If you haven’t played Psychonauts, the magnum opus of Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Studios, please stop reading this article. Instead, go purchase a copy of the game, begin playing it, and do not come back until you have beaten in it in its entirety.
Caught up? Good, because if you finished Psychonauts you’ll be already chomping at the bit for a sequel. We have good news for you: Tim Schafer has confirmed at The Game Awards on December 3, 2015 that Psychonauts 2 is in development.
Once you’re over the shock, we’ll go into detail after the jump.
Old Dutch Foods is a snack manufacturer, primarily known for their brands of potato chips. They only tend to distribute in the northern United States and Canada. Dutch Crunch is Old Dutch’s brand of kettle chips, and our preferred brand of potato chips with an unparalleled Salt & Vinegar flavor.
If you’re eating locally in the Midwest, you’ve probably encountered a plate of Old Dutch branded chips. They’re unmistakeable: they have a fresh potato flavor, are always way too salty, and are soaked in oil that covers your fingertips as you eat.
It sounds kind of awful when you put it like that, but it’s a typical comfort food for the Midwesterner. Whether the chips are tucked into a roast beef and mayo sandwich, used to scoop out Old Dutch-branded french onion dip, or just eaten on their own: it’s a distinctive mark of the region, as you can’t find them anywhere else in the United States of America.
We’ll bring the distinctive flavor of a Midwestern Bistro to the rest of America after the jump.
Animal Inspector
is an animal inspection simulator released on November 18, 2015 by Tom Astle. In a world where there are simply too many animals clogging everything up, the Animal Inspection Agency is there to inspect all animals to determine their value. Good animals are approved, and bad animals are… well, rejected.
Inside the world of inspecting animals, we’ll discover office drama, a mysterious secret, and a world where sending animals to their presumed deaths with a rubber stamp is just business as usual.
We’ll give Animal Inspector an inspection of its own. Will it get our approval? Find out after the jump.
I am dead where are my keys is a driving-adventure game released on October 31, 2015. With programming by Taylor Bai-Woo, graphics by Ben Swinden, and music by Halina Heron, it’s pretty comprehensively developed for a game about two skeletons saving Halloween from the comfort of their car.
Yes, once again Halloween is in danger and it’s up to a dynamic pair of skeletons in their cherry-red convertible to save it. Can they save this treasured holiday, or will it forever be ruined by… whatever kind of threat Halloween would face?
After the jump, we’ll rattle some bones and see if we’re bad enough dudes to save Halloween.
Oases is a game released on November 11, 2015. Described as a “kaleidoscopic elegiac flyscape”, it was created by Armel Gibson and dziff, members of the Klondike Collective.
You might remember the Klondike Collective from their last work that we reviewed, Naut. This game has a lot of similarities to Naut: it’s a surreal, brightly colored jaunt throughout a mysterious, desolate landscape. The main difference is that this one takes place in an airplane. Oh, and also it’s scary.
We had discovered Oases over Twitter, where some small discussion of it had sprouted from its release. We were interested and decided to give it a look, as we had heard that it was “relaxing” and “soothing”. We’re always in the market for more games to soothe us, so we thought at first Oases and us would be a perfect match. But would it? After the jump, we’ll hop in the cockpit and find out.
This is the start of our Half Hour Games column, a series where we experience free games within the span of half an hour and then tell you about them. Call it “judging a book by its cover” because it’s certainly not representative, but for the millennial world, we need all the time that we can get.
Viridi is a free-to-play indie simulator game, designed by Ice Water Games (the game studio also responsible for Eidolon) and released for Steam on August 20, 2015.
Viridi is marketed as a brief lunch-break game to be “a place you can return to for a moment of peace and quiet whenever you need it”. The game revolves around growing and maintaining your personal pot of succulent plants and keeping them watered and alive. That’s it - you get a pot of plants, and you treat it pretty much like a real pot of plants. No goals, no gameplay, no stress. It’s just you and your cacti, relaxing.
It sounds interesting in practice - a quiet, comfortable place to watch little plant buddies chill out? It’s certainly a Far Cry from all of the Call of Fallout Battlefield games out there. But is it really substantial enough for it to hold its own? After the jump, we’ll give this game 30 minutes to impress us or wither trying.
