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Open-world survival game 'Rust' adds female character models
Rust, the popular open-world survival game from the creator of Garry's Mod, now features female character models after more than two years on Steam Early Access and attracting millions of players. Facepunch Studios rolled out the new models in an update late last week. Players don't get to choose what their characters look like or which gender they are -- models are randomly assigned and locked to individual Steam IDs.
Rust dev's next game is arcade shooter Riftlight
Rust developer Facepunch Studios recently revealed its next game, an arcade shooter called Riftlight. The brightly colored game will feature light RPG and looting elements, so players will constantly battle their way through stages and fend off enemies, like giant space squids, to improve their ships and abilities. The developer has three different ship classes planned for the game with varying talents: The traditional Ranged ship, the magical Caster class and the non-shooting Melee class. Riftlight will feature online cooperative multiplayer, in which players can "fly around and kill stuff with 2 or 3 people," and is already playable in its current prototype form. Facepunch wants the game to revolve around randomized level layouts, sections and missions to boost the game's replayability, so that players can charge through the same areas a number of times to collect new items.
Rust proves a big hit for Garry's Mod creator Facepunch Studios
The success of Garry's Mod established Facepunch Studios, but the developer's latest effort, Rust, appears to be an even bigger hit. Though Rust, a survival game that pits players against an unforgiving, mysterious wilderness, is currently incomplete, the game's release on Steam Early Access has managed to attract more than 250,000 players since its December 11 debut. According to a GamesIndustry interview with Facepunch founder (and Garry's Mod namesake) Garry Newman, that rapid influx of customers has generated "about 40 percent" of the income Garry's Mod has attracted in its nine years of availability, all in little more than a month. With Rust well on its way to success, Newman's development team is focused on adding content to the game, and removing certain ideas such as the game's undead denizens. "[W]e really wanted to get rid of [the zombies] before we launched on Steam, but kind of failed, because we didn't want people reviewing it as just another zombie survival game," Newman said. "We want to remove them, though - we'll probably end up removing them and replacing them with nothing, first, then working something else in eventually." Newman also makes mention of a backstory for the world seen in Rust, though he wisely avoids any specifics. "We don't really want to tell anyone about it just yet, though, because if we talk about it before we do it they'll get angry at us!"
Some Assembly Required: Yet another FFA PvP sandbox
I dabbled in yet another alpha-state indie sandbox game this week. As you'd expect, the title is rough around the edges. Also as you'd expect, it boasts FFA PvP and the correspondingly godawful community for whom the game's "do whatever you want" mechanics immediately translate to "kill everything that moves first and ask questions later, if at all." Since it's still alpha, there's plenty of time for the devs to correct this unfortunate bit of business and separate this particular game from the legions of crappy FFA-PvP-with-zero-consequences titles clumping together in the vast litterbox of bad MMO ideas. Will they do that? Probably not, but at least I'll get a good rant out of it.
Garry's Mod made $22 million, Facepunch working on new PC game
The Garry's Mod PC utility has earned creator Garry Newman $22 million in seven years, as revealed in a recent developer mailbag. Newman noted that the team got "less than half of that though. Then the tax man gets a bunch of that. Then when we take money out of the company the tax man gets a bunch of that too." The PC/Mac tool is often used in conjunction with any Source engine game to create Machinima videos.Newman added that Facepunch Studios is beginning development on a new PC game. "It's a game I've wanted to start work on for ages," he said. "I'm trying to get a team together in office to build it this time."
