The first rule of video game club (apart from not talking about video game club) usually involves saving the world somehow. We do our best to rescue others from harm, to avert world-ending disasters, and give everyone around us the happy ending they deserve. But if there's one thing I've learned about myself in 2021, it's that I'm a cruel, heartless robot who will happily toss others under the bus if they don't provide any material benefit to me. Or at least I am when I'm playing Unsighted, the gorgeous and criminally underrated action RPG from Studio Pixel Punk that puts a ticking time-bomb inside each of its characters' metallic chests which, if left unchecked, will remove them from the game entirely, preventing you from gaining some potentially very handy upgrades to help you in your quest to fight back against your human oppressors.
It's an ingenious system, as you're not only fighting against the hordes of enemies that appear onscreen, but your own ineptitude.
]]>If you're anything like me, when you start a game you will almost invariably try to run off into the woods or swamp and aggressively ignore anything even passably resembling a main story. After hours of feeling like a brave rebel by doing this in Vagrus - The Riven Realms, I realised it's how you're supposed to play it. This is not a game about some Epic Quest or grand campaign. It's a game about running a caravan in a world that just happens to have a cool history.
]]>2021 was hot boy summer for detectives. Well, not summer. Hot boy autumn? Is that a thing? Anyway, I not only played Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, but also an incarnation of Hercule Poirot as a bright young thing in Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases. And yes, that name is a bit of a nightmare, but the game itself is very sweet. There's 'orrible murder, conspiracy, blackmail, union busting, and a cast of Cluedo-esque characters trapped inside a snowy manor. And yes, I am reusing the shoddy Love Island promo photo composite I made for a header picture, because it deserves the mileage.
]]>Ghost Time Games’ Tux And Fanny, from co-developers Albert Birney and Gabriel Koenig, is not only the game I think you may have missed this year, but it is also my Game Of The Year for 2021. This game sends two best friends (alongside a courageous flea and a mischievous cat) through adventures great, small, and absurd to stunning effect – and you owe it to yourself to give this little marvel a play before the year is well and truly out.
]]>It’s pretty difficult to quantify which games actually whip ass, mostly because it’s a little subjective. That being said, if barrelling through the streets of a futuristic, neon-glazed Detroit, hopping over pursuing cop cars and racing through business offices and factories to the tune of an engrossing soundtrack doesn’t whip ass, I don’t know what does.
]]>Immersive sims are tricky games to get right. The spaces need to have incredibly tight design so they feel fun to explore, and lots of ways to get around them. And one of the best games of the year just happens to be one that does that expertly. Hang on, Deathloop? What are you talking about? No, no, the real best immersive sim this year is co-open by lowpolis, obviously!
]]>Diablo has, for good reasons, become a shorthand for describing the flavour of gothic, grimdark fantasy setting in games, where pus-filled demonic hordes and rotting, undead corpses scour a hellish cathedral looking for unwitting adventurers. For all its wretched decay, however, the series still feels like an indulgence to be savoured. Its clickiness and abhorrent sights make the games endlessly gratifying, and masterful butchery of fiends eases most players into a comfortable rhythm. And part of that appeal lies in the macabre yet captivating fantasy it so deftly peddles — all that blood, gore and guts really make for a grisly setting that’s nearly impossible to look away from.
Tainted Grail: Conquest conveys the same sense of blight and doom in its dark fantasy universe — one that’s a reimagining of Arthurian legends — but also ups the ante with a huge wallop of Slay The Spire’s roguelike, deck-building elements.
]]>As a child struggling to sleep at night I'd dream of three worlds. First and least of these was Desert World, a blithe eternity of golden sand always viewed from kilometres up, where fizzing white rings rose toward me like expanding surf. I'd try to find my way down to the surface, but always at the risk of glitching straight through and ending up in Snake World, where monstrous serpents emerged from darkened kitchens.
Somewhere between these two poles lay the realm of the Animals, not that they were really animals, but clouds of eyelash-thin mandible, grot and sparkle, like rotten food on the point of becoming a school of tropical fish. I loved Animal World. I used to spend hours trying to mind-hack my way into it. I was pretty shocked to find its likeness in Sluggish Morss: Pattern Circus - an irresistibly strange, gristly, sorrowful, comical and inventive album of creatures, songs, places and phrases from Jack King-Spooner and composer Helena Celle.
]]>It’s hard to imagine a collaboration between Zero Escape and Danganronpa creators Kotaro Uchikoshi and Kazutaka Kodaka going under the radar, but an odd release schedule (involving dropping a half-finished experience on Apple Arcade) saw interest in the collaboration buried by the time the game hit PC last month. Which is a shame, since it’s a rather unique title in their respective careers, and it charts new waters for these cult directors.
World’s End Club was the first game the pair released since forming their own studio, Too Kyo Games, and can best be described as a bizarre but intriguing blend of platforming and death games, starring a cast of prepubescent children way too young to be fixing the world or dealing with cults. Think Danganronpa, if Danganronpa was a Saturday morning cartoon rather than a murder game filled with psychopaths.
]]>December has provided a bounty of games at the long-awaited death of a hideous year, but its greatest and most unexpected treasure is already clear to me.
Suzerain is the modern successor to Hidden Agenda, an ancient political simulator I once described as "possibly the greatest political simulator ever made". A fictional nation still bleeding from civil war has just overthrown a dictator, and elected you to lead it into whatever future you think is right, just as the world begins to light up with the countless devastating proxy wars of the 1950s. It is superb. The game, I mean. Not the wars. Those are very bad.
]]>I'll always make it my business to check out a game if music is meaningfully integrated. From Crypt Of The NecroDancer's beat-hopping and Vib-Ribbon's path-generating, to the Rock Bands and DJ Heros that clogged up all of our attics with plastic instruments, I love it all. Well... not all.
I don't need to tell you that Harmonix are the superstars of this world. They're the ones that gifted us the cultural phenomenon of toy guitars, so you better believe I'll be paying attention to whatever they release. It's like that chart-topping act you had plastered all over your walls 20 years ago: they don't get radio play anymore, but you'll always give their new stuff a spin.
]]>We are living, we are constantly told, through unprecedented times. Years like 2020 are the kind of years that make me think things like "woah, we are living through history, like, all the time", like a stoned 20-year-old gap year dude coming to self awareness for the first time in his life.
In Mesmer you get to be the history maker, in an old-world, European-esque city that is ruled over by a corrupt monarchy. Leading a revolution and storming the castle is, as it turns out, quite difficult, and requires a complex balancing act.
]]>When Kirby inhales an enemy, he’s able to steal that character’s famous moves as well as a bit of their appearance. Now imagine a group of Kirbys, all attached to one another like some pink frog spawn, inhaling every popular game that released over the last couple of years. Then the violent eruption as Multi-Kirby belches out the result: Craftopia.
]]>Playing Milky Way Prince made me think about people I would rather forget, and memories that will never quite stop hurting. You know, the ones about the intense, dysfunctional relationships you sometimes end up in when you're stupid and young.
It's a game that feels young at its core - the first commercial work of a solo developer, Lorenzo "eyeguys" Redaelli, and the first work published by developer Santa Ragione, of Wheels Of Aurelia fame. Like many young adults, it's rough around the edges and entirely too sincere.
]]>The castaways are a ragtag crew of teens: Lily is smart, Jaimie is athletic, and Oliver is charming. Sure, there’s Audrey, but she’s such a rebel and her crush on Joshua is making it tough for her to get anything done. And on the night of Day 8, Lily seems to have remembered seeing a documentary about a ritual to scare evil spirits and convinced everyone else on the island that it would be a great idea to burn all the leftover wood in the shape of an idol. Great. Now how are we going to get home?
This is Teen Island Simulator, a zero-player adaptation of the GMless pen-and-paper game, Teen Island, by Chris McDowell.
]]>For the first few months during lockdown, I spent some of my time at home working on a model greenhouse. I used white glue to attach small pieces of wood to other small pieces of wood, making door handles and boxes of pot plants and watering cans. There was an undeniable feeling of safety in the sway of a life in miniature. That is, up until I got overwhelmed by the prospect of finishing a project and let the pieces while away unglued on my bookshelf.
Perhaps I’ll get back to it at some point. In the meantime, the charming little diorama homes in The Almost Gone are here to give me my tiny-house fix.
]]>What would the sprawling metropolises of a cyberpunk dystopia smell like? If you look beyond the gleaming skyscrapers of point 'n' click adventure VirtuaVerse’s futuristic city, it probably contains whiffs of the industrial odour of diesel and metal, tinged with the stench of rotting food and sewer drains.
Even through its pink and blue neon-lit structures, the place is overwrought with gloom and grime. You’ll see puddles of toxic spills from the perpetually torrential acid rain, decaying posters and messy graffiti on oil-stained walls, and bags of garbage spilling over sidewalks. It’s an abysmal place to be in, particularly so in the slums and back alleys - the city’s sordid underbelly where criminal gangs gather, and the homeless scavenge for leftover food and drugs in dumpsters.
]]>Back in late March/early April, I got to know all the corners and bits and pieces of my house a little better. There’s a small bit of wood chunk missing from the threshold into the kitchen, and a crooked staple in the doorway to my office. The golden afternoon light in my bedroom is unparalleled, but the light in my office before 10:00 is perfect for getting work done - bright enough without too much glare. I even took some time to clean and bleach the grout on my kitchen floor.
I originally played the Bitsy game Vertigo around that same time: back at the beginning of quarantine. In April, those halcyon days where the idea of isolation was somewhat novel. Magma Subterraneo made Vertigo as a part of the Bitsy Isolation Jam, which sought to explore all the various feelings of isolation via the medium of Bitsy. In it, you explore bits of your (or the dev’s?) apartment. You reminisce on various objects until you, very literally, begin to float away.
]]>I really wanted to review Iron Danger back in March, but the world was in the middle of going totally cowabunga at the time, so it rather fell through the cracks.
And you know what? I'm damn glad I reversed time and pulled it back from the oblivion of the "want to play it one day" pile, because it's an impressive little number. A lot of games market themselves as being built around a "unique" mechanic. And while 90% of the time these mechanics are not in fact unique, every so often you get one that's the real deal, and this tactical RPG with functional time travel is certainly one of 'em.
]]>I’ve often heard whispers of macabre accounts stemming from Malay and Indonesian folklore - which share some overlaps in supernatural beliefs - as told to me by friends and family alike. Perhaps it’s just sheer proximity to these Southeast Asian cultures that makes these spooks feel more intimate and corporeal, but the spirits in these tales are, to me, more eerie than most garden-variety ghouls. Take, for instance, how even the mere whiff of the frangipani flower can unnerve me, as it’s a scent commonly associated with the pontianak, the vengeful spirit of a pregnant woman who was violently murdered.
In the Indonesian horror game DreadOut 2, these spectres are known as kuntilanak (as they’re referred to in Indonesia). These long-haired, howling spooks are every bit as vicious and frightful as I had imagined them to be, and plenty more such Indonesian ghosts lurk in the city you’ll spend the bulk of your time in in DreadOut 2.
]]>Good things, they say, come to those who wait. Like clichés in the first sentence of an article, this is often a load of toss, but a stopped clock is ("That's enough of that, thanks." - Ed).
Sands Of Salzaar leapt into Early Access this January, its huge success in China prompting promises of an English translation soon. But 2020 did a lot of things to the word "soon", so we'll forgive them for delaying that translation. Besides, it was worth the wait. Sands is a superb game that blends the hack and slash chaos of Dynasty Warriors with the open world RPG skirmishes of Mount & Blade.
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