I am willing to go on record right now and bet that, empirically speaking, Tommy Wiseau has enriched more lives than James Franco. In a just world, we would be seeing a parody biopic of Franco’s mediocre acting career, with Mr. Wiseau in the lead…
Nic Reuben
57 Articles
Nic Reuben likes to pause games every five minutes to ponder the thematic implications of explosive barrel placement. When he's not having an existential crisis over CAPTCHA verifications that ask him to prove he's not a robot, he's reading sci-fi and fantasy short stories, watching cartoons, and mourning the writing standards in Game of Thrones.
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
Upon starting the demo to RPG2 Heaven’s Nightkeep, you’ll be treated a short story sequence introducing you to its world. A vainglorious monarch becomes obsessed with immortality, descends into madness, and causes an unspeakable evil to descend on the kingdom. Several hundred years in the…
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
Here is a list of several delicious meals you can share with your very best friends, and one you should probably avoid. Can you guess which is the one to avoid? Leave your answer in the comments. If you guess correctly, you win a free…
Nic Reuben
2 Min Read
It doesn’t feel right to review Jettomero: Hero of the Universe like a product, because it doesn’t feel like a product to begin with. Jettomero is the waveform of a cacophonous tone poem. A bittersweet stumble across the dots in a speech bubble. If Doki…
Nic Reuben
2 Min Read
“Dad, Look! They’re here!” My team of mechs beamed down from orbit. The local populace were understandably overjoyed. When your hometown is under assault by a legion of bugs as big as buildings, there’s few sights prettier than a trio of heavily armed war machines….
Nic Reuben
2 Min Read
When Cliqist covered Shape of the World back in the halcyon days of 2015 – back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and prehistoric humanity had to contend with just seven Fast and the Furious movies – we praised its “gorgeous vistas”, “beautiful abstraction”, and invited…
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
Hazelnut Bastille lured me in with a cutesy name and a nostalgic, pastoral pixel-art covered website. It then proceeded to kick me repeatedly in the squishy parts, non-squishy parts, and parts that were pretty solid before all the kicking. I probably should have read developer…
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. So goes the opening line to William Gibson’s Neuromancer – the novel that defined a genre and basically fucked the nineties for anyone not that into shades, piercings, and trenchcoats….
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
Ok, so I was all set to write an informative preview about Prehistoric Kingdom. I was going to say that it’s a dinosaur reserve management game, which heavily resembles but is legally distinct from that film where Jeff Goldblum gets drunk with a bunch of…
Nic Reuben
3 Min Read
Pyre is a storybook with singed edges; stained by spilt ink and filled with blank pages. A pastel-hued cartographer’s fever dream. The feedback from a smoky lute ballad run through a distortion pedal. Most astoundingly, Pyre is a sports game that makes loss just as…
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
Having just narrowly escaped death at the hands of an enraged cultist by jumping into a glowing blue portal, I found myself stumbling through the night, bleeding onto the rotten wooden planks of a moonlit jetty. At first, I was safe. Then, there were pirates….
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
To celebrate its release on Itch.io, developer National Insecurities invite players to grab a copy of the interstellar murder mystery game 2001:1 : A Space Felony for exactly zero monies. Described as ‘an ambitious investigation that walks the line between science and fiction, resulting in…
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
I played the demo to Seek Etyliv in a tiny window floating at the centre of my screen. All play takes place in 3×3 grid. The game features precisely six colours. Player input is limited to arrow key controlled movement, one square at a time,…
Nic Reuben
1 Min Read
Developer MoaCube describe Bonfire as a game that ‘respects your time but hates your guts’. It’s certainly an attention grabber, but I feel MoaCube might be underselling it here. While teeth-gritting trial and error is the Roguelike’s razor-tipped calling card, nothing in Bonfire’s difficulty feels…
Nic Reuben
2 Min Read
Developer Shotgun with Glitters describe The Padre as “a corrupted fairytale set in the 1910’s”. While a smattering of literary horror influences can be dredged up from The Padre‘s darkest corners, my time spent with the Alpha demo was less a ghost story, more a…
Nic Reuben
2 Min Read
One of the Japanese demonology inspired Yokai you’ll face in indie platformer Rising Dusk is the lizard-bird hybrid Kappa. The Kappa is an ancient Japanese folklore staple, and has a history with games too – the most notable example being fire breathing princess stealer King…