Thenessgroup

Those human pilots! If they're so keen to make their way back to Earth, why do they keep getting themselves warped away from it? Out There is a neat little space opera for Android and iPhone. You wake from cryosleep to discover your spaceship has been 2001'd into an unfamiliar galaxy. Hundreds of star systems away, you are aware of a particular star that may be important, but your first task is not to die.  The game is turn-based and there's no combat. Well, that's not quite true. There is an enemy to discover and there is in fact a way to attack enemy fleets. But mostly, you choose the next planet or star, decide whether to land, whether to drill for resources, whether to meet the local species, whether to take over the abandoned spaceship etc. It plays a lot like a Fighting Fantasy gamebook - I have fond memories of Starship Traveller. It's also really, really hard. This is a survival-themed game - meaning you will die a lot. You can die by running out of hydrogen...

"Amani, this is Liang. I've been exploring these Martian caverns for ten hours now and I'm reaching a conclusion about the nature of this game. The discovery of a smooth-walled vertical cavern running through many layers of the map confirms my hypothesis: this is not a naturally occurring structure but a tribute to the classic BBC Micro era game Exile." Waking Mars is a game for mobiles, tablets etc. with impressive scope. As astronaut Liang, you explore a network of caves with your jetpack, searching for a missing robot and discovering an ancient ecosystem as you go. In order to progress, you'll need to understand the relationships between the different life forms (your computer assistant, ART, is keen to point out that they are not technically plants or animals), and use this knowledge to increase the biomass in each area. Gameplay video by Youtube user 1Retrodroid The gameplay area is huge, and after you've taken the first few steps the game becomes non-li...

Military scientist McCarthy's (Toby Stephens) research into artificial brain implants is not going entirely to plan - recovered bionic soldiers become inexplicably mute a few weeks after surgery, and one experiment goes on a killing spree. To save his scientific bacon, McCarthy recruits quantum computer expert Ava (Caity Lotz) and together they work towards the creation of an android which, for dramatic or possibly budgetary reasons, bears a striking resemblance to Caity Lotz. The Machine attempts to tell a complex and dark story - plot strands include McCarthy's motivation for his research, his relationship with the android as she awakens and discovers the world, as well as what appears to be a power struggle amongst the sinister bionics. This film bears a superficial resemblance to Alex Garland's film Ex Machina which will be released later this month, if the Ex Machina trailer is anything to go by. It also reminded me of Splice , as both deal with the twisted relationshi...