So many are the dignities heaped upon Beyond Blue, that it’s somewhat hard to get at the game beneath. When I began playing, I knew that it had been made in association with the filmmakers behind the Blue Planet II series, and in consultation with a host of marine scientists. I knew that it promised a sober and ultra-realistic exploration of the oceans, and that the Flaming Lips were on the soundtrack. I knew that it would feature whales in some capacity.

I didn’t actually know what it was, you know, as a game. That was fine, though. The sea and its contents are possibly the most potent preoccupation in my overly-preoccupied life, and so I was open to whatever these people wanted to sprinkle on me. The answer, it transpires, was a very simple diving simulator, about swimming up to a range of extremely realistic marine animals and clicking on them.

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I’m pretty sure I skipped over Combat Core on release, and forgot to slip it into the “up to 3 friends” section of the “this looks good but” pile. I am a fool.

Turns out it’s pretty great. I’ve not played a Smash Brothers game since the gamecube, despite the daily racket as everyone played it outside the RPS treehouse over the last year. So I may not be the best person to judge, and the famously level-headed fans of that series might politely object, but it hit me in a similar place. Constantly, right in the face. It is frantic>.

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Like an excitable tiger with a lisp, critically-acclaimed horror game Devotion bounced off Steam before I got to play it. It’s a shame because I was really looking forward to seeing what developer Red Candle Games was going to do after I was scared pantsless by the studio’s first game.

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Squirrels: they’re hiding something. No matter how cute they look, they’re keeping something from us and maybe it’s more than just food. Perhaps you’ll see some of their secrets in the new demo for Nuts, a game about surveilling the goings-on of squirrels. By day, carefully place your cameras. By night, sit back to watch where the blighters go. It’s a first-person puzzle game of sorts, about the daily cycle of tweaking camera locations to follow the furry fiends, but also has a story about squirrely secrets. I’m interested.

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Just in case you’re in need of more [cms-block] for your calendar, indie stream extravaganza The Guerrilla Collective is back for a second day of announcements. If you missed what happened yesterday, you can catch up on everything that happened on Day One of the Guerrilla Collective by clicking that link there, but here’s everything that went down on Day Two.

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One problem with unfathomable and unspeakable horrors in video games, right, is that they’re designed by people. Oh the human brain can do weird and awful, no doubt, but it’s bad at things it can’t itself grasp. So I’m quite into how newly-announced roguelikelike action-platformer Source Of Madness uses machine learning and procedural generation to spit out its “Lovecraftian” levels and monsters, which do have a pleasing weirdness to them. A bit like if you let Google DeepDream munch up a load of dogs and landscapes then spit them back out into a game.

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It is time, once again, to scream about Skate Story. Sam Eng’s crystalline kickflipper made a fleeting appearance during this weekend’s second Guerrilla Collective stream-a-thon. The new trailer flaunted more of the game’s stunning concrete underworlds while laying out the technical footwork that’ll get you there. To paraphrase a truly well-worn phrase, one doesn’t simply ollie their way into hell – and lord, do I long for the day when I can carve my way into Skate Story’s abyss.

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It feels very 2020 to wish for a vast annihilating cylinder to flatten the world, but goodness me I am so up for The Eternal Cylinder. The latest game from ACE Team, the makers of Zeno Clash and Rock Of Ages, is about cute critters trying to escape a monolothic planet-pulverising tube rolling over the landscape. They’ll eat other life to gain new abilities aiding their escape, which sounds fun but… I’m still in the stage of being wowed by how wild it looks. ACE Team’s surreal style is such a treat, and a new trailer shows off more of the weird life we’ll meet.

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It’s all getting a bit cramped in the World Of Darkness, but it seems there’s space to squeeze in at least one more wolf. Putting the other White Wolf behind them, two former Witcher devs today announced Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart Of The Forest – an upcoming tale of anger, activism and global warming as told through the lens of the big bad wolf. Not that any of that’s in the teaser, mind. We’ll just have to make do with this rather lovely owl.

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Screenshot Saturday Sundays! In the midst of this hectic, kinda-sorta-not-E3 storm, perhaps you’ll join me in taking an afternoon away from the hype. Grab a cuppa, pop open your laptops, and let’s find some gems buried behind the glitz and glamour of professionally-curated showcases. This week: the rat-man rises, electrifying ghosts, an eternity in landscapes and the eye of terror.

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