Gaming In The Wild - Video Game Reviews

This week's episode features two fascinating games. First it's a recommendation for the experiential origami nature odyssey Paper Beast – released in 2020 for Oculus and PSVR – followed by a critique of the bafflingly designed Cultist Simulator, which was recently ported to Switch. You can come say hi on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Twitch via http://linktr.ee/gaminginthewild and suppor...

This week's episode is an interview with Gareth Damian Martin, an artist, writer, and the developer of In Other Waters. It's an unusual game that offers you the chance to explore an alien ocean, experience an imaginative, detailed and plausible-seeming marine ecosystem, and to uncover a sci-fi mystery. It was an illuminating conversation that covers the game's conception, the ensuing r...

How time flies… it’s episode 40! That means the podcast is old enough to wonder why it doesn’t yet own a house and start worrying about doing more cardio. Lucky, then, that this week’s game is Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, which is a wonderfully innocent game about childhood, nature, birds, and the unbridled fun of summer holidays. Also mentioned: the Backbone iPhone controller, PSVR, Apple Arcade,...

This week's episode is a short one about two short touchscreen games: the Game Awards winning If Found... and the Apple Arcade's miniature feel-good RPG Guildlings .  Also touched upon: Linelight, Reigns, Necrobarista, Red Colony, Yakuza 0 and Resogun . You can come say hi and follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Twitch via http://linktr.ee/gaminginthewild .  You can also sup...

New year, new series! The first episode in season 2 of Gaming in the Wild is a banger, featuring three games I played during the winter break - the beautiful Spiritfarer , the bonkers WATTAM , and the adrenalised Nex Machina . Also featured: aurora sightings, things I’ve gotten in the mail recently, and how to deal with game frustration. You can come say hi and follow the show on Twitter, Instagra...

In the final of three GOTY 2020 episodes, this week’s guest is gamer, streamer, and brand new dog owner Dani aka Girl With Box. Dani brings a fresh multiplayer selection that helped her stay sane in the year that was. You can follow Dani at https://twitter.com/girlwithbox. (Note, Dog With Box, aka Muncy, does a bit of background gnawing at the start - if it bothers you, jump in at minute 17 and yo...

My second Games of the Year guest is Louis, co-host of the excellent Time Played 3hr podcast, who dropped by to talk about the history of rally driving, in-game photography, turning horses into glue, Cyberpunk 2077, and much more besides. It was a really fun chat, be sure to check out Time Plays 3hr, streaming now on all reputable podcast services.   Games discussed: 12:01 Umurangi Generation 18:3...

On this week’s episode I welcome special guest Ciaran Daly to the show. He's one of the people behind the Radical Art Review magazine (and kind of my “gaming mentor”). We each talked about five games we loved playing this year. It’s not all about 2020 releases - some of them are from last year, or earlier - but it was a really fun chat about games as diverse as Mario All-Stars, Dreams, Disco E...

This week’s episode is a roundup of some true show favourites that have recently had updates. Remedy’s Control has added much-needed difficulty options and two new episodes; No Man’s Sky has continued to grow and improve with the 2020 Desolation and Origins updates. I also share some thoughts on recent sale buys Gato Roboto , The Alto Collection , and Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch . You can...

This week's game is the third polished gem in the Supergiant Games roster. After escaping from Hades last episode, this time I traverse the Downside in the high-fantasy visual novel–RPG–sports game Pyre . It's an inventive and aesthetically stunning one-off game that's  like nothing else I've played. (There's a spoiler break half way through, so you can hear about it safely if...

This week’s show is about Hades, an all-action roguelike dungeon crawler set in the Greek underworld. It’s not my usual genre, but it's by the acclaimed Supergiant studio who made Transistor, Pyre and Bastion, which bodes well for any game. It took a bit of a journey to understand the mechanics, but it's a supremely entertaining game that earned my admiration by the end. It’s out now for N...

This week I played an extraordinary new action-adventure game called The Pathless by Giant Squid, the studio behind ABZU. With fluid gameplay, brilliant music and a fascinating game world, fans of Journey, Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus and Hyper Light Drifter will find something to love here. The game also touches interestingly on some contemporary themes, which are explored after the...

This week's episode takes us to a far-flung Hebridean island to kick through the seaweed and hike over the hills of melancholic 'walking simulator' Dear Esther. Fans of more recent games like Gone Home and What Became of Edith Finch? will find something to enjoy here. Having finally finished one story strand of the mammoth Spartan saga Assassin's Creed Odyssey, it’s also time to re...

The truth is out there... maybe? This episode I played two Halloweeny games: the bizarre fractured narrative of 45 minute indie-horror game Paratopic, and the surprisingly wholesome Speed Dating For Ghosts. Both are available for just a couple of units of your favourite currency on Steam, Itch and Nintendo Switch. You can follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Twitch via http://linktr....

This week’s show covers one of the most acclaimed (and best-selling) games of all time – the stunning Western epic, Red Dead Redemption 2. Now 25 hours in, I’ve been breathing the mountain air, learning the dead-eye, and coming to grips with the radical freedom that this stunning outlaw simulation has to offer. I also chat a bit about Fallout 76, and about how I’m recording in the middle of an aud...

Is INSIDE a horror game? Find out this episode, when I delve into Playdead's LIMBO follow-up (and conduct a Twitter poll about whether this qualifies as a Halloween episode). Also featured: the oddities of playing as a child protagonist, the enjoyment of piecing together narratives from environmental cues and clues, the game's stunning sound design, and more. (Note: story spoilers are behi...

This latest episode covers the fabulous, original, challenging sci-fi exploration game Outer Wilds. It's dizzyingly ambitious, and can be both glorious and maddening. It's a true original.  This spoiler-free episode covers the gameplay and the first passage of play, with a spoiler break to talk about some of the central concepts and late-game stuff, so you can listen safely if you're y...

The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide are two deeply unusual games by US developer Davey Wreden. This week's show takes a dive into the alternately surprising, hilarious and disturbing waters of their bizarre metafictional stories. Also covered: the troubled release of Lost Ember , and some first thoughts on Ori & The Blind Forest and Ori & The Will Of The Wisps . You can join t...

Many games are described as cinematic, but few have gone as far in that direction as Virginia. A BAFTA-winning 2016 narrative 'walking simulator', it's a surreal and fascinating game that recalls Silence of the Lambs as much as Firewatch, and it's the featured game of this week's episode. Also covered: the launch of the Gaming In The Wild Patreon (which you can join at http://w...

This week’s show has the novelty of being about actual new games! First, we dive into the forlorn underground of The Last Campfire , before engaging in some optical illusion trickery in the Portal-influenced Superliminal . Finally, there’s some chat about the PS5 and X-Box price reveals, and the ensuing Twitter flop-off from fans of each console. Find the show on Twitter, YouTube, Twitch and Insta...

This episode is about three games that all share a sense of wonder and fairytale mystery. First is The Unfinished Swan , a celebrated 2012 PS3 title that has just been released for iOS and Steam. Next up is Fujii , a mellow, nature-oriented VR journey. Then it's time for enigmatic dimension-shifting 2D puzzle game Gorogoa . We round things off with some chat about The Secret of Dank Mountain a...

This episode centres coincidentally on games featuring Chinese food: indie visual novel and family saga Road To Guangdong, and brawler-puzzler-anime-story Battle Chef Brigade. Also covered: surreal visual novel Far From Noise, and finally, easy going tactile puzzle game One Line Coloring. Follow the show on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube and Instagram via http://linktr.ee/gaminginthewild . Thanks to Swi...

This episode begins with two wonderful indie games: the BAFTA-winning minimalist platformer Thomas Was Alone, and jelly-legged capitalism dismantlement simulator Pikuniku. Then, it's a trip to Ancient Greece for big-budget blockbuster Assassin's Creed Odyssey, with a segment about how the game is being used as a communication tool by modern day historians. Finally, I run through some essen...

As summer ends and night returns to Iceland, this episode is about three dark games. Fe (pronounced, roughly, Fay-uh, from the Swedish for "fairy") is a mysterious exploration game about animals singing to each other in a forest ecosystem. Bleak Sword is an Apple Arcade title by Spanish solo dev More 8 Bit that will thoroughly test your swiping skills. Finally, A Dark Room is a compelling...

This week I visited the picturesque Pacific Northwestern town of Bright Falls for a psychologically horrorifying and thrilling vacay via 'Alan Wake.' It was like a step back in time, not only in the town's atmosphere, but in terms of the console itself, because I borrowed an Xbox 360 solely to play this game. Sure, it's a lot of effort for one game... but the thing is, 'Alan Wa...