Author: Trafficblast

Double Fine has developed a veritable bucketload of games since Tim Schafer founded the studio back in 2000. From Brutal Legend to Iron Brigade, Broken Age, and the upcoming Psychonauts 2, just to name a few. In 2014, the studio branched out and started a publishing arm as a way to help indie developers and provide their games with more exposure, with Double Fine taking a cut of the revenue in return.

This might not happen for too much longer, however. Microsoft acquired the studio earlier this year, potentially rendering the Double Fine Presents label redundant. “How Double Fine Presents will evolve is kind of an unknown,” Schafer said in a recent interview with Destructoid. “It doesn’t make sense to do exactly the kind of publishing stuff if we can’t do it–like if the platforms are limited. From a business sense, I don’t know if it structurally makes sense to have a publisher within [another publisher]. It’s a complicated issue.”

Despite this, Schafer expressed a desire to continue helping indie devs in any way they can. “If you go back to why Double Fine Presents existed, a lot of it came about because there’s so many games and it’s really hard for any individual game now to get a lot of attention for itself,” Schafer explained. “We’ve been through a lot of deals, seen how they happen, how platform-holders operate, how the press works–all these different things that maybe a first-time indie dev doesn’t know about. We thought we could help them with that and also kind of pick our favorite games and give them more exposure. Whether or not we’re still hands-on publishing those games ourselves, we can still be fulfilling that mission of just helping indie devs even though we’re a part of Microsoft.”

To Microsoft’s credit, Xbox Studios boss Matt Booty said the company would consider allowing some of its studios to release games on competing consoles on a case-by-case basis. When asked directly if Microsoft would allow Double Fine to release future titles on platforms that compete with Xbox, Booty replied, “Yeah, I think we would.”

Even if this doesn’t come to fruition, Schafer expressed a desire to continue helping indie devs in other ways. “We can also still do things like Day of the Devs which is another part of Double Fine Presents that helps elevate 70 or 80 games,” he continued. “We let people come meet those developers and play those games, and it’s free to the public. It’s a great way to approach that same mission, and we can still do that without officially putting our name on it and taking a share of the revenue. We don’t have to do that anymore.”

Knights & Bikes is the most recent game to be published by Double Fine Presents. The charming cooperative adventure from Foam Sword Games was a hit with David Wildgoose, who said, “Knights & Bikes is a wonderfully warm, effortlessly inviting experience that’ll make you feel young again,” in GameSpot’s review. Whether this is the last indie game Double Fine publishes remains to be seen, but whatever the case, it sounds like the studio will continue to support indie creators and give their games the platform and exposure they need to succeed.

All September long, IGN is highlighting the best TV coming your way in the 2019-2020 season. Today we’re taking an early look at Supergirl: Season 5. The new season will introduce multiple new threats to National City, as the sinister organization Leviathan makes its presence known and Lena Luthor finally comes to terms with the fact that her best friend is secretly Supergirl. Season 5 also introduces Supergirl’s new costume and features the departure of Mehcad Brooks’ James Olsen. 

IGN has an exclusive new image from Supergirl’s Season 5 premiere, “Event Horizon.” Check it out below:

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Microsoft has recently been striving for more accessibility in games, releasing the Xbox Adaptive Controller last year to give people with disabilities a viable way to play both PC and Xbox games. Gears 5 is the company’s biggest game of the year, and marks the first in-house production to really focus on being as approachable and accessible as possible.

The Coalition’s hard work has certainly paid off. Can I Play That, a site dedicated to reviewing video game accessibility options, has awarded Gears 5 a perfect score for including comprehensive options for deaf players and those that are hard of hearing. “Readers, you are about to see something I don’t think we’ve ever been able to do before in all of our years of Deaf/hoh accessibility reviews,” Courtney Craven’s review says. “What follows isn’t so much a review as it’s a series of ‘Look at all the things they got so very right.’ Because what they got right is everything. There’s not a single thing I can say needs improving in terms of Gears 5’s Deaf/hoh accessibility.”

The praise starts with how Gears 5 presents all of these options, with the first screen in the game letting you toggle subtitles and select text size before any gameplay or cutscenes begin. The subtitles themselves are lauded for being incredibly information-inclusive and unique compared to what you typically see in games. Subtitles not only relay spoken dialogue, but also tell you if a character is speaking off-camera (like over a radio), spell out various sound effects, and indicate what the speaker sounds like, including the non-speaking noises they make.

The most eye-opening aspect of Gears 5’s subtitles, however, is the fact that they let you know when the combat music stops. This is something most of us take for granted, with the soothing silence indicating that all of the enemies in a combat encounter are dead. Can I Play That says this is the first time a video game has indicated this to Deaf/hoh players.

There are additional accessibility options that extend to visuals and gameplay, too. There’s a damage indicator that makes it clear where you’re taking damage from, and readable bullet tracers let you know who’s shooting at you. All of the buttons can be remapped, which is particularly useful for those using non-standard controllers, and the chat function in online multiplayer has both text to speech and speech to text options. “Gears 5 is essentially a masterclass in Deaf/hoh accessibility,” Can I Play That’s review concludes. “Everything we’ve been harping about games lacking and therefore made more difficult for Deaf/hoh players to play has been implemented and in the six years I’ve been doing these reviews, damn it feels good to feel like, hey, people have been listening.”

Gears 5 has also received praise from the LGBTQ+ community for its inclusiveness. There are 19 pride banners you can choose to equip in multiplayer. When you’ve earned a commendation, your banner will be displayed behind your character at the end of the match, meaning you can share your love of robotics and Sea of Thieves, or proudly state your identity with pride flags including bisexual, polysexual, non-binary, and many more. Twitter user @ashiinu first pointed out the colourful new additions.

Gears 5 launches on September 10 for Xbox One and PC, though those with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate can download it today. In the meantime, you can check out GameSpot’s review in progress, find out what all of the critics are saying, see what Cliff Bleszinski thinks of the cover, peruse some Gears-inspired jewellery, and discover how you can play it for just $1.

The Legend of Bum-Bo, the long-awaited prequel to indie success The Binding of Isaac, is finally launching on November 12. Edmund McMillen and the team behind Super Meat Boy and The End is Nigh are going in a very different direction with the much-anticipated prequel.

While The Binding of Isaac was a top-down roguelike with twin-stick shooting and pixel art, The Legend of Bum-Bo adopts turn-based combat with a match-four-style puzzle system that’s set in a grubby papercraft world. You play as the titular Bum-Bo–who was previously a passive item in The Binding of Isaac–and must traverse through procedurally generated dungeons, lining up glyphs from a bag of trash to attack, defend, and cast various spells. You can check out the trailer for yourself below.

McMillan first announced the “turn-based puzzle RPG type thingy” back in 2016. It was originally scheduled to arrive in 2017 but has suffered through multiple delays since. Now it looks set to arrive on November 12 for PC and Mac, with iOS and Nintendo Switch versions due some time later.