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Following the release of Digital Bird Playground, I was curious what Tom van den Boogaart was up to with his other long-awaited game, a follow-up to Bernband. 2014's first-person explorer remains one of my favourite games, the game I recommend to people more than anything this side of Skeal, and I'm still happy just seeing snippets of his work on a new alien city for…
The second-best game of 2016, Digital Bird Playground, is finally out
While we all agree that Devil Daggers is the bestest best game of 2016, you might not even have heard of the year's second-bestest game. It's Digital Bird Playground, a local multiplayer sandbox made by Bernband creator Tom van den Boogaart, where birds ride bicycles and play with worms and chase frogs and play basketball with frogs and throw frogs into the pond and generally…
Oh no, some of RPS's secret favourite game developers have teamed up to form a videogame collective. Their power to make delightful, colourful, physics-animated games, toys and joys will be too great for any of us to handle. They're called Sokpop and they consist of Aran Koning, Tijmen Tio, Tom van den Boogaart and rubna. They've made a trailer of their work, which you can…
The first game I played at GDC was Digital Bird Playground. It was on a big screen in the Mild Rumpus area so I collapsed into a beanbag and started guiding a seagull around a play area, hopping on and off a little yellow bicycle and throwing frogs through basketball hoops.
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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Bernband [official site] has my favourite alien city in a video game. Stuff the Citadel, Bernband is where I want to go. Wandering its streets, corridors, and passageways at night you might see bands play in bars, visit nightclubs, stumble into school classes,…
Red Amazon [official site] is a lovely little thriller told in only four minutes, made by Bernband creator Tom van den Boogaart. It's wonderfully restrained and a thrill to discover. No, it's not a horror game. No, I don't want to tell you much more. It's free to download so do so, play it, then come back and we'll have a little chat. Good? Good.
Feature: Wandering around an alien city
Give up on trying to find your way around Bernband's neon alien futurecity. Give in to wandering, see where your tippy-tappy feet and the turbolifts take you. One minute's wandering might take you through a bustling club, over a bridge with hovercars zipping past, to a horrible trumpet performance, then bumping into an alien weeing in a corner. Variety is the spice of life, They…
I'm still pining for Prey 2, but Bernband has sated that desire a little. It's a walking simulator set in an alien city, all stark architecture, colourful lights, and noise. Lots of noise. Trains roar past, flying cars zip overhead, machinery churns, and crowds all mutter and growl as you gawp at them. It's a low-fi version of everything that excited me about Prey 2's…
