It's the RPS/Gamer Network annual day of chest-thumping/excessive consumption/enforced PowerPoint-watching, so we'll all be offline when Capy's much-anticipated rando-dungeon-runner Below launches this evening.
Hence, let's say this now: Below's out today! Somehow! After half a decade! Is that even a long time in games development any more? I don't know I've been here 11 years so it feels like Below only got announced like, last summer! Anyway! It's really happening! Happy days!
]]>Very pretty/entirely menacing rand-o-dungeon-o game Below has been tantalising us from a distance for half a decade. "It'll never happen!", bellowed Derek Misery from a Twitter account with 12 followers, sometime in 2016.
Well, suck it up, Derek - all of a sudden, the closest thing there is to a follow-up to peerless adventure/musical odyssey/exploratory crisis Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is out in seven short days.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I wrote the other day that Grim Fandango proved to be a metaphor for the decline from wider relevancy of the point and click adventure game. Well, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a metaphor for how those games - and others of the era - have mutated in our memory to become something far more than they were.
]]>Here’s something to coo at if you like your art done in thousands of tiny squares. Narita Boy [official site] is a game-in-progress where the hero flies a floppy disk as a hoverboard and rides a horse made out of old computers while slashing at red foes with a techno sword. He’s stuck inside the computer dimension, you see, in a quest to save it from some red-coloured badthings known as the Stallions. But to understand any of that, you really need to see it in motion, which you can do below.
]]>Sword & Sworcery is one of my favourite games ever, and Super Time Force was great fun, so I'm terribly excited for Capy's next project, the dark and mysterious explore-em-up Below. [official site] Jim Guthrie (Sword & Sworcery, Indie game: The Movie) providing the soundtrack is really just the icing on this delicious cake.
And a new trailer reveals we're going to be able to taste it this summer. I can already smell its procedural generation and the rotten corpses of Dark-souls-like permadeath. Everyone beat me to all the bad jokes already, so please just follow me below for some more details and a few minutes of gameplay.
]]>Previously, pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian's videos have focused on how problematic many games' depiction of women characters can be, but a new companion series looks at the other side of the coin. The seven-minute first video in Positive Female Characters focuses on the wonderful, strange Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP [our review] and its stoic protagonist The Scythian.
]]>Below, the gorgeous, mystery-dripping roguelike explorer from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery collaborator Capy, is looking tremendous. It's got a uniquely dreamy vibe about it and atmosphere that hits like an 18-wheeler driven by a throng of stampeding rhinos. It was set to be an Xbox exclusive, but Capy managed to wriggle loose from Microsoft's iron grasp and set about working on its first ever day-and-date PC launch. That lack of experience might make you wary of a slipshod port, but the developer is dedicated to getting things right on PC. Shortly after citing Ultima VII as a (rather surprising) influence, Capy creative director Kris Piotrowski told me why excluding full-blown mod support from a game - indie, triple-A, or otherwise - simply doesn't make sense in this day and age. On top of that, he added, Below is now being designed with a PC crowd in mind, and that stands to change the game entirely.
]]>I wouldn't be writing about Below on RPS if it weren't coming to the PC, because in spite of the many, many, oh-so-very-many emails from marketers and PRs about iOS hidden object games (and the occasional moment of writer's prerogative), this is mostly a PC site. So we haven't mentioned Capy's Below until now, because it was tied up in Xbox Xclusivity. That's changed, as was revealed in a very elegant fashion in the trailer I've embedded yonder. I'm not going to spoil how they did it, because I think what they did was lovely and speaks to the game's core adventurousness, and I want you to smile like I did.
And just what is Below? Well I've attempted to find out for you bel-, er, beneath. It's not entirely clear.
]]>Oh. Oh my. That is the second post I've introduced with those words today, but that does not (necessarily!) mean I'm creatively bankrupt. Rather, it's been a very good time for brilliantly impressive games that just sort of appear out of nowhere. First Eden Star took me entirely by surprise with its runleaping Minecraft's Edge antics, and now Hyper Light Drifter is dazzling me with glorious grimdarkpink art and music provided by Fez chiptune maestro Disasterpeace. Oh, and then there is this: "It plays like the best parts of A Link to the Past and Diablo, evolved: lightning fast combat, more mobility, an array of tactical options, more numerous and intelligent enemies, and a larger world with a twisted past to do it all in." Mmmmmmmm, yes. Good. Goooooooood.
Welp, I guess that's it, then. We can't escape it. The Steam Summer Sale's returned, but honestly, can you remember a single moment before it began? Was there ever a moment before it began? Maybe we're trapped in some infinite, Groundhog-Day-style loop of spending, obligation, and guilt. Maybe we'll never escape. Maybe this is the least threatening eternal hell loop ever conceived. But oh well, because look at all of the savings!
]]>There's a new Humble Bundle, wouldn't you believe it. And blimey, it's a good-un. I'm not in charge of deciding what's best, but this looks to me like one of the best bundles I've ever seen. Just look at this list: Amnesia, Limbo, Sword & Sworcery, Bastion, and Psychonauts. Seriously. And it has an absolutely brilliant video to promote it.
]]>Let's be prosaic to begin with. Sword & Sworcery EP is the result of a collaboration between Superbrothers, CAPY and musician Jim Guthrie. It's converted lovingly from its initial Apple phoney-paddy-thing format last year, where it was very well thought of. It's a graphic adventure which stresses atmosphere and style over traditional puzzles. I like it. You probably will too.
I'm being prosaic, because I'm just about to go off on a 500-word micro-essay tangent. I'll get back to Sword & Sworcery EP eventually. Trust me. And if you're interested in the game, you better get used to that. You're in journey-over-destination territory.
]]>That's Steam, just so you know - not a clumsily abbreviated form of "swim team." I'm not sure what a highly acclaimed iOS indie adventure would be doing on a swim team, but I have a number of overly elaborate theories. At any rate, the world's most gorgeous excuse for massive mountains of tiresome tweet spam has officially achieved its vague release date of "soon" by hitting Steam. Better still, it's on sale for £3.74 until next week, and a free soundtrack rounds out the pixelated package. We will probably write Some Words about it in the future. Until then, I confess that I've played it on an unholy Apple rune tablet, and I found it to be quite delightful. I hope, however, that it doesn't include the iOS version's tilt mechanics, because my PC weighs more than an iPad factory.
]]>Capybara Games have confirmed that their beautiful, lo-fi iOS adventure game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery will be arriving on Steam "very soon". Good news, I think, because it's a gentle, weird little game that does a lot with a little and creates an unusual atmosphere. Sort of nostalgic, but at the same time feeling quite modern.
There's also going to be a Mac version, of course. Trailer below.
]]>
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")
