To track the public understanding of modern-day indie gaming is to look at the small-scale independent development scene through an Anglo-centric lens. While it would be unfair to ignore the hobbyists programming experiences in BASIC on their ZX Spectrum or similar, it’s commonly accepted that indie gaming as we recognise it today has its roots in the early days of the internet and the Y2K boom, when Flash, Gamemaker Studio and similar tools allowed things like Cave Story and N to grow. With online distribution further helping games like Bastion, Journey and World Of Goo to flourish, the definition of the indie game became: a title with big ambitions and creativity grown from small budgets and teams.

It's not entirely wrong, but it has obscured decades of hobby development that was once at the forefront - not just the stories of BBC Micro solo-development stars, but similar ones of hobby development from around the world. In Japan, the doujin markets of Comiket and beyond serve as a home for hobbyists to make, sell and share their creations. It is the doujin gaming scene that helped major studios like Fate/ studio Type-Moon, and franchises like 07th Expansion and Touhou Project, flourish in a way that would never be possible otherwise.

Read more

Walking around the deserted streets of Los Angeles - and you can take your leisure, in Dead Island 2, because most zombies are quite shambly - I encountered many a rich-person decor. Last week, I was given a preview build of the upcoming first-person zombie-smasher and played about the first five hours of it in single-player, taking in sights like a community of gated millionaire mansions, a slightly less palacious but still ridiculous neighbourhood, and an upmarket hotel styled after the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. They're all full of weird stuff.

There's a panic room where a guy turned into a zombie mid-demo tape recording. Actress Emma, who you're battening down the hatches with, has a truly awful full-length Burt Reynoldsian portrait of herself. A shared house called the GOAT PEN, where a team of influencers all live together, has a set for a video series called LIT OR SH!T, and a whiteboard with the script for an apology video. I ask the game director David Stenton if it's low hanging fruit, or if there's no such thing with Hollywood rich people. "Of course, it's low hanging fruit!" he says, laughing. "And also, there's no such thing."

Read more

I was going to do this as a sidebar in my larger article previewing Dead Island 2, but then I realised it would be a sidebar of about 800 words, which is not a sidebar Alice, for God's sake, pull yourself together. Dead Island 2 is set in LA, known as HellA as a little play on words, because it's full of zombies now. Your job is to smash a lot of them to pieces with a hammer, like so many sausages and balloons full of blood held together by sellotape. In the course of this, you find yourself merrily looting your way through the homes of the rich and famous, stuffing as many screws and bits of scrap metal into your pants as the elastic can handle (I assume; none of the player character options has a backpack). Notable among things I couldn't find when I went looking for them: the bastard keys.

Read more

Sundays are for saving a Steam Deck unboxing for when you get back from holiday, just to beat away those blues. Before you almost lose all willpower, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

Read more

Honestly, no. Just no. Away with this snow. Anything less than 30 centimetres of snow is insufficient to justify this recurring winter. Please, give us spring. We need it. I can barely recall the feeling of sun on my arms, or digging my toes into warm sand, or the embrace of water which admittedly is still dangerously cold but at least is more refreshing than agony. Ah! Go on then, tell us what you're playing this weekend. Here's what we're clicking on!

Read more

As our resident walking simulator enthusiast, I was instantly onboard when Alice Bee asked me to play a new game exploring a forest. I'm always up for a wander in the woods. I am a bit of a genre purist so with a name like Sons Of The Forest, I was concerned it might be another of those so-called walking sims that are more concerned with making you listen to a Radio 4 dramatic monologue. Thankfully, no, this is simply a pretty walking simulator exploring an island bustling with wildlife. Here, enjoy this video with some sights from my peaceful strolls.

Read more

One of the best things games can do is bring you an appreciation of something you've never thought about before. You'll probably start out Zellige thinking "oh, it's making some shapes and they turn into a pattern, whatever". But within ten minutes you'll be actively saying things like "does the empty space over here feel like purity or desolation" and "what does the contrasting colour of these triangles say about their relationship with the central star?".

It's been a while since I played a game about creating art that felt effortless even as I put in a lot of effort. Zellige: The Tilemaker Of Granada is humble but delightful. It's about designing tiles. And why something that straightforward is also rich and complicated.

Read more

We all love a bit of a headscratch sometimes - something to challenge the old noodle and vexate the little grey cells. Luckily, puzzle is a mainstay genre in video games, from classic point 'n' click adventures to weirdo physics puzzles and aliens in space. Puzzle games can also be RPGs or adventure games; they can have horror or hacking. There are so many, in fact, that curating a list of the best puzzle games is something of a puzzle in itself. But at RPS we like a challenge, so we've brought you a new and improved list of the 25 best puzzle games on PC that out there today, in 2023.

Read more

In a thrilling follow up to last week's episode, The Electronic Wireless Show podcast today discusses sequels and serieseseses, in light of some surprise announcements of sequels over the last week (Nate isn't here today, but maybe he'll return in the next entry? You'll have to listen to find out). In games we seem to accept that a series running for decades, over many, many sequels, is just kind of normal. What's the deal with that? Would games be better without sequels? Who knows? Us. We do. We talk about it today.

Read more

Coinciding with International Women's Day on March 8th, Humble has put together a Humble Heroines bundle that offers eight games with female protagonists for £12.45 (~$15) - including Control, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Dreamscaper and Sable.

Proceeds go in part to the charities Girls Make Games Scholarship Fund and Girls Who Code, and you can adjust the mix between the game publishers, the charities and Humble itself using the 'adjust donation' section of the bundle page.

Read more