A major update and wide-ranging sale for ambitious space game “No Man’s Sky” propel the sci-fi exploration experience to the top of several PC digital downlad charts, while “Baldi’s Basics in Education and Learning” moves closer to full release with a new, free demo.
First revealed in December 2013, released in August 2016, and recipient of six major updates intended to attain or surpass the game’s original vision, “No Man’s Sky” has now reached version 2.0.
The August 14 update, Beyond, expanded the multiplayer capacity from 4 to 8 players (on console) or 32 players (on PC), embraced virtual reality headsets across PC and PlayStation 4, and brought to bear a number of other changes designed to weave previously added elements into a more cohesive whole.
Development studio Hello Games, at one time best known for bright motorcycle stunt challenge “Joe Danger,“ followed up on various stability issue reports by pushing a collection of subsequent fixes to PC, and then to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One builds of “No Man’s Sky.”
A half-price sale coincided with the highly anticipated Beyond update, helping to propel “No Man’s Sky” to the top of the charts across well-established digital retailers Steam, Humble, and GOG.
Indie game repository Itch.io is no less well-established but has carved out a vibrant niche for itself by specializing in smaller titles, many of which find an enthusiastic audience through video streaming sites such as YouTube and Twitch.
One such Itch.io success has been “Baldi’s Basics in Education and Learning,“ a jump-scare parody on low-budget educational games, itself part of a widely appreciated small-studio survival horror genre.
Players are put in the shoes of a high school student who must collect items scattered throughout various classrooms, while escaping from staff, other students, or even a long-handled brush roaming the corridors.
“Baldi’s Basics” creator Micah McGonigal has made this full game early demo available from mystman12.itch.io/baldis-basics-full-game-demo, with the original still downloadable from mystman12.itch.io/baldis-basics; McGonigal plans to bring the full game to not only computers but also consoles, while an iOS edition of the original experience is also in the works. — AFP Relaxnews
