Hitman: Absolution Gameplay Video

Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.

I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.

I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.

Don’t kill people. That’s the ARC’s job. Make no mistake, I ain’t no softie. Just coz I won’t attack you first, don’t mean I won’t defend meself from a rat bastard who likes the look of my backpack! The rustbelt is a volatile place. I’ve seen what it’s done to us. What it does to the mind. But we gotta stick together, fight for humanity, and focus our efforts where it truly matters – FOR SPERANZA!

Beyond: Two Souls is a paranormal action thriller starring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. You’d be forgiven for assuming it’s a Hollywood film based on that description, but it is in fact the latest game from Quantic Dream, the studio behind the equally cinematic Heavy Rain. It’s tempting to compare the two, but Beyond is a different experience, opting to tell a linear story with fewer choices and consequences. As a big fan of Heavy Rain’s dynamic storytelling approach, I expected to be disappointed but as soon as I started playing I realised what writer and director David Cage was trying to achieve and felt satisfied to go along for the ride. Because what a ride it is…

The Trials franchise is surely the most successful game to ever start out life as a Flash browser game. I remember playing the original game on Miniclip back in the day, and I have played every single iteration since. The game’s core concept is simple – you control a trials bike, and must navigate it across a series of increasingly difficult obstacle courses on a 2D pane. It’s the perfect pick-up-and-play game, because it’s easy to get the basics, but insanely difficult to master.