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.

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Sometimes a game comes along and sucker punches you right in the gut. You can be completely aware of the premise going in, but some element of the setting or the mechanics takes a broader theme or commentary and makes it deeply, intensely personal. Papers, Please got me like that. My job at the time involved identity verification and, while it was nowhere near as life or death as the game, it still made it all too real, too visceral. Dragon Age: Inquisition completely caught me off guard, with NPC reactions to my Qunari Inquisitor feeling way too close to my experiences as a very visible trans woman.

Nobody Wants to Die is a work of dystopian science fiction, so I was expecting some hard hitting moments. I'm hardly the first person to point out that the last few years have felt increasingly like living in a cyberpunk novel - only without the ability to get shiny chrome replacements for my ageing knees. As a disabled person with a veritable laundry list of health conditions forced to rely on the underfunded NHS, the games' medical themes hit way too close to home.

Nobody Wants to Die is set in New York circa 2329, which, in a completely shocking and surprising twist, looks a lot like New York circa 1929, complete with tommy guns and prohibition. The sci-fi angle brings flying cars, 500+ story high apartment blocks and, most importantly, immortality. The discovery of a substance called ichorite allows brains to be encoded and transferred to new bodies, making death little more than an inconvenience, other than on the rare occasions that ichorite is completely destroyed. It's all very Altered Carbon, really.

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Cancellation Watch: Status updates for the sci fi and fantasy shows on the broadcast networks, cable channels, and streaming services as well as breaking news on the currently airing, returning, and upcoming genre entries. 

Status Updates

The Boys (Prime Video, Status: Renewed): This superhero satire entered the Nielsen Streaming Rankings for the week of its fourth season premiere. It landed at Number 2 with an estimated 1.2 billion minutes watched across just four days. The show has been renewed for a fifth and final season, and I expect it to continue on with spin-offs for several years.

House of the Dragon (HBO, Status: Renewed): This show entered the Nielsen Rankings under the Acquired shows for its run on Max at the Number 8 with 741 million minutes watched. That represents just one evening for viewing for the second season premiere plus any of the first season episodes that were streamed that week. The linear ratings have not been as strong, but not surprisingly this one has already been renewed for a third season.

Supacell (Netflix, Status: Renewal Possible): This British-made series has now spent three weeks in the Netflix Top 10, two at the Number 1 slot. There has been no word on a second-season renewal at this point, but I expect that the streamer will be interested in bringing this one back.

Futurama (Hulu, Status: Renewed): This animated sci fi comedy slipped into the Nielsen Rankings at Number 10 with 241 million minutes of viewing over a month and a half before its twelfth season premiere. It has already been renewed for two more seasons, so the hi-jinks should continue for several more years.

Scavengers Reign (Max/Netflix, Status: Cancelled): This animated sci fi series has not made it into the Netflix Top 10 in its encore run on that streaming service which definitely puts a damper on the hopes that it would get a second season. However, it did just get an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Animated Program which could give it a boost. Fans should definitely take the opportunity to get the show trending on the social networks and bring it more attention in an attempt to convince Netflix to keep it going.

You can see the status of all the shows from the current season at our Cancellation Watch Page.

Go to r/SciFiTV to join the discussion on sci fi and fantasy television and to keep up with the latest news, trailers, schedule announcements and more

Cancellation/Renewal Score:

On Monday, the cancellation of Syfy’s horror dramedy Reginald the Vampire was announced which brings the Cancellation/Renewal Score for the current season to 20 cancelled and ending sci fi and fantasy entries (28% of shows tracked) vs. 29 renewed (40%). Below are this season’s numbers, and you can see the list of shows and keep up with the score throughout the week at our Cancellation Watch Page.

Be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site  for breaking news and updates. And for the latest news and discussions on sci fi and fantasy television, follow r/SciFiTV

Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.

The post Cancellation Watch: The Boys and House of the Dragon Enter the Nielsen Rankings, Supacell Continues to Top Netflix Top 10, and More appeared first on Cancelled Sci Fi.

Following starring remaster turns for Pheonix Wright, Apollo Justice, and Ryunosuke Naruhodo, it's finally Miles Edgeworth's time to shine; Capcom has unveiled the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, coming to PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Switch on 6th September.

The newly announced collection includes two Miles Edgeworth led Ace Attorney spin-off adventures - both incorporating the series' usual mix of crime scene exploration and courtroom cross-examinations - starting with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, which originally released for Nintendo DS in 2009.

It's the second included title that's perhaps most exciting, however, given that Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit - which initially launched for DS back in 2011 - hasn't previously had an official release outside of Japan.

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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.

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The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is heading to PC later this year on September 6th. "Waitaminute," you might be saying, "Didn't this already come out?" No, you choob, you eejit, you dafty, you're thinking of one of several other collections of Ace Attorney games.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection comprises two games: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and its sequel, Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. Neither game has been on PC before, and the latter has never been released outside of Japan.

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No, it's not Silversun. Sit down, Brian. Let somebody else have a go at answering. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a sci-fi RPG with plenty of dice and a heavy nod towards tabletop role-playing. The first Citizen Sleeper saw your bio-robotic protagonist landing on a donut-shaped space station where they learned to make a new life for themselves among interstellar farmers and ramen-serving rapscallions. In the sequel, a demo of which I've played [smug face], the hook is a little different. This time you're being pursued across a bunch of backwater truck stops, colonies, depots, and derelicts. All the while your misfit crew will clash and commingle. You still haven't got it, have you? Ugh. I suppose I'll let the game's designer tell you then.

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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.

Read more

The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is heading to PC later this year on September 6th. "Waitaminute," you might be saying, "Didn't this already come out?" No, you choob, you eejit, you dafty, you're thinking of one of several other collections of Ace Attorney games.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection comprises two games: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and its sequel, Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. Neither game has been on PC before, and the latter has never been released outside of Japan.

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No, it's not Silversun. Sit down, Brian. Let somebody else have a go at answering. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a sci-fi RPG with plenty of dice and a heavy nod towards tabletop role-playing. The first Citizen Sleeper saw your bio-robotic protagonist landing on a donut-shaped space station where they learned to make a new life for themselves among interstellar farmers and ramen-serving rapscallions. In the sequel, a demo of which I've played [smug face], the hook is a little different. This time you're being pursued across a bunch of backwater truck stops, colonies, depots, and derelicts. All the while your misfit crew will clash and commingle. You still haven't got it, have you? Ugh. I suppose I'll let the game's designer tell you then.

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Citizen Sleeper 2 is coming in early 2025, publishers Fellow Traveller have announced, and it's also going to be releasing on PlayStation 5 and Switch alongside the already confirmed Xbox Series S/X, Game Pass and PC versions.

Unveiled at tonight's PC Gaming Show during its first proper gameplay trailer, Citizen Sleeper 2 will see you wake up in the body of a brand-new Sleeper android who's fighting for survival out on the Starward Belt on the edge of the Helion System. We've known for a while that Citizen Sleeper 2 is going to be a much bigger game than the original, but tonight's trailer gave us a taste of just how large the Belt actually is, as it will have its own navigable map screen, along with lots of different space ports and unique locations to visit along the way.

We also get to see some of the characters we'll be meeting when we get there. Unlike the first game, though, they'll be joining your crew as valuable team mates here, and will live alongside you in your ship as you travel between locations. You'll also be able to draw on their unique skills and character traits when taking on big contract jobs, too, as each crew member you recruit will have their own set of dice rolls to use to help you complete tasks and get the job done.

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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.

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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.

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Indika, unhelpfully for a desperately devout Orthodox nun in early 19th Century Russia, is in communion with the Devil. Or maybe she just isn't as piously pure of thought as she'd like to believe. In the slippery, shifting world of Indika (I'm talking about developer Odd Meter's wonderfully confounding platform adventure now, not the character - brace yourself for some back-and-forth there), disorientating, uneasy ambiguity reigns over all.

Which isn't to say Indika the game is afraid to commit; this is an astonishingly confident experience, so full of swagger and style, so fearless in its presentation and thematic reach, it's hard not to be immediately taken in. Indika opens very much as it means to go on, beginning not with a dreary pan across the snow-battered Russian landscape, but with a dreamy, expectation confounding interactive free-fall through an inverted world, brazenly presented in the style of a 16-bit arcade game and accompanied by a muffled, insistent cacophony of song. Then, as the miserable reality of Indika's convent snaps back into focus with a crash of metal on parquet and the first of many striking directorial decisions - here, the cutscene camera remains firmly fixed on Indika's wretched face as the world around her tilts and swirls - Odd Meter deals its next hand.

Indika the character, as becomes immediately apparent when the game relinquishes control moments in and her idle animation takes over, is an extraordinary creation. Not only is she brought to life through a wonderfully nuanced vocal performance by Isabella Inchbald (the game's English translation is consistently strong and its voice cast superb), her complex, conflicting inner life is evident just from the way she moves. She's a twitching, restless ball of nervous energy; awkwardly shifting her weight from one foot to the other, eyes darting back and forth, occasionally chewing on her fingernails or wringing her hands.

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Role-playing musical Stray Gods is getting DLC in which you'll play as sorrowful ghostly rocker Orpheus, the developers have announced. You briefly meet Orpheus in the base game while playing as leatherclad muse Grace, finding him moping in the underworld, eyes dripping with glam rock mascara. In the DLC he makes a musical comeback on earth, alongside messenger god Hermes. I've not stumbled on Orpheus in the other mythical game of this season, Hades 2 (he showed up in the first Hades but there's no sign he's reappearing in the sequel). So it looks like fans of the ancient Greek sadboi will have to flock to Summerfall's expansion when it comes out this summer.

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Indika is a good game about a good nun, and I’ll talk about why in a sec, but first - a complaint. ‘Low’, ‘Medium’, or ‘Ultra’ graphics settings? Really, Indika? Where is 'High'? Where’s it gone, eh? This isn’t cute when Papa John's do it, and it’s not cute now. You’re lucky you’re an extremely interesting game, Indika. Let’s talk about that instead.

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It’s that time of year again, LudoNarraCon! The annual Steam festival organized by indie publisher Fellow Traveller (known for games like Citizen Sleeper) is back as of May 9 and will run until May 13. Like previous years, the festival brings with it sales, panels with interesting developers, and exciting demos for…

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Hello and welcome back to What To Play! We've returned from a little hiatus, which you definitely noticed and have been very sad about, of course. It's finally edging towards spring here in the UK, but don't let that tempt you into going outside, there's video games to be a-playin'!

As ever, this is where we'll round up the best games from the month gone by, and the things we're most excited to play from the month ahead - plus, any other suggestions for what might complement it. Here's What To Play This May 2024.

Availability: Out now on PC, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

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You might assume that Indika will be dour, given that it's a story-driven game about a nun in a grey, cold, alternative Russia. Then you watch its trailers and find surrealist imagery, genre-hopping, and a bleak sense of humour are part of its arsenal, and suddenly it seems, to me, irresistible.

It's out now.

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What I like about browser games is that clicking on a word in this mundane piece of software could take you anywhere, to anything. For example, if you click on this link to the domain corru.observer, you'll find yourself in a dark room before a strange glowing device. Apparently it's your job to do... something with it? So begins one of the most surprising and delightful games I've played all year, a sprawling, shape-shifting sci-fi story which is still unfolding through updates. I didn't even know all this was possible with HTML and CSS.

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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 handcrafted art, intense fighting game violence, cosy management, and heaps more attractive and interesting indie games. Check these out!

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