Premature Evaluation: Sunless Skies

This week’s Premature Evaluation sees Fraser hurtling through the cosmos inside a space-faring locomotive in Failbetter Games’ eccentric early access space sandbox, Sunless Skies.

Narrative-driven games aren’t normally a comfortable fit with piecemeal early access development – it’s harder to offer a compelling vertical slice of a story that’s meant to be viewed as a whole. This isn’t Failbetter Games’ first rodeo, however; the studio has already had one successful early access game in Sunless Sea. Like its predecessor, Sunless Skies has another advantage: it’s a game about making and experiencing your own story through evocative vignettes and quests, rather than following a prescribed narrative.

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Star Wars Battlefront 2 reworking loot crates

What a time we live in, when Star Wars is crassly monetised. What a world! The idea this dear little mom & pop franchise of movies, comics, cartoons, toys, novels, statues, t-shirts, nappies, waffle irons, Christmas decorations, and tiki mugs could ever be used to wring pennies from pockets… it doesn’t bear thinking about. But EA were trying to do just that with Star Wars Battlefront 2, packing upgrades into virtual loot crates that can — optionally — be bought for real money. Scandalous! So with the game’s launch now mere weeks away, EA have announced changes to make loot crates and progression slightly less gittish. (more…)

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World of Final Fantasy catches ’em all on PC next month

We’re seeing more of the main Final Fantasy games on PC these days, and a fair number of the strange spin-offs and side-games too. Square Enix today announced that the next round our way will be World of Final Fantasy, a spin-off which is a bit like Pokémon except you collect cute versions of FF characters and stack them on each others’ heads. Yup. Initially released on PlayStation 4 and Vita in 2016, it’ll hit PC in November. And it looks a little something like this: (more…)

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Five alternative Halloween treats

So you’re on the lookout for an Interactive Horror Experience™ to play this Halloween week, huh? But you’re not a fan of action horror; you’d rather you weren’t holding a gun in your shaking fingers. Or perhaps you prefer your horror games to be something a little more unusual. Something a little outside the box. But you don’t want comedy horror! You still want to be genuinely unsettled, disturbed even, but the likes of Resident Evil 7 and The Evil Within aren’t quite right for you. Well that’s fine. That’s okay. Gather round, kiddies, because boy do I have some cool Halloween week recommendations for you which (mostly) fit outside the box of traditional horror games. They’re all recent, all available right now, and even if you’re a fan of all things fearsome, there should be at least a couple of surprises.

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Horror walk-o-story Marginalia remade and respookified

On Halloween, there are few places I’d rather be than in a Connor Sherlock forest. Often contrasting darkness with lurid colours and laying ace retro horror synth soundtracks over the top, he creates places where people shouldn’t be. He never has jumpscares or monsters, just creeping wrongness. On Halloween in 2014 I was playing Marginalia, a horror walk-o-story he made with Cameron Kunzelman, and this Halloween I’m delighted to be playing Marginalia’s new “HD remake”. Wander a forest, hear a story unfold, and watch for lights through the trees – if you dare, and so on. (more…)

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The 25 Best Horror Games On PC

To compile a list of the 25 best horror games on PC is to look into the void for so long that the void not only starts to look back, but shakes you by the hand and takes you out for coffee. It is to fight with monsters until you become a monster and then go on a European railtrip with the other monsters, and really bond over cocktails in Saint-Tropez.

It is also a great way to explore the wide range of possible experiences within horror fiction. Here, there is something for everyone, even the squeamish and the easily-startled. Yes, there are jumpscares, but there are also slow-burn psychological dramas and tongue-in-cheek splatterfests. There are uncanny things and real terrors, but there are smiles and smirks among the shocks.

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Doki Doki Literature Club is a hidden horror game for the internet age

We players like to be in charge of our games. We save before boss battles. We watch how our choices change the story flow. Many of us know how to access game data if needed. Most of all, we like knowing we’ve out-smarted the game. And there’s no easier style of game to out-smart than a dating sim. Right?

Japanese-style dating games often stick to an aesthetic and tone that’s all but synonymous with the genre: bouncy anime blended with air-headed girls, all clamouring to get the attention of the male protagonist. Doki Doki Literature Club slips into that style seamlessly. Only one thing sets it apart – the tagline. “This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.” Beyond that there are no hints in the game trailer, no secrets in the description.

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Feed the fishies in local multiplayer game FEED

FEED (Fish Elders’ Eternal Digestion) looks like an underwater take on Push Me Pull You. In the devs’ own words, it’s a “3v3 character-based multiplayer game where basketball meets meets tug-o-war meets three-person potato sack race in a bizarre underwater world of sentient limbs and insatiable Fish Elders”. It’s not something I realised that I wanted in my life until I read that sentence back, so it’s a shame I’ll also need 5 other human beings (and 5 extra controllers) sat next to me before I can dive in.

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Resi 7 bids fond farewell with duelling DLCs

While tallying up which still-to-come games I want to shovel into my mind-hole before 2017 shrivels up and dies, I reckoned the last remaining DLC for Resident Evil 7 would be a surefire thing. Resi 7 pushed my buttons, by which I mean it made me feel almost unbearably anxious, and I hoped the long wait between it and this (presumably) final add-on meant it would seek to recapture the best bits rather than merely remix or just repeat the climactic shooty-bang section.

The bad news is that the upcoming Not A Hero pack, which is free for anyone who owns Resi 7, sure looks like it repeats the climactic shooty-bang section to me. Which leaves me hanging on for the other final (but paid) DLC, End Of Zoe, which looks altogether a little weirder and returns the theme of creepy people living in the swamps and using the word ‘family’ like a threat.
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Scream Fortress IX brings back every Halloween TF2 event

As if the hoards of pyros weren’t scary enough, Team Fortress 2‘s Halloween event launched on Friday. Instead of doing something new, they’ve chosen to make every previous Scream Fortress – going back to 2009 – playable once again. Get your spooks in while you can, because the event ends on November the 8th.

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Have You Played… Lone Survivor?

A demake is like a remake but with a retro vibe rather than a desire to update and refurbish. Lone Survivor [official site], Jasper Byrne’s modern classic, initially seems like it’s going to be little more than a Silent Hill demake of sorts. Then it becomes one of the few truly Lynchian games, and then it becomes something else entirely. (more…)

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Night In The Woods getting director’s cut in December

The wonderful Night In The Woods will receive “a whole bunch of new content” later this year with its ‘Weird Autumn Edition’ update, developers Infinite Fall have announced. Promising “new weird”, “new crimes”, and “old tales”, they say to “think of it as the Night In The Woods director’s cut.” I’ve just about come to terms with the initial coming-of-age crisis so sure, I should be up for more when the free update hits on December 13th. (more…)

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Spintires: MudRunner splats out

A hundred Halloween horrors start this way: driving through the wilds, a vehicle becomes stuck and its driver faces a harrowing ordeal. Will they escape and live to see another dawn or will they be found in a shallow grave? A hundred Halloween horrors may start this way but few are nearly as tense and trying as Spintires: MudRunner, which launched overnight. It’s an expanded re-release of 2014’s fantastic driving-through-mud simulator Spintires, which comes fancied up a little but most importantly freed from the troubled relationship with previous publishers Oovee. MudRunner is a separate paid release, not a free upgrade, though Spintires owners do get a discount. (more…)

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