The Sunday Papers

rockpapershotgun.com:

Sundays are for hoping the plumber has ordered that new sink part in. My sink is ‘non-standard’ apparently. "Why can't I just be normal?!" I scream in silent longing. Armitage Shanks would never. Before I look forward to no longer having to wash up my pasta bowl in the same place I brush my teeth, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

For Aftermath, Luke Plunkett spoke to ‘Albert’, an anonymous industry vet, about the struggles of making a demo for a big showcase or event - despite sometimes knowing it’s “100% Grade A Bullshit”.

Actually, now that I think about it, I was at a studio (if not directly involved) in a trailer that was 100% Grade A bullshit. Essentially our publisher really, really wanted stuff to show and despite the fact that our next project wasn't even in the pitch phase, let alone production, we had an external team create a trailer to build hype. It was completely divorced from anything we hoped to do, and it was so early in development that it couldn't help but be misleading or tie our hands. That one sucked. It thankfully didn't eat up a ton of our resources and time, but it was still demoralizing because we had little to do with it and we all knew it was going to be promises that we couldn't necessarily deliver on.

For Unwinnable, Jay Castello wrote about “Supergiant’s Scrappier, Better Underworld.” That being the landscapes and characters of my favourite Supergiant game, Pyre.

But unlike the spaces of the Hades games, the Downside is not an infinite labyrinth of rooms, filled only with enemies (and the occasional Charon store). The Downside is a world. Escaping it is a journey that takes the Nightwings through a variety of jewel-toned, hazily lit environments, each with their own moods. It necessitates the wagon, a home base that feels simultaneously comforting and crowded. And it gives all the characters a sense of grounding, a place in the world that lends them important narrative weight.

For The Guardian,