We enter week one of RPS Post-Graham. The office Slack echoes like the Great Hall of Durin after a Balrog teaparty. Horace coils about the foot of the Treehouse like a sullen Viking serpent. The Maw seems peevish and incontinent, spurning any news we offer it. The wifi network keeps changing its name to “Execute Order 66”.
It is time to smash the emergency glass and bust out a few favourites from my personal collection of morale-boosting videogame intros. Here’s Red Alert, to put some spring in your step; Okami to let the light in; Colony Wars for the WRAAAOW noise at the end. And here are this week’s most interesting new PC games.
Monday 4th August
- Texnoplazm is a gun-fu brawl-o-shooter set in an urban world of sorcerous technology and vengeful synthetic escorts. You can steal weapons and kick dudes into walls real good.
Tuesday 5th August
- Tall Trails is a laidback exploratron featuring a smiling, albeit angst-ridden golem and his rocket-powered boot.
Wednesday 6th August
- Static Dread is about working at a lighthouse during a cosmic apocalypse, deciding which ships are safe to allow into the harbour.
- Era One is a real-time space strategy sim from Homeworld lovers that lets you clip together your own ships.
Thursday 7th August
- Mafia: The Old Country takes us back to pre-WW1 Sicily for some antique car chases and shoot-outs.
- The Royal Writ is a handsome, malevolent cardgame roguelite that mixes inspirations from Inscryption, Monster Train and Balatro – I enjoyed the demo.
- Wildwood Down is a point-and-click comedy mystery featuring a protagonist with Down Syndrome, inspired and voiced by one of the developers’ childhood friends.
- Artis Impact is a pixelart top-down RPG that feels at once cobbled-together and swish. It reminds me a little of Sword & Sworcery.
- The Lilliput Workshop is an automation game that looks like an old Brio toy trainset.
- These are certainly some Strange Jigsaws.
Friday 8th August
- Cleanfall is about a doughty mining robot descending through a world of hungry insects. Also feat. airships made of giant plant spores and Gatling gun turrets.
As for what RPS staff are up to this week – I started late and missed the morning all-hands meeting, so I have no choice but to make it all up. James is trying to invent new buzzwords for graphics cards, each buzzier and wordier than the last. He’s got as far as “polymorphotovoltaic processing” and shows no sign of showing down. Ollie has embarked on his magnum opus, a guide to Life. Jeremy has been reading too much Goldilocks and Proust and is lost in a series of flashbacks, each defined by the temperature of a particular bowl of porridge. Mark is engaged in an epic war against his neighbours, the Ice Giants, who have been trimming the hedge on his side again.
