When you start the game, your character—Tyke—has a single intention. You just want to climb the mountain and reach the summit. Unfortunately, you don't have the right gear to do so and the only way we can get ahold of it is to explore the park. This is done through meeting the charming characters littering the map and helping out across various puzzles and fetch quests, all featuring humorous dialogue and interactions. I felt like each character I helped out became my friend, which started to build a support network for Tyke and his adventure.?

But the more time I spent with the game, the more I unraveled a thoughtful, more solemn story than I expected. There was still this feeling of childlike wonder that accompanied the exploration, though, which helped alleviate the heaviness of the game. As you complete quests for the park's visitors, you unlock memories that you play through as a younger Tyke, all of which take place in the park. To reinforce this sense of childlike curiosity and wonder, these memories are constructed of craft materials: dinosaurs and goblins built of cardboard and environments shoddily coloured with crayons. These sections of the game, although short, very quickly became my favourite parts.?

They're integral in understanding the story since they're the only insight you get into Tyke's motivation to climb the mountain, as well as being your way of unlocking skills like climbing and lifting that help you travel further around the map. But the pacing of unlocking them is what stuck with me. At first, you unlock the more joyous memories fairly quickly. They feel abundant, and I felt like I was breezing through the game at an alarming rate. But once you exhaust the easy challenges to complete and have to work to unlock the next memory, they take a deeper turn. In a way, I saw this as Tyke having more time to reflect since he was rapidly running out of distractions, which is why these childlike memories become slightly darker in colour and lose their whimsy.

But even though making your way through these memories is quite emotional, especially compared to the start of the game where everything is fun and bright, it's all essential and unavoidable. Without reflecting on the hardships as well as the fun memories he held of the park, my grasp of why you need to push through to help him climb the mountain probably wouldn't have given me such a deep connection with the game.

Don't get me wrong, Pine Hearts would've still been a fun game had it not delved into such an emotional story. Above all else, it's still a sweet slice of narrative adventure, and fans of games like Lil Gator Game, A Short Hike, and Little Kitty Big City will find a lot to love about it. But the way Pine Hearts cracks the surface and presents something so gut-wrenching in a sweet and accessible way is what puts it slightly above other narrative adventure games I've put hours into. It's fun at first, but the story that you discover is what stays with you even once the credits have rolled, and that's what drives me to share it with others.?

Pine Hearts ended up not being the adventure I was expecting, but that isn't a bad thing at all. It's an emotional journey that will make you laugh through its charming little character designs and humorous dialogue, but it'll also tug at your heartstrings the further you dive into Tyke's backstory and desperation to reach the summit. It presents grief and loss sweetly and sentimentally while still being fun. This is why I mark it as a game that anyone facing their own mountain ought to pick up when they can.?

Have you ever played beloved, award-winning mystery game Return of the Obra Dinn and thought "I enjoy this puzzle-mystery format but I wish it was actually very different?" If so, well, there's a game for you now. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a just-released casual mystery adventure about a world of animals, stolen lunches, and a somewhat down on his luck duck.

The developer calls it "Aggretsuko meets Return of the Obra Dinn" and I think that's pretty good for what they've got here, a cozy casual mystery game that has low stakes but a lot of humor. It's very character-focused, with your duckish protagonist interviewing suspects to figure out their motives and hidden secrets.

So, you know, get out there and figure out who stole all that salami.

The draw of Duck Detective is certainly that it has a full voice cast, and everyone in this thing has really committed to the animal bit. It's very much the kind of voice acting you find in those cartoons for upper-teens or new adults or whatever we're calling the genre of stuff enjoyed by 16-24 year olds nowadays.

Duck Detective is made by indie developer Happy Broccoli Games, who previously made silly school adventure Kraken Academy!!.

You can find Duck Detective: The Secret Salami on GOG and Steam for $10.

As promised in January, the mighty Godzilla has come to Dave the Diver, and even better, he's free. But there's a catch: You've got until November 23 to add the king kaiju to the game, and after that—like an ancient reptilian beast slowly retreating to the murky depths from whence he came—he'll be gone forever.

We wondered when the Godzilla DLC was announced whether he'd be friendly, or at least as friendly as Godzilla is inclined to be whenever he decides it's time Tokyo an ass-kicking. It turns out the answer is, sort of—and spoilers will follow, so read on with caution if you're concerned with such things.

As detailed last week on the PlayStation Blog, Godzilla has somehow been wounded, which led him to seek refuge in Blue Hole, where Dave runs into him while hunting for fish. Dave will apparently have the opportunity to do Godzilla a solid or two, which presumably pays off in the long run because Godzilla isn't the only kaiju in the neighborhood: Ebirah, horror of the deep, is also on scene, and he's a little more overtly hostile toward Dave.

Fortunately, Dave has also taken possession of a submarine belonging to the international military organization G-Force (this DLC really goes places) and so he's not totally helpless against Ebirah. But surely they're not going to put two kaiju into one DLC and not let them fight, right?

Surely not.

Dave the Diver's Godzilla DLC looks very weird and cool and fun, hopefully it will live up to that promise. But the limited-time availability seems strange. As explained on Steam, it breaks down like this:

• Download will no longer be available after the distribution period (ends 11:59 pm PST on November 23, 2024).
• If already downloaded, the DLC can be played even after the distribution period ends.
• If downloaded during the distribution period, the DLC can still be deleted and reinstalled after the period ends.

A Nexon representative explained that Dave the Diver's Godzilla DLC is only available for a limited time because of licensing issues.

"While the content is currently free to download, it will only be available for a limited period due to the Godzilla licencing.?There are no plans to transition it to paid content, but it will eventually be delisted from the store," the rep said in a statement provided to PC Gamer.

"However, users who download the DLC during the specified period can still enjoy the content even if it's no longer visible on the Steam Store. So, no need to worry about losing access once it's taken down."

The full Dave the Diver x Godzilla DLC patch notes are below.

[Godzilla DLC Content]

• 1) New Missions - 3 new Godzilla DLC-exclusive missions have been added that will be available after the end of Chapter 5
• 2) New Dishes - Discover new dishes inspired by Godzilla and Ebirah
• 3) Sea Exploration - Collect Godzilla figures scattered through the ocean

[System Improvements]

• 1) Display
• Updated the version number display to only be shown on the title and settings screen instead of being displayed constantly
• 2) Controls
• Controller vibration was added to some cutscenes
• Added function in “Keybind” to assign keys to mouse buttons 4 and 5
• 3) Sushi Restaurant
• Improved the icon design for staff currently “Dispatching” to be more intuitive
• 4) Achievements
• Improved system to update missing achievements according to the game's progress
• ‘Ration Eater’, ‘Dev Killer’ achievements will be updated starting with this update
• 5) Other improvements
• Corrected the display of stars showing up in the dark part of the crescent moon
• Improved the design of some DLC icons displayed in the “Load” screen

[Bug Fixes]

• 1) Bosses
• Fixed an issue where the game would not load properly after choosing "Give up and return" during the battle against the Wolf Eel
• [Chapter 4] Fixed an issue with where Dave’s headlight would turn off during battle with
• 2) Missions
• Fixed an issue with progressing through some missions during chapter 7
• Fixed an issue where progression was unavailable if the Tuna Tutorial and the task ‘Call Duff’ from the ‘Duff’s Pink Delivery’ mission?were overlapped
• Fixed an issue where, in specific situations, the task did not move on to 'Ask Bancho to Cook a Dish' during the “Treat Ramo” mission
• [Chapter 4] Fixed an issue that occurred in certain circumstances during the puzzle mission in the
• 3) Sea Exploration
• Fixed an issue where some weapons and items spawned on the map would disappear after visiting a different area
• Fixed an issue where the quantity of roes obtained from a dive and the quantity of roes in the Fish Farm were displayed differently
• Fixed the issue where the Moray Eel’s tail would be visible in unnatural situations
• Fixed an issue where fish would sometimes spawn in awkward spots
• Improved the animation of opened weapon/oxygen chests disappearing
• 4) Sushi Restaurant
• Fixed an issue where Seahorse Skewers were unavailable at the Branch
• Fixed an issue where Branch Managers weren’t working efficiently in certain situations
• Fixed an issue that prevented interaction with Otto at the Sushi Restaurant if certain missions were overlapped
• Fixed an issue where speech bubbles were displayed incorrectly after customers left in certain circumstances
• Fixed an issue where the dispatch result popup would appear during tutorials
• 5) Smartphone Apps
• Fixed an issue with the Management App where the ingredients stock was displayed incorrectly in certain circumstances
• 6) Other
• Fixed an issue where some interaction options of NPC’s could not be clicked on with the mouse
• Improved typos and awkward translations for some languages
• Additional Information

In retrospect, the original Hellblade was never going to be an easy game to make a sequel to. Protagonist Senua's personal journey to self-acceptance was introduced and fully resolved, and most of the events of the story were seemingly hallucinations. That doesn't give you a lot to springboard off into a wider world, and indeed Hellblade 2: Senua's Saga struggles throughout to rise to that challenge.?

Seeking to stop the Viking raids on her homeland at their source, Senua allows herself to be captured and brought to Iceland, with bloody vengeance against their leader on her mind. She arrives to find that things will not be so clear cut—this is a cursed land where the people live in fear of man-eating giants, and their reasons for taking slaves from other lands aren't as black and white as she thought.?

Now trapped in Iceland herself, and fresh from carving her way through gods and monsters in the first game, Senua resolves to track down and slay the giants, recruiting the aid of local people and weirder allies as she goes. For the player, that means about eight hours of cutscenes, lightly interactive setpieces, mild puzzle-solving, and sword fights.

It's a visually spectacular world. The landscape is scanned in from the real world using photogrammetry, and Iceland's bleak but beautiful vistas are just as startling and strange as any alien planet or fantasy realm. Mocap is used to phenomenal effect, both in the subtle performances of the human characters, and the deeply unsettling movements of the giants. There's a photo mode in the game at launch, and even as someone with little eye for that sort of thing, I couldn't help but snap shots of every horizon, skybox, and character close-up. And it all runs smooth as butter, on my machine at least, with no bugs or stuttering or even a loading screen along the way.?

But what kind of world are we actually in, here? The dark fantasy setting creates an immediate disconnect with what Hellblade is supposed to be about.?

Mind games

The series' focus is the idea that we're seeing the world from the perspective of someone with severe psychosis—Senua hears voices in her head relentlessly, and her reality is utterly distorted. The first game seemed to be a journey into her own mind, full of not just hallucinations but also metaphors for her mental state. When she fought terrifying undead warriors, the implication was they were simply human Vikings seen through her terrified eyes. The magical disease that was slowly killing her represented her fear and shame at her mental illness. Her confrontation with the Norse god Hela was really a confrontation with her own reluctance to process grief and trauma.?

But though Senua is certainly still hearing voices, she now seems to be in a world of actual monsters and magic, phenomena observed and confirmed by other people around her. There are still metaphors at play, but it all seems to be physically real too. Iceland has its own undead Vikings, for example, and perhaps these too are not quite as they appear, but the locals call them monsters, name them draugr, and confirm that they eat people and perform magical rituals, so there's little room for interpretation.?

The entire concept of Senua becomes muddled. If myth is real, why should we assume any of what she experiences is hallucination, rather than actual magic and the real voices of spirits? How is a distinction between what's real and what isn't meaningful if surreal and impossible things can happen in either world? And if she really can stand up to seemingly physical gods, then were the events of the first game all literal after all? Sure, you could simply say every character she meets and everything she experiences in Iceland is all one enormous hallucination, but that doesn't get you anywhere narratively, and it's not really how the game presents itself.?

It's a jarring symptom of a wider problem, which is that Senua simply feels out of place in her own sequel. Where the first game was deeply personal to her character, in this story she feels like she's wandered into a sidequest in a setting she has no connection to. With her arc of self-discovery already completed, she doesn't have a meaningful journey left to go on, and half the time it feels like she's pushing forward out of habit rather than any real drive to see this through.

Even the performance seems out of place. That's no slight to Melina Juergens as Senua—she's as wonderfully intense and surprising as ever, with advanced tech giving her even more opportunity for expression through the mocap. But she's now surrounded by much subtler, more naturalistic characters, and her heightened delivery clashes, emphasising the feeling that she's an alien to this world. Neither approach is inferior (though Juergens' is certainly more memorable) but they don't click together.

That might have worked as a deliberate touch if the story was about Senua as a stranger in a strange land, but that doesn't seem to be what it's going for. Instead, it's about her becoming a hero to the local people, and the difficulties and burden of leadership. That's really not a role that Senua as portrayed is able to slide into. She's quiet, haunted, and erratic—half the time people ask her something, she just flatly ignores them while her eyes dart around, and she never explains to anyone around her any decision she makes or what she's doing. With her grand feats in the story, it makes sense that she would inspire awe, fear, even respect, but as a leader she feels totally out of place, as does the speed with which the locals' wariness turns to devotion.

Norse play

It feeds into an oddly patronising atmosphere—Senua is special and important just because she is and everyone recognises it on sight and praises her for it. It starts to seem like she's a Make-A-Wish child whose request was to be in God of War. It's a feeling made far worse by the very rudimentary mechanics.?

You're constantly being told that you, as Senua, are accomplishing incredible feats and doing things no one else could have done—the reality is that most of the time you're just holding forward on the stick, or doing puzzles a child could solve, so it all feels deeply unearned. In one sequence where the characters were lost in a strange forest, I was heaped with praise for using my insight to find a way through—when literally all I was doing was following the one clear path in front of me.?

The occasional battles are a little tougher, but still stripped down and simplified even from the first game. You only ever fight enemies one-on-one, and all are beaten with just a simple toolset of a fast attack, strong attack, parry, dodge, and slow mo power. There's no nuance to be found beyond learning each of the handful of enemy types' limited attack patterns, and if you do falter, the game seems reluctant to actually kill you—it is possible to die, but you're given second chance after second chance, and on the default "Dynamic" difficulty, the game gets easier and easier the more you falter.?

Simple mechanics aren't inherently a bad thing, of course. The game is clearly aspiring to a cinematic feel, rather than the kind of system mastery demanded in previous games from Ninja Theory such as Enslaved or DMC. And it does have the visual chops to swing for something like that.?

It's always gorgeous, often truly breathtaking, and there are a few moments where the sheer spectacle of what you're seeing does convince you that you're playing the part of this incredible warrior. Some of the encounters with the giants in particular are wonderfully terrifying and really give a sense of tiny little humans coming face-to-face with immortal, elemental forces. It's an impressive feat of both design and technology, pulling off sights very few studios could even hope to match. With the right story behind it all, it could perhaps have gotten away with such a thin veneer of interactivity, but in a tale all about accomplishing the impossible, it feels absurd that more often than not all you're really accomplishing is walking and pressing a button.?

And despite that visual approach to the storytelling, there's an awful lot of breaking the rule of 'show, don't tell'. The voices in Senua's head, though atmospheric (and particularly creepy if you wear headphones), constantly over-explain what's happening in a story that would hugely benefit from some moments of quiet.?

You're never allowed to wonder about what a line might mean, or the significance of a particular facial expression or gesture, because the voices are there to talk all over it like YouTubers making a Let's Play. At their worst, they make a game trying to be intelligent and artful feel like it has no respect for the audience's intelligence, explaining the most basic of plot points multiple times in a row and offering a jumble of advice for overcoming simple obstacles.?

It's a problem the first game had, but it's exacerbated here by how disconnected Senua and her psychosis are from the narrative. With no new personal backstory to exposit on or anxieties to work through, they don't really have anything of substance to talk about. Even Senua just ignores them most of the time, which has the unfortunate effect of creating lengthy sequences without a peep from her at all. I'd much rather watch more of Juergens at work than "She must go back! She'll die!" "No, she can't! She must go on!" ad nauseam.?

But the problem extends beyond the voices. Through the Icelandic characters, we're told about the effect the giants are having far more than we see it, and Senua's more mystical allies are able to simply relate to her the backstory and weaknesses of all of her greatest foes whenever she's en route to challenge them. There's never a sense that either she or the player need to figure something out or speculate on a clue—it's always presented plain as day, which feels bizarre for a series so interested in the surreal and ambiguous.?

A dulled blade?

The only thing that leaves you to really ponder on is the game's broader themes and metaphors, but they're too disjointed to inspire much analysis. Narrative threads related to leadership, power, parents, betrayal, redemption, mercy, and the question of whether someone can truly change drift in and out of the plot without ever really feeling relevant to anything Senua is going through, and the revelations of the climax are a culmination of ideas that weren't really explored sufficiently in the lead up. Often it feels like chunks of the story are missing, especially in the character arcs of the supporting cast, some of which feel rushed while others are abandoned part way through. That's not helped by frequent disorienting time-skips that artificially break up what is otherwise one long, continuous shot. ?

As with the first game, in the lead up to Hellblade 2 huge emphasis has been placed in the marketing on the authenticity of the depiction of psychosis. I don't have the personal experience to say whether it is representative or not—I'll leave that to others—but what I can say is that I don't think Senua's psychosis feels relevant to the story this game is telling. It isn't really even a psychological tale—it's a dark fantasy parable with some surreal imagery that evokes but doesn't actually explore the idea of distorted reality.?

That's probably a sign that the first game didn't need a sequel at all, or certainly not one on this scale. Hellblade 2 was always an odd fit as a flagship title for a publisher as big as Microsoft, and perhaps that pressure to go bigger, more epic, and more mainstream was too much for Senua to carry on her shoulders. Whatever the case, visual spectacle and intricate motion capture can't save this sequel from feeling like an unengaging and inessential adventure.?

The architect of this post-modern duotone walking simulator, John Evelyn, began by creating renders of each game world object in Unity and then painstakingly drawing out each texture by hand.?

In an interview with The Verge, Evelyn discussed how he fell in love with pen and ink art: "I liked all the incidental details and the accidents that come out along the way," he said, even though "sometimes it goes horribly wrong!" The inkblot visuals impart a rich depth of texture, something tactile and personal. Evelyn's brutally honest approach to artwork, which embraces the permanence of ink and all the mistakes that come with it, gives it an incredibly unique look.

That approach to permanence hasn't carried over to the world of games publishing, however. The Collage Atlas began as an iOS exclusive before the end of its run on Apple Arcade—a subscription-based game library—saw it become unavailable to play, even for those who previously could.?

It would have been another casualty in the gaming industry's ongoing siege on art itself, but while Evelyn was prepared to wash his hands of the whole thing and leave The Collage Atlas in purgatory, he ultimately decided to port the game to PC, telling The Verge that he felt he owed it to his past self, who put so much work into the game.

"This is the sad thing about the way our kind of creative mediums are going: works don’t have any kind of permanence—they can just vanish," he said.

Take a scroll down the mass casualty list at delistedgames.com and you'll probably see one or more games you've played, want to play, or even own in some capacity being shuffled off into a black hole. Thankfully, devs like Evelyn are making the effort to keep their games available. You can now find The Collage Atlas on Steam.

Silenus casts you as some kind of android exploring an abandoned oil refinery?—the installation's shadowy new owners have laid everyone off in the name of AI automation, with strange missives from management and surreal new workplace initiatives (like mandatory dance breaks for the now-nearly nonexistent staff) implying something more sinister is afoot. We're hitting some familiar Norco themes?—the metal titans of fossil fuel extraction carving up the coast, vaguely threatening yet absurd transhumanism, the crushing boot of capital? flattening all—but from a fresh new angle. I can dig it

You explore the refinery in full 3D instead of Norco's static 2D design, but the pace of exploration and branching, scene-by-scene layout of the world definitely feel familiar. Geography of Robots' distinctive look translates really well to full 3D too, and I'm excited to see how this crunchy, strikingly lit world looks on a CRT monitor.

And then there's the music tie-in: Doom metal band Thou's latest album, Umbilical, has been released 11 days early through Silenus' demo. You can pick up individual tracks as items in the world?—I found one as a puzzle reward in my short sampling of the demo?—and you can listen to them in a separate menu.

It's my kind of music, and also a delightful, incongruously whimsical way of releasing an album given how inherently grim both doom metal and mournful sci-fi adventure games about the gulf coast are. This is also not the first time we've seen a nice indie game/alt music release tie-in like this: last year, Health released a new single through the boomer shooter, Ultrakill.

Geography of Robots says it will keep Silenus' demo up for two to three weeks following the release of Umbilical on May 31. The full game has no set release date, but you can check out the demo for yourself and wishlist on Steam. If you haven't yet played Norco, you're in luck: that particular adventure game heater is just $6 on Steam until May 23.

We've been able to play Nintendo 64 games on PC for a long time?—over 25 years, actually, as pointed out in a video by Digital Foundry?—but while console emulators can provide a great one size fits all tool for a given library, they're inefficient, failing to take full advantage of our powerful new systems and occasionally introducing new glitches or errors as well.?

Direct ports to PC by way of "decompilation" can provide the best possible experience, but are also extremely labor-intensive, requiring years of work to produce results like OpenGOAL for Jak and Daxter or the Mario 64 PC port. Wiseguy's static recompilation tool makes that porting process easier, shaving years off the process.

Wiseguy showed off the power of this tool by quickly turning around a PC port of the dark horse candidate for best Zelda game. Like with emulation, you'll still need to provide a legally acquired ROM in order to play, and Zelda 64: Recompiled is a brilliant showcase of the power of static recompilation, providing a modernized, hassle free way to get gang-stalked and mugged by kids in the woods.?

Static recompilation translates the game's code into C, then utilizes direct3d12/Vulkan to render breathtaking visuals. It's not an automatic process, requiring some hands-on work to account for how vastly more efficient modern hardware is than the N64. But where a full decompilation of a ROM to extract the source code required to build a native port can take years, developer Wiseguy was able to churn out a playable port of Majora's Mask in only a couple of days. According to the developer, Zelda 64: Recompiled was tested against other emulators with a performance metric called RDP Accuracy, which assists in identifying which effects and visuals are intended and which are quirks of the hardware.?

Native controller support, input-mapping, autosaving, widescreen support, and easily the best feature that was previously marooned on the official 3DS ports, gyro-aiming, have all been added, removing the hassle of first-time emulator setup. Ray tracing, mod support, and dual analog support with camera controls, as well as eventual Ocarina of Time integration, are all features planned for Zelda 64: Recompiled.

That these features have been seamlessly integrated into Zelda 64: Recompiled is what's most exciting to me about the potential of this method. I'm no stranger to emulation, but the amount of times I've tried to emulate a game that uses some weird form of hardware specific anti-aliasing or texture smoothing and been met with single digit framerates or totally warped texture mapping is too many to count.?

The level of visual clarity afforded by the power of modern hardware is stunning, with lighting and atmospheric shading that makes Termina's "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" vibes even more pronounced. Personally, I'm excited to see if Static Recompilation can bring us even more native ports of some games desperately in need of them. You can check out Zelda 64: Recompiled here.?

A little adventure-mystery puzzle box game is currently totally free on Steam, with Littlefield Studio's 2021 release Machinika Museum available at a 100% discount "while supplies last." With the kind of detailed 3D backgrounds that might remind you of Myst, Machinika: Museum is a puzzle-box-solving adventure through machines of extraterrestrial origin.

The protagonist—that is, you—is a researcher whose job is to understand this large collection of strange and sometimes bizarre objects, figure out their stories, and even discover the fate of their previous owner. Developers Littlefield call it out as directly inspired by puzzlebox genre revival hit The Room, from back in 2014, which will probably get genre enthusiasts excited enough on its own.

"In a distant future, finding machines from alien civilizations is not unusual, especially in a museum dedicated to them. Your job is to receive these devices and to understand how to repair them. But this time, something is different. You have not been given any information and this seems to be rather urgent," reads the game description.

Most negative reviews of Machinika: Museum talk about how it feels like a port from a mobile app, with sometimes clunky controls to match. That might be a dealbreaker for you, and if so you're probably better off avoiding it—but at the price of free those who're fine with that potential could do worse. A lot worse! They could pay for something.

Machinika: The Museum takes two to four hours to complete and looks pretty good on modern hardware. In my short time with it the controls are obvious and intuitive, but a bit clunky. A sequel from developer Littlefield Studio called Machinika: Atlas will launch later this year.

You can find Machinika: Museum on Steam. It's free until May 27 or "while supplies last."

When you start you don't have a huge amount of skills—which is pretty typical of a metroidvania. Your main focus is on movement, how to attack the various vile-infested enemies coming your way, and how to parry their assaults. To shake things up, you are given a tentacle-like grapple that can bring you closer to enemies to land a few close attacks before stepping back. But outside of combat, this tool is also vital for a number of platforming sequences later, acting as a grappling hook to help you cross larger gaps.

As I learned pretty quickly during my time with the demo, avoiding a quick trip to the bottom of a pit can be tricky. You can't jump toward the platform you're trying to grapple onto and flawlessly pull it off. It's a precise maneuver, even though sometimes the icon just doesn't want to appear and initiate the move. But after a few attempts, I got the rhythm of these jumps—and I really needed to, given how frequently they begin to pop up the further I delved into the starting area.?

Once you've chipped away at the first stage of the boss, a rather intimidating millipede, you start to see the platforming element really shine. In a tense upward chase, you have to throw yourself across various platforms in a desperate attempt to flee from your encroaching enemy. As I learned after getting a little too close for comfort, the only damage this boss will do if you accidentally fall is reduce your health by one heart, before conveniently firing you back up to the closest platform. But, paired with the soundtrack, this chase does feel pretty epic.?

It also serves as an effective way to quickly get to grips with what you've learned. With that said, I definitely found myself panicking about missing a jump that was far closer than it initially seemed, leading me to dash over the top of a platform before falling off and having to start again. But, after a few runs and making the same mistake a number of times, I learned how to pull certain tricks off—which is always the nature of a metroidvania. It's always a learning curve.?

One thing I particularly loved about Venture to the Vile was the amount of depth and detail each area had. While traveling between the background and foreground to solve puzzles and face more enemies, you start to pick up on the details embedded within the environment that help add to its slightly unsettling nature. Dark spaces occasionally feel like two eyes are watching you, and you can never really tell if walls have been coated in red due to the Vile infestation or by anyone who might've come before you.?

Because of how the game looks, and the ominous music that plays in the background, Venture to the Vile consistently kept me expecting something to spring out at any time and I found myself sweating at the idea of exploring the next section of the map. I questioned whether or not I had missed an integral part of my adventure along the way more times than I like to admit, whether that was due to a hidden puzzle or a possible secret carved into the wall. But it's a good sign that I felt so compelled to fully explore the half-hour-long demo in spite of my encroaching fear.

I left with more questions than I started with which would usually frustrate me, but instead it's got me more excited for the full release and to explore more of Rainybrook and its inhabitants. Despite its brevity, Venture of the Vile's demo is still full of tension and deftly tapped into my wanderlust. I'm looking forward to finding out if it can keep this up when it launches on May 22., In the meantime, I cannot recommend the demo enough for metroidvania fans. There's still a huge amount of Rainybrook to explore and I feel more prepared than ever to perfect my precision platforming skill and face whatever's to come.

The humble point-and-click adventure game has gone through many iterations, with ups and downs year to year, but the genre has given up its relevance entirely. I know this because at least once a year I see one that's just drop-dead interesting for some reason or other. Rauniot, out now from Finnish indie developer Act Normal Games, is drop-dead interesting because it's drop-dead gorgeous.?

With a world of rich, sepia-toned pre-rendered backgrounds, Rauniot promises point and click adventure puzzling in a pretty unexplored videogame setting: Northern Finland. With people unable to trust each other, small bands now scrabble for survival—that's where protagonist Aino comes in, working to establish a group of survivors supporting each other. Interestingly, while the setting is bleak, not everything in the game has to be: achievement descriptions hint that there's a way to survive without firing any bullets.

Despite being set in the post-apocalypse, Rauniot's world is one that diverges from our own world in 1974 when "a massive natural disaster pushed the civilization over the edge." The world that results is a retrofuture of a kind, where the computers are all CRT monitors and floppy disks while the cars are deliciously blocky, and some puzzles appear to involve tuning radio channels.

Developer Act Normal points at a variety of puzzles in Rauniot that don't have to be tackled in a linear order or with a single solution, which should give variety to each person's experience. A looping gif on the Steam store page shows the main character adroitly unlocking a padlock in one frame, then shooting it off with a pistol in an alternate one.

There's something to be said here about the beauty of pre-rendered graphics. The technique is decades old and the results are proven and hard to argue with: Whether we're talking about the backgrounds of the old Infinity Engine in Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 or the charming streets of Ravachol in Disco Elysium.

Early user reviews of Rauniot are overall quite positive, with a majority saying that the Finnish voice acting adds to the atmosphere and the puzzles are engagingly difficult in a game that doesn't hold your hand, but does have a nice fast travel to make adventure game fiddling more bearable. Negative reviews seem to dock the story as having a bit of a vague ending.

You can find Rauniot on GOG, Green Man Gaming, and Steam for $18.