Textbook of Gaming

Welcome, to the spoooOOOoookiest entry into the blog so far! This Halloween I’ve put on my big boy pants and actually played a horror game, and that is Soma , the other game that Friction Games developed after their cult hit Amnesia: the Dark Decent . In case you repressed those memories, Amnesia was a sensational survival horror game that came out at a time when all the major publishers were spouting the same line: that survival horror games just weren’t profitable enough to make. Frictional Games made sure that they knew that they were wrong. Amnesia scared the ever loving Buh-Jesus out of pretty much everyone who played it . One the downside it also made PewDiePie famous, proving that behind every silver lining there is a cloud. Soma is the studio's follow up, and still deals with Lovecraftian horror but via different narrative vehicles. The game centres on Simon, a man with a brain injury that is slowly killing him. After sitting down for an experimental treatmen...

We’re taking Weekend with Indies in a slightly different direction this week, looking at a AA game released independently by Rebellion: the quirky and peculiar, co-operative shooter-slash-puzzler  Strange Brigade . Rebellion isn’t a stranger to co-op shooters, from classics such as the Alien Vs Predator series to a pulpy spin-off to their acclaimed Sniper Elite series called Zombie Army Trilogy . Their latest self-published effort follows in the same pulp science fiction vein as ZAT , taking players on an adventure through 1930s Egypt in pursuit of the evil witch-queen Seteki and her hoards mummified minions, minotaurs, and even pirates. As I said above, there are plenty of puzzles to be found in the game that are worth solving, because the secondary objective of Strange Brigade is acquiring artefacts, diaries, blue crystal cat statues, and all the gold that the player can eat. But between the player and their reward are the undead hordes of Seteki, from Skeleton Warr...

We’re scraping the bottom of the bank account again with the return of Weekend with Indies! This time I’ve taken a look at a game that has intrigued me for a while now: a little endeavour by the developer George Batchelor called Far From Noise . Far From Noise is a visual novel about having a quiet conversation, but it has elements of an adventure game too, with different dialogue boxes leading to different responses. It’s also a bit of a strange one, as the protagonist is a 20-something year old young woman trapped in her car as it teeters over the edge of a cliff. She also passes the time by chatting to a nearby talking deer. Okey dokey. George Batchelor, 2017 In what has become a typical design philosophy for games like this, Far From Noise follows a minimalist style in terms of artwork and user interface and input. The entire game can be played using only the d-pad on your controller, making it highly accessible from a design standpoint. Indie games are often ...

It’s the end of the holiday season and indeed my holiday. I’ve been in Australia for the past month, away from the grey skies and rain off the British winter. But now I’m back from the shrimps on the barbeque and the dropbears of the billabong, and find myself staring up at the gargantuan pile of games I’m in need of playing. And so, we shall begin to tackle said pile of shame to examine one of the indie titles I missed last year because Assassin's Creed: Origins is outside of my budget currently. Today, we’ll be looking at What Remains of Edith Finch , a story driven walking sim created by the folks at Giant Sparrow. The game is about the tragic Finch family; Swedish immigrants to the US whose house seems to be cursed, resulting in the premature deaths of many family members. Edith, the youngest and only surviving member of the family, goes back to the family home to explore her childhood and learn about her deceased relatives through stories written by or about them. ...

It is a quiet, still afternoon. There is nothing on TV and you have read every book in the house twice over. You decide to instead go for a walk in some local woodland. The crunch of leaves underfoot, the cool air, the stillness of the tree branches; it relaxes you and puts your busy mind at ease. Sat on a fallen log, you take it all in. You wonder if you are the only person for miles around. The pillars of bark go on seemingly forever, fading from the orange of autumnal leaves to the encapsulating blackness in the distance. In that moment you come to realise your smallness, not just in this patch of woodland, but in the whole of this vast world. In that calm, blissful moment, you are terrified by your own inconsequential existence. This is the strange feeling known as the natural Sublime. (Yeah, this one is going to get a bit emo.) The Sublime is a concept that artists and poets have wrestled with for centuries, and still lacks a clear definition. The best summary I h...

Welcome back to Weekend with Indies, where I play through the weird and wacky titles that come out alongside the AAA monsters. We're a bit late this month, but nevertheless this week, I’m looking at three titles that follow similar design choices: none of these games like to tell stories in a traditional way. (CAUTION: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.) Let’s start with probably the most complex of the three; Virginia . I love this game. I love it because it gave me a headache and after playing it through five times now I still don’t totally understand what’s going on in its weird Twin Peaks­ -esque narrative, and that is because of Variable State’s decision to not include any dialogue or text-based communication in the game, aside from the main menu. Instead the game relies on the player intrinsically understanding how a game should work: you know how to use the analogue sticks to move a character because that is how you have always moved a character. You understand that you need t...

And so, it is the week before payday. The coffee jar is empty. The bills are due. There is nothing on Netflix left to  watch. Amazingly, you can buy a quarter of a AAA game with what little money you have left… Welcome, then, to a new series I’m calling “Weekend with Indies”! It’s like Weekend at Bernie’s , but with less corpse related hijinks and more independent games that I’ve played over the weekend. I’ll be doing this once a month, and whilst the games may not be the latest, they will certainly be interesting and worth checking out. This is why I love indie games. Whilst the AAA scene innovates in terms of graphically fidelity and extorting more and more money out of consumers, the indie scene actually does some pretty novel things with the medium itself, be it their art styles, subject matters, or mechanics. They’re usually cheap and fun experiences too, so they work for a broke graduate like me. This month, the indie I’ve spent the weekend with is Oxenfree ...