Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

For most of his game-making career, Australian developer dweedes has projected an image of cheeky, punkish rebellion. His website WET GAMIN has accumulated a trove of experimental games over the last decade: short works by various freeware developers that exemplify a scribbly, DIY spirit. Now, making and selling games on Steam under his studio Nonsense Machine, dweedes finds himself in the position of stepping up his commercial and craft ambitions while trying to stay true to his anti-corporate roots.

“I’ll put out games for free because it kind of lightens the load off my head,” he tells me as we chat over Discord. “I don’t have to market it, I don’t have to invest time in it. I just want to get the idea out, and then people can play it. There’s no quality target, so it’s fun for trying new ideas and throwing whatever you want out and not thinking too hard about it.”

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I fear and covet no videogame genre on this Earth like the bullet hell shoot ’em up. I find these scions of the arcades irresistibly beautiful. They look like how I imagine human nervous systems appear to thunder spirits. By the same token, I’m not sure they’re actually designed to be processed by the human nervous system. They’re the kind of game the androids will play, once they’ve hunted down and incinerated the last of our kind.

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Not long before joining Rock Paper Shotgun, I wrote a feature for Edge magazine about the origins of the very silly term “AAA game”. The overall conclusion I came to is that “AAA game” is possibly a boardroom-level borrowing from the credit rating industry and Hollywood, and that it has little meaning beyond “most expensive/biggest”.

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The first bit of DLC for mud-splattered infrastructure setup sim RoadCraft has rumbled out of the garage, bringing with it a couple of new maps, several extra vehicles, and some extra-tough options for those craving a hard time.

One of those fresh rides is a bridge layer, and you best believe it’ll end up wedged somewhere improbable with its wheels spinning helplessly once I get my hands on it. How can you mess up motoring towards a gap, and pressing the ‘commence bridgening’ button? It’ll be possible.

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Hollow Knight: Silksong developers Team Cherry are “working to improve” the game’s Simplified Chinese translation, following “quality issues” which have seen its Steam user reviews from those speaking the language drop to “mixed”.

As you can easily see thanks to Steam’s recent introduction of language-specific review splits, the mixed reviews are unique to the 6,382 people who’ve left verdicts in Simplified Chinese so far. For every other language, including Traditional Chinese, the impressions being left are either mostly or overwhelmingly positive, though it’s worth noting that a sizeable number are more shows of support for Team Cherry than proper reviews, being based on less than an hour’s playtime.

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In case you missed it, a plucky little game no one had heard anything about whatsoever arrived yesterday. Hollow Knight: Silksong. Yeah, I know, it’s news to me too. Anyway, what’s also news is that Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone has a voice acting cameo in Skong. Though, he’s being all coy about revealing when and where you can hear his dulcet tones.

This came to light because of some valiant folks who’ve already made it to Silksong’s end credits, presumably having pulled mammoth sessions last night, as our own Ollie did to provide you lot with some helpful early game walkthroughs. Or, you know, they’ve gone to the extras bit of the main menu and pressed the button that rolls the credits.

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“Horror” and “automation” are concepts I’m used to seeing together in fiery/weepy essays about late capitalism. I’m less used to seeing them together in videogame marketing blurbs. Horror, in an automation-based game? Why, games with automation are supposed to deliver the finest and most methodical of chemical highs. They are supposed to feel like building yourself a better brain out of candy-coloured conveyor belts and smelters. They are not supposed to make you afraid.

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Star Trucker, Raw Fury’s answer to what Euro Truck Simulator might look like in the year 3000, is now a year old, and has celebrated that fact with an update that finally lets you whip out your wheel and pedals.

Ever since I gave it a go with a controller prior to letting my Game Pass subscription crumble into dust, this is a day I’ve yearned for. After all, what good are truck sims, be they Euro, American or something more Snowrunnery, if you’re not operating the controls of your great metal haulage beast by flicking flappy gearbox paddles, or sawing away at a circle clearly designed for something a bit sportier?

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Well, who could have seen this coming: Hollow Knight: Silksong has taken Steam offline, or at least, laid waste to large swathes of it. Within seconds of its release this afternoon, Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight sequel brought Valve’s servers to a halt, cue endlessly loading pages when trying to access the checkout, browse the store or do much of anything.

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Hollow Knight: Silksong has officially buzzed across the thin red line between “entirely hypothetical object of mass hysteria” and “existing videogame that you can play on your PC”. Team Cherry’s new metroidvania is live now on Steam and GOG. You can actually buy it with your actual money. Should you buy it? Sadly, I don’t yet have a Hollow Knight: Silksong review for you, because Team Cherry have decided not to distribute any codes in advance. If you’re reading a Silksong review right now, the reviewer is either a worryingly close confidant of the developers or a filthy bloody liar or some other, totally innocent third thing.

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