REVIEW: Eternal Hope on PC (Steam)

Review by Jon Donnis

Eternal Hope is a 2D puzzle platform game, you play as a young lonely boy called Ti'bi, you have lost the love of your life, a girl called Hope, who seemingly dies during a storm after she is stuck under a fallen tree and then falls to her death, and you are about to undertake a journey that will hopefully bring back your girlfriend. 

While grieving for Hope, The Keeper of Souls appears and he tells you that his job is to collect souls, but he has become weak, and Hope's soul has shattered into fragments, you then make what I assume is a deal with the devil and agree to help him by collecting various souls and fragments, which in turn will give him his strength back, and in return he will bring Hope back into the land of the living.

The Keeper of Souls gives you some powers, and you now have the ability to briefly swap into the land of the shadow realm for 10 seconds at a time. You can do this to pass areas un-passable in the real world, to use harmless creatures to help you get to hard-to-reach places, or to solve a puzzles.

There are no enemies to fight as such, just running from boulders, or escaping from situations.

If you have played Limbo or Inside then this game will feel very familiar.

The Good

Beautiful graphics, enjoyable story-line, and great soundtrack.

The Bad

The controls are just not sharp enough, I played using a Xbox Controller, and really this game should be geared towards people using game-pads, but most of the mistakes i made while playing were due to the controls, and then if you do die because of a missed jump, you then have to wait what seems like forever for it to reload to try again. Now realistically this loading time is no more than 10 seconds, but in 2021 this feels like an eternity, especially when you have a feeling that your failure in the game was not really your fault. Of course as you play you will get used to the lack of sharpness and adjust, but it really is something that can and should be fixed. The game is also a little short, and you will finish it within a few hours.

Overall

Despite my gripes over the controls, I really did enjoy the game, it is beautiful to play, and the story is lovely.

I score Eternal Hope and strong 8/10

Review by Jon Donnis

Available on Steam now - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1162280/Eternal_Hope/

Interview with Charles Yu, CEO of VoxPop Games, Inc.

Pax East 2020

What can people expect from VoxPop Games? 

VoxPop is a profit-sharing game distribution model. When people help a sale happen, whether through seeding or recommendations, they get a percentage of that game’s price tag as credit (which can then be cashed out). This percentage is set by the developer, and specific percentages can even be assigned to specific users.

The core idea is that indie devs don’t have the money up-front to pay for advertising. So instead, they can use this revenue-split system to drive word-of-mouth marketing. Meanwhile influencers like YouTubers and Streamers will be able to plug games the way they would a Ko-Fi or Patreon and get the share they deserve.

How did VoxPop Games Start? 

I had always wanted to be an independent game designer. I had this image in my head of indie devs as auteurs with full creative control of their projects. Throughout High School and College I was putting games on Newgrounds, then the App Store, then Itch. I didn’t really sell much, but at the time, I’d never thought too much of it. I’d assumed that as soon as I had my degree I’d have a better idea how to make a living as an indie dev. Then, in my senior year as part of a lecture one of my professors told us that in the 5 years leading up to his professorship, he’d only made $15,000 as an independent developer. This didn’t bode well for my dreams.

I decided to pivot to starting a business, and I got a job at a VC Firm to help me better understand the fundraising process for entrepreneurs. The firm I was at happened to specialize in Blockchain investment, and for the first time I was seeing all these new Blockchain projects use user incentives to drive everything from processing to marketing. Working there gave me the idea to use the same tech to rescue the independent market.

This was over a year ago, and we’ve pivoted a lot since. Most importantly, we’ve totally dropped Blockchains from any and all aspects of the platform. But the broader idea of using profit-sharing to connect developers and influencers together remained. I believe this is the best way to stabilize the indie market. Naturally, we can’t promise everybody’s going to be rich, nor that every single game will be a success. But we DO want to give every developer out there the best chance possible to actually be able to make a living making games.

What kind of indie games does VoxPop Games have? 

All kinds! We don’t believe it's our job to gate-keep what is and isn’t an “indie game.”

That being said, the smaller and min-budget the team, the more they stand to benefit from the profit-share model over traditional advertising. On our platform, the revenue-split always offers a path to discoverability, and the more developers are able to leverage the profit sharing to approach influencers, the more they will ultimately stand to benefit from us. Therefore, our unofficial target demographic are what we call “garage devs,” teams that are typically less than 4 people, and who don’t have much in the way of marketing budget.

What is something VoxPop Games is looking to do in 2021 After our official launch on 1/21/21, and after we’ve finished patching the inevitable flood of bug reports that always comes with it, we plan to tackle crowdfunding and internal development. We have all sorts of ideas about how our profit-sharing, P2P model can tie into these verticals, but would prefer not to explain too in-depth in what’s supposed to be an overview.

www.voxpopgames.net

About VoxPop Games, Inc.

VoxPop Games, Inc. is an American based profit sharing, peer-to-peer, game distribution, and development platform. It has roots in its early inceptions in December of 2018 and was formally incorporated in March of 2020 as a new client gaming platform for small-scale independent game developers.

VoxPop Games was founded by Charles Yu and Marc Anthony Rodriguez and operates out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY.

The company's peer-to-peer distribution platform is designed to help independent developers to drive additional indie game sales by sharing a percentage of initial sales to those who recommended the games, namely, VoxPop Platform users, Streamers, Let’s Players and video content creators.

The client platform went ONLINE on May 5th, 2020, in Closed Beta form, and Open Beta on July 31st, 2020, and is now posed to host an amazing new roster of Exclusive and "Made For" VoxPop titles, in the Full Client 2.0 - January 21st, 2021

The client is also a hybrid crowdfunding platform designed to allow gamers to invest in upcoming games, via the Platform’s Micro-Investment Engine. A percentage of profit is shared based on the percentage owned by the upcoming game.

VoxPop is the first worldwide games distribution and development platform founded in Brooklyn, New York, and currently boasts a Library roster of over 125 Independent Games, 3 Platform Exclusive titles (that cannot be found on any other Game Distribution Platform), 10 “Made for VoxPop” titles, that are sku variants with exclusive content found only on VoxPop, and several games from prominent publishers, such as Rogue Games and Kwalee.

VoxPop Founders & Core Team

Charles Fang Yu is the founder and CEO. He completed his bachelor's in Computer Science and Game Design from Tisch School of the Arts in New York City, New York. 

Marc Anthony Rodriguez is the co-founder and COO. He received a Bachelor’s of Arts (Philosophy) from Stony Brook University.

In 2020, the company on-boarded two additional key foundational team members, Elisee Augustin, Platform Software Engineer and Holly Welch, Social Media Manager & Content Creator.

VoxPop also has help from Social Media interns as well as other community Mods and Streamer affiliates.

Key Title Listings

Game	Company	Platform Status
Pixel’s Hallow Eve	Salt & Pixel	Exclusive Game
Ultimate Reality	LinkUp Games	Exclusive Game
Miasma Caves	Windy Games	Partner
Guardians of Lodino Forest	Adrien Dittrick	"Made For" Partner
Arcanium: Rise of Akhan	SuperCombo	Publisher Partner
UNDER - Depths of Fear	Rogue Games	Publisher Partner

 

https://linktr.ee/voxpopgames

How to Take Off Your Mask Remastered arriving on consoles next week

"How to Take Off Your Mask Remastered" is a cute fantasy visual novel with one love interest. One day you discover the other side of your partner you had never known. What is the truth beneath the masks?

Lilia is just an ordinary girl who works in a bakery. She spends every day happily with her childhood friend, Ronan. One day Lilia finds her body has shrunk. Moreover, she has grown cat ears and a tail?! She panics, jumps out through her room's window, and runs towards the town. And the first person she bumps into is the city guard, Ronan. Each of them has secrets.  The mask of "Big Sis" and "Luccretia Girl" she wears. The mask of "Lil Bro" and "City Guard" he wears. Which one of them will be taken off first?

Features:

Cute visual novel with wonderful anime / manga art.

Japanese voice acting.

Original theme song.

How to Take Off Your Mask Remastered will be priced for 14.99$/€ for all platforms.

It will launch on February 5th on PS4 (NA & EU), Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch (NA & EU).

Also for the Japanese region, it will release on February 4th, on PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

COMPETITION: Win Fahrenheit: 15th Anniversary Edition on PlayStation 4

Fahrenheit: 15th Anniversary Edition is Out Now on PlayStation®4

And to celebrate we have a great competition for you and a copy to give away.

Synopsis: 

Fahrenheit: 15th Anniversary Edition, the classic story driven interactive drama from Quantic Dream, is out now on PlayStation®4 as a special retail boxed edition across Europe and Australia. 

Fans of classic story driven interactive dramas can now rediscover one of the first highly acclaimed titles from French developer and publisher Quantic Dream. The story of Fahrenheit follows Lucas Kane who finds himself hunted by police detectives Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles after fleeing the scene of a murder with no memory of what happened. What follows, is a thrilling, story driven adventure where your choices have a direct effect on how the story unfolds.

This special edition of Fahrenheit: 15th Anniversary Edition will include a specially created case and sleeve, a sticker set, high quality printed artbook and a thank-you letter written by the team at Quantic Dream. This boxed edition will retail for £24.99 GBP / €29.99 EUR / $49.99 AUS  (suggested retail price) and is available to purchase in specialist gaming stores across Europe and Australia now.

Buy From Amazon at

https://amzn.to/39rKXdh

For your chance to win just answer the question below.

COMPETITION CLOSED

Terms and conditions
1. Closing date 15-02-21
2. No alternative prize is available
3. When the competition ends as indicated on this page, any and all entries received after this point will not count and emails blacklisted due to not checking this page first.
4. Winners will be chosen randomly and will be informed via email.

5. Entries that come directly from other websites will not be accepted.

Daedalic Entertainment Reveals Glitchpunk - Cyberpunk Aesthetic Meets Gritty GTA 2 Style Action

Welcome to the dystopian future! Developer Dark Lord and Publisher Daedalic Entertainment have announced Glitchpunk, a cyberpunk-themed game with an old school GTA 2 feel. Set to be released in 2021, Glitchpunk is a top-down action game where you shoot, brawl, drive, steal and sneak yourself through a neon-soaked world full of gangs and cults, forging cooperations along the way. A demo of the game is available during the Steam Games Festival: February 2021 from 3rd February to 9th February. 

In Glitchpunk you play as a glitching android going against your own programming and challenging the tyrannical governments and megacorps of the dystopian near-future. Forge your own path in several cities full of drug-crazed gangs, aggressive police, and irresponsible drivers that make each mission and playthrough unpredictable. Steal cars and lead your enemies on a merry chase, fight them with a variety of melee and long-range weapons, and upgrade your own body with tech. But Glitchpunk isn’t just about blowing things up, it also tells a story of transhumanism, xenophobia, and religion. You can influence the world around you, make new friends, face off against more enemies than you can count - and you might even find love. 

Key features:

Brutal top-down action with a massive arsenal of weapons to choose from

Hacking system allows players to control minds of pedestrians and affect various devices.

Many different ways of locomotion, including trains, tanks, motorbikes, buses, trucks, and obviously tons of cars

Frantic police chases and up to 10 escalations of mayhem-inducing wanted levels

12 gangs with their own stories, quests, and culture

4 different cities, from the desert remains of the USA to cyberpunk Soviet Russia in a post-nuclear winter

Mature story with several endings

Rare art style mix of 2D sprites in a 3D environment

In-game radio with music by artists from all over the world, together with news stations and absurd commercials

Glitchpunk is set to enter Early Access on Steam in the first half of 2021.