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Feature: Twofer Mario
In the streets of a not so distant future, between the public onanism booth, and the bouncer employed ironically by a nightclub's post-millennial owners, stands an enormous phone display encased in concrete. Squint into the solar flare brightness of its 20-foot screen, and you can just about make out some of the messages as they scroll by. Local youths are voting on whether Ben and…
Ben and Dan finally delve into the Lair of the Clockwork God this month
Once, long ago, Size Five Games' Ben-and-Dan 'em up Lair of the Clockwork God was gunning for a Summer 2019 release. But last July, Size Five pushed the release back into late 2019, perhaps even 2020. There was a bit of last-minute tuning to do, sure - but more than that, Dan was worried his plucky platformer might struggle for air. Last year had a…
Feature: Don't be heisty
Robots! Sneaking! Hacking! Dying! So. Much. Dying. The Swindle is a roguelike sneak 'em up that gets far too repetitive far too quickly, but I do like how most of those deaths are preceded by greed.
Lair Of The Clockwork God delayed until other games will no longer crush it
The next Ben & Dan adventure, Lair Of The Clockwork God, has been delayed until further notice because a small delay would mean competing with some very high-profile games. Lead dev Dan Marshall of Size Five Games explains in this development blog post, citing how hard it is for a smaller game to get noticed these days. A pity, as I was looking forward to…
They said it couldn't be done, they said it mightn't be done, and I still mutter that it probably won't be done, but it seems Ben & Dan will finally reunite later this year. The stars of Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! (and alter-egos of Ben Ward and Dan Marshall) will return in a new adventure, Lair Of The Clockwork God. Ben's…
Feature: Foot-to-ball: The Game
Behold The Kickmen can’t escape the problems of football games
Behold The Kickmen [official site] is an almost-football sportsball game: there's a ball and two teams trying to get it in each other's goal via tackling, sprinting, passing and kicking. It's only almost-football though because it has been designed by someone with a wilfull ignorance of football's details, and who dislikes the sport but did enjoy playing classic football Amiga game Sensible Soccer. Footballers become…
Very realistic football game Behold the Kickmen dribbles onto Steam in authentic and accurate way
Behold the Kickmen [official site], the arcade game about football, known in some parts of the world as British Football, has been released this day. It’s by Dan Marshall and Size Five Games, makers of The Swindle. Dan started working on the ball-kicker as part of a game jam but was whisked away by the locker room drama of it all until he finally ended…
If football is the biggest sport in England, pretending that you don't know anything about football comes a close second. Dan Marshall, the creator of The Swindle and the bad half of Ben & Dan, is a fan of the second. His Behold the Kickmen [official site] is an arcade kick 'em up which gets football gloriously wrong, and it's launching this Thursday. It'll run…
It's not officially called Speedball mode because that might cause upsets down the line, but Dan Marshall's Behold the Kickmen [official site] now has a menu switch that turns it from a highly accurate football simulation into a highly accurate grim futuresport simulation. I say "highly accurate" with tongue in cheek as Kickmen is the project of Dan Marshall (he of Ben There Dan That…
The Swindle's [official site] cyberpunk/steampunk aesthetic was unique, but the sci-fi concept art posted on Size Five Games' blog seems like it would adapt even more readily to its stealthy computer hacking gameplay. The developer is considering a follow-up game and has brought in an artist to chuck a few ideas together. The resulting artwork by Gareth Davies has a gritty 70's/80's sci-fi look highlighted by…
Here's a curious thought experiment: what if football were played by human beings rather than sentient cars? How would they turbo boost? How would they even kick the ball? Dan Marshall - him what made The Swindle and is the mean half of Ben & Dan - has some ideas. He's making Behold the Kickmen, a game where football is played on a round pitch…
Feature: Dwindling Returns
Steampunk London-town heist caper The Swindle [official site] should feel comfortable in the shadows. It's a sneak 'em up, with gadgets, set in self-contained randomised levels full of robotic guards, fatal falls and explosive traps. There are also clanking great computers that a skilled hacker can siphon cash out of and piles of cash. All of these elements are scattered willy-nilly around the interiors of…
After four years, one cancellation, and one uncancellation, The Swindle [official site] is faring better than the third Ben & Dan game. What's going on with that, HEY DAN? Anyway, it seems The Swindle will see the light of day, as Size Five Games have announced a release date: July 28th. The Swindle's a 2D steampunk sneak-o-stealing game about pulling heists in procedurally-generated levels, dodging…
The Swindle is dead, long live The Swindle. This Steampunk heist game was what Size Five Games planned on doing in lieu of another Ben & Dan / Time Gentlemen, Please point and click adventure, but lead dev Dan Marshall wound up quasi-cancelling it when he couldn't find the fun, to borrow a line from Blizzard. Given that he'd also axed third Ben & Dan…
Feature: Channel Hopping
You may have heard about last weekend's extraordinarily disastrous attempt to film and broadcast a Pepsi-sponsored game jam, called GAME_JAM. At enormous expense (rumours fly of around $400,000), a group of in-indies - the likes of Zoe Quinn, Davey Wreden, and Robin Arnott - and YouTubers were supposed to be taking part in a reality-show-cum-game-jam for four days, to be professionally filmed, edited and broadcast…
It's no Monkey Tennis but Size Five's Gun Monkeys has found its fans. It's a procedurally generated, physics-based 1 vs 1 deathmatch game and, being a multiplayer sort of thing, it is hungry for new players. To entice fresh monkey-handlers, Size Five are allowing people to play for free this weekend, on Steam, and reducing the price of the game by 50% during that time.…
We've written so much about The Swindle that sometimes I forget that it's not out yet and that I still somehow know very little about it. Stealth, cyberpunk, crime, infiltration. Good things. It's in the same mould as Gunpoint and perhaps distantly related to Subversion. News from Size Five suggests that there may be a deeper connection to Introversion's ill-fated infiltrator. Development is proving problematic,…
What a strange time for game selling we live in. Not ten years ago the idea of doing basically anything other than heading down to your local Woolworths and picking up an honest-to-goodness box was madness. Now, not only would there have to be a special case for a game to come in any sort of packaging but you can do anything from pay for…
Are you Slightly Old? And British? And of broadly good humour? Then you will doubtless be at least passingly familiar with the work of The Actor Kevin Eldon, quiet mainstay of some of this nation's greatest televisual comedy. As well as Brass Eye, Alan Partridge, Nighty Night, The IT Crowd and more, he can now add Size Five Games' Gun Monkeys to his CV. Witness…
Oh, he just had to release this just as the RPS Hivemind was about to slump into its weekend-long coma, didn't he? The punishment for that is a shorter post free from our usual witticisms. Actually, no, I'm going to twist the knife and say 'bum monkeys more like'. I don't know if Gun Monkeys is fun or bum in fact, as I haven't yet…
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