Category Archives: short;Play

short;Play: Demon’s Souls

I’ve held off on exploring the Souls series for quite some time, because I know you need to invest a bit of time and effort to “git gud”, as the kids say.

Well, just recently I started to make that effort. And wouldn’t you know it — I’m having a good time! So much so that, having been enjoying Demon’s Souls on PS3, I went and picked up the whole Dark Souls trilogy for PS4 in a nice box set ready for some indeterminate point in the near future.

In the meantime, enjoy my experiences as a relative newcomer to the Souls series in the video below — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play: Teleglitch

As wonderful as true teleportation technology would be, I think we’ve probably had enough cautionary sci-fi tales by now to make anyone very wary of actually pursuing research in this field.

One that I’m rather fond of is Teleglitch, a charmingly lo-fi roguelike-inspired action game that takes a number of cues from classic first-person shooters and survival horror games. In it, you play a scientist at a military research installation with rather questionable ethics where, unsurprisingly, work on both teleportation and genetic engineering has gone horribly wrong.

Enjoy my gameplay in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play: Dungeon of the Endless

Amplitude Studios first came to my attention a good few years back with the release of Endless Space, a 4X strategy game that I didn’t completely suck at.

Since that first game, they’ve expanded the Endless universe considerably with several other games. Probably my favourite of them all is Dungeon of the Endless, a curious hybrid of roguelike, board game, tower defense and all manner of other goodness. And it’s out now for Nintendo Switch! You can get it in a box and everything.

Having not actually played it for a while, I decided to see how I got on with my rusty skills. The answer is “not well”, but I hope at least you can see why this game is so enjoyable if you take the time to learn it!

If you enjoyed the video, don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play: Ion Fury

I’m not so hot on them these days, but back in the ’90s I absolutely loved first-person shooters — and for me their pinnacle of pure fun factor was Ken Silverman’s Build engine.

It was with some excitement, then, that I booted up Ion Fury for the first time; this is the first Build engine game to be produced for about 20 years, and promised a somewhat different twist on the “enhanced retro” experience that is quite a popular aesthetic approach these days.

I was not disappointed. This game is like being back in the ’90s again. Join me for some foul-mouthed fun in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

short;Play: Descent

The mid ’90s was a great time to be playing PC games. It was a time when the platform was really starting to find its feet, and it saw a variety of innovations in lots of different genres that we’re still feeling the effects of today.

Enter Descent from Parallax Software, then — a fully texture-mapped, polygonal, 3D, six-degrees-of-freedom first-person shooter that plonked you in the cockpit of a spacecraft and taskes you with blowing up a series of mining installations from within. There really was nothing quite like it at the time.

It’s a game that’s held up extraordinarily well over the years and is still a ton of fun in the 21st century. Check out the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play: The Incredible Machine

PC gaming today is, in a lot of cases, “console gaming but prettier and smoother”. There are exceptions, of course, but over the years I feel like we’ve lost a little something.

Back in the MS-DOS era, “PC games” felt a lot more distinct from “console games”. And a fantastic example of this is Dynamix’s The Incredible Machine: a delightful, subtly educational, Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg-inspired puzzle game that challenged you to accomplish simple tasks in the most convoluted manner possible.

Join me in rediscovering this old classic in the video below — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play: Blake Stone – Aliens of Gold

One of the reasons I wanted to introduce the short;Play series was to celebrate some of my favourites from yesteryear that don’t get talked about all that much.

Today we take a look at Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, a sci-fi first-person shooter running on an enhanced Wolfenstein 3-D engine… and a game that has been mostly forgotten by history thanks to the fact that it came out a week before the legendary Doom.

I like this game a whole lot, and it provides a noticeably distinct experience from both its spiritual predecessor and id’s subsequent classic. Check out the video below to find out more — and don’t forget to subscribe over on YouTube while you’re at it!

short;Play: A Valley Without Wind

One of the things that has always been good about the indie sphere has been its many developers’ willingness to experiment.

One company that has always been at the forefront of experimental gameplay is Arcen Games, who are very fond of blending disparate genres together to create something wonderful — and of throwing a healthy dose of procedural generation into the mix, too.

A Valley Without Wind was my first encounter with them… and it’s a game I’ve loved since I first came across it back in 2012. Take a look at the video below to see how it plays — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play – Lonely Mountains: Downhill

I really like Lonely Mountains: Downhill, as you’ll know if you’ve read my writeup on it.

It’s a wonderfully chilled game in its early stages, but also offers some stiff dexterity challenges for those who want to push themselves on its later courses. The whole thing is held together with a delicious low-poly/papercraft-style aesthetic and some of the best ambient sounds I’ve ever heard.

If you wanted to see how it actually plays, well, I’ve got the video just for you right here! Don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

short;Play: G-LOC Air Battle

Following on from my article about it, I felt compelled to show the wonder that is G-LOC to all of you.

If you’ve never encountered this game, it’s one of the later Super Scaler games from Sega in the arcades, and until the recent Sega Ages release for Nintendo Switch, it has never had a particularly good conversion to home consoles.

Now though… whoo. You have to tear me away from this damn game. Enjoy the video below, and subscribe on YouTube for more.