Happy new year all. What’s the weather like where you are? We’ve got Amber and Yellow warnings in London – I do not understand what these terms mean, but I’m going to add a Sapphire warning for escalating Maw activity. The creature was pretty lively over the Xmas weekend, but Graham managed to soothe it with posts about gaming-related new year resolutions and, of all things, the Spike Video Game Awards. We can expect the Maw’s petulance to mount during January, a lean month for announcements and revelations, but there are a few tasty morsels in the offing – a new Prince of Persia and Tekken 8, for instance. Fingers crossed we can build up some kind of momentum.
Some new game releases we are pointing our telescopes at this week: Skeleton Rebellion (4th Jan), a scrappy offbeat RPG with claymation elements in which you are a skeleton trying to overthrow some mages, and The Night Is Grey (5th Jan), a point-and-click adventure about a beardy bloke and a little girl stuck in the woods with some weirdo wolves. If you like, you can also play a free drinking game I’ve just invented in which you do a shot for every time I accidentally write 2023 instead of 2024.
Cruelty Squad developer Consumer Softproducts, real name Ville Kallio, is making another non-linear shooter thingy with explosively odd aesthetics – Psycho Patrol R. It’s described as “a mecha FPS hybrid policing and punishment simulator set in the decayed state of Pan-Europa. You play as an officer of the European Federal Police, a V-Stalker pilot of Psycho Patrol, a special unit tasked with solving mental crime, among other things.” Sounds like A Lot.
Square Enix president and representative director Takashi Kiryu has penned a new year’s letter discussing the company’s 2024 ambitions for metaversy stuff, AR/VR, the blockchain and generative tools in game development. The letter also summarises 2023 as “a year of tumult exemplified by an intensification in geopolitical risks and sharp inflation stemming partly from monetary policy moves made by central banks grappling with the pandemic.”
Some morning pick-me-up music.
IT IS MONDAY. Spin up the August Journoplasmic Apparatus! Top up the hamster’s water bottle! Oh, and FEED THE MAW.
