This Month On Edge

The things that caught our eye during the production of E354

2020-12-31 -

MUSIC

Slice Of Life: Songs From Wholesome Games bit.ly/wholevinyl

This collection of 21 tunes from a range of deliciously soft-centred indie games has been assembled for an equally heartwarming cause: all proceeds will go to Galaxy Fund, a grant for women, BIPOC and LGBTQ game studio founders to enable them to overcome some of the barriers they face. Which is all the excuse we need to add to our ever-growing collection of game soundtracks. Available on oh-so-covetable limitededition purple vinyl, Slice Of Life features exclusive mixes and first-time-on-vinyl tracks from the likes of Wattam, Ooblets, A Short Hike, Kind Words, Spiritfarer and Rainy Season, with a sneak preview of Lena Raine’s delightful score for Greg Lobanov’s colourful adventure Chicory, out next summer. A wholesome purchase indeed.

WEB GAME

PS5 Simulator bit.ly/PS5simu

With demand outstripping supply, it’s likely that plenty of would-be PS5 buyers will be left disappointed over the holiday season. This physicsbased game is no substitute, but it does entertainingly capture the complexities of setting up a modern console. Plugging it in is the first challenge, with no sockets near the TV. You can chain a series of extension cables from the garage, or stretch the wires as far as they’ll go; we end up plugging the PS5 in a back room and dragging the HDMI cable through a wall. The difficulties continue with a smoking router (which we fix by throwing a pipe wrench at it), a controller that needs charging and a game – the identity of which is one of the best gags – that’s over in seconds thanks to the blistering speed of the SSD. A diverting bit of silliness.

NOVELTIES

Pigminted wooden carvings bit.ly/pigminted

Nostalgia meets craftsmanship in Etsy artisan Pigminted’s detailed carvings. Crafted from a variety of woods – chiefly walnut, poplar and cherry – their items range from custom N64 cartridges (which double as Raspberry Pi cases) to ornamental Final Fantasy menus (which you can personalise) and authentic recreations of PS2 boxes. It’s not just retro items, either: an Animal Crossing: New Horizons flight information board can be engraved with your player and island name. Other highlights include a wonderful Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door GameCube box, which comes in at just under £150 – probably as much as you’d pay for the real thing at CEX.

VIDEO

Line Rider – Omniverse II bit.ly/lineridervid

Remember one-time Flash favourite Line Rider, in which players sketch lines for a boy on a sledge to race down? Well, David Lu’s dazzlingly ornate construction – which the creator estimates took 401 hours to build over 11 years – is effectively the Sistine Chapel ceiling of tracks. It’s an astonishing feat of digital engineering, which first required Lu to recreate the game in Python, while refining a style he calls ‘Olympic puppetry’: exploiting physics quirks so the diminutive rider can pull off elaborate tricks and reach exhilarating speeds as he whizzes along. Mesmerising.

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Reascension

An out-of-nowhere PC release for cult hit El Shaddai? Asura’s Wrath next, please

Netflix and chills

Streaming giant delivers fine adaptation of cult Taiwanese horror Detention

Stanned

SNL and Eminem team up for send-up of PlayStation 5 stock shortages…

Finding of Isaac

Metal Gear Solid film gets its first Oscar win: casting Poe Dameron as Solid Snake

quit

Dance of danger

A glaring oversight means Cyberpunk 2077’s braindances include realworld epilepsy triggers