Hello chum! Sit down and have a nice glass of water and a pack of Bombay mix. That’s how we greet our closest friends on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week, best pals John and Brendan discuss how friendship is handled in videogames, and what characters felt most like close buddies. John felt a kinship with Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins, and sees Lydia from Skyrim as Wilson the football from Castaway. Whereas Brendan felt a habitual closeness to the undead woman in Dark Souls who sold him poisonous arrows. Takes all sorts, really.

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The wonderfully colourful and funny Chuchel, the new adventure game from Samorost and Botanicula makers Amanita Design, is now out. Our John gushed praise in his Chuchel review but who can remember as far back as yesterday? “A tour de force of animation”, he said. “Daft happiness at its purest, titrated into gaming”, he said. For a game this great, a reminder is warranted. Ah, I laugh just seeing this angry little squiggle. Look: (more…)

Chuchel is a tour de force of animation, every scene so vibrant and hilarious, colourful and manic, the slightest tweaks in character facial expressions eliciting guffaws. Every new scene is a glorious delight just to look at, before you even start playing with it. And then, as you click on every element on the screen, delightful, silly and gorgeous things happen. This is a game where I find myself trying to work out what is the correct solution to any given puzzle, just so I can avoid clicking on it before I’ve clicked on everything else. I exhaust every repeated joke until it loops, don’t mind when they do, and call people in from other rooms to see the funniest moments. Chuchel is, beyond belief, wonderful.

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