Supporters (Page 2)

You start out aiming to restore a princess to a throne, which naturally tempted me on her every turn to lunge onto the nearest spear for a punchline, but I will forgive Tyrant's Blessing for circumstances beyond its control.

Like everything, it's also a roguelike, but it's transparent and fair enough that I can reluctantly forgive that too, not least because I've found myself enjoying this one the more it went on. It's a lighter, cheerier sibling of Into The Breach that's half tactical fighter, half puzzler, and its default difficulty setting is close to perfect if you're looking for something less intense that will still catch you out now and then.

Despite lamenting the other week that the rest of 2022's gaming calendar was looking a bit weak sauce after endless delay announcements, September is shaping up to be an absolutely monster month for indie releases right now. As Alice Bee noted earlier in the week, there are just too many cool, interesting games coming out for us to review effectively on the site at the moment (although rest assured, we will do our darnedest to cover as many of them as we can).

Part of the challenge is working out what's worth reviewing, and what we think is worth highlighting for you, our readers. The other part, though, is often entirely selfish on our part, just playing and writing about cool games we like. In fact, the decision to review many of the games we covered this week - Railbound, Jack Move and Roadwarden - were all down to having played and liked some form of demo, making events like the Steam Next Fest an increasingly invaluable tool in helping us cut through the noise when we inevitably enter mega months like September.

I saw a panel of thriller authors a couple of months back and one of them made reference to "the fat chapter", and the others all went "Ohhhh, yes, the fat chapter!". Thriller writers deal in short, snappy chapters, and the fat chapter is the one that ends up getting a load of events or exposition shoved into it, somewhere in the second half, because they wouldn't fit anywhere else. Every year in games there's a fat month, where loads of games come out and loads of them look really good and there is never enough time godammit.

This year that month is September. There are so many games out this month that look so much my jam that I want to spread 'em on my morning toast, but September is also the month that a lot of RPS staff have holiday booked - including me, for two weeks, which means that if these games do get reviewed it probably won't be by me. But know that I have my beady little eyes on 'em.

As PC setups are carefully packed away and booths are dismantled, the curtain closes on another PAX West and it's time to say goodbye to Seattle (for now anyway). After four packed days of demos, panels, interviews, and lots of fruit smoothies, Liam and I are completely PAXed out, but we're not done quite yet.

Below you'll find something a little different from our usual daily round-ups. For our last day at PAX, we've done a super, uber, mega round-up on the entire event. We list off our favourite panel moments, the best game demos we played, and our general opinion on how the overall convention went. Click play below to see one of our last videos from the event:

The weekend is over and our third day of PAX West has come to a close. I feel like I say this every day, but it was another busy day today as we bounced around the PAX show floor. We played some of our favourite games from the whole event and also recorded two incredible interviews you won't wanna miss. Watch our daily round-up of everything we did for more info!

In an interview opportunity that Liam and I are still reeling from, we had the chance to chat to the cast of Team Fortress 2 about their experiences lending their voices to one of the most iconic FPSs of all time.

After watching yesterday's TF2 panel, we were incredibly excited to put our own questions to the TF2 squad. Ellen McLain (the TF2 announcer), Gary Schwartz (Heavy and Demoman), John Patrick Lowrie (Sniper) and Robin Atkin Downes (Medic) answered all our questions including how they each created the voices for the characters and if they would they return for a completely metaphorical release of Team Fortress 3 which - spoilers - was a resounding yes. Watch below for the entire interview.

It's the dawn of day three here at PAX West, and what better way to wake us up than play the incredibly chaotic demo build of Friends VS Friends. We loved the trailer from Gamescom and Liam even chose it for his bestest pick in our Gamescom round-up video, so our expectations were high, and after playing a quick match at the Raw Fury booth, Brainwash Gang's blood-pumping deck-building FPS shot straight to the top of our favourite things we've seen here at PAX so far.

If you've not heard of Friends VS Friends, check out the game's trailer first (its incredibly slick animation is super cool, highly reccomended for your peepers) then watch our interview with Brainwash Gang developer Edu Verz who talked all about the game's development. Watch it below:

It's been one heck of a busy day for team RPS on day two of PAX West. It's now the weekend so the show floor was significantly busier, but not enough to keep us from getting our mitts on some games. That's right, we actually played some games today!

Have a click on the video below were we break down the day's activities and also to see us get booted out from the show floor when it closed at 7. Here's today's daily round-up:

Today's PAX West interview is with the one and only Ron Gilbert, series creator of the iconic point-and-click adventure series, Monkey Island. We are big fans of Monkey Island here at RPS, so after watching him guest speak on the Adventure Games PAX panel today, we got a chance to chinwag with Gilbert and to chat about his upcoming comeback to the series with Return to Monkey Island.

Gilbert was lovely enough to tell us all about the next game in the Monkey Island saga - what it was like to return to Monkey Island's world after so long, what we can expect from the puzzles, and snippets of the game's story. Watch below to see the interview in its entirety and make sure you watch to the end to see my impression of a pirate - you won't wanna miss that.

It's day two of PAX West and to kick off our second day of game events and demos we got hands-on with a build of Neowiz's Pinocchio RPG, Lies of P. The gameplay demo caused quite a stir when it was at Gamescom earlier this year, so we made it one of our priorities to check it out here in Seattle.

Neowiz are not actually at PAX so there wasn't anyone on the team to give us some behind-the-scenes info, but I got stuck into the demo for a solid 30 minutes, brawling with the game's angry robot lads that roamed the city's blood-washed cobbled streets.

Overall, I had a great time with the demo. Yes, it is incredibly similar to Bloodborne in both its combat and environments but there are plenty of other elements that steer it away from FromSoftware's horror-filled gothic RPG. If you want more details instead of that short summary then check out our video below where I talk about my time with the build, and about having my arse kicked by giant mechanical automatons. Enjoy!

The doors have been flung open for PAX West 2022 and we've been busy bouncing between booths, games, and panels all day. Liam and I have been busy making behind-the-scenes videos for our RPS supporters and the last one of today is our daily round-up! We'll be recording and uploading one at the end of each day as a handy summary of what we got up to. Watch below and enjoy!

It's been a busy day at PAX West, but nothing has been as wild as the Gearbox Software panel. Randy Pitchford made a return to the Seattle stage to let us know what's coming up for Gearbox, but not without some shenanigans first.

After a classic Randy magic trick, a proud display of lock-down Lego builds, and a chaotic bidding war where he auctioned off the literal shirt off his back (which an audience member bought for an eye-watering $1200) we finally got to see some fresh New Tales From The Borderlands gameplay and had a lovely chat with director of production, James Lopez. Watch the video below for the interview in its entirety - it's a good'un!

Join us for our mega tour of the PAX West show floor where we go behind the scenes of the show's hustle and bustle to bring you a little slice of PAX gaming heaven. We've been stomping around the show floor looking at all of West's greatest sights, including bonkers booths, game demos, cool cosplays, and all the different gaming areas to give you a full picture of everything there is to see at PAX.

Oh my goodness, what a creepy, funny, and odd game Northern Journey is. I almost don't want to say any more about it, not because it can be spoiled but because it seems appropriately respectful. Not in a reverent sense, you understand. It just feels like such a world should be preserved, even slightly feared, rather than trampled on by some idiot with a camera in her face.

To call Northern Journey "retro" would completely misrepresent it. It's beautiful in an ugly, desolate way reminiscent of Kenshi or Morrowind. It's translucent in its exposition but not obtuse, hostile, or obnoxiously hard. It's a bit clunky, without that ever undermining the experience. It's vaguely amateurish, yet almost consciously so, like a painter who knows their talent and intent is enough to overcome any technical flaws. This is a bloody treat and I'm so glad I got to play it.

Not since the cruelly overlooked Blast-off has a game so accurately pressed the faster! button in my brain.

Neodash is a type of racing game that pops up relatively often; a time trial crossed with an obstacle course and a little of what I suppose is the endless runner. Picture Trackmania but with the courses condensed into short bursts of high speed dodging and you're basically there. They're often very throwaway and don't really hold my interest for long. Neodash grabs hold immediately.

The only Zelda game I've played was Link's Awakening, on the Game Boy. I do not feel short changed by this. In fact I get the distinct impression it was one of the best, if not the one that most distilled the series' essence.

That essence has made its way into Blossom Tales II, a charming light adventure game in the classic "going on an adventure" sense rather than the "rubbing every item on every other item until you're allowed to play again" genre sense.

You're playing out a story playfully told by your grandfather, who's cast you as the wee hero of a village out to rescue your brother from the sinister Minotaur King. Both of you occasionally interject, sometimes prompting a decision that changes the game a little as your granddad amends things to your liking. It doesn't go to the full meta-narrative lengths of a Juarez Gunslinger with it, but it's a cute touch and keeps the framing relevant.

You know what it's like at the beginning of a new year. You're all excited about the many tens and hundreds of new video games coming out over the next 12 months, and you go and make a big list of all the ones you're really looking forward to. We did exactly that back in January of this year, coming up with a list of our 43 most anticipated games of 2022. Lately, though, it seems we can't go a single day without word of yet another game being delayed, whether it's just by a couple of months, or that it's been taken off the calendar entirely.

It got me thinking. How many of those 43 games are even still on the table this year? And, more importantly, what does that mean for RPS as we head into the back-end of 2022? Well, I went back and counted, folks, and it's not great reading. At time of writing, just over half that number - 27 in total - are still slated for a 2022 release right now, although with many still listed as a very vague '2022' or 'Coming Soon' on their Steam pages, I wouldn't be surprised if that number fell further. Needless to say, I'm not sure 2022 will go down as one of the great gaming years... 2023, on the other hand? Wow, that's looking rad.

Heard joke once: man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great game Neon White is out now. Go and play it. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor... I am Neon White. No, wait. What did you say? Did you say white or blight? Oh, white, oh, okay."

As many of you well know, I rather enjoyed cat adventure Stray recently. As an owner of two tortoiseshells myself, it was right up my alley. I do, however, have a confession to make. When I started seeing other real life cats enjoying the game alongside their respective humans, I began to feel sad and a bit left out. You see, my cats Maple and Midna (still!) haven't shown any interest in Stray whatsoever, not even flicking up their ears in response to the cat's in-game meow. I'm not gonna lie, it kinda broke my heart a little bit.

However, I'm beginning to think their (clear and apparent) hatred of video games goes further than simple disinterest. I was playing A Plague Tale for the first time last week, a game famous for its swarms of screeching rats, and STILL nothing. They love hunting rats and bringing them home to leave as little presents for us on our back door step. Heck, they'll even wig out and go into prowl mode when they hear them scrabbling away underneath our floorboards (yes, we do have a rat problem in our house). But clearly, their ice cold little murder hearts are unmoved by their video game equivalents. Is this what it's like when your children reject your hobbies and go and sulk in their rooms for the rest of the day? Because it sure does feel like it.

"Metroidvania" is a terrible phrase that gets in the way of its own definition and I hate it.

It does, however, still apply to Zapling Bygone. Describing it in less mechanical terms could make it sound creepy. You're a spore of an all-consuming hivemind, dropped on an unfamiliar planet to assimilate it. You move by skittering about on wobbly green tentacles, leaping and climbing and clinging and lashing out at living things with them, then absorbing the green muck that bursts out, and periodically consuming a creature powerful enough to be worth assimilating. And wearing its skull in the centre of your tentacle mass, because why not.

You might remember that I couldn’t beat Spelunky 2's first stage, no matter how hard I tried. Well, I'm proud to announce that my fortunes have since changed and that I've bested it. I should say "we", as my achievement was aided by a co-op pal, and the only person on Earth patient enough to accompany such a terrible Spelunker. We even reached the first boss, and the level after that! Before we both got splatted by an anti-gravity zombie-puppet-that-lives-underwater.

Aside from my – our – achievements, I learned that the game is a perfect measurement of fatigue. Where rulers calculate distance or Ollie's highly scientific WIPERS precipitation system measured the best rain in games, Spelunky 2 is the ultimate tool for accurately determining just how tired someone is.

Demons happened. There's your plot. More specifically, they apparently happened to everyone except you, but the process still messed with your tv, so there's nothing for it but to fight your way through them to some kind of solution.

Demons Happened is a curious blend of very rapid action faintly reminiscent of Hotline Miami, and an Abe's Oddysee type of puzzle game. Such disparate genres don't often blend as well as this, and I'm disappointed that it hasn't got a bigger reception.

There's a set of Unreal assets that Alice of Bees once described as "angry playmobil". I've wanted to quote that for years but had yet to play a game using them that grabbed me enough to warrant an article. Let us be thankful, then, for ADACA, an angry playmobil FPS.

It's actually two games, and I'm not sure which to call the main event. I know which one I prefer, because the story mode is a love letter to Half-Life 2, complete with Bane-muffled jackboot cops, endlessly catching up with a Story Guy who's inexplicably ahead of you again, a bionic arm standing in for the gravity gun, and a spooky dark underground section where you're swarmed by creepy mutants. It was good enough to tempt me this week, despite a few minor niggles, but its other half, Zone Patrol, is a Stalker-esque sandbox where it really shines.

I like a building game that doesn't need constant babysitting. I also like one where you get to be a bit creative and build according to your whims as much as to necessity. The Final Earth 2 is an ant farm kind of game that places very few limits on what you can build where, and lets you cheaply restructure as needed even if you mess it up.

The idea is you build vertically, with each building taking up a block, and your people freely travelling through all of them to get to work or home or the pub. Everyone else who plays it seems to build enormous, elaborate, impressively well organised structures that are even kind of beautiful. I build a random pile of crap. I am absolutely rubbish at it.

Alice O's excellent Tour de Jeux words - which see her celebrate cycling in games and real life alongside the ongoing Tour De France - got me thinking about the sorts of exercise that take up a good chunk of my spare time. As some of you might know, I'm that badminton guy. That guy who always mentions he's away at a tournament sweating and eating bananas. That guy who believes Gears Of War and badminton have more in common than you might think, and reckon Gears is the closest thing we'll get to a proper badminton game.

Badminton aside, running is another pastime that's become dearer to me over the last few years. And that's a universally understood form of exercise, right? Especially when compared to the likes of badminton. So, why are there no proper games about running? I'd like one.

Once again I went into the basement of the treehouse - into the very roots, this time - to retrieve one of the reels of tape on which episodes of the bonus podcast Nate Files are recorded. I walked until the ground became unpaved and earthy, and the darkness became velvety. I heard the chittering of many pincers and carapaces colliding, and felt untold small bodies moving around me. Only for you, the supporters, would I make such a journey. I won't detail how I made it back alive, but I did, and it is with gratitude that I present this episode of The Nate Files to you. It's about ants!

For the most part, PowerWash Simulator helps me reach a state of total focus. Grime must be eliminated and I am there to facilitate that request with water and power. But occasionally I succumb to frustration as something I consider pristine isn't determined clean by the little progress bar that usually pats me on the back for jobs well done.

Then I learned that although grime can’t move, it makes up for it with cunning. It cements itself on surfaces in ways you wouldn't expect, as if to belittle my cleaning standards. After many encounters, I've identified this menace as The Underside: a secret boss you'll need to beat to become the ultimate power washer.

Prettiness, a strong musical score, and being a very welcome product of Persian myth and literature rather than Mount Olympus or Shakesbore again are good reasons to consider The Tale of Bistun. But I am absolutely shallow enough to be immediately invested in a game that implies my overarching goal will be to team up with Shohreh Aghdashloo. It turns out she's barely in it, but by the time I'd figured that out I was already won over.

I have long been on the "eh, seems okay" side of the fence regarding Valve's newest lil child. To me, the Steam Deck did not do anything not already covered by the four different video game boxes I already own. The largest advantage afforded by the Steam Deck, the ability to play cool games on a handheld device, was surely the domain of the Nintendo Switch - a console that I personally use about once a year. Usually the process is that I go "Oh yeah!", pick up the Switch, and contemplate buying Breath Of The Wild before I see that it has not depreciated in value whatsoever since it came out five years ago. Then I turn off the Switch.

Last week, though, I picked up the Switch, saw that Tangle Tower was on sale, and played it through in one go. "This is great!", I thought, marvelling at how I could play a game while sitting on the sofa, but leaving the TV free for my partner to watch whatever stupid TV show he wanted. I went to look for other cool indie games that might be on sale on the Switch, and that's when I discovered that the Switch eshop is hot garbage unless you know specifically what you're looking for. So now I want a Switch.

Earlier this week, I had a real blast from the past moment. Apparently, my ancient LiveJournal turned 18 on Tuesday, a thing I haven't posted in or given a single thought to for at least ten years. Naturally, curiosity got the better of me, so I dipped my toe back in to see what teenage Katharine had been blogging about in the mid to late 00s. Aside from all my custom images having been eaten, probably with the closure of whatever photo upload service I used back in the day, everything else was pretty much in tact.

But man alive. Those OPINIONS. Just terrible. Bad, awful, narrow-minded. In some ways it's quite funny looking back at how angry I was about Nintendo putting trains in a Zelda game, for example (joke's on me, Spirit Tracks would go on to become one of my fav Zelda games of all time), but in many ways I'm just quite glad I've (hopefully) moved on as a person, if only because recent weeks have reminded me there are still plenty of people out there like late 00s Katharine who are in all likelihood the same age I am now. Yes, I'm talking about the backlash to Return Of Monkey Island.