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Feature: If only we could talk to the machines
Eliza’s creator on the real life inspirations for his fictional therapy software
Have you played the visual novel Eliza yet? If not, stop what you’re doing and play it pronto. This almost sci-fi visual novel was recently awarded an RPS Bestest Best by Sin, who said, in her review, "if I start talking about how much this game has spoken to me, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop." It's a fascinating, thought provoking game…
Feature: Skill check for 'an exclusive'
Disco Elysium’s developers are in “a bloody battle” for the human mind
When visiting ZA/UM's studio, I had to take my boots off. This is because their studio, where they are putting the final touches on open world RPG Disco Elysium, is also a flat in a townhouse in Hove, where several of them live. It has nice wooden floors, unbelievably high ceilings, and a big bay window cradling some workstations. There's also a bookshelf full of…
Feature: If you're cold, put a coat on
The It’s Winter and Routine Feat developer explains Russian sadness and powerful moods
Alexandre Ignatov makes strange, quiet, melancholy worlds to explore. He calls them “sad3d”, also the name he publishes under on itch.io. But Ignatov has a whole back catalogue of these games, and they’ve only been growing larger and more complex with time. If you’ve been reading RPS closely you might know of the most recent ones, It’s Winter and Routine Feat. Ignatov's games have a…
Feature: 22 minutes to go
Brittle Hollow is a doomed planet. For a start, in about 22 minutes’ time, it’s going to be destroyed, along with the rest of Outer Wilds’ solar system. And also, up until that apocalypse, Brittle Hollow will also endure constant bombardment by meteors, which will smash away great crystalline chunks of its frigid surface, so that they fall away into the black hole at the…
Feature: Epic loot
Epic and their latest indie exclusives talk about what it gives them, and maybe us too
Epic’s expansion from developer to distributor continues apace. Having secured exclusive distribution rights to some of this year’s biggest PC games, such as Metro Exodus, The Division 2 and Remedy’s Control, today Epic announced partnerships with a swathe of independent developers. Games such as Manifold Garden, Superliminal, No Straight Roads and Airborne Kingdom will all have their initial PC launches exclusively on the Epic Store,…
Feature: Start new turn
A first look at Humankind, Amplitude’s new historical 4X beast
To the untrained eye (eyes that haven't spent many an hour trained on an exquisitely detailed topographical map, checking on all corners of your immense empire), Humankind probably looks like any other 4X game where you shuffle units around and micromanage different settlements. But according to the hands-off demonstration shown at Gamescom this year, it ain't. 4X stands for explore, expand, exploit and exterminate, the…
Feature: Maximum interview
Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith on turning his tabletop game into Cyberpunk 2077
The so new it's not even out yet hotness in games is still Cyberpunk 2077, but as the name suggests, it's not the original Cyberpunk. Although there aren't 2076 previous entries, there is a robust and well loved tabletop roleplaying game to thank for the existence of CD Projekt Red's upcoming RPG. The TRPG was written by Mike Pondsmith, the founder of publisher R. Talsorian…
Feature:
Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City strives to be a unique and grounded cyberpunk city
Marthe Jonkers is a senior concept artist at CD Projeckt Red working on Cyberpunk 2077. Jonkers actually designed the location in the first very first teaser trailer for the game back in 2013, featuring the cyberbabe with mantis arms, and was resigned to the fact that nobody was really looking at the building behind her. Jonkers' team work on locations and interiors, and even the…
Feature: Putting the fiery coat back on
It's amazing how quickly you get back into a routine, even when you've been out of it a while. I got to play a bit of the Proving Grounds, one of Borderlands 3's endgame challenges where you run a timed gauntlet and try to survive waves of high-level enemies and/or kill them efficiently. It was like putting on a big explodey coat. Which is not…
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: Loaded questions
Terry Cavanagh on why he believes Dicey Dungeons is his best game yet
Terry Cavanagh is known for making difficult games, including the likes of Super Hexagon and VVVVVV, two tough-as-nails gauntlets that challenge digital dexterity and reaction speeds. They're crucibles where the sting of failure is treated by the balm of an instant restart. They're not, notably, deckbuilding roguelikes that revolve around dice manipulation. That would describe Dicey Dungeons, Cavangh's latest and (according to him) greatest game.…
Feature: Big robots, big moods
The writer of Heaven Will Be Mine on how she made 2018’s most interesting game
If it was socially acceptable to ask people who made cool things to explain them to me, I would absolutely do this for everything, all the time. “Bloody hell, that cake was delicious. Please describe to me the process of making it, how much planning you had to do, and what the ingredients mean to you. And also what you think of current cake culture.”…
Feature: Hakuna cantata
Cantata is Advance Wars with logistics and an Ann Leckie glow-up
I’ve tried for about twenty minutes to find an opening sentence that doesn’t sound contrivedly promotional, but sod it: Cantata is one of the most interesting upcoming tactics games around. Taken individually, none of its elements are revolutionary. It’s a case of “Advance Wars, but…”, where the wheel of modifiers has been spun and landed on “bright colours”, “supply lines” and “high brow science fiction”.…
Feature: Throwback Thursday
Why are so many old games coming back? We asked developers why they chase nostalgia
Remember that thing you like from 10 years ago? It’s probably getting a sequel. Shenmue 3. Evil Genius 2. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. The calendar of upcoming games is packed with throwbacks that will revisit the worlds we left behind over a decade ago. Oddworld: Soulstorm is heading back to the strange homeland of Abe the skinny green freedom farter. Mechwarrior 5 is booting…
Feature: "Ask the hard questions"
Meet the geographer who tells studios when they’re ignorant and offensive
We hear a lot about level designers in games. Voice actors, concept artists, big directors. Kate Edwards is none of those things. She is a geographer. It seems like an odd job for the games industry, but the more you learn about her work, the more it feels essential. Edwards is hired by studios to cast her geo-eye over the shuffling NPCs of sci-fi space…
Feature: A furr-ly good job
How the cat jokes and beast names of Monster Hunter: World are translated into English
“I do remember there being some pretty bad cat puns that we all wish we could unhear," Marco Bombasi tells me. He’s the localisation director for Monster Hunter: World, the man in charge of translating the dinosaur-harvesting game from its original Japanese into other languages, including English. Every player in Monster Hunter gets a cat sidekick who says things like “Hello Meow-ster”, so I’ve asked…
Feature: You've been blocked
‘Kids are not born toxic’ – How Roblox tries to keep 90 million children safe
“Kids are not born toxic,” says Laura Higgins. “Adults generally are where most of the negative stuff is online. It's not kids doing it.” Higgins works for Roblox, a children’s game of blocky-armed figures and even blockier cars. Well technically, it’s not one game, but many. Roblox is a sort of pick-your-own-playground with a platter of multiplayer minigames made by other players. You could fly…
Feature: It's not about Somerville dog festival
‘Mystery is important’ – Inside’s co-creator won’t tell us the secret of Somerville
It’s set in England. That’s all I learn about gloomy sci-fi adventure game Somerville while talking to Dino Patti, producer at Jumpship. For all those hiding under rocks which are secretly giant spiders, Patti is the former co-chief of Playdead, the studio who made Limbo and Inside. The flagship games of the sad-boy-goes-right genre. Somerville is likely to have similarities to those quiet puzzle platformers,…
Feature: He had me at the ghost impression
I spoke to a Midnight Ghost Hunt developer and now really want to be a fridge
"I... I wonder who the bad guys are in this game." That's Samuel Malone, game director at Vaulted Sky Games, now deep in thought about the moral message behind his upcoming 4v4 prop hunt 'em up Midnight Ghost Hunt. It's about ghosts who have to hide from their would-be-busters, possessing household furniture in an attempt to survive till midnight. I've just asked him if the…
Feature: HMS previewed. Steel Beasts 4.1 discussed
There was a nasty moment early on in my relationship with HMS when I thought me and Johan Nagel's latest weren't going to get on. In my first hour with the beta of this highly original turnless Hornblower-em-up I experienced five game-curtailing mutinies. Even on the lowest difficulty setting I couldn't make progress. Baffled disbelief was fast becoming sulky defeatism when the doubloon finally dropped. An…
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