Truth is the first casualty of first-person shooters, said the philosopher Ian Videogames. Time has proven him correct. Not a game is developed without some use of smoke and/or mirror. But this week on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, we shall not be lying to you. We are journalists and we stand for the Truth with a big ‘T’. No more tricksy use of code and polygon, we say. No more lying!

Unless it makes us go really, really fast.

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Building games are supposed to be in-depth and serious. We deserve towering cranes, gleaming interplanetary landers and complex networks of conveyor belts, not cutsey fairies, sunbeams and magical fruit. Glittermitten Grove [official site], a wretched and insipid affair, rips the meaning and the strategy out of a noble genre – a cynical cash-in made from what looks like clipart, making a quick buck out of legions of creatively-minded PC gamers who long only to escape from a world that hates and fears them.

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The elusive Frog Fractions 2 snuck out while over the RPS Crimble holiday, hidden inside a colourful game about building a faerie village and locked away behind a sprawling ARG. Frog Fractions 2 could never be as surprising as the first game, given that y’know we now have heard of Frog Fractions, but it seems to have made a fair go of replacing surprise with epicness. Epicity? Epicicity? That thing. Once again, FF leaps wildly between genres on a wild adventure hidden within something innocuous. This time, your way in is to buy the sparkly-named Glittermitten Grove [official site]. … [visit site to read more]