Receiver is a game with “a lot of buttons. A needless amount.” So says Graham, who also claims that the gun simulator is one of his favourite roleplaying games. A gun simulator is not a first-person shooter, just as QWOP is not a walking simulator, even though in some ways that’s precisely what QWOP is. Receiver isn’t a game about pointing and shooting, it’s a game about mechanisms – the gun as machine, with parts that require understanding and manipulation.

For the next ten hours, Receiver is free as part of the current Humble Bundle End of Summer Sale. Go get.

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Receiver is a first-person shooter made in just seven days. It takes place on a set of grey rooftops sparsely populated by turrets and flying robots. Your goal is to collect cassette tapes from randomised locations, and each one contains a nebbish voice coldly reciting instructions and explanations of the game’s hard-boiled scifi setting.

It’s austere and 3/$5, yet it’s also one of my favourite roleplaying games. Not because of a character creator or a stats sheet or quests. Receiver doesn’t have any of those things. It’s one of my favourite roleplaying games because it has a lot of buttons. A needless amount.

I want all games to have more needless buttons. (more…)

In between being Humble and making games about dangerous rabbits, the handsome folk at Wolfire have made a game with astonishingly complex gun-mechanics. It’s called Receiver, and it’s arguably one of most interesting experiments in the first-person shooting field for some years. Rather than clumsily attempt to precis this, I’ve posted Wolfire’s own mechanics video below. The game has just had a big content update as it finds itself upon the Steams, and there’s a video explaining that, too.

What a lovely day I am having. (more…)