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Many Nights a Whisper, our meditative third-person archery game, is out now!Apr 30, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsWe just released a new game on Steam! It's short and experimental, about 1 hour long. So far, players who have been playing it are reporting it's pretty intense, check out the user reviews 🙈 And the press reviews hold high praise too! "Few games have this tension and impact" - GamesRadar 4/5 "A masterpiece that can be experienced in a single sitting. Don’t pass this up." - MonsterVine 4.5/5 "Incredibly thought-provoking." - Checkpoint Gaming 8.5/10 https://store.steampowered.com/app/3541130/Many_Nights_a_Whisper/ And even if it's not verified yet, it runs like a dream on the Steam Deck. Here's the launch trailer! Hope you find time to give it a go! Let us know what you think Many Nights a Whisper: New short experimental game!Mar 11, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsFor the past decade, Deconstructeam has been crafting 2D pixel-art narrative experiences like Gods Will Be Watching, The Red Strings Club, and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. Now, we're thrilled to explore a–at least for us–new frontier: 3D games. Over the past years, we've been quietly honing our skills, collaborating with talented indie studio Selkie Harbour, and experimenting with exciting new ideas. While our larger commercial projects are still under wraps, we’re eager to share a glimpse of something special with you: Many Nights a Whisper It's a short, meditative, third-person archery game about dreams, pressure, and expectations. If you want to know more and see some cool gifs, visit our Steam page and if it piques your interest, please, wishlist the game! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3541130/Many_Nights_a_Whisper/ This is a special milestone in our career, as it is our first self-published game, and it also paves the way to some higher quality games we never dreamt of doing... We can't wait to show you more of the other cool stuff we're working on! Please, let us know what you think since this is an essential moment of growth for us The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood announcement!Apr 27, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello! We're back! It's been five years since we released The Red Strings Club (almost 10 since we released Gods Will Be Watching, phew) and now... We're proud to finally show you what we've working in for all this time, the most ambitious project we've ever attempted: The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. It's a tarot deckbuilding narrative experience! You will play as Fortuna, a witch living in exile on an asteroid. Seeking freedom, Fortuna forms a pact with a forbidden creature—the mysterious and ancient Ábramar—who grants her the ability to craft magic-infused tarot cards. It's a game about community, identity and personal responsibility. You will meet many Witches and get to read their past and futures using your very own Tarot deck. Slowly, you will see yourself immersed in an intergalactic Witch plot! We're super excited to finally release this game. We hope you will support us while we're getting ready for release. Can't wait for you to play it! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1340480/The_Cosmic_Wheel_Sisterhood/ Grab the Akara-184 Plush before it's too late!Oct 14, 2022 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31062391/dd4b8616707e31422dbface8af3fedbebc9e0376.png Hello world. 🧠 Did you meet our Akara-184 plushie? They are coming into existence in an adorable shape. To make us all happy. (Still deciding on the definition of happiness, though.) Available for a limited time this week! https://www.makeship.com/products/akara-184Essays on Empathy is Now Available!May 18, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsEssays on Empathy is a curated compilation of ten interactive stories from Deconstructeam, the creator of The Red Strings Club and Gods Will Be Watching. Inhabit the lives of a diverse cast of characters from all walks of life in bite-sized, innovative, interactive stories; from a hitman working at a flower shop, to a schoolgirl who is convinced her skeleton isn't hers. Explore 10 unique, offbeat tales including "De Tres al Cuarto," a brand new short experience exclusive to the compilation about a couple of two-bit comedians trying to make it big. Essays on Empathy is Now Available! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586880/Essays_on_Empathy/The Red Strings Club devs' next game is actually a ten game collectionApr 30, 2021 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunYou may know Deconstructeam from their cyberpunk bartending story game The Red Strings Club, but they've made other games. Several other games, actually, which they're pulling into a colleciton called Essays On Empathy. Essays includes a bunch of previously released Deconstructeam story romps along with their new game De Tres Al Cuarto about a couple comedians trying to make it big together. Essays On Empathy is launching on May 18th, and you can snag a peek at what it includes in a new trailer. Read more Essays on Empathy launching May 18th!Apr 29, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsEssays on Empathy is a curated compilation of Deconstructeam's best efforts in seeking new narrative experiences in games. Inhabit the lives of a diverse cast of characters from all walks of life in bite-sized, innovative, interactive stories; from a hitman working at a flower shop, to a schoolgirl who is convinced her skeleton isn't hers. Explore 10 unique, offbeat tales including "De Tres al Cuarto," a brand new short experience exclusive to the compilation about a couple of two-bit comedians trying to make it big. Coming May 18th. Add it to your Wishlist. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586880/Essays_on_Empathy/The Red Strings Club Makes Its Physical Debut!Apr 12, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsSpecial Reserve Games has teamed up with Deconstructeam and Devolver Digital to create the ultimate physical collector's edition of THE RED STRINGS CLUB! Limited to a run of 3,000 copies, for true fans and collectors, this special physical edition is ON SALE NOW! (while supplies last) The Special Reserve Games physical edition of THE RED STRINGS CLUB for Nintendo Switch features: SWITCH CARTRIDGE Includes critical updates, patches, and DLC Packaged inside the Switch game case SHIPS IN A SPECIAL RESERVE BOX Multiple textures and processes Makes a great shelf display and protects your game! SEQUENTIALLY NUMBERED GAME PACKAGING REVERSIBLE JACKET ARTWORK 32-PAGE INSTRUCTION BOOKLET Inside the shrink-wrapped game packaging TWO BAR COASTERS Colorful PVC soft rubber 3.5" in diameter 5" x 7" ART CARD Printed on thick linen paper Watercolor-style portrait On sale now! While Supplies LastAs Cyberpunk 2077 is running late, here's a broad spread of cyberpunky funNov 19, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Now that Cyberpunk 2077 is delayed again until December 10th, what are you to do? You’ve grown a lurid blue mohawk, your leather jacket is almost worn in, and your prescription mirrorshades are ready for collection at Specsavers – but for what? You might as well use this time to explore all games cyberpunky, from edgy and nihilistic griping about how the future sucks to wacky cyberjapes that make you wanna jump up and shout HACK THE PLANET. I have some recommendations. (more…) Have You Played The Red Strings Club?Apr 7, 2020 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunHave You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. In The Red Strings Club, a corporation believes it holds the keys to happiness, and it’s preparing to slip them down the throats of everyone in the world. It’s a chemical end: to discrimination, to suffering, and to freedom. So what. A little brainwashing never hurt anyone. (more…) As Cyberpunk 2077 is running late, here's a broad spread of cyberpunky funJan 29, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Now that Cyberpunk 2077 is delayed from April to September, what are you to do? You’ve grown a lurid blue mohawk, your leather jacket is almost worn in, and your prescription mirrorshades are ready for collection at Specsavers – but for what? You might as well use this time to explore all games cyberpunky, from edgy and nihilistic griping about how the future sucks to wacky cyberjapes that make you wanna jump up and shout HACK THE PLANET. I have some recommendations. (more…) Daily Deal - The Red Strings Club, 50% OffApr 18, 2019 - AnnouncementToday's Deal: Save 50% on The Red Strings Club!* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Saturday at 10AM Pacific Time Priceless Play 9 March 2019Mar 9, 2019 - Rock, Paper, Shotgunthat we spend so much time thinking about time: setting alarms, making dinner reservations, meeting deadlines, missing deadlines, scheduling due-dates, planning for investments and interest rates… A 30-year mortgage? Will I even be alive then? I mean, I wasted a solid ten minutes between writing the first and second sentences of this very article marvelling at what I imagine must go into the infrastructural maintenance for the Wikipedia entry for “time,” so who’s going to trust me with a mortgage? Sometimes it seems like the whole concept is one big existential prank we’ve conned ourselves into playing along with. Time, that is. Not mortgages. Hell, you know what, them too. It’s around this time that I’ll probably fix myself a drink. It’s five o’ clock somewhere, right? (more…) Best PC games of 2018Jan 2, 2019 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun The doors have been opened, the games inside have been devoured, and now it’s time to recycle the cardboard. Below you’ll find all of our picks for the best PC games of 2018, gathered together in a single post for easy reading. (more…) Best Story 2018: The Red Strings ClubDec 29, 2018 - PC GamerNext up in our GOTY awards is The Red Strings Club, from developer Deconstructeam. Find the complete list of awards here. Joanna: The Red Strings Club takes the grittiness of '80s cyberpunk and gives it a modern, corporate edge. But it does what every good cyberpunk story should do: make us question what it means to be human in a not too distant future. The Red Strings Club is all about the control of human emotion, whether that’s mixing drinks to make patrons more “loose” with information, or fulfilling the main quest of the story to stop Supercontinent’s Social Psyche Welfare program. As Donovan, all the detective work is done with old-school cunningness and charm, but with Brandeis’ it’s done through an implant that can precisely imitate voices. Arkasa-184 collects and synthesizes information about the bar patrons to quiz Donovan (aka you) on your listening skills. Your ability to discover key information about the high-level executives behind Social Psyche Welfare will determine your success in stopping the release of the program. Fighting large-scale cybernetic manipulation with small-scale chemical manipulation really brings out your inner hypocrite. When it came to mixing drinks for patrons, I had no problem choosing the right cocktail to get the result I wanted, but when it came to putting a Short Span Memory Resetter in people’s drinks, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sure, it would give me another chance to ask the same questions again in case I missed something, but it felt like I was drugging them without their knowledge, and that made me feel gross. I couldn’t cross that line of consent, even if it meant failing the main quest. Arkasa-184 fills the space between Q&A sessions with philosophical questions that confront you unexpectedly on your views of society and technology, morality, and free will. Prepared or not, you’ll learn something about your own views on transhumanism by (hopefully) putting some thought into these questions. Think about it: if you had the ability to get a cybernetic implant that suppressed every negative emotion you could possibly feel, would you? What broader implications would that have on not just your personal development but our society as a whole? The Red Strings Club asks you to grapple with these types of questions, and your answers to these questions that shape the future of this fictional world. Jody: I love a philosophical cyberpunk story and The Red Strings Club is great one of those, reaching way beyond "what if robots had feelings" to take on much less abstract themes. It's also a love story. The relationship between a bartender who can't leave his bar and a hacker who plays a mean piano is renegotiated and expanded on over the course of the game. It deals with that as maturely as it deals with the questions about free will and social responsibility and, yeah, what if a robot had feelings? W...Giada Zavarise s 5 best games of 2018Dec 25, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun We asked a bunch of our regular writers to tell us what their five favourite games this year were. Today it’s the turn of Giada Zavarise, who has smuggled in an extra five games by making them awards and having runners up 2018 is the year I played Symphony Of The Night for the first time. Can I just rave about Symphony Of The Night for the whole article? No? Fine. Here are some other games that aren t too shabby, either. (more…) Our picks from the Steam autumn Sale discountapaloozaNov 25, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunHurry, hurry. There are only 37 Steam sales each year – miss a bargain now and you’ll regret it for the rest of your days. (Until the next one). As always, the latest Steam Autumn sale is a sensory overload of cut-price delights. We’re here to guide you through the white noise and make a few informed choices. (more…) Trans representation in Cyberpunk 2077 matters, but not because it s cyberpunkSep 3, 2018 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Even before its recent public gameplay unveiling, Cyberpunk 2077 was the target of a very particular piece of criticism. Perhaps sparked by the transphobic joke made by the game’s Twitter account, many online have been calling out 2077 for presenting yet another future that, despite its overt themes of transhumanism and body modification, falls strictly into the gender binary. Despite the gender diversity already prevalent in our own world and time, players in 2077 are asked to choose between a strictly male or female character. Many online have been saying that this is at odds with the very genre from which the game gets its name and ideas. Cyberpunk shouldn’t be cis! is more or less the argument. This criticism has dogged the game for weeks now and will probably follow it all the way to release. Yet it doesn’t quite ring true to me. (more…) Sexuality and gender in science fiction gamesAug 4, 2018 - PC GamerIn 1992 Microprose released Rex Nebular & the Cosmic Gender Bender, an adventure game set on a world where a "gender war" had killed off all the men. The remaining women separated themselves from the rest of the galaxy, hid their planet, and perpetuated their species thanks to the Gender Bender, a device that instantly but non-permanently transformed women into men and vice versa. What does the game do with that setup and the questions it raises? It makes jokes about how men leave the toilet seat up and women don't know what torque wrenches are. We've come a long way since then. In 2007's Mass Effect the Asari are a monogender alien species coded as women, and they don't hide themselves away refusing to learn how wrenches work. On the surface they seem like stereotypical blue space babes, but they're also a matriarchal society that plays a central role in the politics of the series. One of the Asari, Liara T'Soni, is a potential love interest for the player-character regardless of their gender—which, at the time, was controversial. Imperfect as they were, Mass Effect and its sequels felt like they were dealing with gender and sexuality in a way that's much more common to science fiction outside of games. If your space opera novel about aliens gives them three genders readers accept it, because of course alien societies would have different ideas about sex. By the same token in cyberpunk novels where people can have laser eyes it's easier for readers to accept gender transitioning as commonplace. When we think about the future we do so by taking modern norms and simply pushing them a bit, and that includes our modern ideas about sexuality and gender. How soon is now? ...it may be a game about body horror giant robots and cosmic mysteries and post-reality hellscapes, but all the emotions in the game are very real Heather Robertson Extreme Meatpunks Forever is many things. It's a contender for best videogame name ever for starters. It's also an episodic visual novel about friends on the run in the Hellzone, which happens to include an Atari-style arcade action game where those characters climb into mechs that look like skinless monsters to fight fascists. Creator Heather Robertson (who also worked on Genderwrecked) describes it like this: "Extreme Meatpunks Forever is a serialized visual novel/mech brawler about four gay disasters beating up neonazis in giant robots made of meat." Three episodes into the series, its heroes the Sundown Meatpunks are sleeping rough, missing their home, squabbling with each other, and shopping for protein bars in a convenience store called Blood Station where the clerk has static for a face. There's plenty of surrealness at play, but there's truth in it as well. "It's about growing up queer in a small town," explains Robertson, "about feeling at odds with your own body, about feeling broken and trying to...The bestest and most top PC games of 2018 so farJul 18, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunWe’re just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we’ve shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you’re reading right now this second. And what games they are! 2018 has been a great year so far, and our top picks run the whole range, from hand drawn oddities made by one person, to big mega-studio blockbusters that took the work of hundreds. And each of them is special to us in some way. Just like you are too. Click through the arrows to see the full spread of our faves so far. Better luck next year to the games that didn’t make the cut this time. (more…)
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