In Little Kitty, Big City, you’ll unlock emotes to show off the full variety of cat expressions. You just need to learn them, first. How to use emotes in Little Kitty, Big City Using emotes in Little Kitty, Big City is thankfully super easy. All you have to do is hold down one of these buttons, depending on the device you’re using to play: PC: Hold F Xbox: Hold Y Switch: Hold X With that button being held, you can use your mouse or joystick to select which emote you want to use. Once you’ve chosen, let go of the button, and your kitty will perform the expression. At the beginning of the game, you’ll start with two: I sits!, and A Little Lie Down. Although these are both classic cat moves, they’re a little basic. Most, however, will learn about emoting when encountering the Mayor Cat, as I did, so you’ve likely got a third one, called Yuck! More emotes can be earned from playing the game, but if you want to get them all, t…

What’s happening on the Nintendo Switch eShop this week? From Little Kitty, Big City to a manic Pac-Man outing, there’s a lot to tempt you. Let’s explore!

First up is

The post Little Kitty, Animal Well, and Pac-Man join this week’s eShop roundup appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for May 10th, 2024. In today’s article, we’re closing out the …

Continue reading “SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘Qualia’, ‘Kinduo 2: Frostbite’, Plus Today’s Other Releases and Sales”

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Steam Deck Weekly. I’m surprised at how many great games have been released …

Continue reading “Steam Deck Weekly: This Week’s PC News, New Steam Deck Verified Games, and Reviews of TopSpin 2K25, Foundry, Footgun, and More”

The closed alpha test for Marvel Rivals has finally begun for PC players, and while thousands of players were hoping to see an invitation in their email inboxes, only a select percentage of the population actually got into the test. There were 30,000 invites sent out to random people who signed up for the alpha test, and a few thousand more were given out on the official Marvel Rivals Discord server. If you still don’t have a Marvel Rivals code, however, there’s no need to give up hope. Every player can claim an additional friend invite code for the Marvel Rivals alpha test that they can then share with someone else to get them in. How to Get More Marvel Rivals Invite Codes Screenshot: PC Invasion To get an additional invite code for the Marvel Rivals alpha test, you need to reach level six. Once you’ve done so, head to the main menu and click Home followed by Overture to access the code claim section. There are only a limited number of additional code…

Anglerfish is a horror game involving monsters, shotguns, and ice cream. It’s also unlike anything I’ve ever played. It won’t be for everyone, but this is an ambitiously wicked title

The post Review: Anglerfish (Nintendo Switch) appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

Over the last year or so, I’ve inexplicably joined the ranks of people collecting big, bulky vinyl soundtracks. Albums are enjoying their second coming in a mostly digital era, and initially, I picked up a few with the sole intent of hanging them on a barren bedroom wall. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, I wound up with a record player listening to the Silent Hill 4 soundtrack. It gives me a sort of haunted, pinky-out ambience.

Anyway, I’ve got no technical reason for it. My vinyl expertise doesn’t extend beyond ‘that sounds good’ or ‘that sounds bad’ — and I don’t own any albums that could fund my retirement or make them worth all the fuss. Really, I just like how holding the unwieldy discs feels, and I’m especially into the ones that look a bit like vintage splatter art. I like looking at the sleeves, blowing away the dust, and using a medium society had long aged out of by the time I was born.

A lot of people making games seem to share that sentiment, too. I recently spoke with Sabotage Studio president and Sea of Stars creative director Thierry Boulanger, who seems inspired by what drives us to revisit those little rituals with older media. In the interview, Boulanger offered Destructoid a peek into the studio’s process. It’s a look into making something both new and retro, maintaining integrity between mediums, and how you decide where Yasunori Mitsuda slots into all of this. 

It’s all about touch

“From the get-go, it was a must,” said Boulanger, in reference to the decision to give Sea of Stars the retail and vinyl soundtrack treatment. The studio released its first game, The Messenger, in the same nostalgic vein back in 2018. They were already familiar with the path to getting something tangible made, and with Sea of Stars, Boulanger says it was always part of the plan. 

“We want there to be intent in everything that we do. We don’t wanna just move plastic. It’s not so much about the units. It’s that we make something people want to touch, they want to own, they want to be able to keep. They want it to exist in their lives, more than the abstract, digital part of everything.” 

The holding, the touching, that’s all part of the retro experience for plenty of enthusiasts. It’s, mostly, a good-intentioned longing for different times or something comforting and familiar. For me, it usually boils down to some combination of childhood favorites and just wanting something a little simpler to manage. However, working within the limitations of yesteryear doesn’t merit praise by default, despite what my nostalgia insists, and by no means is the process truly easier.

Sea of Stars gets that, I explained as much in my review, but eschewing what’s needlessly obtuse doesn’t detract from recreating classic RPG designs with modern sensibilities. The limitations, however, still exist when you move between mediums  — like making the jump from a limitless digital library to the more restrained, plastic discs.

Sabotage’s Iam8bit vinyl collaboration is a 2xLP collection, so it doesn’t contain the entire, hefty 200-song tracklist from Sea of Stars. Instead, it has to work as a sampling representative of the OST’s best pieces, capturing the work of composer Eric Brown and his legendary collaborator, Yasunori Mitsuda of Chrono Trigger and Xeno-series fame, in a curated format. It’s a gauntlet of bangers already made within a limited framework, and for the vinyl, they’d have to be culled again. 

“In capturing retro, we do like to work with the limitations because we sort of aim for the type of experience or the type of things that emerge from really harsh boundaries,” said Boulanger. 

“So, any track has to be a two minute loop maximum. You need to have a hook in there in like three sections, you know? You can’t do this drawn-out intro into a symphonic thing that just goes on. So it’s, it’s less of a score and more of a classic soundtrack there. But since we don’t have the memory limitations of a cartridge, then we can do as many tracks as we want.”

For Sea of Stars, that meant any important cutscene could have “bespoke audio,” leading to its whopping 200 tracks. It’s not the usual setup for many of the games that inspired the RPG, so that meant the vinyl would get picky. 

“The first thing we did was [say] ‘okay, we’re doing 2xLP, right? So, we’re gonna save one side for Mitsuda, because this collaboration is straight-up legendary.” Boulanger laughs describing the process, but that harsh curation left to the rest of the soundtrack was important to get Mitsuda’s 12 tracks on the physical album. 

From there, Boulanger and Brown worked to sample a selection of its more iconic themes into something that could flow outside the larger, digital collection. They needed the basics, like the town and battle themes, but Brown was left to much of the curation process to ensure the round-up was not only representative but balanced. 

“Eric also put care into the idea of the listening experience, trying to pace everything properly. Of course, you want all the heavy bangers, but you also want to sometimes take a bit of a break. So we feel it flows really nicely, but it was really something [of a process] because when you’re doing digital, you’re kind of boundless, right? You can just do however much you want to do.

And this kind of brings it back to now, ‘but what if you distill your idea’ It forces you, it puts you in this mindset of like, ‘what’s the nugget? What’s the, the crystallized form of it that’s concise?’ It was a super fun journey to do that, even though it was a bit hard.”

Moving with purpose

I describe my own recent affinity for vinyl with a bit of annoyance. If anything, I’m mostly embarrassed to be so sentimental about just stuff. I’ve already got an untameable retro collection of cartridges, discs, and guides eating away at a finite amount of closet and shelf space. But there’s comfort in holding something, purposefully removing the cartridge, or smashing a physical reset button. It compels me into keeping a sea of N64 games. 

If anything, Boulanger’s enthusiasm for that sensation offers a far kinder look at the type of person hoarding a stash of CDs to unlock creatures in a decades-old PlayStation game. 

“There is this understanding, there is a commitment to being in the moment. If you’re just playing some playlist on Spotify or whatever in your Bluetooth speaker, it’s like, yeah, you just go back 10 seconds to keep getting the dopamine hit of your favorite spike in the melody, or you hit next the second you’re not like 100% vibing with the current track or whatever. 

Whereas when you have a vinyl, it’s kind of like, in a way,  it’s a presence. It’s not just a thing that you consume. And just all the steps that you have to do to even get it to play, I feel like, your entire body understands that you are committing time to listening to music more mindfully.”

It’s a process he sees as almost meditative, or at least shares roots with the grounding, purposeful steps involved in physical media. While there’s no shortage of stories from the director rooted in childhood nostalgia that leads to the creation of games like Sea of Stars, he seems just as compelled by the little processes. “For me, a vinyl is that, I’m going to actually sit down and listen to music. Not on the side, but that’s my activity this afternoon, I want to listen to music fully.”

I grew up using CDs, but I’m incredibly nostalgic for the physicality of the whole playing-a-record process. It’s certainly far more cumbersome to pull out the Silent Hill 4 vinyl and listen to ‘Room of Angel’ on a device drastically bigger than my phone, but I just brood better that way. I’m more emotional.

Ultimately, there’s always a more critical read of my desire to buy another SNES game at a pawn shop or order more pieces of plastic to stack on a shelf, and I get it. I don’t necessarily need every piece of digital media I own as a tangible, physical item, but there’s value in that very purposeful, involved way an old concert or vinyl setup makes me interact with it. It’s certainly a commitment, as Boulanger described, and in the attention economy where focus is a constant struggle, I appreciate the occasional game or album that demands I slow down.

Sea of Stars launches its retail edition worldwide today and is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X. The exclusive edition with a retro game manual, digital game soundtrack, poster, and other collectibles launches in Q2, 2024. The 2xLP vinyl soundtrack is available for pre-order now and is scheduled for release in Q3 2024. A digital download code with the full soundtrack is included with the vinyl.

The post Sea of Stars creative director talks crafting physical game releases and our craving for the tangible appeared first on Destructoid.

As of 2024, there are over 27,000 unique cards in Magic: The Gathering. But despite the high number of cards, most formats such as Standard and Pauper include restrictions for the types of cards allowed. If you’ve found your parent’s old MTG cards or came across some at a garage sale, chances are the cards can’t be used in a majority of the game modes that local game stores (LGS) hold events for. 

One type of game mode that is an exception to this is considered the most popular game mode of Magic: The Gathering: Commander. It’s a little different from your normal Magic duel.

How to play Commander in MTG

Commander, also known as Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), is considered the most popular (and most fun) format in Magic: The Gathering. Walk into any LGS and if there are MTG players, they most likely have a Commander deck. So what separates this format from the rest? 

• Commander is a free-for-all format played with 2-6 players

  • For the best experience, it’s recommended to play with at least three players. This is due to Commander-specific cards that introduce interactions with multiple opponents

• Each player begins with 40 health as opposed to the standard 20 health.
• Each player has a designated Commander card (more information on that below). 
• Commanders are played from a zone known simply as the Command Zone. 
• When destroyed or exiled, Commanders are returned to the Command Zone instead.
• Each subsequent cast of the Commander will require an additional two colorless mana (there isn’t a cap to this additional cost).

An additional rule in Commander that helps players get home at a decent hour is the Commander Damage rule. If a Commander deals at least 21 combat damage to an opponent over the course of the game, that opponent loses the game. So don’t worry, if your former friend has a field of Lifelink Angels and their health is well over 300, you don’t have to swing on them until midnight. 

Other than these rules, everything plays exactly how typical Magic: The Gathering modes do. So with these rules in mind, it’s time to move on to what my personal favorite part of Commander is: deckbuilding.

How to build a Commander deck in MTG

Commander decks have 40 more cards than their Standard counterparts. While that seems like it’d make for a more expensive game mode, the opposite is true. Since Commander has far fewer restrictions and banned cards, it means that the demand for the majority of cards is much lower than that of the Standard format.

Local game stores often have boxes with unsorted cards that are perfect for filling out a Commander deck, often priced under a dollar. Online, many of these cards go for as little as a penny each. With that in mind, here are the rules for building a Commander deck in Magic: The Gathering:

• Your deck must be comprised of 99 cards plus your Commander.
• Any Legendary creature can be used as a Commander.
• One Legendary creature card is designated the Commander.
• Two exceptions to this rule are:

  • Two Legendary creatures that have the Partner ability (this would allow 98 other cards in the deck)
  • Planeswalkers that contain the text, “this card can be your commander.”

• The rest of the deck must be built around the Commander’s mana color identity.

  • This includes the mana colors used to cast the Commander card along with any mana costs associated with abilities that the card may have.
  • Ex. Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds has a mana cost of Red, Green and White. If used as a Commander, the deck can only contain cards that have Red, Green, White, or Colorless mana costs.

• Besides basic land cards, each card must be unique.

  • Cards that have the same name but are from different sets are considered the same card.

Having access to nearly the entire library of MTG cards makes putting together a cheap, well-built deck much more accessible for players. It’s worth noting that your Commander or any other card in your deck doesn’t have to be in English. You can find great deals on MTG cards in various languages by using sites such as EDHREC or Scryfall which have many filter options that streamline your card search.

Wizards of the Coast makes it even easier to jump into Commander by selling preconstructed (pre-con) Commander decks. Wizards has begun to increase the number of Commander precon sets every year, with 2023 having 25 Commander precons, up from past years that saw only 4-5 decks being released. These preconstructed decks provide access to Commanders that are crafted specifically for the game mode and are a solid foundation for new players. 

Many guides can be found in the MTG community that give ideas on how to take pre-con decks to a higher level with various budget options. However, it’s recommended that you learn how the Commander plays first so that you understand what synergies or directions that the deck can take before you begin spending money. 

Why Commander over other MTG formats?

Unlike Standard, Commander decks truly feel like your own. Instead of chasing a meta where everybody plays Azorius Control and players know the exact decklist that their opponents have, Commander allows for endless possibilities. You can build around your favorite Legendary creature, your favorite tribe, or construct a deck entirely around a single win condition (such as this example from Commander Mechanic with the Luck Bobblehead from the Fallout Universes Beyond set).

With your first Commander deck in hand, you’re ready to join players of the most popular format in Magic: The Gathering. If you don’t have an LGS near you or you’re hesitant to put your friendships on the line with an absurd deck strategy, you’re in luck. Nowadays, MTG is easier than ever to play online, with options for every type of player. From official platforms such as Magic: The Gathering Online or SpellTable, to community-managed apps like Cockatrice and XMage, your cards won’t ever have a chance to collect dust.

The post How to play Commander in Magic: The Gathering (MTG) appeared first on Destructoid.

What’s possibly better than a cat? A cat in an adorable little hat! This guide details the exact locations of all 42 hats in Little Kitty, Big City. Collect them all to earn Capped Crusader achievement. Table of ContentsAll Capped Crusader hat locations in Little Kitty, Big CityApple HatLadybug HatBanana HatEggplant HatCactus HatCorn HoodDuck HatHard HatAxolotl Hat, Rabbit Hat, Panda Hat, and Shark HatOnigiri HatGrapes Hat, Tangelo Hat, Pear Hat, and Watermelon HatButterfly HatTurtle HatTraffic Cone Hat, Cowboy Hat, Space Helmet, and Witch HatTiger HatBao HatMushroom HatGinkgo Hat, Salmon Nigiri Hat, Taiyaki Hat, and Daikon HatFish HatHedgehog Hat, Seal Hat, Frog Hat, and Mouse Hat All Capped Crusader hat locations in Little Kitty, Big City In Little Kitty, Big City, most hats are rewarded upon collecting gachapon capsules hidden throughout the game or purchased at machines, though a select few are also earned through quests. Use the sc…

Rumors have been circulating for some time that Fortnite will soon cross over with Pirates of the Caribbean. However, a recent leak has given some additional credibility to those reports, indicating that new pirate-themed maps are on their way to Fortnite Rocket Racing. Fortnite leaked Rocket Racing maps point to a Pirates of the Caribbean […]

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