When I catch word of a chocolate-and-peanut-butter blend of genres such as “cyberpunk survival horror RPG”, my eyes light up. Literally, they light up like the pilot lights of flamethrowers, like glyphs on a cursed monolith that has been exposed to fresh blood after a billion years of dormancy. When I hear that the aforesaid RPG is set on a “dying space station”, I begin to emit a monotonous reverberation, like the mysterious banging recently heard aboard the Boeing Starliner. And when I hear that it’s being made by the people behind Shadowrun and Battletech, I extend dozens of independently cognitive motorised tentacles and begin writing a news article.
Keeping your eyes on the road isn’t easy when the horizon hosts crackling azure nebula; when the voluminous nightglow from the planet below makes even the gargantuan industrial indicators look like so many tiny, twinkling cat eyes. I, a terrestrial chump, cannot help be taken in by it all. But I get the sense all this spacey wonder is just so much unremarkable grease pooling at the rim of a diner plate for my Star Trucker. He’s seen a couple things, that’s for sure. Taken the long way round the spiral arm to slip past security checkpoints and offload cases of booze for off-the-record cash. Seen reduced-to-clear Ginster’s wrappers glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. Hummed that Freebird solo a thousand times while waiting for the traffic to thin out near the shoulder of Orion.
Hopoo Games, the studio who made chewy roguelike Risk Of Rain and its moreish 3D sequel Risk Of Rain 2, are shutting up shop and taking jobs at Valve. They’re no longer working on a previously unannounced game called “Snail”, say the developers on Xitter. Instead, the studio co-founders Paul Morse and Duncan Drummond (plus “many other talented members”) are taking up game development roles with the Steam owners.
I can’t read the title of OneShot without hearing Eminem singing “do not miss your chance to blow” immediately afterwards. But this mental deficiency is probably not shared by the thousands of folks who fell in love with the purple-tinted puzzle RPG in 2016. If you are among that number, and fancy a handheld way to replay the game, then good news. OneShot: World Machine Edition is a remastered version that is Steam Deck compatible, and it’s coming out on PC this month.
Amazon is currently offering a significant discount on one of the best microSD cards for the Steam Deck. The Lexar 1TB Play microSDXC Memory Card, an ideal storage solution for portable gaming devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally X, and others, is now priced at just $66.49, or £61.74 in the UK. This is a substantial drop from its original $129.99/ £129.99 list price, making it a great deal while the sale lasts.
Fast transfer speeds for quick loading time with up to 160MB/s read.
We’re a week out from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s release date, and Saber have put out a final roundup of details in a Steam blog. Alongside a global release time map (or two maps, technically, since they’re pulling that pay-more-to-play-early nonsense), there’s a big Q&A covering all your burning questions about burning ‘nids. Among these is a confirmation that, no, the action game won’t be implementing DRM software such as Denuvo.
We’ve been negligent in our duty as watchkeepers of extreme sports games. Parcel Corps is a light-hearted bicycle courier sim set in a colourful totalitarian regime where the police do not like things to be delivered in time, or at all. Perhaps that’s why the game, which was due to arrive on Steam tomorrow, has been delayed until an unspecified date. That’s okay, half the news stories we write seem to be about release setbacks. At least the developers announced the delay in a funny and thematically appropriate way.
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I’ve moved on to Wolfe’s Sword Of The Lictor this week and, readers, I’m starting to think that Severian might not be a very good dude. This week it’s Still Wakes the Deep, Little Orpheus, and Robocraft designer (along with many others) and current lead technical level designer at Half Mermaid, Robert McLachlan! Cheers Robert! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
I’m debating re-reading Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. It’s set in a past/near/far future Kent, a post-apocalyptic mix of horror (black trees, black forests, mud, dogs and death) and beauty (Punch and Judy, St Eustace, rebirth), written in a version of English as wrecked as the nuclear-blasted landscape. It’s bleak – though not quite as brutally resistant to re-reading as The Road – and now I’m older with kids in this modern world, the thrill of reading the apocalypse is replaced with uneasiness and fear, but what an amazing piece of work. Apparently Hoban couldn’t spell properly for the rest of his life after finishing writing it.
Hoban was an American who spent half his life in London, and this superficial fact made a connexion (in Riddley Walker speak) in my mind with another book I read this year, by a genius writer who also made England their home – W. G. Sebald. The Rings Of Saturn is also written around the East of England and its boundary with the North Sea, although there’s so much more to the book than that. There’s a real desolation and liminality in his descriptions of the towns and landscapes which lie along the restless North Sea coast… Who knows what secrets lie beneath those waves?
Another week, another Steam Fest looms. From September 2st until the 9rd you’ll be able to find intergalactic discounts and demos in the Steam Space Exploration Fest.
Against The Storm already contains a zoo’s-worth of animal-people to order around as you attempt to build a town that can survive the perma-rain of the Blightstorm. That doesn’t stop new expansion Keepers Of The Stone from adding one more. Come September 26th, you’ll be able to welcome the frog people as you venture into a new biome.
