We’re not all about the games here. The ‘stuff’ bit of our slogan keeps us covered when we feel like telling you about other entertaining things. Things like this. Comic-Con just happened, and along with vague news of Jurassic Park 4 from Spielberg himself (yes!), there’s also this fantastic trailer of season 2 of The Walking Dead. Frank Darabont’s adaptation was the best TV show of last year, and we’re eagerly waiting to see the story continue.
More than just another zombie tale, The Walking Dead managed to be a suspenseful drama focusing on interesting characters who you genuinely care for as they struggle to survive in a devastated world gone tits-up. The opening scenes are very reminiscent of 28 Days Later (though this is mere coincedence rather than rip-off, as the original comic came out around about the same time) but everything else is very much its own take on the zombie survival idea for a story. I was engrossed throughout and look forward to the longer second season, which is said to have 13 episodes compared to the first series’ 6.
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.
VVVVVV is one of the only 2D platform games that I have completed from start to finish, which makes it special to me. I became obsessed with Veni Vidi Vici, an entirely optional sequence of deadly traps that teases you with a collectible orb right in the very first room, which is blocked off by a tiny box. You can’t jump in the traditional way as most other platformer’s, so the only way to overcome the box is by leaping up through the ridiculously cruel chambers above, navigating your way to the top…and then back down again.
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.
I don’t know many people who played Quantum Break, and nobody ever talks about it anymore, so it must have been rather forgettable for those who did. Even as I write this, two days after blasting my way to the end-credits of the 2016 bombastic time-travelling action romp, I am struggling to remember some of […]