It’s episode four of RPS’ indie podcast Indiescovery and this week the team got into the Valentine's Day spirit and had a long chat about our favourite indie game romances (any excuse to gush about how hot the characters are in Hades, really). We get gabbing about our favourite game OTPs, the fabulous representation of queer romances in indies, and then finish with a cursed (not horny) Cosmo-style dating quiz.
Introversion Software are, we can infer, at home in simulation games by now, what with their most famous game Prison Architect having a bajillion DLCs that, at this point, can add zombies, rehabilitation, or the jungle to your prison. Their new one is called The Last Starship, a layered spaceship simulator that's less friendly than their prison. I am not sure if it's because the early access is still largely without any tutorial markers, or because I am very bad at the game.
Logitech make some great keyboards and mice, and now you can get their K400 Plus wireless keyboard/trackpad combo for £25. That's £20 less than its normal price, and a great value for one of the most convenient peripherals for Steam Deck, media PCs, Raspberry Pis and other systems that occasionally need keyboard/mouse input but don't require a full keyboard and mouse setup.
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Samsung's high-end 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 SSD has dropped in price on Amazon UK, and now costs £91.82 for a 1TB model with preinstalled heatsink rather than the £125+ it normally costs. This is an awesome price for one of the fastest SSDs on the market, with the advent of the even faster (but significantly more expensive) 990 Pro pushing the previous flagship to nearly bargain basement territory.
I see the question, "What order should I play the Yakuza games in?" pop up on the reg. Like clockwork, it happens whenever a new Yakuza (or Like A Dragon, as it's now known) game arrives. And you know what? It gets to me. To experience the series in the richest way possible, there's an obvious answer. But if you're someone who hasn't got the time to do so, or you're a bit unsure whether Yakuza is for you, then there's another way in. Now pick up that bike and walk with me.
Blue's legendary Snowball Ice USB mic is a popular way to get started with streaming, VO and YouTube video production, and now it's 30% off at Amazon UK. That brings it to just £38.99, the lowest price we've seen in months and a good value for the level of quality provided.
The ultimate Steam Deck Micro SD card just went on sale. SanDisk's Extreme Pro lineup offers pretty much the best performance you can find in the UHS-1 Micro SD category, with read speeds up to 200MB/s and write speeds of 140MB/s, and now the massive 1TB model is down to £122 at Amazon - that's significantly cheaper than upgrading from the base-level Steam Deck to the top-level 512GB option, yet provides double the storage, an awesome deal.
You ever see that Mastodon post where a guy explains why he now understands Elon Musk is an idiot, because he's started talking about software? I imagine you've experienced a similar thing with video games, whenever a columnist for a broadsheet writes about them and you can instantly tell that they have never played one in their whole dahlia-manuring, boot room-having, fox hunt-following life.
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow is a book about the decades-long relationship between two people who are game developers. And like the above, it would be impossible to explain to someone who doesn't work in the games industry why a small exchange between the two of them made me absolutely roar with laughter.
If you’re British and you’re old, then you love the ZX Spectrum. (Or the Commodore 64, I suppose, but not both. Never both.) Personally, I’m what they called a “Speccy” kid, and I have carried a deep and profound love of the elderly microcomputer’s cassette tape screeches, colour clash and long, long load times into my adult life, despite the fact that – and please don’t get upset, purists – many of the great Spectrum games don’t hold up in the cold light of the modern day. It’s not that the games are necessarily bad>, more that they were tremendous for their time. Still eminently enjoyable, but they require the player to get their head into a certain zone, to put up with what are inarguably quite archaic controls and mechanics.
Oddly enough, there are some Spectrum games on Steam, thanks to a publisher called Pixel Games. However, with the utmost respect to their output… these are not the kind of games that are going to foster interest in the Speccy amongst modern players. Of course, that may well not be the point, but I’d be a little taken aback if even avowed old-school gamers were going to bother picking up the likes of gardening simulator Pedro, a game that scored 63% in Newsfield’s iconic Crash magazine back in the day, or Sam Stoat: Safebreaker, which did a little better at 68%.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, we have a lot more of a horror vibe than I expected in February, from cursed websites to Apocalyptic events and even hints of Myst. Brrr! Chilling. Come see!