A sequel is coming for excellent cooperative heist game Monaco, publishers Humble Games announced today. Jim Rossignol's Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine review in 2013 was pretty straightforward: "This is one of the most important independent games this year, and might well end up being one of the best-loved games of the decade." I don't think it panned out quite that way, partially because indie games grew so larger and more mainstream than expected across the decade, but the IGF Grand Prize winner is still a cracking game. And Monaco 2 looks pretty.

Read more

Pack your bags, wrap the presents, put your scarf around your neck. And then sit down because, I’m sorry, you’re going nowhere. It’s bad, yeah. Even yours truly, a respected list goblin of note, could not make it back to his family in time for the holidays due to the ongoing vengeance of mother nature. But listen. What if I told you: “video games”? They have always had something for us in the past. What wonderful surrogate families can we join in this time of loneliness and separation to ease our troubled minds? Here are the 10 most wholesome families in PC games you may look to in this hour of need.

(more…)

Looks like we’ll be waiting a little longer to roam the new trippy corridors of Stanley’s office building, because The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe has been delayed again. It was originally expected in 2019, then this year, and now we won’t be seeing it until at least 2021. The co-developers at Crows Crows Crows revealed the bad news on Twitter by, uh, borrowing some corporate ‘our game has been delayed’ images and slapping their own info over the top.

(more…)

There aren’t enough heist-focused video games. You’d think the ludicrous success of Grand Theft Auto V would’ve led to more Ocean’s inspired capers, but no. Where are all my Nespresso-drinking, salt and pepper hair-having protagonists? At least the spirit of Clooney and Friends can be found in Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine.

(more…)

We’ve missed the Thursday mark, but there’s still time to snag some free games over on Epic’s shelves. This week, the house of Sweeney are giving away The Stanley Parable and Watch Dogs. One is a sprawling, meta-textual comedy narrative about control and the nature of stories themselves. The other has a bloke with a neat cap. You’ve got until next Thursday to grab ’em for free, at which time they’ll be replaced by Figment and Tormentor X Punisher.

(more…)

>

It s Friday the 13th, the day of Saint Badluck, patron saint of ladders and casinos. And it is a fabulous holiday. Out there, parades are getting ready to be rained on, and children are looking forward to tonight s shenanigans, when they will dress up as mirrors and knock on doors, declaring: sweets or I ll smash myself . I love Friday the 13th. So many cherished memories. So many splinters of reflective glass.

So, Happy Bad Luck Day. Here s a list of the 9 unluckiest characters in videogames. Spoilers for pretty much every game mentioned. So, watch out.

(more…)

>

Happy love day, you disgusting piece of filth. Got you. That was an example of what today s young people call neggling . This is when you are nice and nasty in such quick succession that the body becomes inexplicably aroused. Spasms of lust take over both neggler and negglee, resulting in a paroxysm of extramarital sex and, subsequently, the degeneration of humanity. This is just one of the signs of an unhealthy relationship. But there are many more examples in videogames. Here are the 10 most toxic couples out there. Don’t worry, you can argue fruitlessly in favour of any of them. That’s the point of these articles.

(more…)

Is that a tingling in my ears? Has Kevan Brighting’s soothing voice returned to comfort my lobes? The Stanley Parable‘s narrator is back in a new trailer, and he’s got some concerning news regarding the development of the upcoming Ultra Deluxe edition. Reluctantly, regrettably, and due to popular demand, it appears the labyrinthine adventure’s second remake won’t be launching as planned this year.

(more…)

Indie developer Crows Crows Crows, whose founder William Pugh is one of the developers behind The Stanley Parable, has released a free browser-based MMO. It is described as “a mix between Journey, RuneScape and that time U2 s new album got auto-installed on everybody s iPhones.” The Club – a blocky 90s-Internet styled multi-player discothon whose name is surrounded by the animated GIF flames of a Geocities fan page, and whose club tracks sound like a DJ set by David Lynch – is a mission-less, non-competitive, online music listening game. It is hell. It is perfect.

(more…)

Davey Wreden isn’t done making you sad. He co-designed The Stanley Parable and directed The Beginner’s Guide, and now he’s heading up a new team with the aim of producing games “that are beautiful, meditative, thoughtful, and sad”. So like the games he’s already worked on, but with fewer jokes.

Details about the next game are thin on the metaphorical, ‘probably a big allegory for something’ ground, but let’s have a rummage through these two job ads. Look, it’s gonna be third-person. That’s a start.

(more…)