At the latest Nintendo Direct, a new smartphone app called Nintendo Today debuted, and it acts as a calendar and news feed for everything Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, and so on. You might think that sounds slight if you’re not a Switch superfan, but the company immediately used the app to drop a release date for…
When I had the chance to talk to Avowed region director Berto Ritger recently, I had one thing on my mind: How every nook, cranny, dead end, rooftop, and pond in the game had something hidden in it that was worth my time. Even a bit of vendor trash or upgrade materials in the right…
Any simulation is prone to bugs and gaps in immersion, but players stumbled on a pretty prominent one when Inzoi released earlier this week. While you can make a gay Zoi by tweaking the romantic preferences of any character you create, premade Zois out in the wild seem uninterested in playing for the other team….
My affection for retro puzzle games is almost as sizable as my backlog full of them; sometimes I find myself wishing I could play two at once just to save a little time. Well, Spanish indie studio Majorariatto has caught my eye with a better value proposition than most, offering two death-defying quests to save…
They grow up so fast! Not long ago, Owlcat were just a plucky young Kickstarter-funded RPG studio, giving us the likes of Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous. Now they’re a big, strong outfit, fresh from the monstrously huge Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader, and rolling out their own publishing wing. Now we get to…
At this year’s Game Developers Conference, I had a chance to see a first gameplay preview of Studio ZA/UM’s RPG follow-up to Disco Elysium, codenamed C4, and speak to two developers on the project: writer Siim “Kosmos” Sinamäe, and artist/producer Ruudu Ulas. Setting aside the controversy, the labor and creative disputes, the ownership of Elysium,…
Quamtotius Purgamentum begins in the time-honoured tradition of all Thief missions, with protagonist Garrett screaming loudly as he falls through an enormous hole. Landing inside a giant blue cube, he is immediately accosted by a half a dozen guards, some of whom spin violently in the air like a helicopter’s rotors. Garrett’s only chance of…
Sherlock Holmes never struck me as the retiring sort, more the ‘dying in his armchair mid-deduction’ sort. Nonetheless, this is the premise of The Beekeeper’s Picnic—A Sherlockian Adventure, a charming little adventure game that’s just released on Steam. Finally fed up with the detective lark, Holmes retires to the village of Fulworth to start a…
ArmA Reforger has come a long way since its rather thin launch in 2022. A multiplayer-centric military roleplaying toolset, Reforger is part ArmA 3’s Zeus dressed in Bohemia’s snazzy new engine, and part testbed for ArmA 4. It wasn’t vastly well liked when it was released out of Steam Early Access, with the community accusing…
Now rendering. Rendering Ranger R2‘s original release is a layered story of mystique and intrigue. Developed by Manfred Trenz of Turrican fame, it was only ever released in Japan after its American and European incarnation, Targa, was cancelled. With only 10,000 copies produced, it’s one of the rarest Super Famicom games and by far the…