Screenshot Saturday Sundays: Fluffy photographers, damp driveways, and living layers

Screenshot Saturday! A day to dream of all the games that might one day be. What do you mean Gamescom starts tomorrow and that’s what that event is for? This is our weekly version, smaller and better. (Also, what do you mean Gamescom starts tomorrow? How is time??) This week: a chunky raccoon pal, some oddly familiar city streets, and a forest built up from sketch to colourful autumn foliage.

First, as often happens, I’m here to introduce you to a friend:

This hypnotically spinning raccoon comes courtesy of Button City, a narrative adventure about our new pal and their pals trying to save their local arcade. There are many more delightfully stout and angular animals to coo over on their website. “Make friends, play mini-games, solve puzzles, and complete quests around town as you follow a story about friendship, growing up, and saving the things that are important to you,” it says. Sounds as cute as this critter’s round little tail.

When I travel, I like to spend a lot of time just wandering around city streets, and these images from Faded evoke the same kind of feeling. Not being anywhere in particular, or seeing anything particularly interesting, but just soaking in the sights. Or possibly it’s because I’ve gotten lost and just ended up in someone’s driveway like the third picture more than once.

Faded is described as “surreal sandbox 3D game” and is set in the Baltic region, but I can’t tell you much more than that yet. Intriguing.

Finally, an actual development-y clip, showing how an idea becomes a drawing becomes an actually rendered area, from Someday You’ll Return.

The “you” in “Someday You’ll Return” is presumably referring to the protagonist’s daughter, who has vanished off into the woods. The player had best fetch her back. But I’m looking at this description that says “psychological horror” here on Steam and thinking that it might not be quite so easy. It’s scheduled to release this year, so some of you will be able to find out soon enough. Not me, a baby. But some of you.

Bonus this week is Knights And Bikes. I’ve used this game as the bonus before, but I do like it any time I can get a little look at how everything looks from an angle you’re not usually allowed to see as a player. Video games are weird! And that’s great! (A tragedy that there’s no cat-petting gif downthread, though.)