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Feature: Life and death advice
Noita rewards you for being reckless, so set everything on fire
Noita is a game about searching for a good death. This is the conclusion I've come to after two weeks of playing it each day. I try and I die and I try again, and when I stop for the evening, it's not because I've reached further than ever before. It's because I have crafted a suitably satisfactory demise.
Feature: Successful experiments
From falling sand to Falling Everything: the simulation games that inspired Noita
"Ants. Cover them in ants." The RPS treehouse is gathered around my screen, where several dozen stickmen are currently duking it out in a blank 2D void. This is not nearly violent enough for Sin, who has seen the Ant button. I obligingly sweep my mouse across the screen, summoning a haze of insects. Some of the stickmen jump into them, and get stuck there.…
Feature: Die and retry
Noita might have come from an alternate universe: one in which we harnessed the forward progress of computer power not to render 3D polygons and open worlds, but to apply greater degrees of simulation to the pixels of a Lemmings or Worms-style 2D world. It's a roguelike in which 'every pixel is simulated', which in reality means that wood burns one pixel at a time,…
Feature: The important thing is we all liked it
Alice Bee: Hello Brendy and Nate! We're here to discuss what we ultimately think of Wilmot's Warehouse, our Can't Stop Playing for the month of September. Next week we will choose a brand new game, so as a final tribute we are here to deliver an RPS Verdict for the sweet organise-a-warehouse 'em up that is Wilmot. We'd been planning to do this verdict chat…
Feature: The absurdity of work
Clowns, dog food and Christmas Miracles: the secret history of Wilmot’s Warehouse
You might not be surprised to learn that Wilmot’s Warehouse, the charming object-categorisation game we’ve been banging on about this month, was inspired by (wait for it) working in a warehouse. Co-creator Richard Hogg worked in warehouses for Asda and Boots in his teens, before moving on to work for a film stills library after graduating. “I loved that job,” he recalls, wistfully. “In fact,…
Feature: Listen now and sort yourself out
You are handed a box. Inside, another hour of ceaseless chatter from three folks on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. Oh no, where re you supposed to put this? Maybe it should go next to the knives in the "dangerous items" pile. Or you could store it beside the tennis rackets in "hobby equipment". Oh hell, let's just make a whole new…
Feature: Unboxing the message
Wilmot’s Warehouse’s motivational posters are a deadpan anti-reward
Could you pass me that block of cheese? No, the other one, the blue one. No, that's a slice of cake. The chee-- oh, for heaven's sake, I'll get it myself. Honestly, you shouldn't be playing sorting simulator Wilmot's Warehouse with an attitude like that. You're clearly not enthusiastic about the minimalist pile 'em up we can't stop playing. Maybe a few of its motivational…
Feature: This is your brain on Wilmot
For the first three and a half billion years of its history, life on earth was fairly dull. It was, essentially, a load of little blobs mucking around in a great big sea. But then, five hundred million years ago, the Cambrian Explosion happened. Despite its name, it was not a sick wrestling move, but a sudden evolutionary riot, in which life diversified into a…
Feature: Reader beware, you're in for a ware(house)
Time, once again, to reveal our Can't Stop Playing for this month. The announcement is coming a bit late because we had some trouble deciding for September, but then we looked at what we'd been writing about and, shockingly, playing, and there was really only one option. Who could have thought that pushing boxes around a black room would have us so completely in its…
Feature: Wilmot and Wittgenstein, sitting in a tree
I don't think we ever see the extent of Wilmot's horror. He's a square in charge of a warehouse, single-handedly responsible for storing and serving up hundreds of amorphous objects. We, the player, only see those objects from the top-down, a step removed from the abject terror of categorising off-colour melon slices that simultaneously resemble 50% of an egg. Maybe reality is less blurry from…
Feature: Speedy delivery
If you do not understand the low-key cerebral pleasure of inventory management, then what are you even doing playing videogames? Get out. Everyone else, welcome to Wilmot's Warehouse. A whole game about fiddling with your inventory and wrestling for space amid piles of bananas and hair dryers. It's basically a giant version of that suitcase in Resident Evil 4 that holds all of Leon Kennedy's…
Feature: Be a cannibal, eat the rich
Four weeks ago, in the disgusting heat of old August, we told you we can’t stop playing the chaos-fuelled micro-muckabout Streets Of Rogue. And since then we've not stopped banging on about it. It's sort of embarrassing. We spoke to its creator, we praised its tabletop-ish freedom, and we enjoyed having a totally normal one. But listen, we’ve got to move on. It turns out…
Feature: Mix and match (and kill)
Our favourite co-op cocktails for total carnage in Streets Of Rogue
Friends are the worst. One minute they’re stuffing delicious bananas in your mouth to heal your wounds, the next they’re flailing at your head with a police truncheon. But what would life be without some friendly fractures to the skull? In Streets Of Rogue, the anarchic roguelite we can’t stop playing, you can still harm your fellow players in co-op mode. That means lots of…
Feature: How to use a shrink ray on the immersive sim
Streets Of Rogue’s creator on how he stuffed a tiny city with ideas
Streets Of Rogue is a tiny Deus Ex about being stupid. It’s good. If you haven’t heard us shouting about this teeny-yet-turbulent roguelite, then you haven’t been paying attention. To add to the cacophony, I spoke to its creator, Matt Dabrowski, about troublesome bodysnatchers, rampaging giants, vague sequel plans, and how he went about brute-forcing as many silly ideas as possible into a tiny toy…
Feature: Sarcastically, I'm in charge
I turned Streets Of Rogue’s character creator into ‘Fanfic mode’
Streets Of Rogue is a chaotic playground of cunning tricks, slapstick violence, and endless, endless laughter. We've been playing it together muchly here lately, in fact you could say we Can't Stop Playing it. An important feature we've not discussed yet is the custom character creator. This lets you combine the wacky traits and abilities from other characters to make your own little pixel person.…
Feature: Streets of Rolling initiative.
How Streets Of Rogue is a tabletop RPG disguised as a roguelike
I love Streets Of Rogue. Loads of us here at Rock Paper Shotgun do, it's why we Can't Stop Playing it. I wanted to dig a little into why I enjoy it as much as I do, and I think a really good way of communicating why is comparing it to rules-light tabletop RPGs.
Feature: Listen to our street music
You may have already seen us bellowing about Streets Of Rogue, the tiny but flavourful immersive sim full of chaos and angry gorillas. That’s because we can’t stop playing it. This week, the pod squad are gathering to chat about why they think it’s so bloomin’ good. But also their favourite characters in the game, from a drug-addicted investment banker to a tiny naked…
Feature: Nothing out of the ordinary here, officer
Ah, these familiar, everyday streets. It's a comfort that Streets of Rogue’s city and its many mundane simulated districts are so utterly ordinary. You can keep your Farming Simulators and your Solitaires. It's here that videogames truly reflect our simple reality. For example, that time four giant gorillas crushed the entire city into dust.
Feature: Chaos is a ladder (to the next level)
I hope you like shenanigans. Or at least antics, or capers. Streets Of Rogue is about all those. It’s an anarchic roguelike about ascending a tower block while everything around you erupts in a comedy sci-fi riot. It’s like that Dredd film, but instead of credits as the city’s currency, there are chicken nuggets. It’s also the first game to get our Can’t Stop Playing…
