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Nether adds crafting, creature mode, and tribes
The mean streets of Nether are easing up a bit on players, as Phosphor Games has patched in a slew of helpful systems for its February update. The trio of new features includes crafting, a creature mode, and tribes. Crafting encourages players to scavenge from their adventures and fashion gear and weapons to use and trade. If being a bad guy is your thing, then the new creature mode allows users to step into the twisted role of a nether to stalk victims. And tribes, Nether's version of guilds, are now in the game with bases, a skill tree, and special objectives to be patched in later in the month. Players who join a tribe from now through February 15th will earn special bonuses including currency and a free uniform. We've got a video showing some of the February update features after the jump, so get a move on, little doggy! [Source: Phosphor Games press release]
Pre-order Nether to bring friends into a post-apocalyptic world of survival and demonic monster-killing
Phosphor Games' online first-person urban survival game Nether is waiting to pounce just around the corner, and it's carrying a live-action trailer and pre-order bonuses. Phosphor Games announced Thursday that pre-orders for the game are now live, and those who plunk down money early will be able to enter the world of Nether early, on October 31. Said players will also be able to share the post-apocalypse monster-hunting fun, as they'll receive 72-hour guest keys so friends can join in at no charge. Phosphor Games Creative Director Chip Sineni said in a press release that community would be important going forward, hence the pre-order reward of allowing more people access to the game. "We want to develop a game that fans are enthusiastic to play, and there isn't a better way to give players the experience they crave than to get them involved in selecting which features are patched in next," Sineni said. So don't get all down and depressed because an event called "The Cull" killed off or transformed most of mankind into horrible monsters, like that's sad or something. After all, you could be shooting those monsters in the face by the end of the month.
See the dark side of survival in Nether's live-action trailer
Last month, we gave you a deeper look into the post-apocalyptic survival game Nether being developed by Phosphor Games. Today, the studio announced that pre-orders for the game will grant early access and allow players to try their hand at survival against the mutated monstrosities starting (fittingly) on October 31st, 2013. Additionally, pre-orders will net 72-hour game keys to share with friends, as well as other in-game perks. Creative Director Chip Sineni stated, "As an online multiplayer game, we feel strongly that the focus is on community collaboration so we want to reward the early players with solid pre-order incentives and really make them a part of the future of the rich, urban environment that is Nether." Along with the announcement, the studio released a new live-action trailer. If you want to get a feel for the game, check out the video after the cut. Then if you like what you see, join the community and help direct the development path of future content in Nether. [Source: Phosphor Games press release]
Nether gives unique twist to post-apocalyptic survival
Stop us if you've heard this game before: It's some time after the apocalypse, and you're one of the final survivors scrounging about for parts and gear to carve out a niche of safety. While that might sound like every zombie survival game that's come out in the wake of DayZ, Nether is eschewing zombies for something more insidious -- and interesting. The titular creatures are mutants that hunt by sound and teleport around, requiring players to adopt new strategies as they try to make it. The newly announced Nether is a persistent MMOish (well, 64 players per server) game where players explore West Chicago in the hopes of finding that one weapon or crate of goods that's needed to survive another night. Or you could just go to Chicago right now in real life and do the same thing. Phosphor Games Creative Director Chip Sineni says his title won't be the same-old zombiethon: "Our focus is to veer away from some of the 'traditional' survival-horror offerings in order to provide something new for the genre, with a great urban setting, a different type of story and an experience that excites us as fans and will be something definitely fresh and new for gamers." Nether is in alpha testing with an eye on a fall 2013 release for the PC and is currently accepting beta signups. You can check out its reveal trailer after the jump!
On the brink: What's next if Project Awakened can't save the world
Phosphor Games has less than 48 hours to raise more than $200,000 for Project Awakened on Kickstarter. If Phosphor doesn't hit that goal, the $270,000 people have already pledged will vanish, and Awakened's current development timeline will be stretched indefinitely.Still, Phosphor Director Chip Sineni is optimistic about Awakened's success."We are feeling stressed, but we still feel there is time for the community to help us make this happen," Sineni tells Joystiq. "We got the Unreal Engine 4 tech demo out, we announced Austin Wintory joining as the composer and a lot of Kickstarters have last-minute surges."A lot of Kickstarters fall short, too: Last year, 2,796 video game projects asked for funding, and 1,885 failed. Of course this means 911 gaming projects succeeded, and those projects earned $83 million overall. Sineni wants to see Awakened in that second group, but the entire process has been a fast-paced learning experience on the whims of crowd-sourced funding. Only (a short amount of) time will tell if Phosphor absorbed its lessons too late.
Phosphor Games' upcoming 'Awakened' looks powerfully promising
We were all set to do a crushingly sad post about "Hero," a really interesting Midway project that got swallowed up by the company's financial woes. (Watch a clip of it here.) ... See? Sad -- right? But before you shed too many tears know that there's one heck of a silver lining: Much of Hero's development team has reformed as Phosphor Games and has begun work on a similarly heroic project called Awakened. Check out this Gamasutra interview with studio head Chip Sineni for the full story.It's early yet -- the game doesn't even have a publisher -- but the concept of a fully customizable super hero and the really stunning trailer we've got for you after the break have allowed us to magically transform our depression into gut-wrenching anticipation. Sure, it's kind of a lame super power, but we figure we have to start somewhere.
