My favourite video game series this year has been a steady flow of wee hidden object games with names like 100 Hidden Birds and 100 Hidden Aliens. Pay a quid and you get an illustration with 100 new thingies to find. That’s it. That’s enough for me.
Watch out all you crafters and hoarders: a Cyberpunk 2077 bug is causing players’ saves to become corrupted if the files become too large. It seems crafting in particular can help save files grow to dangerous sizes. CD Projekt Red are advising players to “use an older save file to continue playing and try to keep a lower amount of items and crafting materials” to avoid the problem, because once your files are corrupted, there’s no getting them back.
[cms-block]
Door 21 on the RPS Advent Calendar is all covered in carved runes, and the planks look like they’ve come from a few different trees – even if they’re now all part of the same door. Sneaking through it might be the way to go, but honestly, you’re free to boot it down and set it on fire if you’d prefer.
I’ve often heard whispers of macabre accounts stemming from Malay and Indonesian folklore – which share some overlaps in supernatural beliefs – as told to me by friends and family alike. Perhaps it’s just sheer proximity to these Southeast Asian cultures that makes these spooks feel more intimate and corporeal, but the spirits in these tales are, to me, more eerie than most garden-variety ghouls. Take, for instance, how even the mere whiff of the frangipani flower can unnerve me, as it’s a scent commonly associated with the pontianak>, the vengeful spirit of a pregnant woman who was violently murdered.
In the Indonesian horror game DreadOut 2, these spectres are known as kuntilanak> (as they’re referred to in Indonesia). These long-haired, howling spooks are every bit as vicious and frightful as I had imagined them to be, and plenty more such Indonesian ghosts lurk in the city you’ll spend the bulk of your time in in DreadOut 2.
Beach farm! Beach farm! Beach farm! I might just be overexcited because I’m playing a lot of Stardew Valley at the moment, but developer ConcernedApe has revealed the game’s next update will come with a brand new farmstead – the beach! It might sound like a nice little seaside getaway, but this farm seems like a tough one to get started with – mostly because sprinklers won’t work on that pesky sand.
If you fancy even more of a challenge, ConcernedApe says update 1.5 is bringing some “Advanced Game Options” too, making community centre bundles and mine rewards a little more interesting.
Whomst among us hasn’t got absolutely bladdered and woken up the next day having lost all of their uniform and with no idea what happened the night before? Well me; I haven’t done that. But I am not Tondbert, the plucky protagonist of retro-style point and click adventureGuard Duty. Tondbert’s drunken lapse in judgement has resulted in his kingdom’s princess being kidnapped, which is not ideal.
[cms-block]
To open the twentieth door on the RPS Advent Calendar you’re going to need to squad up with some of your best buddies, strap on a parachute, and remember to check your corners.
Good things, they say, come to those who wait. Like clichés in the first sentence of an article, this is often a load of toss, but a stopped clock is (“That’s enough of that, thanks.” – Ed)>.
Sands Of Salzaar leapt into Early Access this January, its huge success in China prompting promises of an English translation soon. But 2020 did a lot of things to the word “soon”, so we’ll forgive them for delaying that translation. Besides, it was worth the wait. Sands is a superb game that blends the hack and slash chaos of Dynasty Warriors with the open world RPG skirmishes of Mount & Blade.
A second post-launch patch is hitting Cyberpunk 2077, fixing more bugs causing crashes and halting quests, among other issues. Hotfix 1.05 launched on consoles overnight, with the devs saying it would “follow soon” on PC. I’m not seeing yet, though. CDPR also offer a tantalising note about wanting to support people who make mods, though I imagine they have a lot of other tasks to tick off before they reach mod support.
[cms-block]
Door 19 doesn’t have a handle, you have to live that chrome> life and jack in> to unlock it with your preem quickhacks> and look I’m running out of the jargon just open it, you know what it is.