TC Staff Writer, Author at Thumb Culture

6Nov

By TC Staff WriterNo Comments

Disco Elysium Review – Drink, Drugs nd Murder

Disco Elysium is an open-world RPG developed and published by London-based Estonian studio ZA/UM and was released for PC via Steam on October 15, 2019. Disco Elysium has been having rave reviews since its release, with the likes of PC Gamer calling it - “An irresponsibly deep detective RPG that lets you be any kind of detective you want. Even a bad one” - 92/100. Let's jump on in. Gameplay Disco Elysium is set in a fictional city of Revachol and is plagued by crime and poverty. Here you take the role of a detective who starts his day waking up from a horrendous hangover after a night fueled by alcohol & drugs. You discover that you have no memory of who you are, where you are, even what you do for a living and it takes a bit of time after leaving your hostel room and after talking ...

6Nov

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Close To The Sun Review – Jump Scare Central

Well, talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. I have been trying so hard for the best part of a year to find a horror game that suits my own personal problem-solving desires, while at the same time grips me with a solid storyline. Let me introduce you to Close To The Sun. If you have ever thought, “What I need is a good first-person, story-led horror with plenty of jump scares to see me through Halloween and beyond” – then look no further. It dropped on consoles on 29th October. The game is created by Wired Productions and takes inspiration from the likes of Bioshock with its art deco designs; showing signs reminiscent of other games such as Alien: Isolation where combat is not an option, your existence depends solely on your ability to survive. Close To The Sun is set in t...

Into the Dead 2 Review – The Boring Dead

5Nov

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Into the Dead 2 Review – The Boring Dead

Lurching its way onto the Switch is Into the Dead 2, an auto-run, zombie survival game by PikPok, The game started life as a free to play the mobile game but has been resurrected as a full title. Gone are the microtransactions but still lingering is a horde of tropes that have plagued the zombie genre since The Walking Dead made its debut on AMC. Let's start with the story. You are Henry, a generic dude who crashes his truck and is trying to make his way home but wait the city is overrun by zombies! Okay, the story is weak but I can't imagine many people are looking at this game wanting a deep and engaging narrative. So let's move on. Gameplay As you'd expect, the aim of the game is to shoot or avoid zombies whilst automatically running from point A to point B. You can strafe left...

4Nov

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Features

An Interview With… Squishy Sports Dev

We here at Thumb Culture were lucky enough to chat to Chris Jeffery, the programmer and game designer at Made By Titans, to discuss his latest game, Squishy Sports. So, tell us a little bit about your game and where did the idea come from? Oof. Straight in there! Squishy Sports is a couch competitive, physics-based 2D party/sports game where the characters are shapes and everything is squishy! Since it's physics-based, all our characters hit the ball in unique ways, thus create interesting and quite manic gameplay! So Squishy Sports came around quite sporadically really. There wasn't any "AH HA!" moments with it. My background for a lot of my game development career has been in web games and I've always toyed around with the idea of creating a couch multiplayer game but never really c...

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD Review – Keep Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’!

31Oct

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Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD Review – Keep Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’!

The year was 2002 and I remember the day vividly. Sitting in my room with a group of misfits that I labelled friends, I slowly reached for my sack (bag not knackers) and presented my latest purchase: Super Monkey Ball. With apprehension, our group of neanderthal metallers began exploring the cutesy, overly Japanese game and like a drug we were hooked. Our meetups became Monkey Ball sessions with each gamer perfecting the traits of their monkey and using them to get the upper hand in party and challenge modes. Fast forward to 2019, “Hey Jaz, you heard that Super Monkey Ball is being remastered?”. I spat out my monkey nuts, stopped The Monkees’ playlist and cancelled my banana split order at DK’s Diner. I had to speak to the neanderthals. We discussed the possibilities, would it be ...

Domiverse Nintendo Review – A Super, Space-based Slap-fest

30Oct

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Domiverse Nintendo Review – A Super, Space-based Slap-fest

Domiverse is the debut title from the wonderfully named Haunted Tie. It is published by the slightly less wonderfully named Plug In Digital and was released on Nintendo Switch on 17 October 2019 for £12.99. Domiverse is a multiplayer one-hit arena fighter which attempts to re-create the balance of chaos and fun achieved by games such as Super Smash Bros, and it's Steam version has already amassed an army of fans. Is the Switch version worthy of universal praise or should it be chucked into a black hole? Gameplay Domiverse features a starting roster of 8 fighters, each of which is completely different in terms of appearance and skills. The drone-like W8T has the ability to hover around the arena, firing a 360-degree laser and leaving mines in its wake. The cat-serpent hybrid Snakit...

29Oct

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PC Reviews

What the Golf Review – Non stop Golf Fun

What the Golf is a silly physics-based golf parody game developed & published by Triband and was released on PC via the Epic store on October the 1st, and stated as coming out soon on the Nintendo Switch. The developers declare that the game is made by people who know nothing about Golf and that it will not make you a better golfer, hence the catchline - “The golf game for people who hate golf”. So let's pick up our “tees” & “drive” on into this Epic exclusive & find out what it's like. Gameplay As I mentioned above, What the Golf is a parody game about golf, where each course you play golf on let's say, is a surprisingly different type of golf to how you would normally play. It starts off just like any type of golf game, the controls are simple, pull back, aim and rel...

28Oct

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PC Reviews, Previews & Early Access

Planet Zoo Beta Preview – It’s The Shih Tzu

Planet Zoo is an upcoming management and construction simulation game developed & published by Frontier Developments. The game is a spiritual successor to the studio’s Zoo Tycoon release and gameplay similar to that of Planet Coaster. “Manage an amazing living world that responds to every decision you make. Focus on the big picture or go hands-on and control the smallest details. Thrill visitors with iconic exhibits, develop your zoo with new research and release new generations of your animals back into the wild”. Planet Zoo is scheduled to be released on 5th November on PC via Steam and you can pre-order today for £34.99 or £42.99 for the deluxe edition. Gameplay Planet Zoo is quite simply the ultimate zoo simulation game. It features authentic living animals who think, f...

21Oct

By TC Staff WriterNo Comments

Switch Reviews

Call of Cthulhu Review – Intriguing To The End

Call of Cthulhu is a role-playing survival horror game developed by Cyanide and published by Focus Home Interactive. Call of Cthulhu is inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu" and an adaptation of the 1981 role-playing game of the same title. The game was released on 30 October 2018 on PC, Xbox & PS4, and was recently released on the Nintendo Switch on the 8th October 2019. Call of Cthulhu had fairly good reviews when it was originally released in 2018, "8.6/10 from IGN", "59% from PC Gamer" & "67% from Metacritic", but even though I didn’t originally play the game and as a lover of horror/psychological thriller genre, I was very interested in seeing how it would fare on the Nintendo Switch. Gameplay The plot of Call of Cthulhu starts off in 1924, w...

A Knight’s Quest Review – The Legend of Rusty: The Wind Breaker

17Oct

By TC Staff WriterNo Comments

PlayStation Reviews

A Knight’s Quest Review – The Legend of Rusty: The Wind Breaker

Remember the good old days playing PS2 era platformers? No? Well, don’t let that put you off as A Knight’s Quest is a fun 3D action adventure game developed by Sky9. Now it’s plain to see that the game wears its influence on its tunic. You don’t need to be Impa to see that Sky9 are obviously fans of the Zelda series and have used that to help build a world and game influenced by the franchise. As you’d expect, you explore Regalia, a beautifully crafted world, collecting elemental weapons and magical powers from three Spirit Knights in order to bring peace to the world. Gameplay The game features many elements that you’d expect in an adventure game: puzzles, platforming, exploration and sub-par combat. Although these are conventions of the genre, they are still extremely fun. The p...