Holiday Playlist: Ryan Noble

The Holidays are a time for relaxation, spending time with the family, and, most importantly, making time to catch up on your video game backlog!

The Holidays are a time for relaxation, spending time with the family, and, most importantly, making time to catch up on your video game backlog! Now that the indie scene is booming, there’s an assortment of games to choose from on a near-daily basis, which makes it pretty difficult to decide what games I should spend my spare vacation time playing. After some careful consideration though, I’ve come up with a short list of the games I’ll be spending the most time on during my time off.

One game that I’ll be playing over the Holidays is The Forest . I won’t go into too much detail on this indie survival-horror, as there’s going to be an extended preview in the New Year’s issue of the Magazine, but it’s currently in Early Access on Steam, with plenty of new features, creatures and improvements being added all the time. It’s tense, gorgeous, and will have you finding a balance between surviving the harshness of nature and the horrific monsters of the forest. Not only is it available to play on PC now whilst Endnight Games irons out the bugs, but it’s also coming to PS4 in 2015, too.

Another game that I can’t wait to spend some time with over the Holidays is Never Alone . It’s about as unique a concept for a game as it gets, and gives players a window into the little-known culture of the Inupiats in Alaska. Using a mixture of platforming gameplay, authentic visual treats, and a charming relationship between Nuna, a young Inupiat girl, and her arctic wolf companion, the game looks to be quite the heart-warming tale to enjoy during the cold nights of winter. Never Alone also allows gamers to play the game alone or through co-op, which is a pleasant surprise. If you’re interested in checking out Never Alone yourself, head over to IGM’s news articleand interviewwith the developers behind the game.

Until recently, The Binding of Isaac was a game that I had only ever heard whispers of. I knew it was meant to be good, but other than that, I knew nothing about it. Then it was offered as part of November’s PS Plus free games, and I haven’t looked back since. This indie gem has gamers play as a naked child, who attacks monsters with his never-ending tears. It sounds weird, but bear with me. Despite its strange concept, The Binding of Isaac is actually an extremely addictive and unique rogue-like dungeon-crawler, and once it gets its somewhat depressing claws into you, it doesn’t let go. Similar to Rogue Legacy in recent days, I always want to get to that next level, that next upgrade, that next boss fight… and that’s exactly what I plan to do over the Holidays.

What will you be playing over the Holidays? Let me know in the comments, or just tweet me @TheNobleGaming.

Happy Holidays, everyone!