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 hurt me.
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 just getting lost in a sea of pop-ups and spam.
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 second level. So maybe you’ll be into that. Then again, maybe not. I don’t know. We’ve barely spoken since that night in July. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS 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 on my tumbles in the press build, all in the form of skillful GIFs. But also some reasons to maybe pull the brakes on that decision. Read the rest of this entry »
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 game launches on Steam Early Access February 9th. This isn’t RageSquid’s first foray into racing – they also made Action Henk, a game that’s sans bicycles but big on butt-sliding.
There’s more going on under the hood here (let’s just pretend that’s a thing bikes have) than in your typical racing game: the action takes place in procedurally generated worlds, which suggests you’ll have to think on your feet/wheels rather than practice the same bends again and again.
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 it’s all about falling down procedurally generated hills while attached to a bicycle. The announcement trailer, which you can see below, shows a bicycle jumping over a train and has a first-person section in which the bicycle is being attacked by trees. I might be scared of falling in real life, but I would happily fall down these digital hills.
