“When we’re done with you, your fingers will be like gods.”

That is just one of roughly a trillion gems from Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing, which doesn’t really teach typing so much as it uses the act of inputting words into a computer as a loose framework magnificently bizarre insanity. You might remember Icarus Proudbottom and his best spirit owl pal from John’s favorite game of all time (it’s about poo), but this one unfurls a yarn of a rather different nature (it’s not about poo). Sometimes there is typing. Other times? RPG stat sheets, virtual pet minigames, loving odes to the tilde key, copious profanity, and a sinister> end-of-game plot twist. Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing probably won’t teach you to type, but it might help you learn to love again.

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Papers, Please is a pretty effective way of having you take a look around yourself, and feel damned grateful for what you’ve got. Unless you’re reading this in a country for which the dystopian themes of Papers Please’s oppressive border controls and poverty-stricken workers are all too familiar, in which case please have some of my Western guilt. You’re a border guard, and your job is to either let or not let people through. And that really is it. Which makes it kind of weird that it’s so utterly compelling that I’ve overworked today by three hours so far, and don’t seem to be stopping. Here’s wot I think:>

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A quick eye prod at the Steam Hardware Survey shows me that the stupid, hateful, and barely useable Windows 8 is the second most popular OS on there. 13.34% of those that responded to the survey use it. For you precious few (actually a healthy chunk), I have arranged a treat: a look at Project Spark. Microsoft’s really rather charming attempt to do a Little Big Planet-esque and Gameglobeish build your own game thing, is the only thing I’ve ever seen that made me want to have access to Windows 8. As Adam showed earlier on, the community has already cloned plenty of games and genres to show the platform’s capabilities, and now it’s the developer’s turn. Thirty Imperial Minutes of tools and tips are below. (more…)

Burnstar is a forthcoming puzzle game in which you are a heroic little firestarter: “In Burnstar your goal is to burn vast swathes of the environment – it’s okay, you’re on a mission.” Yeah, that’s the excuse I use, too. Basically: you have to run around the board with one of four uniquely-powered little dudes, and then set off explosives at the correct points to solve the puzzle. Sounds simple, but seeing it in action makes me think it’s actually going to be a brain-frazzler.

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Strategy hopefuls Camel101 send word of their Kickstarter for Black Talons, which hopes to get us involved in a pacey, all-encompassing sci-fi RTS. They say this: “Black Talons is a real tactics game set in a distant future, where you play as a mercenary commander. You’ll have under your lead every single detail of war: logistics, equipment and diplomacy, which are as important as leadership and cold blood in battle.” They’re pitching as a real-time addition to the tactics spectrum, with elements of XCOM and Mechwarrior: Mercenaries. The first videos of it in action are below, for your edification. (more…)

I own a mountain bike, but I can’t really tell you if MTBFreeride’s downhill riding fun is as accurate as it claims to be. My bike has been sat in John’s back garden for the past two years, so really if the bike in the game moves even one inch then it doesn’t match my experiences. No, this game claims that bikes move down hills at high speed, bumping over jumps and whizzing past trees. Where’s the crawling vines wrapping around the body? Where’s the creeping rust? Where are all the phonecalls from John, his wife, and his dad threatening me? No, this really doesn’t feel like mountain biking as I understand it. Consequently, it’s a lot of fun. (more…)

Jim and John have been playing the incredible top-down sci-fi roguelike, Teleglitch. They really do like it. Read on for why, below. (more…)

The mod news ticker is all tick-tick-tick-tack-tack-tack-i-will-kill-you-in-your-sleep. I usually don’t pay it that much attention, because it’s not plugged in and doesn’t actually exist, but now it’s clacking away and demanding that we should pay more attention to Mount & Blade’s mod scene. While I don’t imagine the High School Of The Dead mod it prints out is in anyway representative of the scene’s usual output, it’s silly enough to make me want to investigate more. I shall. Meanwhile, H.O.T.D. is a mod that brings high school pupils, zombies, cities, and civil unrest into the base game’s feudal war nonsense. There is some footage below. Also, can someone recommend an exorcist who deals in imaginary electronics? The news ticker is now spewing blood and doing something horrible> with a crucifix. (more…)

I shouldn’t find the phrase “middle of nowhere” funny, but it my head it is attached to being lost in Wales on holiday with my parents, and so takes on a faint whiff of the ludicrous. That’s perhaps a little too idiosyncratic a reaction to the forthcoming survival horror game Middle Of Nowhere, but it’s an honest one. The game itself has little to do with Wales, but plenty to do with families and being lost. The developers explain: “You are Isaac, a widower with only only priority in your life, your daughter Emily. She is an unusual girl who suffers from a severe case of parasomnia, claiming to have premonitions of a lost world called Nowhere. Throughout the years her condition has worsened, prompting you to seek medical assistance. But the results of the encounter were far from expected. You find yourself in the middle of Nowhere, a beautiful yet troubled land filled with horrors that far exceed the confines of reality; and worst of all… Emily is missing.”

Yikes! Details below. (more…)

I always feel like I’m playing catch-up on Monday mornings. Game news doesn’t stop, so I have to hop back and make sure we didn’t miss anything. But after drinking irradiated orange juice, I accidentally overshot the weekend by about three weeks. So here I am in the past, where everything is black and white and people are riding dinosaurs. Instead of abusing my position as a person unstuck in time, I am going to blog about Starbound. RPS missed this first video of Chucklefish’s space adventure game, so I can post it without causing a paradox and ripping the universe a new timehole. (more…)