There’s just one week left until a borderline-biblical plague of developers descend upon Birmingham to showcase their up-and-coming games to all. This great gathering shall be known as EGX 2018 and starts on September 20th, running until the 23rd.

There’s going to be hundreds of games on show there across all platforms, featuring developers of all shapes and sizes – both physically and business-wise. While I’ll be sadly missing out on the fun (someone’s got to man the news desk), here’s a few choice PC games that’ll be at the show, and everyone should be checking out. (more…)

Disco Elysium (formerly known as No Truce With The Furies) is shaping up to be ridiculously good. It’s an upcoming RPG that slips you into the shoes of a detective in a hardboiled urban fantasy world, where combat happens through dialogue and your internal monologue can be both a hindrance and a help. Your skills have their own personalities and sometimes wrestle control away from you, while you can choose to internalise certain thoughts, thus changing who your character is and what they can do.

It’s absolutely fascinating, and I mean it when I say the hour or so I’ve played also contains the best writing I’ve ever seen in a video game (several other RPSers are thrilled by it too, as discussed on our recent podcast). To find out more about Disco Elsyium’s special sauce, I sat down with design and writing lead Robert Kurvitz at Rezzed to chat about its pen and paper origins, encouraging tenacious behaviour, rewarding players who want to fail and why most other RPGs do quests wrong. (more…)

The combat engine is so often the heart of an RPG, even in the tabletop sphere. Characters shuffle around a battle-grid, attacks are tabulated, armour classes are defined, hit points are shaved away until only one side is left standing. Not so for upcoming police-drama RPG Disco Elysium. In their latest development blog, Studio ZA/UM go into detail on combat in the game including why it’s so rare, and how deeply intertwined it is with the dialogue and thought-inventory systems.

(more…)

It s a podcast special! Astrid Johnson takes us through the halls of London game show EGX Rezzed, on a search for oddities and weirdness. And she finds plenty of both. There s Stereopolis, a game projected onto a disc of frosted glass, or Wobble Garden, which is played entirely by twanging a bunch of springy door stoppers (pictured above).

It s an overview of the show for those who couldn’t make it this year. We also learn about the plane tinkering of Above, two-player sausage-dog cooperation in Phogs, and Disco Elysium, an isometric RPG featuring an alcoholic detective having an unconscious argument with his lizard brain. And then there’s the tale of Fernando’s chicken… (more…)

It s a podcast special! Astrid Johnson takes us through the halls of London game show EGX Rezzed, on a search for oddities and weirdness. And she finds plenty of both. There s Stereopolis, a game projected onto a disc of frosted glass, or Wobble Garden, which is played entirely by twanging a bunch of springy door stoppers (pictured above).

It s an overview of the show for those who couldn’t make it this year. We also learn about the plane tinkering of Above, two-player sausage-dog cooperation in Phogs, and Disco Elysium, an isometric RPG featuring an alcoholic detective having an unconscious argument with his lizard brain. And then there’s the tale of Fernando’s chicken… (more…)

Disco Elysium is my secret side infatuation in 2018. First the game was operating under the name “No Truce With The Furies” which the devs didn’t think stood out enough (!!) and then each new look I get at the game reveals a more complicated and exciting RPG about crime solving and I just want to be playing it now. Not even for first play-though; I want to be on my third play-through where I’m deliberately trying to break the game. Bonus: there’s an original score by the rock n roll band British Sea Power. What isn’t to like here? Well, depending on how upset you are by complicated moral choices, this new set of skills listed for player development might be your cut-off point — because it gets dark.

(more…)

While debate over its recent title-change remains heated, the upcoming alternate-earth detective RPG Disco Elysium continues to be a game well worth talking about for far less spurious reasons. For example, the highly creative skill system at the heart of the game.

ZA/UM Studio have already given us a peek at the Intellect skills, defining the mental faculties of your character, from their ability to recall minutia to identifying lies through your own knack for improvised dramatics. Psyche skills are a far more esoteric ball-game, as these stats determine your emotional makeup, and may even keep other stats in check.

(more…)