RPS Feature Gun Game
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
There are a lot of games with guns in them, and a lot which strive for some measure of simulation, but few that manage to wring the tension, nuance and sense of expression that Receiver [official site] does from its arsenal of carefully modeled handguns.
RPS Feature Press H To Read Thoughtfully
Receiver is a first-person shooter made in just seven days. It takes place on a set of grey rooftops sparsely populated by turrets and flying robots. Your goal is to collect cassette tapes from randomised locations, and each one contains a nebbish voice coldly reciting instructions and explanations of the game’s hard-boiled scifi setting.
It’s austere and £3/$5, yet it’s also one of my favourite roleplaying games. Not because of a character creator or a stats sheet or quests. Receiver doesn’t have any of those things. It’s one of my favourite roleplaying games because it has a lot of buttons. A needless amount.
I want all games to have more needless buttons.
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Its rabbit characters are not the interesting thing about this game. Overgrowth is interesting because this indie project from a small team has physics-driven kung-fu, destructive and satisfying swordfighting, environment-hopping wall-running, stealth, RPG mechanics, local multiplayer, and a level editor that allows you to construct your own scenarios.
The game has been in paid-alpha since 2008, a time when “paid-alpha” wasn’t really a thing we understood. Now it’s available on Steam Early Access. There’s more detail and videos below.
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It’s always interesting seeing how games come to be. Take Relock: it was inspired by Wolfire‘s excellent Receiver, a complicated gun sim that was made for the 7-day FPS challenge in the middle of last year. Receiver is excellent, but with Wolfire currently making a wabbit kung-fu sim, it’s unlikely to get much love. So Relock is here to give the people that loved Receiver something to be excited about, though it’s missing the oddball story, NPCs, and randomly created levels. So what does it have?
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RPS Feature Reality doesn't have a reload key.
I went to a firing range once. Now, don’t get the wrong idea: I had no pretensions of “Oh, I’ve played first-person shooters, so this will be a bullet-casing-encrusted cakewalk.” I was not able to pre-fathom, however, just how truly terrible I’d be. Even the simple act of loading rounds into my borrowed 9mm pistol’s magazine was – at least, at first – an awkward, embarrassing battle of man vs incredibly simple machine. And, of course, I made all the rookie mistakes: I forgot to turn the safety off, my aim kept getting shaken up by recoil that wouldn’t rattle a baby, etc. All the while, I couldn’t help but wonder: “How do people who are actually good at this do it?” This wasn’t helped by the couple standing in the stall next to me, gleefully unloading a gigantic automatic rifle.
Receiver – Wolfire’s every-aspect-of-a-gun simulating entry in the recent 7DFPS challenge – reminded me all-too-painfully of that day. But, you know, in a mostly good way. And with a twist: I had to bring my horrific lack of firearm know-how, abysmal aim, and woefully non-bulletproof body into an environment full of things that definitely knew what they were doing.
I’ll be honest and say I had a slight prejudice against Wolfire’s bunny Overgrowth. Everytime I’ve looked in on it, I felt like the Arthur and his knights at the Cave of Caerbannog. But this morning the mists cleared, and Overgrowth tossed a Holy Hand Grenade of a video, tearing my cynical innards with the glorious sharpnel of truth. The video below of Alpha 166’s knife work is amazing.
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Breathtaking indie furry fighting gaming Overgrowth is still growing to full size in the warm, fleshy pouch of pre-order funded development, but the videos released by the team are beginning to really show where all that time and effort are going. Honestly, this is the best video of anthropomorphic rabbits kicking the living shit out of each other that you are going to see today. Watch it.
(Thanks to everyone who sent this in.)
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It’s a Thursday afternoon, and that means it’s time to talk about cute animals kicking each other to death. We haven’t covered upcoming indie action game Overgrowth much on RPS, which is a sad side-effect of its much-adored precursor Lugaru arriving before the Hivemind had coalesced into being. Let’s correct that now, as it’s hard to imagine you lot wouldn’t be interested in a videogame about a rabbit roundhouse-kicking wolves. I had a quick natter with Aubrey Serr, Wolfire’s lead artist and John Graham, Wolfire’s self-proclaimed coffee operations officer, about what Overgrowth is, where it’s at and the highs and low of self-funded development. It’s entirely possible that some, all or none of these were dressed as kung-fu rabbits at the time.
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Lugaru was an independently-developed third-person fighting game in which the central character was an anthropomorphic rabbit. That’s actually a bit better than that it sounds, and the fighting itself was actually relatively convincing. It’s one of those indie games that you don’t expect to be any good, but you install anyway, only to discover that it’s, y’know, okay. Why not download the demo (top of the page there) to see what I mean?
All of which preamble leads to the announcement that there is a sequel incoming, Overgrowth, which already has a spectacularly pretty website. Once again, it features the man-rabbit, and some combat. The development team are gunning for a commercial launch on this one, and I have to wish them luck. Rabbit’s feet at the ready, eh?
