Grim Dawn launched back in 2016 and scratched the hack-and-slash itch for Diablo 2 fans disillusioned by that series' third entry. Its last expansion was back in 2019 - but now it's getting another, called Fangs of Asterkarn. It's aiming for a 2024 release.
]]>Valve are joining all those great internet thought-leaders and telling you to clean your room, or at the very least to play the games that you've bought on Steam. Running this weekend until May 28th, 6pm GMT, the Steam Spring Cleaning Event provides a front-page checklist of games to try or return to, and rewarding the diligent with goodies to decorate their account page with.
All fluff, really, but as good an excuse as any to dust off something you might have picked up a few sales back. Of course, undermining this push, there's also a bunch of free weekend trials open on discounted games which also count towards your total. The list includes action RPG Grim Dawn, four-on-one competitive horror game Dead By Daylight and stylish 4X sci-fi strategy game Endless Space 2.
]]>As time inexorably ticks away, its guttural screaming horror counting down the seconds until our infinite deaths, it's important we remember what really matters: that the game you like best isn't as good as the game I like best. The game you like best, the game you like reading about the most, is indicative of how foolish you are, how you're wasting your precious moments on this planet. Whereas I, liking my game, am making the most of it.
]]>Tip-top throwback action-RPG Grim Dawn yesterday launched its second expansion, Forgotten Gods, venturing into a fictional fantasy land that's not at all Ancient Egypt nuh uh to click on new monsters until they explode in showers of gold coins and new loot. The base game and the perquisite first expansion are on sale right now too. Given that our Grim Dawn review noted that Titan Quest seemed as much an influence as Diablo II, hey, nice to see it in more Titan-y lands (I'd say it looks more Egypt than Lut Gholein?).
]]>Dry and dusty seems to be the In Thing for RPGs lately, action, MMO or otherwise. Among others, in developing a love of levelling and stats Assassin's Creed picked up a fondness for Egyptology, and Guild Wars 2's most recent expansion took the game out into the desert.
Not wanting to be left behind, Crate Entertainment have announced a second expansion for their satisfying little action-RPG Grim Dawn. Trading up its collection of traditionally european ghosts & ghoulies for a presumable plethora of mummies and scarabs, Forgotten Gods is officially in development and due late this year.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>Wotcha gang. Your old chum Alice here for this week's charts, as everyone else has been fired. Out of a cannon. Blown into a jillion little pieces. Hence the Apocalyptic yellow tone to the skies today. Hold your breath when outside, and hold your breath while we count down last week's top ten of the top-selling games on Steam.
]]>The first words of every summoned skeleton, after dark forces draw their scattered bones together and rebirth them from their warm soilwomb, are "WAHEY! LADS LADS LADS." Always grinning, this lot live to roll around laughing, pranking, and scrapping - but don't worry mate, it's only banter. You can now be a Lad Dad in Grim Dawn [official site], as the action-RPG last night launched its Ashes of Malmouth expansion, which includes a Necromancer class (and an Inquisitor, if you're more a Stern Dad). It also explores lands through new story chapters, whacks in more items and enemies, and raises the level cap.
]]>A spooky-ooky Necromancer class is coming to action-RPG Grim Dawn [Grim Dawn] in the next expansion, developers Crate Entertainment have announced. No Diablo 'em up is complete without a Necromancer, after all. I'd be fascinating to see how it worked with a Necrodancer but this will have to do. As you'd expect, Grim Dawn's Necrodancer will have powers to drain life, spread disease, and of course raise a rowdy gang of skeletons to roll around with.
]]>The action-RPG Grim Dawn [official site] - one of our favourite games so far this year - now has a touch of DLC. The newly-released Crucible Mode adds an arena wave survival mode with hordes of awful monsters to murder, defenses to build and upgrade, treasures to win, and mega-points to score. As survival modes go, it looks pretty robust. Naturally, it supports multiplayer too.
]]>"If you have an ARPG itch to scratch, I can't recommend you look anywhere else right now," our Alec said in his Wot I Think of Grim Dawn [official site]. It's an action-RPG in ye olde olde Diablo-y style, with wizards and warriors clicking on monsters until they explode in pleasing showers of rusty swords and golden coins. It's got pedigree too, as developers Crate Entertainment were founded by some of the remains of Titan Quest devs Iron Lore. Now, following a Kickstarter and several years on Steam Early Access, Grim Dawn is finally properly released.
]]>Grim Dawn [official site] is a hacky-slashy action RPG set in a fantasy world ravaged by monstrous invasion, in which you play a wandering hero seeking to stem the chaos with blade, bullets, sorcery or all of the above. It's been in Steam Early Access for a while, following a successful Kickstarter, but is now designated 'content complete' and will see full release next month - though you'll get essentially everything if you buy it right now. Here's whether you should or shouldn't.
I hesitate to make quite so blanket a statement as "this is the Diablo III that many Diablo II fans wanted", both because there are key ways in which it's not and because I can't speak for people who've spent years memorising loot tables and now expect very specific things. However...
]]>Back in 2010, when it was first announced, I was as excited about Grim Dawn [official site] as I was about any other game in production. It's the work of Crate Entertainment, a studio made up of Iron Lore Entertainment veterans, and Iron Lore were the team behind one of my favourite ARPGs, Titan Quest. When the other kids were slaying demons in Blizzaro-Land, I was carving a path through myth and legend. Despite Grim Dawn's availability in alpha form for some time now, I still haven't played. The latest release, which adds a deity Devotion system and the first part of the final act, is awfully tempting though.
]]>There was a time when I found ARPGs exciting, my buttocks glued to the tiny swivel-stool before the one-armed bandits of Diablo II and Titan Quest, hoping that they would spew shiny loot into my lap. In recent years I've managed to shake the habit. I poked at Diablo III for a while but kept my distance and even though I enjoyed Path of Exile in its early days, I haven't felt compelled to revisit its blighted shore. Grim Dawn tempts me though. My memories of Titan Quest have become rosier than dawn's fingers and Alec's impressions of the team's long-awaited follow-up were pleasing. Act II of the Early Access release is now available, and it introduces choice and consequence.
]]>Lots of grim, not too much dawn so far. Which is a shame. Dawn's so pretty. Might lift the spirits after all that zombie-twatting in the gloom. Still, that is what we've signed up for: Grim Dawn, an action RPG created by much of the team (and the tech) behind Titan Quest, is here to be our alt-universe Diablo III. No fancy business models (other than Steam Early Access), no unorthodox DRM (other than Steam), no drowning in lore and cinematics, no slickness at the expense of all else: just getting on with the zombie-twatting. Spiders too, naturally.
]]>Grim Dawn is the model of a modern videogame. Built by the remnants of Iron Lore Entertainment, using the engine and tools from their excellent but overlooked action-RPG Titan Quest. It's been in development for over three years, it got double its asking amount in a Kickstarter project in 2012, and now it's available to buy and play via Steam Early Access.
]]>Grim Dawn may still be a good few months away (currently perhaps at the end of August), but I've had my hands on some early alpha code to get an impression of this furrow-browed, grimly serious action RPG from the former Titan Quest developers. You can see my thoughts below.
]]>Grim Dawn, the action RPG that grew from stirring the ashes of Titan Quest in a Kickstarter crucible, has been relatively quiet. Unlike bigger, bolder games, developers Crate Entertainment took the cash of the crowd and then retreated into the warm, dark embrace of their community. The last video the team released was a year ago, and the website is basically a frame for their Twitter feed. There's no harm in that, but it does mean the game dropped off the map a little. I'd basically forgotten it existed. But I've been recently reminded, because the game jumped out at me wearing a t-shirt that reads "I'm With Stupid", though "With" and "Stupid" are crossed out, replaced with "In" and "Alpha". Get better marketers, guys!
]]>Having read our previous interview with Crate's Arthur Bruno - a crucial portion of which he has reposted on the Grim Dawn site as a sort of manifesto - I wanted to catch up with him and to talk about how the indie ARPG was looking after its half million dollar Kickstarter success. Read on for a discussion of the challenges of Kickstarting, and some good old-fashioned PC fundamentalism.
]]>This makes sense as a thing to do. With so many gaming Kickstarters running, for games we're genuinely interested to play, let's have a look to see where they all are this weekend. The headline news is that Grim Dawn has finished its run, with just shy of double its target reached. Below you can catch up on Moebius, Xenonauts, Tex Murphy, and many more. And you can also note that almost all of them aren't pledging to Kick It Forward, which completely sucks, so you should get in touch with them all and yell at them.
]]>You waited more than a decade. Diablo III's finally out. You can even play it when the server gods smile upon you. And it's fun! But it won't last forever. Randomly generated or not, you and the big red Lord of Destruction (no, not that one) will eventually grow apart. And then what happens? What do you hack? Whom do you slash? Where do you find undead creatures carrying cracked pants? Well, there's Torchlight II on the horizon, but let's say you have an irrational vendetta against colors and smiling. That's where Grim Dawn comes in. I mean, it has "grim" right in its title, and titles never lie. Perhaps somewhat more concrete, however, is the new Soldier Demolition Melee trailer, which is about as spooky and soul-crushing as they come. It crushes other things too - mostly spines, near as I can tell. But with former Titan Quest folks at the helm, I suppose that's to be expected - and, so far, highly anticipated. Check out the full trailer below.
]]>Forget the rest of the loot-gathering crowd for a moment and concentrate your senses on the other ARPG. The one that isn't a sequel but does see much-loved developers working in a genre where they have excelled in the past, the one with non-linear story progression and different factions to side with. Yes, it's this one, Grim Dawn from the designers of Titan Quest. Although well into development, the game recently surfaced on Kickstarter and I explained the reasoning behind that move. Now, with 10 days to go, the target has been reached.
]]>I wasn't sure what the polite level of enthusiasm for action-RPG Grim Dawn was but as it turns out it's perfectly acceptable to perform a small dance while saying "it appears to combine the best of the developers previous game, Titan Quest, with a pleasingly unpleasant new world to discover and factions with which to side and war". Alternatively, just holler wildly and punch the air whenever it's mentioned. John spoke with Crate Entertainment and they explained much but now, after two years in development, the game requires a swift kick up its grim awning to help it along the way. Yes, gentlepeople, to Kickstarter once more.
]]>Diablo III's landing in May might have made the biggest tremors in the release schedule, but there's still every reason to keep an eye on the beautiful, sinister dungeon-crawler, Grim Dawn. I tell you, after this interview, there are few games I am looking forward to as much. The latest trailer shows the Occultist class in action. It's looking more intense than I'd imagined, and I suspect Crate are going to nail this one.
]]>Crate Entertainment, an indie development studio born out of the ashes of Titan Quest creators Iron Lore, have been working on their first major project for a while now. Grim Dawn, built using the tech behind Titan Quest, will hopefully be entering alpha at some point this year, and it's a game we're extremely excited to see. So we caught up with Crate's core man, Arthur Bruno, to learn more. In a wonderful interview he tells us about the fall of Iron Lore, and the birth of Crate, explains where Titan Quest fell short, and how Grim Dawn is not attempting to appeal to casual players. In fact, it's going to be actively hostile toward them. And he introduces us to the concept of rainbow farting machines.
]]>I think Titan Quest is one of the most underrated action RPGs (as we all now so politely call Diablo clones), so it's with a happy face that I see new news of the team's new game, Grim Dawn. From Crate Entertainment - the company formed by many of the former Iron Lore gang - comes some pre-alpha footage, as spotted by PCG. You can watch it below.
]]>One Mr Azri reminds me of the existence of Grim Dawn. It's being created by veterans of the sadly missed Iron Lore - who you'll remember from Titan Quest. Last time I checked there was no images, but there's a mass of early Alpha shots to nose at now, as well as talk about its features such as destructible scenery, building characters from five skill-classes and NPC-faction-relations. Oh - and multiplayer. They're also giving the option to pre-order now, for twenty dollars basic version or pay more to get special editions (and your name in the credits). I strongly suspect this will be worth keeping an eye on so - er - I will. I'm a bit of a Beholder in terms of the amount of eyes I'm able to access to keep track of RPGs. Very handy.
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