Keep Talking & Nobody Explodes brings bomb defusal to your living room

Pop quiz, hotshot.

There's a bomb in front of you. The bomb is armed and counting down - when it hits zero, the bomb will explode. You don't have the instructions to disarm the bomb, but your partner has the manual in front of them.

Of course, they can't see the bomb. If you want to disarm the bomb you're going to have to describe it to them. What do you do? What do you do?

You keep talking.

That's the premise of VR game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which launches on Steam today promising to bring the frenetic joy of bomb defusing to the masses.

I've had the luck of playing Keep Talking at several events and can confirm that many rounds are every bit the equal of a taut Hollywood defusal scene, albeit with an expert that's already sunk three pints and is moving onto his fourth between sputtering instructions at you.

This full release adds few extra features, with the developers adding procedurally generated bombs for endless play and removing the requirement for VR, allowing you to play it without a headset.

For the most fun though, you should play it in virtual reality and experience the spectacle of it up close.

One cool feature is the ability to play the game remotely. Steel Crate Games has freely released the defusal manual and invited people to play it both locally and over their voice over IP platform of choice.

This is a neat feature, and part of me is tempted to dial a friend on a flip-phone and relive the glory days of 24 by defusing a bomb and yelling 'I have no time' over and over.