Nathan Grayson

New Strategy Game Lets You Talk People To Death

When I set out for my first expedition in Renowned Explorers, I had one goal: win only by talking. I was not disappointed. Renowned Explorers: International Society is a new turn-based tactics game about fantastical expeditions in the 19th century. I’ve been playing for a couple hours, and so far, it’s rad. Your goal is…

Pro Counter-Strike And DOTA 2 Event Is A Disaster

Delays, passport snafus, police involvement, illness, and more turned Gaming Paradise into the eSports event from hell. Gaming Paradise was supposed to be a landmark DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike event, a partially crowdfunded (via ticket sales) high-level eSports event in Slovenia—an occasion of unmatched magnitude in the region. Organized by The Gaming Resorts and Gaming.rs,…

Shu’s Garden Helped Me When I Was Feeling Shitty

Things have been kinda rough lately. I was having a bad day in a bad week in a bad month in kind of a crappy year. My grandfather suddenly passed away a few months ago (he choked while eating, and the paramedics weren’t able to revive him quickly enough). It came as a shock to…

One Player Beat Divinity: Original Sin’s Final Boss In An ‘Impossible’ Way

Players could exploit the crap out of Divinity: Original Sin, and that’s why it rocked. During a recent demonstration of Divinity: Original Sin 2, I asked Larian co-founder and creative director Swen Vincke about his favorite player stories from the original Original Sin, a fantasy RPG designed to let players get creative with a broad…

The People Trying To Uncover A Game’s Real Life Secret Society

Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon contains a massive secret. The Steam/mobile game, in which you play as a spider bobbing and weaving through a mysteriously abandoned mansion, has a story that you, as a spider, are under no obligation to give a shit about. You as a person, however, can dig into all sorts…

Rocket League is coming to SteamOS, and it’s free if you buy a Steam Machine, Steam Link, or Steam Controller. The car soccer sensation is great fun in split screen, so the pairing makes perfect sense. Also, it’s sold one million copies on Steam alone. I get the impression that maybe people like it a…

Man Turns Wedding Proposal Into Actual RPG Quest

I’ve seen a handful of video-game-themed marriage proposals in my day, but this one takes the cake. A website designer by the name of Noah Yamen recently posted about his Borderlands-themed marriage proposal to his girlfriend, Tia. He explained that playing the co-op shooter RPG is one of their favorite things to do together. “Playing…

What I Saw Of Divinity: Original Sin 2

If what I saw during an hour session of Divinity: Original Sin 2 is any indication, the RPG sequel is gonna make you really mad at your friends. Divinity: Original Sin 2, the sequel to Larian’s excellent evolution of classic PC RPGs, hit Kickstarter today. A handful of hours later, it’s already almost completely funded.…

Universe Sandbox 2 Lets You Build, Destroy The Universe

Ever wanted to create your own universe? Or destroy it by ramming planets into each other, destruction derby-style? Well, here you go. Universe Sandbox 2, which just hit Steam today, doesn’t have clearly defined goals. It is as its name suggests: a sandbox, a near-limitless playground for your demented imagination. Within a minute of booting…

Mod Adds First-Person To The Witcher 3, But Only On Horseback

I don’t think first-person would necessarily make The Witcher 3 a better game, but damn this looks cool. The mod, created by insane0hflex, adds two new horseback perspectives to The Witcher 3: over-the-shoulder and first-person. Both are neat, but I don’t know; there’s something about seeing The Witcher 3’s war-torn world up-close-and-personal—through Geralt’s man-cat eyes—that…

Remember Starbound, the huge 2D exploration/building game that landed on Early Access a couple years ago? Well, it just got a massive update. It adds the ability to construct NPC-populated colonies. There are also 400 new micro-dungeons and improvements to pretty much every part of the game.

Dreamcast Saves Work With The New PC Version Of Grandia II

Still have all your old Dreamcast saves lying around somewhere? Wait, really? Well then, you’re in luck. Turns out, the new anniversary edition of JRPG classic Grandia II—which launched today, August 24th 2015, Anno Domini—is compatible with saves from Sega’s dearly departed living room box. Yes, the one that got discontinued in 2001, the year…

New Horror Game Looks Like A Messed Up Ghibli Movie

If you like your nightmares with an extra helping of anime-inspired ultraweird, you’ve come to the right place. Stray Cat Crossing is a 2D horror game that’s coming to Steam soon (via Greenlight), but you can play a free demo right now. It’s… unsettling. Think Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, but with whimsy replaced by simmering…

Trine 3 Developers Dispute Complaints That They Released An Unfinished Game

The Trine series of fantasy platformers is beloved, especially on Steam. Trine 3, however, has longtime fans upset. In addition to basic mechanical quibbles, many Trine fans think the latest game—which recently emerged from Early Access—feels unfinished, with a gaping hole of non-ending that only magic (or DLC) could patch up. In a recent Steam…

Horror Game The Flock Has A Killer Idea, But It Feels Unfinished

The Flock is a multiplayer horror game that ends after too many people die. Cool idea! The game itself? Freaky, but limited. Here’s how it works: you start out as a creepy gargoyle monster, one of the titular Flock. Your goal is to claim the Light Artifact, a fabled instrument from a time of eternal…

“Why anyone would ever play this game is beyond me.” 542.9 hours played. You’ve probably seen a Steam review or two to that effect before. Steam Review Watch is an entire tumblr of them. Enjoy.

Witcher 3 Mods Have Gotten Weird

Juggalo Geralt says hello. Witcher 3’s new mod tools might leave something to be desired, but that hasn’t stopped modders from injecting the game with a cackling dose of fuckweird. Let’s look at a few of the less… expected mods that have come out in the past week. Geralt face fusion This one lets you…

Half-Line Miami Is Exactly What It Sounds Like

Do you like to crowbar people? Half-Line Miami really is exactly what it sounds like: a mash-up of Half-Life and Hotline Miami. It’s a fast-ish top-down shooter, but with Half-Life locations and, of course, the gravity gun. Oh, but unlike both of those games, it’s free. Otherwise, it’d be a one-way train ride to Lawsuit…

RymdResa Made Me Feel Terrible About Leveling Up

I just leveled up for the first time in new Steam space survival game RymdResa, and it was devastating. RymdResa is fascinating. It’s an outer-space roguelike-like that just launched on Steam, but it’s about exploration instead of combat. You drift through the infinite procedurally generated cosmos—once alive with technology and culture, now dead (or perhaps…

Darkest Dungeon Adds Option To Turn Off Controversial Features

Darkest Dungeon might be the out-of-nowhere Steam sensation of the year. For the game, that’s been a double-edged sword. The punishingly difficult, psychosis-inducing dungeon crawler launched as an Early Access game, but it was already in better shape than a lot of “complete” releases. People flocked to it—significantly more than anybody, least of all the…