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2023’s games industry jobapocalypse continues with news that Amazon Games are laying off 180 people. This includes the entirety of the Twitch service Crown Channel, plus its Game Growth division. According to Amazon themselves, it’s all with a view to refocussing on Prime Gaming, which serves up games to Amazon Prime subscribers.
Shadows of Doubt is the voxel-based 1980s detective sim in which the glass is always rain-slicked, the coffee as bitter as the human soul, and the whodunnits, procedurally generated. Hard-nosed private eye Rachel (RPS in peace) pronounced herself fascinated but a little stumped by it, back in April, while Graham described it as his “ideal game” in a post about the recent addition of infidelity cases and lost-and-found jobs, adding to my suspicions that Graham is some kind of jigsaw killer and that his news posts are actually ciphered confessions of his terrible crimes.
Well, these already viscous plots are about to thicken into a borderline-immobile soup of intrigue, for ColePowered Games are adding modding tools to the game. These will allow you to pen your own detective mysteries, and even alter the surrounding city to fit.
Sometimes, all you need is a wireless keyboard and touchpad mouse to get things done. Whether it’s selecting the next movie on your living room media PC, changing settings on your racing rig or getting your Steam Deck set up just the way you want it, having a convenient, all-in-one wireless option can be just the ticket.
Logitech’s K400 Plus is a popular model in this niche category, and normally retails for an affordable $28. Today though, it’s down to $19 on Amazon, a sweet 32% discount that makes it near impulse buy territory for anyone that has a PC for which a regular mouse and keyboard setup isn’t quite convenient.
Unity have said that they expect to lay off staff in the coming months, following the engine maker’s catastrophic rollout of their new pricing plan earlier this year and as they turn towards a more “focused” offering, including the likes of AI, for growth.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater arrived for the first time on PC with a resounding “oof” last month, launching alongside Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2, plus the two Metal Gear games, in the extremely barebones Master Collection.
Alan Wake and Control developers Remedy Entertainment have announced that their untitled co-op shooter, the artist formerly known as project Vanguard, will no longer be a free-to-play game – largely, it seems, because the free-to-play business is looking a bit dicey. The game has been given a new codename to celebrate: Kestrel. It’s still a co-op multiplayer affair, however.
The reboot follows an evaluation period during which Remedy and publisher Tencent discussed a proof-of-concept version of the game, as we reported last month. They’ve now kicked it back to the concept phase “due to uncertainties in creating a successful game [in] the rapidly changing free-to-play market and associated risks”. A few members of the old Vanguard development team have moved to other Remedy projects, while the core leadership and certain select developers carry on with Kestrel.
Behold, all the best early Black Friday gaming monitors that have shown their square, light-emitting faces ahead of the main event on November 24th. There’s already quite a haul of attractive offers at this stage, both the UK and US being spoilt for choice on well-appointed gaming monitors with up to three-figure discounts. As in, hundreds, not £1.35 or something. Only the good stuff here, obvs.
Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away is a film about a spoilt young girl who is obliged to work at a bathhouse for supernatural creatures, after her parents are turned into pigs by a wicked witch. Spirittea from Edmonton, Canada-based Cheesemaker Games is Spirited Away in the guise of a Stardew Valley-style management sim. Released today, it casts you as a wholesome young entrepreneur who has just arrived in a town full of rogue supernatural creatures. To free the town from its spectral infestation, you must renovate an old mountain bathhouse and treat each phantom to a jolly good scrub. You might also need to deal with some Unfinished Business, such as tracking down a lost possession. At least there’s no witch to worry about. That I know of, anyway.
I have fond memories of Spirited Away – it was the film that re-introduced me to anime as an undergraduate, following the traditional early-career middlebrow otaku phase of obsessing over Akira, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell while turning my nose up at stuff like Naruto, because it’s “just for kids”. I was on the brink of pitching a Spirittea review, but then our reviews editor Ed Thorn emerged howling and gibbering from the floorboards and asked me to review a 100-hour RPG instead (won’t spoil), so I’ll have to settle for trying the demo.
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You might have heard of the “horseshoe theory” in political science, which holds that far-left and far-right groups are actually closer to one another in terms of values and objectives than the political centre, coming together like the prongs of a horseshoe. I would like to propose an analogous theory for horror games and cute games whereby past a certain point of cuteness, the videogame in question teeters over dramatically into dread and nausea.
As evidence of this, please witness the unholy magnificence of Saccharinity of Starfield, a Starfield mod from lucyprrrr that treats Starfield‘s items, spaceships, buildings, vegetation, planet models and, worst of all, people to a barbie-doll makeover reminiscent of a seriously overclocked shoujo anime. Do you like pink? No you don’t. Not this much.
