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Gaga: Small Radios Big Televisions Released

Weird worlds

I'm always interested when a free small weird doodad I enjoyed years ago gets a full commercial release, and I'm especially curious to see what Small Radios Big Televisions [official site] has become. I enjoyed the mild puzzling of 2014's free version, poking around an oil rig and gathering tapes to enter the warbling distorted scenes stored on them, but I've no clue what it might be now. More of a puzzle game, perhaps? I am keen to find out. Unfortunately for both of us, I need to finish this post before I can clock off and fire it up. Chop chop!

So! There are disused factories and industrial buildings, and there are tapes in them. These tapes contain small 3D scenes, snippets of low-fi worlds, which have been distorted in that fake VCR muddle sort of way. Nice!

"Explore, manipulate, and distort the tapes to make them reveal their secrets," says the marketing blurb, which does hint at more puzzling. Another blurb says, "Some of these tapes may contain clues to help you progress, some need to have their worlds distorted and ripped apart by magnetic fields to discover what's stored inside."

I had hoped that a full release would also get more into the oddities of reusing tape, recording over old data which leaves ghosts or breaks down as it's rewritten. I've no clue whether it does or not. Fingers crossed? I'm up for tape puzzles too, and... now I'm wanting to fire up Sylvio to manipulate tapes too.

Small Radios Big Televisions is on Steam for £7.19/9,59€/$9.59, which includes a 20% launch week discount. It's made by Owen Deery's Fire Face and published by Adult Swim Games.

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About the Author
Alice O'Connor avatar

Alice O'Connor

Associate Editor

Alice has been playing video games since SkiFree and writing about them since 2009, with nine years at RPS. She enjoys immersive sims, roguelikelikes, chunky revolvers, weird little spooky indies, mods, walking simulators, and finding joy in details. Alice lives, swims, and cycles in Scotland.

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