, and Maze Walker.

Finally this week, NIS America will release Stranger of Sword City, a turn-based RPG, for the Vita; while Nordic Games will publish Battle World: Kronos, a turn-based strategy game, for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

We’ll be back throughout the week with a look at the newest additions to the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, and Wii U eShop.

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