Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i PC Gamer

OK, maybe this isn’t a typical PC Gamer cover – but if so, that’s just the latest convention Chinese free-to-play RPG Genshin Impact has smashed. You might not be playing it, you might not have even heard of it, but it’s one of the biggest mega hits in PC gaming right now. It’s got more players than Counter-Strike, more momentum than Fortnite, and some seriously ambitious plans for the future ahead. How did Genshin Impact become such a phenomenon? That’s the question we’ve investigated for our cover feature, uncovering a story of zombies, waifus, and a group of nerds who want to save the world… ROBIN VALENTINE Specialist in Expecting the unexpected Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Got a little flustered at this picture of himself as an anime lady.…

HIGHS Valheim The Early Access hit has reached five million sales and counting. GTA Online A modder managed to reduce GTA’s loading times by 70%, earning him a $10k bounty from Rockstar. Microsoft Mesh Microsoft showed off Microsoft Mesh, an incredible AR HoloLens environment where folk talk to holograms of one another. LOWS Dogg gone Snoop Dogg streamed Madden on Twitch, quit after 14 mins, but left his stream running for seven hours. Fail of Duty Police arrested an escaped prisoner when he emerged from hiding to buy the latest Call of Duty game. Rotten Apple Apple’s been trying to get Steam data. A judge said Apple has “salted the Earth with subpoenas”, but Valve has to release it anyway.…

Everybody understands trees,” says Maria Sayans, CEO of Ustwo games. It’s maybe not the kind of pitch we’re used to hearing from developers, but that sentiment does get to the roots of Ustwo’s mission. In just two months this indie developer has helped plant more than half a million trees with its 2020 release Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. The game follows a young girl visiting her grandparents on a Mediterranean island, lush with gorgeous nature and wildlife. The idea initially came from art director David Fernández Huerta’s love of bird watching. “You’re spotting the animals and you’re like ‘Oh my God, it flew away,’” says lead designer Mishal Mistry. “‘OK, well, maybe I’ll just wait for it to fly back and take another picture’. And so [Huerta’s] like ‘This feels…

GIRL GENIUS The main character of Stoneflyis engineer Annika. Following in the footsteps of her absent father, she’s a mech-building genius whose inventions are inspired by nature. NUTS AND BOLTS Sleek modern aesthetic meets insect-inspired design withStonefly’s mechs. They may look heavy, but they’re sprightly machines and will help you gather resources in the wild, hopping and gliding with ease. HAPPY CAMPER In your base camp, you can chat with your rag-tag group of explorers, upgrade your mech with Annika’s newly found inspirations, and take stock of what resources you’ve found. BUGS LIFE Most of Stonefly’s bugs are friendly and will only need a light gust to keep away, but the bigger ones will need a more hands-on approach. Flight School Studio has left the electrifying pinball hack-n-slash action of…

When I think of rhythm games, I picture inputs chaotically dancing across the screen, each begging for my attention. But Rhythm Doctor only demands only one – just hit the spacebar every seventh beat. Seems simple enough, but this game is not for the faint of heart. Well, unless you’re one of its patients. Rhythm Doctor dropped me right in the heart of Middlesea Hospital, a struggling institute that’s trying out an experimental new type of rhythm-based healthcare. I’m the new intern, a simple disembodied arm and a silent face behind the screen. There’s a whole cast of characters demanding my time, including a poorly samurai who’s suffering from a wi-fi virus. and the hospital’s hapless barista who can’t quite kick that nasty smoking habit. All their treatments come in…

When I speak to Will Overgard, he’s enthusiastic, friendly, and immediately likable; attributes which serve him well on Twitch, where he streams as Viking_Blonde. Bursting with energy, he gleefully chats with me about his previous life in the games industry working for companies including Creative Assembly, Improbable, and RocketWerkz. I warm to him within seconds. So why did three total strangers once wish him death by cancer? Why does anybodyon the internet suffer threats and hatred from people they don’t know? The answer (for community managers I’ve spoken to, at least) is complicated, and leads me to realise that you and I aren’t as many steps away from such behaviour as we may like to believe. Take another, particularly horrifying example of harassment that Will gave me: “A group of…

Thanks to Evil Genius 2, I now understand why so many criminal masterminds are bald. It’s because they’ve torn all their hair out through sheer frustration. When a James Bond knockoff rocks up to your secret lair and murders a bunch of henchmen with an exploding cufflink or whatever, that’s all well and good for the henchmen, who are now on a permanent lunch hour, but nobody considers the administrative headache it causes for the boss. Recruit various types of underling to help realise your plans Now you’ve got to train new henchmen to replace the old ones, which means dipping into your pool of workers and sending them to the equivalent of thug university. This in turn means hiring moreworkers, which costs money you don’t have because you spent…

It’s nothing short of blasphemy to mention a gaming console inside a magazine that is strictly about PC gaming and hopefully, the print between your fingers hasn’t been set ablaze at the forbidden word alone. But, I think the PC gaming gods will forgive me writing about Narita Boy, a platforming action adventure that takes place inside a gaming console, whose circuits, wires, and lines of code have all been transformed into an intricate digital empire. The spirituality of the world isn’t just meaningless symbols Playing as the eponymous hero Narita Boy, you have been summoned to save the Digital Kingdom from a crisis. Travelling through each of the kingdom’s three regions, you must defeat the evil servants of HIM, a dark program that wishes to see the Digital Kingdom…

If I told you it took me several races in Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 until I stopped getting lapped by the very easy mode AI, would you laugh? I know, I know. I have considered getting gud. If you’ll spare me too much mockery, though, I can explain why I think that’s actually a big selling point. The revamped track editor allows for all manner of tweaking None of my experience with other Milestone games was going to help me here, it seemed. But I enjoyed those pastings, because Supercross 4 was forcing me to learn a new discipline, distinct from mastering the ebb and flow of MXGP’s forgiving outdoor layouts. AMA Supercross is a law unto itself, fought out in tight tracks full of challenging…

Well this is an oddly paced game – but it’s also a game with vision. HellSigncasts you as a ghost hunter in an Australian town decimated by demons, and populated by the very worst scummers and vagabonds who seek their fortunes there in a kind of ghoulish gold rush. Many of your perfectly timed dodge-rolls will be right into walls You’re one of these undesirables, carrying out missions for the skeevers at the local bar to make some money… and to work out why there’s a demon inside you that brings you back from the dead whenever you perish. You pick your missions from a map screen, where you can see the type of contract, its difficulty, and its location type. You gain XP and build a character based on…

The well of block-pushing puzzle games is not dry yet, and here’s another standout example in the form of Overflow: a game about sloshing water around in a bucket. You play as a cute little gardener attempting to water a bunch of plants, while trying to avoidwatering the weeds placed all over the ground. There’s also a well that gradually fills, before overflowing with water. If that happens, you’ll fail the stage and have to restart. So yes, this is a littlemore complicated to grasp than many block-pushing games – there are no blocks, and no pushing for that matter, but it’s the same grid-based puzzling beneath the surface. The difference being the bucket, which allows you to ferry water from the well to all the thirsty, thirsty plants, but…

“Honestly, what is the point of re-reviewing Halo 3?” you might say. “It’s perfect.” You are correct. But it’s important I confirm it’s perfect in the way I want. I need to know I can set up a custom game via Steam with the settings I like and the weapons I prefer, and play the same four maps until I turn to dust. I’m pleased to report that, unlike the original release of The Master Chief Collection, this is mostly possible. There are a few hurdles to get over. I have to log into my Microsoft account before I can even get to the menu, which is the sort of thing that should appear on a Buzzfeed list of things that make you irrationally angry alongside accidentally yanking out your…

While ‘Overcookedin space’ isn’t a very accurate description for Catastronauts– that would just be rehydrating bags of curry and sucking up gobbets of energy drink as they floated past. Which, to be fair, is a game I’d definitely play. This is more like a 3D, multiplayer FTL, where everything goes wrong at once and you watch your hopes and dreams turn to cosmic debris. It’s much more fun than I’ve made it sound, and at least this way you have somebody else to blame when everything explodes.…

Gabe Newell, chief plumber at Valve and part-time Half-Life 3 tease, held forth on New Zealand TV show 1 News earlier this year on the subject of brain-computer interfaces. It turns out he’s all in favour of them, and Valve is working on software to interpret the signals from our brains, using hardware described as being ‘like a modified VR helmet’. From our experience, that means it will be largely sampling from around the eye area, but that’s probably where the ‘modified’ part comes in. He’s been working with OpenBCI, a company taking an open-source approach to BCIs, and told 1 News, “If you’re a software developer in 2022 who doesn’t have one of these in your test lab, you’re making a silly mistake.” Wise words, indeed. Newell has been…

Last September, I made the ill-considered decision to get into skateboarding as an adult – and not to brag, but I reckon I’ve gotten rather good at it. But while I got in a good few weeks of tearing through town while the weather held up, a Scottish winter predictably binned my plans to spend every free minute busting out sick moves. So, in the meantime, I’ve started popping a few ollies around Session, one of the growing number of skate-’em-ups gunning for Skate’s long-absent throne. Let’s be real for a moment. Sessionis rough. After a year and a half in Early Access, the game’s still very clearly not done, with rampant physics glitches, unfinished character models, and only the most barebones structure. It’s only this year that the game…

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Valheim lately, the co-op Viking survival game that’s attracted millions of players just a few short weeks after it launched into Early Access. It’s a survival sandbox game playable in co-op or solo, taking place in a procedurally generated (and extremely massive) open world. Valheim is a bit Minecraft, a bit Skyrim and a bit Legend of Zelda, and as scores of players have discovered, once you’re a few hours in it can be hard to stop playing. Valheimis already highly suitable for different playstyles. The world has one relatively peaceful biome, perfect for constructing a Viking home and spending hours refining, building and crafting with only the minor threat of occasional greydwarf raids. But other players will be pushing themselves deeper into…

COLLARED DOVE A bit of a space cadet. Thinks Gordon Freeman is the bloke who narrated The Shawshank Redemption. EURASIAN HOOPOE Went to a Black Sabbath concert in 1972 and has based their entire personality on that day. EUROPEAN GREENFINCH She’s a little sensitive, loves iced coffee, and runs a small Etsy business selling various kitschy earrings. COMMON KINGFISHER Will ask if you have any games on your phone. Loves a bit of Fortnite. And fishing (for kings) probably.…

When I was still in single digits, I went through a potion-brewing phase. Inspired by Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine, I was convinced that with the right ingredients I too could concoct a magical elixir. Instead of hitting up the medicine cabinet, I took advantage of all the farms and woods nearby to create my brews. Plants, mushrooms, manure – everything went in the bucket. I never could find any guinea pigs, sadly, and there was no way I was going to slurp down that bubbling, foul-smelling bile first. But now, thanks to Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator, I’ve got queues of people willing to pay for the privilege. Creating each new recipe in Potion Craft is like going on a mini adventure, with each ingredient pushing you further into the…

You’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve been transported back in time to the heyday of old-school JRPGs as you lose yourself in the world of Another Eden. The enthralling story, characters, and battle system pay homage to classics such as Chrono Trigger and Xenogears — but presented with a contemporary polish. From master storyteller Masato Kato (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII), this epic story unfolds across the Antiquity, Present, and Future. You’ll find yourself thrown headlong into adventure as Aldo, a boy from a small village hurled 800 years into the future by the villainous Beast King. You must set off on a journey, gather allies, and travel across time and space to find Aldo’s sister, Feinne, and save her — as well as the world— from destruction. Another Eden…

From the moment its 16-colour title screen fades in alongside dramatic chiptunes, Loop Hero feels like some forgotten, VGA-era fantasy RPG, a game that contains the mystery and difficulty of 1991, gently modernised to 2021. Behind that charming intro screen isn’t empty, indulgent nostalgia, but a novel gameplay format that’s strangely engrossing, considering much of your time playing Loop Hero is hands-off. I want more games like this. It’s unexpectedly fun to have zero control over combat The setup is dead-simple: you send one of three heroes (warrior, rogue, or necromancer) on repeated expeditions to an empty road. As your little hero auto-walks around this stone path, you populate the blank world around it by playing cards like graveyards, battlefields, villages, or mountains one by one. These pieces in turn…

The original Strongholdholds a special place in my heart. You build a medieval barony, surround it with a labyrinth of impassable walls, and stave off waves of attackers while keeping the serfs living within happy, well-fed, and well-taxed. It had real character too, with a lovely soundtrack, snappy unit soundbites and memorable villains. Equipment is varied, ranging from trebuchets to kamikaze oxen Stronghold: Warlords feels a million miles away from that game. It’s the most sprawling entry series in the yet – largely abandoning the principle of building a feudal gauntlet for waves of enemies in favour of a more traditional RTS setup featuring larger maps and symmetrically placed enemy bases. The warlords system is the twist here. Beyond your base and the enemy’s, there are several smaller estates on…

Who are you? Where are you? Why are you here? These questions and many more are gleefully ignored by Passtech Games. After a brief tutorial it’s a case of ‘here are some weapons, there’s a temple full of monsters and treasure, get on with it’. A bold choice for a roguelike in the post-Hadesworld, perhaps; and one that provides the first sign that comparisons with Supergiant’s colossus are misleading. They didn’t just put ‘curse’ in the title because it looks cool Curse of the Dead Gods takes many cues from traditional action adventure games, and benefits from them enormously. The most obvious one is probably the fact that the game is essentially split into levels. The first temple tier contains three ‘levels’, with three more tiers and a total of…

Tarsier Studios’ Little Nightmares II is a horror game which understands modern horror in ways most games haven’t wrapped their heads around. The Babadook, Midsommar, Hereditary… these iconic modern films have eschewed jump scares in favour of slowly building chills, unsettling atmosphere, and a constant sense of dread. Little Nightmares II, much like its predecessor, laces all of these feelings through its gameplay while others in the genre are still focusing on things that go bump in the night. Even the more elaborate puzzles never get too frustrating Speaking of wrapping your head around things, Little Nightmares II serves up what I’m pretty sure, even early on as we are, will be my biggest videogame chill of the year. In Little Nightmares II, you play as a small boy trying…

At first, Castawayis just utterly baffling. What does all that stuff on the screen mean? Even with the aid of the help button, it was quite a few runs before I understood it – but I’m hugely impressed by what’s going on. It’s a roguelike/puzzle game reminiscent of Minesweeperand sudoku, as it’s all about making educated guesses in stages that are swathed in a fog of war. You’re a castaway on a desert island – or should I say islands, as you’re forever leaving one blob of rock for another filled with hidden enemies and power-ups. Ignoring all that stuff at the screen borders for a moment, you can just uncover each tile randomly, by blundering into a scorpion, or a skeleton, or a restorative spa with the mouse or…

Perhaps Outer Wilds is the worst game imaginable for someone as easily distracted as me. I find it hard enough to even get off my folksy home planet without checking on its inhabitants, let alone traverse a neat galaxy of interesting things in search of buried truth. It’s like trying to make a Labrador traverse a snack corridor just so he can do long division. Thankfully, the central mystery in Outer Wilds is compelling enough that I’m happy to repeatedly hop into my ship and jet into space, even if I do it so often I begin to see wooden launch towers in my sleep. I don’t even mind that the autopilot flew me directly through the middle of the sun. Technically, that’s my fault.…

The wonderful thing about PC gaming is that just about anything can be an input device if you try hard enough, yet I can think of no better way to game than by making a ruckus with every lovely button press on a mechanical keyboard. The sweet, slick key press of a mechanical switch will have your fingers feeling less fatigued, your response times swifter, and your key presses more absolute. There’s also room for more personalisation beyond the rubber dome. From a smooth linear action to a typewriter-esque clack, and a range of RGB lighting configurations, there’s something for everyone in the land of mech boards. That’s why we’ve rounded up a selection of gaming keyboards for this month’s group test – everything from wireless low-profile kit to the…

Every strategy game or management sim I play, the same thing happens. I love it at first, but then my city, space empire, civilisation, or whatever it is grows to a certain size, and the micromanagement becomes unbearable. The joy is sucked out of the experience and I quit, destined never to finish a game. I’ve lost count of how many abandoned empires are sitting in my Steam cloud saves, destined never to be completed. So when I heard about Slipways, a new strategy game that lets you build a space empire without the busywork or time investment, I felt like someone had made a game specifically for me. Start a new game and you emerge from a wormhole into an unexplored, randomised galaxy. Launch probes from the wormhole and…

Three minutes and three seconds. That’s Phil Savage’s time in the Dubai level of Hitman 3. The closing chapter in IO Interactive’s trilogy only recently launched, and I’m fifth out of the seven friends I’ve accumulated on the Epic Games Store for the purposes of comparing leaderboard scores. I’ll never beat Phil’s score in Dubai. I’ll never beat former PC Gamer writer and game developer Tom Francis, either. I’m filled with shame. My friend Dave, though, is at the bottom of the leaderboard with a score that’s around a third of mine. Ha! Good old Dave. He always knows just how to cheer me up. Leaderboard rivalries are what we call friendships in 2021. THE LEVELS IN THIS GAME ARE GREAT, AND AMAZING IN A COUPLE OF CASES The problem…

1 HAMMER TIME First, the basics. You start with a hammer and use it to build close to a workbench. Select the hammer on your hotbar and click right-mouse button to access the build menu. Use the middle-mouse button to scrap, and scroll to rotate. 2 LEVEL PLAYING FIELD Save yourself plenty of bother later by ensuring your foundations are level before you start building. With the hoe – which you can craft at a workbench – you can raise and decrease the ground to make sure your components are nice and stable. 3 TRIAL AND ERROR There is little consequence if you make a mistake while building: there’s no resource cost. If you place a wall incorrectly or want to scrap a construction again, you’ll lose no materials for…

After getting the approval of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the European Union Commission in March, Microsoft has now officially announced that the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda, is complete. DOWN THE ROAD THEY WILL PRODUCE GAMES THAT ARE EXCLUSIVES Xbox head Phil Spencer welcomed the eight studios under ZeniMax (id Software, Bethesda, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog and Roundhouse Studios) and said it was “an honour” to have them join the team. A selective list of just some of the game series Microsoft has acquired includes Doom, Dishonored, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Prey, Quake, Rage, Starfield, Wolfenstein, and The Evil Within. The reaction of some Bethesda fans to this acquisition, which has been known about for some time, has been…

“THOSE SYSTEMS OF EXPLOITATION ARE PROBABLY JUST GOING TO GET MORE FINE-TUNED AND PREVALENT” Sometimes a name simply drifts through space, awaiting the perfect project to dock with. Blade Runner was originally the title of a little known 1974 sci-fi novel about a black market medical equipment supplier – until Ridley Scott bought the rights, keeping the name and jettisoning everything else. Similarly, the name ‘Shipbreaker’ pre-exists the game it now so perfectly describes. Hardware: Shipbreakers was originally the working title of Deserts of Kharak, the Homeworld RTS that became Blackbird Interactive’s first release. It was years later that Blackbird would develop a game about shearing huge chunks of metal from the carcasses of starships – but even then, somehow, the team missed the title that was staring them in…

Tuque Games’ Dark Alliance is D&D for the impatient. It’s got the setting, characters, and language of D&D, but they’re draped over an action game that will see you fighting without ever worrying about dice rolls. Kill goblins, grab loot, admire your new cloak – it’s about the simple pleasures. Though technically the third game in the Dark Alliance series, the slate has been wiped clean for its PC debut. Previously a top-down action-RPG exclusively for consoles, Dark Alliance is now a third-person action game where clicks have been replaced by combos. As celebrity drow Drizzt Do’Urden, I rush around Icewind Dale, dodging, leaping and backstabbing with the goblin body count rapidly rising. While I button-bash my way through the mostly linear mission map, there’s still an RPG working away…

“WE DECIDED TO CREATE A COMPANY TO MAKE ANIME GAMES THAT WERE EXCITING FOR US” When Genshin Impact launched last year, no one saw its huge success coming. It was obviously pretty, sure, but it was also easy to write off as another Chinese free-to-play mobile game filled with microtransactions and high-pitched fairy sidekicks. What wasn’t apparent was how it would transcend the negative stereotypes, pulling inspiration from beloved classics like Nier: Automata and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to create an RPG that manages to feel both nostalgic and innovative. Or how its developer, MiHoYo, would come to exemplify China’s evolving games industry. In the span of just a few months, MiHoYo has become one of China’s most prestigious gaming companies. And since its 2020…

MONDSTADT Pastoral fields surrounding a medieval kingdom terrorised by an evil dragon, Mondstadt is maybe a little too similar to Hyrule, but it sure is pretty. LIYUE Genshin’s visual potential comes to life in this country inspired by ancient China, complete with terraced villages, mountains, and a resplendent coastal city. DRAGONSPINE The latest zone added to the game, Dragonspine is a frigid mountain wasteland where players have to fight to keep warm or else freeze to death.…

STRONGHOLD HD Excellent villains, wonderful voice acting, and a beautiful soundtrack that’s as memorable for its ambient medieval tunes as it is for the stentorian battle music. STRONGHOLD CRUSADER HD Ramps up the scale and gives everything a Middle-Eastern makeover. This was still very much a siege game with one side attacking and one defending. STRONGHOLD LEGENDS None of the Stronghold games since those mentioned have been great, but at least Legends had a bunch of fairytale silliness over a so-so strategy game to give it some charm.…

A city-building throwback that throws players all the way back to the cradle of civilisation, Nebuchadnezzar arouses fond memories of games like Caesar III and, to a lesser extent, Age of Empires. Its classical style both looks and sounds great, while its systems delve considerably deeper than what is apparent on the surface. Unfortunately, as Nebuchadnezzar grows in scope, it becomes increasingly burdened by micromanagement, while a couple of significant design flaws threaten to sink the whole enterprise. Successful city management involves mastering logistics Set in ancient Mesopotamia, Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign tasks you with building some of the world’s oldest and greatest cities – Ur, Nineveh, Babylon, etc. Guided by Gilgamesh through the game’s four introductory missions, the remaining nine levels involve constructing thriving metropoli, capping each one off with a…

It’s standard practice with an XCOM game to rename your troops after your friends. You can throw the ones you like less recklessly into battle. Or perform heroic deeds using the people you slightly fancy so you have a fresh reason to initiate conversation. But we like to push boundaries here at PC Gamer, so I’m entrusting no less than my potential happiness to XCOM 2. Sure enough, I lose one of my career choices in the first mission Instead of friends, I’m naming my squad after possible futures. It will break my heart to watch some of them die, so I’m hoping rookies Screenwriter and Bake Off Winner will inspire me to take extra care. I’m less worried about Deliveroo Driver. And although all this sounds a bit silly,…

Alright, so I’ve gone for a loose theme of space this month – but I never specified what kind of space. And there’s something about Hypnospace Outlaw that’s both comforting and deeply unsettling. It’s pleasant because it recalls a simpler time of dial-up modems, constantly-engaged phone lines, and comedy AOL email notifications. But it’s also harrowing, because what feels like recent history is now a period piece for some people. The stuff on display here is further in the theoretical past than the setting of That ’70s Show was in the ’90s. Thankfully, the gentle detective work on offer here is a compelling distraction from the grinding wheel of time that will pulverise us all.…

These days it takes a lot for a roguelike to stand out, so it was a pleasant surprise for me this month to be so wowed by Curse of the Dead Gods (see our review on p82). The punchy combat, grim atmosphere, and meaningful decision-making sucked me in immediately. But one of the things that impresses me most about it is the traps. I struggle to think of any game where I’ve found traps fun. Usually they’re anti-fun – the thing that slows you down, or punishes you for inattention. But here they’re a thrill. As you explore the dark temples, you encounter all manner of deadly devices left behind by the architects – from electric landmines to living statues. Learning how each one operates is vital to survival. Avoiding…

1 FIND RUINS The traditional way to get wood is by picking up branches and chopping trees with a stone axe. However, the quicker way is by finding abandoned buildings in your world. 2 PLACE A WORKBENCH Spend ten wood to craft a workbench. Once you have the materials, equip your hammer, right-click to open the crafting menu, and select the workbench. 3 DESTROY! Just as you would disassemble your own builds at no resource cost, you can now use your middle-mouse button to take the wood from the ruins for yourself, quickly and efficiently.…

I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m not! But I am afraid of what PC gaming would look like without Pajama Sam. A whole generation of PC gamers grew up after the heyday of adventure games, but were too young and oblivious to notice the rapid descent of a genre. All kids knew was the computer desk, a treasure trove littered with old CDs, many of which had a game from Humongous Entertainment tucked away somewhere. And it was scratched to hell probably, sending CD-drives into whirring, heaving fits – working nevertheless. Playable cartoons. That’s what we thought of them, and Pajama Sam’s big adventure in a surreal nighttime world hidden in his closet might’ve been the best of the bunch. In Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When it’s…

PHASMOPHOBIA  kineticgames.co.uk This is the go-to co-op game for my multiplayer squad. Our fumbling attempts trying to document paranormal activity combined with the game’s slapstick jankiness are constant sources of stomach-hurting laughter. You stop chuckling quick when an angry ghoulie locks all the doors, though. AIRBORNE KINGDOM  airbornekingdom.com In Airborne Kingdom your only enemy is gravity. It’s a city builder where you control a giant flying fortress, searching for resources, expanding your city, and finding old technology all from the dizzying heights of the sky. It’s a gorgeous game and gliding above the patchwork map is simply serene. THE SOLITAIRE CONSPIRACY  bithellgames.com How Mike Bithell managed to merge solitaire with a spy thriller baffles me – it’s nothing short of wizardry. Solitaire games play out as tactical missions where you…