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Feature: Throw your hands up at me
This would not be RPS if I didn't return from Gamescom and write minimally about the triple A-xtravaganzas and maximumly about smaller, weirder things wot I saw. So here, have at it: my favourite of the independently made games I saw at this year's show. I flatter myself that the selection is broad enough that it covers genres to suit every taste. Strategy games! Card…
Feature: Feed me, Seymour
Atomicrops: hands on with the twin-stick Stardew Valley game you didn’t know you wanted
I have been telling people I played this game called Atomicrops, and they go “Huh, haven’t heard of that one, what is it?” And then I go “It’s sort of… twin-stick Stardew Valley?” because so far that is the best shorthand I can come up with. Although it describes itself as an action roguelite farming simulator, which may be more helpful for you. The framing…
Bloody Norsemen. They don't know how good they have it, up there on those tiny frozen islands. Here I am, sticking another water bottle in the freezer and they're still up there bashing each other into a bloody pulp over a pile of snow. Typical. It's about time someone went up and gave them a good shake-up. Things might be grim up north, but Bad…
Feature: Who taxis the taximen?
When I'm in the back of a taxi I'm most likely to be hoping that neither I or the driver end up coming off as an awful person. I am extremely unlikely to think of the driver as "a priest, a confident, a friend". But for all I know, you, the person reading this right now, are a big weirdo and pour your heart out…
Per Aspera lets you build a colony on Mars, without useless humans holding you back
There's a metaphysical thought experiment I like called The Ship of Theseus, which I'm not going to explain to you because a.) I'm sure you already know it and b.) It's casual Friday, not played-out philosophy Friday. That is next week. Anyway, this concept seems to have a legacy in Per Aspera, a story-stuffed strategy offering from Tlön Industries and Raw Fury, about terraforming the planet Mars…
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They just keep coming don't they? A lot of games were announced at E3 2019, things that we didn't know about, as well as stuff that's previously announced, or expansions to already released games. Now, to the casual outsider, what we're doing might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we'd put together an alphabetical list of all the PC games that have been confirmed to…
The second in Noio's side-scrolling strategy series, Kingdom: New Lands, is the latest giveaway on the Epic Games Store, and the last weekly freebie of the current sale. It's a minimalist action-strategy game where you play as a mounted monarch in a lush 2D world. You tell the peasantry what to build and where, and convince them to do the job with coins thrown from…
That game you don't know much about other than you saw a trailer with hoverbikes and skidding and deserts and ruins and an art style looking mighty inspired by French comics artist Moebius, or Sable as it's officially titled, is coming later than expected. Previously due some time in 2019, it's now pushed back into 2020. That's fine, because you weren't really sure what it…
Quick! Hurry! You have until 6pm today (10am Pacific) to grab Kathy Rain for free for keepsies. To celebrate the third birthday of the mystery-solving adventure game, publishers Raw Fury yesterday launched a wee giveaway. We were on holiday then but NOW we're back and NOW you should grab it NOW because Kathy Rain is pretty deece and it's free NOW and I am done…
Screenshot Saturday Sundays: a handcrafted hedgehog, a fuchsia forest, and a valuable volume
I think the reason that I like Screenshot Saturday so much is that it necessarily makes us focus on the little things in games. All those background vistas and assets that are easily overlooked when you’re actually playing a game instead of happily watching gifs of all the hard work that’s going into them. This week, then: a shy cardboard buddy, an absolutely gorgeous forest,…
A cybernetically-enhanced futurecop is on the trail of several strange murders in Whispers Of A Machine, an adventure game collaboration between Kathy Rain creator Joel Hästö and The Samaritan Paradox maker Petter Ljungqvis. It'll launch on April 17th, publishers Raw Fury announced today, which is doubly welcome news because I'd entirely forgotten about it since it was announced two years ago despite enjoying Kathy Rain.…
Much as my girlfriend adores Stardew Valley, its gentle pace is a little soporific sometimes. Atomicrops, on the other hand, appears to be the game's jittery, over-caffeinated cousin, blending Harvest Moon-esque farming and romance with twin-stick shooter combat and a colourful post-apocalyptic setting. Bird Bath Games's vision of the end of the world is perhaps a little more Adventure Time than Fallout, but I reckon…
Feature: Per aspera ad astra
Talking about a game’s influences is always a tricky business. Sure, developers love to give long talks about the artists they admire. About their inspirations, the concepts they remixed, the idols they wish to surpass. But there’s a difference between the influences they are trying to evoke consciously, and the many-finned chimeras swimming just under the surface of consciousness. Take Sable, for example. When the…
Feature: Live free, pike hard
“The units should feel like humans,” says Oskar Stålberg, co-creator of Bad North, a strategy game about little soldiers defending their islands against bad Vikings. “They’re quite stylised; they don’t have faces and barely have arms, but they should feel human in their behaviour and what they’re capable of doing. They should feel fragile and it should look like fighting is a courageous effort.” You…
Feature: Morally ambiguous west
Bad North is the first game for a long while that has stirred in me a terrible desire to have it in physical toy form. I would, I think, love nothing more right now than to have a tiny island on my desk, with tiny squads of soldiers and tiny corpses of my enemies on the shore, near where they had beached their tiny boats.…
Slimline side-scrolling strategy series Kingdom will continue with couch co-op in Kingdom Two Crowns on December 11th, publishers Raw Fury have announced. I've quite enjoyed the Kingdom games but always bailed when it got frustrating towards the end, so it might be nice to have a pal by my side spurring me on. Two Crowns will also jaunt off to a second land, a kingdom…
Feature: Tactics and hacked bits
I’m not sure if Bad North is a strategy game for the inept or the lazy. It does a lot that speaks to both: the islands you’re defending are small, you’ve only a few units to guide and those instructions don’t extend beyond ‘go there’ or ‘hide in that’. When they do get ‘there’ they auto-attack any marauders in reach and pursue the stragglers. It…
In a bygone age, I used to be a night-shift cabbie. Awful job, but I got to hear a lot of weird stories from drunk or otherwise intoxicated people, and the police even asked now and then if I'd heard anything about the occasional missing person. Never got to solve any murders, though. It's not surprising that upcoming noir mystery Night Call resonates with me,…
Sable makes a strong case for being the prettiest game of E3
I don't really know what Sable is going to involve. I'm not sure I much care, so long as it looks and sounds like this.
Feature: Into The Breach's real-time cousin
Into the Breach is one of the most perfect games I’ve ever played. It’s tactical warfare with every sliver of fat trimmed away and I’d put it up there with Chess and Invisible, Inc. in the pantheon of turn-based games. Bad North will not be entering that pantheon. Not because it doesn’t seem capable of reaching lofty heights – it absolutely does – but because…
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