PC • Uppercut Games dropped City of Brass into Early Access last week, and after having spent a good few hours with their Arabian Nights gauntlet simulator, I’m here to give it a mighty thumbs up from the bottom of a spiked pit.
PC/Mac/Linux • INTRODUCE Capped off 12 East Games’ Trackless some days ago. Still thinking about 12 East Games‘ Trackless today. Surely a very good sign. CONTINUE
PC/Mac • Psst. Hello there. My access card still works at Stately HQ, so I’ve slipped the after-hours cleaning staff a fiver to wax floors elsewhere and jumped on Dave’s terminal. Password: daStatel1est. You see, one of the blokes behind Quakey roguelite Teleglitch has a new one in the pipe. Influences front and center, if you’re champing for more FTL all these years later, Shortest Trip To Earth is a right old trek.
PC, Consoles • The Surge is out, and by a piston’s hiss, is it grand. For good or ill, Deck13‘s futuristic brawler will be known as ‘that robot Dark Souls‘, and if it helps cut to the chase, then I’m all for it. FROM Software’s punitive dark fantasy has laid the groundwork for what has now been coined Soulslike, a tidy riff on the descendants and pretenders to Rogue. Soulslike it is. Industrial body horror Soulslike, even better.
PC, Mac, Linux • World-class style isn’t just reserved for the catwalk in Milan. Going by the likes of Mixed Bag, Santa Ragione and now Antab Studios, Milanese game development is about matching substance with impeccable visual kung fu. Having had my senses tickled by the likes of forma.8 (currently on sale, you know what to do), Futuridium (first-person or bust) and FOTONICA (PC or iOS; a personal pick for endless runner), it’s time to stir a little Last Starfighter into Lawrence Angelo’s coffee. Behold, the freshly-released GRIDD: Retroenhanced.
Windows, Console • I’ve been exercising an increasing regime of self-control in regards to SMAC Games’ Tokyo 42. Isolated and insulated against everything bar the basics. All I really know so far is that it is going to be a Jolly Good Time.
Windows • Though my 2014 review of Cyanide‘s goblin stealther has disappeared beneath the waves aboard a now-defunct website, my opinion on the Styx franchise has only strengthened with this year’s Shards of Darkness. This brand of dark French fantasy might be left wanting in the narrative presentation stakes, but as an unfettered vertiginous romp worthy of grizzled Garrettians, the goblin is as good as it gets.
PC, Mac, Linux • NEXT JUMP: Shmup Tactics has my number something fierce. Do you like shmups, this Brazilian indie effort asks. YES, I proclaim. But do you suck at them, it continues. YES, I admit. If you find yourself in this quandary of unquenchable thirst, Post Mortem Pixels has your back.
Windows • Junkers, wanderers, lurkers with dicky pistons, attention. Big Robot‘s The Signal From Tölva is just about out on Steam, and if the screenshots are anything to go by, a STALKER of conduit and coolant is about to amble over the horizon.
PC, PS4, PC, Vita • You can say you were there, but the fact remains whether you were, like, really there. I packed a PSP from Day One, and while I built a portable library deemed by esteemed colleagues to be the UMD equivalent of the Royal Navy, I never quite grokked Sony’s portable software saviour. Monster Hunter. Responsible for atrophied extremities numbered in billions, the talons of Capcom’s fantastical neolithic beast-mincer never found true purchase in my soft, sallow flesh. But I think, years later, I might have found friendship in a genre descendant. Something clicked here. The formula has been shaken up, a story has been injected, and it’s by those Dynasty Warriors folks. It’s Toukiden 2. And it’s pretty good.