🗝️ Bosskey Newsletter 23 - Mountain Top Spectre Divide, Pixel Art Never Die, When WoW was a Game
# 🗝️ Bosskey Newsletter #3 Things: 1 🎮 Game news, 1 🔎 Interesting Find, 1 📱Social Post. Written by a Part Time Indie Game Dev
🎮 Game News
Spectre Divide
From Mountain Top Games Spectre Divide. Reminds me a lot of valorant. Not surprising the developers were from Riot, Bungie and Respawn. They have on board Shroud who used to play competitively on Counter Strike which can explain the influences.
The game is a 3v3 Tactical shooter multiplayer. I am not sure if it can go up against Valorant which already has a huge chunk of people playing oh there is counter strike 2 which is making a comeback.
I do like the artstyle with its semi realistic with a toon shader.
Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2641470/Spectre_Divide/
Official Site: https://playspectre.com/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/SpectreDivide
https://venturebeat.com/games/nate-mitchells-mountaintop-raises-30m-for-player-vs-player-games/
📱Social Post
When World of Warcraft was just a game
This essay does look back at the old World of Warcraft days where a game used to be played for fun and the good times. There was a time where it was the social network where players chatted and did non gaming things.
WoW recently got updated with its new expansion The War Within, used to play a bit of the first classic edition but it looks like WoW is just going through the motions, following industry trends like Season Drops, microtransactions of rentention of users. It feels very different now in the post blizzard activision Xbox / Microsoft Era what a mouthful!
I do miss the old blizzard where you played to get lost in the world. Not sure how they can keep this up to differiated themselves. Maybe thats why cozy games are gaining popularity, something the creator wished WoW could be more cozy.
I love the characters though. Its a good story.
Link to Youtuber Rotan
🔎 Interesting Finds
Pixel Art Never Dies
Why Pixel Art is still the go to for indie devs? Here in this video it goes through some reasons for the nostalgia and ease of working with this asset. Somehow there is something still appealing of using this format for development and playing games.
Ease to make the art
Utility X & Y Axis (Easier to develop for)
Character Control precisions for platformers down to the pixel
Nostalgia and Cuteness
Image from Chuckfish WitchBrook via Gamespot
Great work as always. WoW expansions have looked lackluster with each new announcement. Many players are going over to ffxiv or guild wars 2. Its a shame to the game fall to such low levels of creativity.