It has been a decade since the original Killing Floor mod for Unreal Tournament, which was released in much-improved standalone form in 2009. It’s one of those games that quickly turns some people off: the visuals were a bit shonky, it was essentially built on repetition, and the less said about the Dick van Dyke voice-acting the better. But for devotees, Killing Floor is one of those games that stealthily racks up several hundred hours on Steam and swiftly becomes a fixture among like-minded mates, a precision blastathon where the repetition is the whole point.

You got better; the game got deadlier. And Killing Floor 2 [official site] is as straightforward a reload as you’re ever likely to see.>

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As luck would have it, I’ll be in Paris right when monstrous hordes are due to overrun the city. Tripwire Interactive have announced plans to release Killing Floor 2 [official site] onto Steam Early Access on April 21st, and I’ll be on the look out for – wait is that a lady with blue cyberhair in that screenshot – for myself?

The original was a barrel of murderfun, and I’m quite keen to return for more first-person face-shooting. Especially as one of the sequel’s big selling points is that faces (and other bodyparts) will explode in a squillion different gory ways.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Girls Aloud song Biology isn’t just a piece of music to me, it’s a landscape. This because of the hours spent playing it over and over in Audiosurf [Steam page], an obstacle-dodging score attack game that captivated everyone in my social circle (and RPS) in 2008.

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Look, it’s the last day of term and we’re allowed to bring in whatever we want. Pip’s batting an avocado about, John’s cradling what appears to be a small hairless cat with opposable thumbs, Graham and Adam are kicking some kind of spherical egg between themselves, and me, I’ve brought in a video to watch. It’s about zombies and monsters and big guns and cool swords totally murdering zombies like schhhhing!> in Killing Floor 2 and before you ask, yes, my mum did say it’s fine if I watch it okay.

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Screened is a fiendish little free platformer in the vein of Super Meat Boy with a scratchy, itchy post-punk soundtrack that’s a perfect match: both are like fingernails run down a blackboard, yet both unavoidably draw you in.

The game was built for the Ludum Dare 31 game jam, the theme of which was “the entire game on one screen”. Screened spins its single screen out into multiple levels by moving around obstacles and barriers every time you reach the exit, with each new spin on the screen throwing new challenges into your face whilst laughing at your incompetence and displeasure.

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I do enjoy how Killing Floor’s monsters look like people in Halloween costumes, the sort of thing one could make with a few hours and some household supplies. Given me a black bodysuit, some tights, cotton wool, pipe cleaners, socks, and wire coat hangers, and I’ll make you a Crawler that’ll win you pity in your office costume contest. Unsurprisingly, Killing Floor gets into Halloween in a big way.

The co-op survival FPS’s annual spooky event launched yesterday, and KF is also part of Steam’s ten-game Free Weekend Weekend, so all and sundry can come fight the horrible, horrible dolls that are murderous and horrible.

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Defense Grid 2 sees you building elaborate mazes of mounted guns which shoot, burn, zap, freeze and otherwise slaughter vast armies of dumb aliens who are attempting to steal ‘cores’ from a techno-thingy at the centre of the level. In other words, it’s tower defence. It’s also the sequel to one of the most-acclaimed and charming tower defence games around. Privately invested into existence after a failed Kickstarter last year, it was released on Steam last week. Here’s wot I think.> … [visit site to read more]

We’re seven years old! (Actually, we were seven years old last month, but we’ve never been much for punctuality.) And so by way of celebration we’ve curated the latest weekly Humble Bundle, and that means we’ve chosen some of our most beloved indie games from the past seven years for the Pay What You Want sale. An esoteric bunch, but so very beautiful, all. If only there were room for all the delights of those many wonderful years. As ever, some of the money goes to charity, too: we chose EFF and Medecins Sans Frontieres. Find out more, below, or simply click over the the bundle itself.

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Team Meat, makers of Super Meat Boy, have announced their intent to become an indie game developer. What does that mean? That’s my cruel way of saying that the two-person team have put their previously announced new game Mew-Genics on hold, and released a fuzzy, live-action trailer for a new game called A Voyeur For September, about which there are no details other than that it’s a “live action stealth game”. That video is embedded below.

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Summer has arrived in London, and it’s pretty glorious all right. But I say that as someone on the third floor with a nice south-facing window and a cat dozing in the sunlight. Parts of London are today, I say exaggerating only an awful lot, Hellish. You hop on the Central Line during rush hour tonight and you’ll see. So where better to set a level in a co-op horror shooter?

Killing Floor‘s annual summer update has arrived, with goodies including a new Underground map and a new playable mutant-murdering lady. And, as they cannily do with big updates, developers Tripwire have also launched a few new paid DLC packs and put the game on sale.

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