Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
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Windy Meadow, out now, is a delightful smalltown fable from the world of Roadwarden
If you played a videogame at all in 2022, I hope it was Roadwarden. A blend of RPG and visual novel from Polish developer Moral Anxiety, it cast you as lonesome wayfarer maintaining the paths and investigating the mysteries or grievances of a thinly populated wilderness setting. It was a game of immense feeling, craft and cleverness, inspired by table-top games, which puts hoarier ideas about videogame role-playing through the wringer. In the world of Roadwarden, there’s no grinding for XP. Knowledge, empathy and insight are worth far more than material wealth or wielding the shiniest axe. Quests can hinge on something as minute as your ear for dialects or knowing the correct form of address. And each village along the trail is a world in itself.
Moral Anxiety’s Windy Meadow – which actually dates back to before development of Roadwarden, but has been substantially remastered since the latter’s release – essentially narrows the focus to one of those villages. Out today, it’s a quietly gorgeous visual novel in which you follow several characters in different timeframes, building up a layered understanding of one and the same setting, with scene transitions plotted on a beautiful pixelart map screen.
How gun giant Remington used Call of Duty to promote weapons to younger players
Newly released documents have given us a rare inside look at how gun manufacturers have tried to use videogames to promote their wares to younger people – specifically, players of Activision’s original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, released in 2009. The memos and emails in question are from now-defunct US gun company Remington Arms, which was once part of the conglomerate Freedom Group. They’ve been disclosed by a lawyer as part of legal proceedings launched by the parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people using a Remington-made AR15 rifle.
RPS is hiring a Staff Writer, and you can apply right now
Following the ascension of Edders into his new role as Reviews Ed, RPS is now looking for a Staff Writer to fill his vacant boots and join our excellent editorial team. Applications are open now, so read on below to find out how to apply.
One of PC’s best and spookiest puzzle games has returned from the abyss
We talk about retro and throwback game releases being a “blast from the past”, but in this case, it’s more like you’re strolling down a sunny path amid soothing birdsong, and then one particular, innocent-looking paving stone swivels underfoot with a rustle of gears, dropping you into a dingy, yellow-panelled room. There are vacuum tubes mounted on one wall, doors to either side, and a ladder leading further down into darkness.
You click one of the doors and the perspective switches over slide-projector style to a second room with identical proportions. There are pipes emerging from the floor, here, and some kind of antique radio on a pedastel in the centre. Hang on, I know this place. I know this formless sense of dread. I know these machinations. The last time I set foot here, it was 2009 and I was running a Flash game blog, writing up choice submissions to sites like Kongregate. This is Submachine, a 14-part escape puzzle series from Mateusz Skutnik, which Skutnik has now compiled, polished-up and re-released as Submachine: Legacy.
Minecraft update 1.21 focuses on “combat and tinkering” with maze-like Trial Chambers and automatic crafting
Minecraft update 1.21 has been revealed, and well, looks like Mojang have been reading my posts demanding the addition of a proper maze generator, those sneaky devils. As explained by Minecraft game director Agnes Larsson, the forthcoming Minecraft update – which has yet to be given a release date – is designed to “focus more on combat adventures and on tinkering” than last year’s Cave & Cliffs update.
The headline addition is an underground structure called the Trial Chamber, a procedurally generated cluster of traps and treasure rooms, fashioned from copper and tuff blocks and arranged around a central hallway. From the Minecraft Live footage this weekend, Trial Chambers look like an evolution of the game’s old buried fortresses, with some nifty new flourishes in the shape of copper bulb blocks that slowly give off less and less light, and new Trial Spawners, which generate a certain number of hostile mobs based on things like the number of players in your party.
Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Podracing and parrying
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by podracing, parrying a grappling hook, seeing your own legs as you parkour about, and heaps more attractive and interesting indie games. Check ’em out!
Endless Dungeon review: an excellently moreish roguelike about opening doors
Let me put you at ease. Endless Dungeon is a very splashy, confidently clever roguelike about spannering turrets, hosing bullets, and popping bugs like angry little pimples. It sounds disgusting when I type it out loud like that, so let’s pivot to the reliable food analogy. It is a delicious game, a hearty stew. A tasty one-more-go-er, perfectly suited to serving up in these dreary autumn months. There. Now that you’ve been pacified by the imagery of a steaming bowl of pleasing dungeon gumbo, you will forgive the 400 words I have written below about doors.
EGX Highlights: Wordy wizard adventure Leximan is proper magic
The EGX demo for magic school adventure Leximan was perhaps only ten minutes long, but that’s all it really needed to confirm that this wordy spell-caster is a riotous delight of a thing that should absolutely be on your radar. Built out of a game jam prototype from 2020, Leximan casts you (sorry) as a would-be wizard who’s struggling to make an impact compared to his more verbally proficient schoolmates. In this particular demo, he’s woken by a friend to go and assist the school cook with preparing breakfast, but things go horribly awry when a pesky fire elemental turns up to spoil it all.
EGX Highlights: Loco Motive’s witty, murder mystery point and clicking has won me over
I’ll admit I’ve been a bit sceptical of Loco Motive since it was first announced a little while ago. Any point and click adventure game that makes a bid trying to be funny like the good old days has a very real chance of being painfully unfunny in my experience (looking at you, Deponia), and I was worried that Loco Motive would fall into the same try-hard pile as other so-called comedy adventures that have come out recently (see also Turnip Boy – yeah, I went there, fight me). But having played a timed 20-minute demo of it at this year’s EGX, I’ll hold my hands up and say, yep, I’m the one who’s been slapped in the face with a giant custard pie here, as Loco Motive is genuinely really quite good, folks, and I’m pleased to report the good old days are still very much alive and kicking. Well, except poor old Lady Unterwald, who carks it within seconds of the game starting, and whose murder you end up getting framed for.