We heard you loud and clear. You wanted more Blue Fire Void platforming levels, but instead of dropping only new levels, we’re also giving you a level editor to make your own Voids! Let your imaginations run wild by designing challenging, epic, or silly levels with Void Maker DLC.

Unleash your creativity!

Were you ever jumping around the Voids and wondering what it would be like if there were giant donuts, eyeballs, and dragons? Or maybe that was just us. The good news is all that and many other silly items are available in Void Maker for you to enjoy.

As we developed Void Maker, we realized the tool had so much potential beyond creating levels that were like the Voids in the main game. We ended up adding more content than what we had originally set out to include, like NPCs, enemies, themes, playlists, and much more. We feel all this allows you to create levels where anything is possible!

Get to know your tools

Void Maker has many assets from the main game, including NPCs, void models and more, but it also has a ton of new items that were made exclusively for the level creator itself (models, music, mechanics, and lots of other crazy stuff!).

This might sound overwhelming, but we developed Void Maker as a simplified level-making tool so that you can focus on creating fun and interesting levels rather than having to learn a complex piece of software and modding new content into the game.

Tips to make fun levels

There are many ways to start designing, the most obvious of which are either randomly testing things out and experimenting or having something specific you want to create. Either way is perfectly fine. Since we know a thing or two about making Voids, we’re sharing some tips to help you make amazing Voids.

• Determine what type of level you want to create. Do you want a straightforward platforming challenge, a puzzle-like adventure, or a story-driven level with NPCs? Knowing a basic idea of what you want the final product to be is a great start.
• Look at the art options and think about what you want your Void to look like. This helps you understand what items to use.
• Think about how difficult you want the platforming to be.

Not all these factors need to be pinned down from the beginning—and that’s both normal and okay! But the more that are defined, the better.

After or during the conceptual development of the level creation comes the execution. This is a slow and nonlinear process that can vary from level to level, but overall should look something like:

• Blocking out the basics with simple shapes and mechanics
• Iterating on that
• Adding art
• Polishing
• And finally quality testing

When the team at Firaxis Games was first approached with the chance to create a new game with Marvel Entertainment, we were obviously super excited! We knew we wanted to create a game featuring tactical combat as we had a lot of experience creating those types of games with XCOM.

However, we quickly discovered that designing a Super Hero game is very different from creating a game about soldiers combating an alien invasion. Today, I’m excited to talk to PlayStation players about our journey to design a brand-new heroic combat experience, why we landed on using cards to represent hero abilities, and how that system works in Marvel’s Midnight Suns.

The theory behind cards

To understand why we use cards, it’s important to break down what makes a tactics game fun in the first place. All tactics games are essentially puzzles, and our job as designers is to find the right balance between that puzzle being too easy and obvious, or nearly impossible and insanely complex. Our goal is to find the sweet spot where the answer isn’t immediately obvious, but the player understands the mechanics and tools to manipulate the game and reach the solution. However, over time seasoned players will learn the optimal way to use those tools and quickly overcome any obstacle. That’s where randomness comes in.

Randomization is an important design element in tactics games, as it offers a way to make the game unpredictable even when a player has mastered the core mechanics. It requires players to constantly adapt to new situations and keeps the puzzle fresh and surprising. And it’s how you end up with those amazing moments in XCOM, like hitting a clutch 25% shot… but also how you end up missing those 95% point-blank rounds!

Another critical element of tactics games is fulfilling the player fantasy. In Marvel’s Midnight Suns we have an awesome roster of heroes from across the Marvel Universe, ranging from the cosmic-powered strength of Captain Marvel and brilliant mind of Tony Stark to the mystic arts of Doctor Strange and vampire-hunting prowess of Blade. Our early prototypes put these characters into XCOM-style combat with elements like percentage hit chance and cover – And while the mechanics worked fine, the game didn’t feel right. These are Super Heroes, after all! Iron Man doesn’t miss shots with his Repulsor Blasts, and Captain Marvel isn’t going to take cover for protection when things heat up.

As we removed more of those XCOM elements, particularly the percentage hit chance, the game began to feel more heroic…but the combat puzzle quickly became too simple. It was easy to repeat the same powerful attack with a hero each turn until the mission was over. We needed to reintroduce randomness to keep the combat puzzle engaging while still making you feel like a Super Hero. That’s when we had the idea to represent our hero abilities as cards.

Cards are great because they are commonly used in games and players are familiar with key “mechanics” like a deck, draw, and discard. Drawing a hand of cards each turn gave us the perfect amount of randomness for our combat experience. Our heroes feel super-powered in combat because their abilities never miss and always do exactly what they say, but there is still strategy required to solve the combat puzzle based on which cards are in your hand.

Fight and think like a Super Hero

In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, every her

Today we’re happy to reveal November’s Monthly Games for PlayStation Plus. Take on savage foes with traditional weapons and supernatural abilities in Nioh 2, cast spells and solve puzzles in Lego Harry Potter Collection and take to the stars for physics sim Heavenly Bodies. 

These titles can be enjoyed by PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra and Premium members from Tuesday November 1.  The PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Game Catalog lineup for October will be announced later this month. 

Let’s take a closer look at each of the Monthly Games.   

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Nioh 2 / Nioh 2 Remastered | PS4, PS5 

Master the lethal arts of the samurai as a mysterious half-human, half-supernatural Yokai warrior, in this challenging single player action RPG sequel. Take down a host of deadly new Yokai, seasoned samurai warriors and gargantuan boss monsters in Team Ninja’s stylized vision of Japan’s early Sengoku period. Unsheathe your deadly weapons and cut down all enemies in your path using a revamped combat system and the ability

PlayStation Store welcomes the November Savings promotion on Wednesday, October 26. For a limited time* you can enjoy discounts of up to 50% on a variety of titles, including WWE 2K22, Dying Light 2 and Ark: Survival Evolved.