Our BIG Festival 2021 coverage is not over yet! We’ve already known games running for Best Game, Best Art, Best Sound, Best Gameplay, and Best Narrative. Today we’re spicing things up, bringing not one but two categories in the same article.
And here they are!
Best Multiplayer
Embr
In Embr, you are an Embr Responder: a mix of firefighter and rescue operator. But different from real life, here you will charge your clients for their rescue and, with the money, buy new tools and gadgets to help you in your missions. Gather three more friends and become the perfect Embr squad, always ready to break up doors, extinguish fires and save the day!
The game was released in May 2020 in Early Access on Steam, where you can purchase it.
Hypercharge
An interesting FPS/TPS where you and up to three friends join forces to protect the Hypercore against invading forces in your bedroom, kitchen, or garden. What? Do you think these are stranger places to protect? Well, that’s because you’re all toy soldiers like the good old GI Joes.
Released in Apr 2020, the game is available to PC (with a free demo available on Steam) and Switch. The game was also planned for PlayStation 4 and Xbox, but we haven’t heard about them until now.
These plastic warriors took the prize of Best Multiplayer Game of the Festival! Congrats to the Digital CyberCherries team!
Republic of Jungle
Republic of Jungle is a party game for 5 to 10 players where a secret group of saboteurs tries to undermine President Puma’s work by leaking confidential information to the media. Here players are divided into two teams, the Loyalists and the Leakers. Loyalists need to help the President by recommending and voting for task forces loyal to the President. Leakers try to pose as Loyalists to earn trust and get into task forces to leak confidential information. Each team counts with roles that give them special abilities and strategies. There are also secret powers that can turn the tides at any moment.
The game is listed as ‘coming soon’ on Steam. So while we wait for it, why don’t you try its free demo?
Secret Neighbor
Secret Neighbor, the third installment from the Hello Neighbor Series, is a multiplayer horror game where a group of kids tries to rescue a friend trapped inside their Neighbor’s creepy basement. But there’s a catch: one of the kids is the Neighbor in disguise. Can you save your friend before the Neighbor defeats you all?
Released in October 2019, the game is now available for PC, mobile, PlayStation 4, and Xbox. The game is available on Xbox Game Pass.
Streets of Rogue
The resistance needs your help to take out the corrupt mayor of the city, and it’s totally up to you how you’re going to do that. In its procedurally generated cities, you and up to three friends can be stealthy, hire goons to do the dirt work, hack your way up to the objective, or go with all guns blazing. Or whatever suits you in this mixture!
The game is available for Xbox, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.
And these were the games that ran for Best Multiplayer in BIG Festival 2021.
Now, as promised, here is the second list of competitors of the day.
Best XR/VR
A Rogue Escape
We will start the list of candidates with the winner: A Rogue Escape was nominated Best XR/VR game of the festival. Congrats to the developer!
In this game, you are trapped for unknown (at least, to me) reasons and need to escape. To do so, you will steal a nauticrawl, a giant mech, and learn to control it in the process before it’s too late.
Scheduled to be released on June 10th, A Rogue Escape will be available on Steam and Oculus Quest.
Fire Escape: An Interactive Murder Mystery
The developers of 1979 Revolution presented their last VR experience during BIG Festival 2021. Released in Apr 202, Fire Escape is an interactive thriller where you will watch from a fire escape your neighbors who live in a close building and are all suspects of a crime. From your perspective, you can freely point your camera to their apartments, poking into their lives while making difficult choices to discover their hidden secrets and unwrap the mystery.
The game is available for Steam and Oculus. There’s no free demo available at the moment, unfortunately.
Gravitational
This VR physics-based puzzle game occurs in a utopic future where large corporations are in a race to develop the ‘gravitational travel & control’ system. You play as Sebastian, a wheelchair user scientist of Gravicorp, the company leading the development of such projects. After a collapse in the building he was working at, you will need to guide Sebastian using a pair of gravitational tools to reach the reactor of the building.
Although it didn’t win the category it was running for, Gravitational received the most important prize of the festival to me: it was nominated Best Game by Popular Vote! Kudos to the Electric Monkeys team for such a fantastic prize!
Gravitational will soon be available for Steam (where it has a free demo for you to try it), Viveport, and PlayStation VR.
Gravitational was also running for BIG Impact: Diversity.
Pixel Ripped 1995
Pixel Ripped series is back and will take you back in time to 1995, to a world where games have the power to break the fourth wall and jump to the real world, and players can do the opposite, jumping into the game world. Who of you never wanted to live inside of a game? Playing as David, a nine-year-old boy, you live (or relive) how playing games were back in the day when you needed to go to video stores to rent games.
Released in Apr 2020, the game is available for Steam, Oculus, Vive, and PlayStation VR.
Stargaze
Stargaze is a VR adventure game where you are an astronomer gazing through your telescope to distant stars. By changing the angle and zoom of its lenses, you will interact with planets, stars, asteroids, and other space elements to solve puzzles and complete a book with your discoveries.
Stargaze is available for Steam, Valve, and Oculus.
Phew! And that’s it for today, my friends.
We’ll be back soon with more games presented during BIG Festival 2021.
See you then!
With a history of gaming that goes from his old man’s Atari 2600 to his Xbox One, Rafael or RAF687, our Brazilian editor, has a love for games as old as he can remember. He has already spent countless hours in many consoles (Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega Saturn, PS1, PS2 and Xbox 360) and is always ready for more (as long as his wife is asleep). Raf has been writing for LifeisXbox since 2017, with a passion for games of almost all genres – though we know he has a special place in his heart for RPGs, racing games and anything that includes pixel art. Writing about games has always been a childhood dream to Raf, dream that he has fulfilled reviewing games for you here. You can drop him a message at Twitter, Facebook or Xbox Live at any time.
