The next advance in video game graphics technology is not ray-tracing or tray-racing or any variation thereof - it's janky stop motion and rubbish plastic dolls, and it actually began about 30 years ago, when I watched the Adam and Joe show for the first time. If you never watched the Adam and Joe show, they used to do home movie recreations of famous films like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan using stuffed animals and action figures. I found these "Toymovies" hysterical as a kid - I suspect they are less so now. Probably, they are full of jokes we might tentatively class as "of their time". The point is, Reptilian Rising is sort of Toymovie: The Game.
The next advance in video game graphics technology is not ray-tracing or tray-racing or any variation thereof - it's janky stop motion and rubbish plastic dolls, and it actually began about 30 years ago, when I watched the Adam and Joe show for the first time. If you never watched the Adam and Joe show, they used to do home movie recreations of famous films like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan using stuffed animals and action figures. I found these "Toymovies" hysterical as a kid - I suspect they are less so now. Probably, they are full of jokes we might tentatively class as "of their time". The point is, Reptilian Rising is sort of Toymovie: The Game.
When I zoom the camera on Alex's momentarily untensed face while he's dozing by the pool, it's not because I'm a creep. When I pursue Ayo and Dija around the garden, keeping their feet and butts in shot as they belittle each other, it's not because I'm a busybody and a lech. And when I pan to the lighthouse piercing the sunset beyond the security spikes it's not out of any feeling of wonder, or even curiosity about possible escape routes. Please understand: I do not see these people, these objects at all, just the boneless, faceless traces they leave upon my own servitude to the lens.
It's very unusual that a relative newcomer to the space ascends the ranks so quickly. You Might Be a DnD Foxworthys the typecasting of class players so effectively that it's been able to ascend to one of the funniest 5e analysis channels in less than a year.
It’s a widely believed fact that comedy is far more difficult than drama. Looking at any gaming platform storefront you’re likely to see wall-to-wall action, and while some of it has a lighter tone, for the most part, it’s full of drama. It’s tough to get a laugh but it’s even tougher to say, “Hey, […]
A glance at comedy medieval medic sim Stretcher Men might have you believe it is a co-op game about co-ordination and teamwork. Not so! It's a singleplayer game in which you control not one but both carriers of a stretcher. You have to ferry a sick man over the hilly countryside, past muddy lake banks and over snowy mountains, all without dropping him on the ground. I can only imagine it controls a bit like Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, but with added ragdoll jollity. We'll know next week, when it releases on Steam.
A glance at comedy medieval medic sim Stretcher Men might have you believe it is a co-op game about co-ordination and teamwork. Not so! It's a singleplayer game in which you control not one but both carriers of a stretcher. You have to ferry a sick man over the hilly countryside, past muddy lake banks and over snowy mountains, all without dropping him on the ground. I can only imagine it controls a bit like Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, but with added ragdoll jollity. We'll know next week, when it releases on Steam.
What are the best dating sims? These games all feature carousels of cute, courtable characters ready for romance. Whether you’re moving into a sleepy seaside town searching for love or ready to find that spark with a kick-flipping dinosaur schoolmate, players have more options now than ever to date around.
While dating is at the forefront of these simulators, great examples of the genre are feature-rich, captivating settings, underlying intrigue, and unique art direction, some of which could even be considered the best PC games overall. The top dating simulators tend to twist the traditional visual novel style and fork it into a new genre, such as adventure games or dungeon crawling - and, believe it or not, one or two even take inspiration from horror games. Regardless of where you want to look for love, this list has you covered with the best dating sims to play in 2024.
Picture a himbo tent. Now, see if you can get your mind around the concept of a flirtatious windmill. What exactly are the key architectural qualities of dwellings you might wish to go to bed with? Actually, don’t bother stretching your grey matter – you can just play Building Relationships, which is sort of A Short Hike but also, Love Island for anthropomorphic toy houses. There are demos on Itch and Steam. Be warned that you will be asked whether you’re a rooftop or a bottom floor.
Mental Salvo describes itself as having an "infinite open world" in which you can do so many things, "they're impossible to list". Were this a game from a triple-A publisher, I'd be heading down to their compound with some powerful magnets and cannisters of highly concentrated acid to wipe out their ungodly creation before it replaces the fundamental particles of our universe with waypoints. But Mental Salvo is actually the work of new indie imaginini (yes, no capital-I), and is a "top down art adventure with light RPG elements" that is perhaps a bit ZANY but also, refreshingly playful in essentially being about poking a big white screen to see what tumbles out of it.
Picture a himbo tent. Now, see if you can get your mind around the concept of a flirtatious windmill. What exactly are the key architectural qualities of dwellings you might wish to go to bed with? Actually, don’t bother stretching your grey matter – you can just play Building Relationships, which is sort of A Short Hike but also, Love Island for anthropomorphic toy houses. There are demos on Itch and Steam. Be warned that you will be asked whether you’re a rooftop or a bottom floor.
Mental Salvo describes itself as having an "infinite open world" in which you can do so many things, "they're impossible to list". Were this a game from a triple-A publisher, I'd be heading down to their compound with some powerful magnets and cannisters of highly concentrated acid to wipe out their ungodly creation before it replaces the fundamental particles of our universe with waypoints. But Mental Salvo is actually the work of new indie imaginini (yes, no capital-I), and is a "top down art adventure with light RPG elements" that is perhaps a bit ZANY but also, refreshingly playful in essentially being about poking a big white screen to see what tumbles out of it.
Hyper Light Drifter developer Heart Machine unveiled its next game at the Devolver Direct showcase.
Called Possessor(s), it's a side-scrolling action game with a beautiful hand-drawn aesthetic set in a devastated mega-city. It's due out in 2025.
Players control two protagonists - Luca and Rehm - with melee combat involving juggles with an array of weapons like swords, bats, and even an electric guitar.
The news panamax has come in and all the shipping containers are spilling off the deck in an uncontrollable catastrophe of trailers. Here's another: you may remember The Crush House, the colourful 90s reality show where you film the cast by day, trying to please the audience, and creep around by night, trying to investigate the unsettling true nature of the show. No? You don't remember? Well, it has been a long year. Never mind, The Crush House now has a release date. But I'm not telling you what it is until you come watch the new trailer.
I fear we may have swum the Rubicon of diminishing returns where multiplayerhorror games inspired by Lethal Company are concerned. The recent Content Warning has sucked up all the remaining oxygen in the room, and oxygen is pretty important in Murky Divers, for reasons that are hopefully self-evident. Still, Murky Divers has some fairly eye-catching USPs. It's got underwater physics, of course, and it puts you and - unhelpfully - your friends in charge of a submarine.
In Mike Judge’s 1999 cult comedy Office Space, there’s a scene where Ron Livingston’s Peter - a programmer working a tedious corporate job - visits a hypnotist. “Is there any way that you could, sorta, just zonk me out so I don’t know that I’m at work, in here,” Peter asks of the hypnotist, pointing to his head. “Could I come home and think that I’ve been fishing all day, or something?”. That’s basically the high-level concept for brilliant sci-fi comedy show Severance, right there. Not wanting to spoil any more than I absolutely have to, I’ll present you with two facts up top. 1. It features a touching queer relationship between John Turturro and Christopher Walken and 2. It’s some of the best television I’ve seen in the last few years. Throw in some Stanley Parable, Control, Gilliam’s Brazil, and some more meta undertones of general musing on gamified reward loops, and you’ve got Severance.
Between this, my supporter post later, and the fact I decided to watch Office Space again this week, I’d like to make it clear to any colleagues or management reading that I value and love them all dearly, and am 110% committed to the eternal grind machine of covering videogames online. Workday malaise is universal, however, whether or not you’re lucky enough to enjoy your job as much as I do. Enter Office Fight, a stylish physics action game where you, a ghost, posess office equipment to cause as much physics-based chaos as possible. The PR did some Office Space jokes in the email, so I pretty much had to cover it. At least once I realised what they were doing, after initially just thinking they were being a massive donkey.
A whopping 1000 corpses have been found in our ongoing investigation into Anthology of the Killer, Rock Paper Shotgun can reveal. The bodies were discovered in the aforementioned murder mystery "video game", which is out now on itch.io. Following our previous reports we can confirm that exposure to the game's crime-infested city can cause severe disorientation, confusion, uncontrolled fits of laughter, and moderate enlightenment. The streets here are so dense with crime that entire apartment blocks must shutter at night. When Rock Paper Shotgun reported the 1000 corpses to detectives, we were told this was "normal" and "appropriate".
In Anthology of the Killer you do not exit the game using a pause menu. You exit it by walking down a back alley into the quavering arms of two hungry bears. This is just one of many laughs your diaphragm will endure as you navigate "the escalating adventures of a girl trying to make zines in a town of giallo-style masked serial murderers". The horror comedy already won its creators the Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival this year, recognition that has been a long time coming for prolific game maker Stephen "thecatamites" Gillmurphy. If you're unfamiliar with his work, you can get acquainted next week, when Anthology of the Killer gets its full release on Itch.io on May 28th. At which point you can explore its unsettling urban hell of shady corporations and cops who think they're cool. There's a trailer below.
What happens when you ask AI to solve your problems? "Deep Learning," the fourth episode of South Park's 26th season, tries to answer that question in a meta way. It's an episode about ChatGPT whose ending was also written by ChatGPT.
The story begins with the boys, as many schoolkids now do, using generative AI software to help with homework assignments. Meanwhile, Stan begins using ChatGPT to text his girlfriend Wendy. While their unsuspecting teacher Mr. Garrison swoons over AI-generated texts from his husband, he also secretly uses AI to grade the boys' papers.
The episode pokes fun at the social norms developing around artificial intelligence: Everyone fudges their work a little, but they're all supposed to pretend that no one does. But if too many people rely on AI all the time, then the house of cards falls apart. Once South Park Elementary catches wind that some students are using ChatGPT, the school administration tries to ferret out the cheaters with a shaman. The results are about as accurate as real-life AI detection software.
Breaking the fourth wall, Stan asks ChatGPT to fix the boys' dilemma. And ChatGPT does it by producing an ending that feels like, well, a South Park episode written by AI. It's formulaic and it feels off, but it's just coherent enough to do the job.
I have a couple of takes on Nico Papalia's new RPG Athenian Rhapsody, which launched on Steam yesterday and still has a demo. The first is that it's a brighter, glitzier version of Toby Fox's Undertale that looks like it belongs on Gameboy Advance - a retro parody created in GameMaker whose turn-based combat houses many an inventive minigame, and whose writing doesn't so much break the fourth wall as moonwalk along the parapet, showering the player in poop, anime tropes and off-colour mental health advice.
My evolving relationship with Vampire Therapist continues apace - much how protagonist Sam's acumen as an unlicensed therapist for the unsettled undead develops at speed. He's a vampire doing therapy for other vampires, while also undergoing therapy, as a vampire, from another therapist (who is a vampire). Vampire Therapist! I've been able to get to grips with a playable preview - I'd say I got my teeth into it, but I'm not that much of a hack fraud - which means I got to see some of the things that creative director Cyrus Nemati told me about in our interview in action. I remain optimistic that, on it's release on June 18th, Vampire Therapist can walk the tricky line it's drawn for itself.
It's balancing on a knife point of humour, the supernatural, and sincerity about mental health, the latter using real cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT; the comments the first time I wrote about Vampire Therapist revealed a lot about our readership) concepts in consultation with licensed therapists. The preview only covered Sam's first meeting with his mentor, Andromachos, and the first client Sam treats himself - a doctor called Drayne, simultaneously self-loathing and self-aggrandising - but it gave a flavour of how the game plays. Rather than a sort of janky template on how to self-therapise, as I'd feared, when you're playing Vampire Therapist it operates more as a sort of language puzzle against different types of theatre kids.
Back in 2015, Grim Fandango Remastered came out, making it easier than it had been since the original version's 1998 launch to play one of the most beloved adventure games ever made. Still, even with the attention given to the classic LucasArts launch — one as well regarded as the studio's The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Maniac Mansion — the remaster didn't provide players with every one of the updates they were looking for. Fortunately, almost a decade later, fans of the game have just put out a new mod that finishes remastering the remaster for free.
It might not be quite the size of Fortnite, CS2, or Helldivers 2, but Duck Game is nevertheless a multiplayer game with a very well-earned reputation. Boasting an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ 97% user score on Steam from almost 25,000 reviews, the indie game about ducks blasting each other with big guns has long been a fan favorite party game to play with friends. Now, after fears that it could disappear from sale amid publisher changes, solo developer Landon Podbielski confirms that Duck Game is “not going anywhere.”
Government employees and their office desks are never, ever, ever getting back together.
Parody of Taylor Swift's "Fortnight" written by Remy; performed by Remy and Austin Bragg; music tracks, mastering, and background vocals by Ben Karlstrom.
COVID's still a thing Though that won't keep me from mid-day Soul Cycle Meeting with our agency? Expect to see three blank screens and Michael
Cuz every fortnight I am in the office one day It is so hard working every other Monday I click "leave-on-doorstep" but the GrubHub driver rings my doorbell I want to kill him
All my mornings are Sundays stuck in an Endless commissary If you ever try reaching us The effects are pulmonary
And my phone rings it's ruining my life (I'm sick and it's ruining my life) We come in one day every fortnight (You come in one day every fortnight?)
Cuz every fortnight I am in the office one day It is so hard working every other Monday In my backyard I have uncooked burger patties on the table I want to grill them
I tried calling ya, but you don't pick up Another fortnight lost in America I tried calling ya, but you don't pick up Another fortnight lost in America
I can’t tell you about Animal Well’s best moments. That’s because doing so would spoil the magic of discovering them for yourself, and because I still haven’t uncovered all of them yet either. I went into Animal Well hoping for a fun, evocative trip through a beautiful, lo-fi underground labyrinth. What I got was so…
Remember a couple of years ago, when Funko announced a collaboration with Jon Burton's 10.10 Games to release new big budget video games? Well, the time has come to see exactly what this collaboration has produced, and it all looks rather chaotic.
The appropriately-named Funko Fusion is described as a co-op action "extravaganza" full of more brands than you can shake a stick at: Jurassic World, The Umbrella Academy, Battlestar Galactica and Nope. The Simon Pegg-fronted Hot Fuzz is even making a big-headed showing in the upcoming game, and that's far from all the properties players can expect to see on release.
Don't believe me? Well, you can see for yourself in Funko Fusion's reveal trailer - which features more giant head decapitations than I was expecting - below:
Your feelings on Funko Pop probably fall into one of two categories: you either hate the black-eyed, copy-paste figures modelled on pop-culture characters with a burning passion, or you own enough of them to construct a small fortress and defend your newfounded Funko nation from the government. Either way, it looks like the first video game starring the ubiquitous toy collectables might somehow scratch your itch.
I once went back to a gathering after a friend-of-a-friend’s metal gig that I distinctly remember not because of either the party or the show, but because we drunkenly went to a big Tesco afterwards to get snacks. I also distinctly remember making a not-completely serious but also somewhat true statement at the party about how that Tesco trip was the most fun I’d had in months, after which one of the metal men sneered at me. I felt self conscious at the time, but I’ve since grown comfortable enough with myself to realise that the metal man was a joyless fool, and going to big supermarkets is at least as fun as going to average metal gigs. There is nothing a drop D power chord can evoke in me that compares to the feeling of blurrily espying a chocolate trifle in the reduced to clear section. So I wish to bring your attention to Supermarket Times.
Great moments in unintended consequences—when something that sounds like a great idea goes horribly wrong. Watch the whole series.
Part 1: Game Engine
The year: 2018
The problem: Too many loud vehicles in the city of Edmonton!
The solution: Erect sound monitoring display boards in various locations in the city, alerting motorists if they are exceeding the 85-decibel level limit by displaying their current noise level.
Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?
Turns out games are fun! Since the display board went up as part of a pilot program with no accompanying enforcement mechanism, competitive motorists used the scoreboards… er, displays…to see just how loud they could get. As revving engines increased, so did noise complaints. Within weeks the city reversed course and turned off the displays.
Looks like cars aren't the only things that backfire.
Part 2: I Left My Smart in San Francisco
The year: 2016
The problem: States are passing laws San Francisco doesn't like!
The solution: Pressure them to change by prohibiting any city contracts with companies headquartered in states that don't share San Francisco's values.
Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?
The Solution: Introduce a bill banning any cartoon in which a person is depicted as a "beast, bird, fish, insect, or other inhuman animal."
Sounds unconstitutional and entirely self-interested! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Turns out, people who make fun of politicians for a living are pretty comfortable fighting back against politicians. Criticism of Governor Pennypacker and the anti-cartoon bill exploded, with cartoonists nationwide depicting the Governor and others as turnips, trees, chestnut burrs, squash, and beer steins. The blowback was so humiliating that the bill was pulled from consideration and replaced with a new broader bill making newspaper editors and publishers personally responsible for libel lawsuits.
The press ramped up their ridicule, daring Pennypacker to take them to court. But the law was never enforced and was repealed after he left office, having been hounded for his entire term by critical cartoons.
That's one way to draw attention.
Great moments in unintended consequences: good intentions, bad results.
Do you know a great moment in unintended consequences? Email us at [email protected].
What the Golf? developer Triband is bringing its absurdist racing game What the Car? to Steam later this year, following its debut last May as an Apple Arcade exclusive.
What the Car? follows in the wonderfully daft footsteps of What the Golf? - and indeed its VR-exclusive baseball-inspired successor What the Bat? - by taking a relatively sensible sport (in this case racing) and sillying it up to the extreme.
If you've long been of the opinion racing games would be a whole lot better if the cars had legs and the racing was spiced up a bit with some cooking, rope jumping, CAR-aoke, or even fishing, then What the Car? is probably just what you're looking for.
I've done some elementary study of the planet Jupiter for various creative research projects/dead-ends. It's probably a symptom of my failings as an astronomer, but I have to say that at no point have I noticed any gigantic, depressed clowns. In new platformer Clown Meat, one such gigantic, depressed clown has swum through Jupiter's atmosphere, drifted to Earth and kicked off some kind of meatpunk apocalypse, saturating the surrounding countryside with circus-themed abominations.
What the Car? is a zany racing game in which you are a car with legs that must race around various courses to get the best time possible. Except sometimes you’re not just a car with legs, you’re also a car with a jetpack. Or with wings. Or swimming. Or singing. It’s from the folks behind the similarly absurd What the Golf?, and it’s coming to Steam this year.
Nintendo Directs are often different across different regions. The order of games presented may be a bit rearranged, or there may even be wholly different titles announced in one region than another. Today’s Partner Showcase may have featured the single biggest such discrepancy of all time. Why? Because we did it,…
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