I’ll say up front that there’s a twist (which you may well see coming) to Draugen which is incredibly spoilery, but which might put you off playing the game entirely - and that would be fair. It’s discussed in this article. If that doesn’t put you off, then know that Draugen is a slow, spooky, sad game where you gradually uncover the eventual fate of Graavik. There are no real puzzles to solve, apart from piecing together what you think happened....
I was only a few months away from my fourth birthday when the game was released in 1997. But it features yellow people ripping their limbs off and spinning their heads all the way round? It’s bonkers and also terrifying. Even the music is wild. Try listening to this outrageous Italian accent. It sounds like the accent my friends speak to me in because I’m the resident Italian in my friendship group (and I’m not even that Italian), but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sound like some of my family members....
Overdungeon is a real-time tower defense card game. You play cards to position defenses and units onto a board, which then fire or steadily march towards an enemy that’s doing the same. There are no turns, though - cards operate on a cooldown, and the battle rages all the while. What makes this glorious - and comparable to Peggle, in my eyes - is that it’s more concerned with spectacle than strategy....
You have near absolute power as the President, which sounded unlikely to me once. You view the world through a satisfyingly chunky strategic interface, clicking on any country at any time for a report on its background, its economy, its relationship with the US, its strategic significance (the game’s heaving with information from the CIA world factbook, which is probably even more interesting today for its obsolescence), and so on....
Snakelike combines two things I resent to create one I enjoy. Dastardly alchemy. It is a turn based roguelike in which you are a snake, from Snake. It’s clever and cute and I’m upset it isn’t better known. I feel bad for narrowly booting Snakelike out of Unknown Pleasures last year. It faced stiff competition, but with hindsight I think I’d rather play it some more (having just replayed it a few minutes ago) than some of what defeated it....
Playing as a one-eyed sprite named Emi, your job is to deliver post to different creatures and spirits that hide within the nooks and crannies of a lush forest. As you join Emi on her rounds, you get to meet the various members of the community as they go about their lives and daily routines in a peaceful, unearthly realm. It’s a point-and-click puzzle adventure but in the breeziest of terms....
Then, as if to make up for all that lost time, the CoD Gods dropped Call Of Duty: Warzone on me a scant few months later. And in a twist of irony, I’ve played very few games since. Now, if there were such things as omniscient CoD Gods leering down upon me and plotting how best to reel me into their millions-strong collection of players, then I’d have to applaud their patience and their timing....
On second thought, there are ignoble deaths aplenty in Fall Guys. The game thrives on them. The premise of Fall Guys is mercifully easy to explain, which has only made the game more popular. Each match pits you against a lobby of 60 players, and you must guide your bouncy, loveable little ragdoll character through various physical challenges inspired by game shows like Wipeout, It’s A Knockout, and the aforementioned Takeshi’s Castle....
Which Hero do you choose though? Obviously, you won’t be able to take your pick of all of them, but we’ve put together a helpful guide to the very best options, so if they come up it’s well worth grabbing a top tier. Since the mode has been available for a fair while, we’ve got more of an idea of what works best, so keep an eye out for ....
Cavill initially announced the news via his Instagram account. “My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures, and alas, I will be laying down my medallion and my swords for Season 4,” the statement starts. “In my stead, the fantastic Mr Liam Hemsworth will be taking up the mantle of the White Wolf. As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam’s take on this most fascinating and nuanced of men....
This isn’t a full match, but it shows that Sigmar will push players to carefully consider and reconsider each and every step of the battle they’re taking part in. As the developer sets up his fight between the Stormcast Eternals and the Nighthaunt in a late campaign mission, the challenge is made all the more difficult knowing that there are insta-death hexes on the field of battle. Both the player and the AI can bosh enemies into those, and he uses that to his advantage....
Developed by Joel McDonald, who previously made the gentle plant-trimming game Prune, it seems as though Hindsight will have players experience colourful old childhood memories between visits to the bleaker present. “Hindsight asks you to slow down and pay attention to the little things left behind,” Annapurna say in a press release. “Piece these things together and shift your viewpoint until you find just the right perspective to pull you deeper into the past....
According to its description, Inscryption is an “inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie.” Sure enough, I can spot way more genre tropes in that trailer than I’m ready for. There’s an overworld map of sorts, a deck of critters for combating with, and—wait hold on. Also the cards appear to be talking to you. There are those promised escape room elements like safe combos and hidden keys....
CK3 is, emphatically, all about planning for the long game. The fact you play as the successive inheritors of a medieval throne means you’re always thinking centuries ahead. Even within the lives of your individual rulers, you’ll almost always want to ensure a long and healthy reign, as that’ll give you more time to work on goals that benefit both your current king and their descendants. Indeed, even Andyamo the giantshagger cultivated a secondary interest in medicine, so that he could extend his titan-tupping career well into his seventies....
“We were just talking about the idea of zero-player games as a genre; games where you don’t control your hero, or anything else, directly,” blinch told me. “One of the team then went and created the idea of a little dude stuck in a loop while the player builds something around the loop. That was it, that was the whole idea.” It didn’t sound like much. It didn’t really sound like anything....
The way Image Scaling works is actually much more akin to AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) than the AI-fuelled DLSS, because it doesn’t add any clever anti-aliasing of its own, simply applying an upscaling algorithm with a sharpening effect to reduce visible blurriness. Unlike both DLSS and FSR, however, it’s also distinct in that you’ll need to set it up outside of your games, as opposed to just flicking a switch within them....
Amplitude also put out a call to fans and prospective players to help them fine tune it, offering access to limited preview builds in return for active playtesting feedback with their Open Dev scheme. There’s even a trailer for that. Because my ancestors angered a wizard, I am bound to complain about everything. Can we please stop having trailers that show three words at a time? Show us the pretty pictures or let us read the whole thing....
Hyenas is the surprising next game from Total War and Alien: Isolation devs Creative Assembly. It was announced back in June, when Creative Assembly described it as a “ballsy entry into the most competitive genre in gaming”. From what we’ve seen so far, Hyenas is positively drenched in Sega iconography, from Mega Drives to Sonic statues, along with other nostalgic gubbins such as Pez dispensers and Rubik’s Cubes. It comes off as a bit much, but I’ll reserve any snootiness until I’ve actually played it....
Set in the 16th century, I, The Inquisitor is described as “dark fantasy Renaissance” by the devs. You’ll play as Inquisitor Mordimer Madderdin (although who he’s madder than I’m not sure. Christ maybe?), and as you might expect from someone who inquires for a living, there’ll be detective elements to the game along with “grey moral choices” and some supernatural shenanigans. You can apparently be merciful in your dealings with other characters, but I can’t imagine this world’s Church going for that....
