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      YoYo Games developer of GameMaker Studio sold for $10M

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Wednesday, 20 January, 2021 - 12:53 · 1 minute

    Game Maker and later GameMaker Studio is a very popular game engine with indie developers and YoYo Games just recently sold it off and it appears they did so at a loss.

    Originally created by Mark Overmars, who later teamed up with YoYo Games who have carried it on since 2007. Later in 2015 the YoYo Games studio was acquired by Playtech for around $16.4 million dollars. News doing the rounds now though, is that Playtech have actually sold YoYo Games to an unnamed buyer:

    Playtech has previously stated that it is a strategic focus of the Company to simplify its business and dispose of non-core assets. It is pleased to announce that it has now completed the sale of YoYo Games, part of the discontinued Casual and Social Gaming business, for a consideration of approximately USD 10 million. With the completion of the sale of YoYo Games, Playtech has now disposed of all its Casual and Social Gaming assets.

    So they not only sold it for less than they originally purchased it for but the buyer has yet to be formally announced, even with that financial statement being released a week ago. Not just that though, for an entire game engine and company that's a tiny amount of money - which should ring some alarm bells.

    Clever people from the official YoYo Games forum already found who might now own them, thanks to the UK Company House records system we can see that multiple people involved in the Opera browser company now sit as directors of YoYo Games. These records appeared the day after the Playtech statement.

    For game developers, the game engine you rely on suddenly changing hands with no prior notice and no announcement a week later must be a little frightening. Games often take multiple years to create, so for developers well into the thick of using GameMaker Studio hopefully the result will be a good one. Perhaps though, the time is ripe to check out Godot Engine since it's free and open source.

    We reached out to YoYo Games for a statement yesterday, will update if they reply.

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      YoYo Games expand their Linux support in GameMaker Studio 2 to the Raspberry Pi

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Monday, 21 December, 2020 - 13:06 · 1 minute

    The Raspberry Pi sure is a versatile device and thanks to GameMaker Studio 2 from YoYo Games , it might even end up as more of a gaming unit with newly added support for exported games.

    In the version 2.3.1.542 release of GameMaker Studio 2 that went live on December 16 ( details ), it mentioned in the release notes how it now supports "Ubuntu ARMv7" as an output type for their editor. We discovered this thanks to the developer of Shield Cat mentioning on their Patreon post how they've been updating their game to hit higher performance on the Raspberry Pi.

    Curious about more details on this, we reached out to YoYo Games to clarify some details of this new feature. Their CTO, Russell Kay, mentioned this in reply to why they started supporting Linux ARM devices:

    We are big fans of the Raspberry Pi and have been looking to support the device in a cost effective way with the release of the OpenGL driver and the higher power (CPU and GPU). It became viable for us to release and support the Raspberry Pi target, since it was generic we expanded it to include devices that support the armeabihf architecture, assuming the device has the correct libraries that we require, but our primary target is the Raspberry Pi running raspbian.

    With that all now in place they said this in reply to future upgrades to their Linux support in GameMaker Studio 2:

    We will improve our Linux offering over future versions, but we are not able to announce specific changes at this stage.

    Game Maker Studio powers some really popular games, and it continues to be a very popular game engine for indie developers. Released titles like Hyper Light Drifter, Minit, The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED], The Swords of Ditto, Stoneshard, Nuclear Throne and a great many more were all built with it.

    Will be fun to see if many developers decide to put out more Linux builds of their games when using GMS2, both on the desktop and for the fantastic Raspberry Pi device family.

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      Shield Cat is a thoroughly charming in-development action-adventure with a free demo

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Monday, 14 December, 2020 - 13:19 · 1 minute

    With a strange otter/cat as the protagonist, Shield Cat seems like one to keep on your watch list with some really charming visuals and you can try the free demo.

    "Shield Cat is an Action Adventure game with light RPG elements. You play as Lance, an otter/cat who must go on a quest to rescue his friends and the Cat Kingdom! Along the way you'll solve puzzles, gain new abilities, meet new friends, and collect stuff!"

    It feels a bit like a classic Zelda title, one with plenty of exploration and secrets to find as you explore. Shield Cat is not a finished game though, with the developer mentioning it's still a prototype but it's fully playable and quite enjoyable to run around in. Such a ridiculously sweet atmosphere I absolutely love it. There's already a plenty to explore, along with character ability customization. Shield Cat has all the makings of the next action-adventure hit. Check out the trailer:

    youtube video thumbnail
    Watch video on YouTube.com

    There's some pretty clever game mechanics here too, it's quite a surprise. One of your abilities is to spin, which will cut down grass and other objects so you can find the secrets as well as the pretty petals currency. Not only that though, you also use it to interact with certain things like making a big cog rotate to extend a bridge, if you keep spinning you can cross over big gaps and use it to attack hostile creatures too. It's a fun multi-use ability that adds to the charm. Easily of the sweetest ideas I've seen recently.

    I couldn't get my gamepad to work, which is somewhat typical of Game Maker with their odd input implementation but even so it still felt great on mouse / keyboard. Hopefully as it's further developed they will get gamepads ironed out fully.

    You can find Shield Cat on itch.io with a free demo or support the development for $5 or more as a purchase.

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      Avoid getting cut up in an intergalactic slaughterhouse, Disc Room is out now

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Thursday, 22 October, 2020 - 18:32 · 1 minute

    Small rooms, lots of spinning blades - what could possibly go wrong? Disc Room is insane and I absolutely love it. Note : our copy was provided by GOG.com .

    A collaboration between Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Terri Vellmann and Doseone with publishing from Devolver Digital, it's a game of constant absurd dodging and lots of blood when you inevitably fail at doing so. In the year 2089, a giant disc has appeared in orbit of Jupiter, and you as a scientist decide to boldly go where no one has been cut in half before. It's one big intergalactic slaughterhouse.

    Their quick explainer video does a good job at the basics if you want some quick footage:

    youtube video thumbnail
    Watch video on YouTube.com

    Just note, that it's made with Game Maker Studio which continues to have some weird dependency problems with libcurl. On Arch Linux for example, you can install the libcurl-compat package and then launch it like this:

    LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/libcurl.so.3" '/media/games/Disc Room/start.sh'

    After that it launches and runs as expected in my testing.  Huge amount of fun and apart from the above minor issue, it works great. Performance is perfect, my 8BitDo SN30 gamepad worked perfectly and I don't have any complaints there at all.

    If you've got the reflexes for it, and you adore a good challenge - Disc Room is something you need to add to your collection. You can buy Disc Room from GOG.com , itch.io , Humble Store and Steam .

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      GLITCHED is a slick-looking upcoming 2D RPG where an NPC becomes aware of you - the player

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Tuesday, 15 September, 2020 - 11:37 · 1 minute

    A game where the unexpected hero is an NPC inside a game world that's glitching out so badly the NPC becomes aware of you? GLITCHED sounds pretty wild.

    "When a glitch appears in the video game world of Soren, an NPC named Gus becomes aware of you- the player. Travel together to solve the mystery of the glitch and save Gus's friends, hometown, and digital world. As the story unfolds, Gus might start to question what role you play in his world."

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    The progress idea sounds pretty fun. As you do more and gain experience, you can use that to patch up glitches in the world giving you access to new areas with every activity giving you some form of experience points so there's many paths through to progress the story. Additionally, the way the story goes changes based on if you win or lose fights which the developer said means you should "almost never" see a game over screen. Sounds thoroughly interesting.

    Feature Highlight:

    • 20+ potential party members
    • Raise bebos and enjoy that sweet monster-raising RPG content
    • A friendship & romance system for party members
    • Tons of achievements
    • Every object has unique flavor text (yes, every object. thousands of objects)
    • Tons of outfits that change up all party members
    • Cool and weird equipment
    • Multiple endings
    • Frogs

    As it turns out, it actually had a Kickstarter campaign way back in 2016 which clearly mentioned Linux support. Since it had been a long time, and it has now appeared on Steam as an upcoming title we reached out to the developer about this. They confirmed Linux support continues, although they will be officially only supporting Ubuntu.

    It was originally due to launch late last year but the developer delayed it to ensure they're not overworking themselves, since it's a solo project and to ensure the quality of it.

    You can follow GLITCHED on Steam . It should be due to release late this year.

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      Fantastic 2D action-RPG 'Chronicon' has now released

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 21 August, 2020 - 19:55 · 1 minute

    Chronicon is an example of pure dedication, as Subworld developed this excellent 2D action RPG over the course of over five years and it's now left Early Access.

    A game that won me over from the first time I loaded it up too, with the heavy atmosphere and intense action that really does give you a classic Diablo feel wrapped up in some nice pixel art with great lighting and effects. It has a curious story too, as you're in a world that appears to have been save already. You're granted the honour of using the Chronicon, a device that allows you to open portals to re-live old tales.

    To give you an idea, see the launch trailer below:

    youtube video thumbnail
    Watch video on YouTube.com

    New as of the big 1.0 release:

    • Added Act 5, complete with 29 new areas, 23 quests (8 optional), 12 new unique items from 12 unique monster spawns, 7 new enemy types with a total of 27 variations, 6 new troves to find, and 5 new big bosses to fight!
    • Added 24 new Legendary+ items.
    • Added 24 new endgame Runes.
    • Updated 26 items with new powers, improved powers, or power tweaks.
    • Updated & improved 14 sets.
    • Updated & improved 9 Runes.
    • Added new Anomaly bosses, layouts, and rare modifiers.
    • Added 20 new Achievements.
    • Added many suggestions and QoL improvements.
    • Added over 120 new sound effects to monsters, bosses, interface, etc.
    • Improved performance.

    The amount that's available to play through in Chronicon is quite ridiculous and impressive, with it starting off slow and steady it gradually expands into some insane fights against enemies big and small. And the loot, my word, the loot! You're going to be utterly spoilt by all the spoils. Even more impressive when you realise this was the first game made by a solo developer, Daniel “Squarebit” Stigsjöö is the only person that makes up the independent studio Subworld from Sweden. Something that was originally meant to only be a small rogue-lite that just continued expanding.

    We helped the developer sort out their Linux dependencies in a previous release (volunteered help), so it should continue working nicely across various Linux distributions. The only issue I encountered was the Steam Overlay not appearing.

    You can find Chronicon on Humble Store and Steam .

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