Rock, Paper, Shotgun

"A kick in the teeth for the fired workers": Unionised former MindsEye devs protest alleged fan playtest at Build A Rocket Boy

Mark Warren — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:08:52 +0000

The IWGB union have held a protest with former Build a Rocket Boy (BARB) staff outside of the MindsEye studio's offices. The union accused the company of hosting an expenses-paid fan playtest event following layoffs, with IWGB chair Spring McParlin-Jones dubbing it "a kick in the teeth for the fired workers who are seeing fans brought in to do jobs that would otherwise have been theirs".

Rally Point: I am extremely here for turn-based strategy game The Great Villainess, and not just for gay reasons

Sin Vega — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:30:25 +0000

LESBIANS

BAGPIPES

STREAMING

LET'S GO!

Well, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is now only barred from purchase in 117 countries according to Steam's backend, which is a start

Mark Warren — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:40:04 +0000

Good news! Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' Steam backend no longer lists it as not being available for purchase in 132 countries. It's now only listed it as not being available for purchase in 117 countries. That's 15 whole countries removed from the list of excluded nations, which looks like it could be linked in some way to the need to have PSN account to access certain bits of the game.

Obsidian still have "the same DNA" that went into New Vegas and KOTOR 2, The Outer Worlds 2 director insists, following chatter around layoffs

Mark Warren — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:16:11 +0000

Last week, Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 developers Obsidian lost around quarter of their staff to Microsoft's mass layoffs. The studio were subsequently reported to be pivoting to start work on a new Fallout game helmed by New Vegas director Josh Sawyer, with a sequel to Avowed all but canned in the process. Cue, naturally, people like me discussing what sort of game the shift towards a new Fallout all these years after New Vegas could result in, and also some voices declaring that Obsidian just aren't as good as they used to be.

Outer Worlds 2 director Brandon Adler, naturally, disagrees with the latter group of loudmouths.

This week in PC games: vert-ramping trains, a retold murder mystery, and Cthulhu’s new gig as an AI Director

James Archer — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 11:39:30 +0000

Merry Monday, readers. Edwin’s been struck down by a post-TennoCon lurgy, and we were only too happy to allow him some rest, provided he file his Soulframe and Warframe: Tau stories before collapsing into a feverish heap. We even agreed to feed the Maw in his absence, albeit without reaching a similar accord on responsibility for the litter tray.

Thus: new PC games this week. Here are some of them.

Baldur's Gate 3's Astarion gets an extra ending cutscene, made by a modder keen not to finish up on a rather awkward note

Mark Warren — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 10:57:37 +0000

Warning: Spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 lie ahead.

Shagging Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3 might say various things about your taste in blokes, but it's understandably the way a lot of folks go. Not everyone's got the nerve to admit that they want to cast some spells with Gale's other wand. Anyway, a veteran BG3 modder's now come to the aid of those who reckon one of the white-haired fang lad's endings concludes a bit too abruptly for their liking, and without enough final hugs.

"An oversight we deeply regret": Games Done Quick cancel SNK-sponsored stream following backlash over studio's Saudi Arabian ownership

Mark Warren — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:20:38 +0000

Games Done Quick, the speedrunning organisation behind events like Games Done Queer and the yearly Summer Games Done Quick, have cancelled a stream sponsored by Metal Slug developers SNK following backlash to the fighting game studio being majority owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. Games Done Quick apologised for the "oversight", and wrote that they "failed to conduct the level of review" they should have when deciding whether to accept the sponsorship deal.

The Sunday Papers

Julian Benson — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for waking up before the sun and getting a bike ride in before the tarmac gets hot enough to cook an egg. Any sensible person would skip the bike ride altogether, but I, a nonsensical person, have agreed to a ride across the country at the end of the month and I'm currently not able to manage 40 miles a day, let alone a hundred. So, I have to get them gains.

Still, should I get back home unsizzled by this heatwave sun, I can celebrate with a tarmac-fried egg and lazy perusal of some of this week's best gaming (and non-gaming) reads.

Digital Extremes finally reveal Warframe: Tau, the sci-fi shooter's long-awaited second solar system, and it's a gruesome place indeed

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 22:21:54 +0000

Digital Extremes's venerable looty-shooty mechabody extravaganza Warframe is finally getting a full second solar system, after a warm-up flashback tour in last year's The Old Peace expansion. The developers have just screened a first look at Tau, home of the game's Sentients faction, during a presentation at Tennocon, the annual Warframe and Soulframe expo.

What does Tau harbour? In brief: lots of noir theming. The first of the system's two initial areas is a ringed city, Fornax, whose occupants are plagued by corrupting rain and addicted to a substance called the Bloom. Fornax is home to Brysko, a chain-smoking, trenchcoated "Chimera Warframe" with an inner monologue reminiscent of a Raymond Chandler detective (he's actually voiced by Critical Role's Matt Mercer). Before you read on, seasoned Warframblers, please understand: I am trying to phrase all this in the language of everyday mortals. I'm sure I'm getting all sorts of lore wrong.

Fantasy action-RPG Soulframe is open to all players for a limited time, with a new dark progression path, wolf mounts, and a Warsongs origin quest on the way

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Soulframe, the fantasy action-RPG from Warframe creators Digital Extremes, is getting wolf mounts, a Warsongs quest, and a new Vadagar progression path or "Pact" that transforms your "Envoy" character into the lovechild of Soulcalibur's Ivy and Tim Curry's Hexxus from Fern Gully. Unfamiliar with both of those? Think ichor-slathered bone warrior with whipsword. The Vadagar class addition is intriguing because it sees you channelling the powers of the Ode, Soulframe's space-faring, spellsong-controlled enemy faction, who are trying to harvest or corrupt all the world's resources and wildlife.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Another horrendously hot Saturday, another wedding to go to. I am all in favour of love, but could we please reschedule it to a cooler day in the year? Mercifully this one's a London wedding and it can be reached and returned from on the tube. Though travelling on a hot carriage and not arriving looking like a boiled saveloy pressed into a too-small suit will be a challenge.

Dear Magical Girls combines a tale of burnout with a tactical defence puzzle in which you shape and reshape a field of sorcery

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:16:40 +0000

I am just savvy enough with anime and manga to hesitantly observe that there are at least two broad types of "magic girl" story. There are the naive and upbeat ones in which the magic girls sincerely believe all the nonsense they yell about the power of Hope and such, and then there are the ones where magic girling is revealed to be an exploitative racket awash with misogyny and overwork.

Guide a living landship through a deadly fungal world in Trailblazers, a roguelite colony sim inspired by Rimworld, Moebius, and Darkest Dungeon

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:55:09 +0000

If you are fond of Nausicaa, Moebius, Andrei Tarkovski, Jeff Vandermeer, Rimworld, FTL: Faster Than Light, fungus, coral, and furiously bright colours in general, you may wish to take an interest in Trailblazers: Into The March - a roguelite colony sim in which you guide a crustaceous landship through a ravishing wilderness. Amongst other things, it is a game in which your vessel's chief fuel source is also a lifeform that has to be kept happy, if you don't want your valiant expedition to end in a cloud of cordyceps spores.

Rockstar have stayed mum on GTA 6 multiplayer, but they might be hedging their bets with a new GTA Online heist that boasts a "unique new level of replayability"

Mark Warren — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:57:42 +0000

Multiplayer crime sandbox and massive money sink GTA Online is getting its first new heist mission in a little while next week, with balaclavas set to be donned on July 14th. The target of this shady op's is the art gallery dubbed the Kortz Center, which you might remember as the setting for that one Merryweather-battling mission with Michael and Trevor in GTA 5's main story.

"Compliance-in-advance is never enough to appease a zealous censor": Robert Yang on the current challenge of bringing experimental gay games to Steam

Mark Warren — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:33:34 +0000

Radiator Forever, an "ongoing re-remaster/re-re-release" collection of developer Robert Yang's short and experimental gay games has arrived on Steam, giving it a new home alongside Itch.io. In a blog post about the release, Yang has outlined the complex situation facing adult game creators at the moment, with the likes of last year's business with payment processors and online-focused UK laws are making it a lot tougher for games like Radiator Forever to exist on the most prevalent PC platforms.

Hooded Horse's new spaceship RPG C-Beams isn't just a riff on Blade Runner - it's a "modern version" of one of my favourite childhood space sims

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:10:34 +0000

For many decades, sci-fi buffs have debated the exact nature of the "C-beams" mentioned by Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner's legendary "tears in rain" soliloquy. Cutter beams used in construction? Weapon systems? Fey astral phenomena? The beauty of the term is its ambiguity, perhaps. Not any more, though. Now, whenever anybody muses moist-eyedly about the replicant's parting phrase, I can say: "actually, he was referring to the forthcoming space action-RPG C-Beams from Distant Light Games and publishers Hooded Horse, which also takes heavy inspiration from one of my childhood favourite space games - Ambrosia Software's Escape Velocity." Time to ~~die~~ roll the trailer.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's standard edition is "is the full, complete experience", Ubisoft insist in response to Steam DLC furore

Mark Warren — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:55:30 +0000

Yarr, ye not be needin' to shell out for the more expensive editions of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced or its day one DLCs if you want to have "the full, complete experience". So developers Ubisoft have said in response to Steam reviews giving the Black Flag remake a thumbs down because it has a bunch of purchasable extras on sale right out of port.

Id Software co-founder John Carmack "can’t muster anger or outrage" over Xbox gutting the Doom studio, but does say it'll "dampen the mood of the founder reunion"

Mark Warren — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:58:50 +0000

Aw shucks. That's a bummer. I'm not angry about it, though. Surely this had to happen, just like the execs said it did. I'm paraphrasing quite facetiously, but that is the basic gist of id Software co-founder John Carmack's reaction to the studio cutting 136 workers as part of Microsoft's mass layoffs earlier this week, a devastating blow that leaves the Doom developers facing an uncertain future.

Steam Machine Verified medals appear on games' store pages overnight, as if left by the Compatibility Fairy

James Archer — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:26:23 +0000

We’ve known for ages that the Steam Machine has a similar game compatibility rating system to the Steam Deck, wherein Valve tests games and slaps them with a Verified, Playable, or Unsupported sticker depending on how much they play technical ball. For the first fortnight and change of the Machine’s release, though, the results of these tests haven’t been visible – alongside the Deck verification info – on those games’ Steam store pages.

"We are the best allies to game devs": Skyrim modder shows solidarity with laid off Bethesda workers by draping union logos across Tamriel

Mark Warren — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:18:44 +0000

You've heard about Microsoft's mass layoffs by now. The last few days have been filled with stories of how these cuts are affecting different studios both still and formerly owned by Xbox, with even Elder Scrolls 6 developers Bethesda not being spared, regardless of that series being one their corporate overlords are determined to squeeze more out of going forwards. Thankfully, those overlords are reciving some pushback, with unionised Bethesda staff planning protest rallies and a modder using their talents to offer players a way of showing solidarity.

After years of Nintendo lawsuits and many millions of sales, Pokémon baiter Palworld is out in 1.0 today

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 03:00:00 +0000

Creature-catching game Palworld - the cheerfully macabre survival game that came out of nowhere in 2024 and has sold 40 million copies despite being roundly berated and, indeed, taken to court by Uncle Nintendo for riffing rather flagrantly on Pokémon - launches out of early access today. It's been a journey! Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the industrial exploitation of Kingpacas.

Final Fantasy 7 Ever Crisis shutting down means its Japan only, prequel phone game will remain unplayable

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:54:56 +0000

It was not particularly surprising to hear that Final Fantasy 7 Ever Crisis, the other remake of Final Fantasy 7 that opts for a more faithful approach to the original game (if being filled with gacha rolls counts as faithful), is ending service. Square Enix have been ceasing development on pretty much every mobile game they have out at the moment, so why would this one be any different? It's a shame, though, not just because of the fact that it'll be completely inaccessible when it goes down, but because of its inclusion of Before Crisis.

Stardew Valley enters the third dimension thanks to this in-development mod that even comes with VR functionality

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:43:37 +0000

I don't need to tell you that Stardew Valley is not a 3D game, and if I do, your understanding of dimensions is unsettling to me. However, where there's a will, there's a way, as a modder has done the unthinkable by adding an extra dimension to the beloved farming sim, turning it into something else entirely.

Helldivers 2 is getting a new anti-cheater policy to stop you feeling bummed out and help the in-game economy

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:07:32 +0000

If a game is online, there will be cheaters. This is an absolute in life, one that we'd all be better off without, but alas, not one that is always easy to get rid of. One such game that has suffered from cheating, much to the ire of its community, is Helldivers 2. Thankfully, though, Arrowhead Game Studios look to be working to dealing with the game's cheating problem, meaning you won't have to be so bummed out by those with unreasonably high Super Credits scores.

Slay the Spire meets Terra Nil in The Solace of Flowers, an "eco-dystopian" deckbuilder in which you cover corrupted islands with foxgloves, bees and, er, lions

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:57:15 +0000

The Solace of Flowers is another tactical roguelike deckbuilder, but wait! This one's also a sweet, grid-based gardening game, awash with daffodils, foxgloves, squirrels, honeybees, and other species of plant or creature I recognise from my own allotment down the road. (Have I mentioned that I have an allotment now? I feel like I've bored some of you about it before.) You even get some lion cards, but please, don't scream - this is just developers Ceiling Games being whimsical and/or poetical. Those "lions" are actually a source of dandelion seeds, ho ho. There's also a duck card that throws away your whole hand and distributes vegetation at random: I'm picturing a mallard guzzling a bunch of blackberries and pooping seeds everywhere.

Honestly, I question the wisdom of some of the game's plant or animal characterisations, but there's no time to get picky about zoological nuance, because this is an apocalyptic world and a bunch of rancid godhands are trying to murder you.

"A densely-packed open world game about death anxiety": Bad Magpie's avian mischief channels a lot of heartache

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Do they sing the song, where you are from? One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy… I wouldn't put it past magpies themselves to have learned this superstitious ditty. They've got a sharp ear for the human voice, after all, and studies indicate that they can count.

Perhaps they're even using the rhyme to mess with us. According to folklore, if you see one magpie, you can trill "Hello Mr Magpie, how is your lady wife" to chase away the prophesied sorrow. Being a creature of perpetual worry, I mutter this Victorian cantrip everytime I spy a pie, skidding over the road with a machine-gun cackle. Then, a second bird materialises from behind a bush, flanking me like one of her velociraptor ancestors, and I feel like I'm being trolled. "I used to do the exact same thing myself," comments Milktooth co-founder and design director Daisy Fernandez, "but it ended up becoming impractical now that I look at a magpie pretty much all day, every day."

Persona 4 Revival's take on the controversial Yosuke will apparently be "more fitting for the world we live in now"

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:05:05 +0000

Considering how old Persona 4 actually is, including its revamped rerelease Golden, there's a non-zero chance that it's been a good long while that any of you have played it (and for the younger readers, a plenty good chance you've not played it at all). So you might have some rose tinted goggles on when reflecting upon it, particularly concerning certain characters like Yosuke, who was written quite insensitively back in the day. But it does seem like the remake will be modernising the character, at the very least.

What will another Obsidian Fallout game even look like all these years on? Here's my attempt to read the radioactive tea leaves

Mark Warren — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:30:00 +0000

I know. The right answer to the question in the headline is simple: whatever the developers working on it decide they want it to look like. Even though I’ve told myself that multiple times since last night’s report that the New Vegas studio have been redirected to the wasteland amid the horrible circumstances of Microsoft’s latest layoffs, I still think it’s something that’s worth any fan of Obsidian’s work pondering for themselves.

Palworld PSA: you might want to uninstall your mods if you've not played in a while ahead of its 1.0 launch

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Well, would you look at that. Palworld is launching into 1.0 tomorrow! Somehow an entire two years and then some passed to get to this point, but here we almost are, several updates and a notable lawsuit later. For some of you it might have been a while since you booted the game up, so its developer Pocketpair have a word of warning for you: be careful about those mods you've got installed.

"We were already running a tight ship": Elder Scrolls 6 devs are worried about Xbox's layoffs causing even more delays to the long-awaited RPG

Mark Warren — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:58:08 +0000

Reports about the specific effects of Microsoft's mass layoffs are having on studios like Obsidian and id Software keep rolling out. Elder Scrolls 6 makers Bethesda are no different, with staff saying that the cuts there have not just tanked morale, but let to worry about the fantasy RPG's development endinbg up a longer and more painful process as a result.

We're making some changes to the RPS Supporter Program, all of them good

James Archer — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:10:56 +0000

Starting... uh, last week, we’re making a bunch of improvements to the RPS Supporter Program, the super-special subscription service through which impossibly cool RPS readers can support our writing and reporting directly. The catch? Ha ha! There isn’t one.

Hooded Horse’s new strategy game Rogue Carrier has you captaining a research ship on a planet where the seas boil with violent squid

Julian Benson — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 13:01:00 +0000

There are two cultural artifacts that buzz about my brain without ever truly settling: 2001's action game RTS hybrid Hostile Waters and Wes Anderson's film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. It may be an unfair lens to apply to newly announced roguelite colony builder Rogue Carrier, but it has enough of both of them to have me ready to dive into its ocean.

In Rogue Carrier, you are the captain of a science ship that is stranded on a strange world. More than a schooner, this vessel is a mega carrier – the largest vessel humanity's ever built. The Bohemoth is able to support whole buildings and production lines on its back. It falls to you to pilot the ship across an ocean that is bubbling with alien sea life – some of it friendly, much of it not – surviving attacks, learning more about the world, and finding your way off the planet.

Doom devs id Software were reportedly kicking around ideas for a new Perfect Dark, a John Wick-inspired game, and multiplayer demonslaying prior to layoffs

Mark Warren — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:24:36 +0000

When Microsoft's mass layoffs gutted Doom developers id Software earlier this week, the studio were reportedly kicking around a number of ideas for games they could work on after finishing Doom: The Dark Ages' Revelations DLC. Among these pitches, it's claimed, were the likes of a new Perfect Dark game and an original gun fu game inspired by John Wick.

Former Marathon director settles lawsuit against Sony and Bungie, following his firing over alleged inappropriate messages to female staff

Mark Warren — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:16:51 +0000

Former Marathon director Christopher Barrett has settled his lawsuit against Sony and Bungie. He filed the lawsuit against the studio after a quiet departure which was confirmed in March 2024.

Bloomberg reported in August 2024 that Barrett had been fired after he was accused by several female Bungie staff of inappropriate behaviour. Barrett subsequently sued Sony and Bungie for breach of contract and defamation, claiming that the real reason he was fired was to prevent him being paid a bonus of over $45 million, with the suit seeing Sony reveal some of the inappropriate text messages Barret allegedly sent to staff.

New Vegas devs Obsidian are reportedly working on a new Fallout game, and only Microsoft could make news I've waited half my life for taste this bitter

Mark Warren — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:37:05 +0000

I rather like Fallout: New Vegas. It's one of my favourite games of all time, if not number one. Ever since I first played it as an impressionable teenager, I've been dying to see its developers Obsidian offered more chances to turn their well-honed talents for building deep RPGs with compelling worlds on the series about life after the bombs drop.

That's what makes the fact I'm now getting to write the words 'Obsidian are reportedly set to begin work on a new Fallout game helmed by New Vegas director Josh Sawyer' with thoroughly mixed feelings as utterly galling as it is.

Well, at least one good thing's come out of Destiny 2's demise: lob tomatoes at ex-Bungie CEO Pete Parsons' car collection in this fan-made boss battler

Mark Warren — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:15:00 +0000

Following the end to Destiny 2's development and subsequent layoffs at developers Bungie, fans of the series have decided to get a bit of revenge of the studio's ex-boss Pete Parsons in one of the few ways they can. By making a browser game in which the player is tasked with lobbing enough tomatoes to defeat both Parsons and his collection of cars.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced can run smoothly aboard both Steam Deck and Steam Machine - with the right settings

James Archer — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:45:19 +0000

Greetings, owners of hardware who are also partial to reasonably well-made pirate game remakes. I’m trying something new and fresh and debatably sexy for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, extending the semi-usual Steam Deck performance and settings investigation with one for the newly launched Steam Machine as well. Look, I said debatably.

Become King Dracula's personal vamp-assassin in Vampirium: 1997, an immersive sim Bithell Games are launching into Steam early access soon

Mark Warren — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:54:31 +0000

Remember the 90s? Oasis were unavoidable, Tony Blair stalked the halls of power, and Dracula sat on the English throne. Wait, what was that last one? Turns out I'm thinking of Vampirium: 1997, a fanged immersive sim Tron: Catalyst and John Wick Hex devs Bithell Games are launching into Steam early access soon.

Xbox boss Asha Sharma pins layoffs on Phil Spencer's regime spreading the company "too thin", while claiming a "a healthy Xbox" could weather the RAM storm

Mark Warren — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Xbox laid off around 1600 people earlier this week, revealing plans to part ways with five studios at the same time. Naturally, boss Asha Sharma's been tasked with justifying it all, and she's now gotten as close as she likely ever will to pointing the finger directly at Phil Spencer's regime, while claming that if Xbox were doing well, the RAM crisis would've been something the company could just tank their way through.

Cat Mail Co. is a cosy game where you run a post office for cats, and I wish it let me snoop into their private lives

Julian Benson — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:45:00 +0000

I love to hold a stranger's post. Letters are good. Though, those padded protective envelopes are better – what's inside that needs that extra level of protection?. But a box, especially one whose contents move a little inside when you tilt it. Oh, that mystery is the most marvelous. It could be anything in there. Stolen jewellery, returned love letters, coffee maker pods. Anything.

Given the chance to run a post office, I'd like to think I would be a responsible guardian for everyone's mail, faithfully transiting it to its destination, but I know that I would be doing everything in my power to work out what was in the parcels, so long as I could do it in a way no one would ever know.

So I am desperately sad to report that Cat Mail Co., a cosy game where you run a post office for cats, gives you very few opportunities to pry into the private lives of felines.

"A mentor and an inspiration to many": Skywind devs pay tribute to modder Kettlewitch, whose death has left another Skyrim mod's future up in the air

Mark Warren — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:57:33 +0000

Update: The Skyblivion team have posted their own tribute to Kettlewitch. "For over a decade, Kettlewitch was a close friend and mentor to us," they wrote. "His work supported both Skywind and Skyblivion, and he poured his heart and soul into countless parts of our projects.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review - a great pirate game swaps the ups and downs of old Assassin’s Creed for the ups and downs of new Assassin’s Creed

Mark Warren — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Frigate spotted off the starboard bow, Cap’n! Ready the mortars, me hearties! Fire! All sail! We’ll split her in twain with the ram! She’s not done, swing around and ready the cannons! Fire! She’s dead in the water, bring her in for a steely kiss! These are the sounds of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag at its best, and all these years on, they’re the sounds of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced at its best.

Get spirited away to a weird, scary version of a Japanese town and take pictures of the oddities you find in SOMBRAS: negative frames

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:53:13 +0000

About a year and a half ago I bought a point and shoot 35mm film camera because I was getting a bit bored of taking photos on my phone in the name of capturing a memory, only to literally never look at them again. Film just has a magic to it, a magic that's difficult to capture in a game for obvious technical reasons. But how about mechanical ones? Enter SOMBRAS: negative frames, a horror-lite photography game about a Japanese-Spanish photography student who gets spirited away.

"This has got to be the most awesome toaster ever": Saber on building upon hits like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 20:51:56 +0000

Licensed games don't really exist in the way they did 20 years ago, with three different versions of the same game being made for different consoles adapting a popular media property on the cheap to fill kids' holiday sacks. These days they've got a bit more to them, and Saber Interactive have carved out a nice little niche for themselves with licensed games, with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 being a big part of that.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners' Lucy finds herself in yet another crossover, this time in an upcoming Apex Legends event

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:58:49 +0000

Crikey, they sure do love putting Miss Lucy Cyberpunk in other games, don't they? First Guilty Gear Strive, then Wuthering Waves, and now the Cyberpunk Edgerunners characters is finding a facsimile of her visage transposed onto another's body as a skin in Apex Legends. In fact, there's a whole Cyberpunk crossover coming, in a move from the battle royale that brings it closer and closer to Fortnite.

Subnautica 2's first proper update is coming tomorrow, bringing in much needed creature behaviour changes and more

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:04:41 +0000

The day has come! Almost, anyway, that day being Subnautica 2's first update that isn't just a hotfix, bringing in a small bounty of those previously promised improvements that'll hopefully make you a bit less mad about the fact you can't kill any of those alien fishies.

Appa is a gorgeous, surreal card game about grieving siblings where every move your opponent makes can be reacted to

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:11:36 +0000

I love a digital card game as much as the next person, but honestly, most of the time I feel that they're a bit of a letdown in the visuals department. There's never been one I've played where I've been satisfied in how it plays and how it looks. But! I am hopeful about the upcoming Appa, a deliciously surreal and vibrant looking narrative-driven card battler about a couple of siblings dealing with the death of their father.

Left 4 Dead lives on in The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, a Lovecraftian extraction game from the creators of Zeno Clash

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:01:19 +0000

Seeking relief from the terrible light of the Xbox resettification, I fall into the sweet, dank embrace of The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, a 17th century extraction game in which four crucifix-wielding, musket-toting Spanish explorers venture to a jungle full of creatures inspired by Lovecraftian horror. Why would they set foot in such an awful place? For loot, of course. Why else do Europeans travel to other countries?

After split with Xbox, Hitman developer IO will "continue to develop" Project Fantasy independently, but they're closing their Istanbul Studio

Julian Benson — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 14:47:35 +0000

Last week brought the news that Xbox had dropped their support for Project Fantasy the, er, fantasy project in development at IO Interactive. The Hitman maker announced they would remain "100% committed" to the game, and ensure "This wonderful universe will see the light of day", but they also acknowledged that there would need to be layoffs.

IOI have now confirmed that they have been able to regain full ownership of Project Fantasy and they will "continue to develop and fund it independently". But that production has come with a significant cost: the closure of their Istanbul office.

"I know how devastating it is, and my heart's with all of you": Doom's John Romero responds to id Software reportedly losing half their team

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 14:32:23 +0000

Xbox aren't closing or selling off Doom developers id Software as part of their latest business teardown, but they are reportedly laying off around half the studio, with swinging cuts aimed at id's legendary technology team in particular. Even as out-going staff fulminate about the situation, studio co-founder John Romero has urged all concerned to preserve "code, assets, stories" and other historical artefacts that risk being wiped away during the restructure.

While several Xbox studios regained independence or found new owners yesterday, Arkane's staff must negotiate their own future

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:27:31 +0000

Yesterday, Xbox announced that they were spinning off five major studios in the course of the latest round of "historic" restructuring, with 1600 jobs instantly chopped and 1600 more layoffs to follow over the next financial year. It's the latest in a string of failures on the part of Xbox leadership, who have repeatedly butchered the division after an evidently overambitious acquisition spree that dates back to the 2010s. It has, at least, not yet resulted in any outright studio closures.

Double Fine and Compulsion are going indie again with a little funding from Microsoft, keeping ownership of their games. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have been sold to unnamed new owners. And then there's Dishonored and Marvel's Blade developers Arkane, whose fate is still being negotiated.

Xbox's layoffs come with a push to focus on series like Fallout, so naturally New Vegas devs Obsidian have reportedly lost around a quarter of their staff

Mark Warren — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 10:10:28 +0000

Xbox laid off around 1600 people yesterday, July 6th, as mass cuts accompanied by the decision to part ways with five studios were set in stone. This substantial upheaval's also had plenty of consequences for the studios staying under the Microsoft banner, including a more concerted push to get remaining staff working on Xbox's most lucrative series. Fallout, for example. That hasn't stopped the reportedly cuts including around a quarter of the staff at noted Fallout spin-off developers Obsidian.

Xbox layoffs mean that Elder Scrolls Online's roadmap is "shifting" just two days before Season One's release... the plan put in place for the MMO after the last round of cuts

Julian Benson — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:33:59 +0000

Yesterday brought the news that Microsoft were cutting 1600 staff, spinning out four studios, and finding a further 1600 jobs to cut in the year to come. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said in an email to staff that she was "making reductions" and "shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects".Today, we're starting to learn what those cuts mean for the teams that Xbox retained, and the projects they were working on. The most public and immediate of these is Elder Scrolls Online.

In January, Zenimax Online Studios, the makers of Elder Scrolls Online, announced they would be ditching yearly expansions and moving the MMO to a seasonal release model. The team were just two days ahead of releasing Season One when Xbox hit them with layoffs so severe the release roadmap needs to be rebuilt.

"It's much further along than we originally planned": Fallout: London modders say work on their next game is going "swimmingly", despite DLC delays

Mark Warren — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:18:25 +0000

Though Last Orders, the second DLC for massive Fallout 4 mod Fallout: London, is taking longer than Team FOLON originally planned, the modders have revealed that their next game is running ahead of schedule. The two are being worked on at the time as the group use their ambitious building of a British apocalypse atop Bethesda's Boston as a springboard into establishing themselves as a professional indie studio.

ZeniMax's pivot to big series amid Xbox cuts reportedly isn't a death knell for Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein

Mark Warren — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:51:09 +0000

Xbox have officially announced the scale of the mass layoffs and rejigging of their studio lineup which have loomed on the horizon for the past couple of weeks. While Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, and Arkane all face futures outside of Xbox, the cuts and changes have also affected how a number of studios remaining under the Microsoft banner will operate going forwards.

Xbox are parting ways with Double Fine, Arkane, Undead Labs, Compulsion, and Ninja Theory in the course of thousands of layoffs

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:31:53 +0000

After weeks of uncertainty, Microsoft have finally revealed what their big Xbox business "reset" involves. Spoilers: it's not great! Gaming division CEO Asha Sharma has announced that they will lay off 3200 people over their next financial year, beginning today with around 1600 redundancies. In addition, Microsoft are parting ways with five of their best-known studios: Psychonauts developers Double Fine, State of Decay developers Undead Labs, Senua developers Ninja Theory, South of Midnight developers Compulsion, and Dishonored developers Arkane.

Further details are few, but here are the broad strokes: Compulsion and Double Fine are going indie again, while Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have found unnamed new owners. Arkane's status is unclear: the studio's bosses are currently haggling with a works council of employees over various "strategic options".

Stop judging games by their sales figures, says Tekken's Katsuhiro Harada: “That’s exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s never actually developed games"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:45:00 +0000

I don't think anybody reading these hallowed pages really judges games by their sales figures, but it's nice to hear that perspective affirmed by no less a Legendary Fightguy than Katsuhiro Harada, the former face of Tekken. Out of the blue, Harada has posted some very nice words about Dark Souls kingpin and FromSoftware president Hidetaki Miyazaki, noting that Miyazaki came late to game development and worked on a bunch of less praised or successful games, before landing it big with Souls.

Harada (who is currently CEO of SNK VS Studio) makes the obvious but eminently repeatable argument that these older, less celebrated projects paved the way for the Souls series. He accuses people who think disparagingly of them of being unable to "appreciate the journey or the growth of the developers themselves". It's not clear who these statements are aimed at, exactly, but Harada does add that he's "NOT talking about the fan community". The whole thing sounds like a rebuke to publisher moneymen who only think as far as the next earnings call.

This week in PC games: Stardew Valley plus vampires, a lavish gamebook RPG, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, finally

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:03:10 +0000

Happy this week, all! Also: huge apologies to the World Cup organisers and teams for any matchside cosmic sabotage brought on by our struggle to feed the Maw. Truth be told, Mexico should have had last night's game in the bag, if only I'd topped up the Maw's feeding trough on Friday with another handful of Slay the Spire 2 stories. In its hunger, the creature broke containment, and fell upon the sacred realm of association football, kindling all manner of pandemonium.

You may have noticed that half of Mexico's goal shots vanished in flight, for example, leaving behind a turquoise haze and the aroma of burning locusts. You may have noticed that Jude Bellingham had six more legs than is customary, for a champions league player. Or perhaps you didn't notice any of that because you were too busy thinking about this week's forthcoming PC game releases. Here are a few I've got my eye on.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is suffering similar PSN region locking woes to Helldivers 2, with 132 countries barred according to Steam's backend

Mark Warren — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:29:33 +0000

PlayStation might have opted to stop putting their single player big hitters on PC going forwards, but they're still committed to porting their online games in the name of juicing player counts. All good, since they've stopped frustrating folks by insisting that PC players link up a PSN account. Ah, bollocks. Based on the fact Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' Steam backend lists it as not being available for purchase in 132 countries, Sony didn't learned their account linking lesson with Helldivers 2 after all.

"Smuggle chainsaws onto the pitch": What Blood Bowl's new publisher thinks the World Cup can learn from Warhammer

Julian Benson — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:05:11 +0000

Last week brought the news that strategy game publisher Slitherine have penned a deal with Cyanide Studios to continue developing Blood Bowl 3 (which will soon become Warhammer Blood Bowl. The tabletop-inflected sport is broadly similar to American football, though there are opportunities for even greater violence on the pitch.

As the Americans are currently one of the nations hosting the World Cup, and using that opportunity to clutter it up with things like hydration breaks and half-time shows, I thought it best to ask Slitherine what the yanks could lift from Blood Bowl while they're at it.

The Sunday Papers

James Archer — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

You know what, reader? Sundays are for whatever you goddamn feel like. Go swimming. Get lost in the woods. Take a kintsugi pottery class. Fix a broken appliance. Eat more than one hot dog. Learn Welsh. Smash your kintsugi pottery and take another class to repair it. Rearrange towels. Borrow some sugar. Don’t give it back.

Object Impermanence is a puzzle game where the moment you look away from something, it stops existing

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 21:53:39 +0000

Remember when you were a baby, and someone would cover their face with their hands, thusly disappearing entirely from existence, only to return and scream at you? This is to do with something called object permanence, an idea of understanding that even when you can't see something, it still exists, something that babies genuinely do struggle with. So how about a game that puts this to the test? Enter Object Impermanence, a puzzle game where nothing exists unless you look at it.

Man a gate and keep out people, chickens and unknown horrors alike in the Paper Please-esque Dreadwoods Gatekeeper

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 20:37:09 +0000

Most Papers Please-likes that I'm aware of tend to all have a throughline in being 2D. That'll for sure be because one, it'll be easier to make and two, most derivative works don't exactly move that far away from their source of inspiration. That isn't so for Dreadwoods Gatekeeper however, an old timey one of those which positions you as a gatekeeper at an outpost where you're all by your lonesome, bar all the travellers and foul that turn up. Also I think there's monsters.

Build a medieval castle piece by piece and then defend it from enemy knights in the city builder and RTS Bergfried

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 17:57:43 +0000

How about a two-for-one today? Perhaps something from the RTS tower defence and city builder departments? Oh, and we'll throw in a medieval flavouring too, on the house. With all of that mixed together and wrapped up nicely, you get Bergfriend, a game in which you build medieval castles to your own specifications, and then defend them from rival knights who want to take them from you.

After spending more than a decade in early access, robotic survival game Scrap Mechanic enters 1.0 later this month

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 17:10:49 +0000

You ever just blink and 10 years of your life have gone by just like that? I wonder if that's how the developers behind Scrap Mechanic feel, given that the survival sandbox game about building fancy machines out of whatever you can get your hands on celebrated its 10th year in early access back in January. That's a long time! So long I don't want to think about it, so instead let's look forwards by about, I don't know, 20 days, as that's when Scrap Mechanic will be launching into 1.0.

Dragon Age writer David Gaider's next game is a light-hearted heist RPG, if he can get the funding for it

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 16:03:44 +0000

Since being founded back in 2017, Summerfall Studios have only managed to put out a couple of games, 2023's Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, and last year's Malys, a devil exercising deckbuilder. Unfortunately for the studio, neither game did amazingly, but according to co-founder and Dragon Age writer David Gaider, the studio is hoping to work on something new still: a heist RPG.

Now is the winter of your discontent, console blaggards: the RPS team reflect on PlayStation going digital-only

Julian Benson — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0000

This week brought the news that Sony will stop selling physical PlayStation games at the start of 2028. Not just for their own games, but third-party, too. Here in the world of PC gaming, we've largely been without physical game releases for yonks now, but this move by Sony has stirred up some discussion at RPS. Mainly, is this a big deal or, as ever, a sign of the consoles lazily trudging after the path carved on PC?

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0000

This weekend marks the first wedding of the season (and the first of three in July alone). There will be suiting, there will be booting, and there will be demanding the DJ plays Toxic. Though, I might change up the traditional demand to Robyn in honour of her UK tour. She has several equally inappropriate wedding songs – Call Your Girlfriend, Dancing On My Own, Love Kills.

Ah, heck why choose? "Disc Jockey, take the night off, I've made you a list of sad bangers!"

Well, Professor Pippin Barr, you've done it again: you've ruined chess

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 16:29:58 +0000

Back in 2019, experimental game developer and actual university professor Pippin Barr released a browser game consisting of eight, very silly variations on chess - a flagrant assault on the dignity of a strategy experience whose roots go back a thousand years, which Barr justified as an effort to "allow non-players of chess to get a kick out of the game".

Slay the Spire 2 gets 15 powerful new multiplayer cards, while making life easier the first time you install a mod

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 15:12:37 +0000

Slay the Spire 2 has received a bunch of potent new cards specifically for co-operative multiplayer. They span all five of the game's classes, from the aloof and stargazing Regent to the venomous and underhand Silent (Silent! My beloved, etc). The update in question is out now via the roguelite deckbuilder's Steam beta branch, and comprises of a new colourless card, two new Regent cards, and three cards apiece for the other four classes. A few other cards have been reworked. All told, it's a great time to have friends who enjoy killing steeples.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is getting a "Story Expansion Pass" amid a heap of DLC to help it wrap up the remake trilogy, leaked store listings suggest

Mark Warren — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:31:18 +0000

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is the end of the remake trilogy Square Enix kicked off with, er, Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Though, it looks like than ending might go on a bit longer than you might have anticipated. A cluster of listings in the backend of the Epic Games Store appear to suggest a heap of DLC's planned for Revelation, including a "Story Expansion Pass".

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced promises smooth handheld sailing with Steam Deck and Steam Machine verification

James Archer — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:14:35 +0000

As nautical stabbist remake Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced heaves into view of its July 9th release date, it’s already secured one piece of treasure. Namely, a full Steam Deck Verified badge, the highest honour Valve bestows upon games that don’t falter, fumble, or otherwise snap in half when faced with the SteamOS handheld PC.

I love being a cultist in Feed the Pit, and not just because I get to throw scummy stock-brokers into a toothy vortex

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 11:32:31 +0000

If Feed the Pit were simply a quickfire extraction game about hunting down obscenely wealthy people and chucking them into a ravenous Sarlacc, that'd have been plenty catharsis enough for this age of actual trillionaires. It'd have been solid reaction video fodder for terminally online Marxists, a kind of Hunt: Showdown for the dirtbag left. But Feed the Pit goes further. It's a creepy narrative experience that, after an hour with the game's first act, reminds me a little of Mouthwashing.

Relic announce a new Company of Heroes RTS, a wave defence roguelite for strategy buffs who don't have time to fight a whole World War

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:10:00 +0000

Very good World War RTS Company of Heroes 3 is getting a standalone wave defence roguelite spin-off, Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand, in which you have to outlast 12 rounds of attackers while steadily expanding and upgrading a custom battlegroup. It's pitched as a snackable, newbie-friendly version of the big-bellied strategy sim Katharine Castle (RPS in peace) described as "World War II on its summer holiday". It's out in July, supports two-player co-op, and LOOK OUT, MEN, WE HAVE TRAILER INCOMING.

Rust's Common Ground update adds terrifyingly realistic apartment and shop renting, forcing you to feed capricious landlords daily scrap

Mark Warren — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 09:50:00 +0000

You wake up in a crappy flat. Ugh. Time to see what's in the cupboards for breakfast. No cereal. Great. Then, a cacophonous banging at the door. "yOu hAvEn'T fEd mE!" Oh, bollocks. You check your pockets. There's not enough scrap in them to cover your daily rent. Gulp. Bye bye possessions. This, from the sounds of it, is about to become a common experience in Rust, with the survival game's latest update adding in rentable apartments and shops.

"I could feel myself coming apart at the seams": Suicide Squad leads on almost leaving the games industry after its failure

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:26:20 +0000

Crikey, remember Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League? That sure was a mess. It was a public mess too, one where there were seemingly some attempts to save the game, but none that could have shifted it away from its inherent flaws. But for the game's co-director Axel Rydby and associate design director Johnny Armstrong, the behind the scenes events were enough to almost turn them off from the games industry entirely.

Ithaca is a road trip RPG about climate resistance and dealing with the hostage you have in your trunk

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:24:07 +0000

The ethical quandaries around car usage aside, we can all agree there's nothing like a road trip, right? When better a time is there to think about every single decision you've ever made in life than on an open stretch of road with only other cars to stop you? It feels like a great setting for a video game, despite there not being very many road trip games. But another one is entering the fray and it's called Ithaca, a "narrative road-trip with RPG elements about environmental resistance."

That's a bummer: Frictional's Soma follow-up Ontos has been delayed into 2027

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:07:52 +0000

To be truthful, these days it's generally surprising when a game isn't delayed these days, whether that be for a month, months, or even a full year. But perhaps in a year like this one, where a certain game that promises to engulf every other game around it like that black hole it truly is is due for release in November, you can't blame a studio opting to delay to get things in ship shape. Which is exactly what Frictional are doing with Ontos, pushing their next game from this year into 2027.

Seoul-set MMO shooter Cinder City halves its RAM requirements, after initial specs listed 64GB of memory

James Archer — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:43:30 +0000

RAMnarök may not be a literal cataclysm, of the kind that smashed Cinder City’s version of Seoul into dirty bits, but it ironic that the upcoming tactical shooter MMO seemingly spent much of the past day oblivious to the fact that there’s a worldwide memory crisis going on. Upon yesterday’s launch of its Steam page, Cinder City declared a set of system requirements that listed 32GB of RAM among the minimum specs – twice what you’d typically see for a modern, well-budgeted 3D game – and a honking 64GB in the recommended specs.

I contacted a representative for publishers NC (formerly NCsoft), because, I mean, yeesh, and a day later, and have not received clarification either way. However, as of this afternoon, those recommended specs have silently changed: the GPU requirement rising from a RTX 4060 to an RTX 4070, but RAM dropping from 64GB to somewhat less outrageous 32GB.

The Video Game History Foundation calls on the ESA to offer "meaningful solutions" for preserving digital-only games

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:11:06 +0000

While it's not really all that relevant to us PC lot, you've still probably heard word from Sony "How To Lend Games To Your Friends" PlayStation about them no longer printing new games to discs come 2028. It's awful for a whole host of reasons, and of course the concern of preservation comes at the top of the list. This move from Sony in turn prompted a response from the Video Game History Foundation's Frank Cifaldi, who had some bigger fish to fry than just what Sony are doing in calling on the Entertainment Software Association to help facilitate more "meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content."

"You can literally reroute a river into a desert and cause it to bloom": Star Wars Galaxies lead says of his new sandbox MMO Stars Reach

Julian Benson — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Raph Koster's career spans the evolution of the modern MMO. Creative lead on MUDs, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and EverQuest 2, the systems and mechanics his teams developed live on in every active MMO today and many games besides. "People made fun of me for having dancing in Galaxies," Koster tells me. "Fortnite ought to give me royalties."

But the promise of his new game, Stars Reach is a scale bigger than everything he's made before. A sci-fi MMO set in a procedurally generated universe, where every world is a sandbox composed of material that behaves according to real-world physics. Feeling playful? Freeze a lake to create an ice rink. Feeling industrious? Boil it to become steam to power machines you've constructed. Looking for something a little deadlier? Electrify a salt deposit to create chlorine gas.

While Stars Reach has an overriding story about invading aliens that will appear on planets through emergent events, forcing players to band together to save one of their instanced, procedurally generated worlds before it falls to the mysterious Cornucopia, my discussion with Koster focused on the sandbox underpinning developer Playable Worlds' MMO.

Most immediately, why bother?

Flask is a grim brew of homunculus autobattling and hand-drawn alchemy, and it’s got a new demo on Steam

James Archer — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:00:12 +0000

Everyone, look how open-minded I am: I’m spotlighting a demo for a game I’m not personally interested in. Nobel Peace Prizes, FIFA Peace Prizes, Pepsi sponsorships, surely all mine now that I’ve pointed out Flask – a darkly comedic deckbuilding autobattler, with scratchy hand-drawn art by Danish pencil warlock John Kenn Mortensen – has a playable preview on Steam.

Valheim 1.0 won’t update the survival game’s sparse oceans, reveal devs Iron Gate, who add it’s "too soon to say" how long post-release updates will continue

Mark Warren — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:52:53 +0000

Co-op Viking survival game Valheim's 1.0 release is set for this September, bringing with it a fearsome final biome, the Deep North. Though, developers Iron Gate have now confirmed that it won't include any much-requested updates to oceans on top of that, while refusing to offer a conclusive answer as to how long the game'll keep on getting updates once it's out in full.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword release date pushed forward, its devs deciding they'd rather fight vampires than cosmic entities and Scottish horrors

Mark Warren — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:39:45 +0000

Ah, don't worry, we're not stressing about that. That's essentially what the makes of samurai action battler Onimusha: Way of the Sword said late last month when it was pointed out to them that their game'll be fighting a lot of competition when it arrives amid the September gamepocalypse. Having initially opted to stick with their planned September 25th release, Capcom have now decided to bring Onimusha forward to September 4th.

New Fallout 4 quest mod starring an iconic Elder Scrolls voice actor has you solve an eccentric gang war over a long-dead starlet's vault of mysterious goodies

Mark Warren — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 09:41:40 +0000

Since 2023, a group of well-known Fallout 4 modders have been getting together on an annual basis to team up with Elder Scolls and Fallout voice actor Wes Johnson on a chunky quest mod put together in a matter of days with the goal of rasing money for charity. Last year, their 40 hour-long charity modathon resulted in an alien-centric adventure dubbed Transmission Zeta. This year, they've plopped your character right in the middle of a war between two performers' gangs over who gets to unearth a pre-war singer's archived belongings.

Subnautica 2 legal battle ends with reinstated CEO stepping down, as Krafton and Unknown Worlds founders agree settlement

Mark Warren — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:02:48 +0000

Shake hands with the nearest underwater critter. The Subnautica 2 legal dispute appears to finally have reached its ultimate conclusion, with a settlement agreed between publishers Krafton and the three Unknown Worlds leaders they fired last year. One of those three leads, Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill, was reinstated to his post via a judge's orders in March. So, naturally, now the settlement's been reached, he's stepping down voluntarily.

Lullabies Made of Static is a quieter, slower, but still quite welcome addition to PC gaming's brutalist walking sim canon

James Archer — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:56:14 +0000

Brutalism serves one of two purposes in games: either as a source of concrete projectiles, or much more commonly, as a backdrop to quietly wander around, feeling morose. Personally I’m a fan of both, hence Lullabies Made of Static – which is out today – tickling the same neurons as my favourite grey walking sim, Fugue in Void.

Grand strategy game Terra Invicta is getting two new scenarios - a Fallout-style nuclear wasteland, and an early noughties world of UFO sceptics

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:27:36 +0000

I had been feeling guilty about not completing my first bout of sci-fi grand strategy game Terra Invicta – six months on from my 1.0 write-up, I'm still trying to colonise my first asteroid - and now here come developers Pavonis Interactive to smother us in nuclear fire. And swanky new spaceship designs.

Behold my range of handmade Steam Machine faceplates: tasteful fan-covering, on the cheap

James Archer — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:19:02 +0000

Say you’ve sprung for a Steam Machine, and are pondering how to put a personal mark on your new black cube. Upgrading the internals? Bit of a faff, it turns out. Playing with the lighting strip? Maybe, but it’s blue by default, and research has shown that blue is already the best colour. No, aquamarine only came fifth.

That front faceplate, though, is ripe for replacement, and there are already certain retailers and craftspeople who’ll happily charge you to cover your Steam Machine in acrylic flowers. Or make it look like a GameCube attending the Wii U’s funeral. However, this first wave of third-party covers appears to span anywhere between 15 and 40 quid, an unpleasant aftershock to the economic blow of the Machine itself. Luckily, more affordable faceplates are possible, as I shall now demonstrate with a selection of cheap household items, a small pack of craft magnets, and some off-brand superglue.

GTA 6 devs have to opt-out of crunch, claim Rockstar North insiders, because it's baked into their contracts

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:24:31 +0000

Three current Rockstar employees in the UK have accused the Grand Theft Auto 6 studio of effectively baking crunch into their contracts, overseeing a widening gender pay gap, and weaponising bonuses to make workers more compliant, in a new report. It comes as Rockstar gear up for the much-trumpeted console release of GTA 6 this November.

Helldivers 2 is once again spoofing Donald Trump's wall with the Frontlines of Freedom update, which launches a new campaign "to make the galaxy safe again"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 11:15:01 +0000

Helldivers 2's latest in-game campaign sees the champions of strategically mitigated democracy supervising the construction of yet another massive wall of pine-scented gas in space. Kicking off with the Frontlines of Freedom update, out now, it's a bid to keep those evil "fascist" Terminid insects away from Super Earth, building on the foundations of the abortive original "Termicide" campaign back in March 2024. It's also a pisstake of US president Donald Trump's dreams of constructing a massive barrier (the best wall! The greatest! Everyone agrees, etc) across the USA's southern border with Mexico.

Exodus' character creator won't let you totally mess up its protagonist's "established look" with nose and brow slider chicanery, but you can still pick a beard

Mark Warren — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:07:48 +0000

If you were planning to spend hours making sure your chin looks just right and ensuring your eyes aren't too close together when you fire up Mass Effecty sci-fi RPG Exodus, I've got bad news. Rather than a slider-based character creator with ten million sliders controlling the likes of cheek yaw and ear curvitude, devs Archetype Entertainment have decided to set the majority of protagonist Jun Aslan's face in stone to make him a more defined person, leaving only the likes of hair and tattoos for you to muck about with.

"Low-effort slop": The creators of the Godot engine behind Slay the Spire 2 are cracking down on "vibe-coding" and now require genAI disclosures

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:32:14 +0000

The foundation behind the open source Godot game engine have announced a crackdown on the use of generative AI by contributors, following a wave of "demoralizing", "low-effort slop" that has added to an already overwhelming quantity of requests for code review. While they'll still let people deploy the chatbot technology for smaller, "menial" jobs such as finding and replacing code, they're taking a stricter stance on "vibe coding" – asking a bot to generate whole swathes of code – and will also require contributors to disclose any genAI usage.

Xbox claim they're "not reducing [their] investment in games" despite looming cuts, as report claims under 2.5% of Microsoft's total workforce are in the firing line

Mark Warren — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 08:51:24 +0000

On top of the reports that Xbox are planning mass layoffs, yesterday brought the news that Xbox are backing out of funding deals and considering closing studios, yet they insist this isn't a sign they're scaling back how much cash they're pumping into making games. At the same time, a new report claims that the layoffs wider Microsoft have planned are projected to affect less than 2.5% of the corp's overall workforce, not that that'll soften the blow by any stretch of the imagination.

"Keeping this under wraps has been torture": Against the Storm 2 could happen, but first, Eremite are making a survival game set in the city-builder's festering world

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 08:18:23 +0000

Eremite Games are making a survival game set in the bleak fantasy world of their Bestest Best roguelite city-builder Against The Storm. They've announced the project with a brief video snippet of a two hooded adventurers, stalking through some rainy woodlands towards a log cabin. From this I deduce that the plan is to support co-op multiplayer. Possibly also cabin-building. Certainly, an abundance of menace.

Green Suits is a surreal platformer stroke JRPG filled with Escher architecture and paranormal investigators

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 22:03:20 +0000

Sometimes I feel that my taste in media is a bit hard to pin down, given that I like shows like Twin Peaks and manga like Chainsaw Man, two series where their similarities mostly stop and start at featuring governmental figures. Enter Green Suits, a game whose dev describes it as those two things fused together, throwing in JRPGs, platforming, and a "drama-based combat system," to make a concoction that feels catered to me personally.

Microsoft reportedly add Arkane and their Blade game to the potential shuttering pile

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:24:34 +0000

There's a lot of whispers about studios shutting down around Microsoft and Xbox at the moment. They've been primarily fluttering between Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and Compulsion, but this week has now seen State of Decay developer Undead Labs added to the list of "companies Xbox bought to build up Game Pass but are ultimately shuttering because they've done a bad job at making line go up." And now yet more reports have emerged, with what remains of Arkane potentially being put up on the chopping block alongside the cancellation of Blade.

Disassembling the Steam Machine suggests Valve are protecting its precious RAM by burying it under a dozen other parts

James Archer — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:02:19 +0000

I, uh, completely took apart a Steam Machine by accident. What began as merely wanting a closer look at its RAM setup ended up as a more-or-less full teardown, the heavily layered, almost Russian Doll-like structure of Valve’s teeny-tiny PC demanding a component be removed for a component to be removed for a component to be removed. Before I’d even noticed my screwdrivin’ arm getting tired, the Machine’s guts lay strewn across my desk – not too gorily to put back together, but in far, far more individual pieces than I’d naively intended, or had dared to attempt in my main review.

Still, this did provide the opportunity for a much closer assessment of the Steam Machine’s upgrade potential and repairability, as well as how easily it will reveal its secrets. After all, for all the inspiration it takes from simplified, lounge-dwelling consoles, it is ostensibly a PC, and the thing about PCs is that there’s always someone out there who’ll want to rejig and rebuild their own. Just, y’know, on purpose.

IO Interactive look set for layoffs as their external partner for Project Fantasy pulls out

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:51:44 +0000

Update: Bloomberg have reported that IO's external partner on Project Fantasy was indeed Xbox.

Sigh. It's another one of those days, as layoffs are essentially imminent yet again, this time at 007 First Light and Hitman developer IO Interactive. The studio shared a post earlier today regarding their as-of-yet not formally revealed Project Fantasy, in which they shared that their "relationship with an external partner… has come to and end."

Guns of Eschaton is a wild west soulslike FPS and posthumous release from the art director of Half-Life 2

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:07:09 +0000

Last year, the art director behind titans of visual design like Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, Viktor Antonov, died at the age of 53. Prior to his death, in 2022 he co-founded Eschatology Entertainment with Dmytro Kostiukevych, Fuad Kuliev and Boris Nikolaev, who were yet to announce their first game formally. But today it's been revealed and it's called Guns of Eschaton, the "world’s first soulslike FPS."