Screenshot Saturday Sundays: Lightning ghost meets 400 rats disguised as a man
Lightning Ghosts and the Rat Man.
Screenshot Saturday Sundays! In the midst of this hectic, kinda-sorta-not-E3 storm, perhaps you'll join me in taking an afternoon away from the hype. Grab a cuppa, pop open your laptops, and let's find some gems buried behind the glitz and glamour of professionally-curated showcases. This week: the rat-man rises, electrifying ghosts, an eternity in landscapes and the eye of terror.
Move over, Games Workshop - we're starting this week's screenshot rundown with a proper vermintide.
This is King, Witch And Dragon, a self-described "reverse Metroidvania" from developer Andrey Torchinskey. What's not quite clear is whether this man is quite literally made of rats, or if the rodents are summoning a fighter with their writhing bodies to do their bidding. From the looks of the game's Steam page though, rats are only one of the critters tormenting this poor man - with the bloke sprouting wretched spider-legs, bat wings, while snakes writhe out of his sleeves like the worst children's magician.
Now, I'm no scientist, but I can't say I'd imagined ghosts to be particularly great lightning conductors.
Rolling into this week's lineup looking like those floating bodies from Death Stranding, developer Alexander Prokhorov has been posting plenty of wonderfully dreary landscapes lately - each punctuated by figures silently gazing from on high. The rain sways them, somewhat, but not even the smash of Zeus' temper tantrums nearby can shake their watch over the hapless player. Pretty dang spooky, that.
Afraid it's all been rather doom n' gloom with this week's selection. If you're looking for a lighter escape, may I offer you a stroll through Jamaican developer Owen's procedural landscapes?
Collected under the generative tool Newosky, these spaces are simply calming - lo-fi stretches of coastlines and sparse forests painted in simple palettes. While not as deliberately crafted, there's a little bit of Connor Sherlock's Walking Simulator A Month Club lurking beyond the treelines. Deep red skies and flowing regal plains, presided over by celestial bodies that often intersect.
That's about all we've got for this week's Screenshot Saturday lineup. But mind how you spend the rest of the afternoon - someone, or something, is keeping an eye on you.
Taking the almost-compulsory "retro PS1 game wot looked creepy" slot this week is developer Toni Hughes. While it's not clear whether this screen is part of it, digging through her works brought up Agony Of A Dying MMO - an in-development horror game set in the final hours of a dying MMORPG. Like No Players Online, that's goddamn catnip for my extremely-online, nostalgic whims, and I'm dying to see more.