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To open this door, you’re going to need a little electronic fob clicker thing. You’ve not got one to hand, but you can make one easily enough, right? You proceed to do just that, and learn a valuable lesson about the dizzying hidden complexity of technological civilization along the way. By the time you stride out of the continent-spanning purgatory of machines that proved necessary to assemble the fob, it is February. Of 2026.

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Now that Steam’s servers have recovered from the marauding horde of bargain-hunters who arrived when the Steam Winter Sale started last night, we can look at what’s actually worth buying. Normally at RPS we do a big batch of recommendations from the whole gang, but everyone else has already sacked off for the year so it’s just me and my factual opinions. Probably the best RPS recommendations ever, I’d imagine.

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Back in late March/early April, I got to know all the corners and bits and pieces of my house a little better. There’s a small bit of wood chunk missing from the threshold into the kitchen, and a crooked staple in the doorway to my office. The golden afternoon light in my bedroom is unparalleled, but the light in my office before 10:00 is perfect for getting work done – bright enough without too much glare. I even took some time to clean and bleach the grout on my kitchen floor.

I originally played the Bitsy game Vertigo around that same time: back at the beginning of quarantine. In April, those halcyon days where the idea of isolation was somewhat novel. Magma Subterraneo made Vertigo as a part of the Bitsy Isolation Jam, which sought to explore all the various feelings of isolation via the medium of Bitsy. In it, you explore bits of your (or the dev’s?) apartment. You reminisce on various objects until you, very literally, begin to float away.

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Chinese media conglomerate Tencent have bought Leyou, a name which might not mean much to you but you’ll know some of their subsidiaries: Warframe developers Digital Extremes, and Dirty Bomb devs Splash Damage. Both those studios have issued statements saying hey, don’t sweat it, this will be fine.

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Not much to do over Crimble? Hey, maybe you might fancy bursting some faces with colourful violence in Overwatch. Blizzard’s multiplayer FPS is holding a two-week free trial over the hols, and is on sale right now if you like it enough to want it for keepsies. Or if you just want something new to play for a bit, that’s cool. The game is running its Christmas event right now too.

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Let me preface this by saying that I, like everyone else, have an enormous amount of respect and affection for Keanu Reeves. By all accounts he is just a very lovely man, and to different people he is Ted “Theodore” Logan, he is Neo the chosen one, latterly, he is dog-loving murdermachine John Wick. He has put in fabulous turns in some truly iconic productions.

It’s just that, with the best will in the world, his performance as Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t one of them, is it?

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Ritual Of The Moon

is an unusual game. Similar to The Longing, it has a real time element to it, although with Ritual Of The Moon it is more specific. You see, the Ritual Of The Moon has to be played once a day, every day, for 28 days, in order to complete it. Oh ho ho, you can see where this is going.

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Well, the gifts start coming and they don’t stop coming. The latest free game on the Epic Games Store is Metro 2033 Redux, the revamped version of the spooky shooter set in post-apocalyptic Soviet subways. The game was already a good’un in 2010, then 2014’s Redux fancied up its looks and improved bits like the stealth so yeah, worth getting.

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If you listen quietly at this time of year, you’ll hear a faint jingling on the breeze. It’s not Santa though, oh no, it’s Valve’s jolly pockets jingling with anticipation as a Steam’s Winter Sale begins. That’s right folks, the seasonal deals are upon us: between now and January 5th, thousands of games will be discounted across Steam. The 5th annual Steam Awards are kicking off too, so go get your votes in while you can.

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I’m pretty confident that all developers that released a game in 2020 would see that as their proudest moment. Just launching a video game during a pandemic is an incredible achievement.

However, the second proudest moment for them, of course, is being recognised at the most flash and prestigious video games awards ceremony of the year: The Spotty Awards!

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