PEGBRJE: Software of Page 24
Let’s roll.
Skyfarer
Welcome to Victorian London, where Skyfarer will allow you and friends captain a spacefaring steam locamotive. Created by Failbetter Games, a UK based studio that got Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor to write the world, players need to keep their steam machine thriving as they make difficult decisions as they sail across the cosmos. It was actually released with their PC title Sunless Skies as complimentary media, both featuring the same universe of Fallen London. It’s not as ‘crunchy’ as some TTRPGs, opting for singular dice-rolling systems to introduce new players to pen and paper games while building up the roleplaying aspects with the Peril and Tenacity systems. If you were a fan of Sunless Skies or just want something simple that features a steam-powered space train, then this is exactly for you.
Desktop Goose.
This isn’t a game, this is an experiment; how long can you survive with a goose that just does stupid stuff on your computer? Thanks to the brilliance that is Untitled Goose Game, we have bizarre projects centred around the audacity geese have such as this desktop application by samperson, an indie developer who enjoys creating the most confusing of ‘games’ and ‘applications’. This goose will appear once players boot the program, and will begin to wreak havoc on your PC as you allow it to. He’ll steal your mouse, leave footprints everywhere, leave messages, and even fill out Goose Notepads. The entire thing can be configurated by the user if they so wish, but I think this is best a prank you just leave on a friend’s computer before running away. Office humor at its best.
Ellipses RPG
Returning to more serious titles is Ellipses RPG, a TTRPG created by Xalavier Nelson Jr. whom many of you may have heard of from his work in the game ‘Can Androids Pray’ within the bundle, or the dozens of other titles with his writing credits. True to his work, this is a TTRPG completely focused on creation of roleplay and characters, only having three pages of mechanics for his system called Event and Effect (aka. Log). It’s focus is on character growth across scenarios rather than number growth across encounters, giving players new personality and trait cards for them to incorporate in to their existing character as they overcome obstacles. It wants you to ask questions about who this character is, and see who they can become. Try it out if you’d rather improv a scenario in DND than roll some dice.
Gravity Typist
Our lord of Chaos samperson returns on the same page with this nonsensical application that does exactly as advertised: it gives your typing gravity. Every keystroke will cause letters to fall from the sky, slowly clogging up the screen until it is an unusable mess of letters, numbers and symbols. Boot it up while playing a game and see how long until the game is no longer visible, or pull another office prank like before but this time make them lose their ability to send that important deadline email. All in the name of chaos.
The Corrupted Kingdom
Back to the seriousness of the world brings a novel by Jesse Galena, writer of tabletop titles, fantasy packs, lore dumps, and more RPG entries. This, however, is instead a collection of nine short stories for viewers to read about different dark situations happening within a fallen Empire. There’s many little things to explore, so I’ll leave it without any spoilers; give it a read if you like supernaturalistic yet somewhat bleak tales of that which had been lost and reclaimed by the bizarre and unknown.
‘How a Wargod Found Peace’ and ‘Applonia’s Promise’
Odd to include two softwares together, but there’s a reason for this; rather than them both being softwares, these two entries in the bundle are actually soundtracks made available by their composer Michael Cherdchupan. These are from two different games that he made soundtracks for, with the first being featured in the title ‘Oh My Gore’ by Bumblebee Games and Daedalic Entertainment and the second being from a game of the same name (also by Bumblebee). They both have descriptions for those interested in the games themselves, but the games are not included; not that this matters much to me, collector of video game soundtracks. How a Wargod Found Peace is probably my favourite of the two, but they are both getting added to my collection. Enjoy them both at your leisure, and look in to the games if you find either interesting.
