Ghosts with fine linen Would PT have spawned a genre of housebound horror had PT been fully released? I don’t know, butLutois the latest indie attempt at making you scared of your linen closet. It even has some extremely impressive sheet physics. I’m a wuss and would not play most horror games, but I do want to play a game where the sheets drapejust soacross whatever abomination is lurching beneath them....
They might change the name before release, however Sci-fi first-person shooterOutposthas an underwhelming working title, but the trailer looks positively overwhelming thanks to the scale of the thing. It’s about fighting gushing swarms of hundreds of squid-like robots and constructing a base to help you. Now, many moons ago, I used to be big into Activision’sBattlezoneand Pandemic Studios’s excellent follow-upBattlezone 2: Combat Commander. Outpost looks like it has a similar combo of combat and base-building, so that’s piqued my interest....
“Pal” is a tainted word to my Scottish brain Palworldhas a new trailer. If you’ve seenPalworld’s previous two trailers, those words alone should send you rushing below to see what new absurdity is on show. For the uninitiated: Palworld is a game in which you can catch off-brand Pokémon, put them to work in a sweatshop producing guns, and then do battle with these Nopémon by your side and and an assault rifle in your hands....
Warning: also contains huge spider monsters There’s a feel of theOriseries and older platformers such asAnother Worldto Planet Of Lana. You’ll need to ask your extraterrestrial chum to interact with other aliens as you progress on your journey to rescue Lana’s kidnapped sister from sinister robots. Said robots rattle about on spindly spider-legs so I find them unsettling. They’re a bit like the guardians from Breath Of The Wild, with their glowing eyes that turn red when they’re about to do something particularly robotic and nasty....
That’s basically yer lot with Ill, and if I were to suggest anything more about it it would be pretty wild speculation. There’s aPatreonwith a teeny tiny bit more info publicly available, which I will reproduce in full here: We can also surmise that the monsters in the trailer used to be human and have had something terrible happen to them. I’m getting deep sea fish, weird crabs, I’m getting flowers, insects, I’m getting that film Annihilation....
Wholesome animals trending towards bears and frogs, away from cats Just like pastels, plants are often a feature of wholesome games, but this year the trend is going all out, and it’s giving ecology. While things likeStrange Horticulture, or even something likeAmong Treeswere early indicators of this, the combination of everything being on fire and everyone being inside for years has caused a latent interest in nature - and reconnecting with it - to bloom....
Robots in even more disguise The trailer forMorbid Metalfrom tonight’s Future Games Show had a lot of metal (the music genre) and metal (the stuff you make blades out of). Morbid Metal is a hack ‘n’ slash, but the difference here is that you have four different mech lads at your disposal, and you can morph between them whenever you like. This real-time switching means Morbid Metal moves very quickly. You might think hyphenated phrases like “high-octane”, “action-packed”, and “fast-paced” are moving in the direction of this game, but buddy this is going at such speed thatthey’re already here....
Sing me the song of your Moomins The Moomins were spreading themselves a little thin tonight, withSnufkin: Melody Of Moominvalleyappearing at both the Wholesome Direct stream and the Future Games Show later the same evening. In the former we got a bit of a primer on Tove Jansson’s work as the source material for this game, but in the latter we got a better look at the game in motion - plus news that ethereal Icelandic rockers Sigur Rós are collaborating on the sound track....
Back to the retro future One of the most intriguing new announcements at today’s Future Of Play event had to bePsychroma, a cyberpunk horror adventure game in the works by indie developer/publisher Rocket Adrift Games. The devs describe their game as a narrative-driven side-scroller where you play as a digital medium. Imagine something halfway betweenObserverandDetention, then, and you’ll be on the right lines. The trailer harks back to the point-and-click mysteries beloved of my misspent youth, which really fits in with Psychroma’s whole retro futuristic vibe....
Weeeeey apples and pears! Sunday Gold, revealed at the Future Games Show tonight, has a lot going on under the hood, so bear with me. In Sunday Gold you play a team of three crims and… well, I can’t explain it better than the steam blurb, which says “experience a unique hybrid of escape room style puzzles, turn-based combat, and RPG mechanics tied together with a dark and cinematic storyline.” So, er, Blending a few things, here....
Gotta start somewhere, right? The Guerrilla Games showcase this year had trailers for like, 60 games, or something, and no woman can play 60 games. Who do you think I am, Santa? You think I can slow time to infinity when I need it? So I’ve done you a little roundup of the games that caught my eye this time. There’s some action, some horror and some puzzles. Fun for all the family!...
More weapons should be so cute Upcoming sci-fi puzzle gameThe Entropy Centrehas a gun that, at first glance, seems to rewind time, and that’s probably one of the most useful inventions ever. The Entropy Centre’s due out this year. Although it could probably be out whenever it likes if it fires at a calendar of games releases. Have your ideas about physics turned upside down when you watch the trailer below....
Demo available now. Would you store your ketchup in this fridge? This was formerly known as ‘Do Not Take Your Eyes Away From the Red Fridge’, and I gotta say I approve of the change. At tonight’s Guerrilla Games Collective stream we got confirmation that this is now being published by tinyBuild, and we got a weirdo trailer showing snippets of some very unsettling stuff. It’s all the usual things you’d hate to open your eyes and see in a dream: a rabbit doll, a vending machine full of limbs, a load of figures arranged on the ceiling like an Antony Gormley installation, floating wheelchairs in a grubby hospital, some guy running at you out of a dark corridor, and creepy kids' drawings of families and stuff on fire....
