In case you weren’t aware, Tomb Raider is getting a reboot next year. Lara Croft’s origins are being explored in a new game about survival on a desolate island, and there’s a new CGI trailer to get you in the mood. Continuing the run of recent Square Enix pre-rendered trailers, it looks fantastic and I for one am looking forward to checking out one of gaming’s most famous heroine’s backstory.
After the fun puzzler Guardian of Light, the series is going in yet another new direction. We’re still firmly in the land of sequels and remakes (and this is yet another re-imagining of course) but I still find the concept of a new Tomb Raider game appealing. Hopefully they can pull it off. Check out the official Tomb Raider site for more info.
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.
Doki Doki Literature Club has dug its way into my chest and ripped me apart over the last couple of nights. It’s a free visual novel game where you get to know a bunch of girls in an afterschool book club… except not really. It looks exactly like any other tropey Japanese dating sim type game, but what lurks underneath this cutesy exterior is something really quite sinister and thought-provoking. The game’s tagline does a good job of reminding you that all is not what it seems: “This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.”
One of my all-time favourite gaming memories is playing Haunting Ground with my mates at the flat in Baldock for 16 hours straight. It was me holding the controller for almost all of those 16 hours. It’s a bit obscure, so if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a survival horror game by Capcom, in which you play as a pretty little fragile girl called Fiona, who must escape from a huge labyrinthine castle. Oh, and you can’t fight. Your only option is to run away and hide from the nasty people that are out to get you. You do have a companion throughout though, the best dog in gaming, a white German Shepherd called Hewie.
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.