Rock Paper Shotgun – PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity

Squirrels: they're hiding something. No matter how cute they look, they're keeping something from us and maybe it's more than just food. Perhaps you'll see some of their secrets in the new demo for Nuts, a game about surveilling the goings-on of squirrels. By day, carefully place your cameras. By night, sit back to watch where the blighters go. It's a first-person puzzle game of sorts, about the daily cycle of tweaking camera locations to follow the furry fiends, but also has a story about squirrely secrets. I'm interested.

One problem with unfathomable and unspeakable horrors in video games, right, is that they're designed by people. Oh the human brain can do weird and awful, no doubt, but it's bad at things it can't itself grasp. So I'm quite into how newly-announced roguelikelike action-platformer Source Of Madness uses machine learning and procedural generation to spit out its "Lovecraftian" levels and monsters, which do have a pleasing weirdness to them. A bit like if you let Google DeepDream munch up a load of dogs and landscapes then spit them back out into a game.

It is time, once again, to scream about Skate Story. Sam Eng's crystalline kickflipper made a fleeting appearance during this weekend's second Guerrilla Collective stream-a-thon. The new trailer flaunted more of the game's stunning concrete underworlds while laying out the technical footwork that'll get you there. To paraphrase a truly well-worn phrase, one doesn't simply ollie their way into hell - and lord, do I long for the day when I can carve my way into Skate Story's abyss.

It feels very 2020 to wish for a vast annihilating cylinder to flatten the world, but goodness me I am so up for The Eternal Cylinder. The latest game from ACE Team, the makers of Zeno Clash and Rock Of Ages, is about cute critters trying to escape a monolothic planet-pulverising tube rolling over the landscape. They'll eat other life to gain new abilities aiding their escape, which sounds fun but... I'm still in the stage of being wowed by how wild it looks. ACE Team's surreal style is such a treat, and a new trailer shows off more of the weird life we'll meet.

It's all getting a bit cramped in the World Of Darkness, but it seems there's space to squeeze in at least one more wolf. Putting the other White Wolf behind them, two former Witcher devs today announced Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart Of The Forest - an upcoming tale of anger, activism and global warming as told through the lens of the big bad wolf. Not that any of that's in the teaser, mind. We'll just have to make do with this rather lovely owl.

Screenshot Saturday Sundays! In the midst of this hectic, kinda-sorta-not-E3 storm, perhaps you'll join me in taking an afternoon away from the hype. Grab a cuppa, pop open your laptops, and let's find some gems buried behind the glitz and glamour of professionally-curated showcases. This week: the rat-man rises, electrifying ghosts, an eternity in landscapes and the eye of terror.

The first E3 I've ever had to pay attention to is upon us, except sort of not because it's all irregular and online. I am lost.

But what's this? It is The Iron Oath, a pretty turn-based tactical RPG that promises dynamic campaigns and a world your little mercenary company can change over time as they go around it killing people. I suppose that'd do something one way or the other, right?

I missed this somehow when it first popped up. But Curious Panda Games have promised a new trailer, and a demo next week.

I could use a lot of words and phrases to describe Master Spy that, when I read them in a game's description, tend to put me off. Retro. "Hardcore". Brutal. Platformer. Balaclava.

And yet I enjoyed it so much that I almost pitched a review a few years back. It's tough, for sure, and I don't think it's the most approachable stealth platformer, but it feels fair. It doesn't waste your time. If it had come out a few years earlier, it would probably have been pretty big. It can now be yours, along with literally over one thousand other games, as part of the Itch Bundle For Racial Justice And Equality.

Like the supernatural intruder it loves so much, stealthy successor Hello Guest snuck its way into this weekend's not-E3 proceedings. Taking Hello Neighbor's home invasion out of the suburbs and into the pine-sheltered alcoves of a haunted amusement park, TinyBuild opened the turnstiles to their stealth-horror follow-up with a free alpha beginning this weekend - no tickets required.

Like a skeleton fired out of a dimensional rift, Undungeon's eldritch creatures have arrived on Steam. Well, one of them did. A free demo for Laughing Machines' hack n' slash n' loot 'em up launched with a new trailer during this not-E3 weekend, letting you roam the post-apocalyptic ruins of seven Earths as Void - a ghostly world-hopping "Herald" who never quite left their goth phase behind.

"Mankind is dead. Blood is fuel. Hell is full." What a lovely poem, which is used to describe Ultrakill, a fast-paced first-person shooter that's like Quake with more colourful levels and a lot of jumping. It's been kicking around for a while, but a new trailer and demo are available now.

Like a lad's day out to Margate gone wrong, Trash Sailors will send you and your pals out on a raft to face threats you're woefully unprepared for. Drifting through swamps, between icebergs, and over sunken cities, up to four fools will be trying to dodge obstacles, fend off attackers, gather passing salvage, craft gear, repair holes, and generally not get eaten by crocodiles, robosharks, or trashkrakens. I see bits of Raft, bits of Don't Starve, shooty bits, and certainly a nice hand-drawn style.

Quietly grab your mop bucket, select your least squeaky soap, and bring a whole load of bin bags, for soon we'll again be called on by the mob to clean up crime scenes before cops get the evidence. Serial Cleaners, announced today and coming next year, is a follow-up to 2017's Serial Cleaner. I still like the sound of the concept. I hope that its realisation is less frustrating this time.

Bomber Crew was already a bit FTL-like, and its sequel is leaning in. Space Crew swaps the original's World War 2 setting for outer space, but otherwise still looks to be a strategy game about telling your vessel's crew what to do as you launch missiles and catch fire. The announcement trailer can be found below.

Our VidBud Colm used to be a postman back in the old country, and from what he's said it was a job he very much enjoyed. Small wonder, then, that big city slicker Meredith would want a go of it for a couple of weeks in Lake, an open world explore-a-town game due out by the end of the year (and a poor SEO optimisation if you ask me, since if I ever forget the name of it I'm going to have to Google things like "post delivery woman video game small town" to find it again).

You play as Meredith, delivering parcels and interacting with the locals of peaceful and beautiful Providence Oaks at a fairly sedate pace. Take a look at the trailer, which was highlighted at during today's Guerrilla Collective not-E3 livestream, to see if it's the kind of gentle, twiddling-guitar-music story you'd like - it is obviously the sort of gentle, twiddling-guitar-music story I'd like.

No Place For Bravery was revealed an entire four years ago, which is a long time, as it goes. NPFB (if you'll allow me an inelegant abbreviation) has shyly peeked around the PC Gaming Show curtain with a new trailer. Alice0 remarked on the sense of terrible scale on display when it was first announced, and though that hasn't changed, a few other things have. In any case, this top-down, fast paced and extremely gory action-RPG is about ready to take itself out of the oven: it's coming Q1 2021.

Have a butcher's at the trailer below. And butcher's is right, since, despite being rendered in little pixels and the camera being at a fair old distance, you can somehow see the innards splashes of gore in lovely detail. Honestly, it's like someone slaughtered a pig in here. Tch.

Gloomwood has done half my job for me by using the URL "ThiefWithGuns.com". What more do you need to know? One thing, perhaps: there's a demo of its first-person stealthing up on Steam now.

Red Thread Games, the studio behind Dreamfall Chapters and Draugen, have announced a new action adventure game, Dustborn, with a shiny trailer.

It's a road trip game about a sooorta queer-coded group of misfits driving a mysterious cargo across America, chased by "fanatical Puritans" and blocked by "the authoritarian Justice". Also you're a folk-punk band, and must practice around the campfire for a showdown at Battle of the Bands. No, really.

Battlestate today gave a new look at Escape From Tarkov's next map, named Streets Of Tarkov. Escaping the woods, warehouses, villages, and industrial facilities of previous maps, it'll head right into the big city. Battlestate say it will be the hardcore PvP first-person scavenge-o-shooter's "biggest and most detailed location ever". I say it has some unexpectedly stylish apartments for a game where you're desperate to find bog roll.

First-person horror fest Outlast is returning for The Outlast Trials. The name and key art above were announced back in December, but the first trailer landed a few moments ago during the PC Gaming Show. We now know it's a new co-operative take on the gore-smeared running away from the previous two games. There's a first new trailer below, involving drilling something into a person's face.

It's been a bit quiet on the Twin Mirror front, but a new teaser trailer was just revealed at the PC Gaming Show. For those who don't remember (who could blame you? It's been so long I thought the trailer was teasing a sequel to A Way Out before I thought of Twin Mirror), Twin Mirror is a weird sort of X-Filesy adventure game from Dontnod Entertainment, which was first announced back in 2018.

And in fact, since Control has come out in the interim, I will say it's maybe like Control meets Life Is Strange. You play a journalist, Sam Higgs, who is constantly having arguments with another version of himself who dresses like a carnival barker by way of a private schoolboy, currently known as The Double. The teaser also comes with the news that Dontnod are publishing this game themselves (the first time they've done a publish) and have extended development, so Twin Mirror is no longer going to be episodic. Fancy! The trailer isn't actually half bad, which is good, 'cos it also says Twin Mirror is 'coming soon.' Watch it below.

Amazon are going all-in on the gaming scene this year. First they jumped onto the hero-shooter trend with Crucible, and now their MMORPG, New World, is next. At the PC Gaming Show today they revealed a gameplay trailer showing off some of PvP combat, and treated us to some info on its closed beta coming this July.