- Eliza is now available in Portuguese and Japanese! - 14 December 2022
Eliza agora está disponível em Português! 『Eliza』は日本語に対応しています。 Eliza is now available in Portuguese and Japanese! Special thanks to the translators who created these translations: Japanese: Shin Imamura, Yuri Tanaka, Lina Mitsufuji, Eriko Hayashi (Main Editor), Cheryl Ng Special Thanks: Koji Kariya (EDM advice) Portuguese: Lucas R M Nunes, Luan Botelho, Gabriel Freitas, Bruno Morais, Tiago Coutinho, Gabriel Prada, Ayumi Anraku, LHEC, Yuri Beira, Ivan Lopes, Erin London, Ryuji "Angelus" Shiryu (@RyujiBlades), Daniela Vilarinho, Janaína Monte
- Last Call BBS - The last game by Zachtronics! - 5 July 2022
Boot up your Z5 Powerlance and dial into Last Call BBS, the last game from Zachtronics! The Barkeep’s loaded up his retro computer with a full set of puzzle games for you to download and play. No need to worry about copy protection, they’re all fully cracked and ready to enjoy! Includes eight full games: 20th Century Food Court: Design factories to produce food just like they did over 700 years ago in the 20th century. Keep your costs low and your machines running fast! STEED FORCE Hobby Studio: Assemble robot models based on the anime smash hit Steed Force right on your computer. No sandpaper required! X’BPGH: The Forbidden Path: Enter a cursed world and create bizarre flesh sculptures in exchange for eternal life. The master is pleased… but can you trust him? Sawayama Solitaire: It wouldn’t be a Zachtronics release without a brand-new solitaire game. This time it’s a fresh take on Klo…
- Eliza is now available in Italian and Chinese! - 19 September 2021
Eliza is now available in Italian and Chinese! Special thanks to the YakYak translators who created these translations: Italian: Daniela Delbarba, Jonathan Antonioli, Emanuele Siena, Marco Ramazzotti, Federica Carboni, Timmy Vargas Chinese: Jian Li
- As Cyberpunk 2077 is running late, here's a broad spread of cyberpunky fun - 19 November 2020
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…)
- UPDATE: Fixing the crash handler - 13 November 2020
Today's update fixes our crash handler to point to a new URL. Nothing else should have changed.
- Eliza is now available in French and Spanish! - 28 August 2020
Eliza est désormais disponible en français! ¡Eliza ya está disponible en español! Eliza is now available in French and Spanish! Special thanks to the YakYak translators who created these translations: French: Briac Pilpré (Director), Pierre Texier, Alexis Barroso, Dongmo Dontia Joel Spanish: Julia Muñoz Santana, María Garrido Manzano, Sara Barbosa Gutiérrez
- Eliza ist jetzt auf Deutsch verfügbar! - 12 June 2020
Eliza ist jetzt auf Deutsch verfügbar! Eliza is now available in German! Special thanks to Tolma4 Team (Steven Korkowsky, Martina Seemann, Julia Mayer) for creating the translation and making this possible.
- Eliza will be part of LudoNarraCon, the online festival of narrative games! - 20 April 2020
Eliza will be part of LudoNarraCon, the online festival of narrative games! From April 24-27, join Matthew Seiji Burns, writer of this IGF Grand Prize-nominated game as he plays through and explains some of the decision making behind the design and story. You can also get the game on sale, watch online panels, and more. See you there! LudoNarraCon 2020
- As Cyberpunk 2077 is running late, here's a broad spread of cyberpunky fun - 29 January 2020
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…)
- Best PC games 2020: great games to download right now - 21 January 2020
Below you’ll find the list of the best PC games we recommend you play right now. These are games that are new, that are being freshly updated, or that are stone cold classics of their respective genres. This is a living list, which means we’ll be updating it throughout 2020 as we fall in love with new games. (more…)
- Visual novel Eliza explores the privacy risks of digital therapy - 16 January 2020
Over the last two years, mindfulness and mental health apps have skyrocketed in popularity. Self-care and wellbeing apps were named Apple's top trend of 2018 with an abundance of apps like Fabulous, Calm, Headspace, Shine, and Joyable packed with meditation techniques, healthier habits, breathing exercises, and audio pep-talks. According to Marketdata (via the Washington Post ) the market for these kinds of services topped $1 billion in the US and have continued to release into 2019 and 2020. Self-care and mental health apps have become a viable market for business as more people are investing time in their mental wellbeing. Some apps are even taking it further by offering professional help to app users. But is e-counselling the way forward? Eliza is a visual novel that grapples with this complicated topic. Developed by Zachtronics, Eliza explores a future where digital therapy and…
- Eliza is now available in Russian and Hungarian! - 15 January 2020
Рады сообщить, что наша игра теперь доступна на русском языке! Örömmel jelentjük, hogy az Elizában már magyar szöveg is választható! Exciting news, Eliza is now available in Russian and Hungarian! More languages coming soon, hopefully...
- IGF finalists announced, confirm RPS is correct about everything - 8 January 2020
The Independent Games Festival Awards have announced their finalists , once more reflecting the esteemed opinions of RPS writers. Sad mutant blueberry simulator Mutazoine is the favourite for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and is also in the running for the Art, Audio and Narrative awards. Two thirds of Alices agree that it is well good. Other grand prize contenders include AI and sadness visual novel Eliza, uplifting flap-about A Short Hike, irresistible card-pusher Slay The Spire, and irritable waterfowl punter Untitled Goose Game. Also in the running is Anodyne 2: Return To Dust, the only game on the list that someone at RPS hasn’t thrown lavish praise at. Soz, Anodyne. (more…)
- Best PC games of 2019 - 6 January 2020
2019 was a great year for PC games – aren’t they all? – but you might not yet know what the very best PC games of 2019 were. Let us help you. (more…)
- The best of Unknown Pleasures 2019 - 20 December 2019
It’s been a weird, weird year for games. My perspective has been particularly odd and hard to square, as I’ve now been full time staff here at RPS for nearly six months. Six months! That’s … oh my god, I still haven’t extended my rent. It’s quite strange suddenly being able to talk about games in real life without having to apologise, but other than that it’s nice. In that time I’ve played somewhere around 1,200 to 1,300 games (an exact count is impossible for boring reasons), almost all of them little known. There have been many, many excellent games. There’s a refrain you see around the internet sometimes that “this was a bad year for games”, and I’ve honestly never understood it. I lived through the 2000s, people, I remember that wasteland. But this year, even after a solid 2018 , has been so replete with interes…
- The best games of the decade on PC - 6 December 2019
It’s been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that’s happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you , but a day’s work for us. Below you’ll find our picks for the 50 best games released on PC across the past decade. (more…)
- Eliza's creator on the real life inspirations for his fictional therapy software - 15 October 2019
Have you played the visual novel Eliza yet? If not, stop what you re doing and play it pronto. This almost sci-fi visual novel was recently awarded an RPS Bestest Best by Sin, who said, in her review , “if I start talking about how much this game has spoken to me, I don t know if I ll be able to stop.” It’s a fascinating, thought provoking game where you play as Evenlyn, a “proxy” for the titular counselling service software. It measures heart rate and key words and things like that, and then generates a counselling script for Evelyn to read. You can get it from Steam (and it just came out on Switch, but that’s of no concern to us here). Matthew Seiji Burns was the writer and director on Eliza. Burns is a Seattle-based writer and musician, and in addition to creating Eliza, he also contributes narrative and music to developer Zachtronics’ other…
- Wot I Think: Eliza - 20 September 2019
Developer: Zachtronics Publisher: Zachtronics Release: Out now On: PC, Mac OS, Linux From: Steam , GOG . Humble For: 11/$15/ 12 Eliza is a visual novel about Evelyn, a woman starting work as a ‘proxy’ for the eponymous service. The service is counselling by algorithm. The proxies sit and listen, while clients say whatever they have to say, and the system takes measurements of things like heart rate, vocal stress and such, before analysing keywords used and delivering a reply. You read the script it generates, and nothing more. That’s the job. The game itself is about everything to do with that. Counselling. Crunch in the tech industry. Ethics and isolation and empathy, and Men In Tech. And it’s about recovery. You get dialogue options here and there, but until the final act there’s not a lot in the way of big decisions. I mulled over those closing decisions…
- Eliza, a visual novel about algorithms and mental health, is out now - 17 August 2019
Here are two things that are currently a bit rubbish: the standard and availability of mental health care, and the quality of AI doing the job of a human. Would applying an AI bandaid do anything to touch the former problem, or make it worse? And is it a problem bad enough to give up a bunch of personal information to tech valley datacentres? These are some of the questions you ll be able to ponder while playing Eliza , a visual novel set in a world where an algorithm provides counselling to those in need via a human proxy who reads the script they re provided. It s about as creepy as it sounds, as you can see from the trailer below. (more…)
- UPDATE: Minor solitaire improvements - 16 August 2019
Today's update adds an achievement for winning a game of solitaire on expert difficulty and a new sound effect for completing a stack of cards.
