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The music in haunting 2D adventure Norco was so good it’s one of the few soundtracks I’ve actually bought on Steam, so I’m deeply intrigued to learn that developer Geography of Robots are putting music – and dancing – front and center in the new demo for their next project, Silenus. You can bop your way between screens, reader!
Risk Of Rain 2 is one of my fave action roguelikes, as it’s a good time with pals and has all the hallmarks of things I enjoy most in my games: shooting and looting. That’s why the latest free update excites me so, as it introduces an artifact that makes chests malicious and another that lets you hatch angry lizard companions. Oh, and there’s a new map, too.
Three questions before we start:
1) Do you like Robert Eggers’ film The Northman?
2) Do you like games that mainly involve pressing ‘forward’ and not much else?
3) Do you like rocks?
MultiVersus – aka Warner Smash Bros, or The Game Where Scooby-Doo’s Velma Punches Batman While LeBron James Decks The Iron Giant – hasn’t quite returned from its self-imposed exile after ending its open beta last year, but it’s already adding more Iconic Characters(™) to its already teetering pile of familiar Licensed IP.
The next part of Undertale creator Toby Fox’s current project Deltarune is actually two parts, as chapters 3 and 4 plan to release together. It sounds like that release is still a ways off, according to a recent update from Fox, even as the latest chapter seemingly makes “great progress” and the team eye up work on Chapter 5.
Two years of early access have been kind Songs of Conquest. Its strategy fundamentals were already strong enough to impress me in 2022 that it’s been quite tricky to even remember what’s changed. But there’s more of it, and although after much reflection I think it’s not quite, quite for me, more of a good and unusual thing is definitely enough to push me into a very nearly wholehearted endorsement.
I may have winced a bit, initially, at Alice Bee’s choice of RPS Game Club game for this month. Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands looked funny and all, but it’s a turn-based RPG, a subgenre that usually elicits the same amount of enthusiasm from me as the phrase “by Ernest Cline” does from Alice. Deathbulge, however, is a clever little sod of a game, managing to devise not only a turn-based combat system that avoids the usual waiting-around tedium but one that’s outright good fun in itself.
There are management games and there are micro-management games. Prison Architect 2 is the latter. I don’t mean this as an annoying thing, like when Harold from corporate starts commenting all over your document at 4.30pm on a Friday. I mean it as a distinction between those games that let you plop down a house, and others that need you to stack the bricks, install the plumbing, fit the lights, and select the wallpaper. The first Prison Architect allowed you to finesse every detail of a secure correctional facility, down to each cell and dog kennel. Unsurprisingly for a sim about prison, it encouraged obsessive control. The 3D-ified sequel isn’t finished yet, but it’s taking a similar approach. Maybe a little too similar.
You remember the ending of 2011’s first-person bullethoser Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, right? Everyone does! A big man kills another big man with a gun but then – then! – a third big man kills that first big man with a rope. It’s dramatic stuff. Well, a data-diving enthusiast of the CoDwars has discovered a cut ending from the original trilogy’s closing chapter. It’s a more downbeat and mysterious finale, featuring a shadowy figure whose identity is never revealed. Also, Captain Price, the hero of the franchise and aforementioned big man number three, drops his cigar with possibly mortal implications.
Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin developers Larian today announced the opening of a new studio in Warsaw, Poland. This is RPG outfit Larian’s seventh studio worldwide, and the latest to contribute to their “24-hour development cycle” model. That’s even more hands on deck to a) keep Swen Vincke’s armour polished to a fine sheen and b) ensure smooth sailing for the two new games that Larian currently have in the works.
