What we’ve been playing

30th November

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we cram ahead of what could be one of this year’s biggest sequel releases, we draw attention to an excellent nostalgia-drenched horror game, and, um, birds – lots of birds.

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

Path of Exile, PC

I’ve been doing a bit of Path of Exile swatting ahead of the imminent early access arrival of the sequel, Path of Exile 2, and it’s striking how old the first game feels. I don’t say that to throw any kind of shade: POE1 has done tremendous things in the action RPG genre, and it was a small project that grew and grew – it didn’t arrive with the fanfare or production values POE2 does. But playing it after playing something like Diablo 4, which has extraordinary production values of its own, definitely highlights how much time has passed. POE1 is so awkward by comparison.

You can’t, for instance, seamlessly swap between mouse and keyboard controls and a controller, which I think you can do in almost any game now as standard. You have to quit to the main menu and then specify the control method you want to use instead. You can’t independently move a character around with WASD keys while you use the mouse to click and attack, either, which feels really restrictive and weird. And look, I get it, these are elbowy bits that fade into insignificance as you embrace the eccentricities dozens of hours in, but they still contribute to a feeling of how timely a sequel now is.

It’s a fascinating prospect, POE2, it’s got everything going for it – a developer in red-hot form and with resources, and with enormous good will from its playerbase. And it’s got interesting ideas like having POE1 and POE2 live side by side and share a cosmetics store, so one doesn’t override or cannibalise the other. Will this mean POE2 will feel more secure in being different, or will it still be beholden in design to POE1?

Perhaps more importantly, will a newer Path of Exile game do a better job of onboarding a 2024 audience than Path of Exile 1 currently does? It has to, right – how can it not? And if it does, what will that mean for the millions of Diablo 4 players kicking around looking for something new to do? POE has been chomping at Diablo’s heels for years now, will POE2 be the moment it gobbles it up?

-Bertie

Tormenture, PC

I love nostalgia. If I could, I’d grind nostalgia into a fine powder and snort it from the top of my ZX Spectrum +3’s disk drive. Unfortunately, nostalgia lacks a physical form so I can’t actually do that. Instead I consume my nostalgia like normal people do, by reading things like Retro Gamer or watching episodes of Bad Influence on YouTube.

Or. Orrr… I’ll get my fix by playing games like Tormenture, a sadly underappreciated gem from Spanish developers Croxel Studios, that combines retro gaming memories and 80s nostalgia and then mixes them with a modern and excitingly fresh take on the horror genre.

Simply put, Tormenture is a game within a game. When you load it up, you’re met with gameplay that’s a direct homage to Adventure on the Atari 2600 – a yellow castle, a small square to control, and little to no clue as to how to proceed. This is all covered by a lovely layer of simulated CRT scanlines because, after you work out the first few puzzles you’re confronted with, the camera pulls out of the TV to reveal you’re actually playing (in first-person) as a child sat crossed legged on the floor, in a small 80’s bedroom.

That room is full of nostalgia, too. There’s a Speak and Spell, a Guess Who, a tape player, and all of these things play into the game in surprisingly creepy ways. To say more about the events that unfold would risk spoiling the game for you but, vibe-wise, think Stranger Things meets Zelda, with a delightful dose of Tunic-style “oh shit! I get it now!” discovery sprinkled liberally on top.

What I really like about Tormenture is how its puzzles, and their solutions, keep on surprising throughout the six hours or so it takes to finish it. It’s genuinely unsettling at times, too, using the dual-layers of game-within-a-game and game-outside-a-game to create an atmosphere that captures perfectly the feeling of being up past your bedtime and playing a terrifying horror in full knowledge your parents could walk in at any time and give you a bollocking – although in the world of Tormenture, your parents would be the last of your worries…

Tormenture is on sale on Steam right now too, by the way – 25 percent off until December the 4th – so if you’re a fan of horror and nostalgia, go treat yourself, because this looks like it might otherwise slip under the radar.

-Ian ‘jorts’ Higton

30 Birds, PC

I’ve been playing lots of short indie games this week, but my favourite has hands down been the gorgeous 30 Birds. Steeped in Persian culture and mythology, it’s a window into a world we don’t often get to see very much in games these days (Prince of Persia aside, of course), but more than that, it’s just so bloomin’ gorgeous to look at, too. Set on a world of actual paper lanterns where characters curl and peel round the edges of each panel, every scene is sumptuously realised, and there are splashes of colour absolutely everywhere. It’s one of the most evocative worlds I’ve had the pleasure to be in all year, and the plot of the game is equally charming as well.

After the godlike phoenix Simurgh gets captured by a man known only as The Scientist, this gentle mystery adventure sees a young detective called Zig become embroiled on a quest to find the 30 birds of the game’s title so they can prepare a ritual to bring Simurgh back to safety. It’s a wonderfully freeform kind of story, letting you loose to visit its four main lantern districts however you see fit. There are some light puzzles to engage in before you can win over the bird in question once you find them, but most of these little mini-episodes are just brilliantly daft and idiosyncratic in their own right. They’re not so much puzzles as strange little interludes that add just a bit more texture to the world’s wider canvas.

It’s a real little treat of a game, and at just five or so hours, it’s also something you can easily polish off in a weekend and say, ‘Cor (or should that be ‘Caw’?), that was really quite lovely, wasn’t it?’ So I implore you go and play 30 Birds. I promise you won’t regret it.

–Katharine