The Lonesome Guild
(PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £19.99)
Verdict: Make friends, not war
Do you know what’s the most powerful thing in the world? Money? Nope. Knowledge? Nah. Nuclear weaponry? Nuh-uh.
The one true answer is, of course… friendship.
Or at least that’s the snuggly-wuggly-ever-so-cuddly message of the recently released The Lonesome Guild.
Because while this action role-playing game has you performing many of the same tasks as other action role-playing games – fighting monsters, saving the kingdom, etc. – it has a different take on what really matters. Here, the jaw-jaw is more important than the war-war.
I’ll be there for you: The Lonesome Guild is all about making friends, and using that friendship to banish the red mist of loneliness
It starts with a rabbit-looking inventor fleeing from a red mist before encountering a ghost who’s lost its memory. Together, they must unite with other animal kinds – including a warrior fox and a witchy cat – to discover just what’s going on. Spoiler: that mist is the literal manifestation of loneliness.
And how do you combat loneliness? By making friends, of course. So that’s what this game becomes: a sort of friendship simulator.
Getting to know you: After a long day of traipsing across pretty landscapes, you and your band of loners must have a campfire chat, in order to increase your skills
Red alert: The mist you encounter in The Lonesome Guild is actually loneliness, in fog form
In between swinging swords and spells at various monsters, and solving environmental puzzles to progress across pretty landscapes, you’ve got to converse with all your fellow critters around a campfire. And it’s not just idle chitchat: your skills and abilities are tied to how well you get to know each other.
It sounds saccharine – and, in some ways, it is. But the surprising depth and darkness of The Lonesome Guild’s story and characters helps to keep it just shy of over-sugared.
As for that horrible ol’ red mist? Seems like the only way to beat it is to ignore everyone else in your life and play this video game.
Twinkleby
(PC, Mac, £14.99)
Verdict: Round the houses
For anyone who thinks The Lonesome Guild sounds too hard-edged, might I suggest Twinkleby? This is an entire game of soft furnishings, pastel hues and neighbourly goodwill.
In it, you effectively play as the nicest real-estate developer in the universe. Your territory is a series of floating islands in space, on which you’ve got to build new houses and decorate them just so. Practically everything is under your control, from the placement of buildings to the colour of individual rugs.
But you are not decorating in a vacuum, as it were. Cutesy characters will row on by in their interstellar boats and choose to live in your dream houses; at which point, it’s up to you to keep them satisfied. Some might be hungry, some might want to express their artistic side, some might simply prefer it when it’s nighttime.
Fantasy island: In Twinkleby, your job is to design, build and decorate homes that will keep your customers – the Islanders – satisfied. So you can move on to another island.
Over time, if you satisfy enough of your islanders, then you’ll be able to move onto another island to start the process all over again – except, this time round, you’ll have more options. Pretty soon, you’ll be master not just of the curtains but also of the weather and the seasons. Want this island to be rainy and autumnal? Hey presto! It is.
Not that there’s really any pressure on you to fulfil all these demands. Twinkleby is a slow-paced game, which is part of its charm but also part of the problem.
You’ll ease through the first few islands, but, after that, you might start wishing the populace would hurry up with getting happy. After all, even for the universe’s nicest real-estate developer, time is money.
