The best games you missed in 2021: Tux and Fanny

Ghost Time Games’ Tux And Fanny, from co-developers Albert Birney and Gabriel Koenig, is not only the game I think you may have missed this year, but it is also my Game Of The Year for 2021. This game sends two best friends (alongside a courageous flea and a mischievous cat) through adventures great, small, and absurd to stunning effect – and you owe it to yourself to give this little marvel a play before the year is well and truly out.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3mGd3b9
via ifttt

The seventh RPS 2021 Christmas Cracker

Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What roguelite takes place solely within the confines of a French archipelago in the Caribbean?

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/32OLgxW
via ifttt

The best games you missed in 2021: Aerial_Knight's Never Yield

It’s pretty difficult to quantify which games actually whip ass, mostly because it’s a little subjective. That being said, if barrelling through the streets of a futuristic, neon-glazed Detroit, hopping over pursuing cop cars and racing through business offices and factories to the tune of an engrossing soundtrack doesn’t whip ass, I don’t know what does.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/33XwEwP
via ifttt

The sixth RPS 2021 Christmas Cracker

Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What horrible smell travels around corners really fast?

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/32BO7un
via ifttt

The best games you missed in 2021: co-open

Immersive sims are tricky games to get right. The spaces need to have incredibly tight design so they feel fun to explore, and lots of ways to get around them. And one of the best games of the year just happens to be one that does that expertly. Hang on, Deathloop? What are you talking about? No, no, the real best immersive sim this year is co-open by lowpolis, obviously!

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3FFCzEG
via ifttt

The fifth RPS 2021 Christmas Cracker

Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: Which game involves taking a spirit-guide on a magical journey to find a whole grain with excellent health benefits?

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3z9GB68
via ifttt

The best games you missed in 2021: Tainted Grail: Conquest

Diablo has, for good reasons, become a shorthand for describing the flavour of gothic, grimdark fantasy setting in games, where pus-filled demonic hordes and rotting, undead corpses scour a hellish cathedral looking for unwitting adventurers. For all its wretched decay, however, the series still feels like an indulgence to be savoured. Its clickiness and abhorrent sights make the games endlessly gratifying, and masterful butchery of fiends eases most players into a comfortable rhythm. And part of that appeal lies in the macabre yet captivating fantasy it so deftly peddles — all that blood, gore and guts really make for a grisly setting that’s nearly impossible to look away from.

Tainted Grail: Conquest conveys the same sense of blight and doom in its dark fantasy universe — one that’s a reimagining of Arthurian legends — but also ups the ante with a huge wallop of Slay The Spire’s roguelike, deck-building elements.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3z2Zo2S
via ifttt

The fourth RPS 2021 Christmas Cracker

Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: What do all shapes consider to be their father figure?

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3EsCfYE
via ifttt

The best games you missed in 2021: Sluggish Morss: Pattern Circus

As a child struggling to sleep at night I'd dream of three worlds. First and least of these was Desert World, a blithe eternity of golden sand always viewed from kilometres up, where fizzing white rings rose toward me like expanding surf. I'd try to find my way down to the surface, but always at the risk of glitching straight through and ending up in Snake World, where monstrous serpents emerged from darkened kitchens.

Somewhere between these two poles lay the realm of the Animals, not that they were really animals, but clouds of eyelash-thin mandible, grot and sparkle, like rotten food on the point of becoming a school of tropical fish. I loved Animal World. I used to spend hours trying to mind-hack my way into it. I was pretty shocked to find its likeness in Sluggish Morss: Pattern Circus - an irresistibly strange, gristly, sorrowful, comical and inventive album of creatures, songs, places and phrases from Jack King-Spooner and composer Helena Celle.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3HjyXJd
via ifttt

The third RPS 2021 Christmas Cracker

Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: Which regimen was set up specifically to help vacuum cleaners overcome their worries and insecurities?

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3EuQAnA
via ifttt

The best games you missed in 2021: World's End Club

It’s hard to imagine a collaboration between Zero Escape and Danganronpa creators Kotaro Uchikoshi and Kazutaka Kodaka going under the radar, but an odd release schedule (involving dropping a half-finished experience on Apple Arcade) saw interest in the collaboration buried by the time the game hit PC last month. Which is a shame, since it’s a rather unique title in their respective careers, and it charts new waters for these cult directors.

World’s End Club was the first game the pair released since forming their own studio, Too Kyo Games, and can best be described as a bizarre but intriguing blend of platforming and death games, starring a cast of prepubescent children way too young to be fixing the world or dealing with cults. Think Danganronpa, if Danganronpa was a Saturday morning cartoon rather than a murder game filled with psychopaths.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3HaHUnY
via ifttt

The second RPS 2021 Christmas Cracker

Every year our clone forms degrade, and Katharine spends the winter break copying each consciousness into a new body. Don't worry: we can't feel a thing! Since our new forms are still coming online from their time spent in the primordial flesh soup vat of the RPS Treehouse, we can't post over Christmas, so we've prepared some Christmas Cracker jokes instead! You can help fund the research into longer-lasting clone bodies with the RPS supporter program.

Now, time to enjoy your nice joke!

Q: How do you get to Death's Christmas party?

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3JgjNWT
via ifttt

The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for digesting the turkey and/or nut roast. Before you lay back, let's read this week's best writing about games.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3HgWs5F
via ifttt

RPS is out for the holidays. See you in 2022!

All right, folks, we're now officially done and dusted for the year. 2021 is being brought to a close, and RPS is entering its annual hibernation period. We wish you a merry Christmas, a happy holiday, and a general Festivus for the rest of yous as we scuttle out of the RPS Treehouse for a couple of weeks and have a nice big sleep in our mountain of sweet wrappers. We'll see you back bright and early on Tuesday January 4th 2022.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3JgrWun
via ifttt

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is free to keep on Epic right now

If you like your RPG adventures to contain dungeons and dragons, and be as complex as Dungeons & Dragons, perhaps you might fancy the latest game being given away free in the Epic Games Store's festive sale. For 24 hours, Epic are handing out Pathfinder: Kingmaker free for keepsies. It's a vast fantasy RPG based on the Pathfinder pen 'n' paper system, played out in ye olde isometric perspective. The sort of RPG that's fascinating to some, offputting to others—so a great candidate for a freebie.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3yXWeNV
via ifttt

Christmas Eve is the time to play Dracula Cha Cha

Midnight, one more night without sleeping Watching 'til that morning comes creeping Green Door, what's that secret your keeping?

Jim Lowe's Green Door might not be a Christmas song, but it sure can feel like one—especially inside the festive action of Dracula Cha Cha. That's right, it's Christmas Eve, which means one more night without sleeping, and time to play Dracula Cha Cha.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/3EkybcU
via ifttt

The voice of Yakuza's Kiryu has a Christmas single

Today I made a life-changing discovery. Takaya Kuroda, the man who voices Yakuza's beloved protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, is also the lead singer of a band. They're named Takaya Kuroda & Goodfellas and they have a Christmas song out. Not only is this excellent news, I can't get over the fact it straight up sounds like Kiryu delivering some festive cheer. So get comfy, bang this on, and let Kiryu's warm tones wash over you like mulled wine.

Read more

from Rock, Paper, Shotgun https://ift.tt/30Vionc
via ifttt