Screenshot Saturday Sundays: Spinning spikes, scenic strolls, and spooky sitting

Screenshot Saturday! A lovely little weekend look into what game developers are working on at the moment. This week: making a devilish trap room, relaxing on a curious world, and an ominous warning about something called the watchers.

Watching Super Mario Maker, either the making or the playing part, is incredibly satisfying. It seems to target that ancient part of the brain, the pattern-finding bit that loves to see things slot into place. But obviously, that’s not unique to Mario, which is good news considering I’m supposed to be writing about PC games. Here’s a potential alternative, riffing off I Wanna Be The Guy fangames instead, fittingly called I Wanna Maker.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me like that menu has a good balance of depth and accessibility, so that there’s a lot of options but they’re easy to apply. Also one of the item categories is called “killers.” Because of course it is. You can keep up with I Wanna Maker via its website.

Here’s this week’s obligatory pretty nature, brought to us today by VR game Maranga.

Maranga should hopefully be out this year, and is supposed to feel “something like a holiday.” Get your eyes on more prettiness at its website, too.

Finally, as we creep closer to autumn, I’m expecting more spooky Halloween goodness. Here’s an early one, courtesy of Sigil.

You’d not be able to tell from this mood-building setup but Sigil’s shooting (…punching?) to be a melee combat game. Developer Van Andrew Nguyen has some other bits and pieces you can already play, which are perusable at their website.

Bonus this week is, as far as I can tell, not destined for a game yet (or possibly ever), but I am a sucker for a good elemental effect and these are so expressive.