Latest news with #Downwell
Forbes
02-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
You Have One Week To Play A Perfect Video Game Before It Disappears Indefinitely
Poinpy is an absolutely perfect video game, and you only have a few days left to play it. The very best new video game I played in 2022 wasn't God of War: Ragnarok or Horizon Forbidden West. Nor was it PowerWash Simulator or Rollerdrome (as great as all four of those are). Instead, it was a perfectly realized mobile game. And it's one that's about to vanish into the ether for the time being. Let me tell you about Poinpy. It's a platforming game designed by Downwell creator Ojiro Fumoto and Team Poinpy. While Downwell was all about, uh, going down, Poinpy sees you ascending through a variety of environments using a combination of jumps and strategic bounces. Along the way, you'll have to collect fruit to make juice to satiate the blue beast that's facing you. Otherwise, you will fall victim to the monster's fiery wrath. Time slows down as you line up each jump, giving you a few precious extra seconds to find the right angle. You'll have a limited number of jump orbs you can use before you have to touch the ground. Once you've collected the right ingredients, touching the ground completes a fruit juice cocktail and resets your jump orbs. You can also restore a jump orb by slamming down on an enemy or pot. This is a roguelike, meaning that while there are a number of biomes with their own distinct elements, each run is different. The placement of fruit, enemies and obstacles will never be the same between runs. You can unlock permanent upgrades and choose between various power-ups FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Poinpy is a perfect game. Fumoto and his team get everything exactly right here. Their vision for the game is crystal clear and they realized that faultlessly. The visuals are adorably colorful and the soundtrack from Calum Bowen (aka Bo En) is a real treat. The difficulty scaling is on point and, most importantly, Poinpy is a delight to play. Make it to the end and you'll get to experience a terrific, oddly devastating ending as well as a lovely post-credits sequence and an endless mode. But there is going to be an end to this, regrettably. The only way to play Poinpy at the minute is on an iOS or Android device. And you'll also need to be a Netflix subscriber to play it. As noted by Ryan Brown (the head of Lost In Cult's publishing label, Editions, which is largely focused on game preservation) on X, Netflix is removing Poinpy from its catalog on June 9. Publisher Devolver Digital confirmed on Discord that Netflix's licensing agreement for Poinpy is coming to an end, three years after the game's debut. After June 9, there won't be any way to play Poinpy until it's ported to other platforms. There's currently no timeline for when that might happen. "For the time being, Poinpy will become unavailable, and we know this sucks," a Devolver representative wrote on the publisher's official Discord server. "With how these integrations work, Poinpy will require further development in order to be releasable in other stores, and realistically we do not know when we would have time in-between other projects. Ojiro and us at Devolver hope to be able to release the game on other platforms in the future, but we do not have any news regarding this currently." This is such a bummer. I often dip into Poinpy to play a run or two. It's such a soothing, delightful experience and I'm so sad that I won't be able to play it for the foreseeable future. While some games certainly would not exist without the financial backing from the likes of Netflix Games, Apple Arcade and Game Pass, it stinks to see some of these works of art vanish when they leave these subscription services. Even with the Nintendo Switch 2 coming out this week and Summer Game Fest taking up much of my time this weekend, I'll be playing Poinpy as much as I can until June 9. I'd encourage you to do the same as well. I don't think you'll regret giving it a go. I hope that enough people check out Poinpy over the next week to show decision makers it's worthwhile to retool the game for the Apple App Store, Google Play Store and/or other platforms sooner rather than later. As soon as it's available elsewhere, I'll snap it up with no hesitation. If and when that happens, it could help this wonderful game find a far larger audience. In the meantime, I'm going to be waiting impatiently for Poinpy's return. Follow my blog for video game coverage and insights, and word games hints. It helps me out a lot! Follow me on Bluesky too! It's fun there. And make sure to subscribe to my newsletter, Pastimes!
Engadget
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is getting a new mode to coincide with the Switch 2 launch
Capcom just announced that Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is getting a new mode to coincide with its launch-day release for the Switch 2, which is June 5 . It's called Otherworldly Ventures and introduces some roguelike mechanics to the action/strategy game. In other words, it's essentially an endless mode. You start off with limited abilities and choose from various upgrades when defeating waves of enemies. Lots of games do something like this, including titles like Vampire Survivors and Downwell . It will also introduce a scoring element, for those who want to ascend a leaderboard. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. To make the roguelike-inspired mechanics work, the developers have simplified other aspects of the gameplay. Protagonist Soh won't have to rescue villagers and crystals will accumulate more quickly than in the standard game. Also, Yoshiro will make her own way to the gate, instead of having to be guided. The whole thing looks pretty fun. Despite launching alongside the Switch 2, Otherworldly Ventures will be available for every version of the game on June 5. This includes PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows and Steam. It's also free, which is always nice. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. For the uninitiated, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a fun hybrid of third-person combat and tower-defense. We heaped praise on the game in our official review , calling it "perfectly balanced, lovingly crafted and metal as hell."
Business Mayor
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
Shotgun Cop Man is a weird-as-hell platformer about arresting Satan
Shotgun Cop Man is a strange platformer. You play as a square man with a round, bald head who's chasing Satan to arrest him. At the beginning of each of the game's nine worlds, Satan gives you the middle finger. And you don't just use guns for fighting, but for traversal as well. You start each world with two guns: a rapid-fire but weak pistol and a more powerful shotgun that only has three blasts. When you're on the ground, your ammo constantly refills, meaning you essentially have infinite ammo. But when you're in the air, if you run out of bullets, you won't get a refill until you touch the ground. This all matters because there's no jump button. That means you get into the air by shooting your guns: the pistol lets you hover, while the shotgun can rocket you upward to reach high platforms. You can aim in any direction, so the shotgun can blast you backward and forward, too — it's a speedy and fun way to get around. It's all a little bit like Downwell , but sideways. You'll need to get around quickly to dodge Satan's minions. Most often, you'll take on little devils that spit bullets and are generally a nuisance. But there are a few more difficult enemies, such as flying sentient saws with one eye. There are bosses at the end of each world, too, like a flying skull with horns that can manifest a body to attack you with. If you get hit by an enemy or stung by a spike, your heart will fly a short distance away from your body. If you get the heart back, you'll survive another hit and the heart will float away again. It's similar to a Sonic game, where you can take a hit so long as you have at least one ring. If you're hit while your heart is out, you'll die — though thanks to the game's generous checkpoint system, you usually won't start too far from where you were killed. Read More Overwatch 2 is now on Steam with access to achievements and more Each world has 17 short levels that are filled with typical platforming dangers including baddies, spikes, moving platforms, lasers, and block pushing puzzles. (Block shooting puzzles?) Individual levels generally take 30 seconds to a couple minutes to beat, so depending on how skillful you are with your guns, you can zip to the goal quickly and feel like a speedrunner. You'll frequently find new guns, too. I was a big fan of one that made bullets bounce off walls, which doubled as a useful puzzle-solving tool. The sniper rifle was a welcome upgrade because it could blast through multiple enemies at once. Visually, the game looks like a platformer in dark mode: black is the primary color, and enemies are generally a shade of red. Throughout the game, you'll hear a persistent, thumping, and unnerving soundtrack that sounds like what you'd hear at some kind of Satan-worshipping club. The whole vibe makes you feel as if you're actually descending into the pits of some dark hell. My favorite part of the game was that you could accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. My full playthrough was about three and a half hours, and I could get through most of the nine worlds in about 20 or 30 minutes. I appreciated the brevity, because even though I very much enjoyed the game, the intentionally uncomfortable atmosphere got under my skin, and I could only play it in short bursts. Once you understand how to navigate just with Shotgun Cop Man's guns, you can really fly around the levels like some kind of cartoony action hero. By the end, you'll use those guns to give the finger right back to Satan. Shotgun Cop Man is now available on PC and Nintendo Switch.
