Calashnikov

Yeah, it was probably my favourite game of last year too.

Its pretty different to Hollow Knight in many ways. Unlike the nimble and tight wee guy in HK, you propel your character about the place with like a jetpack, which might seem unwieldy to begin with. He’s got a really tangible sense of heft when you move him, with his diving gear and boots. Eventually though you defy that weight as you get to grips with the controls, and he becomes a joy to skoosh about, almost like flying an underwater kite. Also, the vibe is quite different to HK, although it can be equally unsettling. Whereas HK achieves this by juxtaposing the gothic and grotesque with cuteness, Shinsekai achieves the unsettling effect by straight up evoking weird 70s sci-fi animation from France which tends to be unsettling in its nature. It all sort of reminds me of Fantastic Planet. The proggy music and Yes album cover colour palettes just further emphasise that sort of feeling. It’s so great. EDIT: it’s also far shorter than Hollow Knight! A nice tight wee digestible Metroidvania, comparable in length to Metroid Fusion maybe?

I definitely want to support that Panzer Dragoon remake, but the colours and artwork in general don’t seem to have quite captured the atmosphere of the original. If it plays a good game of Panzer Dragoon I’ll still be happy enough, but it would be good if you could apply SotC Remake style filters to adjust the visuals. Who’s buying it?

It’s a stunning game. If you like your Metroidvanias alien, isolated and atmospheric this one is for you. Beautiful art style and music too. Animation is incredible. I love it. I wish there was a physical release so I could gift it to people I know!

Really chuffed it’s coming to Switch. Hopefully it finds the audience it deserves. Fantastic game.

I miss villagers each having their own wee jingle like they did in New Leaf

Cheers. Do I need to visit your island or vice versa before you can post stuff to me?

It was the website.

Oh, and who’s got the Japanese stuff? I wanna get all Charles Rennie Mackintosh up in my interiors

I’d love one of those, plz.

I think you’d need to be ‘best friends’ with other players online in order to pilfer their iron, since you can’t use axes or shovels otherwise when visiting, which means you can’t hit rocks, I think? The mystery islands with Nook Miles Tickets should see you alright though. It maybe took me 3 different visits to get the iron nuggets I was looking for, in addition to gathering it on my own island over a couple of days maybe.

WHAT RA, Ghostface & G Rap all on the one track?! Chuck D?! Omfg Those beats better be up to their billing.

Great shout, I’ll be doing this. Need to give the online a wee bit more of a go.

I think the reason most go left is because that’s how we read, from left to right. We probably have a deep ingrained sense that if when start on the right, we’ll be missing essential information on the left, which we understand to be the start. Also a lifetime growing up playing side scrolling games will have conditioned us to begin our exploration from the left and work our way right. It’ll come from not wanting to leave a stone unturned.

No chance.