Expedition 46
The Bathysphere
Welcome aboard! Mind the various hatches and cables. It’s Hatches and Cables Week! Luckily, it’s also Steam Demo Week - it may not actually be called that - and Chris has been looking at some lovely demos.
Elsewhere, Florence decides to take things slow…
The Bathysphere crew
Christian Donlan
Florence Smith Nicholls
Keith Stuart
Contact us at bathyspherecrew@gmail.com
Delightful games
Radio Farm by Samantha Toeman is about the magic of radio. And making snow angels. It also has what is perhaps my favourite walking animation I have ever seen in a game. An absolute delight, like looking into a pixelated snow globe. FSN
Interesting things
I’m currently packing to move countries, and my PhD thesis deadline is looming. I would like to slow down. Luckily, the book Zen and Slow Games by Víctor Navarro-Remesal recently came out, and it’s even open access! FSN
Matt Reynolds is one of the loveliest and most talented people I’ve ever worked with. I miss seeing him on a regular basis! Luckily, he’s just launched One More Catch, a site covering Pokémon Go and Pokémon everything. It’s going to be very special. CD
Demos!
Hello! It’s Steam Demo time. Here are three I really enjoyed.
Here is a decent take on Vampire Survivors - the similarities go right down to the nature of the power-ups - in which you fight off a horde and level up while you do it, unlocking things that making fighting against the horde a bit easier.
A few little wrinkles: it’s desert-and-engine-parts sci fi, a genre I have just christened. It’s also notable for the sheer size of the bait ball you can collect behind you as you play. This is a good thing.
A better thing: stick around in the demo until you first level up, because at this point you unlock a dash and the game becomes fun. Dash allows you to rush through enemies doing them damage, and it makes the game faster and more consequential. It also makes it chuggy, which is a good thing for this kind of game to be.
I was sold this as Jet Set Radio with a train, but in truth it’s more like Thumper-meets-Tony-Hawk with a train. This doesn’t matter at all because those things are all good.
The JSR element presumably comes from the Cel-shaded art and bright colours, both of which are beautiful. And the fact that you’re tricking through Tokyo. Okay, there’s maybe quite a lot of JSR in the mix after all.
What I love is that it’s a trick game about getting air and doing spins and all that jazz, but because you’re a train you spend a lot of time riding a rail. Cue Thumper-ish cornering, lane-switching and all kinds of lovely tweaks and gimmicks. What a beautiful thing!
I’ve been following this on TikTok for a while, but I can never remember the name. Now it’s here in demo form I can stop googling “monkey in exploding van game” whenever I want to check if it’s out yet.
That’s google search is not a bad description of Deadline Delivery, incidentally. You are a monkey in a van and the van explodes if you don’t make your deliveries in time. Or if you don’t cross the finish line in time. Or if you have a big enough collision. What’s surprised me I think is that while Deadline Delivery looks carefree, it’s actually supremely exacting. You race the clock, you deliver in the right spots while moving, you pull of tricks and you manage boosting, and you do it all with utter seriousness or it doesn’t work out too well.
None of this is a criticism. With huge, hairpin levels and a lovely sense of forward momentum, this is the kind of game that’s going to swiftly become a real showcase for incredible skills. Probably not mine, but I’m happy to at least get a chance to have a go. CD
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