Ark Adds Giant Anglerfish And Friendly Penguins
The stuff dreams are made of!
Peel off my scalp, saw through my cranium, then shake the goop out into a video game, and you'll either find yourself in either a cyberpunk girl gang up to no good or dark icy waters filled with friendly and frightful creatures. I'm now suspicious of the scab I found on the back of my head this morning, as Ark: Survival Evolved [official site] has dived into the latter with its latest Early Access update yesterday. Giant anglerfish and friendly penguins are the stuff my dreams are made of.
We can get to the inside of my head later, as the sandbox survive 'em up's update added other things too. You'll also find prettier fur on animals, a new siege catapult, a gatling gun turret, and a 'Tribal Warfare' system which I'm told "allows Tribes to formally declare war against each other for specific mutually agreed-upon timeframes, encouraging large-scale set player-vs-player confrontations rather than offline raiding!"
More importantly, those penguins are the extinct Kairuku Waitaki. You can tame 'em to have a friend, or I guess also beat them to death to rip useful blubber out their corpses. Be kind to them. As for the angler fish, the Melanocetus Anglerpescum is a honking great monster lurking in the depths, attracting prey with its bioluminescent lure. You can tame it and ride it, in theory. That's the life I was made for, man: chilling in the depths with glowing monsters, occasionally surfacing through the ice to hang with friendly penguins. I miss the swimming pond I left back in London; it'll be cooling nicely now, though the ice is still a while away. I don't know how I ended up trapped on land, my skin stolen, but it's not right.
ANYWAY. Check out the patch notes for more on changes and whatnot.
Developers Studio Wildcard plan to launch the full version of Ark in June 2016. If you want in now - and it does seem Ark's development is far more active than most Early Access games - it's 33% off until Monday, down to £15.34.
