Rime

The light at the and of the tunnel. After years in the shadows, Rime finally reveals its true nature.

“When you are responsible for other people – for the wellbeing of their families – sometimes you can get a lot of vertigo. But the sooner you get used to the feeling of always falling the better, because in life you often find yourself falling forever.”

Tequila Works’ CEO Raúl Rubio knows that the development of Rime is like no other. For the better part of four years, his studio has been home to one of the most anticipated independent adventure games of recent memory. But for the longest time it has also existed only on the periphery, as a project that found itself plunged into darkness as quickly as it was pushed into the light.

Fresh Hell

A short history of modern horror games – with Amnesia: The Dark Descent’s Thomas Grip

Traversing the decaying, twilit corridors of the Baker residence, we’re lost. We’re yet to find a map for this section of the swampy compound, we’re short on bullets, and we can’t work out what combiney-item thing we’re supposed to do with that clock. We’re confused, frustrated even, but also thrillingly helpless and terrified. It feels almost profound that a game can make us feel this way. Resident Evil, the series that inspired the term ‘survival horror’ yet had long since strayed from its rotten roots, has been reborn, and this year’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has become the clearest testament to the resurrection of the genre in recent  years. But the credit for that return to form doesn’t go to Capcom, or to Sega for the nerve-jangling Alien: Isolation. Back in 2010, while the Resi series was goofing around with co-op and the Aliens licence was being torn a new one by Gearbox and Rebellion, a little-known Swedish developer had caught the gaming world’s imagination with its quiet release of a first-person horror game on the PC.