Here we are, the final voyage of 2024. This is the last advent calendar entry of PC gaming website Rock Paper Shotgun. Days elapsed: 24. Writers employed: 8.
I hope this hurts.
The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 24th
Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
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The second RPS Christmas Cracker 2024
The fell moons rise, and in their cold glare emerges a parcel from the dirt. Bloat and gangrene, crimped as if by tourniquet. A dark promise wriggles within. Grip the fibrous handles, feel its jagged soul imprint upon your palm. Now pull! Rend the sinew, tear muscle from bone, hatch their fetid gift! The yoke draws near! Take up the slip and read the words upon its face.
Time to enjoy your lovely joke!
Q: How can you tell a soulslike fan has fallen in love with a giant ape?
The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 23rd
An ancient tale, often re-told – and that’s just the story of the development studio that made it.
The first RPS Christmas Cracker 2024
The fell moons rise, and in their cold glare emerges a parcel from the dirt. Bloat and gangrene, crimped as if by tourniquet. A dark promise wriggles within. Grip the fibrous handles, feel its jagged soul imprint upon your palm. Now pull! Rend the sinew, tear muscle from bone, hatch their fetid gift! The yoke draws near! Take up the slip and read the words upon its face.
Time to enjoy your lovely joke!
Q: Why do oil rig workers only drink sparkling water?
What’s on your bookshelf?: I am 90% yule log but I need to keep up the streak edition
The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 22nd
It was a rainy day when she walked into my office, hard rain, like stray stones from a truck on the highway hitting your car bonnet. I lit my cyber-cigarette and put my feet on my desk, I don’t know why, I thought it would make me look nonchalant to this strange woman. She wasn’t impressed. “Detective,” she said, glaring at me with eyes like gorgeous tennis balls, “I want to open today’s advent calendar door.” I was confused. “Whaddya wanna do that for, missy?” She sat back, relaxed, and pulled a gun from her purse. “I need to stuff a body into it.”
The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 21st
There’s a slight breeze and a comforting glow coming from the crack’s in today’s calendar door, the sound of merriment and many accents from all over the world. Better join in the campfire revelry, because whoever’s there won’t be staying for long.
What are we all playing this holiday?
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Happy weekend all. Due to the intervention of Dark Powers and also, half the Treehouse already being on holiday, we neglected to do a round-up of staff Xmas plays before signing off for the year. Well, I’m pretty sure nobody did one. I can’t see anything scheduled in the RPS Post-A-Tron, but the RPS Post-A-Tron is an unreliable beast, full of malice and deceit. If I publish this and it turns out we have two, please divide into rival factions and have a comments war over which is the real one. Apologies! Normal service will resume next year.
Here’s how the strategy layer works in Menace, the turn-based squad combat RPG from the Battle Brothers devs
“A tactically rich turn-based game with some meaty role-playing elements”, was how Staff Sergeant James Archer characterised his Menace hands-on, back in September. The only thing missing from his account of the game was the bread needed to make that rich, meaty concoction a tasty, nourishing sandwich.
And by bread, I of course mean the strategic layer – the parts between the turn-based battles where you pick your next mission, improve your squads, deal with pop-up story events, appraise your standing with each NPC faction, and equip your strike cruiser with auxiliary systems. Developers Overhype have now shared a few details of how it all works. Mmmmm, such malty, yeasty strategicalness.
Rally Point: Oh phew, Songs of Silence is only pretending to be a card game
Clambering deep out of the Contemplation Pit, where reading reviews or opinions or, god help you, Takes, is forbidden, I am curious to learn how people have been categorising Songs of Silence. Its structure most resembles Songs of Conquest or Heroes of Might and/or Magic, but with little RPG emphasis or base building, and minimal tactical fighting.
Taxonomy is arbitrary and often unimportant at the end of the day, but I am very glad to firmly rule it out of one category: It’s not a bloody card game. It looks like one, sure. You do most things with cards, and characters acquire more cards over time. But even if you absolutely, utterly, and correctly loathe card-based systems, this game has none.