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Feature: Free games of the week to tide you over
Greetings, all! It's the end of August, and so, these dog days are over. The temperatures might remain warm well into September, but do not be fooled: autumn is on its way. It has been one year since I started writing Priceless Play, carrying the baton for Free Games of the Week. I love it! Bringing you weird writing on weird games week after week…
Just looking at ritual crafting game Stones Of Solace lowers my blood pressure. The fuzzy, dreamlike edges to the items. The daily shifting of the colour palettes. The gentle, beach-y music to keep you company. It’s all a much-needed breath of fresh air on a hot weekend. Here is a very pretty trailer to soak in.
Stones Of Solace is an upcoming ritual game with a shifting cast of statue pals
It’s heatwave season here in the UK, so I would like nothing more than to be lounging in the soft grass, perhaps in the shade of a statue or pressed against its cool stone plinth. Meditative craft-o-ritual Stones Of Solace wants to evoke that same feeling, and it’s lovely, if somewhat disappointing that we don’t yet have the technology to bring through the physical sensations…
Dig up new music in the strangely cozy car park of Rainstorm EP
Rainstorm EP is a pleasingly simple game about digging up cassette tapes that have been lost around a rundown car park, and then listening to them as the nighttime rain pours down. Playing it has made me quite sleepy, so here, take a look (and listen) to a little of it in the launch trailer below.
This morning I've had a pleasant potter in Pattern, over hills, through forests, and along beaches, passing giant stone heads, oversized apples, derelict towers, and antennae. It journeys endlessly across procedurally-generated lands, dotted with occasional oddities, with dreamy generative music to wrap us in the world. Pattern has a public beta out now, which is what I've been playing, with a full release due to…
Take a deep breath -- in through the nose, and hold two three, then out through the mouth -- and open a window into another world with Tenderfoot [official site]. It's a small virtual scene staring out a window in a futuristic (and possibly post-apocalyptic?) city. Green creeps up glass-fronted buildings, wind turbines rotate slowly on rooftops, a creature snoozes on a leaf, flocks of…
On Christmas Eve in 1966, a New York television station broadcast several hours of a festive fireplace so people in fireless flats could tune into The Yule Log and feel Christmassy too. A modern tradition was born. You might have seen fireplace videos in Christmas shops on VHS and DVD, Netflix has three of 'em (I favour the birchwood fire), one ad has Nick Offerman…
Feature: A real-time plant simulator.
Viridi is a kind of free-to-play desktop potted plant companion. What you get is a pot full of succulents which apparently grow in real time. I have no idea if this is true because I am not good at plants IRL. The developer Ice Water Games (who also made Eidolon) describes it as a "safe haven", "a place you can return to for a moment…
The Absence Of Is [official site] was created for Antholojam - a game jam focused around the theme "Golden Era sci-fi". It's a peculiar little thing which prods at the idea of near-death experiences and the afterlife.
People are puzzled enough by the whole swimming-in-icy-ponds lark that I don't often mention my second greatest pleasure in life is watching plants grow. Every spare surface in my tiny box room is bristling with green, from ivy and ferns to alien succulents. Despite living in a minigreenhouse, I am still super stoked for the next game from Eidolon developers Ice Water Games. Viridi [official…
Feature: Surviving & Journaling
Eidolon is a beautiful survival game inside which John starved to death on video back in August. We asked Jack de Quidt, writer for The Tall Trees, to live a little longer and write a little more about his experiences with the game. When you first open up your journal in Eidolon you’re met with wonderful, terrifying blankness. You have no objective. You have no…
Feature: It ate my face
The extremely pretty Eidolon is out now - an explore-them-up set in a future Washington that has been reclaimed by Nature. Unquestionably looking like Shelter meets Proteus, it plays differently to both, this game primarily a survival simulator. However, with no information at all, including that bit, I started playing and recorded my efforts. You can watch them below.
As expected after a few non-moving screenshots and some of those positively primitive runes otherwise known as "words," developer Ice Water Games has elected to release a trailer of upcoming survivalthing Eidolon. And oh what a trailer it is. It really does look like a gloomier, more traditionally "game"-like Proteus, riddled with gnarled scraps of our culture's smoldering past for good measure. Like a butterfly…
I am very good at surviving. So far, I've made it 24 years, and I've only forgotten how to eat, panicked, fashioned a spear out of a busted broom and a butter knife, and attempted to slay my refrigerator, like, six or seven times. But I can't take all of the credit for that sterling record. Games taught me countless survival tips and tricks, like…
