As befits the “very normal gardening game” that puzzly mystery box Grunn winkingly bills itself as, the first tool I obtained was a pair of shears. The second tool I obtained was a trumpet. It doesn’t really work like a trumpet, and it does things no regular trumpet could or should do. I got a trowel next. Here’s the thing about the trowel: it’s a pretty good trowel. Nothing fancy. But recently, I keep digging up… objects. Objects most peculiar. I’ve got the weekend to sort this garden, and a cosy little shed to sleep in, so I really should just get on with it. Again, though, I must reiterate: I keep digging up… objects.
I go to clean some rubbish from the bathroom. I interact with the mirror and the game says: “You do not see anything in the mirror”. I take a note that says: I do not see anything in the mirror. I check the game again and no, I still do not see anything in the mirror. Sure it’s fine. Just a shit mirror, probably. They should get it replaced. What good is a mirror you can’t see anything in?
]]>I usually avoid writing sentences that could easily be quoted on a Steam page, but the exquisitely satisfying sound that Grunn’s garden shears make is the exception. Please feel free to try any of these on for size: Grunn’s shear sound is the Wilhelm Scream of gardening equipment, sure to be referenced for decades to come. Grunn’s shear sound wormed its way past my eyes and into parts of my brain I’d previously assumed could only be accessed by either masterful ASMR or irresponsibly long Q-tips. I used to have anxiety, but now, my only fear in life is that Grunn’s grass will run out, so I no longer have a reason to click away with its shears. Play Grunn, innit. There are, by the way, lots of other things to like about it, although I cannot hear them over the wonderful sound of these shears.
]]>After more than six years of making games together, indie development team Sokpop Collective are just about to reach their 100th release in December. Hitting that milestone means the group have decided to change how they operate and adjust their Patreon. They’ll no longer be working to release one game per month. Sokpop are recommitting to releasing another 100 games though, so they’ll still be surprising us with intriguing diversions like village-building card game Stacklands or cutesy RTS King Pins. You can watch a trailer for their recently released 99th game, action RPG Springblades, below.
]]>While the Tour De France Femmes ended on Sunday and the Tour Hommes the week before, I'll not be rushed on my own Tour De Jeux. I can't keep pace with professionals so it's fine if I run long, and today I want to take my time and enjoy the journey. I'm playing Aran's Bike Trip, a visual novel/interactive diary/thingamy where Dutch indie dev Aran Koning (the designer of Stacklands) documents a two-day bike tour with 360° photos. It's a lovely little adventure, taking in sights including an art deco radio station and the tallest waterfall in the Netherlands. The waterfall is... about what you might expect in a notoriously flat country.
]]>While the Tour De France is currently zooming about the Alps, the next stage of my own cycling journey through video games leads somewhere far flatter—and weirder. Bird Snapper is a nice little free game that's just you, an endless grey desert, a bicycle, a howling night, and innumerable antennae and electricity pylons. A walking simulator on two wheels, with a bell.
]]>I've enjoyed building a house of card in Stacklands, and farms of cards, and lumberyards of cards, and... it's a new manage-o-strategy game where every building, resource, and unit is a card on a table. It's a cute conceit and fun, especially because it treats the virtual tabletop as a physical space. Your own farm animal cards will unhelpfully jostle your setup as they roam, for example, and invading monster cards will chase your villager cards across the tabletop. It's all very pleasant, a little adventure to figure out how it all works then reach the end.
]]>Sokpop Collective are a band of game development pals who release a new game every two weeks via their Patreon. The games are all cute, frequently physicsy, but otherwise cover a broad range of genres. Genres like space golf, skeleton brawler, and rock paper scissors MMO.
To celebrate the Patreon's third birthday, they're taking to Twitch tomorrow to stream all 77 of their games. Even if you're a subscriber to the Patreon, it's doubtful you've played them all, so watching the developers play and talk about making them sounds like a good time.
]]>We finally did it, folks. 2020 is almost over. And while it felt like spring and summer were interminably long, autumn seems to have passed in the blink of an eye. But we can still enjoy the best season a little while longer with Dutch indie boyband Sokpop, who are taking us all out on a cosy trip to Pipo Park's tiny sandbox. Wrap up warm, though. It's rather nippy out.
]]>I do love a good RTS from time to time. It's just that, well, I start to lose focus as soon as I'm juggling a dozen units or more, my perfect opening collapsing into a panic of select-all death balls. Fortunately, that's not a problem I ever see myself having in Sokpop's King Pins, with the Dutch indie rascals stripping the genre down into an adorably simple single-screen strategy puzzle for you and up to three pals.
]]>Every so often, Dutch indie boyband Sokpop find themselves making an MMO. This time, however, they're courting this boutique videogame website by nicking two-thirds of our name. Released earlier this week, Rock Paper Sock is a deconstruction of Old School Runescape that ditches sword and sorcery for three simple weapons - a rock, a sheet of paper, and a handy pair of scissors.
]]>Dreams? Never heard of it. Media Molecule's swish toolset might be locked down to PlayStation folks, but those rascals at Dutch indie collective Sokpop have already given us one better. The latest entry in their twice-monthly release catalogue is Sok-Worlds, a set-dressing toy for making and exploring 3D simple collages. Who needs modelling, scripting and animation tools when Google image search is sitting right there, anyway?
]]>My first impression of Dutch indie collective Sokpop Collective was an odd'un. Leaving a Berlin club one frozen afternoon in 2017, we were stopped by the presence of some bizarre boys. Squatting and posing and donning coats sewn together with odd pairs of socks, who was I to know that these strange lads were about to embark on a daunting new project: a brand-new game delivered every two weeks, funded by supporters on Patreon.
Two years and 50 games later, the self-professed "videogame boyband" are celebrating their second anniversary with a mic-drop, bringing their entire collection of former Itch-exclusive games to Steam.
]]>Argh, yes, hello hello, intro intro, words, excuses. Sorry everyone, I've been rather ill and all the game devs selfishly decided to keep releasing their games anyway. Do they not KNOW what HAPPENS to troublemakers in the Unknownatorium?
It is, of course, time for a belated Unknown Pleasures, our regular selection of the best under-exposed games on Steam.
]]>Landlords might currently forbid me from owning a pooch of my own, but Sokpop's Pupper Park lets me become one instead. There's comfort in that, I think. Put aside the troubling concerns that come with being human. Ditch work, to hell with the groceries. Let's go chase a ball, harass some toads, irritate the hell out of every other pup in a colourful park for a glorious ten minutes.
Nobody even needs clean up the mess.
]]>I have a new dream pet, and it’s a handful of Sproots, the friendly Pikmin-like stars of game collective Sokpop’s latest. I am tempted to say that I would like to be one, putting my hands in the dirt and eating berries, but they do have an unfortunate habit of dying. Which perhaps indicates that I wouldn’t be the best pet parent for them either. The cheery little “good luck!” at the end of this trailer may betray some of the cut-throatedness behind the cute.
]]>Gosh, who knew intense outdoor labour could be so cute?
Ollie & Bollie's Outdoor Estate popped out of Dutch collective Sokpop last October. You'd be forgiven for missing it, however, unless you're up to date on your Humble Monthly bundles. The pair have since broken free of those shackles, and you can now pick up Ollie & Bollie for a meagre $3 on Itch.io.
]]>Do your neighbours work from home? Are they on the night shift? When would be the ideal time to shimmy in through a cracked window and sift through their valuables? Hopefully these are questions you’ve not considered before, but get to it, because that’s what you’ve gotta do in Pilfer, a medieval open world klept ‘em up that tasks you with getting your grubby hands on as much of the village’s treasures as possible. You can peep through the keyhole at its trailer, which portrays player-driven character personality and comedic timing better than any other video game teaser I can recall.
]]>Following the release of Digital Bird Playground, I was curious what Tom van den Boogaart was up to with his other long-awaited game, a follow-up to Bernband. 2014's first-person explorer remains one of my favourite games, the game I recommend to people more than anything this side of Skeal, and I'm still happy just seeing snippets of his work on a new alien city for the waggly-handed wanderer to get lost in. No, still no firm word when we'll get to play it. Yes, I'm happy to wait, going by how lovely his work-in-progress screenshots and videos have looked. Come see.
]]>While we all agree that Devil Daggers is the bestest best game of 2016, you might not even have heard of the year's second-bestest game. It's Digital Bird Playground, a local multiplayer sandbox made by Bernband creator Tom van den Boogaart, where birds ride bicycles and play with worms and chase frogs and play basketball with frogs and throw frogs into the pond and generally muck about. Tragically few people got to enter the Digital Bird Playground because it was only playable at a handful of events - until now.
]]>If you ever tinkered with Klik 'n' Play back in the day, or you just fancy doodling a game out in minutes, you might be delighted by the Sokpop Collective's new Sok-Stories. It's a quick 'n' cute game-making tool where we draw sprites in a wee MS Paint-y way, add them to scenes, whack in simple logic, and away you go. It's more a game-doodler than a game-maker, I suppose, able to very quickly throw together something strange and surprising. It's easy to share games too, simply uploaded then played in a browser. I've enjoyed poking through the games people have made with it.
]]>After several days of working until 5am watching press conferences where mournful music plays as men are stabbed in the neck, I've been delighted to get away to the woods and build a little base. That's the pleasure of Huts, the latest from Sokpop, the Dutch collective whose members are also behind such joys as Bernband, Lisa, and Digital Bird Playground. Off we go into the woods to scavenge planks, pallets, pipes, posts, tree trunks, traffic cones, barrels, bicycles, and whatever else we can find, build a little (or big) base, and enjoy the sounds of the woods.
]]>'Suspicious Developments' remains my favourite name for a games studio*, but 'Sokpop' might be my favourite name for a video games collective. That's because a) it captures some of the playfulness that they bring to their work, and b) it's fun to say. Sokpop!
I can look forward to exclaiming it more often, because Sokpop Collective have announced that they'll be releasing a new game every 2 weeks using crowdfuning from their recently launched Patreon. You might know them for sci-fi city stroller Bernband, pleasant meadow puzzler Lisa, multiplayer park mess-about sim Digital Bird Playrground, or any of their many, many other games. Click on through for details about that Patreon, as well as the bigger projects they've got planned for this year.
]]>Sokpop, the Dutch collective whose members were behind such lovelies as Bernband and Lisa (the one with the nice meadow, not Lisa: The Painful RPG), have released a collection of small games. The Bamboo EP [Steam page] contains three games which involve bamboo in some way but are all quite different. They cover the three main genres of video game: swimming in ponds; swordfighting animals; and local multiplayer ballsports. That's worth three quid to me all right.
]]>Got some extra cash to burn? Want to support the independent gaming community of Austin, Texas? Pick up the latest Fantastic Arcade Bundle, with five games from the festival hosted by game collective Juegos Rancheros. They include games from the maker of Downwell, the gang behind Bernband, and IGF winner Nathalie Lawhead.
]]>Oh no, some of RPS's secret favourite game developers have teamed up to form a videogame collective. Their power to make delightful, colourful, physics-animated games, toys and joys will be too great for any of us to handle.
They're called Sokpop and they consist of Aran Koning, Tijmen Tio, Tom van den Boogaart and rubna. They've made a trailer of their work, which you can watch below, if you have space for so much levity inside of you.
]]>
