It’s interesting to note that while we absolutely did once have too many WW2 games, and later there certainly were too many zombie-based games, there can never be too many post-apocalyptic survival games. Why? Science can’t yet explain, and theologians have only offered impetuous shrugs. But still they come, and still there’s room. The latest attempt to join this grim-futured desperation for survival is Impact Winter, pitching on Kickstarter for 95,000. It’s an RPG from Mojo Bones, it’s very snowy, and best of all, you have an android companion.

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You might think yourself a real Top Gun, the next Dan Dare, or a veritable Buck Rogers. Kerbal Space Program has been out long enough for you, oh mighty pilot, to master space flight and possibly get a bit cocky. Don’t worry, the latest update has added new things to cock up. Your space centre is destructible now, for starters. It also bulks out the Career Mode a little with new strategies that might help you but can backfire, like unpaid interns. KSP’s on sale for a few days to celebrate.

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart.>

This column is something I wrote early this year and posted on my own blog. It was about the way in which depression affected how I played Dota 2. I don’t tend to write about my private life beyond daft anecdotes so it felt a little unsettling but a lot of people got in touch to share their own experiences. I get the impression that it has been a helpful thing to have posted as, generally, depression is not something that’s particularly easy to talk about. With that in mind I’m posting a slightly updated version here so that it can be part of Dote Night and so that, if it is at all helpful for anyone, they can find it easily.

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Moondrop have released a trailer for their puzzle game Amphora and it’s stunning. I was going to say it was the most beautiful thing I’d seen all day except that during the course of writing this article I watched Alfonso Ribeiro finally doing the Carlton Dance on Dancing With The Stars.

So! Amphora is a puzzle game which is coming out in November. The art style is inspired by shadow theatre, but the way it’s been coloured also puts me in mind of stained glass windows. Also quilling, which is a way of arranging thin scrolls of coloured paper to make pictures.

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Development company Cyanide have long been purveyors of interesting-but-guff fantasy games. Styx: Master of Shadows turns out to be their least-interesting-but-most-good. It’s a stealth game in which you play a goblin – the Styx of the title – sneaking around the Tower of Akenash, a medieval city built so high among the branches of “the World-Tree” that ledges stretch down into a cloudy abyss.

It’s also a strict> stealth game: one in which triggering combat means almost certain death, and where you’ll spend your time mastering the shadows by hiding in them rather than pouncing from them.

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Can you imagine having to tell all the players of an MMO that Christmas is cancelled? That there will be no twinkly lights in pine trees or fine dustings of snow offering the chance to feel festive while simultaneously escaping your nearest and dearest? That actually you’re not only cancelling Christmas but Hallowe’en as well? That’s what WildStar developers Carbine have had to do.

The logical lore explanation for all this would have been, like, “Some Mordesh dude in a pinstripe suit tried to alleviate his festive ennui by poaching Christmas* and doing it himself. Everything went tits up, no-one could find the Aurin rag doll lady who fixes this kind of thing and thus the holidays are off and it’s probably Tim Burton’s fault, not ours”. Alas, they didn’t go with that explanation.

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Do you remember Exile? Created by Peter Irvin and Jeremy ‘Thrust’ Smith, it’s the game that I was playing while the rest of the world was on a Metroid binge. Environmental Station Alpha is an exquisite power-up and platform game that reminds me of those happy days of yore. It uses its pixel art style to delicious effect, with particle effects a-plenty and brilliantly bizarre creature designs. A demo is available right now and it’s as good an example of its type as I’ve played for a good while.

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As a lifelong fan of Jessica Fletcher (my Livejournal icon used to be a picture of Columbo wondering WWJD what would Jessica do?) Missive appears to have been tuned to activate my keyword excitement gland*. It involves a typewriter and a murder mystery

Missive is a Twine entry to this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition. You have a week to solve the murder of Henry Astor, the previous owner of a typewriter you received as a gift. I found myself playing it through three times after being drawn into solving the puzzles so thought I’d flag it up here. Y’know, in case you fancied role playing as a daytime TV amateur sleuth.

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“This story is dedicated to all those otakus who fight against injustice and corruption every day of their lives”, opens Dog of Dracula 2. Don’t worry if you missed Dog of Dracula 1. The intro explains that after overthrowing the tyrant who banned condiments, most of the world is now jacked into the cyberbahn under megacorp monitoring. It ends: “2000 A.D. Nuevo Tokyo is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E.”

Some of that might sound familiar. Dog of Dracula 2 is a free interactive novel bulging with references to anime, ’90s pop culture, junk food, video games, movies, and all that jazz. It’s funny, odd, and self-aware enough to make that work far better than it might sound.

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance makes medieval life look so pleasant in its latest trailer. Developers Warhorse have built something beautiful in CryEngine, and are showing off its fields, ponds, meadows, sheep, villages, and taverns in little slices of life. How splendid. They don’t show any of the warfare the open-world not-fantasy RPG’s actually built around, though. Still, just imagine men with swords hitting each other in the background of these tranquil scenes. Soldiers march between the pines. The fisherman stares intently at his rod, hoping the two blokes duking it out ignore him. A severed head flies past the praying lady’s window, briefly obscuring the moon.

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