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Feature: You should, Your Grace
Am I a bad dad for letting my daughter run around with a pet bear cub? Almost certainly given the circumstances, but seeing as how I'd already let her enlist a snail, magical rooster and a prickly hedgehog into her army of so-called 'secret agents', I thought it would be churlish, if not positively unfair, to deny her this new, grizzly companion. After all, my…
Narrative kingdom simulator Yes, Your Grace launches in March
The kingdoms I play in most management games are doomed, though that's most often a consequence of my poor management skills. In Yes, Your Grace, I'm convinced that the kingdom of Davern is meant for the ashes either way. You'll take over as king and spend part of your days approving or denying requests from your petitioners with your meager resources and the rest attempting…
Feature: Turns out there were a lot
Alice Bee: Good afternoon, esteemed colleagues. We were all locked, at one time or another, in the RPS EGX dungeon this weekend. Given that it's a veritable bonanza of video games, both large and small, we should discuss the bestest games we saw over the weekend. I'm sure it will be entertaining and useful for our readers! Who wants to offer the first game up…
Turns out, bike modding is more than just sticking some paper on the back wheel to make it sound like a motorbike. After two years of steady downhill offerings, developers RageSquid want to breathe new life back into roguelike BMX 'em up Descenders by bringing official mod support into the fray. The Modding Update arrived last week with nearly a dozen new tricked out tracks,…
It’s tough being King Dad in monarchy manager Yes, Your Grace
Kings and Queens, eh? What are they good for? I don't recall the last time Queen Elizabeth sat in front of the people and promised to help them fund a new fridge or rescue their turnips from goblins, that's for sure. It's time someone kicked these crowned clowns off their plush seats and got them into the thick of the action. Developers Brave At Night…
Card-slinging tactical roguelike Nowhere Prophet has a release date locked in, and it's exactly one month away, landing on July 19th. Rather than re-tread tired ground, Sharkbomb Studios are blending genres and wrapping them around a fresh Indian-inspired take on dusty sci-fi worlds, giving it a distinct look and sound. There are complex multi-lane battles between building decks and managing a nomadic caravan on a…
Feature: The Banner Saga meets Thronebreaker with hints of FTL
Nowhere Prophet hits the road this summer and it’s made me a digital card game convert
It's been over a year since Sharkbomb Studio's rad-looking card-based roguelike Nowhere Prophet last made camp at the RPS Treehouse, but since then the game has disappeared from its early access pilgrimage on Itch and set its ever-expanding caravan towards a full release later this summer. Based on a recent build I played at PAX East recently, I'd say it's shaping up to be one…
Feature: Y2K Hun?
Hypnospace Outlaw, if it can be described at all, is a game about policing an alternate-world dream-based internet browsing system in 1999. Oh yes. Accessed by wearing a brain-scanning headband, users can create their own Geocities-like web spaces, interact via a chat app, and share music and images with one another, all via the HypnOS operating system. Think Compuserve, but you're asleep. And, because it's…
Players and nostalgic netizens (wow, I feel older just writing that word) will be able to dive into the deliciously 90s dream-internet of Hypnospace Outlaw next month on March 12th. The latest from Dropsy crew Tendershoot, it's a game about exploring a hallucinatory future-past vision of the internet that exists in people's shared dreams. You play - at least initially - the role of 'enforcer',…
Feature: Lights, camera, rock, paper, shotgun!
The Thursday Matinee: Highlights from the RPS video department
Whew, Thursday already? How did we get here? For those of you who enjoy our video matinees, or for those who didn’t even know we had a YouTube channel (you can subscribe here, by the way), here’s this week's. Yeah it’s a bit late, but we’ve been pretty busy -- you’ll see why on Friday -- and Matthew’s off trying not to get killed in…
Feature:
Interactive credits sequences make games and their developers more memorable
Usually when I finish a game, I like to sit and let its credits run their length. It’s a ritual that allows me some time to reflect on the game itself and the hard work of all the people who made it, and generally it’s a very nice experience. Except for the time when I spent a full hour watching names scroll by at the…
Grimly satirical post-Brexit bouncer sim Not Tonight is out now
It's hard not to have mixed feelings about Not Tonight. For starters, it's nice to see another game so heavily inspired by Papers, Please - we need more darkly satirical bureaucracy sims. It also contains words (apparently quite funny ones, at that) written by RPS pal and contributor Richard Cobbett, another mark in its favour. It's just hard to shake the terrible sense of all-too-real…
Political games are picking up traction, with Papers Please and Beholder being among my favorite indies from the last couple years. A new game published by Mike Rose's No More Robots (Descenders, Hypnospace Outlaw) combines those influences with some bit-art and the current political hellscape into a Brexit simulator. I'm exceptionally excited for the impending release of Not Tonight because I love when video games…
It's sometimes hard to believe that the internet of the late 90's wasn't some sort of bizarre techno-dream. Floating GIFs, embedded MIDIs and mouse cursors that transformed from site to site. Hypnospace Outlaw (from Dropsy developer Jay Tholen) is a game about exploring a fictional internet the likes of which we just about remember, keeping the peace when trolls and malware rear their ugly heads, or…
Hello. If you fancy breaking your neck and tumbling downhill through a dense patch of conifers, you’re in luck. Descenders, the mountain biking game with roguelite undertones, is out in early access today. I wasn’t wholly convinced of its muddy cycling when I tried a preview copy but I did enjoy all the painful giffage that resulted in my doomed attempts to get past the…
Feature: Falling with style
I’ve been mucking about in mountain biking game Descenders. It’s a muddy, roguelite take on bicycles wot go fast, with the twin sticks of your gamepad responsible for steering and stunting on dirty downhill trails (keyboard controls aren’t in our copy but they will be when the game comes to early access on February 9th, we’re told). Here’s eight silly reasons to play it, based…
Downhill mountain biking sounds like a lark. What could be more pleasant than gliding down scenic valleys and weaving between the pines... at about 80kmh? Ah, yeah, I'd forgotten that bit. Downhill mountain biking sounds awful. Google tells me that's the top speed for real world bikers, but the ones in Descenders seem to eclipse that - as we'll get to experience firsthand when the…
Like most people, I don't like falling down the stairs, so the prospect of falling down a hill or a mountain seems absolutely terrible. Incredibly, some people find falling very entertaining and they strap skis or boards to themselves expressly for the purpose of throwing themselves down slopes.Descenders [official site] is the new game from the creators of butt-sliding action racing game Action Henk, and…
