Dominic Tarason

Amazon have decided that ad-free streaming on Twitch was a step too far for Twitch Prime. Cheekily announced in a Twitch blog post while everyone was getting excited over Gamescom's first day, the streaming network say they're changing what the Twitch Prime subscription (a suite of Twitch perks included in the larger Amazon Prime subscription) includes. While most current perks will stay, ad-free streams are…

Tagged with Amazon Prime, Twitch, Twitch Prime.

The Life Is Strange series isn't known for telling the happiest of stories, but the Gamescom reveal trailer for Dontnod's sequel Life Is Strange 2 wastes no time in letting you know that this one is going to be a downer. The video below gives us a brief introduction to the young Diaz brothers - Sean and Daniel - and gives us some hints as…

Tagged with Dontnod Entertainment, Gamescom 2018, Square Enix, Life Is Strange, Life Is Strange 2.

The Touhou shared universe is now pouring onto Steam. Spinoffs and fan-games aplenty have popped up recently, but Metroidvania Touhou Luna Nights seems a cut above. Licensed from original Touhou studio Team Shanghai Alice and developed by Team Ladybug (the crew behind that excellent free Shin Megami Tensei Metroidvania and others), it launched into early access today. While the cast of characters are familiar to fans of…

Tagged with AGM Playism, Team Ladybug, Team Shanghai Alice, Vaka Game Magazine, Touhou Luna Nights.

FromSoftware's next third-person hack n' slasher - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - now has a release date for PC. Due to launch on March 22nd, 2019, Sekiro looks like a blend of some of the long-running Japanese studio's greatest hits. It's hard not to see equal inspiration taken from both Bloodborne and the Tenchu series in there, complete with grappling hooks, rooftop navigation and lots…

Tagged with Activision, FromSoftware, Gamescom 2018, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Windjammers for the Neo Geo was a lovely little thing - a bright and summery frisbee-sport hybrid of tennis, volleyball and a fighting game. While it wasn't a huge hit in its own time, Dotemu have announced that they're working on Windjammers 2, due out on PC in 2019. While an improbable game to get a sequel, it's likely due to a resurgence of interest in the…

Tagged with Dotemu, Windjammers 2.

There are some who feel the strategy RPG genre peaked with Final Fantasy Tactics back in 1997, and I struggle to find a solid counter-argument. 6 Eyes Studio must feel the same way, as they're happy to call their own entry into the genre - Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - a spiritual successor. It's an impressive-looking game, and, after a successful run on Kickstarter, seems…

Tagged with 1c company, 6 Eyes Studio, demo, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark.

While Far Cry 5 was a solid open-world shooter (if you could switch your brain off whenever it tried delivering another wave of plot), Ubisoft just haven't been sticking the landing on the DLC. The first two thirds of the season pass - a Vietnam war themed expansion, and a mission into pulp sci-fi territory on Mars - just haven't lived up to their concept,…

Tagged with Ubisoft, Ubisoft Montreal, Far Cry 5.

It's hard not to have mixed feelings about Not Tonight. For starters, it's nice to see another game so heavily inspired by Papers, Please - we need more darkly satirical bureaucracy sims. It also contains words (apparently quite funny ones, at that) written by RPS pal and contributor Richard Cobbett, another mark in its favour. It's just hard to shake the terrible sense of all-too-real…

Tagged with No More Robots, PanicBarn, Not Tonight.

I've always been a sucker for a good ninja-themed game, and The Messenger captures that Ninja Gaiden/Shinobi vibe well. Sharp pixel art, catchy chiptunes and an interesting twist define this Devolver-published platformer. While The Messenger looks like a perfectly solid Shovel Knight-esque platformer on the surface, the release date trailer below shows how players will be hopping between 8 and 16-bit versions of the game,…

Tagged with Devolver Digital, Sabotage, The Messenger.

Free-to-play space ninja sim Warframe has always had an 'anything goes' attitude to new content. While we wait for the Fortuna and Railjack expansions (adding a new open world planet and capital-class space combat respectively), idle Tenno now have a new option for whiling away the hours. Frame Fighter is a goofy little fighting game assembled from the main game's characters and animations. It's is…

Tagged with Digital Extremes, free to play, Warframe.

Update: E-Line have announced that the beta might not be quite as open as first announced. To quote: "While the team will strive to provide access to as many users as possible on a first-come-first-served basis, upon further inspection it was decided that, given enough demand, it may be necessary to limit the number of users in the initial testing period for technical purposes" Original…

Tagged with E-Line Media, The Endless Mission.

Try as I might, every time I've attempted to learn another language, nothing quite sticks more than a few hours. Perhaps today's release of Lingotopia, formerly featured at Rezzed's Leftfield Collection will give me a foot up with its more pragmatic, problem-solving approach to language. Lost in a strange and mostly-abstract land knowing none of the language (Mandarin, French, German, Japanese, Russian & Spanish are…

Tagged with Lingo Ludo, Lingotopia.

Anyone grumbling about lower-resolution pixel art being played out needs to hush and look at Inmost. Announced today and to be published by Chucklefish, it's a horror-themed puzzle platformer with a very striking visual style. While its character sprites are small and starkly outlined, similar to what you'd see on the original Game Boy, the mostly-monochrome world they inhabit is anything but. Beautifully detailed architecture,…

Tagged with Chucklefish, Hidden Layer Games, Inmost.

I've always thought that Fallout Tactics got an unfairly bad rap. Yes, it had its balance and structure issues, but it had an interesting combat engine. I'd like to think that Dustwind's developers agree, as their game bears more than a passing resemblance. Fraser Brown took a look at it while it was in early access, and found an intriguing web of systems, sadly under-populated.…

Tagged with Dustwind Studios, Z-Software, Dustwind.

While other esports games continually rework and re-imagine themselves, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive moves slow and steady. New weapons and systems are tentatively introduced once in a blue moon, so it's not surprising that its latest addition feels conservative. Absent since Counter-Strike: Source passed the torch to CS:GO, the now-silenced MP5 submachine gun is now available for use in offline, official casual and deathmatch modes, though Valve…

Tagged with Valve, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

First World of Goo, then Little Inferno, then Tomorrow Corporation even made programming a bit sinister in Human Resource Machine. Next week, they're rolling out 7 Billion Humans, sequel to Human Resource Machine. Robots have taken over the world, and in order to give our now-redundant species something to do, they've bundled us all into a towering office building. It's up to you to program…

Tagged with tomorrow corporation, Zachlike, 7 Billion Humans.

There are few sentences that have me sitting up and paying attention faster than 'inspired by Vampire: Bloodlines', so interactive fiction/RPG blend Nighthawks already had me. That shot comes with a chaser, too; it's a collaboration between Wadjet Eye (of the excellent Unavowed) and prolific word-spewer and RPS regular Richard Cobbett (Sunless Sea). Suddenly, I want to know absolutely everything about it. It's early days…

Tagged with Quarter To Thirteen, Richard Cobbett, Wadjet Eye Games, Nighthawks.

It's a scene we've all seen a hundred times. The tech-savvy cop hunches over an all-too-bright monitor in a darkened room. There's a reflection in a mirror in a blurry photo, and it's the last clue to cracking this case. Only gritty and realistic use of modern technology can get to the bottom of this crime. "Zoom. Move right. Enhance!". And the image comes into…

Tagged with free games, Nicole He, ENHANCE.COMPUTER.

Boyfriend Dungeon is a strange title - it manages to sound both more kinky and less weird than the game it's attached to. Announced back in October by Shrouded Isle and Moon Hunters studio Kitfox, it's about smoochin' on swords. Part hack and slash action-RPG, part dating sim, it features a variety of weapons that transform into an equally diverse suite of suitors. There's men…

Tagged with crowdfunding, Kitfox Games, Boyfriend Dungeon.

Stardew Valley is all well and good, but y'know what the farming life-sim genre really needs? Witch-burnings, inquisitions and a general sense of dread. At least, that's what I'm assuming was going through the heads of Punch Club developers Lazy Bear, as they set to work on their latest game, Graveyard Keeper. Set in a dark fantasy world, you get to stomp around in the…

Tagged with Lazy Bear Games, tinyBuild, Graveyard Keeper.