Every week Brendan scours the wastes for an early access title to tame and take home with him. This time, the haphazard space colonies of RimWorld [official site].>

Before I tell you about> RimWorld, let me tell you a story that happened in> RimWorld. It’s about that girl up there, drinking a beer. If you’re not convinced to jump in by the end of this tale, then we have nothing more to talk about. We can’t be friends. Everyone else: we’re still cool. So here it is, the story of Min, a pop star with a privileged upbringing, who is about to come crashing down to earth.

… [visit site to read more]

Zombasite [official site], a living-ish world action RPG from the people behind Depths of Peril, has been in early access for a little while now, so I thought I’d take a look. Even though I just can’t shake the suspicion that it was supposed to be called ‘Zombacide.” … [visit site to read more]

VR games are clogging up Steam’s Early Access list like cholesterol these days. Well, here comes another one. Raw Data [official site] is a survival-mode shooter that pits you (and a friend if you’ve got one) against wave after wave of malevolent robots. Using a laser katana to deflect their shots and your own selection of firearms to shoot back, you have to survive for as long as it takes to download one “geopbyte” of data from Eden Corp’s mainframes. I hope you’re using a good USB stick. Come see the trailer.

… [visit site to read more]

Every week, Brendan forages on the frontiers of Early Access, looking for nourishing games and safety from dark creatures. This week, he founds his own village in Stonehearth.>

It would be easy for me to blame everything that went wrong with my settlement on one foolish worker who always messed things up. But with the hamlet I created, it was not so much a case of “village idiot” than “idiot village”. Welcome to Ballyscum. Don’t trip on the gravestones.

… [visit site to read more]

Back in the days of STALKER and its two sequels, I felt like I was the only games hack who didn’t get sent on a tour of Chernobyl and Pripyat. Those who did visit came back with reports of rain and health worries and mystery meats, then shared photographs of them smiling in front of a decaying Ferris wheel or looking sombre in a Marie Celeste classroom. Perhaps it is best that I never went myself. What a strange thing to be a tourist to. Is any possible response appropriate?

The Chernobyl VR Project, essentially finished but for the time being only available for Oculus Rift, with a more refined version due for both that and Vive a little later, gives me my chance to be a tourist, without the background anxiety about background radiation. … [visit site to read more]

A fair few people said they wanted a little tour of my Subnautica [official site] Volcano Base so I’ve made a quick video to show it off – especially the garden which is packed with bioluminescent plantlife!

… [visit site to read more]

After a couple hours of tinkering and revising, I’ve almost got a decent amusement park in Parkitect, Texel Raptor’s pseudo-remake of Rollercoaster Tycoon. Most of the rides are full or at least half-full, I have a cool rollercoaster or two that are drawing a lot of customers, and I’m turning a handsome profit every month. It’s a good-enough park, and the customers who walk back out through the gates feel like they got what they came for, but with a little more care and convenience it could be great. Not unlike Parkitect itself.

… [visit site to read more]

When a new space combat simulator looks as handsome as House of the Dying Sun [official site], that’s reason enough to raise an intrigued eyebrow. When it can evoke memories of TIE Fighter within minutes of loading it up, that’s reason enough to raise a celebratory fist to the torpedo-streaked heavens. But when all of the glories of its atmospheric non-atmospheric combat are packed into a few short missions, it’s also fair to raise some concerns.

… [visit site to read more]

Few sci-fi games embrace the menacing strangeness and indifference of the universe as you find it in Kubrick, Tarkovsky, or even Scott’s original Alien. Space, and the far future, tend to be familiar analogues to the everyday conflicts we see around us. The aliens are never too> alien, and new worlds are never too> new.

The Solus Project maroons the player beyond the outskirts of comprehension. It’s a survival game with a little more guidance and sense of purpose that you’ll find in the million other survival games jostling for attention on Early Access. It’s also about a hundred times more polished, which is fitting for a game fast-approaching its full release. But its gorgeous graphics and clever diegetic interface are all in the service of a story of isolation and suspense on a deserted alien world.

… [visit site to read more]

Hello everybody! Rob is away so Brendan has been drafted in to prematurely evaluate this week. He has decided to go into deep space (again). Only this time, he has a team of cohorts helping him out in PULSAR: Lost Colony. Will the crew become famous throughout the galaxy? Or will they die in a fiery blaze of unimportance? Read on to find out!>

… [visit site to read more]