It’s a good day for an RPS Game Club live chat, and we’re talking Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands

What's up, rock nerds. See you back here at 4pm BST / 11am ET / 8am PT.

What's up my fellow string noodlers? Check out this sick riff I just learned *boots the door down and starts playing Wonderwall*

Hello Wemblaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

I also like kicking doors.

What's the difference between a real drummer and a drum machine? You only have to punch commands into a drum machine once! Whey! I'll be here for the next fourteen minutes until they realised I snuck through the back!

I think it's a testament to the quality of Deathbulge's door-kicking that literally three of us, all independently, prepared to pitch an article about it before remembering Alice had done one for supporters ages ago.

That, or a testament to how on the pulse Alice B is about door kicking trends in games, forecast to rise this year by another several percent. But yes - Deathbulge's choice to individually draw every single booted-in door in every house you visit is incredibly special.

It's the way they animate all the different ways the doors have completely demolished people's houses though. And they'll just sit there and be like 'everything is fine, this is fine'. Genius.

But it's really fucking good door-kicking though! Proper committment to the bit. My favourite spin is the dude who shows up on the side of a mountain dressed as a door, and after you kick him (obviously) he's just all "Thanks mate, nice one"

pete says: Behind door kicking, what's the second best thing in the game?

Can I posit: the facial expressions?

I'm a big fan of all the different ability names, especially all the numerous ways the game finds to say "very loud bassline'.

pete says: Behind door kicking, what's the second best thing in the game?

I lived for Scrumptious's booty dancing after every conversation. But yes, the ultra-detailed portraits of the characters were also brilliant.

I've just realised this is my first liveblog. I feel naked without spellcheck. Readers: any typos are just stylistic choices. The dictionary was written by The Man. Who, as hard rock rebels, we're generally opposed to.

oh, and all the bass-themed jokes

What I'd like to know, James, is if Deathbulge has inspired you to range further afield to the bountiful crop of other turn based games? Is a complete Final Fantasy series run in your future, or does Deathbulge alone make such polite combat protocal bearable for you?

It's unlikely, if I'm honest, though I'm probably more open to the possibility of trying them?

I've actually been wondering if I like Deathbulge more, less or equally to LAD: Infinite Wealth, which also spices up turn-based fights but with a drastically different approach. That's more traditional, mechanics-wise, but goes much bigger on spectacle than Deathbulge.

pete says: I know one of the things Alice loved about this game was how funny it was. Did you find it funny, and is it a specific type of funny?

Yes! It's actually much dryer and more witty than you'd expect from how colourful it is, but there's also just plenty of goof. It leaves a lot of the more out-there humour to the art and animation though.

I'd also like to posit just how great the premise is in general. I'm a sucker for Battle Royale type setups anyway, but I especially love just throwing an incredibly grim plot point into a comedy game like this.

I like how - and I wish I could think of a less nationalistic word for this but - British the humour is. It's got that slightly damp, yet evocative lexicon you might develop watching Channel 4 comedies.

And just the way of wording things is cute. "Active cheese", Alice's favourite example, has proper "top light" or "Big Tesco's" energy.

It is very British. To be fair I totally agreed with him. You don't mix your cheeses or open a new one when you're already halfway through your active cheese. That's just madness.

You could have a level in Deathbulge set in the Big Tesco's and it wouldn't seem at all out of place.

Speaking of locales - and Nic, your piece about band life made me think of this too - the opening town honestly gave me flashbacks to mooching around music shops as a bass-wielding teenager. Even going into one, looking at the mods on sale, and walking out without buying anything was *exactly* what I used to do most Saturdays.

The one thing it was missing was not being able to say "Just looking, thanks" to any of the shop NPCs.

Oh, for sure. Like, there's so many indentikit high streets in the UK where if you removed any kind of live music culture, they'd just be a dull wasteland. The game felt really celebratory of that while also poking a bit of fun.

I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says: You can have multiple active cheeses going as long as there's the prospect of an emergency dinner party to avert disaster. I've lived to tell the tale.

But then, are they different kinds of cheeses? And if so - doesn't a blend of cheese all together in one meal create one singular, super cheese? So many questions.

How nuts did everyone go in switching up their party with mods, custom beats etc.? I moved Ian from tank duty to damage dealing, but couldn't live without speed-freak Faye and healer Briff, which largely means sticking to their defaults.

pete says: I've tried having more than one active cheese, but it quickly gets resolved into one active cheese as I demolish the secondary cheese

I feel having a second active cheese *does* make you kind of reckless with the first active cheese. Why shouldn't I have double cheese on toast? Stuffed crust? Doesn't look that stuffed to me! I've got just the ticket!

Also, apologies to Deathbulge that this has devolved into a conversation about cheese. But also, I think they'd be fine with it?

I didn't get too into the mods, but I did find a wild patch that made casting haste (hype?) twice as effective, and abused the heck out of it.

pete says: On the turn-basedness of it, is it the kind where you need to spend an age optimising and pondering, or does it promote getting on with it? (I haven't played, but do intend to)

As someone who favours only stopping and tweaking loadouts when I start losing, I found it had really good momentum!

pete says: On the turn-basedness of it, is it the kind where you need to spend an age optimising and pondering, or does it promote getting on with it? (I haven't played, but do intend to)

In my experience, every fight is winnable unless your overall party level is too low. That still involves a bit of guesswork as you don't see enemy levels before you fight them, but I've never felt railroaded into specific builds/tactics etc.

You are sort of railroaded into booting down doors though. There's no option to not do that.

Yeah but why would you not.

Yeah I can't argue with that logic

I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says: No mark against Deathbulge, which is a great band name, but I wish it also gave me the option to customise our band's name to Sulky Monkey or Vikings in Drag or any of the other band names I'll never use because of lacking musical talent.

I would pay money to see Vikings in Drag to be fair. Do you guys have any cool band name ideas?

I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says: No mark against Deathbulge, which is a great band name, but I wish it also gave me the option to customise our band's name to Sulky Monkey or Vikings in Drag or any of the other band names I'll never use because of lacking musical talent.

I always wanted to start a psychedelic funk band called 'superfly agaric'

Bit niche, but how about a Buffy the Vampire Slayer tribute band called 'Make it (Ethan) rain'

I've probably said the phrase "That would make a good band name" hundreds of times in my life, and whenever the time comes to actually suggest a band name, I come up blank.

Come up Blank - there you go!

S'alright.

Our work then, is done gentlefolks. Immma head out now, thanks for having me! Keep those doors on solid hinges and eat all of the megacheeses.

My new band name is 'It's Friday losers see you NEVER' (thanks for showing up everyone, this was fun!)

Indeed, thanks all! Game Club will be going on a break while we figure out all the new ownership gubbins, but hopefully we'll liveblog together again soon x