Inmates begins with some cool dream imagery that has nothing to do with the story at all, and will never be referenced again. When it’s over the protagonist, Jonathan, wakes up in a prison with no memory of how he got there. He quickly discovers the horrifying truth: he’s trapped in a videogame with a lot of long corridors and no sprint button.

It’s hard not to be glib about a game that makes so few attempts to be interesting. Sure, as I explored Jonathan’s prison I found the Zodiac killer’s alphabet, references to the Heaven’s Gate cult suicide and demonology, but nothing came of any of it. Inmates is another horror game full of Biblical verses proclaiming doom and gloom, though it does subvert that cliche by being devoid of any religious insight. Jonathan’s predicament has no relation to any religion, nor do the motives of his enemies. 

Inmates has one meaningful reference: nearly every character’s head blurs back and forth in a clear nod to the film Jacob’s Ladder. It’s the scariest thing in the entire game, which isn’t saying much.

Around 15 minutes in, it becomes incredibly obvious that the prison is inside Jonathan’s mind, and that the man masquerading as his doctor and the ghostly prison guard keeping him in are just other aspects of himself. It’s a premise that has been explored countless times before in films displaying variety and intrigue that's lacking here.

The rest of the story is an exercise in tedium as Jonathan meanders through his mind-prison, solving easy puzzles while the voice pretending to be his doctor gives him his objectives that amount to "find keys" or "go somewhere."

I’m no great puzzle master, but I never found myself troubled by Inmates’ puzzles. Once, I was floating in a room. In the middle was a door, and beyond the door were four levers. All I had to do was memorize the symbols on the door, then move the levers until I had found the matching symbols, and the door opened. That was the hardest puzzle in the entire game, but only because I didn’t immediately spot the levers.

The level design makes no attempt to reward exploration, because the bulk of Inmates takes place in a single square cell-block, gated by actual prison gates which require keys or scripted encounters to pass. Walk forward, open a cell door, read the note inside, step out, walk forward, and open the next cell door. Repeat until you’ve traversed the length of the cell block. Occasionally, you’ll see spooky cliches painted on the wall, like "Home Sweet Home," or get trapped in a cell, which you can leave when you solve one of Inmates’ simplistic puzzles. 

Inmates is eager to give its players matches, but they’re not worth using. In a game like Amnesia, which Inmates seems desperate to imitate, light sources serve as a way to retain your sanity, making them meaningful. Inmates is not so clever—its matches are so bright that they make it harder to see the rest of the screen.

Mechanically, Inmates has very little going on for it. The lack of a sprint button seems to be a remedy for a bigger problem: an absence of any meaningful interaction. Aside from solving a few puzzles, Jonathan spends all of his time walking and backtracking. The fearsome Roy, one of Jonathan’s other personalities, shows up at intervals to appear menacing. Roy scares Jonathan, but for players, his presence signals little more than story progression. With no mechanical or narrative depth, Inmates has little to offer. I completed the game, unlocking every achievement, in a single 90-minute playthrough.

Performance is acceptable for an Unreal 4-powered game, aside from the occasional minor stutter, and I experienced no major crashes or noticeable bugs in the 90 minutes it took me to complete the game. Unfortunately, the options menu leaves a lot to be desired. When it comes to graphics, Inmates features the typical low, medium, and high graphical presets, as well as options for Vsync, brightness, and motion blur, but nothing beyond that. If there’s a way to change the resolution, I haven’t found it. There is no way to rebind keys, though you can change look sensitivity and invert the mouse.

Inmates’ biggest shortcoming is that it's aggressively uninteresting. Rather than attempt a fresh take on worn-out tropes about dissociative identity disorder, Inmates repeats what came before. References are made because they’re assumed to be scary, but they rarely matter. Inmates has few scares or surprises to offer.

If the trailers for Spintires: MudRunner, the updated version of developer Saber Interactive's all-terrain driving sim, are to be believed, trucking is serious business. Through offbeat music and surprisingly stirring narratives, every single one has managed to turn otherwise simple and straightforward shots of big trucks into something downright epic, including today's launch trailer ringing in the game's release. 

"This version of Spintires offers new content and unique experiences for a video game," Saber Interactive said in an announcement. "It's a genre of its own, reinventing the rules and offering new challenges for players looking for emergent encounters and true-to-life off-roading situations." 

Simulation really is the word. Everything from fuel levels and tire conditions to inventory weight and weather-battered terrain has been faithfully simulated to create a realistic off-road experience. There's also a robust array of stuff to drive, with a total of 19 "4x4s, trucks and sturdy logistic vehicles," with which you'll conquer terrain like "rivers, forests, swamps, mountains." 

MudRunner also features mod and co-op support, which is sure to expand its sandbox. There are six sandbox maps in all, including the five from the original Spintires, as well as nine maps dedicated to the new challenge mode. 

If you're hungry for more ATV action, you can get Spintires: MudRunner on Steam for $29.99. If you own the original Spintires, you can get it for 50 percent off. 

In Tokyo Dark, Detective Itō explores both the mysterious underworlds of the city and its lighter side, one that's just as unfamiliar to her even though she's a native: the tourist side of Tokyo. The search for her lost partner and the killer he was pursuing takes her to places whose names are familiar even to someone like me who has never been, like Shinjuku and Akihabara. These are the kind of places people back from holidays to Japan talk about, and talk about in ways that make them sound like they're where nerds might go when they die—if they fall in valiant combat.

There are probably places where you live you've never visited because they're a bit too tourist-y as well, places that might be famous but locals don't hang out at because they're overpriced, or tacky, or just kind of silly. But those places can be fun too. When Detective Itō needs to talk to witnesses who work in a maid cafe she gets dragged into their full routine before she can quiz them, holding her hands up like paws and reciting a chant and tasting a pancake shaped like a cat emoji.   

Despite herself, she likes it. Later, there's a temple surrounded by falling cherry blossoms, a street stall that sells tasty octopus balls, a Golden Gai bar run by a super friendly bartender, and a cat at a cat cafe that creeps up and noses into the text box while you interview the owner. You talk to cosplayers and a kendo instructor and the owner of a manga store.

Tokyo Dark was designed by an international team, an indie studio called CherryMochi based in Japan who have a creative lead originally from England, and it feels like appealing to an international audience was their aim. Even when you visit places that aren't as nice, like a bar owned by the Yakuza, the suicide forest of Aokigahara, or a hostess club where a gross dude hits on you, it feels like a familiar Japan of the kind you might read about in a Lonely Planet guide, or if Bill Bryson ever wrote a book about it. It's Tokyo as seen by an interested outsider.

It's apt that the setting walks a fine line between being very Japanese while also recognizable to foreigners, because the structure of Tokyo Dark also merges two sets of influences. It's half Japanese visual novel, half western point-and-click adventure game, and that melding brings out the best in each. Visual novels can be too wordy for their own good, making you click-click-click through reams of text before you get to anything interactive, but Tokyo Dark is relatively concise (by the standards of the genre), because it's broken up by adventure game puzzles, exploration, and decisions. 

Those parts are all pretty straightforward too—it's not the kind of adventure game where you find a blocked door and then spend hours tracking down the right combination of items and information to get past it. Because it has a story to tell and it's more interested in which ending you're aiming for, the puzzles are often simple to bypass, albeit in ways that make your Professionalism stat drop. When I found a literal locked door but realized I'd left behind the item I needed to pick it, I just pulled out my gun and shot the damn thing open. Classic adventure games that would instead have forced me to repeat a bunch of walking-and-talking, so that was pretty cathartic.

You also have options to get around characters. The witnesses and suspects you meet in places like Shinjuku and Akahibara won't always open up to you unless you find the right way to talk to them, or help them out with a problem. But you can just threaten them, roughing up NPCs until they tell you what you want to know if you're not in the mood for their sidequests, or their cat-shaped pancakes.

I was less inclined to take this option (well, except for with that one gross dude in the club) because of how cheerful the gaudy side of Tokyo is. The people there might be obstructive, but as Tokyo Dark veers into horror and madness—tangling you up in the story of a suicide cult, tormenting you with visions as your Sanity stat falls—those tacky distractions become a reprieve from the horror, and the light side of the city seems like a welcome relief. Even the maid cafe. 

Gods Will Be Watching developer Deconstructeam has unveiled its new project, The Red Strings Club, a point-and-click adventure—or, if that description doesn't ignite your neon, "a cyberpunk narrative experience about fate and happiness featuring the extensive use of pottery, bartending and impersonating people on the phone to take down a corporate conspiracy." Okay, that sounds more like our wheelhouse. 

The tale revolves around a plan to eliminate depression, anger, and fear from society through Social Psyche Welfare, a system about to be introduced to the world by Supercontinent Ltd. But a bartender and a "freelance hacker" aren't down with the plan—free-thinking and all that stuff, I guess—and so they set off to bring it down. Their efforts to remove the shackles of corporate oversight will include "psychological bartending" (get people drunk and then pump them for information), "genetic implant pottery" (DIY mind-control devices, as best I can tell), and "vocal corporate espionage" (prank phone calls).   

It sounds like a lark but the trailer hints at something grimmer, while the description on Steam suggests that the story will contemplate weightier concerns, including "what does happiness mean and what lengths are permissible to obtain it."   

That's in line with Deconstructeam's previous effort, Gods Will Be Watching, which forced players to make very difficult decisions in morally ambiguous (or just straight up bad) situations—a path of "a hundred tiny little steps down that road to Hell paved with good intentions," as we put it in our (very positive) review. That's a good place to start—I just hope that The Red Strings Club won't also emulate Gods Will Be Watching's unforgiving difficulty: The game was so ferocious that Deconstructeam eventually dialed it back with a patch that was literally called the "Mercy Update." 

The Red Strings Club is expected to be out in January. Find out more at deconstructeam.com. 

At Paris Games Week Today, the developers of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds announced it's leaving Early Access this December. "Late December," to be more precise. That release looks like it will closely follow the launch of the Xbox One version of PUBG on December 12, which will include the much-anticipated vaulting system that's coming to the PC test servers soon.

An Xbox press release by PUBG Corp. CEO Chang Han Kim says the following:

"In addition to announcing Xbox’s XGP launch date on December 12, we also shared the exciting news that we’re on track to launch 1.0 for the PC version in late December. This has been an amazing year for us and launching both 1.0 on PC and on Xbox through Xbox Game Preview are huge milestones for the team. I’m incredibly proud of how far we’ve come in such a short time, but I’m even more excited to say that we’re just getting started."

The press release also states that the two versions of the game won't be identical, though that divide may not last long: "Both versions are being developed at the same time, but they both have their own separate roadmaps. Various Xbox One features and functionality will change and come online over time just like they have on PC, with our goal being to have both versions align to each other as soon as possible."

The new desert map will be included in the 1.0 PC release scheduled for December, and will come to Xbox later. You can watch the full VOD of the announcements here, though watch out for some early audio problems (skip to 12:30 to save your ears, headphone users). 

The great holiday known as Halloween has finally come around for 2017! And no, it's not really a "holiday" in the technical sense, but it is an excuse to do some silly stuff in videogames, including GTA Online, which for today only is offering double GTA$ and RP (that's Reputation) in the Lost vs Damned, Slasher, Beast vs Slasher, Come Out to Play, and Transform – Inferno Race modes.   

Rockstar is also handing out double GTA$ and RP for the new Adversary mode Condemned, which was revealed earlier this month, and has a special GTA Online Halloween Playlist running through November 6. Halloween content coming back for 2017, which includes the Franken Stange, Lurcher, LCC Sanctus, and the Duke o' Death, is available for 25 percent off over the same period. Also out now is the Western Seabreeze, a small, stylish amphibious aircraft with enough space to accommodate both a gun emplacement and a bomb bay.   

If Halloween's not your thing (you monster), you can opt to take advantage of non-themed events instead, or just blow some of your cash on some of this stuff, which is all marked down 25 percent: 

• Western Company Besra (Jet)
• Nagasaki Blazer Aqua (Special Vehicle) - both Buy it Now and Trade Price
• Hangar Custom Shop Add-On
• Progen GP1 (Super)
• Grotti Cheetah Classic (Sports Classic)
• HVY Insurgent (Off-Road) - both Buy it Now and Trade Price
• Lampadati Toro (Boat)
• All Melee Weapons

And don't forget that you can earn an easy 400 large by just logging into the game sometime prior to November 6. It won't help you score any of this Halloween sweetness—the money won't actually drop into your account until the event is over—but hey, free money, right? The full rundown of the GTA Online Halloween event is up on the Rockstar Newswire.

In just seven months, Nintendo has sold more than 7.5 million Switch consoles, half what the Wii U sold in its entire lifetime. It's been flying off the shelves and so have Nintendo's big games. But, then, they almost always do. More surprising is how much success smaller indie games are finding on the Switch.

Almost every indie release on Switch reports that it's outselling other platforms. Games like Death Squared, Oceanhorn, and Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap are all doing better on the Switch than on PC. Other games like Forma.8 sold better on other platforms but made more money from the higher-priced Switch version.

With heavy hitting indies like Super Meat Boy Forever and Rocket League still to come, we got in touch with some of these teams to find out what they think about the success of indie games on the Switch, and what it could mean for the future of indie games on PC.

A hungry audience 

Many developers attribute some of the Switch's success to the console still being in a honeymoon period. Mauro Fanelli, CEO of the team behind Forma.8, Mixed Bag, said that's expected from most new platforms. The Switch is still undercrowded, and people are still excited to play games on it.

"First the platform is very young and the player base is hungry for new content, and that’s true for each new game platform that launches on the market. Then the eShop is currently extremely democratic, with no special spots to highlight new games: basically, each new game launching on the platform get the same amount of exposure, and that’s great."

Death Squared publisher SMG Studios pointed out that the limited number of games means new ones aren’t as easily lost. Ultimately, "it's that purity of the console right now that helps," said SMG's founder Ashley Ringrose.

Is the option for portability a big part of a game’s success on Switch? Maybe—but more than once Sony’s Vita was cited as a cautionary tale. Omar Cornut of Wonder Boy developer Lizardcube, who also worked on the Vita exclusive Tearaway, explains "the Vita had that for a while, it was the indie's handheld for a long while. But Sony didn’t support it with enough unique first-party titles so it felt too much like a secondary console and lost some traction."

Despite this reason for wariness, indie developers are still fairly confident in Nintendo's ability to provide for its own console and secure other big-budget developers, which will help drive support and in turn more indie sales.

Jeremy Dunham, vice president of publishing for Rocket League developer Psyonix, said "More than anything, it's Nintendo's active decision to support and promote the indie scene that's exciting the fans and teams involved."

Admiration for Nintendo is what drew many studios to work with the Switch in the first place. Philipp Döschl, co-founded and executive producer of Oceanhorn’s publisher FDG, for example, said they decided to work with Nintendo because of their regard for both the Switch and the company behind it.

"We love Switch!" he said. "It's the perfect gaming platform to date. You can play anywhere and anytime, either on TV or on the go. That being said, we've always been a bit of Nintendo fanboys and it was a childhood dream to make games for a Nintendo platform."

Team Meat’s Tommy Refenes agreed that the intrigue of new hardware drove his decision to port to the Switch. He also gave some insight into the simplicity of the process. "It's very easy to develop on the Switch, and I say this not working with any middleware. I ported the game which is my own custom engine to the Switch in three days… one day was for reading documentation," he explained.

Lizardcube, on the other hand, were simply taking their game everywhere they could, with Cornut saying, "as game developers it’s our job to port to as many platforms as we can, provided it makes sense in term of performance and controls."

And while the difference in specs and hardware were a potential boundary for Rocket League to come to Switch, the success of other indies on the console has positioned Psyonix to be excited for the release. "The fact that they're buying other indie experiences leads us to believe that they'll want to buy ours too."

Looking ahead

When asked whether they'd consider developing exclusively for Switch, the answer changed depending on the size of the studio. Many of the smaller devs thought exclusivity deals with compensation from Nintendo would be out of reach, and without that kind of deal, exclusivity would only make sense if a game was built around the Switch's unique features. 

"Developing an exclusive game has its own advantages: you can fully focus on the platform and on its peculiar strengths. The Switch offers some unique capabilities we would like to fully exploit: the Joy-Cons sure are lovely piece of technology!" said Forma.8 developer Fanelli.

Dunham agreed there's potential there, but generally it doesn’t fit in with Psyonix's ideals. "I wouldn't say it's impossible, but given our approach to community-friendly design and development, I don't think it's likely. We want our games to be available to as many players as possible and limiting a title to only one platform runs counter to that approach."

While exclusivity could be a great way for smaller studios to get help from a larger company, the level of compensation better-known studios like Team Meat would need to make money in a deal like this would probably be too high for a game that isn’t a system-seller, according to Refenes.

"Super Meat Boy is a known franchise, but it's not known like a Call of Duty, Mario or a Minecraft, but it's a game that's extremely popular with a multi-million user fan base. Therefore, it falls into a grey area when it comes to what a platform holder is willing to provide. I think a lot of indies get preferential marketing treatment in exchange for exclusivity which doesn't put any money in their pockets initially but instead gets them guaranteed exposure which in turn gives them money via sales. For a first-timer or a lesser known franchise, this can be a pretty great deal. That wouldn't be a great deal for Super Meat Boy Forever."

We also asked if there was a fear of alienating PC gamers by turning to Switch exclusively. Most doubted that would be an issue, especially if it was a case of requiring the Switch’s hardware. Others cited the plethora of games already available on PC as a reason not to worry. "No, PC gamers already have it pretty good," said SMG's Ringrose.

In the case of Lizardcube’s game, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap released late on PC due to technical issues but Cornut doesn’t believe that was a reason for lower sales than on Switch. "Eventually what happened is that we sold much less on PC than on consoles, but honestly it isn't very surprising. We’re still happy we developed for PC and we’ll probably release our next game for PC."

He went on to explain that for Lizardcube, developing for PC was actually more difficult than console due to their custom engine. "Curiously, if you are using a custom engine and you are a small developer, developing for PC has become really difficult. It became easier to target PS4 or Switch than PC. That’s because the software, hardware, and drivers ecosystem are a minefield. Engines like Unity are taking care of lots of that minefield for you, but if you are running your own code, shipping even the simplest 2D game is really tough and stressing."

SMG think that the Switch might be able to overtake PC as a home for indies given the current success of the platform. "It has that potential right now," said Ringrose. "Not for all types of games but it's only six months old so it'll be an interesting holiday period as the Switch continues to grow. On PC there's just too many games and they are all so cheap. So many people have a backlog of games they don't play. I've been playing more games thanks to the Switch as it lets me play while hiding from the wife and kids!"

"It’s a very tough question," agreed Fanelli, adding "PC is currently overcrowded and has huge discoverability problems, but it still is and it will continue to be the biggest platform out there. I think we’ll continue to see amazing success stories for PC-only indies. But if you’re an indie developer you just have to be on Switch right now: it’s the hottest platform around for indie developers."

Others think PC is fine, so long as it evolves. FDG's Philipp Döschl sees Steam as the chink in PC’s nigh-impenetrable armor. "To me, Steam is completely broken and I almost stopped buying games there," he said. "From pricing (massively sale driven) to discoverability (harder and harder to find games), Steam has so many problems right now that have to be fixed in order to make it an attractive platform again for players and devs alike. And if Valve will not fix these problems, somebody else may come around and take over leadership. Now's the time for Amazon, Microsoft, GOG or maybe others to rise up."

For the most part, everyone agreed that while the Switch may be a fantastic new indie machine, PC is likely safe as the main home for indies in the future with its huge player base and ability to upgrade as time moves on. The unsurprising consensus from an industry standpoint was to develop for as many systems as possible and, if making a game exclusively for Switch, make it one that uses the unique features to get the full benefit of the system.

"The best advice I'd give to any indie developer is to build your game in a way that lets you put it on as many platforms as possible without needing major port work," Dunham said.

Rather than competing, it seems likely the two systems can complement each other with the boom on Switch allowing for more indie development on all platforms. Games that do come exclusively to Switch are most likely to be designed for Nintendo’s controllers, and those that don't will probably release on PC after a delay rather than leave such a large audience and so many potential sales on the table. It seems likely the success of indie games on Switch will be a good thing for the future of indie games everywhere.

Haemimont Games has just released their first video dev diary for Surviving Mars, their upcoming survival city-builder about colonizing the red planet. CEO Gabriel Dobrev took the time sit down with us for an exclusive interview about the challenges of setting up a comfy living space in a hostile environment, turning real science into fun gameplay, and what happens when everyone in your space dome suddenly wants to be just like the dumbest guy around.

PC Gamer: You mention in this video that you’ve incorporated a lot of actual science into Surviving Mars. What's your research process for that? 

Gabriel Dobrev: So a lot of these issues have been tackled for a while now by different scientists. And all of this is summarized in a number of places. So what we had to do was cover, with the design team, all of the material in order to get acquainted with all of the current thinking about what’s going to happen. Because it’s not only about the science side of it. Sometimes the science is well-developed, sometimes not so well-developed. But the key here is, how do you turn that into actual, viable gameplay?

If I even look around, I just have a computer in front of me and a wireless [router]. And this is very complex machinery, but they look like a box. And as long as you plug the cables in, they just work. That’s a very nice magic we have, but you can’t have a good game with that. You know, you have to tell the player a little bit more about how they work and why they work. And you also have to, a little bit, kind of make ways for them to break so there actually is a game to play.

So where do you find that balance between accuracy and fun?

Take the example of the MOXIE ["Mars OXygen In situ resource utilization Experiment," an oxygen extraction system]—whatever the internal design of the MOXIE is, it’s just a box. And it just works. You plug in the power and as long as it has access to air, it just works. So we had to do stuff like, okay, there has to be certain cases where the MOXIE actually breaks and certain conditions where it won’t be able to work. So we, essentially, are finding ways to expose and explain a little bit of that technology and how it works to the player.

How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in games? Is there anything you guys are trying to do to change that?

We don’t really have an agenda in that sense. But from my end, I’ve always wanted to have more things to be explained and be real. Surviving Mars is a very good learning process, because we’ve really learned why you really have to sometimes simplify things. Because the actual thing that is going on is so complex, and the process of colonizing Mars is so complex and so many things can break in so many places, that we don’t really want to expose the player to all of that complexity. We somehow have to make it more manageable. But still, for us, it’s very important that it makes sense, and the problems players will have are some of the actual problems we will have when we actually go to Mars.

For example, the dust covering everything because there is a dust storm and a lot of machines stop working. Because they are clogged or just as a precautionary measure, they have to stop working otherwise they will just break. Also handing temperature, handling the radiation—in general, handling all the major hurdles people will have when they go to Mars. Being able to grow food on your own there is a big, big thing.

How did you decide on Mars colonization as the subject for your next game?

First idea was generally, outside of Earth. But then we quickly realized that … the type of things you will have to do to go to the surface of Venus or to the Moon will be very different because the conditions are so different. And the type of things you will have to produce on the surface versus the type of things you will have to bring in, also the general outlook of your structures, will be different. And since Mars is kind of the next thing that is very close on the horizon, we decided, okay, this is the one we will tackle. And then we actually realized that, by doing this, we will be able to tell people a little bit about what the actual problems will be so they can learn more. And I’m really looking forward to people playing the game and then saying, “Okay, I want to know more about this and what’s happening.”

What’s the longest, internally, that you’ve seen someone keep a colony going?Oh, very long. We have games that are about 40 hours [of play time] on a single colony? And you pretty much have everything. You’ve got all the resources. You’ve researched everything you need. Really trying to do everything in the game. And even in that playthrough, it wasn’t all done. We tried to sort of break the game in a certain way to get the highest research possible. And this led to accumulating an enormous amount of money. The guy just had billions and billions. Because he was selling all of this research [output] back to Earth, and also selling various resources. But his colony was not big. Not even close to what you can get in terms of size. He was more focused on breaking that specific mechanic.

Then what's Surviving Mars' 'ending?'

We don’t have a stopping point and we are consciously avoiding providing any. Even in some games when you can continue the game [indefinitely], when you see that screen that kind of says, “That’s all,” you feel like that’s all. Because the game just told you. Five minutes before you were okay [to keep playing], and now it’s kind of like, well, it’s over. And we don’t want to do that. So really, it’s up to you to decide. We have these milestones you can achieve and some of them are not easy, at all. And you’re definitely not going to achieve them all in a single playthrough. Or maybe you will. That could be a goal—to get all of the milestones done in a single playthrough. But essentially it’s up to you to really decide how much is enough. 

And you can play to really just establish a working colony. You know, that’s a very quick thing to do in a few hours. Your colony is set up. [Your colonists] are happy with their lives. You’re producing all of the resources you need for the colony. And you have this small, stable society. And then there are the mysteries [ed note: optional quest chains that introduce some more outlandish sci-fi elements to be uncovered], so you can play through the entire mystery. And typically, your research opportunities last way longer than that. So you can try to research everything you can get your hands on, which is going to take quite a while. So you really have to decide when it’s enough for you.

I’m curious about what your general inspiration was for the game's aesthetics.

The first inspirations were The Jetsons and Futurama. We love that, and we kind of wanted to do that, but we never had the opportunity. We wanted, even way before this project, to somehow incorporate that naive style and very clean things. Very functional at the same time. So that retro-futuristic style was really something we wanted to do and we decided maybe it was going to be a match. 

And the second inspiration came from what we think and consider necessary on the surface of Mars. So if you have machinery that looks like the Curiosity rover, and you have to go there and live there—that rover looks like it’s going to fall apart any moment now. It’s a wonder that it hasn’t fallen apart yet. And if you have to go and live in that environment, you definitely don’t want the things around you to look like that. You have to feel very, very safe. And that’s why we wanted to have these very clean aesthetics. We think that is really necessary if you want to have people living there and feeling comfortable over long periods of time and bringing more people than a few highly-trained scientists. You need to have people going there because it’s really a better place to live.

Overall, are you wanting Surviving Mars to feel more lighthearted, along the lines of a Tropico? Or will it be closer to some of the other things you’ve done that are a bit darker?

There is danger, and there will be a lot of dangerous things. But this is not our focus. It’s not about the drama of the dangers you face on Mars. Our focus is more on the challenge of getting to Mars and settling it. So we didn’t want to make it a big problem, what’s going to happen if all of the sudden you lose power? So we wanted to sort of get away from that dark future kind of environment. It’s more about keeping it optimistic and positive.

You say that, but you’ve also mentioned several times that it’s going to be a difficult game. It’s going to punish you for playing poorly, like a survival game. What’s been your tactic for balancing that optimistic and accessible atmosphere with the difficulty?

We have a number of things that can change your difficulty. One of them is picking a mission sponsor. Some sponsors just give you a lot of things. Sometimes even, you can have all of the research done for you on Earth. So you might never even set up any research on Mars. It will go slowly, but you can completely rely on that. You can have a lot of food brought in, so you don’t have to set up these separate systems to take care of that. And with some sponsors it’s a lot tighter.

It also depends on where you land on Mars. If you land on a spot where there are not that many dangers and there are a lot of resources around, naturally, it will be a lot easier to set up the colony. If you need something, you can just move over a few meters and there it is. But if you land on a much harder position, you can see your water reserves depleting and you have no idea where you will get your water. So you have to scan more of the surface so you can maybe find frozen water underneath the surface. Or you can try to bring in some machinery that produces water, but that’s expensive in a different way. So you see this wall coming that you have to find a way around. 

Planning against those issues is very interesting. So the difficulty varies greatly, and we absolutely recommend playing with the easier sponsors first just to get familiar with the mechanics and how everything works out, then try with the more difficult ones.

So who’s the sponsor that’s like, the really, really hardcore players pick it just to show off how good they are at the game?

I am not sure, honestly, about dropping names [right now]. But we have surprises there, let’s say. We have difficult ones that are really, really limited in what they can offer you. 

There might be like, Joe’s Mars Colony Supplies and Sandwich Shack?

[laughs] When you see it, it will be very self-explanatory.

I hate to ask this before the game is even out, but—we’ve seen with most of the recent Paradox games, from the Development Studio stuff like Europa Universalis IV down to, you know, Cities: Skylines, this sort of ever-expanding with DLC strategy. Have you guys thought about if you want to go that route?

For the moment, we are absolutely focused on cleaning up the game, polishing everything and getting the performance and everything right. So we don’t have any particular decisions about what we are going to release. I would certainly hope so. Because my feeling is—the game is pretty long when you start to play, and there are so many systems interplaying with each other. And there is such space to explore, design-wise, in terms of different ways to tackle this problem. Different solutions, different approaches. We really don’t feel that we have exhausted the space [with the core game], so to speak. So I really am hoping that we have the chance to explore that fully.

Before you go, what's the most memorable thing you've had happen while playing the game so far?

I can tell you about something that is not a hallmark of what the game is, but is very interesting and crazy. All the citizens on Mars are different, and they have different traits. They are all unique in their own way. And we had for the first time in the office, a couple days ago, a 'Guru Idiot.' And the idiots, they just sometimes break stuff, you know. They just walk around and go to work, and everything explodes, and they’re just like, “Oh, whatever.” And of course, you may decide that you don’t want to recruit any [idiots] to come to Mars. But you can also try to invite them, and that’s also fine. You know, even if something breaks occasionally, you can fix that. But the guru is this rare trait of a person that sort of teaches everybody around him to be more like him. And in this case, they’re all becoming idiots. And in a colony full of idiots, everything just breaks because there are so many.

This almost reminds me of American daytime television. The implications of the guru idiot.

[laughs] You know, if it’s maybe one or two, it’s fine. But if it’s a whole bubble of them, then everything is literally falling apart. It’s a crazy, crazy thing. So we had a big laugh when that happened. Just anticipating what was going to happen when we saw that. And we’re still discovering these combinations of these different traits ourselves. And we’re looking forward to the first time that we encounter this or that combination that we’ve discussed, this will be very interesting when it happens.

Oh, I did have one more thing I have to ask as a metal fan. You did the Motörhead DLC for Victor Vran. Is there any chance we will ever be able to send Motörhead to Mars?

[laughs] I don’t know. This is such a licensing nightmare. We do have a very good relationship with the Motörhead guys. Unfortunately with Lemmy [Kilmister, late frontman] passing away, we can’t really ask—we can ask [guitarist] Phil Campbell and see if he wants to be on Mars. And that would be a very interesting sort of mix-and-match. But now that you mention it, I think Victor Vran can probably find a way to Mars. That’s a very interesting thing.Yeah, especially if he became a guru. I could see some interesting implications with that.

Thanks to Gabriel for taking the time to talk to us! Surviving Mars is set to release in 2018, but Paradox is taking signups on survivingmars.com now.

Spelunky is a perfect videogame—the perfect videogame, perhaps. Or at least, it is if you forget that the 2012 version shipped with a deathmatch mode. Not many people talk about Spelunky deathmatch, in which up to four players brawl on a single-screen arena, using bombs and ropes and shotguns and rocks to pound the ever loving spe-lunk out of each other. It's adventure mode's weird, less-popular friend.

I think I understand why: If you dip into the mode solo using the default settings, you’re fending off three erratic AI opponents, in addition to a laser target which roams the screen smiting anyone who stays still for too long. Oh, and the ghost: the dreaded ghost from the adventure mode turns up as well, so the whole thing just feels like a frantic mess to most newcomers. You’ll likely die within three seconds of spawning (no exaggeration) and then you’ll likely quit the mode three seconds later. It’s about as bad as a first impression can get. 

But for the last two years at least, Spelunky deathmatch has been my bread and butter. I’ve played Nidhogg, Towerfall: Ascension, Sportsfriends, Videoball… and none of them are as good a couch multiplayer game. You may believe Spelunky’s finely wrought roguelike adventure mode was the modern classic, but nope: deathmatch is up there with it.

The first step to enjoying Spelunky deathmatch is to ignore its default settings. They’re crap. Turn off ghosts, turn off targets, turn off bots. Never, ever use bots. Then increase the amount of lives per match to 10. Then, increase each player’s bomb amount to 10 (just do it). Now you’ve got at least one perfect deathmatch game, but you might find other settings that work better for you.

The best thing about deathmatch Spelunky is that it inherits all of the complexity of its more popular sibling, while also demanding speed and reflexes the likes of which are rarely needed in adventure mode. For example, most adventure mode players know you can whip bombs to carefully nudge them into awkward places with more accuracy, but did you know you can whip away airborne bombs that have been lobbed at you? It’s tricky, but you can and you’ll need to, because being stunned is a death sentence. 

Other tricks you might not use often in adventure mode become crucial in deathmatch, too: for example, learning to lob bombs with precision as an offensive attack, or just as a means to stun an opponent. Bombs are less tools of navigation and more automatic grenade launchers, and learning to predict their bounce patterns and trajectories is one of the first hard lessons you’ll receive—especially if your opponent has lobbed 10 at once. 

Elsewhere, ropes are surefire ways to stun opponents from below; the teleporter is a neat portable telefragging device; and learning the maps and the best positions from which to lob bombs becomes more important than mere dexterity. Meanwhile, obscure items from the main game such as the shield—only found in a single hidden area in adventure mode—become powerful tactical tools in the deathmatch setting. Lessons that couldn’t vaguely apply to adventure mode (except map learning, of course) compose the moment-to-moment stouches in deathmatch, where having the baseball gloves, a jar of sticky glue and a full inventory of bombs can prove disastrous to your opponent.

Will the newly announced Spelunky 2 have a deathmatch mode? No idea, but I hope so. I wouldn’t blame creator Derek Yu and co for leaving it out, since it gained no traction in the original, but I reckon even the existing deathmatch mode could have its fate reversed just with a few tweaks to its default settings. There’s so much potential, and if it had online support that would be a dream. I want Spelunky deathmatch to be an esport. I want it to be on ESPN. It would make the world nicer.

Let’s assume for a moment that Spelunky 2 deathmatch exists: how can it improve upon the original? Aside from the obvious tweaks to its default game settings, I’d definitely include a level editor, and I’d be careful to remove items that are utterly useless in the mode (such as the parachute, as none of the maps are high enough to permit fall damage). Player spawns can also be a bit uneven and unfair, especially with four-players. Of course, we don't really know anything about Spelunky 2—its weapons, items, and so on—so apart from those elementary changes, it’s hard to guess at what else might be done.

Even Yu thought deathmatch was underrated, though he admitted he and co-creator Andy Hull were to blame. “I think it was because people just didn’t play it the way Andy and I did while we were developing it, where it was just much more tactical,” he told me last year. “We didn’t chuck bombs all over the place, we’d wait for that perfect opportunity and try to take out the person when they were vulnerable."

“I definitely don’t blame the players or anything like that," he added. "I think a lot of people do have a lot of fun with it, as a more casual thing. It may also be that adventure mode is more compelling than deathmatch mode.”

No, it’s not Derek. And while I’m at it, chucking bombs all over the place is totally a viable strategy.

It's Halloween, so you're more likely to be looking for something scary to play than at any other time of year (it's also possible you're just finishing Wolfenstein 2, which is fine too). While you can find our long list of the best horror games elsewhere, in this feature we wanted to focus exclusively on some of our favourite indie horror titles, where the subject matter tends to be more specific than you'd get in a blockbuster game. Hopefully you'll find something in these picks that you haven't played before. 

Lone Survivor

This neat Silent Hill-infused sidescrolling adventure sees you trying to escape a disease-ridden city, and what transpires is shaped by how you play—how many pills you take, how much you've slept and so on. It has flashes of Lynchian surrealism, and its grimy corridors are chilly spaces to explore. The director's cut, available on Steam, features new areas and two new endings, among other extras. Since developer Jasper Byrne is also a musician (his work is featured in both Hotline Miami games), the soundtrack is fantastic, and again feels like it takes some influence from Konami's seminal horror series. I'm not sure what happened to Byrne's non-horror follow-up, New Game Plus, but it sure looked cool.—Samuel Roberts

Detention

Inspired by Chinese mythology and Taiwanese culture, this atmospheric, subtly creepy game is part point-and-click adventure, part survival horror. Set in the 1960s, two students are trapped in a school haunted by bizarre creatures and must find a way out. The hand-painted art is stunning, and the tone and puzzles are reminiscent of the original Silent Hill. An overlooked game and one of the best modern horrors on PC.—Andy Kelly

Anatomy

I don’t want to say too much about Anatomy other than you explore a house looking for VHS tapes. Things change. Considerably. This isn’t your typical haunted house story either. If Resident Evil 7 is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre then Anatomy is Kill List or Jacob’s Ladder or Under the Skin. It’s a short, slow game that refuses to use closets for monsters, positing the house itself, the medium, the geometry as what you should actually be afraid of. —James Davenport

Stories Untold

This horror anthology features four connected stories of spooky happenings. Episode one, which you can play for free on Steam, sees you exploring an abandoned house in an ancient text adventure within the game, while sat at a desk. The environment around you starts to change in accordance with your actions in the game, and it becomes scary as hell. And that's just one episode—the others are based around a very different idea, each of which involve deliberately repetitive interactions and escalating spookiness.—Samuel Roberts

Bonbon

This tiny, unsettling slice of horror marries toddler-in-the-eighties-in-the-UK nostalgia with that sense of mundane things becoming scary when you view them through the perspective of a child. The best thing about Bonbon is how it meanders back and forth across the distinction between reality and imagination in order to create its scares. The actual interactions can be clunky but there's an ambiguity built into the experience which elevates the result. 

I should confess that I can only just about handle Bonbon because horror really isn't my genre and I had to ask a horror-aficionado friend to reassure me that there wasn't much left when I was tempted to quit out. I also managed to attract attention in the office after a particular jump scare got me really badly. But overall I'd say this is an interesting horror game which I, a terrified person, managed to play and get something out of. Maybe don't make me sleep with the lights off for a week, though.—Pip Warr

SCP-087 (Stairwell)

The SCP stories are the product of a bunch of strangers on the internet trying to freak each other out. They are often disturbing, and frequently work ordinary objects or locations into nightmarish horror scenarios. Stairwell is one. You simply walk down a dark staircase for a random number of floors as weird stuff happens. It’s so simple but very effective—a perfect example of an indie horror game that focuses on one idea and nails it. The SCP Foundation is worth a visit if you want some odd horror fiction.—Tom Senior

IMSCARED

IMSCARED is a low-fi first-person horror game that describes itself describes itself as a "metahorror" experience. Its creator warns that the game "will try to deceive you as many times as it can". To say much more would spoil things, but expect the trickery to extend beyond the confines of the game. Keep an eye out for any stray files on your desktop screen, and don't say I didn't warn you.—Tom Senior

Duskers

Equal parts real time strategy, survival game, roguelike, and horror, Duskers puts you in remote control of a handful of drones as you explore a series of procedurally generated derelict spaceships. Scavenge for fuel, scrap metal, and upgrades, and try to remain calm as unseen alien entities skulk around the spooky-as-hell ships, chewing through doors and slipping through air vents in an attempt to destroy your plucky drones. With low-fi visuals and excellent sound design, Duskers overflows with tension, atmosphere, and lots of delicious oh-shit moments.—Chris Livingston

The Last Stand 2

The Last Stand 2 is a Flash game about clicking on zombies till they die. In a certain frame of mind I will tell you it is the perfect zombie game. 

The first Last Stand was a straightforward thing about standing behind barricades as the undead approached from screen left and learning when to switch to the chainsaw as they neared. Survive until dawn, and it ended. The sequel adds something to do in daylight hours: searching for survivors who will join you at the barricade, as well as more weapons and traps. (Watching a bear trap snag the legs of one of those fast zombies so you can lazily headshot them is a good time.) Any spare hours can be spent repairing the barricade.

But the real reason to search is to find supplies so you can travel to the next town. In 40 days the entire country's going to be quarantined and if you don't make it out by then, you never will. It's as simple, low-budget, and effective as the best movies about the living dead. Maybe it is the perfect zombie game. —Jody Macgregor

Inside

My favourite horror films are those that continue to defy neat explanation even as the credits roll. I'm thinking of weirdo cult stuff like Possession from the '80s, and more recently Enemy, by Denis Villeneuve, the Blade Runner sequel dude. Why mention movies? Because very few games pull off the same feat of managing to be both unsettling and satisfying, but Inside does. The spiritual sequel to Limbo leans on similarly gorgeous but bleak art and animation, but has a story that's far more interesting than its predecessor. 

Not that I'm sure I can explain it. Roughly: you're a boy on the run in some sort of dystopic otherworld, navigating puzzles, platforms, and inventively nightmarish insta-deaths. The greatest/nastiest of which has to be the underwater section. Just say to any other Inside player "How about that swimming witch?" and savour their reaction.

And then the game morphs, quite literally, into something else entirely. It's a huge, again also literally, spoiler that we've talked about at length elsewhere on the site, and which developer Playdead gave a great talk about making at GDC last year. I think I've also read them say that the game is fundamentally about totalitarianism, but all I can say for sure is that the implications of its final reel have lingered with me long after I left that moonlight dappled beach. —Tim Clark