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Ghost Bike, the upcoming cycling ’em up from Nidhogg makers Messhof, is now called Wheel World. The name change is designed to reflect some substantial changes to the game itself – and there’s a new trailer to show its current condition as a seemingly chill game about tinkering with bikes and riding them around pastel-coloured worlds.
One of my favourite internet jokes is: “I enjoy video games because they let me live out my wildest fantasies, like being assigned a task and then completing that task”. Wilmot’s Warehouse felt like that joke made manifest, putting you in the shoes of a tiny warehouse working squareboi. This puzzle-solving sequel, Wilmot Works It Out, doesn’t come packaged with its predecessor’s wry humour, nor the same sense of compulsion. Instead, it exudes a calm and homely sense of idle comfort. For me, that ultimately makes it less compelling, even if it is thematically the entire point. This is about a warehouse worker doing jigsaws on his day off.
Velvet 89 is a free hidden object game that tells the story of communist Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” in 1989, which brought an end to 41 years of one-party rule and led to the founding of a parliamentary republic. The game released earlier this month, and you can find it on Steam, iOS and Android. I know nothing about the Velvet Revolution, but I do have some quick thoughts on the use of a format I associate with Where’s Wally to capture a process of extraordinary political change.
Developers Dreamlit have piped over fresh footage of their open world ecotribal extravaganza Towers Of Aghasba. It’s an abbreviated but generous display of equatorial exotica and vaguely prehistoric wildlife, home to such key verbs as “exploration”, “village-building”, “gardening”, “creature-nurturing” and “murdering megasloths with a lump of wood”. And look at that, there’s a release date perched on top – 19th November 2024.
Over the past week or so, you may have caught wind of Denuvo – the makers of anti-cheat and anti-piracy software – embarking on a PR campaign of sorts, intended to combat negative public perception of their software. In case you’re unfamiliar, Denuvo’s wares have become infamous for allegedly sabotaging the performance of all sorts of video games, from Resident Evil: Village to Tekken 7, though accounts of the severity vary, and there is an on-going shortage of independently supplied raw data.
Denuvo’s attempts to clear the air include opening a Discord, which they say “ is a key step in fostering closer relationships with game developers, publishers, and players, offering a dynamic, real-time platform for meaningful interaction”. On Monday, Denuvo’s media team reached out to me to offer an interview with Denuvo’s product manager, Andreas Ullmann. Here’s that interview, edited for brevity.
RPS: In a recent public statement you said “we will stop letting every claim about our product go unanswered”. What claims are you referring to?
Andreas Ullmann: It’s basically really about the stuff that’s posted by the community. So you just need to check out Steam forums, for example. Very toxic, very hostile environment. If a game announces to use any of our products, if you check out the Steam forums, all the claims are popping in. SSDs are destroyed by our solution. The usual performance topics, and we simply don’t want to leave the floor to these people who are posting all things about us anymore. We want to also be there for a person who has not heard about us before. We also want to share our view, our opinion on these topics, and also act as a trusted source of information.
“Move over Hollow Knight,” declared Katharine (RPS in peace) in our Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown review, summarising this freshly-honed hunk of POP art as “a deep and challenging Metroid-like with some of the best platforming this side of Moon’s Ori games.” Sadly, for all the plaudits, the game doesn’t seem to have earned sufficient megabucks to justify keeping its development team together. Earlier this week, French journalist Gautoz reported that Ubisoft had disbanded The Lost Crown’s core dev team after turning down proposals for a sequel and further expansions. Speaking to RPS this morning, Ubisoft have confirmed that “most” of the Lost Crown’s dev team have moved onto other projects, while noting that there have been no layoffs as a result.
When I was little, I really liked what I saw of Shin chan, even if it was just largely flashes of his bare arse on Japanese TV. He seemed mischievous, a bit of a menace, and part of a fun family dynamic. Flash forward to now and I can only describe the lad as… jarring. At least, I think he’s an odd flag-bearer for a series of games where you live out a nostalgic, Japanese summer in the countryside.
And I think it’s doubly weird that Shin chan: Shiro And The Coal Town opts for a collectathon approach, that doesn’t necessarily make the act of living out a Cicada Summer all that mesmerising. But, and this is a big but: I can’t stop thinking about it. Of all the games of 2024, Coal Town may have left the biggest impression on me. In a way, I hope it does for you, too.
Did you have a fine old time in Blackreach, the mazy, Dwemer-built underside of Skyrim’s sprawling mountain map? Do you like murdering Ents in slow motion? Do you want to see smells? You might be interested in The Axis Unseen, which has just launched on Steam – it’s the work of former Bethesda developer Nate Purkeypile, one of the big brains behind Blackreach.
Shotgun King developers Punkcake Délicieux have quietly rolled out another ticklish oddity in the shape of Build The Sun, a work-in-progress 2D god sim. In Build The Sun you preside over a tribe of alarming yet cute inkblot creatures, who sometimes remind me of Pikmin and sometimes, of that awful ‘roided-up panther monster from the opening stretch of Another World. Your objective is, indeed, to build the sun, because there isn’t one: the game’s pastoral pixelart world is engulfed in darkness.
