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1 month ago
Feature: Live, die, repeat
We’ve been battered by wave after wave of survival romps since Minecraft popularised the genre, with its deadly nights and groaning zombies, almost a decade ago. In its wake, we've been introduced to a cavalcade of punishing, persistent environments intent on putting us in an early grave. The masochistic impulse to put ourselves through the wringer for entertainment has spread to RPGs, management games, cosmic…
7 months ago
Feature: Listen now to our great story
Sit down at the boiling pot, stranger. Let me tell you a tale. A sordid tale, full of fascinating lands and captivating characters. A story of wonder and flame, strangeness and warmth. Would you like to hear it? Great. Just play this rubbish cover shooter for a half hour. I’ll start the introduction when you hit the first checkpoint. Welcome to the RPS podcast, the…
1 year ago
Feature: In space, nobody can hear you starve
This week’s Premature Evaluation sees Fraser hurtling through the cosmos inside a space-faring locomotive in Failbetter Games’ eccentric early access space sandbox, Sunless Skies. Narrative-driven games aren’t normally a comfortable fit with piecemeal early access development - it’s harder to offer a compelling vertical slice of a story that’s meant to be viewed as a whole. This isn’t Failbetter Games’ first rodeo, however; the studio…
2 years ago
Sunless Seas sequel Sunless Skies [official site] has a rosy glow to it as it nears the finish line of its Kickstarter. Successfully bringing in £300k in pledges - 3x what devs Failbetter originally asked for - will do that, eh? In other words, the spaceshippy alt-Victoriana exploration, storytelling and sudden death game is, barring developmental disaster, looking like a sure thing.
Feature:
I've just jettisoned a wounded zailor while underwater. It was to free up a last gasp of oxygen for the rest of my crew as I frantically try to ascend from the depths of the Zee in Sunless Sea's [official site] Zubmariner update. As the screen fades to black (to resurface, not to die horribly) I wonder whether to imagine the departed comrade as being…
Feature: Darkly blissful
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Most roguelikes or lites or whatever you prefer to call this newer generation of permadeath roleplaying games, I play to win. Or, at least, to try to win: with the intention of victory, even if the actuality of it is unlikely. In Sunless…
Feature: What you'll see Unter the Zee
Sunless Sea's [official site] first expansion, Zubmariner will be released on 11 October bringing with it new ports and cities to explore and tales to be told. Or as developers, Failbetter, put it: "agonising choices presented in beautiful prose." But it wasn't the beautiful prose which caught my eye in recent dev blog entries, it was the undersea (or rather, Unterzee) flora and corals. That's…
3 years ago
Feature: Never say goodbye,
As much as PC gaming hardware has changed and improved over the years, there's always been one constant: the limitations of disk space. Granted, it's far cheaper and easier (no more absurdly tiny Master/Slave toggles) than it used to be to grab a new hard drive, but the rise of ever-faster but more expensive SSDs set things back a bit in that regard. With new…
Feature: The RPG Scrollbars
HO HO HO. Christmas is practically upon us, and games eveywhere... well, mostly online... are joining the party. Whether they call it Winter Veil or Frostfell, it's a chance to deck the hubs with bonus XP and let everyone from elves to orcs don Santa hats and hand out treats to the good little wizards and barbarians. Here's a few of the events going on…
Feature: Level Cap
An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC RPGs ever released. Covering the entire history of computer role-playing games is a daunting task and attempting to place the best games in such a broad genre in any kind of order is even more daunting. Thankfully, we are equal to all tasks and below, you will find the best fifty PC RPGs of all time.
Feature: Dawn of the third day.
What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 3 of the sale.
4 years ago
Feature: BOSS COG
Hey! It's a new and final episode of COGWATCH, a weekly video series in which Quintin Smith examines one mechanic in one game. This week, the BOSS COG that is miserabilist, boat-bound roguelike Sunless Sea [official site].
Feature: Little promises
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to the conclusion that Early Access (and the same concept under various different names) has only improved my gaming life.
Feature: Checking in with Early Access games further down the line
Starting an irregular series in which I revisit Early Access games a few months on from when I first tried them. Have they come along much? Does a finished game seem a realistic prospect? Bit of a silly one to start this series with, given Sunless Sea hits 1.0 - and thus release status on February 6th, with a major update due around that time,…
Feature: #someoceans
Failbetter have been writing the bestest best words in gaming for a while now and in Sunless Sea they have created a worthy vessel to carry those words to new audiences. There is horror, humour and haunting in the cavernous depths, and through it all, your ship cuts through the waters seeking new mysteries and fresh hells. Adam: Worse things happen on the Sunless Sea.
Feature: Rime and Reason
We’re deep down now, deep down where dreams and figments tumble and churn together like silt, deep down in sleep, where pain and sorrow fall drop by drop into the Sunless Sea, and wisdom comes in whispers of text and through the rubbery fronds of some ancient lifeform. Now in Early Access, Sunless Sea is the first ‘proper’ game from Failbetter, the clever-clogs creators of…
5 years ago
Feature: Tentacular Talk
Our lengthy conversation with Alexis Kennedy and Paul Arendt of Failbetter Games continues, with mysterious, enigmatic and untold tales of Fallen London, details of the nightmarish voyages undertaken by the captains of the Sunless Sea, and adventures in the mind of a dead god. If you haven't read part one, you'll find it here. If you have, jump right in.
Feature: London falling, and I wanna shout
"Have you ever been to Córdoba?" It's not the sort of question an interviewee normally asks me but this isn't a normal interview. I'd like to say that I spoke to Paul Arendt and Alexis Kennedy of Failbetter games in a corroded wine cellar by gaslight, but that would be a lie. The creators of Fallen London work in Digital Enterprise Greenwich, overlooking the Thames…
