Nightingale certainly isn't the sort of game I was expecting from a former BioWare developer, but I'm well excited to give it a go. Announced at The Game Awards 2021, Nightingale is a survival craft 'em up set in a fantastical, alt-history world. It's being made by Inflexion Games, a studio lead by Aaryn Flynn, former programmer and general manager at the Dragon Age and Mass Effect developers.

But don't go in expecting the sort of huge, arcing plotlines of BioWare's recent games. While Nightingale will have an over-arching narrative, it's being designed to offer up adventures that let you make your own stories. I spoke to Flynn at the end of last year to find out a little bit more about what that entails.

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Happy New Year, folks! 2021 may be behind us now, but before we start looking ahead to all the hip new video games coming our way this year, we thought it was as good a time as any to look back at all of our favourites from the last twelve months. If you kept up to date with our hale and healthy Advent Calendar over the course of December, then you'll already know our game of the year selections for 2021, but this post gathers all those lovely words and entries together into one handy list.

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The first rule of video game club (apart from not talking about video game club) usually involves saving the world somehow. We do our best to rescue others from harm, to avert world-ending disasters, and give everyone around us the happy ending they deserve. But if there's one thing I've learned about myself in 2021, it's that I'm a cruel, heartless robot who will happily toss others under the bus if they don't provide any material benefit to me. Or at least I am when I'm playing Unsighted, the gorgeous and criminally underrated action RPG from Studio Pixel Punk that puts a ticking time-bomb inside each of its characters' metallic chests which, if left unchecked, will remove them from the game entirely, preventing you from gaining some potentially very handy upgrades to help you in your quest to fight back against your human oppressors.

It's an ingenious system, as you're not only fighting against the hordes of enemies that appear onscreen, but your own ineptitude.

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If you're anything like me, when you start a game you will almost invariably try to run off into the woods or swamp and aggressively ignore anything even passably resembling a main story. After hours of feeling like a brave rebel by doing this in Vagrus - The Riven Realms, I realised it's how you're supposed to play it. This is not a game about some Epic Quest or grand campaign. It's a game about running a caravan in a world that just happens to have a cool history.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.>

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What medical procedure is taught to all Vikings upon entry to Valhalla?

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2021 was hot boy summer for detectives. Well, not summer. Hot boy autumn? Is that a thing? Anyway, I not only played Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, but also an incarnation of Hercule Poirot as a bright young thing in Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases. And yes, that name is a bit of a nightmare, but the game itself is very sweet. There's 'orrible murder, conspiracy, blackmail, union busting, and a cast of Cluedo-esque characters trapped inside a snowy manor. And yes, I am reusing the shoddy Love Island promo photo composite I made for a header picture, because it deserves the mileage.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.>

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What kind of colourful legume is the main ingredient for rainbow humous?

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Ghost Time Games’ Tux And Fanny, from co-developers Albert Birney and Gabriel Koenig, is not only the game I think you may have missed this year, but it is also my Game Of The Year for 2021. This game sends two best friends (alongside a courageous flea and a mischievous cat) through adventures great, small, and absurd to stunning effect – and you owe it to yourself to give this little marvel a play before the year is well and truly out.

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Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.>

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What roguelite takes place solely within the confines of a French archipelago in the Caribbean?

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It’s pretty difficult to quantify which games actually whip ass, mostly because it’s a little subjective. That being said, if barrelling through the streets of a futuristic, neon-glazed Detroit, hopping over pursuing cop cars and racing through business offices and factories to the tune of an engrossing soundtrack doesn’t whip ass, I don’t know what does.

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