Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 20

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. The first is a new animation: every now and then, the cats will wash their faces for a few seconds, and yes it’s adorable. You can see Peaches washing her face in the screenshot below. That’s what you’re looking out for.

The most adorable screenshot today (via Imgur)

OK, so, about this other mysterious addition. It’s a new cat that goes by the name “Whiteshadow.” It used to be that Peaches (pictured above) was the most finicky cat in Neko Atsume. Most cats can be relied upon to turn up if you put out the right toy or treat or whatever. But Peaches was a little fussier than everyone else. But now she’s been outdone by Whiteshadow, who is a bit of a ninja cat who hides in scenes, sometimes on the very edges where you can barely see him. Good luck trying to get this pesky kitty to show up in your scenes.

what Whiteshadow is attracted to seems to vary in each scene

That said, the game’s community has been slowly putting together some theories as to how Whiteshadow can be lured in. First off, it appears he likes Sashimi and Bonito Bitz, so make sure to put some of that out. Secondly, what Whiteshadow is attracted to seems to vary in each scene. In fact, what he’s most after is a way to perform ninja moves. For instance, he’s been known to use “espionage activity” in the Original and Cafe scenes, while he uses “Scouting mission” for Zen and Rustic scenes. What this involves is hiding in some manner in these scenes, perhaps on top of a vase or under the stairs. Can you see him in the screenshot below?

Whiteshadow is lurking, unseen … (via Imgur)

Good luck getting Whiteshadow to turn up. Just keep an extra vigilant eye out and hopefully you’ll get a little ninja treat for this festive time of year. Oh, and as we’re near the end of 2016, it seems like a good time to remind you that Neko Atsume is getting a live-action movie adaptation next year. It’s only confirmed for Japanese theaters so far but hopefully it’ll head West too.

You can download Neko Atsume on the App Store and Google Play.

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Header image via Reddit

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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 in Sundered, has to sling it over both her shoulders to fire it, like she’s carrying the trunk of a tree she just fell. Then, when she fires it, she gets launched back across the 2D space so far that the camera has to zoom out to keep up with her trajectory. This is a thick-ass gun. A goddamn laser cannon. I love it.

you’re fighting for your sanity as well as your survival

Anyway, now that’s outta the way, I should tell you what else I learned about Sundered from its demo. Don’t worry, I can do better than saying ‘it was good’ or ‘my word, that gun though.’ Speaking of which, check out the new trailer for the game below, and look out for a couple of very quick peeks at that gun.

Right, to bring you up to speed, Sundered is a game filled with eldritch horrors to battle. And as is often associated with the word “eldritch,” it’s a game in which you’re fighting for your sanity as well as your survival. There are also nasty tentacles looking to grab ya because of course there is. I can’t talk too much on the world the game takes place in except for that as the demo didn’t go into it.

However, I would note that, in the trailer, it’s said that the nature of humanity has been corrupted and that a better future requires sacrifice. This seems to correspond to two features in the game: the first is that you’re able to upgrade Eshe to make her stronger, but she also gains new powers from huge, strange statues that look like the one below. The ability I acquired in the demo replaced her dodge-roll with a short teleport, letting her pass through purple, gungy waterfalls that she couldn’t before. If you ask me, these powers make her more agile, yes, but are also corrupting her further. I’m expecting consequences later on in the game.

The second feature is that, to upgrade Eshe—that is, to get to the skill tree where you spend points you’ve gained—you need to die. You shouldn’t die purposely, of course. It’s more a case that this system that places death as a requirement towards improvement means you’re able to return to the thing that killed you a bit stronger than before (it also probably means that no-death runs are encouraged). That seems like a pretty sensible bit of design. It’s a game that gives you a bit of a boost when you’re down, letting every second encounter tip a little more towards your favor, whether it’s due to an increased shield, more health, a stronger attack, whatever.

as good as getting a strike in a game of bowling

But that isn’t enough to survive the enemies in Sundered. Its combat seems to place an emphasis on crowd control. Most fights have you outnumbered heavily but all sorts of ghastly creatures. They launch skulls from up high, leap from the sides, dive you from above, charge at you like a herd of stampeding elephants. You’re kitted out with the tools to deal with it. Not just diving to avoid taking damage or depleting the shield, but quick slashing combos with a sword to stop their attacks, jumping into the air and slamming back down, or knocking foes into the air and juggling them for free damage.

Then there’s the gun. It’s a vital tool, letting you launch that huge, slow-moving laser ball into a big crowd. Lining it up just right feels as good as getting a strike in a game of bowling. To balance the use of the gun, it takes away all your energy for a moment, meaning that you can’t dodge for a little while—you can still use your sword just fine. Which is a fair trade-off given that it’s capable of clearing a lot of space. It encourages careful and creative use, to blast a load of enemies at once for a breather, before heading back in to swashbuckle away.

What the demo didn’t let me experience but did tease was a boss fight. As with Thunder Lotus’s previous game, Jotun, the bosses are set to be huge, hand-animated atrocities. The one I saw looked like a green corpse hanging out inside a giant metal spider with lots of ballistics ready to go. Fast-moving and kinda terrifying. The trailer teases that to beat these bosses you’ll need to make a choice. “Harness the power of corrupted relics to defeat gigantic bosses at the cost of your humanity,” reads the text. “Resist or Embrace.” It certainly seems like you’ll have an easier time by corrupting your humanity but I’m guessing by the end of the game you’ll be made to regret that somehow. We’ll have to wait until next year to find out.

Sundered is coming to Windows, Mac, Linux, and PlayStation 4 in 2017. Find out more on its website.

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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 of heroes. “The community was quick to suggest this as well, but we at Red Hook always try to put a different spin on things, so we thought a great twist would be to introduce a vampire hunter, but have him be hunting you,” said Chris Bourassa, creative director at Red Hook.

“a (literal) damned if you do, damned if you don’t encounter”

The Fanatic is that vampire hunter. There’s a chance of him chasing and stalking your party if any one has contracted the “Crimson Curse” and steps foot into the dungeon. “The Fanatic will attempt to burn party members at the stake, improving his resilience by reading holy verses as the flames sear his victim,” Bourassa revealed. “Damaging his pyre will fill the Fanatic with zealous rage, emboldening his attacks and imbuing his warhammer with holy light. So it’s a (literal) damned if you do, damned if you don’t encounter!”

The Fanatic will be another of the “wandering bosses” like The Collector and The Shambler in Darkest Dungeon. A proper threat that you’ll want to avoid but will have a hard time doing so if he’s after you. Bourassa said that the team has been experimenting with custom audio cues that will let you know when he’s near, so perhaps you’ll have some warning at least.

As far as the visual design of The Fanatic goes, Bourassa told me he wanted to steer away from the classic vampire hunter tropes, like tall hats, gadgets, pouches, and crossbows. He’s more of a mad monk type of figure. “I imagine him as having gone rogue from the church, hunting the Crimson Court anywhere he can find them,” Bourassa said. “His scarred face gives the impression of having had a serious entanglement at some point in his past—perhaps that’s what finally drove him over the edge.”

“He’s got a few iconic vampire-hunting tools at his disposal—stakes, garlic, and prayer, but he’s given up on himself—he’s scarred & dirty,” Bourassa continued. “Nothing matters to him anymore except the pursuit of his righteous cause!”

Wherever possible, Bourassa likes to give the heroes and villains of Darkest Dungeon a signature weapon. The Fanatic’s is the warhammer as it felt like a great fit to Bourassa, plus it hasn’t been used anywhere else in the game. “The hammer has a ‘V’ on it, so when it’s heated up, every hit brands you as a Vampire,” he added.

Darkest Dungeon’s “Crimson Court” DLC will be coming out in early 2017 for Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Look out for more information on the game’s website.

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Get ready to unlock the secrets of A Normal Lost Phone in January

It’s cold. You burrow further into your scarf, hoping to shield more of your face from the harsh winds biting at your cheeks. The streetlights do little in their attempt to guide you along the cobblestone street—the fog is too thick to distinguish shapes. As you walk, you squint against the way the light disperses among the thick mist, resembling soft glowing orbs that float in the night sky.

The weight of your boot crunches against something that is not pavement. You glance down to find that it’s a phone. Removing your hand from your pockets, you bend down to inspect the device. The screen is completely intact. For all intents and purposes it’s a normal, lost phone. But what do you do with it?

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A Normal Lost Phone is the result of a well-received prototype conceived during Global Game Jam 2016 by independent French developers Accidental Queens. Through the help of two external collaborators, the prototype has been polished and expanded upon to create a full version that will be released on iOS, Android and Steam platforms on January 26th, 2017.  

The game features you as the founder of this lost phone that belonged to Sam, and it’s your job to search through messages, apps, and pictures in order to learn more about the former owner. Through investigating the device, you’ll learn more about what happened to Sam when they turned 18 and mysteriously disappeared. According to their press page, Accidental Queens hope to “create games that feature never before seen mechanics, exploring topics from everyday life and social questions, through innovative narrative tools.”

Exploring a smartphone interface is a feature that has been implemented through other titles like Sara is Missing or Cibele, where players are asked to sift through the personal lives of their owners in order to learn more about them. A Normal Lost Phone will be different in that it will address issues like “coming of age, homophobia, depression and peer pressure” alongside opening text messages to read so you can form an opinion of Sam.

narrated by whoever gets access to the phone

The game will want to implore to your empathy and your curiosity as you investigate the content held within a seemingly ordinary piece of tech. In a previous interview Diane Landais, one of the co-founders of Accidental Queens has gone on to say that “Every phone tells a story, the story of its owner…It’s just not a story that can be told, nor is it a story that can be seen. It’s narrated by whoever gets access to the phone, and is shaped by the way this person sees the world, by their habits or prejudices.”

To learn more about A Normal Lost Phone, click here.

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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 label Finji has confirmed that two of the games under its wing will definitely be coming out in 2017. They are the post-apocalyptic survival game Overland and the ennui-cum-mystical adventure game Night in the Woods. Yes please, thank you very much.

There’s a chance you’ve already played Overland given that its limited, paid alpha program started way back in April, when the world didn’t seem so … how to put it … screwed. Since then, Finji has been updating it with new features, including new character models, loadsa new items and traits, Twitch usernames and in-game chat, and also a Night Mode. Yes, it gets dark in there now, which is something that Overland‘s new trailer focuses on showing off. Give it a look below, and watch out for the good boy called Mustard, who is doing so well at holding a stick.

The gist of Overland, if you don’t know, is to “make the most of a terrible situation.” It’s a road trip through North America after everything has gone to shit. You put together a squad and attempt to survive as you travel through its procedurally generated dioramas. If you’re lucky you’ll find gas for a car, maybe a dog to help carry sticks, and avoid the patrolling nasties that are out to rip you apart. It’s the kinda game you’ll remember for those close calls, when you somehow steered clear of death, probably because one of the dogs jumped in and saved the day. Look, the dogs are really good in this game, okay?

the dogs are really good in this game

Anyway, on to Night in the Woods, which also has a new trailer to celebrate its confirmation for a 2017 release. What’s notable about this trailer is that it’s the first one that its team at Infinite Fall has put out since 2014. And, if you keep your eyes locked as you watch its many scenes fly past at the speed of light, you should see some new stuff. Are you ready? Okay … GO!

I’ve played a little bit of Night in the Woods and can confirm that it has very a good baseball bat swing. That’s important for a game about being bored in a small town where the only entertainment for a young adult is smashing shit up in a junkyard. You play as college dropout Mae, the rebellious cat on show, in Night in the Woods, as she returns to her hometown to find her friends have moved on from their teenage years. Mae wants to shoplift and hangout, but they have jobs and don’t feel quite so up to breaking the law. It’s among this that something mystical then goes down in the woods that presumably grabs Mae’s attention.

With games like these coming out in 2017 maybe it won’t be such a terrible year after all? One can only hope.

Find out more about Overland on its website. Same goes for Night in the Woods—visit that website.

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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 the Netherlands, around three years ago. “In one of our first Skype calls, Damir told me he didn’t like the existing Christmas games on the market. They all had the same approach,” Vervoort told me. “He wanted to make something that was more original. It had to stand out and most of all look different. I agreed. A lot of Christmas games are part of the over-the-top commercial Christmas craze, which is more about decorations than being together.”

“Moonlight Express is about endorsing the idea of equality”

The pair started off by coming up with their own fantasy land that they could set their game in. They didn’t want to have any of the usual imagery so heavily associated with Christmas. “I wanted to create a Christmas game that is not about Santa struggling through chimneys, reindeer, elves, materialism or anything like that,” Stuhec said. One idea was to set the game on floating islands in the sky, another saw them exploring the notion of a world that is half underwater, and a third idea involved a universe with inverted physics.

In the end what they settled on was a Civic Skyscraper city, “a place with endless vertical buildings.” This suited the touch controls of the mobile game they had in mind to make too, as at a press of a button, gifts could be shot at the balconies of the houses by a vertically-travelling vehicle. “This made it easier for everyone to understand the intent of our game,” Vervoort told me. That intent is more than to make a Christmas game that doesn’t look like any other, although that is part of it. It’s born from seeing how effortlessly Christmas can bring people together and wishing that everyone gets to experience it.

“Moonlight Express is about endorsing the idea of equality and making sure that every single child, no matter where or in what kind of conditions it lives, deserves to experience the magic of Christmas,” Stuhec said. The whole idea of the game, then, is to make sure that every person in every house receives a gift no matter what. To imply that it’s the duty of everyone to help each other to enjoy this time of year with those who love them, the pair replaced Santa and his magical sleigh with a young boy called Palti who has an over-night delivery service. If Palti can do it then so can we all is the message.

You can purchase Moonlight Express on the App Store for $1.99 starting December 16th.

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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 scraggly sock puppet that the Collective uses as its mascot that is talking to me. As you’d expect from a mascot, it represents the group pretty well, it being a bit of a scribble with an endearing, childlike personality to it. The games made by this group of four have similar traits.

“None of us can really draw so most of our games just consist of straight lines and circles,” Sokpop said. “We animate almost everything from code, so all you see in our games are lines and circles that wiggle, wobble and move about. That contributes a lot to the organic gameplay we make.”

The word organic comes up time and again during our conversation. It permeates the Collective; not just their notion of play, and their game-making processes, but also how they formed in the first place. They met in 2014 after working on games by themselves, and found that they shared similar styles and valued each other’s opinions on their projects, so they continued talking and participated in game jams together. The name Sokpop came as a result of this collaboration, and soon after they learned the benefits of being a collective: increased visibility, financial safety net, and being able to share administration responsibilities.

“We make games that are playful, and explore intrinsic fun”

“Someone once said to us that there are a lot of people with both talent and ambition and that doesn’t make you special,” Sokpop told me. “The hard part of making games is creating a healthy environment in which you have the time and space to do what you love to do. So ever since we’ve been trying to create that for ourselves through Sokpop.”

Bamboo EP is Sokpop’s first commercial release and so it should set the standard for what they’re all about: “We make games that are playful, and explore intrinsic fun rather than pursuing goals,” in Sokpop’s words. The EP contains two games and an interactive menu—you swim around a spherical pond, nudging frogs off lily pads and bumping into goldfish. The first game is “Bamboo Heart,” a frantic side-scroller that has you swordfighting various anthropomorphic characters in a bamboo environment. But what about it makes it distinctively a product of Sokpop?

“In Bamboo Heart (the swordfighting game) for example, it’s not about ‘oh in this situation i have to press these buttons to solve it’, but rather a stressful moment in which you forget you’re using a controller and just try to survive without really knowing how to achieve that, but that’s what swordfighting must really be like, right?” Sokpop said. “Our games mostly are somewhat of an emotional experience like that and have a certain emotion or feeling as a main theme. A game of ours typically tries to make you happy and laugh, wander in curiosity or just relax for a bit.”

The second game, “Bamboo Ball,” is certainly of the same mindset, though is a little more chill than the first game. In it, you and an opponent are placed on opposite sides of the screen with a number of bamboo plants with you. The idea is to pick up balls to throw at your opponent’s bamboo to smash them. Whoever smashes up the other person’s bamboo first wins. It comes with a choice of the four seasons that acts as four different pitches to play on: spring is the standard, summer has beach balls, fall has a gust of wind that you need to adjust your throws for, while winter lets you roll up snowballs to make them bigger.

Sokpop wanted Bamboo EP to be a little more than just a collection of games. To achieve that, they added a secret that you can unlock in one game for the other. “We intend to explore those cross-over mechanics more in possible future albums,” Sokpop said. “I think that only because our styles overlap as much as they do we are able to make a more coherent collection. It’s a privilege of being in a collective. We should make use of that!”

Bamboo EP serves as a great introduction to what the Sokpop Collective is all about. It’s playful, scrappy, and cheerful, even when you’re slicing up animals that stole your heart and replaced it with a bamboo one. There should be plenty more of that coming from this little videogame group in the future.

You can purchase the Bamboo EP on Steam. Find out more about Sokpop Collective on its website.

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An election simulator shows you how everything went so wrong

Much of the public was left stunned in the wake of the November election in America. Beyond Clinton’s loss, despite winning the popular vote, many were shocked that the margin was close at all.

While distrust and dislike of the electoral college is a fairly bipartisan issue, it is actually only one layer of what caused the election to go the way it did. The much larger systemic factor is the voting system we use, as demonstrated by Nicky Case’s To Build a Better Ballot, an interactive essay on alternative voting systems.

One person, one vote, isn’t that the fairest?

Many people may not have even considered alternative voting systems. After all, when we vote in small groups, we don’t usually ask which options you would be okay with, we ask which one you want. One would assume that the most straightforward would be the most representative. One person, one vote, isn’t that the fairest?

But Case uses the simulations they built to show how easy it is for there to be a glitch in America’s voting system, known as First Past the Post voting. However, most people, when considering alternative voting systems, are generally talking about Instant Runoff Voting, where a voter ranks their candidates. Case demonstrates through simulations that, while this system is better, it’s also rife with problems.

There is a host of alternative voting systems beyond Instant Runoff Voting, though, and while many are great in theory, as Case states in their essay, we won’t really know how well they work until we try them. But, if you want to play around with theory, Case has made a sandbox mode of the simulator that you can play with, and they encourage you to use it to debate others about what voting system would work best.

Or, if you’re a politics nerd like me, you’ll be trying to simulate past elections, seeing how things would have played out differently with an alternative voting system. One thing the data definitively shows is that First Past the Post voting leaves people feeling unhappy and disenfranchised, so the time to have this conversation is long overdue.

Read/play To Build a Better Ballot here.

Header image Voting Booths 1966 by Clackamas County Historical Society

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An online chatroom isn’t where you’d expect to find a platformer

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Walkie Talkie (Windows)
BY DANIEL LINSSEN

Daniel Linssen must see platformers everywhere. He’s already made one inside a computer interface and one that works in tandem with a separate game. Now he’s made a platformer inside an online chatroom. It also doubles up as one of the most easy-to-use level creators ever conceived. Called Walkie Talkie, the game is a fully-functioning online chatroom where people can talk to each other by typing into a box.

You can scroll through the entire conversation and, at any point, press Enter to turn the text into a 2D level for a platformer. Symbols and letters have prescribed functions so that an exclamation mark is a bouncing hazard, the letter Z a falling floor, and an arrow facing up becomes a bounce pad. You control a tiny stick figure who can run and jump across the level attempting to beat each one. Or you can create your own levels by typing a few characters into the chatbox and hitting Enter. Not even Mario Maker can compete with that level of accessibility.

Perfect for: Millennials, Snapchatters, level designers

Playtime: A few minutes

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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” RPG, due out next year.

ZA/UM says that this teaser should be considered the first taste of the game’s world, music, and voice acting. It leaves a very good impression. The music you can hear is provided by another British band called British Sea Power, and they’ll be composing the entire soundtrack for the game.

A new website with new information on No Truce With The Furies is apparently going to be launched in January 2017. But there’s already plenty about the game we already know that makes it a very intriguing project.

For starters, it’s described as a “police procedural role playing game,” mostly because you’ll be playing as a disgraced detective lieutenant. But get this: this law enforcer thinks themselves more of a rockstar than a police officer. “Put on your disco pants,” reads the game’s description. “Wander a gorgeously rendered seaside city in another world, solving one last case.”

wearing a disco outfit “to the maximum effect”

This brings us to the game’s setting, which has apparently taken 15 years to develop, and is described as “fantastic realism.” The game’s central city is a melting pot of cultures and technology. It has phone booths and motor-carriages. Techno music and liquor stores. There are elements of Bauhaus and Dada, neo-grotesque fonts and transistors, communists and fascists.

The other big feature of No Truce With The Furies that’s worth highlighting in this brief summary (and I mean really brief, there’s a lot to this game) is that mostly everything is handled through dialogue, even combat. Choices and consequences abound.

The thoughts your character has are also a huge part of this game. They’re all stored inside the Thought Cabinet where you can process them into original ideas. Some of these becomes skills that you can enact in the physical world, such as tuning your nervous system with electrochemistry, and wearing a disco outfit “to the maximum effect,” whatever that means. Others become doubts and memories, permanent beliefs that you can’t get rid of.

That’s not even to mention that the art is handled by oil painters who use a trick called “paintshading” that lets the game essentially be a “moving contemporary oil painting.” There are so many fresh ideas in the writing, systems, and artwork here that when the creators say “The role playing game is an emergent art form – and we’re set to light it on fire,” you can believe them. It seems like a lot to pull off, but heck, I reckon they can do it.

You can find out more about No Truce With The Furies on its website. It’s due out for PC, iOS, and Android in 2017.

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