Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We talk about retro and throwback game releases being a “blast from the past”, but in this case, it’s more like you’re strolling down a sunny path amid soothing birdsong, and then one particular, innocent-looking paving stone swivels underfoot with a rustle of gears, dropping you into a dingy, yellow-panelled room. There are vacuum tubes mounted on one wall, doors to either side, and a ladder leading further down into darkness.

You click one of the doors and the perspective switches over slide-projector style to a second room with identical proportions. There are pipes emerging from the floor, here, and some kind of antique radio on a pedastel in the centre. Hang on, I know this place. I know this formless sense of dread. I know these machinations. The last time I set foot here, it was 2009 and I was running a Flash game blog, writing up choice submissions to sites like Kongregate. This is Submachine, a 14-part escape puzzle series from Mateusz Skutnik, which Skutnik has now compiled, polished-up and re-released as Submachine: Legacy.

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Minecraft update 1.21 has been revealed, and well, looks like Mojang have been reading my posts demanding the addition of a proper maze generator, those sneaky devils. As explained by Minecraft game director Agnes Larsson, the forthcoming Minecraft update – which has yet to be given a release date – is designed to “focus more on combat adventures and on tinkering” than last year’s Cave & Cliffs update.

The headline addition is an underground structure called the Trial Chamber, a procedurally generated cluster of traps and treasure rooms, fashioned from copper and tuff blocks and arranged around a central hallway. From the Minecraft Live footage this weekend, Trial Chambers look like an evolution of the game’s old buried fortresses, with some nifty new flourishes in the shape of copper bulb blocks that slowly give off less and less light, and new Trial Spawners, which generate a certain number of hostile mobs based on things like the number of players in your party.

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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by podracing, parrying a grappling hook, seeing your own legs as you parkour about, and heaps more attractive and interesting indie games. Check ’em out!

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Let me put you at ease. Endless Dungeon is a very splashy, confidently clever roguelike about spannering turrets, hosing bullets, and popping bugs like angry little pimples. It sounds disgusting when I type it out loud like that, so let’s pivot to the reliable food analogy. It is a delicious game, a hearty stew. A tasty one-more-go-er, perfectly suited to serving up in these dreary autumn months. There. Now that you’ve been pacified by the imagery of a steaming bowl of pleasing dungeon gumbo, you will forgive the 400 words I have written below about doors.

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The EGX demo for magic school adventure Leximan was perhaps only ten minutes long, but that’s all it really needed to confirm that this wordy spell-caster is a riotous delight of a thing that should absolutely be on your radar. Built out of a game jam prototype from 2020, Leximan casts you (sorry) as a would-be wizard who’s struggling to make an impact compared to his more verbally proficient schoolmates. In this particular demo, he’s woken by a friend to go and assist the school cook with preparing breakfast, but things go horribly awry when a pesky fire elemental turns up to spoil it all.

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I’ll admit I’ve been a bit sceptical of Loco Motive since it was first announced a little while ago. Any point and click adventure game that makes a bid trying to be funny like the good old days has a very real chance of being painfully unfunny in my experience (looking at you, Deponia), and I was worried that Loco Motive would fall into the same try-hard pile as other so-called comedy adventures that have come out recently (see also Turnip Boy – yeah, I went there, fight me). But having played a timed 20-minute demo of it at this year’s EGX, I’ll hold my hands up and say, yep, I’m the one who’s been slapped in the face with a giant custard pie here, as Loco Motive is genuinely really quite good, folks, and I’m pleased to report the good old days are still very much alive and kicking. Well, except poor old Lady Unterwald, who carks it within seconds of the game starting, and whose murder you end up getting framed for.

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Ever since rocks and sticks formed the first proto-drumkits, mankind has understood the uplifting power of a good bop. So too does Billie Bust Up, an upcoming 3D platformer that’s just as much of a Disney-style cartoon musical.

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When I see dirt, I know what I must do: clean. Whether it’s in my own, real-life home or in a game, I am compelled to scrub, wipe and tidy – and the oily, purple globs of gunk clogging up Loddlenaut‘s appropriately named region of Flotsam Flats are just begging to be zapped by my little diver’s handy laser gun. With just a single squeeze of the trigger, he sets to work, moving his arm automatically to neatly attack each neighbouring blob without any further prompting or manual aiming. All I need to focus on is getting him close enough to the gunge and he’ll take care of the rest. Sure, it’s perhaps not quite as involved as your PowerWash Sims and other polish em ups, but the combination of Loddlenaut’s lo-fi visuals, comforting score and surprisingly soothing controller rumble all work to give it its own kind of zen-like charm – and it was enough to make me forget the surrounding din of the EGX Rezzed Zone for a very enjoyable 20 minutes or so.

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Sometimes, the ability to push over a tree was inside you all along. Retrieving woodland traversal skills from the depths of memory is key to Pine Hearts, an easygoing adventure/exploration game that I’ve spent a very relaxing half-hour with in the EGX 2023 Rezzed Zone.

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Pitched as “a racing game for people who don’t like racing games,” Resistor shows an immediate disinterest in tracks, time trials, or even really the cars themselves. This racing game, I’m told as I sit down to play a demo in the EGX 2023’s Rezzed Zone, cares about the person behind the wheel – and their burgeoning camaraderie with a roughneck pit crew.

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