News

兽视通过第三次全球调查跟进探讨欺凌问题

Thanks to Cartoon Brew we’ve learned about Brave Cat, the first animated feature film by Gabriel Osorio, Chilean director of the Academy Award-winning short film Bear Story. “The new cg film, which is currently in production, follows Kona, a teenage forest cat who decides to face her fears and search for her missing mother, who was kidnapped by the circus long ago. She is joined on her journey by Colin, an abandoned guard dog pup, and Bernard, a runaway old circus bear, who are also searching for their own families.” Like Bear Story, much of this new film is an allegory for the struggles of ordinary people in Chile. Check out the teaser trailer too. The film is in production and seeking distribution.

image c. 2024 Punkrobot

When you hear the word 'Sequel', either one of two things will pop in your mind: Either happy images of great sequels like 'The Empire Strikes Back' or ‘The Expendables 2’ or nightmares of horrible sequels like 'Son Of The Mask' or ‘Halo 5: Guardians’. So, what happens when a great product receives a sequel that does improve on the previous faults and introduces new ideas but, at the same time, seems like a step backwards? That's where 'Banjo-Tooie', the sequel to the legendary Rare game 'Banjo-Kazooie', seems to fall. Now, before you raise your pitchforks at me, hear me out: While it does improve all the original faults and issues that I had and I do still like the game, it oddly feels like it takes a few steps backwards as well. What do I mean by this? Well, ready your trusty side-kick and prep your new moves, cause it's time to Beak Bomb into: BANJO-TOOIE.

Nintendo Power Hour! 

A much anticipated Nintendo Direct finally premiered on June 18th, 2024. With it, came news about a variety of upcoming releases for the Nintendo Switch happening in Q3 and Q4 of the year. A lot of fun games had been announced both first and third party with several coming soon. Lets look at some of the highlights.

Having recently come back from playing Super Mario Bros. I was naturally intrigued by Kitsune Tails which got showcased as part of the Wholesome Direct I covered previously. It's adorable, full of Japanese inspired charm and the protagonist is a fox. All things that very much appeal to me. And like the game series it clearly takes gameplay inspiration from, it is brutal.

Players step into the paws of Yuzu, a kitsune who has recently become a courier. Yuzu is a curious and energetic fox who frequently gets into trouble. Which becomes all the more apparent with a cutscene after the first level where Yuzu gets attacked by an oni while foraging for mushrooms in a cave. A couriers life is not an easy one, especially as Yuzu gets tasked with delivering a letter to a ghostly warlord in a haunted house. The amount of stage variety in the demo isn’t bad and they aren’t easy to clear either.

Naughty Dog really had something special when they started the Jak and Daxter Series. Platforming, collecting, engaging puzzles with just the right amount of difficulty, and to top it all off, it had the first seamless 3D open world with no loading screens. And who doesn’t love a furry otter-weasel hybrid sidekick? I just wish they had kept the plans to have Jak a wolf-like humanoid! Always could use more wolf characters!

Recently Animation World Network told us about Tumble Leaf: The Movie, an upcoming feature film based on the multi-award-winning stop-motion animated series for kids created by Drew Hodges — who will also direct the feature version. “When everyone on the island of Tumble Leaf gathers at the Finding Ceremony, a momentous coming-of-age celebration, only Fig the Fox resists because it threatens to upend his perfect life. Suddenly, the ceremony is interrupted when the island mysteriously breaks apart due to a long-hidden ancient entity. With Tumble Leaf lost, Fig and his friends must lead their eclectic community as they set sail on an epic, quirky, and hilarious quest across the vast unknown to find a new home and their place in a bigger, wilder world.” No word yet on a release date, but the film-makers are seeking out distribution.

image c. 2024 Bix Pix Entertainment

A new trailer for an all-ages platformer that looks like some of the fantastic cartoony games of old has made its way out of the bushes and into the open! It looks to feature a cool mix of 2D and 3D action that switches planes of control from one to the other. Developed by VEA Games and published by MY.GAMES, Nikoderiko: The Magical World piqued our interest with an array of colorful creatures and adventurous, action-filled gameplay. Also, Donkey Kong Country composer David Wise is creating the soundtrack! Check out the trailer below:

It’s-a me! Super Mario!

Originally released in 1985 for NES and Famicom, There is little doubt that Super Mario Bros. has an immense legacy. Mario is one of the oldest and most recognizable names in pop culture. It's one of the earliest titles in what would become one of the biggest and most well-known gaming franchises to ever exist. In fact, it’s considered one of the greatest games of all time and in the context of the time period in which it was released, it definitely is something special that earned that legacy without question. 

Let’s be honest: The State Of Play from Sony and Geoff Kieghly’s yearly ‘Summer Games Fest’ were less than stellar. While both had some interesting games, general consensus seems to be that they were the weakest, especially Summer Games Fest. So, all eyes were on Xbox and their showcase, with everyone hoping we got at least some decent games announced and did we? Well, I’m happy to say that not only did we get that and then some, I feel Xbox may have had the best show they’ve had in a long while! In fact, general consensus seems to be in agreement as well, with a recent poll by Geoff Kieghly ranking Xbox’s showcase with an A, the highest, I think, the showcase has ever gotten. Do I agree? Personally, outside of two games we’ll get to, I think this was the best show I’ve seen in a while!

Welcome to "Fresh Fur!" Our weekly installment going over the newest game releases, and which ones you can expect to find anthros/furries in!

Check the list below for all the games we could find with animal/anthro influences and characters.

New Releases for the week of June 10-16, 2024:

• Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, PC) - June 14
• Monster Hunter: Stories (PC, PS4, Switch) - June 14
• Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked! (PC, PS5, PS4, Switch) - June 11
• Wayfinder (PC) - June 11 (out of Early Access)

*Bolded games have furry/animal influences/characters

Furry & Animal Indie Steam Game Finds:

These games were found in the New Releases section of Steam this week and will be updated as more come out throughout the week!

Dutch furry fandom is spawning the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival, a public event celebrating furry culture and art. Part of the festival is a conference to connect academics, researchers, and community members for multi-field learning and presenting. It will happen physically and online, and you don’t have to be professional to contribute.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS — send proposals for work you can present at the event or online — DEADLINE IS JUNE 24, 2024

The Call For Papers has details and suggestions of work to present. History, philosophy, behavior study, economics…

We encourage the submission of proposals for academic papers, short workshops, practitioner-based activities, best-practice showcases, and pre-formed panels. We welcome established academics at all stages of their careers, and warmly embrace independent scholars. We also encourage submissions from non-academic furries and welcome other presentation formats such as photographic essays, alternative presentation styles, etc.

Here’s more info from one of the Organizing Committee. Vanguard Husky is a Postgraduate Researcher in the UK at the Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University. He runs Chasing Tails: A Furry Research Blog.

Furry Studies: An idea whose time has come — by Reuben “Vanguard” Mount

Just under a year ago, an academic colleague and I were approached with the idea of hosting a Furry Studies academic conference as part of a wider furry focused event. Honestly, there wasn’t much consideration before we accepted. I had been studying the furry fandom as a furry myself for three years at this time and was stunned to learn that this would be the first academic conference focusing on furries.

The furry fandom has been around for a long time. I know I probably don’t need to tell anyone reading this, but even if we take the first “furry party” as the benchmark, we’ve been here for almost forty years. Conversely, Furry Studies has been around arguably since 2007 with the initial studies from a group of social psychologists that would later become FurScience. Since this beginning, the number of furry academics has grown, with some incredible voices and viewpoints from countries around the world.

This was our starting point when we were approached to organise the first furry academic conference. We wanted to bring together these distant international voices that study furries to come together either physically or digitally to share their research, their thoughts and their knowledge about the furry fandom. It was also this desire to bring together knowledge that led to the creation of Minerva, our mascot.

The final result – drumroll please – is the Furry Studies 2024 conference (furrystudies.org) in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as part of the programme of the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival (otterdam.art). This will be a full-day event at the Nieuwe Instituut (nieuweinstituut.nl) on Friday October 18th 2024, with several sessions planned to fill the whole day. The opening keynote from Joe Strike (joestrike.com), who you may know from their amazing and insightful books about the furry fandom – Furry Nation and Furry Planet.

The theme of this conference is “Being Furry”. The intention of this was to begin with a provocation that was wide enough to prompt a variety of discussions, and one that we think every furry – academic or not – could speak to even if they couldn’t definitively answer. Also, as the first furry academic conference, we wanted to keep the theming simple to lead to more- complex and in-depth questions for future conferences – but that’s a thought process for later!

The Call for Papers is on our website. It’s been warmly received by the academic side of the furry fandom and we have received some incredible and insightful submissions so far. We’re still taking submissions until June 24th so make sure you drop something in before then!

But this isn’t just for academic fluffs! We welcome anyone interested in attending in person or online as registration and speaking slots are open to all. Plus, with all of the incredible events taking place over the weekend for the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival, and the fur con Reffurence (reffurence.com) happening the weekend after, there’s plenty to enjoy during this October in Rotterdam. So make sure you drop down and say hello!

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon.Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

As Furry Tea Party (FTP) held its seventh event in 2024, Haneneko gives his insight about the event's history, its challenges, and what the future holds for the furcon.

Steam Next Fest is here and it has so many highlighted games and demos. Today I’m looking at one that caught my attention: Isle of Swaps.

For those who are unaware, I have a long history with card games. I’ve collected Pokémon cards since I was little. I found a Yu-Gi-Oh structure deck in a shed once(Don’t ask me what it was doing there) and play Magic: The Gathering with friends on occasion. I’ve played several digital card games of varying types. So when a new and especially cool looking card game comes along, I become interested. Now if this game sounds familiar, that's because Isle of Swaps was featured before as one of the games Daxel played for the Deckbuilders Fest back in March. It's back for round 2 as one of the games highlighted for Next Fest.

This comedic video series from the Uncivil Gamers stream team for GamingFurever.com explores new released games on a weekly basis. Our streamers each select one game that was just released within the week and each play through their own game. We then edit together the best and funniest moments from the gameplay and deliver them to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 PM ET!

Description on Steam of "Deep Beyond":   Deep Beyond Is a first-person interactive thriller about a sea explorer and the mystery behind her father’s disappearance.

Link to video (also embedded below:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW8uv2fIADE

Subscribe to Uncivil Gamers on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UncivilGamers

Here’s a graphic novel to tug at your heart: Missing You, written by Phellip Willian and illustrated by Melissa Garabeli. “Following the loss of their mother, Thomas and Lara find an injured deer on the side of the road. Deciding to bring it home with them, they name the deer Lion and quickly become best friends. The new woodland creature soon fills their hearts with warmth and fun, easing their mourning. But when Lion grows more and more curious about the forest beyond their house, Thomas and Lara start to wonder if the forest is where Lion truly belongs. Will they be able to say goodbye to their new friend?” You can find out now — in this trade paperback edition from Oni Press.

image c. 2024 Oni Press

HOOOO BOY do we have a long list for all you readers out there! Don't feel like going through 1800+ games to see which ones had furries, animals, creatures, and other wonderfully fluffy, feathery, scaly, or otherwise exciting anthropomorphic qualities? Well, our wonderful staff member Valraven did! She's compiled an absolutely CRAZY list of all the games we could find that had an ounce of furry in em, or some sort of animal focus. We'll continue to look through the games and see if any slipped through, but even so, this is a big list of games that feature some potentially awesome games in them. Steam links and the image for them provided for easy access!

We'll be playing some of these demos this week and next, and hopefully providing some previews, reviews, and developer interviews as many of these games progress through development! Additionally, we have an actively updated Furry & Animal Games List  over at @GamingFurever that you can follow and get constant updates for lots of indie titles with TONS of lovely furry characters!

Anyways, without further ado, the LIST:

Originally conceived as a follow-up to Wolfenstein 3D entitled ‘Wolfenstein 3D Part 2: Rise Of The Triad’, Rise Of The Triad was originally released in 1995 by legendary developers Apogee Entertainment and became a cult classic amongst gamers and FPS fans. Now, Nightdive Studios and New Blood Interactive, the later being the minds behind the FPS hits ‘Dusk’ and ‘Amid Evil’, have teamed up with Apogee to remaster the game and bring us Rise Of The Triad: Ludicrous Edition, along with bringing it to consoles for the first time. Does this game live up to its boast of ‘Really Cool Explosions’ or should it have stayed a cult hit? Let’s get psyched and find out!

国际兽视首次与兽时报联合报道活动取得巨大成功

Summer Fest has rolled around and with it, a number of reveals, announcements and so much more. In particular what got my attention was the Wholesome Direct, which showcased a lot of cute and cozy games, most of which are upcoming and have demos already out. Some of these are even headed to multiple systems. Check out some of the more notable titles below.