“Give the guy a gun and he’s Superman,” Humpty Dumpty said. “Give him two and he’s God.” I’d like to add to this, “Give ’em five guns stacked up and clicked together into one huge megagun, and they may well be playing Mothergunship.”

That’s the next bullet hell first-person shooter from the creator of 2014’s Tower Of Guns, and this time it’ll have players build our own guns. A bit like Serious Sam: Double D, we snap bits and bobs into honking great guns covering half the screen. You can see quite how that works in the ‘Gun Crafting Range’ demo released today. Read the rest of this entry »

Say, have you played The Curious Expedition, the turn-based colonial-era exploration game which we declared our favourite roguelikelike of 2016? You can’t all have, as otherwise developers Maschinen-Mensch wouldn’t have released a demo today. It contains two expeditions. So whoever you missing-outers are, go on, get in, give it a go. You needn’t even download anything special to play, as the demo runs in your browser. Read the rest of this entry »

A demo is out now for Viking survive-o-management RPG Dead In Vinland, inviting us to play through one in-game week and see if we can hack life on a mysterious island.

“At its best, Dead in Vinland is compulsive, and a great example of systemic roguelike storytelling,” Nic Rueben said in our Dead In Vinland review. But at its worst… ah, it’s good that a demo is out now so people can see for themselves, because the game does have some quirks. Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever your weapon of choice–plasma rifle, axe, M1 Garand, or raw capitalism, baby!–you may well be able to dabble in your favoured violence this weekend for free. The full versions of XCOM 2, For Honor, Call Of Duty: WWII‘s competitive multiplayer (okay, so not really the full version), and Offworld Trading Company are all available in free trial weekends for the next few days – mostly through Steam. Read the rest of this entry »

If you fancy turn-based stealth puzzling in the style of Hitman Go with a more-artistic crime, have a gander at Vandals. Released today, it does Hitman Go-style sneaking but with the goal of spraying graffiti on city walls rather than garroting goombahs. You can even paint your own art in MS Paint-y spraying. It has a free demo too, so you can safely try a life of minor crime. Read the rest of this entry »

Boys, boys, boys, I’m looking for a good time. That’s why I’m downloading the demo for Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, which just launched. The demo contains the RPG’s first chapter so we can meet those boys, boys, boys and see how their road trip starts. And hopefully it’ll let us see how the game might actually run on our PCs, given that the benchmarking tool released earlier this month is wonky and Square Enix say it “may not accurately reflect the game’s final performance”. For now: boys.

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I’m almost ready to leave the enticing waters of Subnautica, so I was pleased to find another alien ocean to submerge myself in this morning. I’ve just played the demo of In Other Waters, a narrative-driven exploration game about investigating a strange planet and doing xeno-biology.

Unlike with Subnautica, my impression of what that world really looks like is entirely in my head. All I actually see of planet Gliese 677Cc is a real-time map, with dots and contours that represent the wildlife and terrain. It’s a great reminder that your imagination can do far better graphics than any video game, and developer Gareth Damian Martin is looking for funding on Kickstarter.

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When it comes to crowdfunded indie games, patience is a virtue that is often well rewarded. Kickstarted back in 2014, we’ve had our beady eyes on Crossing Souls for a long time, and it looks just as tempting now as it did then.

After a lengthy development cycle, the game launches next week on February 13th, but to ease potentially skeptical players into its quirky world of movie-inspired 80s nostalgia, developers Fourattic have released a generously portioned demo to both Steam and GOG.

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Going anywhere nice this weekend? Have you considered the irradiated ruins of post-apocalyptic Boston? You might fancy a crack at Fallout 4, as this weekend Bethesda will hold yet another days-long free trial of the full game. The speedrun record is under one hour so you certainly could ‘complete it’ in one weekend, but myself I like the sound of wandering aimlessly. While I find Bethesda’s open-world RPGs quite flat and have never finished the main quest of a single one, I do always enjoy spending a while pottering and seeing sights. That’s my weekend sorted. Read the rest of this entry »

I was really tempted to pick up stealth-action RPG Seven: The Days Long Gone over Christmas, but three things stopped me. 1) I wasn’t sure I’d like it, 2) most people said it was buggy and 3) it was priced just a little bit too high. Yesterday, those sneaky devs and publishers launched a three pronged attack to win over me and my fellow free-running fence sitters, and by ‘sneaky’ I mean ‘smart and good’.

The game now has demo that lasts about an hour, an update that’s cleared up a bunch of bugs and improved some core parts of the game, and a 30% discount that lasts until January 29th. After playing the demo, I’ve somersaulted off my fence of indecision and landed on the side that’s left me £19.59 out of pocket but with a promising RPG to sink my teeth into.

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Whoever wrote the description of Rainswept that’s attached to the trailer on YouTube manages not to mention a certain TV show even once, so I’m going to avoid mentioning it by name as well.

Rainswept is an adventure game in which a detective comes to a small town to investigate an apparent murder-suicide. As he digs deeper into the rumours and mysteries surrounding the crime, he discovers that nothing is as it seems and “his own sanity will be pushed to the edge”. Along the way he’ll work with local law enforcement and learn about the locals and their secrets. There’s a demo, about an hour long, that you can try right now.

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If the prospect of spending time with your family this holiday season isn’t horrifying enough you can always download The Evil Within 2‘s free trial, which is available now on Steam. In her The Evil Within 2 review, Olivia White called the game “a definitive, well-produced classic survival horror experience” so it’s worth a go if you fancy a spooking. Read the rest of this entry »