Catacomb Kids to Early Access, MCC patch beta has problems, then news bits

Welcome to a new week. We now begin the countdown to Friday the 13th in a few days time. What terrible thing will happen come Friday? Well, other than Evolve getting released, we cannot be sure what else.

Things are much better at the start of the week though. Have you been keeping an eye on Catacomb Kids? Like a lot of things these days, the game first saw the light of day as a crowdfunded project on Kickstarter in late 2013 (but was already in development as a spare-time project since 2009). The game then made its way onto Steam Greenlight (and was a success), and is now set to make an appearance on Steam Early Access later this month.

The developer himself labels Catacomb Kids as a “procedurally generated platformer,” a phrase that instantly should remind many of Spelunky. However, compared to Derek Yu’s game, Catacomb Kids has more ways to interact with, and best its levels. Most notably, players can choose various different ways of how they attack enemies that litter the game’s world. Lunging at them with different sets of weapons is an option, as is using a spellbook – to cast various different spells. The world is also reactive, meaning you can use spells to interact with it. If you see water, you can boil it using a fire spell, or make it an electrifying deathtrap with lightning. There are, of course, many more ways to play. This is just the tip of the iceberg. No need to spell everything out in a simple news item!

Some backers of the Kickstarter had access to early builds of the game already, so even before it gets to Early Access there has been a public eye on it – hopefully helping to iron out some bugs before even more people get to play it. Catacomb Kids will debut on Early Access on February 20th. Here is a trailer for you to watch with your eyes.

On the less exciting side of things, Halo: Master Chief Collection still has problems. Remember that patch beta that was supposed to be coming out? Well, it is no longer coming, which is both good and bad news. I will let 343 explain everything to you.

“After further evaluation, the team has determined that that final testing for the content update will be completed internally, and we will not be conducting a beta test for the next CU. Also, it was determined that the additional time and work devoted to the beta would’ve actually postponed the public availability of the content update,” comments the dev in this Waypoint update.

They continue “Progress on the CU continues, and we’ll work to provide an ETA once the final date is locked. As stated last week, our current focus and priority remains delivering the upcoming improvements to the matchmaking and party systems, but the team is also working on and prioritizing additional items beyond this, and I look forward to discussing these – a lot more – as we get closer to those updates.”

I am starting to think 343 have no idea what is wrong with their own game at this point. Halo: The Master Chief Collection has currently been available to buy for 90 days at the time of writing this news piece, and it is still not a reliable piece of software.

News bits

• “The Witness is a big game” that might take “dozens of hours” to complete, apparently. God knows what other sites are talking about.
• Making a multi paragraph news article from a single 140 character Tweet is a bad idea. Just sayin’
• In similar vein, Jonathan Blow playing Infinifactory on Twitch is the most interesting set of videos I’ve had the pleasure to watch recently. More people should know about this.
• Nintendo are doing Valentines Cards again – that you can send to your Peaches in another castle
• The Crew is said to be getting patched to work a bit better. It’s worth reminding you though, it is still a bad game at its core.
• Evolve is going to have a 3GB launch day patch. Strangely, that is now starting to feel small compared to others
• The Battlefield Hartline Beta is even getting patched. Nothing can ever be left well enough alone this generation.
• You know what, It is a good job that patch for Halo did not get a beta, otherwise I would be out of bandwidth by now.
• Worth a reminder, you can play online for free on PS4 (like you used to on PS3), this coming weekend – February 13-16. That includes Valentines Day. How romantic
• Rock Paper Shotgun did a good job explaining the failure of Peter Molyneux’s Godus – a game that both asked and received much from the Kickstarter community. It’s okay Peter, games like Catacomb Kids at least helps us keep faith in crowd funding.
• The developers of Contrast have revealed they are doing something brand new. Concept art is but a click away.
• Persona 5’s protagonist’s first summon is apparently called Arsene. This character probably has dodgy defence stats.

Sorry for the football humour at the end there! None of that tomorrow, I promise!