The Talos Principle is known for its story. Serious Sam is not. That these two so utterly different videogames come from the same small development studio has always tickled me, but it never occurred to me that, aside from a few goofball easter eggs, the two could actually cross over in any meaningful way. I mean, how could they?

And yet somehow, it's happening. Not within the games themselves, but in their creation, and in a way I can only describe as bizarre: Jonas Kyratzes, one of the two writers of The Talos Principle, and his wife Verena have signed up as the "screenwriters" for Serious Sam 4.

"I was a fan of Serious Sam before I got to work with Croteam, so I must admit I was sort of hoping I might be involved with the next one if The Talos Principle went well. But more than that, we immediately clicked with the team, were treated like family, and really wanted to keep working with them," Kyratzes said. "Going to Croatia and working in the office just confirmed that."

Croteam offered no insight into what direction the plot to Serious Sam 4 will take (and that may be the most mind-boggling thing I've written all week), but said the Kyratzes are "shaping the story into something really awesome." I can't even begin to guess how that will work out, but it's worth remembering that The Talos Principle actually began life as Serious Sam 4, before evolving level mechanics led the studio to turn it into a whole new game. Since it's likely that some of those Talos gameplay elements will make it into the next Serious Sam, maybe it's not so weird that the writing would, too? 

Yeah, no. It's weird.

A new expansion has been released for brain-bending philosophy-'em-up The Talos Principle. It's called Road to Gehenna, and it follows Elohim's messenger Uriel as he journeys through four new worlds. It is likely to be just the ticket for anyone looking to dismantle more fans, place more jamming devices and redirect more lasers.

Can you solve the puzzle of how to watch this trailer? I have faith that you can.

The Talos Principle was really good, so I'm glad to see there's more of it now available. It sounds like a sizeable amount of new content, too. That's reflected in the 11/$15 price tag, although you can currently get Road to Gehenna for 10% off until July 30.

Is it any good, though? We should have a review up tomorrow—just as soon as Chris's head has stopped hurting.

I really liked Croteam's narratively complex puzzle game The Talos Principle, and fortunately for my self-esteem, so did Chris when he played it for our review. I was thus very excited about the March announcement of an expansion called Road to Gehenna, and today we finally got wind of the release date: July 23.

The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna will unfold over four chapters with "some of the most advanced and challenging puzzles yet." Players will take on the role of Uriel, Elohim's messenger, as he tries to free the souls trapped in the game's strange, mysterious world. The expansion will feature new characters and a new world with its own unique history and philosophy, created by Tom Jubert and Jonas Kyratzes, the writers of the original game.

The Road to Gehenna expansion will be out on July 23. More information will be available on Steam when this link goes live—in the meantime, enjoy some screens.

Mario Kotlar, level and puzzle designer for The Talos Principle at Croteam, has as many instruments around his desk as he does screens. Though, I think "desk" is a generous description for a pair of small tables, but to each their own when it comes to setting up your space. Personal comfort is the priority. With a keyboard (the piano kind), a Cintiq, and a laptop to compliment his rig, Kotlar has a lot of options crammed into not very much room. He was kind enough to show off his desk and PC, as well as tell us why he—perhaps predictably, being a puzzle designer—loves the Portal games. 

What's in your rig?

• Operating System: MS Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
• CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz, Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
• RAM: 16.0 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 668MHz (9-9-9-24)
• Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P8Z68-V (LGA1155)
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770
• Monitors: SyncMaster (1920x1200@59Hz) and a Cintiq 13HD (1920x1080@60Hz)
• Hard Drives: 977GB Western Digital WDC WD10EARS-00MVWB0 (SATA), 2TB Western Digital MyBook, 3TB Western Digital MyBook, and a 232GB Storejet 25 Transcend
• CPU cooler: Contac 29 BP
• PSU: Coolmaster 700W
• Keyboard: AKAI MPK49
• Mouse: Zowie Mico
• Speakers: Logitech Z523
• Laptop (ancient): DELL Vostro 1700
• Guitar: Floyd Rose - X-Cort
• Table: no comment :)

What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?

It has to be either the shittines of the table, or having 3 instruments around together with the Wacom Cintiq. Or could it be apple keyboard hooked to a windows PC? My setup is weird...

What's always within arm's reach on your desk?

Other than the obvious, plain old boring bottle of water and some candies, not featured in the photos I'm afraid.

What are you playing right now?

I've got FFXIII and Life is Strange on hold, and I occasionally still sometimes play SC2, GW2 and Portal 2.

What's your favorite game and why?

Portal 1 and 2, I'll never forget the mindfuck of conceptualizing non euclidean space for the first time. And then there's both perfect gameplay and perfect story setting tied into it.

Tom Jubert, one-half of the writing team behind the outstanding first-person puzzle game The Talos Principle, has provided a little bit of insight into what's coming in the Road to Gehenna expansion. He wasn't interested in repeating what had already been done, he wrote in a recent blog post, so he and writing partner Jonas Kyratzes kicked around some ideas that would "expand on the original world without simply following in its footsteps."

Among the ideas pitched and discarded were setting the expansion in the distant past, when the Elohim system was still in development, or in the distant future, after it's been discovered by other beings; or putting it on a separate server with the same rules but different archive information, resulting in completely different versions of Elohim and Milton, the game's nagging voice of doubt and cynicism.

Jubert didn't offer any hints about what they and Croteam eventually settled on, but said it "provides us huge flexibility in terms of the sort and tone of material we deliver. It gives us a world that fits within the original game's religious and science fiction mythology, but which resolutely has its own identity. Most importantly for me, it lets us explore completely new ideas about how to interact with the game." He also described it as "ambitious," adding that the script is comparable in size to that of The Talos Principle itself.

"We have consciously designed [Road to Gehenna] to be experimental," he wrote. "We wanted to explore new ideas in a safe environment so that when we inevitably come to Talos 2 we will be able to raise our audience's expectations once again."

Jubert said the expansion is now undergoing "final bug-hunting," and will be out in the next month or so.

I have been assured that this is not in fact an April Fool's joke, and thus I deliver the news that you may now opt to replace the smooth and soothing voice of Elohim, the godlike overseer of The Talos Principle, with the rather rougher tones of Serious Sam.

It will still be Elohim's words and wisdom guiding you through the existential maze that makes up your journey through The Talos Principle, but the new DLC pack means they will delivered by Serious Sam voice actor John J. Dick. The DLC also includes a new Serious Sam player model, for those who'd prefer the game to be a little less serious. (Which is ironic, I know.)

Injecting one of the ultimate embodiments of the thick-headed FPS macho man hero into a game that's essentially a slow-paced meditation on the meaning of life, consciousness, and personhood might seem counterintuitive, but that dichotomy has been one of my favorite things about The Talos Principle from the very beginning. That the studio that gave the world "No Cover. All Man" would conceive of a game like this in the first place is flat-out weird. That it would do such a good job of it almost beggars belief.

The Serious Sam Voice Pack DLC is free until April 7, after which it will be available for purchase for $3. The Talos Principle itself, along with all other DLC, is on sale on Steam for half-price (that's $20) over the same duration.

Brain-taxing puzzler The Talos Principle is getting an expansion, publisher Devolver has announced. Called the Road to Gehenna, it will cast you as Elohim's messenger, and will send you through a new, previously hidden chunk of the simulation. Fun fact: Gehenna has all manner of religious significance, and could also theoretically contain lasers you can redirect.

A four-episode add-on, Croteam is promising the most advanced and challenging puzzles yet made for the game. It'll also feature new story from the main game's writers, Tom Jubert and Jonas Kyratzes.

"We wanted to revisit the world of The Talos Principle and deliver new characters and a new world with its own history and culture, said Jubert in a press release. With Road to Gehenna we have created an all-new narrative which both branches off from and expands the original character s journey."

The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna is due out this Spring.

Croatian developer Croteam is mostly known for the Serious Sam series of run-and-gun blast-the-shit-out-of-aliens shooters, which is why its puzzler The Talos Principle was such a surprise. It s more Portal than Duke Nukem, filled to bursting with puzzles and a challenging philosophical narrative. Again, surprising from the team that made Serious Sam—especially because The Talos Principle actually began life as Serious Sam 4.

In a GDC post-mortem for The Talos Principle titled Reactive Game Development, Croteam talked about how The Talos Principle spun out of development on the next Serious Sam game. While working on the jammer mechanic that eventually found its way into The Talos Principle, the Serious Sam team kept brainstorming new mechanics that seemed like a better fit for a new project. So they decided to start work on a completely new game.

Croteam s Alen Ladavac and Davor Hunski stressed how important they think it is to be reactive in game development, because there will always be unforeseen problems or situations or opportunities during development. They said that that s especially true when developing a wholly new game, rather than a sequel: you can t know what you want until you see it.

Croteam s focus on reactive design informed The Talos Principle throughout the entire development process, starting with internal testing. The team members individually built puzzles, then extensively tested each other s puzzles and rated them for fun and difficulty. Getting stuck on puzzles in testing led them to The Talos Principle s nonlinear structure, so that players always have multiple puzzles to tackle. External testing led them to more refinements, as the team cut out redundant puzzles and shortened the game s Rome segment based on that feedback. They also used automated testing, running a bot through the puzzles, which they say came out to 15,000 human hours of testing.

Not everything went well—Croteam acknowledged several mistakes, such as misjudging the time required for localization—but the key lesson was that getting and reacting to feedback quickly is vital. Had that iterative process not kicked off during the development of Serious Sam 4, The Talos Principle would never have been made.

I can't think of a better fit for a philosophical puzzle game than a murderous Detroit cyborg who shoots first, shoots later, and only stops to think when he's reloading. Croteam neglected to include RoboCop in their well-received first-person puzzler at the time of its release, but that mistake has now been rectified by a modder named 'Ar2R-devil-PiNKy'. Look at that brilliant, ridiculous image up there.

The Talos Principle's RoboCop mod can be found here, which uses the model from the 2014 mobile RoboCop game that apparently existed. Deprived of his typical killing tools, renowned thinker and MRI hazard Alex Murphy has to rely on every ounce of his pulsating cyborg brain. Let's enjoy some more images of him trying to do just that.

He looks so out of his element. I love it. Thanks, Destructoid!

We're a couple of months away from Independent Game Festival Awards #17, and so, in the spirit of competition, some finalists have been announced. The chosen hopefuls are distributed across multiple categories covering excellence in design, narrative, audio and art.

It's a pretty eclectic mix this year. A few PC Gamer writers, myself included, were among the hundreds of others involved in the initial judging process. That early list of entrants contained a wealth of weird and wonderful games. It's nice to see that, in picking the finalists, the jurors have drawn broadly from that pool.

The nominees for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize are an equally diverse in style and scope. In the running for the main award are philosophical puzzler The Talos Principle, turn-based stealth-'em-up Invisible Inc. and the unrelenting survival story This War of Mine.

See the full nominees below. The IGF Awards will take place on 4 March. For more details, head to the IGF's site.

Excellence In Visual Art

• Donut County (Ben Esposito)
• Lumino City (State of Play Games)
• Else Heart.Break() (Niklas …kerblad, Erik Sved ng, et al.)
• Memory of a Broken Dimension (XRA)
• Metamorphabet (Patrick Smith)
• Oquonie (XXIIVV and Kokorobot)

Honorable mentions: Crawl (Powerhoof); Future Unfolding (Spaces of Play); Hyper Light Drifter (Heart Machine); Mini Metro (Dinosaur Polo Club); The Sailor's Dream (Simogo); The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (The Astronauts).

Excellence In Narrative

• 80 Days (Inkle Studios)
• Coming Out Simulator 2014 (Nicky Case)
• Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration (Down to the Wire)
• Pry (Tender Claws)
• This War of Mine (11 Bit Studios)
• Three Fourths Home ([Bracket]Games)

Honorable mentions: Curtain (Llaura, Dreamfeeel); Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) (Upper One Games/E-Line Media); Outer Wilds (Team Outer Wilds); The Fall (Over The Moon); The Sailor's Dream (Simogo); The Talos Principle (Croteam).

Excellence In Design

• 80 Days (Inkle Studios)
• Framed (Loveshack)
• Invisible Inc. (Klei Entertainment)
• Killer Queen (Joshua DeBonis & Nikita Mikros)
• Outer Wilds (Team Outer Wilds)
• The Talos Principle (Croteam)

Honorable mentions: Desert Golfing (Captain Games); Dungeon of the Endless (Amplitude Studios); Endless Legend (Amplitude Studios); Helix (Michael Brough); Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (Steel Crate Games); Mini Metro (Dinosaur Polo Club),

Excellence In Audio

• Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure (SuperChop Games)
• Phonopath (Kevin Regamey)
• Shovel Knight (Yacht Club Games)
• The Sailor's Dream (Simogo Games)
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (The Astronauts)
• Thumper (Drool)

Honorable mentions: Deep Under the Sky (Rich Edwards and Colin Northway); Fotonica (Santa Ragione); Goat Simulator (Coffee Stain Studios); Hotline Miami 2 (Dennaton); Nuclear Throne (Vlambeer); Smash Hit (Mediocre).

Nuovo Award

• Become A Great Artist In Just 10 Seconds (Michael Brough and Andi McClure)
• Bounden (Game Oven)
• Desert Golfing (Captain Games)
• Elegy For A Dead World (Dejobaan Games & Popcannibal)
• How Do You Do It? (Nina Freeman, Emmett Butler, Jonathan Kittaka and Deckman Coss)
• Plug & Play (Mario von Rickenbach and Michael Frei / Etter Studio)
• Rooftop Cop (Stephen Lawrence Clark)
• Tetrageddon Games (Nathalie Lawhead)

Honorable mentions: Curtain (Llaura, Dreamfeeel); Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration (Down to the Wire); International Jetpack Conference (Rob Dubbin and Allison Parrish); Outer Wilds (Team Outer Wiilds); Phonopath (Kevin Regamery); Push Me Pull You (House House).

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

• 80 Days (Inkle Studios)
• Invisible Inc. (Klei Entertainment)
• Outer Wilds (Team Outer Wilds)
• The Talos Principle (Croteam)
• Metamorphabet (Patrick Smith)
• This War of Mine (11 Bit Studios)

Honorable mentions: Donut County (Ben Esposito);Endless Legend (Amplitude Studios); Killer Queen (Joshua DeBonis & Nikita Mikros); Shovel Knight (Yacht Club Games); The Sailor's Dream (Simogo Games); The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (The Astronauts).