June 7, 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular article where we write about some of the games we’ve played over the last few days. This week is probably the closest we’ll get to playing Bloodborne on PC; we jump back in time in a retro-inspired RPG; and we enjoy the easy pleasures of this year’s Clash Mini.
What did you play?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.
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Skald: Against the Black Priory, PC
While playing Skald last night, I was struck by the feeling that RPGs are a kind of language. It’s something we pick up as we grow, in a gaming sense (and perhaps in a literal sense too), and it works in the background when we start a game like this. Instinctively, before we even start, we know what to do. We know how to balance things like hit scores, and why they can be useful. We know what stealth means, ranged attacks and magic. We have an implicit understanding of character archetypes and how they will be used. We can really see part of the tunnel of the gaming experience before it has even started.
That’s why a game can do a lot. It can assume a basic level of knowledge and thus not be too concerned with teaching the basics. It’s a bit like we’ve all already been to school and studied a bit of math and science and so on. It means the game can jump ahead and become more concerned with the adventure than the mechanics. Great, that’s a good thing. RPGs helping other RPGs: it’s holistically healthy.
But I sometimes wonder if too much is taken for granted. That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by games that break away from the Dungeons & Dragons foundation that underpins many role-playing games, computer-based or otherwise. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of careful thought going into D&D; a lot of people thinking about this for years has come up with some wonderful things. But is this the only way to realize a fantasy game? I’m digressing from the topic, but Eurogamer’s friend Quinns recently wrote a wonderful review for a TTRPG game called Wildsea where he talked about exactly this topic. We’re reprogramming our minds to rethink what a fantasy RPG actually is.
Skald is consciously based on old-fashioned computer RPGs, which are based on D&D, so I know I’m not going to get a free-thinking reinterpretation of the genre here. That’s not why I play it. And for what it’s worth, it tinkers with the rules and does its own things. It is not just an obedient specimen. But I do wonder what a game like this could look like if it took no RPG knowledge to begin with and came up with something new. That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?
-Bertie
Squad Busters, iOS
A new Supercell game is always exciting. Last summer we got Clash Mini, and this year it’s Squad Busters, a great game that brings together all of Supercell’s characters into something that shouldn’t work, but does.
It’s essentially a top-down dungeon crawl, even though the dungeons are outside and on the cheerful Supercell landscape. Create a team of heroes and battle your way to victory. Tap and move your finger on the screen to move, and hold still to attack: enemies, treasure chests, trees, and whatever else will give you loot.
Like a MOBA, you spend most of the game trying to become as powerful as possible so that when a huge amount of gems are unlocked in the middle of the battlefield, you can go in and get the majority of them. At low levels, where I’m still stuck, it’s mostly just crazy fun where I gently compete with players who are about as incompetent as I am. I can imagine that higher up it is much more serious and technical. Balancing that out, though, it’s a Supercell game.
-Chris Donlan
Nightmare Card, PC
It was Wednesday when I got the message: an item on your Steam wishlist has been released. Nightmare Kart, a mix between Mario Kart and Bloodborne, was here.
Nightmare Kart comes from game developer Lilith Walther, a name you might recognize as the mastermind behind the PS1-inspired Bloodborne demake. It started life as Bloodborne Kart, but Walther had to remove all Bloodborne branding from the game before it was released. But even though Nightmare Kart is now legally separate from Bloodborne, we all know that in its soul, that’s really what it is.
Nightmare Kart is a solid karting game in every respect, but one made even more fun by its PS1-era aesthetic and gothic setting. There is almost a juxtaposition to the whole thing. While the music and power-ups give it the frenetic pace of a Sunday afternoon Mario Kart Grand Prix with my kids, the gameplay also had me shooting skeletons and werewolves as I blasted my way through a terrifying version of definitely not Yharnam . I even died at one point when a very large beast jumped out and crushed me. It was brilliant!
I love the details Walther added to the game. The game’s boosts are like Bloodborne’s rejuvenating blood vials. Power-ups include the Hunter Pistol and Chipper Chain Wheels, and you can battle bosses in racing battles, complete with second stage transformations. I don’t really want to share too much more about Nightmare Kart, because it was so great to see how each new song or battle plays out, and I don’t want to spoil anything. But let me say this: Even though that may not be the case technically Stop being Bloodborne Kart, Nightmare Kart certainly hit all the right umbilical cords, and I’m happy to see it on PC.
And the icing on the cake? It is free!
-Victoria