I can’t tell if I love Cultist Simulator or loathe it. In some respects, it’s a remarkable game: a wholly unique mix of card game, text adventure, and resource management. Its fragmented narratives unfold in a mesmerising way through the cards played, inviting you into a grim, fascinating world of …
For Thomas Olsson of Skeleton Crew Studio, Olija is a very personal project. It’s a game about being a foreigner in a strange land, drawing from his own experiences as a foreigner living in Japan—an experience that can be exciting and awe-inspiring, but also lonely. Olija may take a swashbuckling …
Often when someone opts to make a retro-styled shoot-’em-up, there’s a deliberate choice to carry that inspiration through all aspects of the design. An old-school aesthetic comes with game systems that overtly channel those of yesterday’s classics, and the technical constraints they were built within. There’s plenty of appeal in …
There’s a lot more to a good roguelike than just permanent death and randomised dungeons. What makes the best of the genre work so well is the way they encourage experimentation with different weapons, different items, different builds—driven in part by necessity and in part by a game loop that …
Stormind Games, the developers behind the Remothered series have announced their next project—and looks like quite the departure from their survival horror roots. Batora: Lost Haven, currently in development for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC, is a story-driven action RPG “based on …
Heaven’s Vault is a stunning achievement in innovative game design and non-linear narrative, woven through a story about the importance of understanding history. Usually when a game has a translation element, it’s limited to decoding a cipher: the words are all English (or whatever language you’re playing in), with letters …
Unrequited love is one of those universal things that everyone struggles with at some point in life. It’s something that everyone handles it differently, but few handle well—a broken heart is a painful thing, after all. But it can also have surprising consequences, and even bring people together in a …
Ivan the blacksmith didn’t believe in bad luck. He was happy with his simple life as the village craftsman. He was content. But that all changed when a sudden encounter with Likho, a monstrous embodiment of pure misfortune, chopped off Ivan’s arm and cursed him to a life of ill …
Like a lot of people, I didn’t really know what to expect from Bowser’s Fury going in. The snippets of game footage I’ve seen so far gave the impression of Super Mario 3D World with new Bowser-themed challenges layered over the top of old ones—which would have been great in …
Fans of old-school run-and-gun shooters will want to keep an eye out for Turrican Flashback. Coming to Switch and PlayStation 4 on January 29th with both digital and physical releases, the collection brings together four classics: the Amiga versions of Turrican and Turrican II: The Final Fight, Mega Turrican for …
