Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Sunday Papers

James Archer — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 06:13:39 +0000

Sundays are for looking back at the week and honestly just thinking, yeesh, what are you doing, working in an industry that’s succumbed so deeply and so wilfully to moral decay. The publishers sold to executioners. The naked attempts at thought manipulation. The constant, miserable hum of distrust and paranoia produced by a technology that even bedroom modders, once the poster children of earnest DIY enthusiasm, are now using to cut corners and mislead players. God, it's awful.

Thus, in honour of my dire need to spend this weekend thinking about something else – hopefully that being enough time to reset and rediscover some of the medium’s lingering pleasures – here are some quality reads from the past week, absolutely none of which concern games.

Manage a cafe by day, go to bed and fight in your dreams in a world without sleep by night in Hips N Noses

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 21:53:20 +0000

"Don't even talk to me before I've had my coffee that restores my lost memories!" This is a line I imagine that the general public would oft repeat in the world of Hips N Noses, a cafe management sim/Vampire Survivors-esque roguelike that's set in a world where no one but you can sleep, and everyone's suffering from a touch of amnesia.

Silent Hill: Townfall's devs say they're purposefully playing against your nostalgic tech feelings, but I'm not sure it'll work on me

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 20:35:12 +0000

The Silent Hill series has one of those worlds that I just struggle to conceptually place in a contemporary setting. Sure, that'll partially be down to when the original four games were released, but seeing a faux iPhone in The Short Message just felt wrong to me. So I'm quite pleased by the fact that Silent Hill: Townfall is set in the '90s, replacing the games' iconic radio with a portable CRT. And in doing so, its devs were able to use that now nostalgic tech against us, so say the devs themselves.

Crimson Desert's latest patch is good news for all you moneygrubs, as it adds in a bounty of new trading posts and goods to pawn off

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:05:29 +0000

It feels kind of alarming that Crimson Desert is continuing to put out such regular patches months on from its release. There seems to be something new practically every week! And this week is no different, as another update has arrived in the action RPG that will please the moneygrubs out there.

Got a spare $10? Net yourself almost 150 games and help support laid off game devs with the game industry hardship fund bundle

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 17:01:19 +0000

I don't need to tell you how badly the games industry is doing, right? Badly in the sense of a handful of people desperate to continue making millions are laying off workers by the tens of thousands, with a new layoff story seemingly every week, of course. There's money to be found, just not for those putting in the work. With so many out of work, Necrosoft, the studio behind Demonschool, have decided to do their bit to help out by putting together a bundle of almost 150 games where the proceeds will go towards the game industry hardship fund.

"I sense immense expectations": Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's director on ending the remake trilogy and DLC

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 16:10:39 +0000

Final Fantasy 7 is the game that never seems to end. That's not just because the original PS1 release is filled with things to do, it's because of the subsequent follow-ups that came as part of the Final Fantasy 7 Compilation. It's also because of the whole remake thing that Square Enix has been doing over the past few years, with the third part, Revelation, due out next year. And as hard as it might be to believe, according to director Naoki Hamaguchi, this really will be the end. For the remake trilogy, at least. More or less.

What if Stop Killing Games win? Anthem, SpaceCraft and Warframe devs on the "massive undertaking" of reverse engineering an always-online game

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 13:04:59 +0000

Sci-fantasy shooter Warframe is the sexy cyborg fruit of 13 years of updates and expansions, encompassing scores upon scores of quests, areas, plotlines, systems and characters, together with a huge quantity of player-made art. Much of Warframe's original design still exists within the game, however tweaked and refreshed: the developers have removed a few larger chunks, including the underloved PvP raids, but they've mostly sought to polish up aspects that have lost their lustre, while playing out stories that range from spacey self-referentiality to commentary on indentured work. Currently, the studio are reworking Banshee, a sonic avenger who formed part of the Warframe launch roster way back in 2013.

"I know the Warframe team has been talking about bringing back raids, and doing stuff with that," the game's original design director Scott McGregor told me, at this year's Tennocon expo. "But overall, there's a lot of stuff from Warframe that's been in there for a long, long time. For better or for worse. I think, as a team, instead of mostly turning it off, we either improve it, or we replace it with something better."

What are we all playing this weekend?

James Archer — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 07:01:00 +0000

I wonder what’s going to happen when we eventually run out of crusty old public-domain drawings to put in these. Hopefully by that point the standards of what’s considered ‘old’ will have shifted and we can start using photos and video stills of, I dunno, my fourth birthday party or something. Or maybe Mark can learn woodblock printing and we can make some ourselves. Should Mark learn woodblock printing? Let us know in the comments, and also, what you’re playing this weekend.

All the RPS Supporter rewards for July 2026: space battles, messy desks, and puzzling dreams

James Archer — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:31:36 +0000

As previously explainderised, not only do we want to do a better job of rewarding RPS Supporters with exclusive articles and other fineries, we want to a better job of highlighting what your patronage gets you, including the chance to catch up on exclusives you may have missed. Here, then, is the first in a series of roundups in which we bring together all of the past month’s Supporter articles, plus recaps of any news and developments around the program itself.

And, if you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed: like what you see? Becoming an RPS Supporter is the best way to help sustain the work that we do, and on top of everything here – plus all other Supporter-exclusive articles, past and future – you’ll also get fully ad-free browsing across the site. Bargain.

Massive Fallout: New Vegas mod Fallout: New California hits GOG, offering another way to get some "proper, story-driven Fallout" in your belly

Mark Warren — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:12:02 +0000

DLC-sized Fallout: New Vegas mod Fallout: New California's now available via GOG, offering an easy way to give it a go if it's long sat on your lost of mods to try at some point before the universe dies.

Nexus Mods update their generative AI-made mod tagging policy, dividing one label into three for more specific search filtering

Mark Warren — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:18:18 +0000

As you might be aware, mods made using generative AI - either to directly generate the likes of character voices or for tasks linked to development - seem to be getting more common as the controversial tech continues to become tougher to avoid no matter where you're looking. Such mods aren't against the rules of modding site Nexus Mods, provided they don't infringe on the rights of voice actors or use assets without permission and are appropriately tagged. This week, the modding site have moved to tighten up the latter, dividing a single AI-generated content tag into three more specific ones.

20 years ago, Dead Rising showed a different path for open worlds, and more games should pinch its ideas

Phil Iwaniuk — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Photojournalist Frank West is heli-dropped into the Willamette Parkview mall, following a tip-off that there’s something sinister going down in the sleepy Colorado town. Impressively undeterred by the sight of people eating each other by a school bus during his fly-by, he instructs his pilot to drop him off on the mall roof and return for him in exactly three days.

The rest, more or less, is up to you. If you decide to do absolutely nothing but lounge around in the security room for 72 in-game hours, Dead Rising doesn’t care. The chopper turns up on schedule, you get in and leave. Thanks for the £40, here’s the credits.

EA expect their $55 billion sale to Saudi Arabia and private equity firms to close next week, with "all regulatory approvals required" in place

Mark Warren — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:52:45 +0000

About a week on from getting the thumbs up from the European Commission, the $55 billion leveraged buyout which will see Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner-founded investment firm Affinity Partners become the new owners of EA and take it private is expected to close next week, the company have announced.

A former Assassin's Creed dev is making a ghost-hunting horror mystery based on visits to abandoned convents, in which your greatest weapon is a chunky instant camera

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:27:37 +0000

What's the next logical games industry career step after being a cinematic director on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a lead cinematic consultant on XCOM: The Bureau, and a director at Ubisoft Montreal working on Assassin's Creed Unity and the recently reborn 1666: Amsterdam? If you answered "explore abandoned convents with a camera crew, proceed to make a horror game about it", then you are clearly Jesse Malcolm Sweet, developer of Sisters of Solitude, and I'll thank you to keep your nose out of my drafts. G'wan, get thee to a nunnery!

Midnight Moments is a cyberpunk diorama builder for the neon sign and drizzly rain lovers

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:52:19 +0000

I'm finding the relatively recent trend of supposedly calming diorama builders in games to be an interesting one in that there's a clear desire amongst creatively inclined folks to be crafting something in virtual environments, just not necessarily at scale. Just this week I wrote about Sandcastle, a literal sandbox game where you build sandcastles, and of course there's Tiny Glade too which good ole Christian Donlan loved. And now there's Midnight Moments, a cyberpunk diorama builder that has me thinking about the function of these games.

Rideshare "Stimulator" is an Uber driver sim set in a city full of weirdos that I'm hoping is satirical enough to pull the concept off

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:30:52 +0000

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 developer Saber Interactive clearly like to keep themselves busy, as today they've announced the next game that they're publishing. It's called Rideshare "Stimulator" (I should note those quotation marks are a part of the title), and it is essentially a game all about being an Uber driver for a city full of oddballs.

Machine Party, out now, is masochistic Mario Party from the dev that brought you Buckshot Roulette

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 19:01:10 +0000

There is an obvious humour to be found in the contrast between the visual presentation of Mario Party and the agita and unbridled rage it brings out in people. This is not a game about violence, yet it pulls it out from people nonetheless. So, how about something that leans into this violence, while still retaining the jovially competitive nature? Enter Machine Party, the latest from Buckshot Roulette developer Mike Klubnika, made alongside GDeavid, a party game "where failure is lethal."

RuneScape: Dragonwilds revamps the agility skill and gives you Wipeout style courses to test your mettle on

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:04:11 +0000

Skills in RuneScape have always tickled me because of the sheer variety on display, and this extends to Dragonwilds too. There's magic, but then there's woodcutting. You've got prayer, and also fishing. And of course you've got runecrafting, or agility. It's that last one that's important for today's purposes, as a new update has arrived in Dragonwilds that revamp the skill, as well as add in some courses for you to pseudo-parkour across.

Thimbleweed Park 2 is "not really a sequel, not really a prequel," but it is in development and due out in 2028

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:04:49 +0000

Hark! I bring word of some good news for those of you with an appetite for adventure games with tasty pixel art. You may remember that Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert was working on a game that was described as "Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park." That got canned at the end of last year, unfortunately, but the spirit of Thimbleweed Park lives on. Literally! As Thimbleweed Park 2 is in the works.

Your most powerful Necron unit in Dawn of War 4 is a sentient shard of a dead star god, and boy does he hate you

Julian Benson — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0000

In Dawn of War 4, each faction can field a massive endgame unit that basically dwarfs everything else on the battlefield. For instance, the machine-loving techpriests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they can airdrop a multistory tall mech from space. This Titan will then merrily stomp around the battlefield crushing everything in its way. However, of all the factions, the Necrons – Games Workshop's equivalent of The Terminator – can bring to bear the most powerful. Called a C'Tan Shard of the Void Dragon, this spearwielding megaunit is a machine-bound fragment of a shattered god.

Unlike the other faction's endgame units, which reserve their rage for the enemy, the Necron's big unit has as much hate for its masters as it does its enemies.

Helldivers 2's Warhammer 40k warbond finally gets a release date, will let you bust out the meltaguns and meltamines

Mark Warren — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:26:57 +0000

After tease upon tease upon tease, Helldivers 2's Warhammer 40k crossover warbond will finally arrive on August 12th. If you splash out for it, you'll get a box of gear, stratagems and cosmetics inspired by the Astra Militarum's elite Cadian Kasrkin troops.

To escalate its relationship-straining putting contests, Golf With Your Friends 2 is turning to chaos and custom courses

James Archer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:59:05 +0000

Before friendslop, there was friendgolf. Sorry, Golf With Your Friends. Released in early access in 2016, Blacklight Interactive’s devilishly competitive crazy golf sim ended up joining Among Us as a Covid lockdown darling, allowing those of us bored with pretending not to betray and victimise our oldest chums on spaceships to do so openly, on cartoon golfing greens. Now Golf With Your Friends 2 is in the works, at Golf 1’s DLC developers Radical Forge, and it sounds like it wants to ensnare you and your mates in a series of club-and-ball arguments for eternity.

Halo on helium has arrived less than a week after modders got their hands on Campaign Evolved, though AI might've been used to chipmunk Chief and Cortana

Mark Warren — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:13:29 +0000

Update: Exactly two minutes after publishing, I noticed that Halo - Chipmunk Edition's creator has AI-generated music videos on their YouTube channel. Laugh rescinded pending further evidence. Beware that searching for Halo: Campaign Evolved mods is very much a game of avoid/try to spot the AI use at the moment for those averse to the tech.

Original story follows:

Halo: Campaign Evolved's now it's out in full, so naturally the mods are flowing. In taking a look through the early ones, which include the usual sorts of performance a graphical tweaks which crop up for every new release, I've stumbled across a few works I'd class as pulling off interesting or noteworthy stuff thus far. There's a mod which purports to activate split-screen co-op the devs have left sitting behind the scenes and another which swaps Cortana's lines for ones from the original Combat Evolved. Both of those have been made using AI - Claude in one case, OpenAI Codex in the other.

So, I tried digging a bit deeper into the early combat mods which don't have any AI shoutouts in their descriptions. That's led me to Halo - Chipmunk Edition.

"Our business did not grow with our audience": post-layoffs, Xbox execs are trying to sell a gaming division bounce back by summer 2027

Mark Warren — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:44:48 +0000

Efforts by those now running Xbox to convince onlookers that the gaming division of Microsoft is now in a better place to start hauling in the ever-growing money numbers those overseeing it crave have continued alongside Microsoft first financial report since this month's mass layoffs. Both Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and her boss Satya Nadella have declared they're looking for the division to be growing financially again by about this time next year.

BeamNG.drive, Steam's finest car pancake maker, gets its biggest update yet with overhauled graphics, fresh rally stages and a sporty new coupe

Mark Warren — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:41:43 +0000

BeamNG.drive's long been one of the easiest games to reccomend to a car lover cruising the streets of Steam. As Graham wrote in 2017, it's a moddable sandbox dedicated to vehicular destruction physics, in which every bump, crumple, and slam results in a glorious bending of metal and smashing of glass. BeamNG's been growing via updates for ages, and its devs say the latest is the biggest yet.

I'm not going to 100% roguelite strategy spinoff Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand, but it does breathe new life into some of the series' oldest features

Julian Benson — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0000

I’d put my six-pounder anti-tank guns in the perfect position to halt the Tigers’ advance. The German tanks would have to cross the bridge, keeping them packed together, and the derailed train on their flank would keep them from spreading out too much before they came into range of my British gunners’ heavy ordnance.

Being the twelfth and last wave of this game of Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand, if I could put down the tanks' advance I'd win the match and take home a healthy bushel of perk points to upgrade my faction for future matches.

But then the blasted Luftwaffe arrived.

Stealth and armour placement rule supreme in Tyr, the new tank shooter from former Destiny and Valorant devs, with a public playtest now live

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 16:00:17 +0000

Kaboom! A trailer has just landed in your inbox, blasting your laptop apart in a sputter of copper and fossilised breadcrumbs. You scan the horizon desperately with your binoculars, but there is no sign of the aggressor. Then: kablam! An incendiary press release whistles into the wreckage of your computer. You unscrunch it with smouldering fingers, and read the words: the first public playtest for Tyr is underway, running till 2nd August.

What is Tyr? Kablooie! A high-explosive Steam page link reduces what remains of your PC to atoms. Ah, I see: Tyr is a new multiplayer tank shooter from Stoke Games, a team of former League of Legends, Valorant, StarCraft 2, and Destiny 2 developers. In case I hadn't spelled things out enough, it puts a high price on visibility and reconnaissance. What you can't see can most definitely turn you into a crater. Here's that trailer.

"The Case of the Golden Idol-style deduction meets The X-Files": Former BioWare devs unveil supernatural detective game The Eventide

James Archer — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:00:07 +0000

Remember that paranormal, protagonist-juggling adventure game in the works at Studio Reset, an indie outfit formed by former Mass Effect/Dragon's Age staffers? It’s just been fully revealed as The Eventide, with a debut trailer to show off its watercoloured, reality-warping take on a neon-noir detective yarn.

Krafton have big plans for Subnautica, after the second game's once-divisive co-op "confirmed the potential to expand beyond the existing fan base"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 13:18:54 +0000

Subnautica 2 publishers Krafton may have had to pay Unknown Worlds a massive earn-out, after losing a farcical courtroom battle with ousted studio execs, but they're tickled pink by the ocean survival game's sales. According to Krafton's latest quarter-year financials, Subnautica 2 has sold over five million units since the early access launch.

They're now trumpeting its potential to become "our second franchise IP" after PUBG, in the words of head of investor relations Sophie Lee, which indicates that they're not only thinking about a possible Subnautica 3, but eyeing up Subnautica crossovers of all kinds. Think of the merchandising! Alterra lunchboxes! Reaper-branded cans of sardines! Nibbler Mango bodypillows! Maybe some kind of dastardly LLM-piloted luxury submarine!

Serve refreshments and spot demons in Night Plane, a PSX-style horror job sim about being a flight attendant in 1999

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:38:32 +0000

There's been a glut of horror-themed job sims lately, from 2025's atrocious smileorama Hellmart to the recent multiplayer offering Shift At Midnight, in which you try not to endorse the existence of any doppelgangers by accidentally selling them groceries. It's been fun, but friends, we have now gone too far.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers sequel in the works from original director's new studio, which bears the wonderful name Indolphinity

Mark Warren — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:01:30 +0000

Chinese soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is getting a sequel, set to be developed by a new studio helmed by the first game's director. Rather than original studio Lenzee, the new Wuchang entry's being made by Indolphinity - or the Chengdu Recursive Dolphin Technology Company - and published by 505 Games.

"Dragon Age: Origins wasn’t the most attractive game": BioWare's old series producer still thinks a DA remaster trilogy is worth it, but the knowhow isn't there

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 10:30:00 +0000

Former Dragon Age series producer Mark Darrah has shared his tuppence worth on the likelihood of BioWare and EA ever commissioning a full-on original Dragon Age trilogy remaster or remake. He thinks such a remastering or remakering would sell pretty well, not least because OG Dragon Age looks like a toilet bowl in a Silent Hill game (I exaggerate the sentiments here slightly). But he also thinks the odds of such a project are low, for the straightforward reason that nobody either inside or outside BioWare really understands the proprietary technology those older RPGs run on. Ah well. We'll always have the mods.

GTA Online in-game gambling reportedly blocked in Australia, leaving folks down under locked out of Diamond Casino games

Mark Warren — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 10:04:25 +0000

GTA Online players in Australia have reportedly found themselves suddenly barred from the litany of in-game gambling minigames found in Los Santos' Diamond Casino, with the change seemingly the result of developers Rockstar adding the country to their list of places where access to such minigames is restricted.

"I genuinely think there's awesome potential": Mike Bithell on his "im-slim" Vampirium: 1997 and the power of quick verbs

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:55:54 +0000

When you start to think about verbs in games, you start to realise how few of them are really at your disposal in most releases. There's only so many features a game can have after all, particularly a 3D one. But for Mike Bithell and his next game Vampirium: 1997, keeping things slim lets him put a new verb in without much hassle.

After gaining independence from Xbox, Double Fine are laying off a quarter of their staff

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:24:44 +0000

It's another one of those days, as Double Fine have announced that they are laying off 23 members of staff. This comes weeks after their split from Xbox that left them independent once more, which also saw South of Midnight developers Compulsion go indie, and State of Decay studio Undead Labs and Senua's Ninja Theory acquired by new, as of yet to be confirmed owners.

Inviting beaches and delightful physics await you in literal sandbox game, Sandcastle

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:02:35 +0000

As someone that partially grew up by the seaside, I always kind of forget that there are plenty of city folk out there who just haven't experienced the beach. It's a tragedy! Or a blessing, depending on your tolerance for sunburns, and children covered in ice cream, and finding sand in places you didn't even know existed for days on end. So, how about a game that allows you to have a bit of fun in the sun where all you do is build sandcastles in a physics-accurate literal sandbox called (predictably) Sandcastle?

Two years on from taking the role, Wizards of the Coast's president is stepping down

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:01:21 +0000

Wizards of the Coast president John Hight is stepping down from the role. As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing from July 27th revealed that Hight will be moving on from the role come September 1st. This doesn't mean he's leaving the company completely, as he'll be shifting into an advisor role. The change in role comes roughly two years after Hight took it in August 2024, and after WOTC owner Hasbro took a $56 million impairment charge last week.

Mistfall Hunter looks like legally distinct Elden Ring but with a faster paced, extraction spin

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:30:23 +0000

On its surface, aesthetically Mistfall Hunter certainly looks like a game where if you were doomscrolling and briefly saw a gif of it in action, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's from Elden Ring. The game certainly apes FromSoftware's dark fantasy, selectively colourful vibe, but it is offering up something different under the hood at least, as rather than your dime a dozen soulslike, it's opted for the slightly trendier extraction approach.

"I didn’t fully appreciate the scope of it": a year on from taking over, Nexus Mods owners reflect on the challenges of their push to minimise modding hassle

Mark Warren — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:59:46 +0000

Last June, modding site Nexus Mods announced an ownership change. Site founder Robin 'Dark0ne' Scott stepped back, and in came a number of new leaders from Danish firm Chosen - principally Chosen CEO Victor Folmann. A year and a bit on from taking the reigns, Folmann's put up a post reflecting on the new regime's first year running the modding site and outlining hopes to turn it into "an operating system for user-generated content in gaming" in the long term.

"I wish I could do that": A developer on The Sims has been eyeing up Paralives' characters' asymmetric shoes and their wider possibilities

Julian Benson — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:24:11 +0000

Asymmetric shoes may not seem like a big deal. I mean, if we look past the cultural mountain that was climbed to turn the faux pas of odd socks into a proud fashion statement of mismatched shoes, asymmetric footwear is just that, right? Two different shoes.

Yet, for one of the senior character artists working on the Sims, competitor Paralives' support for non-uniform footwear signifies something much more significant.

Nioh 3's Hell Rising DLC will sword thrust the soulslike's yokai-battling action into decimated Keian era Edo when it arrives next month

Mark Warren — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Nioh, far, wherever you are. I've probably made that bad pun before, but seriously, I hope our guides writer Jeremy's not close to any desks right now. Nioh 3, that game that pushed the poor bloke to the point of violence against the contents of his home, is getting its first major DLC next month. The expansion's dubbed Hell Rising, and kicks off a two-part story with a trip to a decimated version of Japanese capital Edo during the Keian era.

Toxic yuri story Kaschei is a marvelous free visual novel that turns your Downloads folder into a little labyrinth of mirrors

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:30:24 +0000

I too often default to thinking of videogames as singular, monolithic things, rather than hives of collectively made functions and assets, secreted behind a launcher icon. Kaschei, an experimental visual novel created for Toxic Yuri VN Jam 2, is an openly piecemeal arrangement of mutually informing or sabotaging fictions, stretched across different interfaces and timeframes, held together by a lot of lovely and hateful emotions. A really good kind of carefully networked, absolute mess. People and pieces in orbit.

Civilization 7's latest update adds more depth to peace deal brokerage and leader relations, as Firaxis gear up for "bigger additions"

Mark Warren — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:33:29 +0000

Civ 7's July update drops today, July 28th, delivering a handful of useful tweaks as devs Firaxis continue to build on their substantial revamp of the strategy game via its Test of Time update. This time around, adding more depth to interactions between the player and other civs is the focus, via changes to peace deals and leader relationship mechanics.

Overthrow the Kaiser in Red Echoes: Berlin, a Weimar-era turn-based strategy game in the style of Suzerain

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:32:50 +0000

Red Echoes: Berlin is a narrative-driven turn-based strategy game in which you join the German "November Revolution" across 1918 and 1919, during the final days of World War 1. Over the course of three chapters, you'll play as three budding agitators from different walks of life, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. You'll move your subversives around a beautiful Berlin map inspired by "classic Weimar-era graphic design", deploying their special abilities against the minions of the state.

That evil Car Park Capital tycoon game is only getting more evil with MicroProse as publisher, but it still looks gorgeous

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:37:25 +0000

Car Park Capital is a triumphantly unwholesome tycoon game in which you try to make an entire society utterly dependent on cars. You start with a relatively green-ish map, and do your best to tarmac it all over. A strange and unlikely prospect, I know!

When we first covered this motorist management sim last year, the options included putting up billboards to brainwash obstinate pedestrians, and selling people banana-mobiles. Since then, developer Hilko Janssen of Hilkojj Interactive has found a publisher in MicroProse. If you were hoping that MicroProse might persuade Janssen to give up on his visions of total automotive apocalypse, you were hoping in vain.

Dragon Age: Thedas at War is a BioWare RPG-inspired Crusader Kings 3 total conversion mod that's here to keep the series alive while it sits in EA limbo

Mark Warren — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 14:42:13 +0000

Who knows when or if BioWare'll ever be allowed to make a follow-up to Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Whatever ends up being the future of a series EA've left in a rather ambiguous place, a group of Crusader Kings 3 modders have stepped up to make a Dragon Age total conversion that lets folks play out a bit of their own kingdom-battling history in Thedas.

"I dunno why they chose Crashphalt": forgotten Steam game suddenly becomes a hit after players start using it for Undertale online multiplayer

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:30:00 +0000

Released back in 2018, Crashphalt is a free and eccentric multiplayer game in which players do ground-pounds to send out seismic ripples, striving to punt each other off-screen. It's got an "overwhelmingly positive" Steam user review reception, as of writing, but that's not entirely a judgement on its quality. You see, Crashphalt is a hit today partly because you need it to run an online multiplayer mod for Toby Fox's wonderful RPG Undertale.

Of Crashphalt's 555 currently existing user reviews, the vast majority were written over five years after release, and either totally disregard or cruelly dunk on Crashphalt. An example: "10/10 Funny Undertale game, will never play this."

STALKER 2's Cost of Hope expansion, and its free but still hopeful 2.0 update, get an August release date

James Archer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:00:20 +0000

Grab your Geiger counter and your copy of The Arbinger Institute’s seminal conflict resolution handbook The Anatomy of Peace, because STALKER 2’s faction war-y story expansion Cost of Hope has a release date. It’s out on August 20th, developers GSC Game World have announced, and will launch in tandem with the long-awaited Update 2.0 – which, among other tweaks, will move the base game over to a newer, less technically perilous version of Unreal Engine 5.

Myst devs Cyan Worlds show off prototype for Project Anglerfish, a canned entry in the noted long-time RPS favourite series

Mark Warren — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 11:59:49 +0000

We famously love a bit of Myst here at RPS. Always have. So, naturally, Cyan Worlds deciding to bust out a teaser for a new game in the Mystverse that's since been cancelled caught our attention.

This week in PC games: a battle royale detective game, a broken Y2K metaverse, a laptop tycoon sim, and a new Company of Heroes RTS

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:44:00 +0000

Hello all! Welcome to another week of sordid digital diversions, aka new PC games, dumped upon the innocent wanderer like a chamberpot upended over your head by a Victorian maid, as you saunter down an alleyway in your finest crinoline and lobster tail bustle. How are you supposed to attend the Crown Prince's soirée in this bedraggled state? In vain do you shake your reeking fists at the chambermaid, for she is a minion of the Maw, and only squawks with glee. You totter out of the alleyway, mopping your face with your nosegay, and are promptly arrested for being a public obscenity.

Enough of this pissy period palaver! Our list of the week's most promising new PC releases awaits. It's a longer edition, possibly because my laptop audio stopped working halfway through the curation process, so I may have included a few extra games that sound absolutely abysmal.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls open beta beaten and bashed by PC performance issues, Arc System Works "apologise for the impact this has had on your experience"

Mark Warren — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:24:58 +0000

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' pre-launch open beta has just wrapped up, having been open over the weekend. Sadly, those who've given the fighter a go on PC over the past few days have run into a litany of issues, leaving developers Arc System Works apologising for the inconvenience and scrambling to provide fixes.

The Sunday Papers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for sobbingly lifting exactly one boulder from the groaning dreampile that is my backlog. Good news, Vacuity, cpt_freakout and the rest – I'm trying out your precious, precious Troubleshooter game. I hear it's a hundred hours long, so please do not take this as a promise that a write-up is forthcoming. So far my major takeaways are 1) I enjoy collecting masteries, aka packages of abilities and modifiers, and 2) this "Short Break" track is cooool. Please hum along while browsing our latest collection of Rollicking Reads.

Commit cinematic sacrilege in Baldur's Gate 3 with this true third-person camera mod

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:51:54 +0000

Video game cameras are often a point of contention primarily because a bad one can completely disorient you, or even outright make you feel sick. These are worthwhile things to consider, but I do wish there was more of a discussion around the specific choices that are made in particular camera angles and positions, and how it might actually be important that certain games should be played in the way they are designed. I'm going to throw all of that out of the window right now though and tell you about a Baldur's Gate 3 true third-person camera mod.

Ringwyrm might have a nasty sounding name, but its action horror, fantasy Soviet vibes are too compelling to ignore

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 20:32:57 +0000

If we ignore the many, many negatives that came with the late 90s/early 2000s era of video marketing, there was a certain charm to the edginess that I kind of wish was still around in some ways. I say that because of a recently revealed immersive action horror shooter named Ringwyrm, that, were it to have released in that era, so easily could have had a tagline like, "The only time you'll be happy you've got Ringwyrm." Alas!

Thick as Thieves studio does what triple-A won't: keep its game playable

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:00:27 +0000

Poor Thick as Thieves. When it was revealed over two years ago it had some promise, or at the very least an interesting mechanical premise in that it was a multiplayer immersive sim where everyone would be competing for the same loot. This got downgraded earlier this year ahead of its launch to just solo or co-op play, a real shame but hey ho, how many co-op imsims are there anyway? Sadly, the game has clearly not done well, as a number of layoffs have taken place at developer OtherSide Entertainment following its launch. But at the very least, what's left of the studio has some positive news: it won't become unplayable.

Sega like physical games too, says their president, but with the shift to digital they're keeping the humble PC in mind

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 17:20:49 +0000

I don't see Sony going back on their plans to embrace a discless PlayStation future, but I do wonder if they realised just how many of us would continue to talk about it for as long as we have. Even RPS got involved, and us PC lot had to abandon discs a millenia ago! And now Sega, former physical media producers themselves, have wandered into the conversation, even throwing a bone to the computer preferring collective that we all are.

Final Fantasy 14's Evercold expansion brings aboard a Final Fantasy 7 collab and a job that's all about fighting with massive shields

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 16:14:45 +0000

Finally, a Final Fantasy 14 job made specifically for the type of person who likes to dual wield shields in Dark Souls! The latest FF14 fan festival is taking place, and with that has come a suite of announcements, including a reveal at one of the two new jobs coming as part of the next expansion, Evercold.

What are we all playing this weekend?

James Archer — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 07:01:00 +0000

I spent most of last Saturday laid out in a Baku hotel room, muscles in both legs ground to flecks of useless meat by the decision to walk down a mountain when there was a perfectly good funicular right there. May this weekend be more fruitful, and less marred by the stupidity of trying to please a step counter that only truly cares about where its next battery charge is coming from. Ruinous silicone bastard.

You can trade in your enemy's teeth to "bend" time in vampire RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker, care of some really horrible Tooth Fairies

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0000

I've been vaguely looking forward to grotty dark fantasy RPG The Blood Of Dawnwalker, despite its genAI flirtations. To recap, it casts you as a medieval vampire fledgling whose family has been abducted by another, boss vampire. You've got 30 days and nights to save your loved ones while deciding just how much you're going to succumb to the gore-guzzling curse.

Blizzard fire World Of Warcraft developer over use of forbidden magicks to insta-kill bosses for regular players during dungeon run

Mark Warren — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:08:17 +0000

World of Warcraft studio Blizzard have announced that they've fired a developer after development-only spells were used to insta-kill some Mythic+ dungeon bosses for a party of non-dev adventurers. The studio will also be "taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation", which was unearthed by some combat log sleuths.

HyperX Pulsefire Saga gaming mouse review: modular parts win hearts

James Archer — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:48:50 +0000

If the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike’s analogue clickers were all about fine-tuning the sensation at the very tips of your mousing fingers, the HyperX Pulsefire Saga is all about adjusting the parts nestled in the rest of your hand. To nowhere near the same extent, granted, but the Saga’s modular components – and the fact that it costs a fraction of what the X2 Superstrike does – make it appealing addition to your wired mouse options.

13 years on, unfinishable survival game Project Zomboid is getting a major update with an expanded Kentucky map, animal husbandry, and revised crafting

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:08:54 +0000

I return to Project Zomboid exactly like an emaciated survivor crawling back to the undead-ridden town they abandoned many moons ago, having finally exhausted their wilderness stocks of cabbage and duct tape. I poke my head into the Steam forums as though cracking the door on a suspiciously silent mall.

Surprise, Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition's Baltic Powers expansion has re-emerged from the annals of cancelled DLC history, will come out in September

Mark Warren — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:58:43 +0000

Ah! You hadn't totally retreated from the battlefield following your cancellation in early 2025, Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition's Baltic Powers DLC! It was just one of your strategic tricks to lull your enemies into a false sense of security. Now, with the time finally being right, you've re-emerged to stake your claim on a September release.

I enjoy Fallgrade's grainy physics-defying city almost as much as I fear its foggy giant spider

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:27:55 +0000

It is said that to name a wild thing is to tame it, to delimit and temper it, to defuse its menace. The giant, vaporous spider in Fallgrade is called Karl. Know any Karls? Are you a Karl? I wonder if it's Karl as in Karl Marx. Perhaps it's a reference to arachnid imagery in anti-Communist propaganda, though arachnid imagery isn't the exclusive preserve of anti-Communists.

Myself, I tend to associate the name "Karl" with paperweights, for reasons my brain refuses to explain to me. And yet, for all these steadying associations, Karl the spider still gives me the willies. Nothing tame about that thing at all.

"Let's make a better world": Denshattack's developers on counterculture, biker gangs, and the optimism of fighting a mecha with a train

James Archer — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:47:34 +0000

In hindsight, I was a fool for meeting Denshattack’s satirical, irreverent, downright countercultural sensibilities with surprise. Upbeat, even goofy as it is for a train driving game, it shares more common ground with skateboarding games, and while the commodification of skater culture is certainly A Thing, few skaters have ever reapplied their asphalt-eating skills to bootlicking.

What remains striking, though, is how specifically '2026' Denshattack's targets are. The main baddies are a rogue big tech company, deploying all your current favourite social ills: enforced inequality, mass surveillance, misinformation-spewing talking heads, police violence, and soulless AI replacing true craft and skill. If only it did a bit on mass layoffs, it would have had a full set. You meet them with force, too, assembling a crew that resembles a Greatest Hits of Japanese normbreaker groups while repeatedly ramming your engine through those oppressive mechanisms at top-gear Skinkansen speeds.

The result is that Denshattack manages to have it both ways, being fully capable of stretching a daft grin across your face, yet possessing a radical heart that wards off the sense – and, indeed, accusations – that this is just an ironic bit of comedy train capering. Yet according to David Jaumandreu, game director at developers Undercoders, Denshattack was never consciously given a political voice – it simply emerged, logically and naturally, from its Japan being shaped as a more locomotive-mad version of the real one.

Kingdom Come Salvation could be Warhorse's next medieval history RPG, if this EU trademark filing turns out to be the genuine article

Mark Warren — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:12:04 +0000

Kingdom Come Deliverance developers Warhorse confirmed back in May that they've got a "new Kingdom Come adventure" in the works, alongside a Lord of the Rings RPG. The name of the former looks like it may now have been revealed via a freshly filed EU trademark for the phrase 'Kingdom Come Salvation'.

Sweeping, strafing and suppression: Total War: Warhammer 40,000 threatens to blow up Total War's combat fundamentals

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 10:05:38 +0000

Perhaps predictably, Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer 40,000 could be quite the step change for how Total War handles ranged combat. Yesterday, the developers livestreamed a battle between the Imperium and the Orks, while chatting enthusiastically about the nuances of drop pods and flamers and evasion stats.

Like a gretchin war reporter – there are Ork journalists, right? Newswaaaagh? Gubbinzfeed? The Wall Street Choppa? – I've been running from foxhole to foxhole, jotting down notes. The conclusion I've come to is that the new strategy game could diverge quite significantly from the archers-behind-spearguys square dance of older Twars. Your units are more autonomous and also, more flexible and smarter in terms of who they shoot with what.

Thwack, the Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls open beta is underway, and, pow, Phoenix Cyclops is coming as a post-launch DLC fighter

Mark Warren — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 09:29:55 +0000

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' pre-launch open beta has opened its doors today, July 24th. It's set to run until July 27th, so offers a chance to end your week with some superhero graps prior to the game's full launch early next month. Meanwhile, Arc System Works have revealed the first fighter set to arrive as part of Fighting Souls year one batch of post-launch DLC in autumn. It's Phoenix Cyclops.

Dinoblade, out now, is equal parts janky, genuinely sick and silly as hell

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:15:00 +0000

Four years ago, a developer called Jean Nguyen shared a short video on Dwitter of a spinosaurus pulling off a sick combo with Cloud Strife's Buster Sword. This, of course, blew up, but it wasn't actually a game, just some animation work from the dev. And then, somewhere along the line, Nguyen decided to make it into an actual game. It's now called Dinoblade, it's out today, and it is jank and over top in exactly the right ways, and genuinely a rip roaring time.

I've yet to smash open a Dyson Sphere in sci-fi RTS Sanctuary: Shattered Sun, but I'm enjoying its take on Supreme Commander

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Sanctuary: Shattered Sun is the kind of unwholesomely large real-time strategy game where you keep accidentally auto-constructing 50 missile trucks because you were preoccupied with (e.g.) a massive spiderbot offensive on the other side of an ocean. Those things breed like rabbits! Still, easy come, easy go: simply charge your 50 superfluous missile trucks into the nearest line of energy domes, and watch as they, the enemy, and everybody we have ever loved disintegrates in about 20 seconds.

Shattered Sun does reward micromanagement – "every projectile is simulated", the devs proclaim, which means you can dance your tanks away from incoming shells – and also encourages resource efficiency, with a "flow-based economy" that hinges on access to generators and alloy extraction sites. But going by my hour with the demo, it more immediately rewards the act of scooping together a continent-sized deathball and rolling it through the nearest pocket of red on your map.

Saudi Arabia's $55 billion EA buyout approved by the European Commission, who say it doesn't "raise competition concerns"

Mark Warren — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:09:47 +0000

The $55 billion leveraged buyout which will see Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner-founded investment firm Affinity Partners become the new owners of EA has been given the thumbs up by the European Commission. The body have ruled that the acquisition's ok as far as the EU's rules on mergers go, and that it doesn't "raise competition concerns".

Terrific castle-building sim Cataclismo is being transformed into a chunky strategy boardgame, care of a paid Old Kingdom expansion

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:35:00 +0000

Excellent real-time castle defender Cataclismo is getting a DLC expansion, The Old Kingdom, which transforms it into a hex-based strategy boardgame. Players must hexpand from citadel to citadel, shoring up supply lines and unlocking technology while fending off the minions of the Mist. Please aim your Lobbers and Cannoneers at this trailer.

Rockstar Games Workers Union say their first meeting with the GTA 6 studio's management was "a step in the right direction"

Mark Warren — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:03:45 +0000

The recently formed Rockstar developer union - officially the Rockstar Games Workers Union - have had their first meeting with management at the GTA 6 maker, whom they're still seeking voluntary recognition from. The union, who're part of the wider Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB), have called this first meeting "a step in the right direction" and that they've secured "a roadmap for a speedy negotiation process".

You only get one, permakillable Jedi Padawan in Star Wars Zero Company, but that's fine because I'm going to roll an R2-D2 deathsquad anyway

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:32:20 +0000

Star Wars Zero Company is the XCOM-style tactics RPG in which you, a Clone Wars-era roughneck called Hawks, lead a squad of "unconventional professionals" into battle against some enigmatic threat to the galaxy. Among these unconventional professionals is a Jedi Padawan, Tel-Rea. Her moves include dual-wielding lightsabers and Force Pushing mooks into overwatch zones. What a beast! Be careful with your Tel-Rea, though: you only get one of her, and she's permakillable. There's no option to train up a replacement Jedi Padawan as a custom operator.

The Incident At Galley House review – an enthralling deduction game that can't escape the genre's classic problem

Julian Benson — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:50:00 +0000

The machine before me looks like Frankenstein's homebrew version of Guess Who. Its main panel is composed of three rows of portraits. Some show men in 1930s suits, others women in flapper dresses, still more are simply blue people-shaped silhouettes. Below each portrait is a simple on/off switch. To the left of the portraits is a slide selector alongside a list of locations. Above that is a radio dial and filament lights indicating a current setting. At the bottom of the machine is a readout displaying a cryptic code '01-QU-1-11'. And, to the right, most enticing of all, is a big red lever.

It may not be much to look at, but calibrated correctly, this machine lets me hear the dead. It's a good thing, too, because there are plenty of corpses at Galley House.

Oblivion Remastered's lengthy patch drought could end with its Switch 2 release, which Bethesda say includes "optimisations" they hope to bring to PC

Mark Warren — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:30:00 +0000

It's been just over a year since Oblivion Remastered got update 1.2, a patch aiming to improve its performance and fix a bunch of bugs that'd been floating around since release. Since that point, the Elder Scrolls 4 revamp's been without any major updates, despite problems persisting.

The good news, or potential good news, is that Bethesda have now confirmed that the game's Switch 2 port features "optimisations" they're hoping to bring to PC at some juncture.

Indie open worlder Future? No Thanks! gets last minute delay after Steam content mods allegedly demand a "watch the sex scene" button

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:06:26 +0000

Entertaining open world satire Future? No Thanks! has been abruptly delayed by Steam content reviewers, due to the presence of multiple seconds of "untextured polygons depicting ass and boobs". In a statement, developer Paulo "Molleindustria" Pedercini reveals that Valve's moderation teams have had the game under review for "more than three weeks", but have yet to make a call. Steamworks documentation suggests that content review should take no more than seven business days.

Stalker 2 studio founder's claims that Xbox paid more for exclusivity than the game cost to make "do not reflect the actual facts", according to GSC Game World

Mark Warren — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Stalker 2 studio GSC Game World have refuted claims from their original founder Sergiy Grygorovych, who left GSC in 2023, that Xbox paid more than the game cost to make as part of an exclusivity deal for it.

Blasphemous and Sekiro enjoyers may savour the boss rushing of Rubinite, a dark fantasy action RPG about a red-eyed murder princess

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:27:06 +0000

If I've learned anything from years of dark fantasy, it's that there's no force in this universe more terrible than a puny-looking girl with a kitchen knife. Just ask Katana Man, or the Queen of Hearts. Or the lolloping wolfbeast I've recently disembowelled in Rubinite, a pretty slick and engrossingly evil boss rush action game from Gameworks Ventures and Cup Dog Games, which is on sale today.

Steam wishlists are getting categories, making it even easier to organise all those games you'll definitely buy next sale

Oisin Kuhnke — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:32:01 +0000

If there's anything I know about Steam users, it's that they bloody love that wishlist system. Hundreds, if not thousands of games, all plonked in a single list that we can pretend we'll go through eventually to pick out some corkers we know we'll love, even though we know we'll just play the same thing we always do because the exhaustion of daily life limits what we can take in? Bloody lovely that is! And now, we'll be able to organise that even further, as categories are being added in.

Laid off Bethesda Montreal staff allegedly told they'd get "smallest severance legally possible" the same day as those Fallout announcements

Oisin Kuhnke — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:54:52 +0000

Last week, in the wake of yet another round of mass layoffs across the company, Xbox announced that Fallout 5 is in preproduction, Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters are coming, and that Obsidian are working on a new Fallout project. If you were to ignore the 1600 staffers laid off and the ongoing call for a boycott due to Microsoft providing AI tech to the Israeli military as it continues to bombard Gaza and kill Palestinians, this would possibly be welcome news. But to make matters worse, OneBGS, the Bethesda Game Studios Union, have claimed that on the same day this was announced, laid off workers at Bethesda Montreal were informed that they would "receive the smallest severance legally possible without bargaining with the union."

The Video Game History Foundation's latest collection is a deep dive into E3 "like you've never seen it before"

Oisin Kuhnke — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:08:51 +0000

Ah, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known by many as Summer Game Fes-, wait, sorry, guess I've already moved on! Better known as E3, of course, the first of its kind showcase dedicated entirely to video games that died because it simply couldn't figure out how to live in the modern world (they probably should have asked Geoff). The whole thing ended with much more of a whimper than a bang, but once upon a time it was the place to have your game. And now, the Video Game History Foundation have revealed a new collection all about the event "like you've never seen it before," covering many years worth of a range of materials.

Forgo visiting the real thing this summer and build the waterpark of your dreams in Aquapark Tycoon, now out in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:01:08 +0000

Waterparks have always felt like quite a strange concept to me in that the UK is small enough that you can just take a quick train ride and be at a beach within an hour or so, give or take. We do have them here, I've just had no reason to go one, and also the idea of having to be rescued from the inside of a slide due to getting stuck for one reason or another is a (I think rational) fear I've had since discovering them. Therefore, I'll take a pass on actually visiting one, but I won't say no to building my own in Aquapark Tycoon, a waterpark sim game that's out in early access today.

"The goal is to provide what we can": Elder Scrolls Online Crown Store undergoing changes due to "team bandwidth" in wake of Xbox layoffs

Mark Warren — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:39:15 +0000

Following Microsoft's mass layoffs, The Elder Scrolls Online has ended up in a transitional period while remaining staff work to forge a path forwards. If you want evidence of effects the cuts are already starting to have on the MMO, look no further than its Crown Store.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced modders make Blackbeard playable, but here's a syringe-shaped reason to avoid historically accurate pirate roleplay

Mark Warren — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:30:00 +0000

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced's an idyllic pirate adventure, especially given it trains its eye firmly on Edward Kenway's quest for booty. Naturally, Kenway hangs out with a bunch of real pirates from history throughout his time on the high seas, including the most famous one, Blackbeard. There's now a mod that'll let you play as the bearded buccaneer in Black Flag Resynced. So, here I am to point out a grisly reason you might not fancy getting too into roleplaying as Mr Edward Teach (or Mr Edward Thatch, depending on which accounts you believe).

Dear Frosthaven boardgame players complaining the PC tactics RPG adaptation is bugged: the devs say it's likely you've "played it wrong"

Julian Benson — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:52:10 +0000

Frosthaven, and Gloomhaven before it, are complex turn-based tactical boardgames. Filled with cards, plastic figurines, a dense rulebook, and a denser tome filled with scenario descriptions and special conditions, Frosthaven's box comes to a weighty 36Ibs, or, in old money, 5Ibs heavier than the Lego Titanic.

One of the perks of the digital adaptations is that you don't need to lug around the equivalent of a four-year-old child to go play at being an RPG adventurer in a frozen wasteland with your mates, you can just boot it up and all hop into a multiplayer server together. Turns, too, play out faster, as you don't need to calculate all the enemy actions and slide their little plastic figurines to their new spots on the board. The digital adaptations reduce this down to a few neatly animated seconds of action. Though, that doesn't mean the rules themselves are any less simple. Nic (RPS in peace) spent a good chunk of his glowing Gloomhaven review just breaking down everything you need to do in a turn. So, understandably, Frosthaven can be difficult for new players to pick up.

However, it's actually the boardgame players trying out Snapshot Games' digital adaptation that are causing more of an issue.

"It started to feel like there wasn't any stealth": 007 First Light had to pull Bond's punches to protect IO Interactive's specialty sneaking

James Archer — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:43:48 +0000

While it’s not a series of truly Hitman-scale murder sandboxes, 007 First Light does make good on its promise of enabling multiple Bond, James Bonding disciplines: shooting, sneaking, punching, and my personal favourite, getting immediately discovered then bullshitting something about being a door technician for supervillain lairs. But, were it not for some rejigging work on IO Interactive’s part, First Light might well have ended up with an undue preference for the brawling, bloody, Daniel-Craig-in-a-bathroom approach.

That’s according to senior combat designer Tom Marcham, whom I briefly interrogated at a taping of the UKIE’s For One Night Only showcase. Marcham says that although there “was always the idea that [First Light] was going to be this kind of flexible blend” of secret agent styles, in the crucible of active development, the strength of straight up henchman-punching repeatedly threatened to wallop the stealth and social aspects into irrelevance.

Playing the riff from Smoke on the Water on a cat piano may be possible in composer sim Offbeat, if you've got more musical talent than me

Mark Warren — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:04:31 +0000

Duh, duh, duh. Duh, duh, de-duh. Duh, duh, duh. Duh, duh. That's how the riff to Deep Purple's tune about a fire burning down a Swiss casino goes. As with any riff, it's just a sequence of inputs you make on your instrument of choice. Usually, this would be a guitar. I've been trying to use the cat piano and singing gnome of jobbing composer sim Offbeat, which is out in early access today, July 22nd. Sadly, I don't think I've cracked it, but I have been having plenty of fun making funky jingles and wedding tunes.

Baldur's Gate series overlords Hasbro take $56 million hit after cancelling several games due out in "2028 and beyond", with Exodus and Warlock unaffected

Mark Warren — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:30:49 +0000

Hasbro, parent company of Baldur's Gate IP holders Wizards of the Coast and backer of Exodus developers Archetype Entertainment, have announced a $56 million impairment as part of their latest financial results. This recording of assets decreasing in value compared to their theoretical worth is tied to the company having cancelled "several games scheduled for release in 2028 and beyond". That leaves Hasbro's games lineup thinner going forwards, but with releases targeting 2027, like Exodus and Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, still on the way.

Scarlet Deer Inn, out now, is a Slavic folk tale platformer with a dark underbelly where every sprite is physically embroidered

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:54:57 +0000

Occasionally I will see a game that opts for an artstyle so complex and involved that will clearly take years to make, leaving me with an unbridled fear of the gamey part being not very good. I'm talking about games like Harold Halibut, where the entire thing is stop-motion. Do you know how long stop-motion takes! A while, I've heard. I feel similarly about Scarlet Deer Inn, a Slavic-folklore inspired platformer where every single sprite is made from embroidery that's out today.

Thveit is a Norse citybuilder filled with folklore creatures where the changing seasons shape how you develop your village

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:38:28 +0000

The idea of developing sound and well placed infrastructure in a contemporary city fills me with an overwhelming sense of incompetency, so for the most part I tend to steer clear of city builders of that ilk. I don't want to care about where a hospital needs to go, or how many roads is too many! So something like Thveit, a Norse folklore inspired city builder where the changing seasons shape how your villagers work, seems a bit more my speed.

Less than a month after launching Empulse, it looks like Splitgate dev 1047 Games are laying off more staff

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:07:20 +0000

Things are sounding bad over at Splitgate developer 1047 Games once again. After launching Empulse last month, a wall-running, quite Titanfall-esque FPS with mechs game that James had some fun with, it appears that layoffs have taken place at the studio, marking the third round of them in the space of about a year.

Darkest Dungeon is getting its first new bit of DLC in six years, borrowing a couple of classes from its sequel

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:56:27 +0000

I'm sure there's plenty enough of you that moved on from the first Darkest Dungeon onto the second one when that launched in 2023, but guess what! You'll have an opportunity to revisit the original turn-based dungeon crawler next month, as developer Red Hook Studios have announced its first bit of DLC since 2020 in commemoration of the game's 1.0 launch 10th anniversary.

Manor Lords' next beta update adds what all video games are sorely missing: cow breeding

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:19:59 +0000

Anyone who knows me knows that the one frustration I come back to in games, above all else, more than yellow paint, quest markers and horrendously written dialogue, is that there just isn't enough cow breeding. Where is it? The video game industry is sorely lacking in that department, but fear not fellow freaks, Manor Lords has our back, as by the end of the month you'll be able to breed your cattle to your hearts' content.

Reported lead of Obsidian's new Fallout game wants you to feel a "sense of agony" when playing an RPG, rather than being an all-powerful god-splatterer

Mark Warren — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:47:09 +0000

Look at the nice fellow in the featured image of this article. Look into his eyes. Look at the slightly awkward grin plastered across his face at the moment in a YouTube video on his channel that I've chosen to pause and take a screenshot. This is a man who wants you to feel "a sense of agony". To be frustrated and perplexed as to which outcome to choose. This is a man who knows you can't feed the world with a set of laser eyeballs. This is Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer, who recently made some points about RPG building that are worth dissecting in light of his reported new gig as head of Obsidian's upcoming Fallout game.

Out today, Dive or Die is a promising roguelite scuba sim that basically turns Darkest Dungeon into Ecco the Dolphin

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:28:17 +0000

A day will dawn when the premise "what if Darkest Dungeon but also XYZ" will lose its crablike stranglehold on my fancy, but that day is not this day, for today we Dive or Die. Not that the two activities are mutually exclusive.

In this 2D roguelite scuba sim from Drop Rate Studio and publishers Dear Villagers, the world has succumbed to a "black rain" that inflicts mutations and nightmares. It's been chucking it down for five solid years, in fact, with human civilisation reduced to scraping a living on mountaintops that are now islands. There isn't much of a living to scrape on mountaintops, so off you go into the "abyssal pool" to dredge up some canned food and building materials.

Building on Burnout and an underwhelming predecessor are Wreckreation 2’s missions, and so far it’s a promising patch of Paradise

Mark Warren — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0000

"Wreckreation wasn’t actually an attempt to recreate Burnout," former Criterion Games studio head Fiona Sperry says as she and her team reveal their latest arcade racer, Wreckreation 2. "I think some people thought it was. But it was actually an exploration of freedom and creativity in racing games, and that was really a continuation of unfinished work at the end of [Burnout] Paradise and also the game we were making before we left EA. It was really about asking the question, ‘What if we gave players an enormous amount of freedom?’"

"Enjoy your last day in a future that works for everyone but you": I adore the demo for Future? No Thanks, an open world comedy about a boomer trapped in leftwing paradise

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:05:00 +0000

Future? No Thanks! is a jolly and acerbic open world city game from seasoned satirist Paulo "Molleindustria" Perdicini. It's about a bitter old boomer trying to enjoy his final day in an ecosocialist paradise. There's a demo on Steam that gives you 30 minutes access to a realm of sentient toilets, cricket burgers, ornamental park guillotines, and cannabis vending machines. Speaking as a bitter old millennial, I found my 30 minutes delightful.

"The concept of [Xbox] Game Pass was good" despite its eventual faceplant now contributing to mass job losses, reckons Forza Horizon 5 director

Mark Warren — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:34:39 +0000

Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown, who's currently working on open-world racer Clutch after departing Microsoft-owned Playground Games in 2023, has offered his perspective on Xbox's current layoff-heavy pivot in direction. Despite the Xbox Game Pass push of former Xbox boss Phil Spencer and co being blamed by new boss Asha Sharma as she's ditched studios and given devs their walking papers, Brown still believes Game Pass was a "good" concept, if clearly not one successful enough to avoid this outcome.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's open beta is set for next month, and will offer a chance to take on the fearsome new slaying slab mode

Mark Warren — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:01:00 +0000

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, this year's Activision shooter about military markspeople (who occasionally look like Beavis and Butt-Head) sliding around with SMGs and shouting 10-4 after checking their corners, is set for pre-release beta testing in August. There are two playtests currently on the calendar, though the first's exclusive to those who pre-order the game.