Screenshot Saturday Sundays: weird water, glitchy ghosts, and corgi consumerism

Screenshot Saturday! A day for peeking at what game developers are working on at the moment. Games, probably. Also, it’s October, and if you haven’t heard, that’s Halloween month, so this week two out of three are spooky. Maybe next week we’ll go for a full house. Who knows! That’s so far away! Within: a leaky basement, a chill spirit, and some light relief in the form of puppies.

Firstly, here is a suitably gloomy shot from Gloomwood.

“Something below is drinking the water,” is a wonderful sentence. It should not actually be creepy at all. Everyone drinks water. I drink water (though not as much as I should.) But you look at this extremely strange architecture, with a big square hole in the floor that can only serve a terrifying purpose, and you do not want to meet whatever is down there even it it’s just thirsty for a nice cold glass of H2O. Also, I love the moss hanging down where everything else is cleanly man-made.

Gloomwood is a Victorian horror stealth shooter, which was once upon a time a roguelike immersive sim. I don’t know how much, if anything, has carried over from that, but I do like the demonstration of the twists game development can take. You’ll be investigating a cursed mansion, and you’ll also get a canesword, which is surely the best Victorian weapon. Gloomwood does have a website, but it’s mostly a link to its presskit, so I will give that to you instead.

Now here’s a slightly less gloomy but still seasonally appropriate spooky tweet:

This ghost on the shore is, conveniently, from Ghost On The Shore. That’s the new exploration game being made by the developers of Marie’s Room, which was very good. Per their website, you search about an island and get to know Josh, who I assume is that spectral fellow up there, and how he died. I've used another image from the game to head this post.

Finally, as a break from all this Halloweenyness, here’s some good dogs:

This game does not have a title yet, which is fine because 1) titles are hard and 2) they have a FAQ explaining that and in place of a title is a photograph of two corgis. It also explains that this is a physics-based party game, which you can tell from the very good wiggling in the video above. “Our mission is to make our players laugh and have a good time with their close ones,” say developers Recreate Games, which is very nice.

Bonus this week is The Tarnishing Of Juxtia, because I can’t stop looking at the way this boss slides to their knees both gracefully and utterly defeated. Also the brightness of the leaves and the weight of the heroes weapon. Also the way the flashy hit effects fade before the blood hits the ground, as if the showiness of the battle wears off quickly, leaving only the reality of murder behind. Every time I watch it I see something new. I have no idea if any of that is reflected in the final product, or if I just have an overactive imagination. (It’s “a challenging 2D action-adventure game, set in a pair of divine kingdoms ripped apart by war and plague,” but it doesn’t have a store page or website yet, hence bonus.) And yet I like it anyway!