Author: Chris Priestman

Chris is interested in videogames, architecture, and data errors. You'll find him rummaging around in lesser known corners of the internet.
Acre 6
News

Brendon Chung’s latest game makes a mockery of RPGs

I missed the latest game by Brendon Chung (creator of Thirty Flights of Loving, Quadrilateral Cowboy) when he released it last month, but it’s certainly worth highlighting. Called Acre 6, it’s a deconstruction of the classic RPG, full of jest, made for the Procedural Generation Jam. It starts you out with a map marked only with icons for areas of forest and landmarks like temples, ruins, and villages. The only interaction available is to move the mouse to guide a circle, representing you as the player character, who journeys across this map leaving a dashed line behind them. open-world games rarely…
News

Neko Atsume’s cats wash their faces now, plus there’s a new mysterious cat …

One of the most important games in the world (and don’t you forget it) Neko Atsume, the cat-collecting game, got an update last week. As you’d expect for this time of year, the update sees the return of the snow music as well as Christmas decorations to spotted around some of the scenes. There are also some new items such as a snow dome, an antique chair, cocoons, and a kotatsu (a wonderful, feet-warming invention). That is not all. In fact, this new update’s greatest gifts are the most elusive—you’ll have to be quick to spot them and take a snapshot.…
Sundered
News

Fighting Sundered’s eldritch horrors is gonna make you feel good

We have got to talk about the gun in Sundered. I know—a gun? Videogames have a lot of guns so what can possibly make this one special? Well, it’s large. (Uh huh.) It fires a huge laser ball. (Uh huh.) And it knocks you flying backwards. (Right.) Look, you didn’t have the shock I did when I first pressed the Shoot button while playing Sundered‘s demo, okay? I don’t know if there’s any other game that, from the very start, gives you such an absurd weapon. I love how over the top it is. Eshe, the woman you play as…
The Crimson Court
News

Meet the vampire hunter that’s coming for you in Darkest Dungeon’s DLC

Red Hook Studios announced back in October that Darkest Dungeon, its dungeon crawler about the psychological stresses of adventuring, would be getting DLC in early 2017 called “The Crimson Court.” Today, we’re able to bring you the first reveal of that DLC with the introduction of a new character called The Fanatic. As was teased previously with the Crimson Court poster and the tagline “The Blood! I must have the Blood!,” the DLC carries a Vampire or Parasite theme. The obvious addition to Darkest Dungeon, then, would be a Van Helsing-type vampire hunter that you could add to your party…
Overland
News

Overland and Night in the Woods get new trailers, confirmed for 2017

It is the end of the year but not the end of times. This means that our minds are being coaxed to look beyond the little that is left of 2016 and towards 2017. What is there for us in this future year? According to the 1987 Schwarznegger film The Running Man, a dystopia is what awaits us, spearheaded by a new show about criminals trying to escape the clutches of professional killers. That doesn’t seem so far-fetched, all things considered. But forget the doom and gloom for just a sec—we have videogames to talk about. In the past 24 hours, videogame…
Moonlight Express
News

A Christmas game about equality rather than the craze

Around this time of year you can expect a number of things to definitely happen. One of those is that a bunch of shallow Christmas-themed games will turn up, hoping to feed on your festive spirit to turn a profit. Perhaps that’s mean spirited, cynical even, but hey, it’s true. In any case, it’s this annual event that has inspired Damir Stuhec and Lea Vervoort to create a Christmas game called Moonlight Express that they hope doesn’t feast so much on your good will. Stuhec is a programmer based in Slovenia and first got in contact with Vervoort,, who lives in…
News

Find delight in the scrappy videogames of Bamboo EP

The Sokpop Collective, a group of four like-minded Dutch game makers, is releasing the Bamboo EP today. The obvious question for me to ask was: why bamboo? “Bamboo is strong, yet flexible and makes an amazing sound,” I’m told. “On top of that, bamboo makes for a good aesthetic. It’s such a unique plant with such distinctive properties.” A great thing to base a videogame album on then, I suppose. I’m not sure whether it’s Rubna, Aran Koning, Tijmen Tio, or Tom van den Boogaart—the four members of Sokpop—who is answering my questions via email. And so I submit to the idea that it’s the…
News

New teaser for 2017’s strangest RPG features Sikth vocalist

That gruff throat noise is unmistakable. If you’re familiar with Sikth, the British progressive metal band, you should recognize the distinctive low tones of vocalist Mikee Goodman‘s voice in the new teaser trailer for No Truce With the Furies. Goodman is an unexpected choice to contribute a voiceover for a videogame trailer, but it makes a lot of sense. His chilling delivery in tracks like “Mermaid Slur” and “Tokyo Lights” is equal parts enchanting and terrifying. Which seems to be close to the mixture of emotions that the Estonian studio ZA/UM (previously Fortress Occident) is aiming for with its “fantastic realism”…
Ooblets
News

Ooblets is still the cutest farming game we’ve yet to play

Forget about Moblets, that cute-as-heck game we spotted earlier this year. It’s no longer called that. It’s new name is Ooblets. And to reflect that title change, the world it’s set in is now called “Oob.” So yes, it’s still goddamn adorable, even more so these days. That isn’t all that is new. As Ooblets designer Rebecca Cordingley has outlined, there have been some changes to how the game works put into place recently. If you don’t know, Ooblets is a farming and creature collecting game. You play as Essie, who aims to start a simple life in the country,…