GOG are giving away the Shadowrun Trilogy - which includes Returns, Dragonfall and Hong Kong - if you signup to their newsletter before Monday. That's a lot of quality cyberpunk RPGs for free.
]]>Two different illicit gig economy experiences are yours for free this week on the Epic Games Store, which is currently giving away 2016's stealth assassination game Hitman and a collection of the Shadowrun cyberpunk fantasy RPGs. Sure, basically you're being paid to kill and rob people in both, but you'll go about it in different ways.
]]>Much as wee Christmaseers watch The Snowman instead of Bad Santa, and diddy Star Warries watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars instead of The Star Wars Christmas Special, minuscule cyberpunks have something short and colourful to suit their attention spans as we celebrate Cyber Monday. FASA, the company behind Shadowrun (best known on PC for the crowdfunded Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Hong Kong) made a live-action short film to promote the cyberpunk fantasy tabletop RPG. The four-minute vid has everything a child wants on Cyber Monday: colours; costumes; CGI sequences set inside a computer; and no difficult plot to follow. That'll get the kiddywinkles out our vertical hair for a few minutes.
]]>If you’ve been following all of our Cyberpunk 2077 coverage and thinking it could really do with some Orcs, you’re in luck. No, CD Projekt Red isn’t injecting magic into their sci-fi RPG, but some magical cyberpunk is free on the Humble store right now. Shadowrun Returns can be yours for nothing at all, as long as you snatch it up in the next day. It’s not as good as its follow-ups, Dragonfall and Hong Kong, but it’s a great, if a bit brief, introduction to universe.
]]>Paradox Interactive have announced they are buying Harebrained Schemes, expanding their power as the heavyweight champ of traditional PC gaming. Y'know, Paradox, the Swedish mob who make games including Crusader Kings II and Stellaris as well as publishing loads more. And y'know, Harebrained Schemes, the American studio behind Shadowrun and BattleTech - and which was co-founded by a fella who helped create those tabletop worlds, Jordan Weisman. Paradox published BattleTech and evidently they got on so well they want to tie the knot. It sounds like the plan is for Harebrained to continue as before, including making more BattleTech, only now with more security.
]]>At this year's Develop conference in Brighton, I grabbed an hour with keynote speaker Luke Crane, Head of Games at Kickstarter, to talk about the state of play of videogames on the crowdfunding platform in 2016. Discussed: what makes a good project now, the odds of making it, 'Kickstarter fatigue' and the question of glory days, Kickstarter's reaction to funded projects that are not then released, the importance of community, how the press can be unhelpful and whether or not famous names are dominating the ecosystem at the expense of smaller developers.
]]>Hey, you! Yes, you in the plastic trenchcoat and plastic elf ears. You liked Shadowrun: Hong Kong [official site], right? Call it a hunch. Good news to you (and folks whose fondness for cyberpunk fantasy is perhaps more private): the RPG's Extended Edition is now out as a free update. Along with a good hour-and-a-half of director's commentary, the Extended Edition adds the new bonus mini-campaign which was a Kickstarter stretch goal. And hey, if you're short on Nuyen, the game's on sale right now too.
]]>You can hang up your cool leather jacket and grow out your sloppy neon haircut, oh I know, but part of you will always want to yell "HACK THE PLANET!" and stick it to the megacorps. Harebrained Schemes just can't stop slipping back out into the grimy streets of our cyberpunk future. They revisted Shadowrun: Dragonfall with a Director's Cut, and now they're returning to Shadowrun: Hong Kong to expand it a bit with hours more stuff to do. What they're working on is a bit vague for now, but the important bit is that it'll be free.
]]>Harebrained Schemes don't only create remakes of olden meatspace games, you know. They only do that when they want to raise millions of dollars on Kickstarter. In between last year's Shadowrun: Hong Kong and next year's Battletech do-over, they're realising a 'procedural death labyrinth' (a roguelike, then) called Necropolis [official site], to which they've just announced the addition of four-player co-op. The thing's also due out in March, and some of you may be relieved to hear that it's skipping the whole early access thing.
]]>Edit: now at over $800k after less than a day. Lawks!
BattleTech is/was the setting for the beloved MechWarrior series, but began life as a 1984 tabletop wargame, long before it was a mech combat sim. Though MechWarrior pops up again now and then (usually involving some tortured development process), the BattleTech name itself didn't get a whole lot of use when it came to videogames - although Command & Conquer creators Westwood had a go at one. But now it's getting its first non-spun-off time in the PC gaming sun since 1994, as a new turn-based mech tactics game being developed by Harebrained Schemes, of Shadowrun Returns fame.
BattleTech reached its $250,000 Kickstarter goal within around an hour of announcement. Blimey. However, the game won't have a singleplayer campaign unless it reaches one million dollars. Wait, what?
]]>Shadowrun: Hong Kong [official site] is the third-and-a-half time around the block for this cyberpunk-but-with-elves roleplaying series, and by now there's a routine and a rhythm. You build a Shadowrunner, a secretive mercenary who can fight with technical or mystical powers (or a combination of the two), leading a team of fixed-spec allies with big personalities through real-time exploration and turn-based action. This time, the setting is one of the touchstones of 80s cyberpunk, and we're dealing with Triads, social segregation and city-wide nightmares in addition to the usual gang war, troll mercenaries and magic-assisted corporate espionage.
]]>Alice is on holiday, leaving it to me to ask us and you that timeless question: whatcha playin' there buddy?
]]>Shadowrun: Hong Kong [official site] has finally got itself a fancy release date, so y'all can pencil this in: August 20th, which gives you a good month to crack those knuckles on the franchise's original Gera-Approved Pen & Paper Daddy for full preparation.
]]>One of the most gratifying things about the recent-ish RPG revival is that they've almost all done well enough to warrant developer interest after release. (Oh, if only the adventure one had been as... no, no. Wrong column.) Call them Enhanced Editions, Director's Cuts or whatever else, they give their creators a second chance to fix mistakes or expand their worlds - and that's pretty cool for fans. But what are the main ones on the way? I put together this quick list of ones to look forward to.
]]>Last week I ran the first half of an interview with three-time Kickstarter winners Harebrained Schemes, in which they fielded my own questions about their upcoming cyberpunk-with-magic RPG sequel Shadowrun: Hong Kong. This time, they're fielding your questions - including what they've got planned for the future of the series, cyberpunk's Asian influences, how the stories are becoming increasingly less linear, avoiding Eastern stereotypes with the new setting, and improving the game's pace.
Oh, and at the time writing the Shadowrun Hong Kong Kickstarter has now brought in $750,000. They'd asked for $100,000. They've now unlocked 12 stretch goals, and promise an additional mini-campaign if they hit $1 million. There are still 19 days to go. *blinks*.
]]>Shadowrun just keeps on returning. The cyberpunk RPG has has various game adaptations over the last few decades, but it was the Kickstarted Shadowrun Returns which most nailed the concept. Narrative and choice expanded in excellent follow-up campaign Dragonfall, which then saw a further improved Director's Cut, and after all that devs Harebrained Schemes had a loyal enough fanbase to pull off their third successful Kickstarter, even in an age where there's a lot of worried muttering about the future of crowd-funding for games. No such worries for Harebrained co-founders Jordan Weisman and Mitch Gitelman, whose upcoming Shadowrun: Hong Kong was funded in less than two hours and now has over $600k pledged - six times what they'd asked for. Blimey.
Earlier this week, I talked to the pair about why they went back to the Kickstarter well, what they're doing differently this time, how they've been able to make story an increased focus, what the community's up to with the Shadowrun editor and being sent free pizza.
]]>They say lightning doesn't strike twice. But they weren't talking about one studio being able to pull off multiple successful Kickstarters when they said that, so it's irrelevant. What is relevant is that Harebrained Schemes join the likes of Double Fine and inXile in getting a second [edit - third, in fact: they also had Golem Arcana, which I think makes them the crowdfunding leader?] game crowd-funded into existence. There's lots of anxiety flying around about the Kickstarter era of videogame development winding down, but Shadowrun: Hong Kong flew in the face of doomsaying by getting itself funded within hours of the campaign launching.
]]>Shadowrun is returning. Again! I've already covered the basics of Shadowrun: Hong Kong, Harebrained Schemes' next step into the world of fantastical cyberpunk, but the Kickstarter has just gone live so there are plenty of details to wrap that bundle of wires you call a brain around. The video below contains the first glimpse of the game's isometric interpretation of the setting, unless you count the concept art above, in which case it's your second glimpse. After the great success of Dragonfall, I'm eager to take another trip into this particular vision of our electronic future.
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![קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/honkai-star-rail-bronya-fu-xuan.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]")
