Ronan Price

1 month ago | independent.ie | Ronan Price

But on its own, a dead end can be invaluable – acting as a punctuation mark, an encouragement to redirect your energies. You could hardly solve a maze without meeting dead ends, right? Such is the thinking in Blue Prince, this most cerebral of puzzle games. On the surface, it’s a little like a user-generated maze. But like an onion, it conceals layer upon layer of mystery waiting to be unwrapped, spilling its tightly wound secrets grudgingly over time.

1 month ago | independent.ie | Ronan Price

This magic-realist version of a modern-day southern United States by Montreal-based Compulsion Games heaves with characters whose pain seeps from their pores, leaving them broken by the injustices of their history. You are a healer, a seemingly ordinary young woman named Hazel who discovers her dormant powers to banish evil and ease the suffering. She has mystical abilities that can manipulate the hidden threads that bind and twist the universe.

1 month ago | independent.ie | Ronan Price

Developed by two-person British indie outfit A La Mode Games, this debut title brims with feisty dialogue and features a throwback style of fixed camera angles and PS1-era visuals. It dissects the romantic relationships of a bunch of oddball Londoners whose borough falls under the spell of a peculiar demon known as the Duchess. You play as stylish local Michelle who’s dealing with their own heartbreak over a crazy ex.

2 months ago | independent.ie | Ronan Price

Rebellion has also soaked itself in other genre classics such as the Fallout and Stalker series, building a mystery rooted in state secrecy around the aftermath of a nuclear accident. It takes as its starting point the very real-life 1957 disaster at Windscale in Cumbria – now known as Sellafield –spinning off into a fanciful story of conspiracy, post-apocalyptic societal breakdown and authoritarian rule.

2 months ago | independent.ie | Ronan Price

Last week, however, it was still releasing a remake of a 10-year-old Japanese RPG by its Monolith Soft studio that failed to save the Wii U from its early obsolescence. Xenoblade Chronicles X had a lot going for it in 2015 but a cynical observer might say it’s a game out of time a decade later. This “Definitive Edition” includes a clutch of modernising improvements to its systems but it can’t escape the constraints of the cliches that were evident from the outset.