If you're reading these Surviving Mars tips, you no doubt know that getting a colony up and running in the Mars-based survival/city builder game is a tricky business. You need more than just potatoes and poop. With an erratic hint system and no tutorial, taking those first steps towards colonising the planet—which, I should add, very much wants to kill your vulnerable colonists—can be daunting. Below are a few things that I wish I'd known before I became a stressed Martian administrator.

Don’t pick the Easy Start

The 'Easy Start' option in the main menu is a bit weird. Selecting it flings you straight into a Martian map and removes all of the big choices you'd normally make at the start of the game. Your mission sponsor, commander, the site of your colony—all of these are chosen for you. Even though all of the picks it makes ostensibly make the game easier, it means you start off a bit clueless, having not been able to pick your rocket's loadout or browse any of the other options. 

If you start the game normally, you'll notice that the sponsors and commanders have clear difficulty levels, and you can still choose the default rocket loadout if you want. More important is the ability to choose where on Mars you're going to settle. When I used the Early Start, the area it sent me to had a dearth of metal deposits and frequent tornadoes. Nobody in their right mind would want to live there. You can find easier places yourself.

Explore before you land

There are a few things, like drone hubs and rovers, that you'll absolutely want to bring with you in your first rocket, but don't forget about orbital probes. After you select what part of Mars you want to set up shop on, you've then got to pick where in this region you want your first rocket to land. If the landing zone the game's picked for you looks rubbish, you can search for another one, or you can explore the areas around the landing zone, getting a headstart on the hunt for water and metal deposits. 

Keep dust away from solar panels

You'll be plonking down a lot of solar panels as you expand your colony, and that means you're going to really start hating dust. Mars is an extremely dusty place, and all of that red dirt loves to cling to your shiny solar panels. Unfortunately, dusty panels don't soak up as much of the sun's rays, reducing the efficiency of your extremely important power network. If you've not set up redundancies, dusty panels could cause blackouts and even halt oxygen production. 

Eventually you'll unlock technology that makes them less attractive to dust, but it's not something you'll have access to early on. Dust's inevitable, but you can reduce it by keeping anything that kicks up big clouds of dust away from the solar panels. Don't land your rockets near them, for example, and keep mines far away. Tornadoes are the worst, but they usually crop up in the same place, so move your panels a long way from them. 

Don't make long stretches of pipe or cable

You're going to need to spread your colony out to take advantage of Mars' sparse resources, making little, discrete bases. When you do that, there's a temptation to siphon life support from the pre-existing network, using pipes and cables to bring it to the new base. That's just asking for trouble. It's the first thing they would teach you not to do in Martian Administrator School.

Inevitably, a pipe will burst, or a cable will break, and then that's the new base without water, oxygen or power. To make sure that these problems get fixed quickly, you'd need to have drone coverage across the whole thing, and probably a few storage areas too. It's a massive waste, and it ends up being ten times as much work as simply generating power, water and oxygen at the new base.

Keep manufacturing facilities fully staffed

By purchasing prefabricated buildings from Earth, you can start plonking down manufacturing facilities as soon as you want, but you should hold off until you've brought a few rockets full of colonists over to Mars. While a building can start working with only a single colonist working in it, any unstaffed positions reduce its effectiveness, up to the point where it's simply wasting resources. 

If you've got lots of open slots, it's probably because you don't have specialists to fill them. By changing the priority of the building, however, you can employ workers for other disciplines or unspecialised colonists. They're not as effective, but it's still better than leaving the slots open. You can also increase a building's production by creating other shifts (though this can negatively affect colonists working unsociable hours) and, by clicking the clock next to them, push your colonists harder. 

Make shuttles a priority

Once you've expanded, you're going to be moving resources around all the time. Concrete needs to get from extractors to building projects, food needs to get from farms to colonists' bellies and countless resources have to get dragged all over the planet to various manufacturing plants. Drones automatically move things to where they need to be, but only if all of the tasks are within either the rover or the drone hub's radius of influence. 

Shuttles go everywhere. And they're fast. They'll constantly flit between storage areas, delivering demanded resources, but they can also shuttle colonists between domes, linking them together even if they're at other ends of the map. If a dome needs a continuous supply of food, you'll still want to use a trade route with a transport rover, but shuttles are great at keeping places topped up. It's an extra layer of automation that alleviates a lot of the micromanagement. The rocket scientist mission commander gets shuttle technology straight away, making it a great choice for beginners. 

Don't be afraid to scrap a game

Some disasters—like the loss of 300 colonists—are so huge that trying to come back from them can just feel a bit too much like hard work. Sometimes it might not even be possible. Surviving Mars provides a few safety nets, like getting resupplied by Earth, but there are some things that you just can't come back from. If it looks like that might happen, or it already has, just start fresh with a new map, and maybe even a new sponsor and commander. Even if you've got a bunch of saves, it can be better to apply what you've learned to a new canvas. 

It's spring and my Viking colonists are gleefully filling their bellies now that the snow has melted and our food stores are filling up. The farmers and hunters are working hard, and with their appetite sated, my warriors are jonesing for a fight. I don't have time to enjoy it. I'm already preparing for Northgard’s next harsh winter. Even more than dragons or undead, foul weather is the greatest threat to my growing settlement. 

Northgard looks like a throwback, a game that would have comfortably fit in with Age of Empires and Settlers, but while the inspiration is clear, it would be a disservice to imply that it's mainly trading in nostalgia. This Viking saga builds on the history-themed RTS romps of the '90s, but it's not beholden to them. 

The basics are still familiar. You start with nothing but a ramshackle town hall and some villagers, eventually growing it into a large, defensible settlement that can handle raids from monsters and other Vikings. That's done by finding resources and exploiting them using specialist workers and buildings.  

Building slots limit how much you can construct straight away. The map is made up out of discrete regions containing resources, treasure and enemies, but only space for a few buildings, and they've got to be colonised before they can be used. Every region costs exponentially more food to colonise, so you really need to plan out your expansion in advance, considering the impact on your stockpiles. 

As each new layer, from weather to warfare, is introduced, the pace of expansion is a relief. It slows things down just enough so that you can take a moment to set priorities, whether that’s making pals with the kobolds who moved in down the road or sending a scout to go delving into ruins. But while the pace might be more considered, winter's approach means there’s always some tension, and the multitude of enemies ensures there's no absence of friction. 

Winter is a challenge that can be overcome by worker placement and preparation—the two most important things in Northgard. Workers can be switched on the fly, so if you've got a warband just sitting around, you can make all of them farmers, fishermen or hunters to help keep everyone fed. With the right buildings and happy, healthy workers, even the most brutal winters can be handled. 

If you're more military-minded, you might not want to disband your army. By generating lore, a stand-in for science, technological advancements can be made, including warmer clothes for warriors. That's a game-changer, arguably making winter one of the best times to go on the offensive, when enemy Vikings might not be as prepared. 

How you approach winter, and indeed most of Northgard's systems, can also depend on the clan you're playing as, along with what victory condition you're gunning for. You can win your 'Best Viking Award' by conquest, but you can also win through trade, wisdom and fame, all of which come with different building and resource prerequisites.  

Fame is Northgard's most unusual resource. It's a representation of a clan's great deeds, like killing a wyvern or defeating another player, and unlocks massive bonuses. It drives exploration, as you seek out greater foes, but also weaves its way throughout the game, tying everything together. Fighting, feasting, building monuments—do interesting things and you’ll be rewarded. 

While each clan shares a lot of the same features, they're still a distinct bunch. The Wolf Clan, for instance, are a lairy mob of fighters. Their warriors can gather food by killing hostile beasties, and they also generate happiness, ensuring the settlement remains productive and new villagers keep appearing. Ultimately this means they don't need as many farmers, fishermen or hunters and can afford to invest in larger warbands. 

The campaign serves as a solid introduction to each of these clans and eventually leads to some creative, novel missions. They can be brief if you clock the optimal path, and 11 seems a little on the short side, but there's very little repetition. Each new chapter pushes you into trying new things, introducing additional mechanics and shaking things up with one-off challenges.

The story the campaign hangs on is less compelling. It's a painfully tired revenge tale with twists so boring they'll put you to sleep. Think Vikings seem exciting? Not for long! The clan leaders that serve as the campaign's small cast are more reflections of their respective clans than characters, rattling off perfunctory lines of forgettable dialogue. At least they're decent fighters because of their high health and damage.

Northgard lives in the skirmish mode. The campaign mission design is good, but sometimes you just want to shake off the shackles and batter some Vikings in a sandbox. When all of the game's concepts collide, instead of being separated by levels, it becomes a tricky, unpredictable RTS that pulls you in all these different directions. Every game is fat with potential, helped in great part by a map generator that spits out a brilliant array of as-good-as-bespoke battlefields. 

Spoilers follow for Dishonored and Dishonored 2.

Delilah Copperspoon—servant, painter, playmate to a young Empress, then witch, usurper and Empress herself—is first introduced in Dishonored’s two-part DLC, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. In Dishonored 2, Delilah returns to Dunwall Tower with one mission: take back what’s yours. 

While Dishonored opens with Jessamine’s assassination, and Death of the Outsider ends with the removal of the Outsider from the Void, Dishonored 2 shows that the instigating act of the series’ narrative arc is one child blaming another. In Delilah’s account, a single act of childish cruelty cascades into a lifetime of misery for herself and her mother, as Jessamine’s privileged position as the daughter of an Emperor doesn’t extend to her half-sister. As a child, Delilah did not understand why she was excluded from the honour, prestige and love showered upon Jessamine. As an adult, Delilah continuously attempts to seize these things which Jessamine possessed. Her desire becomes an act of imitation. 

It’s clear that, in The Brigmore Witches and in Dishonored 2, Delilah wants the throne. As a villain, she pursues power with ruthlessness and cunning. But the nature of this desire and its origins are interrogated in both games. The throne and all its power seems to be a natural thing to desire for someone as ambitious as Delilah. Indeed, her first attempt in The Brigmore Witches makes her appear to want it for the sake of it; power and prestige are assumed to be their own reward. But across the games, the throne is shown to be a symbol of social relationships as much as power. It’s familial as much as legal – meshing the machinations of the state with the entanglements of family life. This only becomes clear when confronted by Daud in the final mission; Delilah pleads with him before her magically infused painting of Emily, claiming that the young girl stole her life away. 

This line, once ambiguous, becomes explicit when it’s revealed in Dishonored 2 that Delilah is believed to be the illegitimate half-sister of Jessamine Kaldwin. As daughters born out of wedlock to the ruler of the Empire, Delilah and Emily share an origin. But more than this, Delilah shows that she doesn’t simply desire Emily’s throne for the sake of it, but Emily’s entire life and history. In The Brigmore Witches, Delilah attempts to possess Emily’s body in order to take power. In Delilah’s desire for the throne, her imitation of Emily is so explicit that it leads her to try to become her. This magical possession becomes a literalised metaphor for the events that transpire in Dishonored 2.

Mirrors of desire

In this understanding, Delilah’s attempts at revenge against Jessamine are thinly veiled attempts to imitate her. And when Jessamine is assassinated and that power is handed to Emily, Delilah pursues Emily just as single-mindedly. But in doing so, she recreates the dispossession and misery which led her, long ago, to pursue the throne out of personal revenge. Motivated entirely by envy, Delilah desires the throne not because she desires to rule the land or govern the Empire. Instead, she desires the throne purely because it was denied to her, and she believes that the women who have held it since have stolen her birthright. While Delilah is focused on the injustice done to her, and the stratification of the Empire’s citizens into the haves and have-nots, she is unconcerned with rectifying any of it beyond personal vengeance. Her tragedy is as much her refusal to break the cycle of violence and desire which led to her deprivation as it is the petty, cruel and childish whims which have harmed her. Even Delilah acknowledges this when recounting the events of her life which lead to her deposing Emily. “It’s your turn now,” Delilah spitefully declares, unaware that her actions have merely created someone exactly like her, who will pursue the throne just as she has done.

The other antagonists of Dishonored 2 operate along these same themes, as each of the four coconspirators of Delilah’s coup can be undone by the doubles they use to exert control. Grim Alex, a Jekyll-and-Hyde creation of Hypatia’s own research, is banished by that same method. Jindosh’s machines turn on him and destroy the intellect that created them. Breanna Ashworth has her magical ability torn away by the same effigies she crafted to supernaturally influence others. Duke Abele is replaced by the literal body double he uses to avoid the consequences of his wasteful and thoughtless lifestyle. Even Paolo and Byrne, fighting over a patch of dusty territory in the once-grand Batista District, now stare each other down through a cloud of dust that obscures the mirrored nature of their relationship. In each case, these doubles, all created by a ruthless pursuit of power and used either directly or indirectly to harm others, are easily turned against them all. Delilah, in turn, is undone by the double she creates in Emily. 

Dishonored 2 opens up the nature of this desire for the throne even further by detailing Delilah’s disempowerment and contrasting it with Emily’s own. As an Empress, Emily is at best ambivalent and at worst unconcerned. Her leadership is weak and her political awareness undermined by rooftop jaunts after dark where she dreams of being free of responsibilities. After the coup that rescinds her birthright and encases her father in stone, Emily’s motivations come down to this same tagline: take back what’s yours. Finally free of the burden of her throne, just as she dreamed, her desires are unclear at the game’s opening. But playing as Emily Kaldwin unfolds a narrative concerned with these mechanisms by which our desires are formed. Suddenly thrust into a recreation of Delilah’s story—one of death, deprivation, and disempowerment at the hands of a family member—Emily is forced to confront her reasons for wanting the throne. Before the coup, she was a poor ruler, but a non-lethal, low-Chaos playthrough shows a young woman coming to understand the depths of her obligation to the people she has hitherto ignored. In contrast with the Duke and with Delilah, Emily vows to be a better Empress not because she wants power, but because she cultivates compassion. But in a violent, high-Chaos playthrough, it becomes increasingly clear that a desire for revenge against Delilah eclipses Emily’s pursuit of what she lost. Through this, Emily imitates Delilah to the point of becoming indistinguishable from her murderous aunt.

Emily's choice

Regardless of playstyle, when Emily approaches Dunwall Tower in the final mission she is confronted with the realisation that her position is the same as Delilah’s before the coup: a deposed empress taking back what she believes is rightfully hers. Dunwall is a ruin when Emily returns, with the infrastructure crumbling and the streets littered with the dead. Delilah, unconcerned with the responsibilities which possessing the throne implies, rules over an empire of corpses. Her attempts to become everything that Jessamine was ultimately fail, just as her attempt to become Emily in The Brigmore Witches had been a failure. The land that adored her half-sister does not adore her—therefore she tries to create another through magic. But Emily, set on the path to usurp Delilah, may well simply become her instead. In a high-Chaos playthrough, Emily ends the game by ruling over a land in disarray, filled with the corpses of her own subjects, who she doesn’t hesitate to kill in her destructive desires. 

Dishonored 2 depicts the violent ends of imitative desire. Delilah’s envy of her half-sister for everything she possessed—not just their father’s throne, but also his love—informs her desire more than any notion of ruling the Empire. And while her story is one in which she seeks restitution for a childhood wrong that caused her so much misery and pain, she is unable to see the imitative nature of her desire and, in turn, visits the same misery and pain upon Emily. The object of desire—the throne and all its power—is quickly obscured when the relationships that form around it are based on envy, spite and imitation. And while a high-Chaos playthrough of Dishonored 2 simply replaces one tyrant for another, a conscientious playthrough sees the young Emily Kaldwin resisting the easy urge of imitative desire and instead growing as a ruler and a woman. Delilah, meanwhile, becomes trapped within her own desires of an immortal rule within her painted world, unaware and unconcerned that she lives out a simple imitation.

What do you get when you mix a group of ex-Hitman and The Division developers, who've set off on their own and are working on an as yet undisclosed "cult classic"? You get Sharkmob, a new indie outfit comprised of ex-Ubi and IO folks that's headed by former Massive CEO Fredrik Rundqvist. 

In conversation with VentureBeat (via gamesindustry.biz), the one-time exec produced on The Division kept his cards close to chest, but did suggest the studio's first project tackles a "cult classic" and has plans to support live services. All going well, it'll be evolved into a franchise down the line. 

"We’re not really interested in making a more traditional single-player type of game," says Rundqvist. "What we play privately, the kind of games we love, are very social, very competitive, always multiplayer. The more the merrier. Of course, in our opinion, the pure mechanics of that are not interesting if you don’t have the right IP, the right setting, the right fantasy to get people really excited about the game mechanics we provide. I guess that also gives you a hint as to what kind of game we’re making."

Rundqvist adds: "I’m not sure, but I think this is fairly unusual about Sharkmob, which is that we have five guys who’ve done games for 10 to 12 years together, leaving together to start something new. We felt more safe working together again than we would have if we were just going off on our own. 

"If you take the five of us, I don’t think it’s exaggerating that the five of us cover a 360 view of everything you need to know to start a company, start a studio, make a game, create an IP, be sure about technology, art direction, game direction, all that stuff."

Elsewhere, Rundqvist explores the benefits and perils of going indie, and the logistics of forming a new team. Check out the chat in full in this direction.  

Sonny Evans' tongue-in-cheek Attenborough-esque nature documentaries span GTA 5, Battlefield 1, Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. They're lighthearted and silly and good fun—with the latter leveraging PUBG's new-ish replay system to great effect. 

The Camper casts its lens over one of my own favourite playstyles, as it explores the benefits of hiding in bushes, beneath bridges and under parked cars. Described as "the scourge" of PUBG, Evans posits "the goal of this creature is to be a general nuisance." How dare he. (He's not wrong.) 

When I spoke to Evans following the launch of his first PUBG Nat Geo doc, he told me that despite the limitations of the game's replay system—so far as performance culture is concerned—it has potential to spin more tales of this kind. I love the work coming from GTA 5 in this vein, so I hope and encourage more players to pick up the mantle here. 

If you like the above, Evans has singled out The Stunters in GTA 5, The Noobs of Fortnite, and The Tanks of Battlefield 1. Check out his full catalogue over here.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not exactly an easy game, but you can transform Henry from lowly peasant to fearsome knight fairly quickly if you know what you're doing. Modder Knoxogoshi's Ultimate Realism Overhaul looks to change that by making the game harder, especially early on. It bumps up the difficulty of combat, slows down progression, and makes Groschen—Bohemia's currency—harder to come by. It sounds brutal, but if you've already finished your first playthrough then it might be a good excuse to start all over again.

It touches on almost every one of the game's systems. The mod tweaks every weapon's damage value and strength requirements, which will make it more difficult to wield the best weapons and almost impossible to one-shot enemies late in the game. You'll also have to pay more attention to the type of weapon you're using: maces, for example, will do barely any damage against padded armour, will weigh a lot more than other weapons, and will have a much shorter reach. 

The mod shrinks the window for a perfect block, while enemies will co-ordinate their attacks to try and hit you at the same time, rather than queuing up to strike, which they tend to do in the base game.  

The mod slows down leveling and nerfs some of Henry's perks. You'll build up hunger faster—to the point where you might starve if you don't eat for a day—and you can't simply eat from stew pots anymore, because they'll only give you a tiny meal. 

Making money in Deliverance can be a struggle at the start but this mod makes it ever harder by lowering the prices that merchants will pay you for goods and ramping up the cost of certain items, especially armour.

It'll make the early game particularly difficult: inflated inn prices mean you might not be able to afford a room for a while, leaving you to sleep on the street. And because you'll need more food, you'll run out of gold quickly, which means you'll probably have to steal lots of bread if you want to survive.

Best of all, it's modular, so you can choose to just overhaul the combat and progression systems, or take everything but the economy changes, for example. Download it all from the mod's Nexus page. I'd recommend reading the description in full first so you know what you're getting yourself into.

If you're looking to tweak the game further, check out our list of best mods.

Occult Scrim looks like a fun twist on Half Life: it's not quite a fully top-down shooter, but it's nearly there, with the camera floating way overhead. Your job is to blast through enemies to rack up points, which you'll spend on new weapons and items when you return to your base, an armoury.

It's still very early days for the mod, and it doesn't yet have a release date, but it looks remarkably polished. The perspective works well, and your character—a black ops assassin—automatically adjusts their aim up and down depending on where your enemies are. It looks like it plays far quicker than the base game, with lots of enemies on screen at one time. 

The camera has two positions: you can bring it slightly closer to the action if you want to get extra precise. Even when it's zoomed out, the guns feel meaty and solid. I'm not sure how many of the weapons are new and how many come from the base game, but I'm impressed nonetheless.

Enemy behaviour has been tweaked from the original to make them more challenging to fight, and they'll do things like roll and strafe out of the line of fire. You'll face bosses, too, like the one below. 

Click here for its ModDB page. It's one I'll be keeping an eye on as it comes together.

Prey's latest teaser for what we can now safely assume is an expansion set on the moon hints that publisher Bethesda will reveal all the details in its E3 presentation on June 10—or perhaps even launch the DLC live on air. Developer Arkane Studios tweeted out a picture, below, featuring its employees each revealing a bloodshot eye and holding up cryptic signs. But the blackboard in the top-right is the most revealing bit.

It features multiple references to the moon, mentions Kosma Corp—a rival of mega-corporation TranStar—and asks "What about Peter?" Perhaps that's a nod to Peter Coleman, a character from Prey that the player discovers dead and disfigured.

It also lists the date 06.10.18 at the top, which (if taken in the American date format) is the same date as publisher Bethesda's press conference. If you were optimistic, you might see that as a release date for whatever developer Arkane has planned, and that's certainly possible. It could also be the date that it spills the beans on the expansion.

I doubt that Arkane's teaser campaign is over, so I'd keep an eye on its Twitter page if you want to keep hunting for clues.

More Prey can only be a good thing, I think. As Phil said in his review, its combat and enemy design were sloppy at times, but its beautiful setting provided you plenty of freedom. It's definitely worth playing.

Thanks, PCGamesN.  

Oh, snap! It's yet another PCG Q&A, where every Saturday we ask the panel of PC Gamer writers a question about PC gaming. You're also very welcome to share your thoughts in the comments below. This week: which game actually lived up to the hype?

Jody Macgregor: The Witcher 3

I hated the first Witcher game, and although the second one's an improvement in a lot of ways I still thought most of it was dull—apart from the bit where you get drunk and wake up with a tattoo, obviously. So when glowing reviews came out for The Witcher 3 I ignored them. There was plenty of other stuff to play in 2015: Tales From the Borderlands, Rocket League, Life is Strange, Pillars of Eternity, Devil Daggers, Her Story. I was busy.

It took a solid year's worth of articles about how incredible every aspect of The Witcher 3 was, from the side quests to the potion-making to the characters to the wind in the goddamn trees, before I finally caved and tried it. Everyone was right, it's now on my "best games of all time" list, and I've become one of those people who says you should turn the music down so you can hear the wind in Velen. There's an entire subreddit devoted to whinging about games journalism's never-ending love affair with writing about The Witcher 3, but without that constant praise I wouldn't have pushed past my disinterest to give it the chance it deserved. And now I've become one of those people who won't shut up about The Witcher 3.

Samuel Roberts: Metal Gear Solid V

Not everyone will agree with this one, but I've lived through multiple Metal Gear hype cycles (MGS2 and MGS4 most memorably), and this is the one game that really deserved it. While this Metal Gear has the worst story in the series by far, it's also a superior stealth game. With its suite of upgrades and repeatable missions, I easily played MGSV for over 100 hours, and I have no doubt I'll reinstall it someday. 

Chris Livingston: Portal 2

I think the original Portal was a near-perfect experience. You learned to play as you played and each test chamber increased in complexity at a rate that was challenging but never frustrating. It was funny and surprising and satisfying, and short enough that it didn't have time to wear out its welcome. When trailers for Portal 2 began appearing, I was just as excited as anyone else, though I wasn't really expecting to love it in the same way. More complex, more characters, more story, more puzzles, more more more. I just couldn't imagine it matching the original, which proved (to me at least) that less is more.

It definitely lived up to the hype, though. Portal 2 is amazing, funny, challenging, surprising, and every bit as brilliant as the first. Maybe it's still true that less is more, but that doesn't mean more is less.

Jarred Walton: Half-Life 2

Piggybacking off Chris here, Half-Life 2 was an incredible follow-up to one of the best (if not the best) games of the '90s. The original Half-Life surprised the hell out of me with ways it changed the first-person shooter. After playing a ton of Quake and Quake 2, story seemed to be an afterthought, but Half-Life revolutionized the genre. Okay, the Xen levels at the end almost ruined it, but I still wanted more.

And then I waited, waited, and waited some more. Daikatana proved that games too long in development could suck, and HL2 felt like it might be doomed to the same fate. But with the addition of the gravity gun and physics, plus a great setting and story that made you care about the characters, it exceeded its source material in every way. I'm still holding out hope for HL3, naturally, but those are some massive shoes to fill.

Tom Senior: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I was dangerously excited when a new Deus Ex was announced. I was hyped to the extent that it would have really stung if a new Deus Ex fell well short of expectations. Human Revolution had a few problems, but it was exactly the atmospheric cyberpunk playground I wanted and the art direction added a new dimension to the Deus Ex universe. Due to the technological limitations of the era the old Deus Ex games struggled to show art or architecture (apart from that silly Earth-in-a-giant-claw statue at the start). Human Revolution decided that everything would be gold, and full of triangles, and its depiction of futuristic augments was gorgeous. I would quite like a pair of Jensen arms.

Human Revolution really got Deus Ex. It had hacking, vents, and intricate levels. But it also had something else, something new: retractable arm-swords. Not many people would look at the groundbreaking masterpiece of Deus Ex and think 'this needs retractable arm-swords', but Eidos Montreal had the vision to make retractable arm-swords happen. I will always respect them for that. 

Andy Kelly: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

I remember the buzz around Vice City vividly. Every time I saw that stylish advert on TV, the one with 'I Ran' by Flock of Seagulls, I got a tingle of excitement. Magazines were full of gushing previews, treating every morsel of information like it was the biggest scoop since Watergate. And then when it came out, it was everything I dreamed it would be. A bigger, more detailed city. An incredible soundtrack. More fun and varied missions. A better story. An all-star cast. HELICOPTERS. Being able to fly around a city of that size back then was a genuine thrill.

GTA III was great, but it felt like an experiment in places; a concept for what a 3D Grand Theft Auto game could be. But Vice City was the first time Rockstar really nailed it, and laid a solid foundation for the 3D era of their world-conquering series. The '80s (or at least some exaggerated, romanticised version of it) has begun to saturate pop culture to an annoying degree lately, so I can't see Rockstar returning to that setting. It's too obvious. But I would like to see Vice City again in a different, more contemporary era, perhaps showing the bleak, faded aftermath of its hedonistic '80s heyday.

Andy Chalk: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The first time I saw this teaser I made a noise like a ten-year-old opening the latest issue of Tiger Beat. Then I saw this teaser, and I pretty much hyperventilated and passed out. I knew in my heart that DX: Human Revolution couldn't be that good, because Deus Ex was lightning in a bottle: Ugly, clunky, with terrible voice acting and a ridiculous, incoherent story, all of which somehow got smushed together into basically the best game ever made. How do you fall down a flight of stairs and land in a bed of roses twice? 

But then Human Revolution came out, and it was that good. Not perfect, and I will never not be mad about those boss fights. But Adam Jensen is the perfect successor (predecessor, I suppose) to JC Denton, I loved the visual style (including the piss filter) and the music (because it's not Deus Ex without a great soundtrack), and the whole thing just felt right: Not as off-the-conspiracy-theory-hook as the original, but big and sprawling and unpredictable—a legitimate point of entry into that world. It took more than a decade to get from Deus Ex to Human Revolution, and it was worth the wait. 

Every time I play the demo of Kaet Must Die! it ends with me, Kaet, dying. Which I guess is truth in advertising. It's a first-person horror game that, from my limited perspective, is mostly about crawling through a sewer collecting glowing mushrooms when it is not about me, Kaet, being murdered. Sometimes I get approached by a creepy little Jawa-looking dude with glowing eyes who I scare off using my mushroom-powered psychic ability to summon balls of light, but mostly what happens is that a skinless jerk appears out of nowhere, grabs me, and drags me down into a GAME OVER screen.

Kaet Must Die! is a deliberately hard game, one that like Bennett Foddy's Getting Over It seems designed to hurt a certain kind of player. The story of how it ended up that way is an interesting one, but I'll let Scott Reschke, the CEO of indie studio Strength In Numbers, tell that.

PC Gamer: To get the obvious out of the way: why spell it "K A E T"?

Scott Reschke: Ha! Kaet is one of the characters from our first, unreleased, Early Access, game Tuebor: I Will Defend. Her full name is actually Kaetheran, but everyone at the studio kept shortening her name to Kaet, so it kind of just stuck.

How far back does the idea for Kaet Must Die! go?The original concept for Kaet Must Die! was born out of frustration and chance. While working Tuebor, our studio's first title, our team was experimenting with livestreaming various kinds of games to see what interested folks the most. We noticed that viewers responded much more strongly when we streamed horror/puzzle games, as opposed to other popular PvP-focused titles, like Overwatch and Paladins. In fact, Alien: Isolation and the indie jump scare title Emily Wants to Play seemed to interest viewers the most.It was quite surprising, and since we already had a full set of wonderful assets, characters, audio effects, particle effects, and whatnot on-hand from our work on Tuebor, we decided to greenlight a simple jump scare prototype for Kaet Must Die! Originally, this early build was just one level set in an underground sewer map from our first game.It was around this time that I had found myself extremely frustrated with the industry. There were some major setbacks for our company throughout the course of development for Tuebor, so I had intended for Kaet Must Die! to be our studio’s swan-song farewell, with the idea that we'd make it as memorable as possible by making it as hard as possible to beat.  

To our surprise, we started receiving an insane amount of positive feedback as a direct response to the game's difficulty. Players and streamers were also responding well to the game’s difficulty, calling it "the Dark Souls of jump scare."What was supposed to be a single-level game that could be completed in a few hours, quickly wound up evolving into a much larger game with 10 levels that increase exponentially in difficulty. Players started asking for more story, more lore, more background on the game's mysterious setting—so we started ramping up production, adding more complex cutscenes and storytelling via cryptic notes and graffiti messages scrawled across the walls in each level. Traps, puzzles, and more cinematics also followed.Before we knew it, what was originally designed to be an almost unfairly difficult jump scare puzzle game evolved into a more story-focused focused horror puzzle game. The jump scares are still there. However, they are no longer the prime focus of Kaet Must Die!  As players progress, the game's story unfolds more and players will find out more about the creator of all the creatures, monsters, and tortured souls around every corner who are all trying to kill Kaet. 

So talk me through the road to getting this game where it's at today. You submitted it to some big publishers but were rebuffed—what did they say?

Well, this game is technically the third game Strength in Numbers Studios is releasing. Our first game, Tuebor: I Will Defend, was intended to be the tent-pole title for our company. Tuebor is a third-person arena fighter with multiple PvP and co-op game modes. That is where it all started for us back in 2012. I tried doing everything the way I thought was best for an indie studio, and tried to be responsible in regards to our company's developers, investors, and most importantly, the players we wanted to enjoy our game.

I knew that indies often solicit developers to work for them for free in exchange for a "cut of the profits", however I also know how hard it is to make a living in this industry, especially if you are just starting out. As a result, I spent three years stumping for investment from various funds, incentives, Angel groups, VCs, etc. I was shut down by everyone given that there is no real flow of investment towards game development in this state [Michigan]. My luck turned around at the last minute when I got a private investor to put up the cash for the game (and a percentage ownership in the company). 

I immediately started hiring developers from where I could find them (another problem in living in a state that doesn't have a flow of game development; there aren’t really many qualified devs). I started building the team and off we went to building the game. Ramp-up time was slow, but we were making progress. As soon as we had enough assets and demo pieces ready, we started sending out emails to publishers to try and get them on board. After fielding several calls with large and small publishers I was told "looks great, get back to us when you've got more finished product."

Two stress-filled years later, Tuebor was playing well, the major bugs ironed out, and we had small community of loyal fans who were telling everyone they could to come play with us. The sad part was that Overwatch, Battleborn, Paragon, Gigantic, PUBG, Paladins, had all come out in the meantime. 

We had managed to get through Steam Greenlight (back when it was required to get votes) and I was using Steam Early Access in order to test and polish and pivot on the game according to player feedback (as I thought you were supposed to do in Early Access).

Sadly, the major launches of products in Early Access, often AAA games using the early access moniker to pre-sell units, has somewhat borked the system. If your game wasn't polished and ready to go, you get a heavy dose on negativity by the early player base, despite it being plainly labeled as "Alpha" or "Beta" or "Early Access".  

We struggled to keep the community going amidst Overwatch and PUBG hype, and so I tried again to reach out to publishers. At this point I was told "looks great, but you should have come to us sooner because we need time to put our brand and spin on it." 

The biggest publisher (a major global one) told me "it doesn't look indie enough" for their indie-branch (pointing to several highly stylized 2D sidescrollers), while the others said, "it doesn't look AAA enough." 

Somehow, we managed to make Tuebor a game that was super fun to play, but that success was bittersweet following conflicting feedback from publishers that labeled it as "completely unknown," "too AAA for indie," "not AAA enough," "too early," and "too late," all at the same time. 

Which led to your decision to make a game that's unforgiving as possible. I'm imagining that bit from The Simpsons where Homer explains his reason for wanting to be a Bigger Brother is "spite".

Oh yes. Kaet Must Die! was initially my final flipping the bird to all things game development. I'd poured almost a decade of my life into this industry and company, and thought I did things the right way (actual salaries for the devs, health insurance, flexible hours, going Early Access instead of releasing a bug-filled Gold release), but rejection and conflicting feedback from talks with publishers was the last straw. I hate to admit it, but the salt was strong in me.

So we channeled that frustration and moved full speed ahead with Kaet Must Die!, aiming to make an arguably unfairly difficult game nobody could beat. The real amusing part is that this challenge in-and-of-itself could be the very thing that saves this company and allows our studio to move forward.I've been told that it feels more like "old school" gaming from so many random people who keep trying for hours at a time to beat even the easiest level.

In recent years we've seen a lot of games that advertise extreme difficulty doing well for themselves. Is making Kaet Must Die! more punishing not actually quite a crowd-pleasing move?

I had started making Kaet Must Die! before seeing the likes of Cuphead come out, but am thrilled with seeing that it is a viable genre. In terms of design, Kaet Must Die! is more inspired by player reactions to Dark Souls, Alien: Isolation, and games such as that. If players consider Kaet Must Die! in their personal list of games they loved to hate the most, we'll be very pleased. 

Kaet Must Die! will be available on April 5. You can download the demo on Steam.