Shovel Game combines Minecraft, Mozart and hell

I did not expect to meet Mozart in Shovel Game, nor did I expect him to ask me to mine a pyramid of shit, with the helpful advice that I start at the top to avoid any floating shitbricks. Mozart is probably the least interesting thing about Shovel Game, actually.

It’s a shortform first-person oddity with Minecraft-style destructible voxels (yes I know Minecraft doesn’t really use voxels) and a touch of AHL_5am. The idea is to tunnel through “a sequence of strange and unfamiliar spaces”. Here’s a trailer.

Read more

Silksong will get DLC and “some of the plans for that stuff are kind of ambitious as well”

Hollow Knight: Silksong began life as a DLC expansion, but then developers Team Cherry decided the concept was “too large and too unique“, and upgraded it into a full game. They spent six years working on the thing in almost total silence, while fulminating legions of the terminally online quietly drove themselves bonkers hunting for release date clues. We now have a Silksong release date – it’s just two weeks away – so in theory, the nightmare is over. Except, oh dear – Team Cherry are planning post-launch content for Silksong, and they’re already calling it “ambitious”.

Read more

The first hours of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 uncloak a slick action game, but a limited RPG

I feel for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. If it was named something like Fang Bastard: The Punching Of The Many, the trailers wouldn’t have so many views, but those who’d watched them would probably be quite jazzed for that new bitey-talky game that looks a bit like Dishonored with more story branching. It isn’t, and they aren’t. Instead, it’s called Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, a name packed with some of the weightiest words in RPGdom.

I don’t pity it, though. Three hours and change into Bloodlines 2, I’ve determined that I’d quite enjoy a Dishonored with more story branching, actually. Not as much as if I could express my roleplaying chops outside of very specific dialogue menus, or if I cared more about the fellow nightcrawlers on the other side of those conversations. But for all the tricky development and heavy heritage, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t enjoyed being The Chinese Room’s version of a souped-up vampire prowling a snowy, bisexual-lit Seattle.

Read more

Daedalic reveal story-driven Star Trek: Voyager strategy game in which you can betray everything Janeway ever stood for

Oi oi, where my Janeway fans at? Where my Parisians and my Torresians? Can I get a whoop, whoop for Chakotay? A high five for Seven of Nine? Daedalic have announced Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown, a “story-based survival strategy game” adaptation of the loneliest of the classic Treks. Created by developers gameXcite, who I may yet forgive for capitalising their name that way, it asks you to “manage systems and crew, engage in diplomacy, navigate difficult moral decisions, and face the unknown”. It’s got a cutaway dollhouse spaceship and a HUD made up to resemble a Star Trek bridge display. Also, Ensign Harry Kim is here! He wants orders. Kim, your orders are to roll that trailer.

Read more

The Chinese Room defend Bloodlines 2’s paywalled vampire clans: “we have been expanding it from where we originally planned to land it”

You really have to hand it to the publishers of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. They are the absolute masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the doyens of stepping on rakes, even as they near the checkered flag. The long-awaited RPG got a new trailer and what may actually prove to be the final release date at Gamescom Opening Night Live this week. The trailer was a feisty show of Dishonored-esque mayhem, and the hands-on verdicts I’ve read (save for stinky uncle Eurogamer) have been positive. Ours is forthcoming.

But then came the revelation that this much-delayed sequel to a quintessentially faction-led RPG from a company famous for downloadable add-ons would sell two of its vampire clans as day-one DLC. How we laughed! How we clutched our faces and chittered like gerbils! How we ran outside, begging for the moon to fall on our heads! Despair springs anew.

Read more