Why did Digital Eclipse make Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story? It’s a tale of centipedes, psychedelia, and tea

Who is Jeff Minter? Unless you’re a long-term fan of his work, you might have asked that upon hearing about Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, the latest interactive documentary from Digital Eclipse (following on from The Making Of Karateka and Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration). You might have heard Minter’s name in connection with the remake of the unreleased Atari arcade game Akka Arrh in 2023. Maybe you played his mind-warping shooter Polybius in VR. You might remember as far back as the Atari Jaguar and Minter’s phenomenal Tempest 2000, the unexpected highlight of the console’s library. Or perhaps you recall his work from the 8-bit glory days. You could just know him from the daily videos of him feeding his sheep on YouTube.

The point is that Jeff Minter has been making games for a phenomenally long time – more than 40 years, in fact. And in all that time, he has stayed true to what he believes in. “One of the things we say in the game itself is the idea of him being the last indie developer,” says Chris Kohler, editorial director at Digital Eclipse in California. “The last of the people from the early 80s who very consciously never sold out, never took the money, never looked to expand or do anything other than [be] just Jeff at his computer, making the sorts of video games that he wants to make.”

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Stylish sniper puzzler Children Of The Sun hits Steam in April

Children Of The Sun instantly shot to the top of my personal most-wanted list when it was first announced at the start of February alongside its accompanying Steam Next Fest demo, and happily, publishers Devolver Digital have now set a release date. It’s coming real soon, with its single-shot murder bullet puzzles hitting Steam on April 9th – and to celebrate, there’s a flashy new release trailer to go with it. Come and be dazzled by its exploding headshots below.

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Alleged leaked Spider-Man: The Great Web trailer shows off Insomniac’s cancelled co-op spin-off

An alleged trailer for Spider-Man: The Great Web has leaked online – Spider-Man: The Great Web being a cancelled Insomniac Games comicbook adaptation with a focus on co-op multiplayer. I am not going to embed the footage because I’m not sure if doing so would cause screaming Spider-Lawyers to crash through my window – best of luck finding tall objects to swing from in darkest West Yorkshire, webheads! – but I will do you the great honour of describing the footage below.

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Chasing The Unseen is like Getting Over It for people who have the Headspace app, and it stressed me out

This weekend I said one of the games I was planning to be playing was Chasing The Unseen, and I did in fact do that. It is indeed a strange, dream-like experience where you leap floaty leaps onto thin, spindly crags of rock in a sage-grey void. Rather than finding it soothing, I found it it extremely stress-making. This was the opposite experience to what I had expected.

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Nightingale’s latest patch fixes major crashes, material losses, and improves the UI

Having played Nightingale a bunch for early access review, I wasn’t entirely convinced by its mixture of survival and Destiny-esque power level grind. I also wasn’t too keen on its slew of bugs and tricksy interface. Still, the devs are hard at work fixing things, as the latest patch squashes major crashes, material losses when building, and further improves the UI.

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Monster Hunter Stories is coming from Nintendo 3DS to PC with a remaster

Capcom announced last night that Monster Hunter Stories, a 2016 Nintendo 3DS spin-off from their megahuge monstermashing series, is coming to PC in June. They’ve remastered it with a wee visual refresh, fully voice acting, a concept art gallery, and more. We’ve actually already had the sequel on PC, 2021’s Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings Of Ruin, so it’s nice to catch up.

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Destiny 2 is crossing over with Ghostbusters next week, complete with a Slimer Ghost and Echo-1

It seems only fitting that Ghostbusters has become the movie franchise that refuses to die, returning for a smattering of so-so (at best) reboots and sequels on screen and elsewhere being relegated to another rich vein of nostalgia to be mined for cash. Speaking of, Destiny 2 is getting Ghostbusters cosmetics next week!

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PUBG is taking the fight to Fortnite with destructible environments and more transportation items in 2024

Despite being the game that pioneered and popularised the battle royale shooter, it seems that PUBG: Battlegrounds has increasingly ended up left in the shadow cast by Fortnite’s ridiculous popularity, Lego and Eminem collabs, and big, flashy season changes. It seems that the earlier battle royale game is planning to borrow at least one leaf from its rival’s playbook this year, though.

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