I'm a fan of a rhythm game. Something where you can get into a flow state, you know? They can be perfect when you've had a long day and don't want to engage brain. The thing is, I don't think Thumper is one of those games. Thumper is some kind of sci-fi nightmare in space, and it moves so fast that you can't relax for a second.
]]>Ultrawide gaming monitors can seem excessive compared to regular 16:9 gaming screens, especially when their demanding resolutions often require powerful and expensive graphics cards to make the most of them. Once you try one, though, there's no going back. I've been a big fan of ultrawide gaming monitors for years now, as their extra screen space not only makes them great for juggling multiple desktop windows, but supported PC games also look uttery fantastic on them - and to prove it, I've put together this list of the best ultrawide games on PC.
]]>Google have now made their cloud gaming service, Stadia, completely free to anyone who has a Gmail account. That means you no longer have to buy their pricey Premiere Edition to get started, all you have to do is sign up online.
On top of that, to help keep people entertained in isolation they've made their premium subscription service, Stadia Pro, free for two months. It's basically a free trial that gives you full access to nine games, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
]]>Google held another one of their Stadia Connect conferences today, and this one was meant to be all about what games you'll be playing in the "scary" cloud come November. Sure enough, there were new Stadia games aplenty announced this evening, with the biggest addition being Cyberpunk 2077.
To help keep track of them all, here's a list of every Google Stadia game confirmed so far, as well as which games are coming at launch, which ones will be arriving a little bit later, and which games you'll only be able to play by subscribing to one of the special Stadia publisher subscriptions.
]]>Over the past several weeks I have sent a lot of interesting people who work in the games industry an email containing the following scenario:
"You enter a room. The door locks behind you. From a door opposite another you enters. This other you is a perfectly identical clone, created in the exact instant you entered the room, but as every second ticks by they are creating their own distinct personhood. The doors will unlock in 90 minutes. Nobody will ever know what happens in the room. What do you do? (assume the materials you need for whatever you want to do are in the room). Please show your working, if able."
]]>Games. You want them, Itch.io sells them, and to facilitate that process it's put 606 of the things on sale.
I like that they've taken the polar opposite approach to Steam's shenanigans for their own summer sale, and surrounded the discounts with absolutely zero guff. I know some people buy into the badges and whatnot, but after years of Valve's bombarding me with cutesy treehouse animals, those avatars have started landing on the manipulative side of corporate fun. Read on for my picks from this refreshingly minimalist sale, which include the likes of heart-squelching rhythm action-game Thumper and soul-squashing robo-shooter The Signal from Tölva .
]]>If you frequently find yourself hankering for high-speed races, or for being strapped into a metal death trap hurtling towards oblivion, then the Humble Store’s racing sale might have something to sate you. It’s going on all week.
]]>SOMETHING BEHIND THE DOOR IS SCREAMING AND PULSING AND THROBBING AND THE BEAT GOES ON EVEN WHEN BONES HAVE VIBRATED TO DUST
Behind door 22 of our Advent Calendar, which celebrates the year's best games, you'll find the best music game of 2016. It's Thumper [official site].
]]>If you own a pair of cybergoggles and plan to jack your family into cyberspace this holiday season for giggles, plus do thump Thumper [official site] right in their eyes. The excellent musical hellride, which our Alec described as "knives in my skull" and which made John physically anxious, has now added support for Rift and Vive goggs, y'see. Please do share your videos of Uncle Sean stumbling round the tree holding, Event Horizon-style, his own plucked-out eyes.
]]>This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Thumper [official site].
“When people say they’re injuring their thumbs it’s too bad, but it’s kind of the best compliment you can ever get,” says Thumper’s co-designer and artist, Brian Gibson. “It means their nervous system is on fire when they’re playing.”
Thumper is a game that you feel. As you hurtle down its sliver of track, every twist, scrape and jump has a physicality that transcends its fundamental nature as a call-and-response rhythm game. You can only really play Thumper once it’s bashed its way into your subconscious, when the lights and booming sound of the abstract hell you’re flying through can brutalise your brainstem into remembering patterns of threats. And the threats that get to you, the ones that really make your fingers claw the pad, are:
THE MECHANIC: Turns
]]>You may have THUMP THUMP THUMPED the thumping great audiovisual assault of Thumper [official site] by now but you've not bested it. You've only made it angry. Thumper is back, faster and meaner. A new update has added a faster, harder, 'Play +' mode, where you'll game over if you die once. Permadeath thumping. Oh you'll take a thumping, chummo.
]]>Rhythm action beetle adventure-coaster Thumper [official site] is one of those elegant games with great core mechanics. I think a lot of people have been commenting on how it's made them feel or on the slickness of the interactions, but I wanted to zero in on the look of the game. It's this pared down bio-metallic thing, somewhere between a heavy metal album cover and a chrome-infused minimalist bar which ends up at sleek but unsettling. To delve deeper into Thumper's aesthetic I spoke to Brian Gibson, the man behind the game's art about colour, speed, focal point trickery and more!
As with all our art-focused features, just click on the individual images for a larger version:
]]>THUMPER is knives in my skull. THUMPER is fire in my veins. THUMPER is the driving beat that has no beat, inhuman rhythm, a bug-eyed dance that starts in the shoulders, moves to the jaw, ends in a chin thrust mechanically forward with murderous intent. THUMPER is a descent into Hell that transforms into liberation. THUMPER is/is not a music game. THUMPER is the videogame you should play today.
]]>Well here's a nice thing for a Monday - rhythm-rollercoaster-combat-thingummy* Thumper [official site] is being released a few days earlier than billed. Tonight, in fact! 3pm PST, which works out at 11pm in the UK and... 6pm on the East Coast.
]]>Newly released German coach sim Fernbus Simulator has spent the week hiding my car keys, flicking rubber bands in my direction, and thumbing through my favourite books with jammy fingers. Exasperated by its anti-social antics I've put it aside until TML improve controller configuration facilities and patch away the most infuriating bugs and performance issues. Instead of a Fernbus impressions piece radiating frustration, today in FP you're going to get a Train Simulator 2016 article radiating admiration. Today I'd like to talk about why Armstrong Powerhouse's new Class 205 'Thumper' has just elbowed out a very miffed Su-25 Frogfoot from my All-Time Favourite Sim Steeds top ten.
]]>You have to understand: I'm not supposed to be here. Something went wrong and I ended up in this dimension, one where we live on land not in water and our FPSs don't roar like Devil Daggers and our rhythm games don't rock faces like Thumper [official site]. This world is not right. But I am delighted that Devil Daggers slipped through a crack in reality, and now we have a date for when Thumper will follow - October 13th.
]]>2016 is the year we eagerly sacrifice our ears to Devil Daggers and Thumper [official site]. They have earned them. We will be lucky to lose our hearing so gloriously.
2017 will be the year we welcome their followers, glad to have more aggressively overwhelming games.
2018 will be the year we smile and nod at their followers' imitators.
2019 will be the year we wish everyone would go back to making pixel art puzzle-platformers about the Kübler-Ross model of grief.
But this is still 2016, when Devil Daggers is flipping excellent and Thumper looks ruddy brilliant. Look at (and listen to!) this thumping new trailer:
]]>The "rhythm violence" of the booming, screeching, and gorgeous Thumper [official site] left John and folks around him shaken and unsettled when he saw a demo at GDC. Elsewhere in the room, me and my chums muttered crudities along the lines of "sugar yes!" and "flippin' A!" We're pretty different people, me and John, but we broadly agree that Thumper looks quite something.
We've been posting about it for a while without formal confirmation of a PC release (so why'd developers Drool e-mail us, eh?) but now it's official: Thumper is coming to PC in 2016.
]]>A few games stood out at this year's GDC Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and I'll be highlighting them in some individual posts. First dibs must go to the opening game, one of the most peculiar experiences I can remember, Thumper [official site].
Despite appearing like a thinned down Audiosurf, Thumper... well, it was something else.
]]>Rhythm action games are often beautifully abstract, and occasionally weird and cute, but they're rarely terrifying. THUMPER [official site] is rhythmic intimidation. Rhythmic violence, according to the latest trailer, which you can see below. Created by two rhythm game veterans, it's a game about a space beetle punching audio while zillapedes haunt the void and an "insane giant head from the future" eats, coughs and collapses music. It's Wipeout via Richard D James and nineties Trent Reznor. Ibiza planted directly above the drowned, dreaming corpse-city R'lyeh.
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