THIS MONTH
Some of the other things on our minds when we weren’t doing everything else
DREAM
This Place Is Cursed
Videogame spells are seldom more than glorified weapons. A conjurer’s arm is often just a surrogate gun, firing ethereal bullets whose otherworldly glow is the only thing that distinguishes them from regular rounds. This absorbing puzzleled adventure, however, strives to put the magic back into spellcasting. Trapped in a woodland cabin, a young woman must gather arcane knowledge from scattered scrolls and rules, assembling clues in a forbidden grimoire to unlock powerful and transformative spells. Here, sorcery is made to feel like a ritual act, involving sequential stick movements and button presses to pull off. As you light candles to reveal secret rooms, gesture to travel to umbral realms and flourish to dispel ghosts, whispered voices and crackling static ensure that the title rings unsettlingly true.
VIDEO 4
Halfling Barbarians
One does not simply walk into Baldur’s Gate 3’s goblin camp. But one can blow it to kingdom come. For the climax of a video documenting the travails of four topless Halflings, YouTuber Okoii amasses a large collection of barrels, spacing them neatly apart throughout rooms and connecting corridors before retreating to a safe distance and lobbing a Potion Of Explosions at them. The devastating chain reaction – set to the finale of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – tanks the game’s framerate, as dozens of NPCs are burned to a crisp, sent flying through the air, or both. Marvellous.
WEB GAME
Mr Platformer bit.ly/scarycavanagh
Terry Cavanagh’s latest looks like your average Atari 2600era run-and-jump, and initially plays like one, too. Its blocky environments offer scant resistance on your way to the bell at the end of the stage, with only the odd coin and star to tempt you toward riskier areas. But there’s structural intrigue, as you choose your next stop on the 4x4 grid of levels, en route from bottom left to top right. Then you notice the difficulty steadily ramping up – and, when you lose all your lives, a message telling you how many stages remain. Hazards and enemies that don’t quite seem to play by established platformer rules leave you feeling uneasy. The black curtain pulled across the stage backdrop as you finish starts to feel strange. And now the sky and sea appear to be intertwined? This place, it transpires, is cursed, too.
BOOK
Curious Video Game Machines
