The developers behind 4X gameHumankind unveiled the game's first major DLC pack, Cultures of Africa, last week, and since then have been slowly detailing what to expect from each of the six new cultures. Now, with a fresh video detailing the Nigerians, we've got a full breakdown on all of them. The Bantu are an expansionist culture in the Ancient era. Their legacy trait, Harmonious Amalgamation, grants you bonus influence based on the number of empires adjacent to your territory, giving them greater impact on nearby regions. Their Mupia Fields district is a special outpost that will provide food to cities regardless of where it's placed. And the Bagendi Pioneer unit can be turned into an outpost without spending your influence. In the Classical era, we've got the agrarian Garamantes culture. Their Desert in Bloom trait generates bonus influence in cities while their population is growing. The Foggara district will allow you to harvest food from tiles that don't normally produce it. And their Javelin Rider unit can move after an attack, doing a quick strike to soften up enemies before your main units hit the front line.
We're now a few weeks into 2022, and the Minecraft devs are getting back into the weekly snapshot routine. Mojang has launched snapshot 22W03A, a beta release which introduces a few of the smaller fixes that'll be the focus of 1.18.2. Then the devs say it'll be "full speed ahead towards the Wild update". The big addition in this snapshot is a new command called 'placefeature'. This will allow you to, er, place features. In other words, objects like trees, grass, and other things that generate naturally in the world rather than being placed can now be put down wherever you like, as long as you don't mind enabling cheats. This should be particularly useful to datapack creators. As producer Adrian Östergård says on Twitter, "we're heading towards 1.18.2 to fix a few issues, and after that, it's full speed ahead towards the Wild update." The Wild update is set to launch sometime in 2021, but as we await the Minecraft 1.19 release date, we'll see many of the new features show up in playable form early thanks to snapshots like these.
When is the Babylon’s Fall release date? The upcoming action game from Platinum Games is shrouded in mystery but already has plenty of lore, and thanks to a reaveal at TGA 2021 we now know the release date too. Revealed during the Square Enix E3 2018 showcase, Babylon’s Fall was unveiled with a rough release date, but scarce few details to go on apart from that. There was no gameplay on display, and no subsequent explanation of what the new IP is all about. It was also delayed out of the 2019 window we were expecting and has only recently had a more solid release date provided. This is an action-RPG that can support up to four players playing in co-op, where you can join forces to fight back against an evil empire ravaging the world for its own gains. You can customise your weapon loadouts by wielding up to four at once. As per the game's Steam page: "only by mastering the powers of your Gideon Coffin, will you unlock your true potential and become strong enough to survive the summit and uncover the secrets that await."
Yu-Gi-Oh fans have been clamoring for a modern game that replicates the full TCG experience, and now that Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel is out, those fans are showing up in force. The free-to-play card game hit PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, and PC earlier today, and it's already one of the biggest games on Steam. The PC version of Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel reached a peak concurrent player count 159,158 earlier today, as SteamDB shows. That's the fifth-biggest peak on Steam today, behind only Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Apex Legends. That means Yu-Gi-Oh is outperforming the likes of Grand Theft Auto V, Monster Hunter Rise, New World, Destiny 2, and more. Today's launch was a complete surprise, so there aren't any critic reviews out there - not that they'd have much to say so early anyway, with this being an online-focused game - but early Steam user reviews have been 'very positive'. Some players are concerned about the free-to-play monetisation, but how that compares to other digital TCGs over the long haul remains to be seen.
City-building games tend to focus on the broad strokes of town management, basically letting you be more of a hand of god than a proper mayor. Norland aims to make things a little more personal, letting you take control of a noble family that's in power over a medieval city, dealing with all the crime, religious uprisings, and social stratification that come along. The devs bill Norland as a "medieval kingdom sim that generates stories", inspired by RimWorld, Crusader Kings, and Caesar. Each citizen in your town, from peasants and slaves to soldiers and criminals, have behaviours based on their status and personality, which can result in anything from happy marriages to bloody riots. While your citizens go about their lives - or while you're in between quelling riots - you can build up armies, upgrade your village, and look to a global map to start expanding your power. You can fight or ally with your neighboring kingdoms, and work through a host of political events on the wider map.
