What are you playing this weekend? No, shut up. I don’t want to hear it. Call up some friends, get them over, tell them to bring snacks and drink, and play Sportsfriends until Fanta drips down your giggling chins. The bundle of J.S Joust and other ace local multiplayer games finally arrived on PC last night, after yonks of only being found at games events (well, and PlayStations, later). They are great and this is what you’re playing this weekend and no, I don’t even want to hear it.

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And just like that, the year is over, leaving us a year closer to death, and a year richer in experience. There’s something gorgeously wistful about endings, really. No matter what kind they are. Between you and me, I have a habit of never truly finishing a game. I always leave it just before the last boss, the last fight before the curtains close. It lets me pretend that the adventure isn’t over and I can go back. What about you? Do you have any rituals to deal with endings? (Also, Merry Christmas and have a great New year, everyone.) This week’s bloody adorable plushie is from Melody.

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I’m looking forward to inXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera, like nearly everyone else who works at RPS. The difference is that I never played Planescape: Torment, the game Tides aims to spiritually succeed. Instead my interest comes from the other end of its name, since I’ve been playing Numenera, the Monte Cook pen-and-paper RPG that gives this new game its setting and some of its mechanics.

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I think I could be a little bit in love with Zombie Vikings, which chucks bearded Nordic glory out of the window in favor of something wonderfully, messily … different>. Described as a “four-player co-op stab-you-in-a-gut-a-thon,” it’s the story of how Loki steals Odin’s last remaining eye and how the All-Father, embarrassed and determined to be not-blind again, summons four of the “most fearsome Zombie Vikings” to retrieve his missing organ.

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Come on dear, come tell your Auntie Alice what you’ve been up to. Oh I know, Auntie Alice is a hunched old maid and her hands are withered like bark, but don’t mind the leaves in her hair. Don’t. Don’t mind them. Don’t mind. Don’t even… pretend they’re not there. It’s fine. Come on, scooch up and tell me: what are you playing this weekend? Failing that, write your response on a leaf and gently blow it to the wind; I’ll find it.

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RPS, I have been having a good time. An extremely good time. I mean a good time in every way: A new gay dating sim has snuck into existence, it is called Coming Out On Top, and it is funny, sexy, nervewracking, tense, charming… and it has fully naked, good-looking dudes in it. Who kiss each other! And do other hot 18+ things. Also there is a goldfish who keeps talking to you. The goldfish is a little overbearing. But we can get past the goldfish.

Tune in after the jump to read about a full release of the gay dude dating sim Coming Out On Top.

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Dwarf Fortress updates come in two flavours: those that impress non-players with changes to world generation or patch notes about spitting dwarves, and those that impressive experienced players by changing some small UI or control thing in a small but significant way. Version 0.40.20 is the latter, because it allows you to set job priorities and it makes it so dwarves will regularly change activity in order to complete whatever is most important.

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Give up on trying to find your way around Bernband‘s neon alien futurecity. Give in to wandering, see where your tippy-tappy feet and the turbolifts take you. One minute’s wandering might take you through a bustling club, over a bridge with hovercars zipping past, to a horrible trumpet performance, then bumping into an alien weeing in a corner. Variety is the spice of life, They say.>

Graham: Science fiction says that people living in crowded, loud, futurist cities will turn to virtual reality in order to visit peaceful forests and remember what the sky looked like. What it won’t tell you is that the reverse is true, too: I can see trees outside my window, but I long for a crowded metropolis full of strange aliens and jazz bars.

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I used to love the Grow games, that series of hyper-cute, hyper-inventive free puzzlers/animation treats from Japanese dev On, aka Eyezmaze. Then I grew up and decided I hated them. Put away childish things and all that.

Nah, ‘course not, I’ve just been busy trying to grow another lifeform. I was both saddened and relieved to discover that On hasn’t exactly been prolific while I wasn’t paying attention, with the most recent release being February’s Grow Clay. Which is, needless to say, lovely>. … [visit site to read more]

There was one very good Alien game this year and in Deadnaut, we almost had another. While Isolation acts as a straight sequel, pitting a Ripley against a familiar creature in a familiar place, Deadnaut is about the horror of the unknown. With no license and no restraints, it is free to populate its derelict vessels with randomised beasties, ranging from the possessed corpses of former crew members (themselves alien) to skittering tentacled terrors. And ghosts. Alien ghosts on dead spaceships.>

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