Yucatan is a Mexican Day of the Dead themed, neon-soaked, low poly adventure that wants to bring Metroidvania style game design to the arcade racer genre. I mean… throw the word “blockchain” in there somewhere and I think this adequately sums up everything the internet is into right now? Unfortunately, you’ve got a bit of a wait on this, as Yucatan is set to be released on PC and PS4 in early 2019. The good news is that there’s a demo available right now.
RPS Feature MasterChef
They say the best meals start with the finest ingredients. For example, if you take a freshly bought Pot Noodle, add a splash of boiling water and a soupçon of sachet sauce, you have a tasty meal for the bachelor in a hurry. Trinket Studios’ Battle Chef Brigade is a little more omnivorous, and a lot more ambitious, drawing from puzzle games and anime and reality TV in a way that, perhaps, should result in a steaming mess. It’s not a steaming mess, I’m happy to report, even if a couple of the ingredients do feel a little underdone.
The harsh and wet ruins of Rain World are now slightly less harsh (but still just as wet), say developers Videocult. That’s good, that’s real good. In the summer we learned there’d someday be an easier “Monk” mode for anyone struggling with the game’s “disco lizards”, as well as a harder “Hunter” mode for anyone who thought death by a dozen leeches did not come quick enough. Well, it’s here in the form of a beta. Read the rest of this entry »
As Adult Swim gears up for the third season of Rick and Morty, characters from Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s anarchic sci-fi cartoon will be appearing in a slew of games, including Rocket League [official site].
Here’s some cheapo games because you like cheapo things and you’re a cheapo person. Don’t give me that look, I’m just being honest. The same folks that do this sort of thing all the time are Humbling Bundling survival platformer Rain World together with Glittermitten Grove, which is a fairy management sim and definitely not hiding any other amphibious videogames inside its slimy belly sac, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is all part of the Adult Swim bundle, which includes some other bits and bobs.
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The humble gecko is a magnificent creature. Have you heard them scream? Well now you might, because Gecko Ridimption [official site] is a free frenzy of colour featuring sticky lizards with the ability to puke whole kayaks onto the wall and shoot lasers from their faces causing massive explosions. I’d give you a reason for all this reptile chaos, but the best I can come up with is: “Adult Swim”.
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Adult Swim are releasing their run ‘n’ gun game Rise & Shine [official site] today via Steam. It features a boy and his talking gun shooting their way through gaming history when their colourful world is invaded by the forces of Next Gen in the form of zombies, marines and the like. The trailer, which you can see below, doesn’t make the distinction between the old and the new seem strange enough for my liking, but the backdrops are gorgeous. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Beautiful, ingenious and a little bit filthy
Headlander [official site], Double-Fine and Adult Swim’s skull-swapping Metroidvania affair is nothing like as funny as it probably thinks it is, but fortunately it’s a quiet delight in so many other ways. It’s also filthy.
Headlander [official site] made me think of Wall-E, except there’s only one human left in the robot-run offworld colony. Technically, the bots are humans of a sort, the entire race having transferred their consciousness from its fleshy confines into new robotic bodies. Those robots are under the authority of a wicked computer and it’s up to the last meat-person (YOU) to save the day. Problem is, you’re outnumbered. Oh, and you don’t have a body. Cue body-switching, ability-gathering, side-scrolling action.
Wasted [official site] is “a roguelike post-apocalyptic pub crawler”, which instantly places it high on the list of things I’d like to play. And play it I did, right before heading out to E3 last week. I haven’t spent enough time to deliver a full judgement but it’s a game worth placing a spotlight on, with some smart progression mechanics and a Fallout meets Adult Swim sense of humour. It was indeed published by Adult Swim’s gaming arm and has been receiving regular rounds of boozy updates since release.
Duck Game [Steam page] made me swear at an empty room this morning. Not because one of the other ducks trapped me in a bubble and threw me off the edge of a level (although that did happen), not because a shotgun blasted me backwards through a door in a flurry of feathers (that also happened) and not because I popped on some plate mail only to run into a duck with a magnet, which he used to rip the sword out of my clutches and then clamped the magnet to my armour before lobbing me into a pit (also a thing that happened).
Duck Game made me swear because I couldn’t fucking believe I haven’t been playing it every day since it released. It’s brilliant.
I haven’t written anything about Kentucky Route Zero yet, but Floor 3: Bears is my gaming moment of the year. I bloody love bears, me. I’ve got three t-shirts with bears on them, my desktop wallpaper is a bear, and I have bought my baby daughter two outfits which make her appear to be some extremely cute human/bear hybrid with poor motor skills. So you’re goddamned right that I clicked on the link for Adult Swim broswer game ‘Holy Crap, Bears!!‘ the second I saw it. I regret nothing.
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Craig wrote about Westerado back in January, but I like to think we live in a time where there is no past or future, only an eternal present. Also I first heard about it at the weekend and it’s swell.
Westerado is a western-set RPG in which your brother and mother are killed and you want to find who did it and avenge their deaths. Only, it’s an open world game, you don’t know where that person is, and they look different every time you start the game.
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RPS Feature Lose Yourself To Dance
Soundodger was absolutely excellent back when I played its original free release earlier this year, but has it somehow become horrible in its frenzied dance lust for more? That unlikely question was brought to you by a need to artificially build contrived tension, and its answer is a resolute, incontrovertible “NOPE.” Soundodger+ brings new songs and the ability to make levels out of your own music, but also a price tag. Make no mistake, however: it’s worth the money. Here’s wot I think in the form of both wordshapes and THE MOST MEANINGFUL VIDEO I HAVE EVER MADE.
Yes, that is a picture of a maniacal star with planets for hands socking a majestic flock of space dolphins. To be fair, they started it. That image pretty much sums up Planet Punch in a nutshell, though: you go through the universe systematically wiping out all life with nothing but a vast cosmic array of apocalyptically powerful planet hands. At heart, it’s a relatively simple premise (PUNCH EVERYTHING YEAH), but different enemy types and planet combos keep things compulsively fresh. Also, each hit prompts a rainbow volcano of satisfying sights and sounds, even as tiny combo multipliers ask you “Why?” and bellow “Unnecessary!”
Adult Swim’s Western RPG flash game Westerado has been playing in a background tab of Chrome for about an hour now. I’ve been listening to the music and imagining stars overhead, the pop and crackle of a campfire, and wondering if there really is a life to be had away from my desk? I could be a cowboy. I have a whip, and I could be out wandering the range, living a life of simple, horsey pleasures. The star of the game doesn’t quite have that luxury: he’s hunting for the killer of his aunt and brother, running from town-to-town and tracking down clues. It’s surprisingly good.
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Everyone, I have some regrettable news: I woke up this morning with the sudden realization that – in my heart of hearts – my truest wish has always been to lead a life of megalomaniacal supervillainy. So, incredibly long and spellbindingly interesting story short, I’ve wired the entire world to explode. Unless! You can tell me – without glancing about one nanometer below this sentence – what’s come of the Team Fortress team-up between Adult Swim and Valve. Mwahahaha, I can smell your fea– yeah, it’s a hat. Well, damn. I guess I’ll just go back to writing about videogames, then.
Edit: Errrrr, also a massive update for TF2. Details below.
So, that Valve/Adult Swim collaboration. As many speculated, it will be the Meet the Pyro video and, yes, ‘will be’. It was foolish of us to think that the video would just appear without any foreplay, so instead there’s the image above, which tells us that something else will happen on June 27th. I’m guessing that actually will be the video, unless they choose to release one frame every couple of days, some hidden at secret locations around the world, the precise position hidden in Morse code messages transmitted on secret websites that can only be found by reading tea leaves through a specific kaleidoscope constructed in 1924.
Ready for something to come out of nowhere and hit you right in the nose? OK, here it comes. Get ready, brace yourself, and… it still hit you. Because that’s how things that defy the law of conservation of energy to suddenly materialize on our plane of existence work. I believe a more succinct term for it is “surprise.” Anyway! Turns out, it’s an announcement – as things we report on often are. Something Valve-related is making its way to famed purveyor of cartoons with curse words, Adult Swim. But what could it be? WHAT?
Adult Swim: home of naughty cartoons and a surprising number of clever, free indie games. UK ministudio Preloaded are the latest to join those ranks, with side-scrolling, high-casualty strategy game zOMT.
Auto-marching strategy games, wherein your lads do most of the violent legwork for you once you’ve built them, are increasingly pervasive – the nominal successor to tower defence, and based on similar values. zOMT differs somewhat in that it’s primarily a defensive game, with you spending generated mana on constructing soldiers, exploding madmen, elemental spells, bomb-bouncing clouds and sturdy trees to keep an implacable enemy from nobbling your base.
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