Hey, here’s a local multiplayer game I’ve just invented: call a pal over to your computer, open Notepad, then whoever is the first to type their name correctly in one uninterrupted block wins. My design philosophy, you might guess, is heavy on shoving.

Far more civil and certainly prettier than my silly idea is Duel42 [official site], a free two-player competitive game which sees two players fight a pistol duel on the same keyboard. Their keys to pace, duck, aim, and shoot are selected at random, leading to a whole lot of confusion and scrabbling and, at the very least, jostling.

… [visit site to read more]

When our Cara’s (well, the Cara we borrow’s) globe-trotting ‘Embed With’ series took her to Tokyo, she had a good look at Downwell [official site]. Made by Ojiro Fumoto, it’s a Spelunky-inspired mobile platformer about someone with guns for shoes who travels deep down a well, fighting monsters and collecting treasure.

Soon after, Devolver Digital chucked Ojiro a wodge of cash, and now it’s an IGF finalist in the Student Showcase, it’s coming to PC too, Devolver say it’s due this year, and we’re getting around to posting about it. There, we’re all caught up. On with the post!

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Oh! We never said what Fable Legends [official site] even is. Microsoft announced a PC version during their big Windows 10 announce-o-rama in January, but it became just another bullet point in a huge newsblast. So. While your typical Fable game is a sprawling open-world, story-driven RPG, Fable Legends is a multiplayer dungeon-crawling action-RPG where up to 4 players can band together in co-op against forces controlled by a villainous player (or AI in any of these roles). And, it was announced yesterday, it’ll be free-to-play.

… [visit site to read more]

Apparently contrary forces, but suddenly complimentary. Are AMD and Nvidia about to become the yin and yang of the PC gaming world? Possibly. Rumour has it graphicsy bits of that DirectX 12 thing that arrives with Windows 10 will allow for asynchronous multi-GPU (graphics processing unit). In other words, you’ll be able to use AMD and Nvidia cards in the same rig at the same time to make games run faster. As rumours go, this is pretty spectacular. But it does rather remind me. Multi-GPU is basically a bad idea. Here’s why. … [visit site to read more]

A Guild Wars 2 [official site] patch will introduce a first-person camera mode to the MMO on 10 March.

As far as I recall the only times you get a truly unimpeded view of the landscape is when you trigger the cinematic sequences associated with activating a vista point (I have a lot of screenshots from those vistas).

After the patch is released zooming in fully while playing will switch the camera to first-person view. It’s not intended as a special option for a particular scenario, just an alternative view. This is pleasing news to me and will necessitate my return to Tyria for the equivalent of a tourist trip. I will take a sandwich and explore some areas and take all the screenshots.

… [visit site to read more]

Every now and then, like for instance whenever we communicate, Kieron Gillen and I disagree about things. One of the things we both think the other is most wrong about is Limbo. Kieron wrongly thinks it’s an unfair game, echoing the failings of Rick Dangerous and its ilk by forcing you to fail. I rightly think it was a statement, an expression through these enforced failures, that crafts a uniquely interesting experience. Oscura [Steam link], despite trying to be a lot like Limbo, is not doing that. It’s doing Kieron’s thing.>

… [visit site to read more]

Even a few years ago, the idea of getting to watch assorted Looking Glass and Irrational alumni play and talk through revered sci-fi immersive sim System Shock 2 sounded like an absurd fantasy. Twitch and Twitter, whatever else they might be throwing at the world, have broken down so many barriers. For instance: two of hours of System Shock 2, with live commentary provided by the likes of BioShock’s Ken Levine, Gone Home’s Steve Gaynor and Ultima Underworld’s Paul Neurath (not to mention all the other landmark games those guys worked on). … [visit site to read more]

I suppose we do post about Cities: Skylines [official site] a fair bit, but that’s partly because it’s a big chunk of (current) future hopes for a whole genre. Me, I’m well catered-for as I mostly play games in thriving genres like ‘shooting men’s faces’ and ‘dreamy wandering around surreal landscapes’. But with Cities XXL a wash, a minor update spun off into a so-called sequel, what else is coming soon for people who dream of building grand cities? So here, have a trailer going over Skylines’ mod support, which’ll let you make things to build.

… [visit site to read more]

The last few times we looked at top-down sci-fi survival-strategy (is that a thing? Genres are becoming so tricky lately) Rimworld it was merely flirting with the idea of being genuinely playable, but recent buzz had it that the Rimworld was now inhabitable at last. It doesn’t take much to convince me to starve to death on an alien world, so I thought I’d check in. … [visit site to read more]

We oohed and aahed over the revelation of Hunger [Hunger] in the RPS Treehouse, circling around and holding our hands up to the teaser trailer as if it were a beautiful little fire warming our spirits. It looks like the sort of Eastern European stop-motion short you might find on Channel 4 late at night years ago, coupling a beautiful miniature-ish, dollhouse-y look with a malevolent atmosphere and dreadful monsters in an undersea world called The Maw.

It’s an sneak-o-puzzler still early in development, at the prototype stage, but come see this:

… [visit site to read more]