Niantic is implementing a new referral system in Pokemon Go. The feature will first be tested in Australia before being rolled out to other parts of the world, and it’ll dole out rewards when you refer new players to the game.
As Niantic explains on the official Pokemon Go blog, when you refer friends through the new system, both of you will receive rewards in the game such as Rare Candy, Incubators, and specific Pokemon encounters. The friends you refer can either be entirely new to the game or lapsed players who are returning after a while.
We’re excited to announce that a referral program will soon be coming to Pokémon GO! Invite friends to join you on your Pokémon GO journey and earn rewards as they achieve milestones on their adventures! Learn more: https://t.co/tl52ydbTNtpic.twitter.com/WZuheB8Z9i
Niantic hasn’t announced when the referral program will officially launch, but the studio says it will send out referral codes to players in Australia first as it tests out and fine-tunes the feature.
In other Pokemon Go news, Niantic has recently kicked off the game’s newest content season, the Season of Legends. As part of the new season, a Searching for Legends event is underway until March 14. On top of featuring increased spawns of Rock, Steel, and Ground Pokemon, this event gives players their first chance to catch a Shiny Nosepass in the game.
Niantic is following that with a Beldum Incense Day on March 14, while the Electric Pokemon-themed Charge Up event kicks off on March 16. That event will introduce two new Pokemon forms to Raids. Mega Manectric will make its debut in Mega Raids, while Therian Forme Thundurus will appear in five-star Raids for the first time.
Roku has confirmed the premiere date for its first ever original show. The action-drama Cypher hits the ad-supported Roku Channel on March 19, and the trailer has been released.
The series focuses on an cryptanalyst named Will Scott, who is recruited by the FBI to decipher a mysterious coded document. The trailer reveals that Scott is supposedly dead and leading a shadowy secret existence, but when he finds that the document is a hitlist with his name on it, things get very dangerous. Australian actor Martin Dingle Wall plays Scott, and it looks like a slick mix of explosions, code-cracking, and family melodrama. Check the trailer out below.
All seven episodes of Cypher will be released simultaneously onto the Roku Channel, which is free for anyone in the US or Canada with a Roku device. The series also stars Jaclyn Hales (Legion), Mary Helen Schmidt (The Thing About LA Is), Lauren Gravitt (Betrayed), and Brian Krause (Charmed). The showrunner is music video veteran Zeus Zamani.
The Roku Channel’s exclusive content will be boosted later this year when the Quibi catalogue hits the service. The short-form video platform closed down last year after just eight months, and in January it was announced that Roku had signed a deal to acquire the streaming rights to most of its shows. These include the Most Dangerous Game, with Liam Hemsworth, Chrissy Teigen’s reality show Chrissy’s Court, the Sam Raimi-produced horror anthology 50 States of Fright, and the reboot of comedy series Reno 911.
Roku had a very big year in 2020. The company announced in January that it now had more than 51.4 million active accounts, which is up by 14 million across the whole year.
An unknown EA employee is alleged to be selling FIFA 21 Ultimate Team cards worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The scandal has quickly been nicknamed “EAGate” and has prompted the company to issue a statement saying it has opened a probe.
Eurogamer reports that the messages, captured from WhatsApp, show the employee offering Icon card packages ranging from 750-1000 euros (roughly $840-1200). One package of Prime Icon Moments cards are even offered for 1700 euros ($2000). At one point the seller assures a potential buyer that there is no risk of being banned, but can’t say why for “security reasons.”
The messages appear to show the sale of a bundle of high-value cards going through and then showing up in the game shortly after.
EA’s FIFA account has shared a statement promising a “thorough investigation” followed by “swift action” if any improper conduct is uncovered. It also stated that it understands how this creates concerns of “unfair balance in the game and competition.”
Icon Cards, like the ones being offered through the seller, are high-value and hard to obtain through randomized packs. The Prime Icon Moments are even tougher, and some players spend thousands on packs attempting to obtain the rare cards. FIFA has reportedly had a black market of selling Coins that could be spent on auctions for the rare cards, but this appears to be direct sale that populates inside the game itself–suggesting involvement of someone in the company.
One week ago, a surprising little endless RPG about the end of the world launched on Steam, published by Devolver. Now, only seven days later, Loop Hero has sold half a million copies.
Loop Hero puts you in the shoes of a hero awakening in a world entirely destroyed but for an empty, circular path infested with slime enemies. As they set out around the loop, they fight enemies and gain memories of a world back in the form of cards — both equipment and terrain. Placing them brings back remembered elements of the empty world, creating new powers for the hero but also new monsters to fight. Loop Hero ends up being a combination of a rogue-like, a deck-builder, a strategy game, and an RPG as you place cards, change your equipment builds, fight, retreat or die, and return to camp to slowly build up your powers for your next run.
With half a million players now and an average playtime of 12 hours, that makes an estimated 3 trillion hours played and 18 billion loops, at least (at least, according to Devolver. who may be exaggerating that last bit some). Its soundtrack is also the fastest-selling in Devolver history.
Developer Four Quarters has released a new set of Steam trading cards to celebrate the milestone, and is currently working on further quality-of-life updates to Loop Hero such as an improved save system, new speed settings, and new rewards from bosses — as well as more content to come down the line including new cards, classes, and transformations.
“When we first encountered Loop Hero it led to a 98% drop in productivity at Devolver,” the publisher said in a statement. “We can’t thank Four Quarters enough for giving us the opportunity to share their incredible game with the rest of the world. They fully deserve all of the praise they’ve received so far, but seriously, we can’t get any work done and may never recover from this.”
Loop Hero is out now on Steam, and we have a walkthrough to help you survive your loops.
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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
After a quick tease showcasing new content coming to The Outer Worlds, developer Obsidian Entertainment has revealed the next story DLC, Murder on Eridanos, set for release on March 17. As the final DLC for The Outer Worlds, this endgame-focused expansion centers around a classic murder-mystery on the planet Eridanos, with your character having to solve a complex and strange ‘whodunit’ to uncover who assassinated the spokesperson for a new brand of space vodka.
Set for release on March 17, with the Switch version coming sometime later, the Murder on Eridanos DLC features new quests, gear, and a weird questline that seems totally in line with the bizarre plot of this space RPG. What makes Eridanos a stranger setting than the usual areas is that the planet’s key locations are spread across a set of floating islands, each with its own points of interest, quests to find, and gear to add to your expanding inventory. Ahead of the announcement, GameSpot spent some time with the new DLC and uncovered the strange happenings on Eridanos.
The main story of the Murder on Eridanos expansion focuses on the death of the celebrity Halycon Helen, who was set to be the spokesperson for Rizzo’s Spectrum Brown Vodka. After her suspicious death, you’re tasked with finding her killer, which will inevitably uncover a sprawling plot involving weird, behavior-altering parasites, Eridanos’ local Tossball team, and the happenings within the Grand Colonial luxury hotel. This new DLC will also introduce new gadgets, including the Discrepancy Amplifier that allows you to uncover hidden clues and secrets. Along with these gadgets, you can find new weapons like the Utter-Buddy, a science melee weapon that is essentially a souped-up cattle prod. There’s also new armor and cosmetics to find, including the Ranger Mascot’s Noggin’, which comes from Eridanos’ Tossball team’s mascot.
As mentioned previously, the final DLC will be a late-game-focused affair. Along with the new quests and gear, the expansion will also increase the level cap by 3, so if you own the previous DLC–Peril on Gorgon–then the Outer Worlds’ final level cap will be level 36. For those who want to jump into the Murder on Eridanos expansion once it launches, your character will need to be level 30 and have completed the Radio Free Monarch quest in the main story.
Gallery
Releasing on March 17 and costing $15 USD, this new expansion will mark the end of content coming to The Outer Worlds. For more on the game, be sure to check out our gameplay video that showcases the opening sections of the DLC, along with a look at one of the side-quests.
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With a likeable loser anti-hero, colourful high school hallways full of misfit teens and teachers to meet, and a snide remark at the ready for almost every interaction, Cyanide & Happiness – Freakpocalypse has all the ingredients to bring the caustic comedy of its comic strip origins to life in videogame form. But while this adults-only point-and-click adventure initially resembles South Park: The Stick of Truth minus the turn-based fighting system, the combat isn’t the only thing that it’s lacking.
For starters, its story is somewhat poorly structured, with the ‘Freakpocalypse’ event in question relegated to a cutscene in the cliffhanger ending. It’s seemingly there purely as a device to set up the two sequels that are apparently planned for a later date. I was pretty surprised to see the closing credits roll just as I thought Freakpocalypse’s story had finally begun to get out of first gear, and I couldn’t help but feel that – as a standalone game – Freakpocalypse comes across as noticeably unfinished, like abandoning a comic after reading the first panel in a three-panel strip.
Happiness is a Warm Pun
For the vast majority of its brisk four-hour runtime, Freakpocalypse’s plot centers around social outcast Cooper ‘Coop’ McCarthy and his quest to avoid bullies, woo his crush, and perform odd jobs for his grandma, whose raging libido is played for cheap laughs. That’s not to say Freakpocalpyse isn’t genuinely funny at times, and certainly I got a kick out of the mixed metaphor-riddled pep talks from Principal McNally and the freestyled song lyrics of the guitar-strumming Warren Wonderwall lurking outside of the school. It’s also endearing that desperately asking a character to be Coop’s prom date is an option in just about every dialogue tree.
But elsewhere, the humour is mostly either presented in the form of corny dad joke puns — with the kid getting a drink in the hallway being named ‘Walter Fountain’ or another in the locker room showers named ‘Hayden Shoulders’ — or it’s just toilet stall graffiti-style smut. When Coop eventually leaves the school and heads to Rod’s Pizzeria, there’s a jar on the counter labelled ‘Just the Tip’… and if that’s too subtle for you, there’s also a picture on the wall of a towering sausage with two vegetables at its base. I appreciate low-brow humour as much as the next childish idiot, but the dick jokes here are a bit too, well, limp.
Strip Search
So too are the puzzles, which are far too basic to even tease your brain let alone wrestle it into a headlock and give it a rigorous noogie. When the school janitor’s closet is locked, you go and speak to the janitor who tells you the keys are in the boiler room, and sure enough… they are. That’s it. Puzzle solved. Some of these fetch quests do get slightly more convoluted later on, but at no point did they stop me in my tracks or make me ever contemplate the use of the built-in hint system. It’s initially cute the way that Freakpocalypse self-deprecatingly refers to its story and side objectives as ‘chores’, but less so when they very quickly start to feel a bit too much like brainless busywork.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=%5BPuzzles%5D%20are%20far%20too%20basic%20to%20even%20tease%20your%20brain%20let%20alone%20wrestle%20it%20into%20a%20headlock%20and%20give%20it%20a%20rigorous%20noogie.”]Not only are Freakpocalypse’s puzzles overly basic and lacking in variety, but there’s also a slight clumsiness to how you progress through them at times. Early on I’d already stumbled upon a rope and pulley and combined them to lift up a desk in the woodshop classroom to uncover a missing library book, before I’d even encountered the librarian who tasks you with finding it. This meant that when I eventually did visit the library and open an initial dialogue with her, she sent me to search for a book that I was able to return it to her instantly, which came across as an unintentionally comedic exchange.
There are some moments that cleverly play with the conventions of the point-and-click genre. When you try and drag a USB thumb drive from Coop’s backpack to the printer in the principal’s office, for example, it doesn’t fit at first and returns to his inventory upside down for you to try and use again, because that’s literally the experience of inserting any USB device into any USB port ever. But such inspired instances are rare, and despite there being an abundance of objects to interact with in every corner of Freakpocalypse’s vibrant small town setting, the general lack of surprise means it’s mostly all click and no point.
Silver Rain Games, an interactive entertainment development studio founded by Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Bayek of Siwa actor Abubakar Salim, has partnered with Electronic Arts’ EA Originals Label.
EA Originals will provide funding for Silver Rain Games’ unannounced IP and will give “guidance and support in the team’s journey to bring a fresh perspective to games and to the industry.”
Abubakar Salim and Melissa Phillips
Silver Rain was founded in December 2019 in the U.K. and it launched with the intent to “generate thought-provoking and innovative games and content across different mediums of entertainment.”
Salim, who also starred in HBO’s Raised by Wolves, co-founded the company with Melissa Phillips. Phillips will lead as Head of Studio and has previously worked as the BAFTA Games Programme manager on BAFTA Games programs and events.
Since its inception, the company has grown to approximately 20 staff members, who are all currently working remote.
“In what has been a challenging year, we have assembled an extraordinarily creative and worldly team who are eager to work on projects that bring their global perspectives to life. Together we will construct an exciting universe that unlocks the power of storytelling and the brilliance that brings,” said Salim. “We couldn’t be happier to work with the EA Originals team, who are phenomenal partners for us as we begin this journey. Not only does each of them understand our vision to inspire and entertain, but they also welcome this exciting new age of game development.”
EA Originals is EA’s way of working with the “best and boldest independent studios across the world to make sure these games get the scale of audience they deserve, with zero compromise on artistic vision.”
The label has already released such games as Unravel, Sea of Solitude, Rocket Arena, and Josef Fares’ A Way Out.
Electronic Arts has announced that it has partnered with Silver Rain Games, welcoming the studio’s upcoming debut title into the expanding library of EA Originals. Silver Rain Games is an indie studio founded and now led by Abubakar Salim (who voiced Assassin’s Creed Origins‘ Bayek and currently portrays Raised By Wolves‘ Father) and Melissa Phillips (who previously worked as the BAFTA games program manager). Prior to EA’s announcement about the partnership, I had the chance to sit down with both co-founders.
“It speaks volumes–the fact that you can’t actually define the genre of what [EA Originals] has built,” Salim told me when I asked as to Silver Rain Games’ reasoning for wanting to partner with EA. “That’s the beauty of the art form of what they support and build. There’s a freedom that the EA and the Originals team bring that allows you as the developer to truly find the strengths and weaknesses of what you bring to the table. At the end of the day, it’s the developer’s game.”
Phillips said that “for now” Silver Rain Games and EA’s partnership is only in regards to this first game that the studio is working on, which is still unannounced. During the interview, both Salim and Phillips remained tight-lipped about the game. “We want to tell you; we totally want to tell you,” Phillips laughed after I jokingly admitted that, though I was trying my best, it was proving difficult to talk around a game that I knew nothing about.
Even if neither one could tell me about Silver Rain Games’ upcoming debut title, the two did share their thoughts on what they hope will be the lasting impact of the game. “It goes back to what we as a studio are just trying to do,” Salim said. “We’re trying to bring thought-provoking content. We’re trying to bring enjoyable content. We’re trying to bring things that people want to escape from, but also just can’t get enough of.”
Phillips added that the idea of “curiosity” is also informing what their game is. “I think we’ve all had that experience early on in our game life, where we find something as children and we’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s amazing. We want to just enjoy the whole thing,'” she said. “I think that’s the sort of feeling that we want to instill in the next generation of whoever’s playing our game. We’re very keen on welcoming new players, perhaps people that haven’t ever picked up games before as well.”
As our conversation came to a close, I asked both Salim and Phillips as to what their favorite types of games and stories are. Salim quickly jumped in first, praising stories that move the player and “reflects something of you as an audience, as a participant,” perhaps evening revealing a side of you that you didn’t even know existed. Phillips followed up by talking about her love for strategy simulation. “I like stats,” she said. “I don’t need to see any action. Just give me the numbers. It needs to feel like work, and then I’m happy.”
“Take what you can from that, Jordan, and imagine the game we are building,” Salim followed up, which got a good laugh out of all three of us. But in all honesty, I’m intrigued to see what kind of ideas sprout from the combined creativity of two people with such differing tastes. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see. The next EA Original game scheduled to release is It Takes Two, a co-op action-adventure platformer that will launch for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC on March 26.
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A recent video surfaced of drone footage travelling through Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and what’s notable is how skilled the pilot is along with how cool the final product of the video looks like. It’s worth your time to check it out for yourself.
It’ll be a few months yet before we can start thinking about things like putting our grubby mitts all over bowling balls thrown by dozens of other bowlers. Even so, we’re anticipating the day when we can once again gather at places like this bowling alley, which is the subject of the stunning short film, captured via drone, below.
The video comes via YouTuber jaybyrdfilms. In the video, an FPV drone begins above the bowling alley and snakes in through the door and around the alley as people bowl and chat. It works its way back into the back of the alley and back out, giving us a look at the whole building before the end.
A lot of work went into the video–the sound work was definitely done in post but adds a lot of atmosphere as you can hear people chatting about scoring a turkey (three strikes in a row) while balls crash into pins. It’s all at once technically stunning and nostalgic. The video is so slick that it almost looks like CGI, but this is a very real place (that I’ve been to once and driven by a few hundred times).
The film has a smashing finish, if you catch my drift. Jaybyrd has another video, also shot in Minnesota, of a motorcyclist driving through a closed-down mall late at night that feels like something usually relegated to Grand Theft Auto games and John Wick movie sequences.
