Jumping in blind, I was taken aback by how much of Jagex’ ancient browser MMO found its way into Sokpop’s latest - from the muted isometric landscape and sheep bones you bury for bonus XP, to grinding out stats (Rock, Paper and Scissors, respectively) and finding dashing new clothes. There are sheep to murder, wobbly goblins hanging about across the bridge, and RPSock even has that bloody stone circle covered in evil wizards wot made trips to Varrock a nightmare....

Why so many games this year? Well, when you consider over half of our most anticipated list from 2022 ended up getting delayed into 2023, that extra surplus of indies and blockbusters alike already puts us in a pretty strong position for ‘cool games coming out’ over the next 12 months. Indeed, the first three months of the year alone are already looking pretty stacked at the moment, and with big ‘uns such as Starfield also aiming to arrive before the end of June, I have a feeling that 2023 is going to be a pretty bumper year compared to the last couple....

The Time Capsule, of course, isn’t intended to be a list of the best games from the year in question, but rather a round up of the games we think are interesting or note-worthy enough to save for future generations. Sometimes there is overlap with “the best” and sometimes there isn’t. If a game has been remastered we have to justify which version of the game we pick, and we’re also going off the year a game came to PC - so if it came out on 2005 but only on consoles, no dice....

Here are the rules: these Time Capsules are not intended to be a definitive list of best games from any given year. The games we pick are all personal favourites, but the key thing is that they’re all games we’d recommend people play today - and it’s this specific version of it they should play, too. If a game has been remade or remastered since its initial release, or had subsequent sequels, there would have to be a very good reason to preserve the original - like if the remaster made something patently worse, for example, or you have a Final Fantasy VII vs Final Fantasy VII Remake-type situation where you’ve clearly got two very distinct versions of game to pick from....

Progress is slow, though. Not slow as in, “I’m taking my time”, but slow as in, “I cannot stop creating characters, help me”. Seriously, help me. Right now my progress towards that light is slow because I cannot stop running. Let me explain. So far, the character I’ve stuck with the longest is Shadow Hulk, who’s a spitting image of the green angry man but in a bluey grey shade, reminiscent of his original comic book colour....

Vast, featureless, quietly hostile and flowing with the changing wind - deserts are basically oceans, Red Sails reckons, so why not put a boat in one? To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings — Leonardo Montes (@LeonardoMntes) May 2, 2020 Conceived as a student project from game design graduate Leonardo Montes, Red Sails is an unconventional exploration game about sailing the desert in search of stranded travellers....

“The premise of Season is that you play a traveller recording the last moments of different cultures before they’re washed away,” Scavengers Studio. “You will be immersed in different societies that will make you discover the mysteries of the world of Season; a surreal version of the mid-twentieth century, where thousands of years have passed without any progress. Find out what caused the last collapse and what might cause the next one…” Scavengers say you’ll be collecting artifacts and taking recordings as you meet characters who can change your course through the story....

This is in no small part down to the new tools the deck has received in the Darkmoon Faire expansion, including Sayge, Seer of Darkmoon and Rigged Faire Game offering a great deal of card draw for this deck that otherwise found it easy to run out of fuel. It’s a decent deck now! Give it a go if you have the cards. Secret Mage deck list and strategy Here is the version of Secret Mage we’re using in the Darkmoon Faire expansion, and the highest win rate version of the deck available....

Over the break, we have a series of guest authors (mostly) telling us all about the best games you missed from each month of the year. And god help us, Nate’s back on the daily Christmas cracker jokes. If you haven’t yet, do check out the RPS advent calendar for thoughts on our favourite 24 games of the year. A whole lot of great games are missing because such is the nature of these things - so come tell us all about the games you’d also want to celebrate?...

That’s a fair spread of Silent Hill from the first few games. Pyramid Head, here known as The Executioner, is from Silent Hill 2, with disappointing reappearances in later games. Our former Adam will tell you Silent Hill 2 is the best Silent Hill and yeah I’d agree. Cheryl Mason (formerly Heather Mason) is from Silent Hill 3, which does have some good bits even if it is mired in mythos....

“I’m working with the Silent Team, the original creators at Konami, there are several games in development as we speak,” Gans told Movie & Game. “There are several teams on it, with a big line of games, they will revive the franchise. I think they were really impressed of the success of the remakes of Resident Evil that are evidently exceptional games.” The director wasn’t shy about his involvement with Konami but, when asked, also acknowledged that Layers Of Fear devs Bloober Team are working on a remake of Silent Hill 2....

The voice lines are created with an application called SKVA Synth by Dan Ruta which outputs speech based on voice samples from Bethesda games. Ruta published a couple different versions of the application for different Bethesda RPGs. Some of the lines created for this fan made Skyrim trailer sound a bit artificial in pacing and pronunciation, but a few are quite convincing. Ruta explains the technical side of SKVA Synth on the application’s Nexus Mods page, saying that it “wraps around FastPitch [1] models trained on datasets compiled from in-game voice acted lines....

If you have to be trapped in a nightmare landscape of worlds-within-worlds-within-worlds, those worlds should, at the very leas, be nice to look at. Oh, they are? Marvelous! Like last year’s Superliminal, Maquette hails from that particular vintage of indie games arriving the wake of Portal 2 that were really, really into perspective-based puzzling. There’s even some crunchy, low-framerate footage of it from GDC’s Experimental Gameplay Sessions back in 2011 (it’s the first game in the line-up - scrub to 4:00 for Maquette)....

Set in the 1930s on an idyllic island in the South Pacific, you’re searching for answers after your husband’s expedition disappeared. I reckon he’s just chilling on a beach somewhere, to be honest… Or maybe he’s being eaten by fish men, if we’re sticking with that Cthulhu thing. Either way, now you’re on a lovely stretch of sand by the ocean, I’m sure he’ll be just fine for a bit longer if you fancy a little swim....

“The level of intrigue that JUMPSHIP has managed to generate for its debut title shows you that this is a team with a deep artistic vision,” said Thunderful’s Chief Gaming Officer, Agostino Simonetta. You can read more about the Jumpship deal here. Patti said that Jumpship and Thunderful had been discussing the acquisition for around a year. The deal, expected to close today, makes Jumpship the tenth studio acquired by Thunderful....

Well, as of today, Little Orpheus, which is a scifi adventure about a Soviet cosmonaut in 1962, has been released. Here’s the launch trailer: Little Orpheus is the work of The Chinese Room, although it’s a substantial departure from their previous works Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. It’s a side-scroller, for one, and ponderous narratives have been replaced with a fantastical adventure through “lost civilizations, undersea kingdoms, prehistoric jungles and lands beyond imagination....

Top of the Hades speedrunning leaderboard right now is runner “Vorime”. Don’t let this 20-minute video fool you, the clock technically stops when you’re choosing boons and talking to NPCs. His actual clear time is an incredible seven minutes and 16 seconds. (Probably goes without saying, but this is spoilerific if you’ve not cleared a Hades run yet.) Vorime battles out of hell with the Adamant Rail (the Ancient Greek gun) with the aspect of Eris (which makes you deal more damage if you absorb your special ability’s blast), and a mixture of boons from Zeus, Poseidon and Ares....

Imogen already rounded up some of the best AGDQ 2020 moments from earlier in this week’s speedrunning shenanigans. Among them is a show-and-tell live craft demonstration of how a Fallout 4 glitch works. There are sure to be more excellently odd and fun moments during Saturday’s games so you’ll want to tune in for your favorites. Here are the PC games you can watch tomorrow on AGDQ and the times you’ll find them:...

The game isn’t a new one per se, having launched along with Apple Arcade back in September 2019. There’s a reason why it seems very like a Saturday morning cartoon mixed with Contra: Spidersaurs was developed by the team who made Contra 4. You play as the relatively prim gun-toting Adrian or axe-wielding – in the guitar sense – punk-rocker Victoria. Or you can be both if you team up with a pal for co-op....

Here are just some of the games you can try out this week, with an emphasis (by me) on the ones that aren’t yet released. I’ll of course be stacking my own favorites here, but if you don’t share my tastes there’s likely still something you’ll enjoy. Spiritfarer is a very cozy management game, a different tone for the same folks who brought us Jotun and Sundered. As Stella, you manage your big house ferry on which you’ll grow crops, craft goods, and make friends with the animal spirits that you’ll eventually help cross over into death....