I'm locked in here with you for the next RPS Game Club liveblog! From 4pm BST today, July 3rd, we'll be chatting about The Tartarus Key. Come prepared to talk about your favourite puzzles, the ones that stumped you, and the weird horror themes you liked best. I've thoroughly enjoyed making the team play a tough puzzle game, especially one that's intentionally retro and a bit spooky without being scary. So why not come and join in the discussion? Haha, that's a joke: you don't have a choice. As I said, you're locked in here unless you can find the Resident Evil-ass key I have hidden in here somewhere. See you at 4pm, when we'll be back to see how you're getting on.
]]>Don't look now, but we're almost halfway through 2023. How is that even possible? I hear you cry. Well, I'm not entirely sure either. The last time I checked it was freezing cold outside and the sun went down at 3pm, but here we are with long, sunlit evenings and that sticky sheen of an early, muggy summer. Or at least it's been quite clammy in the RPS Treehouse this month, as we've all been sweating over our favourite games of the year so far.
]]>This month's pick for our RPS Game Club is the nails sort-of-horror puzzle game The Tartarus Key, and we'll be doing another funtabulous liveblog to chat about it with you next Monday July 3rd at 4pm BST / 8am PDT. Is that a different month to the current one? Yes. But do I make the rules? Also yes. And, like Katharine was last time, I'm travelling right now, so Monday it is.
]]>There are a bunch of reasons I like The Tartarus Key (enough to make it our RPS Game Club pick this month), and one of them is that it's not actually scary. Like, sure, you could attach the horror tag to it on Steam if you wanted, but it's more of a costume for you to enjoy - like the family down the street who are really into Halloween and turn their suburban semi into a haunted house with a movie-quality zombie in the front yard. It's really cool and you like it on its own terms, but being frightened isn't so much the point as it is to remember you have enjoyed being frightened in the past. Also, for some reason the family won't let you out of the living room until you complete a logic puzzle involving maths.
]]>When Alice Bee selected thriller-puzzler The Tartarus Key as this month's RPS Game Club pick, I naively signed up for it thinking I'd be fine tackling a game where most puzzles can't be solved with a few trigger pulls. So, I did the smart thing and roped in my pal Ed. Yes, my pal is also called Ed, so parts of this post sound like I'm referring to myself in the third-person. This isn't the case, but if you'd like to imagine that I, in fact, solved the puzzles myself, then please feel free to do so.
]]>Following on from the lovely space highjinks of Citizen Sleeper, Katharine has unwisely allowed me to take the wheel on this month's RPS Game Club, and thus I am steering this baby right into fiendish puzzle town. Next stop: The Tartarus Key!
It's only recently come out, so we're fresh to death this time - literally, because in it you're trapped in a mansion full of SAW-esque murder-puzzles. I really enjoyed this game, with its low-poly PS1 style, and its vibe of being an early 00s thriller that would probably star e.g. Morgan Freeman hunting down a twisted serial killer played by e.g. Hugh Jackman. But in this metaphor, I am the twisted monster, and I have trapped both you and my colleagues and am forcing you all to play this game I like.
]]>If you woke up in a mysterious mansion, with no memory of how you got there and only a walkie-talkie and a bunch of security cameras for company, how d'you reckon you'd handle it? Personally I know, sure as eggs is eggs, that I would absolutely go to pieces. I'm not hitting the end credits of The Tartarus Key in real life, but fortunately, it's a nails thriller puzzle game that fuses PS1-style retro graphics with Saw-esque murder traps. Plus, you know, it's only about six hours end to end, which isn't bad for a semi-magical kidnap plot.
]]>Waking up in a room you don't recognise with a camera trained on you: the result of a heavy Saturday night, or the opening salvo in an inexplicable kidnapping? In The Tartarus Key, a PS1-style thriller/puzzle/horror game, it's definitely the latter. The free demo is out now, and throws you into the first couple of puzzles for the game as Alex, whose last memory is of being at home in her apartment. Now she finds herself locked in a weird study in a poorly lit mansion, with only a stranger on the end of a walkie-talkie for company. It was enough to staple this game right into the middle of my disorganised Charlie Day conspiracy board of games I'm interested in, I'll tell you that much.
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