Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I have to write at least 250 words for a news post. Rock Paper Shotgun’s CMS (content management system) even has a built-in widget that shouts at me if I don’t write at least 250 words. “Page 1 body content is quite short” it says if I go under. How cute is that “quite”? I love being fooled into getting charmed by automated systems via colloquial British understatement. Anyway, I bring this up because I honestly don’t have anything to add about Blippo+. I just wanted to inform you all of its existence. It’s a “casual” “FMV” “Cinematic” “Pixel Graphics” “1980s” digital product from developers also named Blippo+, as well as publishers Panic, who’ve previously unleashed the horrible goose and Thank Goodness You’re Here! on the world. Have a visual orientation:

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Creation is an act of kindness. One person sloughs off a piece of themselves, shapes it, wraps it, and sends it out into the world in the hope that it might mean something to someone else. Other people do this for us all the time and mostly we don’t even notice. The work is unseen and unremarked upon even as, through repetition, we come to depend upon it. Until, one day, that light that they shine can’t be seen. Maybe you left home, or maybe they did, but now it’s your turn to perform such acts of kindness. To carry the tradition forward for others – and for yourself.

Friends, it’s time to play Skeal.

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Infamous evolutionary flop Spore, for all its flaws, still had a lot of magic to it. It was fun to design your weird creatures, to watch them try to walk, and – in principle – to turn your humble creations into a spacefaring species.

Curiosmos is a very different game, but it has a little of the same appeal. It’s a galactic playground in which you smash meteors together to make planets, then tinker with the ecosystems of those planets to make life and watch that life evolve. All while a hungry black hole lingers nearby, eager to consume everything you have created. There’s an explanatory video below.

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Hyper Light Breaker is a prequel to the excellent topdown action-RPG from 2016, Hyper Light Drifter. The differences are myriad, given that Breaker is also 3D, open world, co-op and a roguelite. It also now has a release date for its launch into Steam Early Access: January 14th, 2025.

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Back when I played Path Of Exile 2 at Summer Games Fest, I fought a cave-dwelling boss who summoned hordes of grotty subterranean wildlife to swamp me. Fortunately, I was rolling a Witch – perhaps the best beginner POE2 class – so I could summon an army of skeletons in response. A similar horde vs horde encounter is underway at POE 2 developers Grinding Gear Games. The game launched in early access over the weekend, and has already drawn so many players that the developers are emergency-hiring additional staff to cope with the waves of support emails.

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In “non-violent and poetic” 2D platformer Symphonia, you’re an extremely fancy violinist exploring a realm of musical machines, where gas lanterns kindle fitfully as you approach, crotchets adorn vast cogwheels, and reams of what I really hope isn’t actual catgut feed through titanic pegboxes overhead. Sampling the demo, I was immediately enflamed by the orchestral score and placed in a mood of white-gloved sophistication only slightly spoiled by the familiarity of the underlying platform moveset, and by my repeatedly falling into pits.

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When I were a lad, you’d open an advent calendar and get a piece of chocolate shaped like a bell with an aftertaste so rancid you’d wish you’d eaten the little cardboard window instead. And you’d bloody well make do, too. Not these days. Now, you get a squadron of tiny automata with drills for noses that burrow through your battle lines and utterly wreck your vulnerable missile launchers. Country’s gone to the tiny robot dogs, I tell you!

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The Steam Deck OLED has joined Valve’s Certified Refurbished programme, offering a much cheaper way of getting your hands on the best handheld PC around. Provided you don’t mind it being in someone else’s first, anyway. As with official refurbs of the original Steam Deck, “certified” Steam Deck OLEDs are formerly-broken models that have been returned to Valve, fixed up and tested in-house, then put back on the market at steep discounts. You’re looking at £389/$439 for the 512GB spec and £459/$519 for 1TB, down from £479/$549 and £569/$649 respectively.

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I am a Winter baby. My birthday is very close to Christmas, and so you’d think this might make me immune to the serotonin-sapping effects of the greyest season in a “I was born of the cold. Moulded by it” kind of way. No such luck, I’m afraid. So, since there’s only so many Vitamin D supplements and delightfully festive lunchtime Gin and Tonics one can consume, I figured I’d ask: what are your favourite comfort games for the bleaker months? The special places you can always rely on for an escape when the weather outside is frightful, and the Cosy Fireplace Ambience 4K (10 hours) keeps getting interrupted by adverts for crypto scammers and War Thunder.

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While it’s always worth starting a new game of Cyberpunk 2077 just to hear Judy say “his own choomba shot him!” for the thirtieth time, there’s now a slightly more tangible reason to start a new journey into Night City’s open world. Update 2.2 went live yesterday, bringing with it a host of fixes, as well as some deeper customisation options for both your character and vehicles. The base game is also 55% off on Steam until the 18th of December, with the Phantom Liberty expansion at 20% off, or both in a 48% off bundle. Cyberpunk is on sale often enough, although these current discounts line up with the cheapest it’s ever been on Steam. Again: worth it for the line.

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