As December approaches like a runaway sled and we prepare to say our goodbyes to 2016, it’s natural to reflect on the year as a whole. Those reflections could easily take the form of laments but we’re keeping our focus firmly on the world of PC games, where we’ve identified ten trends that may not have defined 2016, but have certainly helped to shape it. We delve into Sorcery and synthwave, DOOM and Danganronpa, and much more besides.

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Quadrilateral Cowboy is built on the Doom 3 engine, which was released long ago under GNU General Public License that states that derivative works must also be released under the GPL. The result? Quadrilateral Cowboy is now open source, meaning you can hack at the source code for the first-person hack-and-heist sim.

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Hacking-fueled heist-em-up Quadrilateral Cowboy [official site] came out last week and opinion has been a bit divided about it. Graham, for instance, thought it was a stylish but disappointing romp. Whereas I reckon it’s a delicious retro-futuristic snack. But most reviews agreed on one thing – that there wasn t enough> of it. Well, get your 56k modem jacked in folks. The 20th Century Cyberpunk adventure will receive new levels in a free post-release mod, the game s designer has said.

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I’ve lined up my suitcase rifle, sawed open my escape route, and written two lines of code to control a small robot when I blink. Blink once and a set of lasers turn off allowing me to enter through a space station maintenance tunnel without triggering any alarms; blink twice and a second set turn off, allowing me to exit cleanly. It’s only a few moments later, as I stand in the vacuum of space, that I realise I left my deck – the computer by which I write scripts to control suitcase rifles, small robots, lasers and more – back in the maintenance corridor.

Quadrilateral Cowboy is a game about breaking into buildings to raid vaults, steal safes and hack coma patients. It’s a stylish, retro-futurist love letter to computing, engineering and ’90s videogame level design. It also feels like the prelude to a better game.

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Pull on your data gloves and slap on your mirrorshades for Quadrilateral Cowboy [official site], the latest from Thirty Flights of Loving and Flotilla developers Blendo Games. Quadlat Cowbo is a first-person heist-o-hacking game about sneaking into places using gadgets, gizmos, and good old-fashioned hacking. It’s from the command line school of hacking, having you tap out commands and scripts to carefully time hacking cameras, laser grids, doors, and such so you can waltz right in. It was jolly special when I played an early version two years ago, so I’m mighty excited that it’s finally finished and out.

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