Berserk Boy is the legally distinct lovechild of Sonic The Hedgehog and Mega Man X, on account of how it fondly emulates the Blue Blur’s speedy momentum and the Dorky Mega’s various power-altering suits. That anatomically tricky relationship is enticing by itself, but even if those retro action platformers just register as historical relics in your memory, Berserk Boy does enough that’s new and interesting that it doesn’t need to rely on aping its inspirations. My only beef is that credits rolled before I was properly given a chance to test my newfound robo-bashing muscles.

Read more

If you dislike getting stabbed in the back in first-person games, you might not like Voin. If you like ravaged Gothic masonry and dramatic evening skies, you might like Voin. If you dislike fighting fireball-lobbing demons with a sword, you might not like Voin. If you like open-ended, changeable levels full of loot and secrets, you might like Voin. If you are confused about whether you'll like or dislike Voin, you might want to try it for yourself during the first public Steam playtest on Friday, March 8th.

Having spent all of 30 minutes with an early playtest build, I'm cautiously impressed. I suspect there are cooler, less-known inspirations at work, but this feels like a Demon's Souls-ified Doom Eternal that doesn't quite have Doom Eternal's swagger and precision, probably because it is the work of just one developer, Nikita Sozidar, rather than hundreds.

Read more

Considering it’s one of the most gawwwwjuss> games you can get one o’ them PS5 machines, Horizon Forbidden West’s upcoming PC version has some pretty fair-looking system requirements. The newly released specs, which you can find below, suggest that pushing the open world, robosaur-slaying sequel to its most extreme settings will take a burly graphics card – but likewise, lower settings and resolutions can get by with much creakier hardware.

Read more

Readers with good memories may recall that I was delighted to see Games Incubator and PlayWay moving away from "cleaning abandoned industrial buildings" and towards "magical pets" in their sim games, when they revealed My Horse: Bonded Spirits. I played the prologue to the game today (which is about 40 minutes long) and discovered that you have to level up your horse before you can gallop. Sir: no.

Read more

As someone who finds games about cars wot go fast only intermittently interesting, I'd expect a game about cars wot go slow to be positively soporific. Speed is, ultimately, the modus operandi of a car. It gets you where you need to go faster than a horse, and doesn't do annoying things like pooing on your patio or dying (also, potentially, on your patio). Surely, then, playing a game about cars moving at the speed of a dead patio horse defeats the point, like playing a first-person shooter where all the guns fire backwards.

Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game demonstrates this not to be the case. This bouncy, slimy off-roading simulator is the most fun I've had with an imaginary car since 2018's Jalopy. This is partly because it is as much a physics puzzler filled with limitless conundrums as it is a game about driving, but also because, like Jalopy, it envisions the car as something more than a way to boost egos by doing a big circle.

Read more

I like a city builder, me, and newly revealed Beware Of Light, from tiny indie studio Bajka Games, has a interesting hook (and a Ronseal-type name, which you know I appreciate). Your advanced colony ship has veered off course, and you've crashed on a dead, desert planet with no water or fossil resources like oil. It's sort of a hot Frostpunk, because you have to manage manpower, there are limited resources to distribute, and nobody is going to help. You must live. What do now?

Read more

After several months on the Steam beta build, Valve last night officially launched an update which revamps the shopping experience and lets you hide your shame. Two universal conveniences: your shopping basket is now shared across devices, so no losing track of things you meant to buy later; and buying gift copies is now less faffy. More conditional: you can now choose to make individual games private, meaning no one will ever see if you own them or are playing them. I won't ask why you might want to hide any particular games.

Read more

Crema, the creators of much-liked Pokemon-like Temtem, are teasing a new untitled game set in the same universe - the mystifying Project Downbelow. It isn't Temtem: Swarm, aka Temtem Vampire Survivors, nor is it Temtem 2. But it will "try out new things we would love to see in a hypothetical Temtem 2", including a new combat system running on a "stronger" game engine. The tease accompanies news that Crema are making significant changes to Temtem as part of the game's update 1.7 - for one thing, they're getting rid of the whole microtransaction system. Temtempestuous times indeed!

Read more

Suika is the puzzle gift that keeps on giving. The viral Watermelon Game that launched a thousand non-Switch-exclusive clones has added another promising offering to its line-up of Suika-like twists on the simple fruit-merging game.

Read more

As a man in my thirties, the idea of going to a club is exhausting to think about nowadays, let alone do. I was thinking about this as I watched the new trailer for Synduality: Echo of Ada, a mech extraction shooter I would probably gladly play instead of going out - but is nevertheless very exhausting to watch itself, at least in this glimpse. You and I will be able to give its open beta a go while avoiding any social engagements later this month.

Read more