A while back I was saying that so many horror games these days are about either babies or Catholicism (and obviously there is some crossover there), and Alice0 pointed out that actually they were mostly about a Protestant’s idea> of Catholicism. This was obviously very correct – as are most things Alice0 says – and we had a short discussion about this and about how it would be nice to have different themes come up more often.

So anyway, Amnesia: Rebirth is a first-person horror adventure game, the third in Frictional Games’ Amnesia series, and it is about babies. I mean, not entirely> about babies. But at any time you can press X to check on your pregnant tummy, caressing it with your two hands and talking to the babe within. This will reduce your fear (both inside and outside the game, because every time I did it it made me laugh a bit). Baby anxiety and so on is at the game’s core, is what I’m saying.

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Do you feel Spelunky 2 seeds have been a bit more generous these past few days? A little less keen to murder you the second you cross the cave’s welcome mat? That’s not luck with the RNG, that’s the blessing of designer Derek Yu. After talking last week about plans to tweak the first few levels, turns out he quietly released a patch doing just that the next day with less fanfare. Surprise!

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Genshin Impact

has a comical number of different types of currency. Unlike most free-to-play games with multiple currencies, Genshin Impact has a bizarrely large number of ways to buy things in-game. It’s okay though, I’ve got you. Let’s explain all the different currency types in Genshin Impact and what they’re useful for.

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Watching Return Of The Obra Dinn‘s creator build the game’s levels is like watching the work of a serial killer who’s obsessed with the detective chasing them, artfully laying out corpses and tweaking gruesome scenes for maximum surprise and mystery. A torso here, a pair of shoes there, and oh the detective will kick themself when they realise what they actually happened here. Lucas Pope has released a time-lapse of modelling the ship, see, condensing three years of work into an hour of video. I do like a good time lapse video, and this is one.

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Donut County

is like Katamari Damacy, but tidier. Instead of rolling everything up into an ever-increasing ball of mess, you’re sucking everything underground until the surface is bare.

As an expanding hole, you eat bricks, chairs, cars, until eventually you’re able to gobble up entire houses. And who doesn’t love some tasty brickwork for their tea?

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Screenshot Saturday Sundays! Unlike certain sea-dwellers on the site, I’ve already caved and cranked up the heating for a long, cold winter – so why not get yourselves toasty too and wrap up for another batch of lovely videogame screenshots? This week: picturesque platforming, sentient seeds, Welsh country horror, and trilobites.

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Between karaoke, crime drama and shareholder meetings, it’s safe to say Yakuza is about so much more than just fighting. But you do punch a lotta blokes in those games. If you wanted to punch a whole lot more, Streets Of Kamurocho reimagines the Sega series as a side-scrolling brawler. Just be quick – the free demake is only available ’til Monday.

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Now here’s some properly “breaking” news. Dennis Gustafsson’s delightfully destructive smash ‘n’ grab Teardown finally has a release date, and will be breaking its way onto Steam’s shelves by the end of the month. After all, what better way to roll into the end of 2020 than smashing it all into tiny, satisfying voxel chunks?

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Somehow, there is still more work to be done on Stardew Valley before Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone is finished farming. Update 1.5 has been ticking along for some time, and now it appears the next big pastoral patch will add split-screen farming for up to four players. While Stardew’s had co-op for some time now, you’ll soon be able to make sure none of your fellow farmhands are fiddling with the crops while you’re not looking.

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Comb your hair, spray that perfume and suit up for a night of high culture, readers – the third edition of the Game Music Festival is underway. Starting last night, you can already tune into a full evening of orchestral rearrangement of scores from Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades, with Larian Studios picking up the mic tonight for a more high-fantasy swing at the concert scene.

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