Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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What’s on your bookshelf?: Tomb Raider, Mirror’s Edge, and BioShock Infinite writer Rhianna Pratchett

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I’m currently reading Brendan Keogh’s The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist. It’s interesting enough that I’m only mildly pissed off about the added academic book tax. Paying the academic price is funny if you say it like paying the iron price. Although, again, not quite funny enough to soothe my awful uni flashbacks of books that cost a week’s worth of groceries each. This week, it’s writer on Tomb Raider, Mirror’s Edge, BioShock Infinite plus loads more, and host of BBC Radio’s Mythical Creatures – Rhianna Pratchett! Cheers Rhianna! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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Minecraft is getting a new biome and The Creaking, a creepy mob that only moves when you look away

Mojang want to release smaller updates more frequently for Minecraft, instead of one major update each summer. This evening’s Minecraft Live stream detailed the Bravery And Bundles update, coming next, but also another update to follow in the next few months. A creepy update.

It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’ll add The Pale Garden, a new biome of eerie, grey trees and hanging moss that’s quiet during the day, but which at night is inhabited by a new mob, the Creaking.

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Clowned King is a Fire Emblem-inspired RPG in which you lead a whole party of clowns

I must confess, it was not till this very hour that I envisaged the possibility of an RPG party consisting exclusively of clowns. There’s a fine tradition of clown characters in RPGs – Sylvando from Dragon Quest XI, Harle from Chrono Cross, the Jester in Darkest Dungeon – but a whole party’s worth? The full big top? The maximum cabaret? Madness! Delightful madness! Here’s the trailer for Clowned King, the next game from Moonana, developer of the colourful and melodious Keylocker. I like it better than a custard pie full of razorblades. I like most things better than a custard pie full of razorblades, but this comes reasonably high up that list.

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Breachway early access review: a graceful reinvention of starship combat as a question of taut deckbuilding

The beauty of cards is that they can be anything. You can slap together a working game with them in a couple of minutes. Take 12 blanks, doodle some faces and landscapes, and lo, you have a procedural narrative generator. Make some duplicates, invent a few rules and lo, you have systems.

Conversely, the great drawback of cards – especially in those roguelite deckbuilders people have been churning out since Slay The Spire – is that everything can be reduced to them. For example: last night, I played a round of Fungi with my partner, Fungi being a charming tabletop foraging sim in which you gather scrumptious chantarelles and boletus from the forest floor. This morning I resumed playing Breachway, out now in early access, in which you guide a starship through a series of wartorn solar systems, with battles unfolding as a turn-based exchange of cards corresponding to ship components.

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Grunn review: I was lied to, this very good gardening game is not normal at all

As befits the “very normal gardening game” that puzzly mystery box Grunn winkingly bills itself as, the first tool I obtained was a pair of shears. The second tool I obtained was a trumpet. It doesn’t really work like a trumpet, and it does things no regular trumpet could or should do. I got a trowel next. Here’s the thing about the trowel: it’s a pretty good trowel. Nothing fancy. But recently, I keep digging up… objects. Objects most peculiar. I’ve got the weekend to sort this garden, and a cosy little shed to sleep in, so I really should just get on with it. Again, though, I must reiterate: I keep digging up… objects.

I go to clean some rubbish from the bathroom. I interact with the mirror and the game says: “You do not see anything in the mirror”. I take a note that says: I do not see anything in the mirror. I check the game again and no, I still do not see anything in the mirror. Sure it’s fine. Just a shit mirror, probably. They should get it replaced. What good is a mirror you can’t see anything in?

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System Purge: Hollowpoint is a maddening platformer, but the good kind of maddening

Alice Bee (RPS in peace) wrote about platformer System Purge a while back, saying it starred a witch with a nice hop. So I tried out the demo for its sequel, System Purge: Hollow Point, and can confirm that the witch still has a nice hop. I’m thankful for this, because if the witch did not have a nice hop, the game would be maddening in a bad way. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still maddening. Just in a good way. The hop is good.

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Deadlock cheaters are being turned into frogs as players get chance to vote on their fate

Valve instituted a fairytale punishment for cheaters in its unreleased laney shooter Deadlock yesterday. Cheaters will now be turned into frogs, provided the other players in the match vote for it. A Counter-Strike 2 modder proved the effect in a post on Xitter after the change was mentioned in some out-of-the-way patch notes by a Valve developer.

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The ghost of StarCraft: Ghost endures as a new shooter set in the RTS universe is in the works at Blizzard

A new shooter set in the StarCraft universe is in the works at Blizzard, according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier’s book Play Nice, via Eurogamer. The project is headed up by Dan Hay, who worked various leading roles on Ubisoft’s Far Cry series, and also a 1999 CGI film starring Jim Belushi named “The Nuttiest Nutcracker”. The real-time strategy spinoff was also mentioned during an IGN podcast that aired yesterday.

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