What are you doing later? Bit of a night out in a bleak post-Soviet city, maybe? Drink? Dance? Drugs? Pet giant rats? Chat with a back-alley cyborg tech? Catch a poetry reading? Have a blood pressure test? Contemplate your empty existence? Eat a kebab? All this and more awaits you with Neyasnoe, the new first-person explorer from the creators of It's Winter. While It's Winter had you so bored and lonely you might cook egg on toast only to flush it down the toilet, here you're surrounded by life, and I'm not sure that's much more comfort.
]]>2019 was a great year for PC games - aren't they all? - but you might not yet know what the very best PC games of 2019 were. Let us help you.
]]>Alexandre Ignatov makes strange, quiet, melancholy worlds to explore. He calls them “sad3d”, also the name he publishes under on itch.io. But Ignatov has a whole back catalogue of these games, and they’ve only been growing larger and more complex with time. If you’ve been reading RPS closely you might know of the most recent ones, It’s Winter and Routine Feat.
Ignatov's games have a depth of interaction you don’t see outside of immersive sims, yet no pressure to really do anything, and a distinctly Russian identity. I found I couldn’t stop thinking about them, so I contacted Ignatov to ask about their origins and inspirations.
]]>Summer. The heat age. Scorch season. Spring's hangover. It's the mid-point of the year and you know what that means. No, not "mojito time", Geoff, put those away. It's time we told you what the best games of the year are so far. There are quite a lot of them. Just look how many videogames have escaped from their developers in the past six months and are now running amok through the blistering streets, getting stuck in the melting tarmac, like ants in jam. It's unsanitary. So allow us to round up these unruly games and trap them in a handy list. Here are our favourite sword swingers and space 'splorers so far this year (and a couple of DLCs for good measure).
Okay, Geoff, now bring the mojitos.
]]>'Winter' has always been a term with two meanings. The crisp, pure return to nature of a snow-settled world, but also the grey death of everything: the wistful dream and the dour reality. Romance, mundanity.
It's Winter, a short vignette about Eastern European apartment blocks, is both of those things. Magic and tedium, wonder and ennui. Real winter, scenes that make your blood temperature drop ten degrees, landscapes that you yearn to be in, a life you immediately feel desperate to escape.
]]>It's the middle of the night, you're alone in a small Russian apartment in a concrete tenement, in a half-deserted neighbourhood surrounded by snow and trees, and you're awake. Now what? That's up to you in It's Winter, a delightful new poke-o-walking simulator where we can wander the neighbourhood, take in the sights and sounds of the night, muck about with items, and even cook a little. It captures a real nightness, mystery and quiet and loneliness and freedom to do anything without anything to do. What really sold me on It's Winter, mind, was one player's video tweet of making then eating egg on toast.
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