What is the best dystopia of 2016, the official year of the dystopia? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games of the year, daily, and behind today’s door is…

INSIDE!

… [visit site to read more]

A demo of Playdead’s grimpretty puzzle-platformer Inside [official site] is now out. Given that John found their follow-up to Limbo a bit empty but Pip adored its animation and Alec enjoyed its dark comedy, you may have been waiting for the official centralised verdict of the RPS Advent Calendar. Our word is, of course, law but I suppose it’s fine if you start forming your own opinions as a warm-up for the forthcoming judgment. Oh, and if you’d been holding out for a DRM-free release, you’ll be glad to hear it now has one. … [visit site to read more]

Aside from starting a new tradition of unusually-named Steam Awards, Valve have also pulled out their worn and adored bargain bucket and have begun to fill it with games you ll enthusiastically buy and probably never play. Yes, it’s their Autumn Sale. In the streets, the apocalyptic jockeying for TVs and blenders has started. The moon has turned blood red. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Black Friday, and sales followed with him. … [visit site to read more]

Sounds and music for Inside [official site] were recorded through a real human skull.

Vibrations rattled the skull so much that its teeth fell out.

No one’s saying whose skull it is/was.

… [visit site to read more]

Phew, finally we get some new names in the Steam top 10 (previous weeks here’n’that), after the chokehold of the Steam Summer Sale is loosened. I did not expect that number 1, but I really> did not expect that number 10.

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There’s been a lot of talk about INSIDE‘s [official site] beauty and poignancy, and I don’t disagree with any of that, but my own appreciation of it was for another reason. I thought it was bloody funny, in the malevolent manner of Evil Dead 2 or Braindead. Inside is a horror videogame, yes, but it’s also an extremely cheeky videogame.N.B. here be FULL SPOILERS. … [visit site to read more]

I finished Inside [official site] recently and then started reading about it to see what other people had to say. One of the things they had to say was a discussion of a secret ending which I then resolved to seek out – here’s how that went and how you can do it too…

… [visit site to read more]

I’ve just finished Inside [official site] – I really enjoyed it. It’s a kind of macabre vignette with a lot of shared DNA from Playdead’s previous game, Limbo. It also reminded me of the few minutes I played of Black The Fall at a previous Rezzed in terms of dystopian setting, palette and some of the control mechanisms so I’ll be curious to see where they differ when that game is released. BUT while playing, the thing about Inside I kept coming back to/being distracted by/being entranced by was the animations.

There were so many little touches, little looks, little variations in movement when it came to the main character that I wanted to make sure we flagged them up in a post with the help of gifs.

… [visit site to read more]

Not much moving, not much shaking in last week’s top ten best-sellers, as the after-effects of the Steam sale are still felt and, without many major new releases or breakout hits, there’s that creeping sense of PC games in 2016 returning to business as usual. HERE COMETH THE BRANDS. We do get one new entry though, and it’s a pretty one. … [visit site to read more]