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Tangiers turns the police into something straight out of a surrealist’s nightmares

One of the first things I noticed about Tangiers was how quiet it is. In a medium populated by graphically noisy deaths, swelling soundtracks and the constant ding of coin collection, Tangiers‘ use of diegetic and industrial tones stood out. But while Tangiers promises to be a whisper compared to its peers, it certainly won’t be voiceless. Boasting a dynamic ‘words mechanic,’ in which spoken language becomes a physical and interactive tool toward your goals, Tangiers makes literal the idea that the pen is mightier than the sword, as words become your weapons. As the game nears its beta release, creator…

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SOMA’s creepy tendrils threaten to reach out with reality-questioning horror soon

Frictional Games, creator of 2010’s infamous horror hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, has announced that its latest title SOMA has hit beta—it looks and plays near-exactly as it will in its final version, in other words. All that’s left between now and a release date is waiting for Frictional to gather feedback from its 40-or-so testers and get to work on the finishing touches. The first-person sci-fi horror game takes place in and around an underwater research facility called PATHOS-2. You play as Simon, a man who is mysteriously stranded in this derelict installation as the world around him is transformed…

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A few of you lucky souls will spend this weekend playing Hyper Light Drifter

Heart Machine have announced that their ultra-pretty, color-filled apocalypse Hyper Light Drifter will be getting a preview release this weekend. Kickstarter backers will find a Steam code in their inboxes this Friday, and it’ll work until Sunday at midnight.  In a helpful bit of semantics, they’re pointedly not calling this a beta release. “Beta isn’t exactly the right term,” they note. “Some game features are locked, some have been hidden, others are being refined, and content is always being generated for the world.” While the decision to release the game at all at this point is ultimately just a financial one,…