Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Cyberpunk 2077's new dual wielding has already been modded to include shotguns and rifles, provided you're down to get "janky and wildly overpowered"

Mark Warren — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:30:58 +0000

It was only ever going to be a matter of time, but I'm still surprised just how quickly Cyberpunk 2077 modders have taken pistol dual wielding mechanic the RPG's Edgerunners 2 update has just added in, and opened it up to include any gun Night City has to offer. Yep, twinning shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, or any combo of those is now possible. Though, you'll have to make peace with the fact enemies will struggle to match your firepower.

A Line Held Tight is a charcoal visual novel about a miner's strike in the 32nd century and choosing your relationships wisely

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 21:50:40 +0000

We've had about roughly four decades of games as we generally know them now, and yet somehow, so often their stories feel so limited in scope. I'm not talking about a lack of big, bold ideas, in fact there might be too many of those. I more mean that there are aspects to life that often go uncovered in games. For example, when was the last time you saw a game about a workers strike? Citizen Sleeper 2 has one questline about such a thing, but it's just what the entire game is about. A Line Held Tight, a mecha visual novel about a sci-fi miner's strike, may bridge that gap.

Robot smashing catharsis game Virtue and a Sledgehammer is out next week, but there's an experimental visual novella prologue you can play right now

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 20:36:04 +0000

Virtue and a Sledgehammer looks like a satisfying game. There is perhaps no more wonderfully chunky and impact frame friendly a weapon than the reliable sledgehammer, and when put into a game with a description like, "Most people resort to therapy. But you chose the brave option. A sledgehammer," then of course I have to give it a look. Unfortunately, I still have to wait a week to check out the full thing. Fortunately, a prologue to the game just dropped for free that offers a tantalising, and quite different, experience.

An internal Mass Effect 5 trailer has reportedly leaked, offering you a glimpse at the sequel you'll never get to play

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:45:41 +0000

Yesterday, only a couple of months after EA went private after having been acquired by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity, it was announced that BioWare are being shut down, with development on their next Mass Effect game cancelled. Now, only a day after this was announced, a trailer that was meant for internal use only has been shared, showing off a rough idea of what the game would be like.

Dispatch celebrates its first anniversary with commentary and storyboard modes for every single episode, if you've got the deluxe edition anyway

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:08:54 +0000

I'm going to park my feelings of unease at the fact that it's somehow already been a year since Dispatch came out, as developer AdHoc Studio have revealed some pretty neat sounding additions to the game to commemorate its first anniversary. Well, if you have the deluxe edition anyway (sorry, regular edition owners).

Even at their most chaotic and conflicted, BioWare were the heart of the western computer RPG

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Life... is strength. The gears of this world are tuned for a quick death. Doomity-doom-doom! We is all doooooo-oooomed! The Guardian says for me to be cheerful, and to not repeat what he says all the... oh. I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel. You simians may merely refer to me as 'Sir,' if you prefer a less... syllable-intensive workout. I have seen the throne of the Gods, and it was empty. Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honour matters. There are people like you everywhere. It's just that not everyone has the words for it yet. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it. Let's call that finished. You must gather your party before venturing forth.

Captivating cosmic megastructure adventure game Hypnos leaves early access next week, offering up a world I'm desperate to dig into further

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:01:24 +0000

I just love me a megastructure, I do. I'm not entirely sure why, to be honest. My best guess is that growing up in a major city with concrete pillars looming over me higher into the sky than I care to take notice of, perhaps even threatening me, left me with a sense of awe towards that which exists at a scale I can't really comprehend. With that, I was quite quickly hooked on whatever Hypnos was putting down, even if when I first had a go at it I couldn't quite tell you what was going on. And now, after a stint in early access, the eldritch "megastructure fever dream," is launching into 1.0 in just a week's time!

Xbox reportedly mandate four days a week in office for staff close to Microsoft's Washington HQ, up from three day requirement brought in last year

Mark Warren — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:53:43 +0000

Xbox have reportedly informed staff that, from the start of February 2027, those within commuting distance of Microsoft's Washington base will have to come into the office four days a week. This follows the mandating of three days in office last year, and comes as the company are looking at cutting more staff as part of ongoing efforts to eventually get rid of 3200 people in multi-round mass layoffs.

"It just seemed arbitrary, and not very smart": EA was never a responsible owner for Bioware, but the developer never seemed to learn from their mistakes

Julian Benson — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:33:16 +0000

19 years after buying Bioware, Electronic Arts have closed the veteran RPG developer. But as saddening as this is, bringing an end to series such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect, EA have never had an easy relationship with the studio.

Looking through old interviews with developers who worked across Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Anthem, the corporation immediately changed the atmosphere of the studio and never seemed to understand what exactly they had bought, or even why.

However, another thread of the conversations is that from project to project, Bioware repeated the same mistakes, getting years into projects before working out what they were trying to make. Sometimes they could pull an exceptional game out of this mess, but other times it led to costly missteps like Anthem.

Resident Evil makers Capcom reveal data breach has affected over 11 million Capcom ID accounts, warn against potential phishing emails

Mark Warren — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter publishers Capcom have revealed that a data breach has seen a third-party gain access to information associated with more than 11 million Capcom ID accounts. "Suspicious activity" around the service, required to play online in the likes of Street Fighter 6, was initially noticed on October 19th according to Capcom, who have spent the past couple of days taking measures to contain and combat the problem.

"We made a very difficult decision": Australian indie showcase Freeplay reject antisemitism claims after delisting a Jewish sponsor who was allegedly accused of being a "zionist"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:30:06 +0000

The organisers of Australian independent games showcase Parallels have rejected accusations of "prejudice" and say they've received "violent threats", after a Jewish developer had her sponsorship of the event refunded. The developer in question is Wren Brier, creative director at Witch Beam. She claims an unnamed speaker booked for the event has accused her of being a "zionist", following an article about her work from an Australian Jewish publication.

While EA shuts down BioWare, developers of The Sims, Skate, and Battlefield say they've also lost their jobs

James Archer — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:30:00 +0000

Apparently the cliché "when it rains, it pours" also applies to corporate feculence. In addition to shutting down storied RPG makers BioWare, EA are reportedly cutting staff at The Sims developers Maxis, as well as Skate studio Full Circle and Battlefield 6 co-devs Ripple Effect.

Mass Effect 5 was aiming to offer a "level of autonomy and choice" that could vault it into orbit with Larian and CD Projekt's top RPGs, former dev says post-cancellation

Mark Warren — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:49:44 +0000

Following EA's decision to shut down BioWare, the game that would've been the fifth entry in the Mass Effect series is being dumped out of an airlock, never to become a finished article that'll reach players hands as its creators envisioned. The larger tragedy is, of course, the job losses and the closure of a studio with a legacy befitting RPG royalty, but it's still sad that next Mass Effect will never come out, and some of the folks who worked on it have begun offering some insight into what the team were hoping to accomplish.

EA is shutting down RPG veteran Bioware "to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth"

Julian Benson — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 06:56:00 +0000

Venerable RPG studio Bioware announced on it is shutting down after more than 30 years of making RPGs. The studio is responsible for making the original Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Anthem.

As part of the announcement Bioware also say that "development on the next Mass Effect project is ending."

Cyberpunk 2077's Edgerunners 2 update adds two new quests, handgun dual wielding and the ability to pimp your mantis blades

Mark Warren — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:09:58 +0000

A beefy new Cyberpunk 2077 update arrives tomorrow, October 22nd, fresh on the heels of the second series of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime which dropped earlier this week. It's dubbed update 2.5 and delivers an Edgerunners 2-themed quest alongside a heap of other additions.

A puzzle game where you must avoid doing the most awkward of things: facing someone while riding an elevator

Julian Benson — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:29:11 +0000

You know when you follow someone into the elevator and when they turn around to face the doors, you choose to stand still and instead meet their eyes? No, of course you don't. Everyone knows that when you're in a lift you don't under any circumstances face other people in the lift unless you know them and you're already in a conversation. Just yesterday I got into the lift with someone I sit one desk over from in the office. I dutifully looked at my phone the entire time until we were safely out of the building. Well, in the puzzle game How To Ride Elevators Like A Human you play a helpful alien who saves people who have accidentally ended up in the dreadful situation of facing one another.

Each short puzzle takes place in a compact lift where one (or several) humans are starting at each other. Using your small UFO's tractor beam, you must pick up and relocate the passengers until no one is making eyes at anyone else. You may well recognise this as a sokoban-style puzzle game, but, despite retreading familiar ground, I'm a big fan of this extraterrestrial framing. Even if I have an ulterior motive for sharing this game...

I keep embarrassing myself in front of the nature gods in handpainted 2D roguelike Talaka, whose colourful, combative demo is out now

James Archer — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:45:36 +0000

One of the most memorable demos I played at Gamescom Latam 2026 was that of Talaka, a watercoloured 2D action-roguelike that - like many games at the São Paulo-based show – leaned deeply into Brazilian culture and mythology. In this case, it's something of a side-scrolling Hades, with the permahorny Greek gods replaced by a playful pantheon of Orishas (vaguely human-shaped forces of nature) hailing from the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion. Though no fault of theirs, I kinda sucked at Talaka when I played it then, and the demo currently available during Steam Next Fest confirms I kinda suck at it now – though it's still colourful enough, and steeped in a folklore that games so rarely explore, that I'm going to keep an eye on it.

"I want room to make a wrong turn": Following Samson dev's bankruptcy, its founder is considering how AI might factor into new studio plans

Mark Warren — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Over the weekend, Swedish reports revealed that Samson studio Liquid Swords have gone bankrupt less than a year after releasing their debut crimebrawler. Founder and former Just Cause lead Christofer Sundberg subsequently confirmed that Liquid Swords are headed for closure. However, he was also quick to make clear that he won't be disappearing from game development, announcing plans to form a new studio that he's now offered a bit more insight on.

Dawn of War 4 clearly loves the Warhammer 40K strategy games that came before, but it misses that they loved to reinvent themselves

Julian Benson — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:12:24 +0000

I may have set my expectations for Dawn of War 4 too high, but it's a series that, to my mind, never retreads the same ground. It's therefore been disappointing to feel, having played it across two its campaigns that this long-awaited sequel may have taken too few risks - or been too reverent of the games that came before.

"AI is a technofascist, anti-human and anti-art project", says creator of lefty tech satire Future? No Thanks!, before explaining why he used it anyway

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:42:31 +0000

Prominent capital-p Political game developer and left-wing academic Paulo "Molleindustria" Pedercini has revealed that he used generative AI tools for aspects of recent ecosocialist satire Future? No Thanks!. According to Pedercini, "a tiny fraction of its code was written with AI support" towards the end of the project, specifically to assess and fix bugs.

The game also uses text-to-speech voice-acting for a couple of characters, generated with ElevenLab software, with Pedercini noting that the characters in question are intended as a spoof of wonky artificial intelligence. He insists that none of the game's art or writing is AI-generated. These insights arrive weeks after the game's Steam release, which was delayed due to Valve's concerns about sexual material. Back then, there was no genAI disclosure on the game's storepage. There is one now.

Further Xbox layoff rounds reportedly planned for this month, November, and January, while a Game Pass overhaul is in the works

Mark Warren — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 10:34:44 +0000

Further rounds of layoffs as part of Xbox's ongoing efforts to eventually have fed 3200 people into the furnace are reportedly planned to take place during this month, November, and January. The company previously made clear more cuts, following on from two rounds of mass layoffs already this year, would be coming at some juncture.

Meanwhile, an overhaul of Xbox Game Pass is reportedly in the works and sounds aimed at offering subscribers more control of which individual aspects of the service they want to pay for as part of their deal.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review - superlative playing power with familiar Windows handheld caveats

James Archer — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 08:40:01 +0000

Welcome to my review of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, a handheld PC that went on sale four months ago. And if you think that’s bad, tell it to the 2025-spec Lenovo Legion Go 2 I’ve left, neglected and unappraised, in the dusty heights of my utility cupboard.

Subnautica 2's next major update adds "the scariest region we've ever done", together with frog mechs and a very welcome tweak for dashing

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 08:07:06 +0000

Bracingly moist open world survival game Subnautica 2 is embarking on the "voyage to early access 2.0" - this being developer Unknown Worlds' excitable term for the next round of updates, which will include a new region, creature, and Tadpole chassis, plus some tweaks for biomods and creature behaviour.

I like Subnautica 2 and am happy that Unknown Worlds appear to be enjoying some stability, after all the firings and ChatGPT-abetted lawyer-wrestling over publisher earn-outs, but I really hate "early access 2.0". I know other teams use nomenclature like this, but seriously, what even is time any more? You can't make a sequel to something you haven't finished! It's 8.30 in the morning, Unknown Worlds, and I already have a migraine. Let's hurry on to the talk of spooky new regions.

Reel out garbage from a flooded planet and make number go up as satisfyingly as you can in the incremental fishing game Selkie's Salvage&Co.

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:52:27 +0000

The wonderful thing about video games is that they can take something that is, quite frankly, terrible, and turn it into an experience where you can't help but think "just five more minutes." Incremental games often have that effect, and Selkie's Salvage&Co. is no different in that regard, it's just the funny thing is that it is essentially a game about taking your rubbish out.

I have seen the future of sports games and it is called just volleyball

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:32:47 +0000

Earlier this year, I embarked on a pivotal journey, one that I'm sure upon finishing will change me for good: I started watching Haikyu!! It's my first sports anime (when you're a chubby little muffin like I was, you take more interest in Not Moving over Sports), an abscess in the lexicon of genres I've dipped my toes into, one I'm rectifying after all these years. And friends, it's good eatin'. I even, incredibly briefly, floated the idea of taking up volleyball. Yet now I don't have to, and it's all thanks to a delightful, incredibly Wii Sports coded game called just volleyball.

Dig through an infested planet with your giant drill-city and try not to die while you do it in the roguelite city-builder CitaDrill

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:15:42 +0000

You've heard of the drill that will pierce the heavens, so introducing: the drill that is attached to an entire city that will pierce the earth. That's the concept for CitaDrill, a roguelite city-builder where the city is encased in a big ole dome, a larger than life drill attached to its base that you dig through an infested planet. It's a lot, of course, but it's got some lush pixel art and a demo you can try out for yourself as part of this Steam Next Fest, too.

I know you probably don't have mushroom in your backlog, but fungus looter shooter Mycopunk is now out in 1.0 and looks like the opposite of a shiitake time

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:34:58 +0000

And lo, mushrooms! This is what I imagine an old timey tour guide might say while on a hiking trail, but we aren't on one of those, so get that wonderful fungi image out of your brain. No, today is the day that Mycopunk has arrived into 1.0, an online co-op looter shooter about embodying robot rejects fending off hordes challenging champignon.

Steady yourself, Mortal Shell 2's Rotten Autumn update comes packed with 15 new dungeons, a photo mode, an alternative soundtrack, and a neat pumpkin helmet

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:03:25 +0000

How's your autumn going? Mine's fine so far, I've switched back to hot beverages, as much as every cell in my being screams to ask for ice. But I reckon that sounds better than the autumn Mortal Shell 2 is having, given the name of the Soulslike's next seasonal update: Rotten Autumn. Sounds bad! In practice, however, it's quite an expansive sounding update that's already out.

The demo for city-flattening fighting game Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is a roaring good time, no nostalgia required

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:30:13 +0000

Despite being a lover of the King of the Monsters, I was unfortunately too young to experience Pipeworks Software's Godzilla trilogy of 3D kaiju-fighters back its PS2/Gamecube-era heyday (there was a PS2 in the house as a young child, but I also had no agency to ask for games or money to buy them). As such, I'm not necessarily the intended audience for Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, a remake of Pipeworks' first entry back in 2002, but I can gladly tell you thanks to my time with the Steam Next Fest demo that nostalgia is not needed to enjoy this classic made anew.

"It doesn’t have to always be triple-A": Galactic Racer and Zero Company’s success has Lucasfilms wanting more smaller-scale Star Wars games

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:00:36 +0000

Star Wars: Galactic Racer has been fucking everywhere recently, seemingly both due to its actual quality as a game and also due to vast swathes of people falling in love with little mole guy Biddy Blas. The success of Fuse Games' Galactic Racer follows on from the similarly warm reception of Bit Reactor's XCOM-esque Star Wars Zero Company (though that success didn't prevent staff furloughs, which are at least starting to be undone in some cases), making it clear that there is a market for Star Wars games outside of just the blockbusters like the Battlefront series. The vice president of Lucasfilm Games, Douglas Reilly, seems to agree, stating in an interview with The Game Business that "Good ideas can come from a lot of different places. You don't have to necessarily be a Top Five publisher to make a great Star Wars game."

Games with loot boxes and other "paid random items" re-rated PEGI 16 as new rules come into force, hopefully cutting down on kids gambling somewhat

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:45:11 +0000

I'm strongly of the opinion that loot boxes, gacha mechanics and whatever other form of gambling remains present in games is a scourge that ought to be wiped out. Absolutely no game is better for having gacha mechanics in it, only worse. The normalisation of gambling through alternative, softer names, cool cosmetics, and in many cases, cute anime girls is honestly abhorrent. European ratings board PEGI doesn't seem keen on it either, as they've begun enacting recent rule changes bring the default age rating of games that contain these mechanics up to a minimum of PEGI 16.

The latest game event to fall afoul of US visa rules is a live concert for horse girl racer Umamusume: Pretty Derby

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 12:05:06 +0000

Umamusume: Pretty Derby has turned out to be one of the most popular games in the world, partly due to being a gacha game and partly due to making pretty girls out of very real Japanese racehorses (which introduces a unique mourning when the real horse passes away and the anime girl lives on). A new kind of mourning faces the Umamusume fanbase now, as an upcoming stop on the game's The Stage: World Tour at Los Angeles' Peacock Theater has been cancelled right before it was supposed to open this week. The apparent cause? The US visa system.

Abiotic Factor's second year of updates confirmed to include official mod support and a DLC taking science to the tropics

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 11:00:28 +0000

Following its 1.0 release last July, Half Life-esque sci-fi survival game Abiotic Factor has been having a pretty good run of post-early access updates. That run of is set to continue through to 2027, as developers Deep Field have announced the game's year two roadmap including full support for community mods, a winter update with smaller additions, and the previously teased paid DLC, Entropic Break.

Penguin Colony is not messing around with its statement on the Palestinian genocide, banning sale in Israel and calling out the games industry in-game

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 10:27:07 +0000

You might remember 2021's Umurangi Generation, developed by Māori studio Origame Digital. It placed its focus on its first-person photography system as much as its very direct anti-colonial and anti-neoliberal criticism, stemming partly from the Australian government's mishandling of COVID and the bushfires that spread across the country in 2020. Origame's second game, the newly-released Penguin Colony, is just as direct in its anti-colonial theming, with its target being the ongoing Palestinian genocide by Israel, and the games industry at large for its silence.

Helldivers 2's GameGuard cheat policing "wasn't as effective as it could have been", cue a switch to Easy Anti-Cheat as part of a crackdown on cheat mods

Mark Warren — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:32:27 +0000

Helldivers 2, a game that still appears to be missing in action from Steam here in the UK, is switching anti-cheat software. Developers Arrowhead are keen to tighten up security and crack down on the use of cheat mods that can influence the bug-slaying experience of folks beyond the person who's installed them.

"Too big a risk": Moonlighter devs delay new game's demo for fear of genAI cloning, calling on platforms to "keep strengthening protections for original work"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:02:28 +0000

Moonlighter and Cataclismo developers Digital Sun Games have postponed a public Steam playtest for their new game ReVamp, for fear of people using generative AI to clone their work before release.

"I was a real anglophile": A Canadian's obsession with Viz magazine is why Grand Theft Auto: London's streets are covered in dogs' eggs

Julian Benson — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:30:00 +0000

The Grand Theft Auto games have a long history of being made by developers who live far from their source material. The original game and its mainline sequels have all been led by Rockstar North, housed in a decidedly not US-based Edinburgh. But, even when it came to a comparatively local GTA mission pack set in London, the team chose instead to ask their newly acquired Canadian team to handle the development work. It didn't matter that only a few people on the team had actually been to London before.

Yet, that distance, as proven across the series grants the developers a more incisive view of a place, one that focuses more on a setting's cultural rendering than its reality.

As evidenced by Grand Theft Auto: London's dog shit.

"Sexy sorceresses" and "bare-chested fighters": Dragon Age's original artists wanted to base it on Conan the Barbarian, much to the outrage of the designers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:05:04 +0000

Buried in the vast and sooty-fingered Summer Eternal anthology, there's an interview with former BioWare developer and Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider, who is now creative director at Stray Gods outfit Summerfall Studios. The interview is a podcast-length account of BioWare's transformations over Gaider's career, stretching back to Baldur's Gate 2. Amongst other things, it explains why the Dragon Age games feel so different from sequel to sequel.

Gaider discusses the original trilogy's fortunes under RPG-phobic parent company Electronic Arts, commenting that 2009's Dragon Age: Origins made it to release partly thanks to "sunk cost" thinking after EA bought the studio. He also talks about Dragon Age's lack of a properly defined vision, early on, which led to a lot of overcorrection between releases. As regards Origins, there was something of a faction war initially between departments over what exact flavour of fantasy fiction the new RPG should draw on.

Crusader Kings 3's merchant republics expansion, Silk and Silver, will release during the very quiet time of mid-November 2026

Mark Warren — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 14:55:52 +0000

The second big expansion coming to Crusader Kings 3 this year finally has a proper release date. Silk and Silver, the gold-clinking sibling of recently released Church-centric DLC By God Alone, will arrive on November 17th. Just a couple of days before that which shall not be named, but has resulted in a lot of studios opting to give mid-November a wide berth release-wise.

Endless pile of Needle In Haystack games begins to emerge, as viral hit imitator's devs claim their code was nicked by a genAI-using clone

Mark Warren — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:25:56 +0000

In a metaphor far too on the nose to turn into any form of fiction, at least without the writer getting mercilessly cyberbullied, a game about finding a needle in a haystack has now become the genuine needle at the heart of a pile of imitators. A pile so large, in fact, one copycat game stands accused of ripping code from another.

This week in PC games: build a better zombie in Stupid Never Dies, glue together houses in Cutout Village, and settle brave new worlds in Star Trek: Outposts Unknown

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:59:48 +0000

Hello all! Welcome to another wonderful week of PC games, and mounting bloodlust. As I type these words, a neighbour has started using a leafblower. I hate leafblowers. They are mutant hairdryers from Hell. They scatter my thoughts like the tiny, tiny quantity of leaves in the neighbour's garden – a quantity of leaves you could very easily sweep up by hand in two minutes, if you had even the slightest bit of gumption.

What's that? You think I should release vipers into the neighbour's toolshed? What a capital idea! But sadly I don't have any vipers to hand, and besides, I have to finish writing this list of new PC games. There are exactly as many games in the list as there are leaves in the neighbour's garden. He'll be at it for hours, no doubt. Please read, while I order in some fresh vipers.

Life has once again found a way in Athanasia, an "immersive" dinosaur FPS that feels like comfort food for Dino Crisis and System Shock players alike

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:17:27 +0000

Good news, people who figure they are going to die of old age before they get another Dino Crisis! Good news also, people who can't get enough throwback immersive sims! Even as Capcom forge ahead with their Resident Evil remake ouroboros, plucky Momentum Games and horror publishers Black Lantern Collective are releasing Athanasia - a first-person homage to both Dino Crisis and System Shock, in which you play intrepid researcher Carmen Flores, who has been sent to an ominous abandoned scientific facility in South America.

One of these days, I'm going to turf up to a collapsing laboratory complex in a game and discover nothing but stationery, old rubber gloves, and unfiled expense claims. I imagine a lot of laboratories are abandoned not due to (for example) gene-modded dilophosaurus outbreaks, but because the funders got cold feet long before Project X reached the prototyping stage. But that day is not this day. Today, there are dinosaurs! Argh, my face and/or intestines! Here's a trailer.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines remaster or remake rumours begin to flow, reportedly in part thanks to a metal band from the original's score

Mark Warren — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 10:41:01 +0000

Rumours of Troika classic Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines potentially getting the remaster or remake treatment have surfaced. They've come from two places: one being the fairly standard source of poster on a game leak-obsessed section of Reddit, the other being rather more unorthodox. It's not often a metal band allegedly pause mid-concert to ask the crowd if they know an old game's getting a revamp.

The Sunday Papers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for firing up Twine again and thinking you know what, if this swanky IF plotter had been around when I was an undergraduate, I might have preserved all my exam revision notes in text adventure form. I still have two, reassuringly heavy boxes of tabbed and colour-coded index cards that you could plausibly lay out to form a maze, navigable by compass commands. Head down the western corridor from Middle English to the Renaissance, and – ah, bollocks, you have been eaten by a Grue. Surely somebody's thought of this, in the decade and change since Twine was released? I mean, we already have 3D museum exhibits extracted from Wikipedia.

Sundays are also for heading to the allotment and getting annoyed with the tomato plants, who have decided to go bonkers right at the end of the growing season. I thought you were done, pesky nightshades. I thought I could leave you alone for the rest of the year. Finally, Sundays are for sharing good criticism, like the below.

Rain98 is a blue-hued, pre-Y2K, Serial Experiments Lain inspired visual novel about time travelling to the past to end the world

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 21:50:37 +0000

Picture this. You're me, and you boot up the demo for Rain98, an incredibly blue-looking, rainy visual novel set in Tokyo, 1998, about a woman who refers to herself as the Angolmois, a world-ending reference to the predictions of good ole Nostradamus. At one point you have to light this woman's cigarette in a lightly stylish sequence. You get to a bit where you're asked to put your name in, and you put it in because like its predecessors, this is surely a self-insert kind of situation. Only you get a Steam achievement for getting a game over for putting your name in. Rude! But curious, so you, and of course I mean I, pressed on.

Black & White 3 doesn't sound like it's ever going to happen, but good ole overpromising Peter Molyneux may have let slip about a remaster of the original

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 20:29:12 +0000

Peter Molyneux feels like a man who can never die. He's just sort of always been there, and seems like he always will be, making some kind of game where you can hypothetically do what you want, never quite living up to expectations. But hey, he's Peter Molyneux, what else would you expect? The complicated icon is still ticking away at his latest, Masters of Albion, but in a recent interview, he spoke of one of his old classics, Black & White, and the idea of a third entry in the series (and the fact that there might be something newish on the way).

RimWorld meets Moebius-esque roguelite colony sim Trailblazers: Into The March welcomes you aboard its hulking landships with a chonky-sounding demo

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 19:07:41 +0000

With the devs behind RimWorld gearing up for their next game with a recent engine switch, it'd be entirely fair if you were hankering for something new (if still familiar enough) yourself. Trailblazers: Into The March is one such game, having introduced itself to us earlier this year, a mishmash of the aforementioned colony sim, Nausicaa, Moebius, Andrei Tarkovski, Jeff Vandermeer, and FTL: Faster Than Light by Edwin's measure. And now you don't just have to look at its trailers, because there's a demo for you to have a go at.

As too much of the industry embrace their own death through genAI, Konami say it's real people that are most important for making good games

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:04:18 +0000

I've taken a habit, recently, to proclaim my desire to explode in lieu of anything more realistically violent I could wish upon myself when I feel stressed. And, in what would likely be more concerning if I were a sentient bomb talking to a bomb diffusal squad, I've been saying that a lot lately, primarily because of the copious amounts of AI nonsense I've been seeing… everywhere. Epic Games, the ever-boycottable company called Microsoft, the decompiling community, the poison has found its way into everyone's veins and it's making me want to, say it with me now, explode! So you can imagine my relief to hear a developer say they don't think AI will make a massive impact. The developer? Perhaps surprisingly, Konami.

Oh dear, half a year after launching Samson, Swedish developer Liquid Swords have filed for bankruptcy

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 15:58:54 +0000

Update 19/10: Despite attempts to find the studio a buyer, co-founder Christofer Sundberg has announced that Liquid Swords is closing. "I'm proud of our team and what we built," he writes, adding that former staff are "discussing continued support" for Samson.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Saturday's are for having your mind read. Or, at least, this Saturday is because I'm seeing Derren Brown's new show. I'm a little self-conscious about it, not because I'm worried the mentalist will hypnotise me and make me profess a false love for consoles over PC games but because my partner and her family have never seen me at a magic (or magic adjacent show).

Reader, I am an awful audience member for conjurors, illusionists, and psychics.

Nonolith traps you in a living maze and challenges you to find hidden terrain magic using good old copy-paste

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 17:44:15 +0000

After enjoying Echo Weaver last week, I'm in the market for games that gaze with utmost scorn upon the concept of unlockable abilities, smugly declaring that everything you need to complete them is available to you from the word go.

We have reached a new threshold in genAI gloom, with a game dev cancelling a demo for fear of copycats ripping them off before release

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:50:00 +0000

In what I suspect is the start of a trend, assuming it isn't one already, the creators of Drunken Goddess Reflux have yanked a planned public demo partly because they're concerned about people using generative AI to clone their game and release a copy before they even launch.

"We were wrong": Wardogs devs end Season 2's team-specific cash and XP bonus experiment after a single, tumultuous day

James Archer — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Season 2 of Wardogs, the multiplayer sandbox FPS currently blasting and/or politely driving its way through early access, introduced an un usual "social experiment" when it launched yesterday. In an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of its Lonestar faction, a.k.a the infamous Blue Team, developers Bulkhead began granting bonus XP and cash – the latter being the upgrade-focused game’s lifeblood – to Blue players alone. The hypothesis, apparently, was that more skilled players would give Lonestar a chance, helping boost its dismal winrates and perhaps improve its tarnished image.

One day in, then, how’s it going? “We were wrong. We fucked up,” says Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer in a video announcing the bonus scheme’s immediate cancellation. Ah!

The Blood of Dawnwalker's update 1.1 adds a "forgiving" difficulty setting, but I think I'll find it hard to forgive its introduction of "directional animal petting"

Mark Warren — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:21:53 +0000

Quick! Hit left scratch ear! Hit down rub belly! Slap right bum pats! Annnnd you've died because you failed to parry a paw coming for you with the force of a vampire's claw. This is how I assume things will go if I boot up The Blood of Dawnwalker once its 1.1 update debuts. Devs Rebel Wolves, in their infinite wisdom, claim to be set to add in "directional animal petting" as part of it.

The creator of last year's cult hit RPG The Necromancer's Tale is back with The Lich Wars, a storybook RPG that follows 30 years of undead botheration

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:45:00 +0000

Psychic Software have announced The Lich Wars, a standalone prequel for their widely acclaimed RPG The Necromancer's Tale. Widely acclaimed by me, anyway. I'm pretty wide, these days – the local Morrisons keeps doing discounts on 80-biccy packets of bourbon creams.

I liked The Necromancer's Tale specifically for how it wove a whole RPG around the narrative dynamics of a single RPG class, with players performing rituals in each chapter to develop their morbid spellcraft, while managing the suspicions of nearby townsfolk. I also really loved its choose-your-own-adventure prologue. The Lich Wars sort of spins the prologue out into a full game.

Cyberpunk 2077 movie "won't be a one-to-one translation of the game's story", CD Projekt Red boss confirms, and boy do I think that's the right move

Mark Warren — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:15:40 +0000

Since the existence of plans for a Cyberpunk 2077 live-action adaptation from devs CD Projekt Red and Paramount Pictures was revealed last week, I've been hoping it won't take the form of porting V's tale from the game to the big screen. Such a thing wouldn't necessarily be terrible, but I like my game adaptations a bit more on the original story side of things, as Cyberpunk tie-in anime series Edgerunners has been. The good news is that one of CD Projekt Red's big bosses has now confirmed that this adaptation won't be beat-for-beat retelling of 'Honey, there's a Keanu in my brain'.

Penguin Colony review - the least expected Soulslike you'll play, and a cracking parody of Lovecraftian empires

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:15:00 +0000

Penguin Colony is probably the best pisstake of Lovecraft and Lovecraftian horror I've played. It's the best because it places Lovecraft's universe at a creaturely remove, amplifying its absurdity without having to drop any punchlines. Entering a ravaged polar campsite, I advance among burning tents and uniformed corpses to a pioneer seated on a crate, who is busily sawing his own face off. Ice and snow shrill overhead and Lenval Brown's narration rumbles in my bones, speaking of eldritch relics and unquenchable ambitions, of "queer creatures" and inexplicable deaths, of madness and glory, of "scientific explanations" and empires from other dimensions. I consider all this, and say: Fnaaarp.

The pleasures of Double Fine's Thank You Bus Driver are not in the destination, nor the journey, but in slapping my disobedient passengers

James Archer — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:38:59 +0000

Showing some gratitude is the least these scribbly wretches can do. The passengers in Thank You Bus Driver – Double Fine’s new comedy public transport sim – are almost invariably rowdy, entitled hypocrites, happy to sully my single-decker by picking their toes and bellowing down their phones, while only ever being seconds away from a strop if another traveller does the same. Still, here I am, locked in symbiotic misery with them, desperate to choke down the scraps of acknowledgement they’ll spare for arriving at their stop in good time. I hate them. Please love me.

Ubisoft were working on a second Assassin's Creed game set in Qin Dynasty China, if this allegedly leaked footage is to be believed

Mark Warren — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:02:35 +0000

Footage alleged to show a prototype of a cancelled Assassin’s Creed game in action has popped up online. The game, it's claimed, was set in ancient China, went by the working title Assassin’s Creed Destiny, and was a separate project to Chinese-set mobile game Assassin’s Creed Jade. Instead, from the sounds of it Destiny would have been a game aimed at PC and consoles.

Valve roll out Steam Achievement Sets in beta, splitting up games’ perpetually growing trophy masses into DLC and season buckets

Mark Warren — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:23:52 +0000

Steam has a new feature in beta aimed at helping completionists feel like they've got a bit more of a handle on their never-ending quests to 100% games whose trophy lists keep on growing and evolving. Steam achievements can now be grouped into sets determined by the developers, creating a means of separating off the likes of DLC trophies from the base game's to-do list, thereby making it clearer what you've done so far and where you might want to focus next.

CD Projekt is in "a really dangerous place", says Anthem's executive producer, pointing to ballooning costs of making games of that scope and quality

Julian Benson — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:15:00 +0000

"The triple-A industry has become over-specialised, specialised to the point of hyper-fragility," Mark Darrah states in a foreboding interview found deep in the pages of the Summer Eternal Anthology, recently covered by Edwin. As a former executive producer at Bioware, who corralled teams on Anthem and Dragon Age, after starting his career as a programmer on Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Jade Empire, Darrah has seen firsthand the growing scale of video game production and the challenges it can bring.

Darrah's also been vocal about the difficult development of Anthem in the past, and the struggles he had at Bioware. However, while what he says in the interview may be familiar, I found it gained sharper definition when read in light of games industry news and some of the interviews I've had with developers this year. So let me pull together some of the choice bits with the extra context from our own RPS vaults.

Welp, all of you RuneScape folks who hate Reignited have gotten your wish, as the controversial MMO rejig has been cancelled

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:51:05 +0000

Welp, that was short lived. Earlier this month, Jagex made some big RuneScape announcements, namely that they're making a fourth version of the MMO (aptly, currently called RuneScape 4), but also the arrival of RuneScape Reignited, a new character type that would come with its own, new economy. The intention here seemingly was to bring new people in to breathe some life back into the game. This did not go down well with the old timers. And now, it's been flat out cancelled.

Ahead of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's launch next week, unionised Activision testers have voted to authorise a strike

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:27:22 +0000

Call of Duty testers have voted to authorise a union strike. The union, formed back in March of 2024, is made up of almost 600 quality assurance workers at Activision, and plan to strike if conditions at the publisher don't change.

Urine Trouble: PEE V PEE, a multiplayer game about hiding from the cops while you take a whizz on public property, takes the trophy for punniest title of the year

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 18:59:01 +0000

I've been doing this whole games journalism for over five years now, and I've seen a lot of different kinds of games in that time. I've written about plenty of them too, with a fair few being plenty weird. But I'll admit that today's game is one that I do understand if I were to tell anyone I'm interested in playing who maybe isn't familiar with games as a whole, they'd probably talk to someone else at the party. You see, Urine Trouble: PEE V PEE is a competitive online game all about pissing literally everywhere, and trying not to get caught doing so.

After almost three years of early access, Enshrouded has hit 1.0 with a complete story, bigger map, and way too much more to mention

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:01:56 +0000

The increasing number of early access games always throws me off, because one day you're seeing an announcement of a game releasing, and then a while (normally years) later, you see another announcement for said game releasing. Feels like I'm in a constant Groundhog Day situation, probably not good for my sense of the passage of time. Anyway! Existentialism aside, after launching into early access almost three years ago, Enshrouded is now out in 1.0.

Monumentally expansive roguelike Caves of Qud is getting even bigger in December with an early access expansion that lets you play as messed up dogs and trees

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Caves of Qud is a game well liked over here at RPS; Brendan gave it the coveted Bestest Bests badge back when it launched into 1.0 a couple of years ago, and all! It's a game I still want to reckon with more deeply, and perhaps with the reveal of its first expansion I'll be more enticed to. It's called Diaspora, and its biggest feature is probably the fact that you'll be able to play as plants and animals. Interestingly, much like the base game before it, developer Freehold Games will also be releasing Diaspora into early access, a unique step to take for a bit of DLC.

4X strategy sequel Humankind 2 gets its first extended in-game footage, rich in era-spanning, culture-shaping, history-rewriting action

James Archer — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:45:00 +0000

Not counting the slivers of footage tacked onto that baby's-eve-view reveal trailer, Humankind 2 devs Amplitude Studios have unveiled their first real footage of the history-spanning strategy sequel. Throughout its (nearly) seven minutes of maps and menus, we can see what appears to a greater focus on resculpting and adapting your chosen cultures to meet the challenges of each era, and less on sticking with preset archetypal bonuses.

There's still loads of cultures to work with – over 70, sayeth the trailer, spread across six eras – and as in the original Humankind, it's possible to take a single civilisation all the way through the game. The sequel, though, also throws up complications like biomes, where environmental dangers and opportunities must be dodged and seized.

"Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards", Sega say as they pull it from stores and restore the original

Mark Warren — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:27:58 +0000

Total War: Shogun 2's Complete Edition is set to be pulled from stores by publishers Sega and developers Creative Assembly, who've admitted that it fell short of both player expectations and its creators' standards. The studio and their overlords have pledged to "investigate the issues" with the game and will be reinstating the original version of Shogun 2 as the purchasable one while they do so.

"I lost the concept of home, until my grandmother took me into these forests" - Trollheim: Gnomes is a survival game from ex-DICE and Paradox devs that channels childhood fairytales

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Swedish studio Off-leash Interactive and Denshattack publishers Fireshine Games have announced Trollheim: Gnomes, a survival-crafting fairytale in which you, a three-inch-high gnome, explore a procedurally generated forest derived from Nordic folklore. You'll be clambering up enormous trees, lighting campfires beneath mushrooms, and befriending or evading troublesome larger supernatural creatures known as "Väsen".

I caught a briefing for Trollheim: Gnomes earlier this month, and while I worry this is generic fare on some level, I'd sure like to get lost in those procgen woods. I'm also interested in the game's eight-player multiplayer, in that it seemingly creates opportunities for hide-and-seek – the game's building system affords scope to camouflage your dwellings against the litter, moss and mold of the forest floor.

The rumoured Steam Frame OLED would fix one of the Frame's minor weaknesses and do nothing for its major ones

James Archer — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Good catch by SteamFrameHub here: snippets of the recently released Steam Frame kernel source code contain references to a possible variant of Valve's new VR headset with upgraded OLED lenses. A failed prototype, ditched during development? Maybe not – one of the related code branches, which codename the device 'Planar,' was updated on October 2nd, weeks after the LCD-lensed Frame opened for reservations.

There's details, too. The OLED lenses seem to have a native resolution of 3,552x3,840 and a max refresh rate of 90Hz, suspiciously identical to the MicroOLED lenses used by Samsung's Galaxy VR headset. In standalone VR play, this would be much harsher on the (allegedly unchanged) Snapdragon SoC than the current Frame's 2,160x2160 eyescreens, but then the code also hints that Valve are getting around this with a cousin of the Frame's foveated rendering and foveated streaming tech: foveated scaling, where higher pixel density is used where your eyes look, and lower, less demanding pixel density is applied where they don't. Interesting! Even if right now, the whole idea of a Steam Frame OLED doesn't make much sense.

"Some people like it, some people are annoyed by it": Substructure may look like Factorio, but it changes the automation game in some fundamental ways

Julian Benson — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

In many respects, as someone who has played a lot of automation games, Substructure is very familiar. It begins with you landing on the surface of an alien world and using nothing but pluck, the tools on your UI, and the schematics in your tech tree to construct a sprawling factory that claws up resources from the planet and transforms them into materials and components to build ever bigger machines.

But it also hints at more.

League of Legends Classic will become a thing of the past in January 2027, though it may one day be resurrected as a limited-time event

Mark Warren — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:01:24 +0000

The classic mode rolled out in League of Legends earlier this year will cease to be a permanent addition once the calendar flips over into 2027, ending a fairly brief nostalgia run, devs Riot have announced. The mode, offering a version of the MOBA mirroring its early days, only debuted in July. It might come back in a different form down the line, but Riot have found that there isn't enough of a prolonged appetite for days gone by to be worth propping up something akin to the classic modes seen in games like World of Warcraft.

Big Walk devs House House announce support for BDS Microsoft boycott, say the co-op puzzler isn't coming to Xbox

James Archer — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:27:34 +0000

House House, creators of breezy co-op puzzle adventure Big Walk, have become the latest high-profile game developers to express support for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement's ongoing Microsoft boycott. The developers, who also made avian mischief sim Untitled Goose Game, wrote in a post that they've been observing the boycott – called in 2025 in protest of Microsoft's business ties with the Israeli military – for a while, citing it as the reason why Big Walk went without an Xbox console release alongside its PC, PS5, and Switch 2 versions.

Ubisoft reportedly look to cut 100 more jobs by proposing voluntary redundancies at studios including lead Anno devs Ubisoft Mainz

Mark Warren — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 09:51:03 +0000

Ubisoft have initiated talks over voluntary redundancies at three German studios under their banner, reportedly seeking to cut around 100 workers via the move. Ubisoft Dusseldorf, Ubisoft Berlin and Ubisoft Mainz are the studios set to be affected, with talks over the plans between Ubisoft and a works council representing staff having been initiated by the publishers last week.

Living world, god-mind or "something far more terrifying": Etre is an eye-melting, Control-inspired action game about reshaping a cosmic brain

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 17:00:00 +0000

If I ever go looking for my significant other and find myself inside a planet-sized megamind that's on the verge of gaining consciousness, I will not run around zapping the cerebral fauna with my magic handcannons. I will not jump on or scan anything. Instead, I will heed the lessons of Harlan Ellison and curl regretfully into a ball, awaiting my transformation into a puddle of mournful goo.

It's one of many ways I apparently differ from the protagonist of Etre, a new third-person action adventure from Studio Lifeforms, in which you "explore an interconnected labyrinth of luminous architecture, solve spatial puzzles, and engage in fluid combat as you search for your lost love and decide what this new intelligence will become."

Fortnite is finally coming to Linux thanks to Epic rebuilding Easy Anti-Cheat, though Steam Deck support is still in the wind

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Epic have announced that they're rebuilding their Easy Anti-Cheat software in order to get their flagship battle royale Fortnite running on Linux, after years of fretting that they don't think they'd be able to shut down cheaters operating across all the associated kernel configurations. It won't support Steam Deck for the foreseeable, mind.

Over the Hill's off-roading simulation winches you in with a more laid-back take than SnowRunner's, but it'll still bite careless drivers

Mark Warren — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Over the Hill, a rather chillaxed take on brutal Saber Interactive off-roading sims like SnowRunner, is the latest game from vibesy driving enthusiasts Funselektor. The folks behind the likes of Art of Rally and Absolute Drift have assembled untamed wildernesses in the cold Canadian hills and the boiling desert of Algeria, before handing myself and Julian the keys to some 4x4s. Here’s our verdict.

"We vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher" because "programming is hard", announce company we're somehow supposed to see as a serious Steam competitor

Mark Warren — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:32:37 +0000

Days after a report emerged about them imposing an "AI-first" production model on the devs of a new Disney shooter, Epic Games have released a new version of their launcher in preview form. It's been "vibe coded" with aim of making it "faster than the other guy". That other guy is Steam, something the yacht gag in the second paragraph of the announcement post makes even more obvious.

Asha Sharma announces Xbox Labs project to "explore new technology," which sure sounds like tinkering with old games through AI

James Archer — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:17:23 +0000

As part of Microsoft's ongoing, physics-ignoring push to do more business with thousands fewer staff, games chief Asha Sharma has announced Xbox Labs: a new umbrella for Xbox's R&D into the kind of game remixing and rejigging most visibly characterised by viralities like Halo for browsers, or Mario in Elden Ring. Both enabled, perhaps tellingly, by the AI-driven decompilation of the original source codes.

Rockstar 'union busting' tribunal extended to November 18th, meaning it will close just days before GTA 6's release date

Julian Benson — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:45:00 +0000

The employment tribunal between the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and GTA 6 maker Rockstar games was due to conclude this Friday, but the legal case has now been extended into November.

It's like everything Rockstar touches gets delayed…

"We are here to give you something to believe in": the former Disco Elysium devs of Summer Eternal reveal new RPG Red Rooster, a game of fire, water and alternate selves

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:15:41 +0000

Earlier this month, the former Disco Elysium developers of worker co-operative studio Summer Eternal sent me a 500-page anthology describing their new game Red Rooster. It's a 3D, real-time, third-person RPG you could broadly style as a spiritual Disco successor, working in the tradition of Planescape: Torment and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, but which also owes much inspiration to Baldur's Gate 3 and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It takes place in a magic realist, "our-world-adjacent", mightily flammable and divided river city called Arta-Tantor, created with Unreal Engine and housing a "physics-powered sandbox of objects you can individually move, manipulate – and burn."

Rockstar are "confident" that GTA 7 won't take another eight years, despite similar promises of greater efficiency seemingly having come with Red Dead Redemption 2

Mark Warren — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:05:28 +0000

Future Rockstar games won't take as long to make as GTA 6 has, the studio leadership currently behind the series have asserted, saying they're "confident" work that's gone into this latest game will allow them to build "more sideways than upwards" going forwards. That's despite Red Dead Redemption 2 seemingly having been viewed in a similar light when Rockstar opted to put everyone on getting over the line rather than developing GTA 6 concurrently.

With the Steam Frame becoming Valve's new favourite VR child, they're selling off their last Index headset stock

James Archer — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 11:20:34 +0000

Valve have officially discontinued the Valve Index VR kit, launching a 20%-off sale on its headset and controllers to get rid of any lingering stock.

This was arguably an inevitable end, given the newer, more multitalented Steam Frame launched last month, with the Frame's memory-shortage-induced price hike failing to discourage enough orders to the extent that its waiting list now stretches into 2027. It's also, truth be told, not really an effective discount – buying the Index headset, both controllers, and two separate (yet essential) HTC-made base stations totals £1,027. Which isn't just more than an entry-spec Frame, but more than the £919 that the full Index kit originally launched at.

Ubisoft are making layoffs at Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced studio Ubisoft Singapore while closing Trials creators Redlynx

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 10:43:55 +0000

Update: Following a request for comment, Ubisoft have confirmed that they are proposing to close Redlynx, affecting "up to 52 positions", subject to negotiation under local labour laws. As regards Ubisoft Singapore, "70 positions have been impacted to align the studio with upcoming production needs". Ubisoft's statement stresses that the Singapore team "remains an important part of Ubisoft’s global production organisation."

Our original story continues below.

"My idea of a Netflix for games doesn’t work": Garry's Mod creator says struggling spiritual successor S&box will go free to play as part of major rethink

Mark Warren — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, Garry's Mod and Rust developers Facepunch Studios released S&box, a mix of open source game development platform/spiritual successor to their Valve prop-filled physics sandbox. It's not fared well, only earning mixed reviews and being stuffed with low quality AI generated games early doors. Now, Facepunch founder Garry Newman has announced plans for a major overhaul that'll see S&box go free to play.

If you've sworn off genAI Crazy Taxi and dislike all the twerking in GTA 6, consider Shifu: Traffic Masters, a jolly open world driving game set in 1990s China

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:28:34 +0000

I'm not your guy for computerised automobile magic picture shows, or "car videogames" as they are popularly known – for that, we turn fearfully to Mark Warren, whose every word during Gchat meetings is screamed against a backdrop of throbbing motors. Still, once in a blue moon a car game hooks my interest. Take Shifu: Traffic Masters, which we can approximately translate as Driver and/or Midtown Madness (those are explicit inspirations), but set in northern China during the 1990s. It's got a demo on Steam. Cars emit steam, don't they? How poetic of them. Here's a trailer.

Send in the Clown is a turn-based RPG comedy about fighting one annoying child at a birthday party where there's only one fight in the whole game

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 21:54:00 +0000

I generally find it quite frustrating how limited the medium of games insists on being when it comes to engaging in a wide breadth of genres. One particular genre that its filmmaking cousin frequently utilises but is rarely seen within games is comedy. Sure, occasionally a game makes an attempt at telling a joke within a cutscene (failing more often than not (comedy's hard!)), but rarely is it a genre mechanically. So I'm quite pleased to learn of Send in the Clown, a turn-based RPG where you play as a clown that has to save a 12 year old's birthday party… and it only has one turn.

Escher's Dream is a Portal 2 mod inspired by the non-euclidean works of the classic artist that will leave you feeling only a little bit nauseated

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 20:29:21 +0000

You know, given the ubiquity of his work, I'm surprised there aren't more M. C. Escher inspired games in this world There are a few, like Monument Valley, Manifold Garden and Superliminal, amongst a handful of others, you just don't find them all that often in spite of how striking a sense of space is found in Escher's work. Escher's Dream is not, unfortunately, a game of its own, but it is a neat looking Portal 2 mod with some trippy levels in it.

Echoes of Delicious in Dungeon ring out in Deep Dish Dungeon, a co-op dungeon crawler about making meals with whatever you can scrounge up that's out now

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:30:00 +0000

I would really like it if someone made a Delicious in Dungeon game. It doesn't have to be official, it can be legally distinct! I've been asking for over two years now! I imagine I'll have to keep waiting, but luckily for me, a new game is out today which certainly feels reminiscent of the delightful (and morbid) anime, while still going for its own thing: Deep Dish Dungeon, a co-op dungeon crawler about making do with the ingredients you find that has a dash of Metroidvania elements.

Coming soon to Invincible VS, it's your copyright-friendly neighbourhood Agent Spider

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Spider-Man might be one of the most parodied characters of all time, simply due to also being one of the most well-known characters of anything, well, ever. Everyone knows who Spider-Man is. Invincible VS' latest trailer plays into this cleverly, with the reveal of Agent Spider as an upcoming DLC character making frequent allusions to his Marvel counterpart.

Ratocalypse might sound like a low-budget horror flick, but it's actually a neat looking Fire Emblem adjacent strategy auto battler

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 17:30:00 +0000

What do you think when you hear the name "Ratocalypse"? To me it sounds like one of those so bad they're good horror flicks like Sharknado, and now I kind of want this film to exist. Alas, instead of what I said, it's actually a quite neat sounding, Fire Emblem adjacent, strategy RPG auto battler about anthropomorphic medieval rats who've been subjected to a zombie plague.

"They thought Callisto was a complete failure": Glen Schofield blames publishers Krafton for The Callisto Protocol's crash landing

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Four years after the release of Dead Space spiritual successor The Callisto Protocol, the co-creator of both, Glen Schofield (no relation), has now openly claimed that Callisto's sub-par release state was down to publishers Krafton - as he and his team were "forced to ship the game" to Krafton's shortened schedule.

Going Medieval's new diplomacy update is all about calling your neighbouring settlements for favours, which yes, may mean delivering a cow or two in return

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:28:51 +0000

Going Medieval may have been in early access for almost five years, but even after it arrived in 1.0 back in March developer Foxy Voxel have continued to build upon it. The sim's latest update has arrived today, bringing with it a whole bunch of diplomacy. Relations? With other people? Perish the thought! But I suppose sometimes there are some benefits to such a thing.

No, I am not evil for wanting to turn space whale city-builder Beyond These Stars into a Moby Dick simulator

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0000

I think I'm a pretty decent Space Whale Mayor, all told. A caring and responsible fellow traveler for Kewa, the astral cetacean on whose craggy, cloud-hung back every city in Beyond These Stars is founded. For each hexagon of whaledirt I transform into a mine or a smelter, I give back to the creature in some way – adding saplings to the forests that emit my city's bubble of breathable air, or spreading compost across the cracked stone of Kewa's neglected extremities. I have unblocked the river that runs along their spine, irrigating the badlands and rousing long-dormant seeds from the dust.

OK, so my progress hasn't been tidy. I did manage to poison half the river, after getting a bit extravagant with wood-fired power plants, but I'm swiftly repairing the damage, having built three automated tile cleaners on each bank, while pausing nearby steel production to avoid adding any more slag and soot to the water. Meanwhile, my hedge gardens gleam like jewels socketed in amongst the dull bronze wires of my roads. My foresters labour zealously to push back the grey. My people are full of good cheer, despite living on an exclusive diet of tea and potatoes. They don't much like the stinking, iridescent river, but they do like all the playgrounds and fountains I've set up near the major workplaces.

GTA 6 PC release planned for early 2027, report claims, which could mean we're playing in time for GTA Online 2: Vice City 4 U or whatever they call it

Mark Warren — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:30:21 +0000

Well, that's happening quicker than I'd anticipated. This is both what the actress said to the bishop and my immediate reaction to a report which claims GTA 6 is planned to release on PC in the opening months of 2027. That'd put it a scant matter of months behind the initial release for console on November 19th, but far less than the year or so folks like me had assumed based on how Rockstar handled GTA 5.

Dwarf Fortress creator Tarn Adams is as tired of genAI in the industry as anyone else, and is pretty set on never using it

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:42:44 +0000

Another day of news, another day in which I find something genAI-related to write about while sighing. But, lo and behold, for once, it isn't a case of a company shifting gears to prioritise AI usage over paying workers, or a studio tucking its tail between its legs admitting 'yes, we used it, but we hoped you wouldn't notice', but instead a developer loudly and happily rejecting it. Rejoice!

Tekken 8 finally gives a first look at upcoming guest Yujiro Hanma from Baki, and he looks just as grotesque as you'd expect

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 11:58:24 +0000

The main selling point of Tekken 8's Season 3 DLC pass, alongside veterans Kunimitsu, Bob and Roger Jr, is Yujiro Hanma, the main antagonist of fighting manga Baki and father of its eponymous protagonist. Yujiro was initially revealed in May through a trailer made up entirely of panels from Baki, leaving it in question just how a character that looks like that would be adapted into the Unreal Engine 5 hyper-realism of Tekken 8. The answer, apparently, is that Bandai just said fuck it, and let him look inevitably grotesque.

Cut Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced epilogue scene, that could hint at fresh 18th century stabby hijinks, allegedly taken down by Ubisoft following datamine

Mark Warren — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 11:20:00 +0000

Ubisoft appear to have copyright struck a YouTube video showing off an unused epilogue cutscene datamined from Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. The unfinished scene reportedly features Edward Kenway chatting to a character who kicks the bucket at the start of Assassin's Creed 3, and could be interpreted to hint at the potential for some fresh AC adventures to fill in gaps around the first half of the 18th century.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls to add Jane Foster's Thor, Venom and Jubilee - following Phoenix Cyclops - in its Year One DLC pass

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 10:47:35 +0000

Following the announcement of Phoenix Cyclops as the game's first DLC character back in July (who'll finally be joining the roster on November 2nd), Arc System Works have ripped the plaster off and revealed all the other new fighters set for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls' Year One phase. Courtesy, by the by, of a beautiful illustration by Peach Momoko, the artist of 2024's unique Ultimate X-Men run.

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse review - a fantastic action game, a less than stellar Metroidvania

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 10:03:04 +0000

Rose Belmont is not her father. Rose is something new: the next generation of the legendary vampire hunters spending her life trying to step out of Trevor's shadow, to be seen as the self-reliant woman she is. Any monster that faces her is surprised to see a young girl, not the grizzled old man they've grown used to. But, despite these expectations, despite the long shadow her family tree casts, Rose tries to prove herself. She will not rely on, or be saved by, what came before. She will blossom into something all her own. This is her story, not his.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is, similarly, something new, learning from its predecessors. The first entry in the series in over a decade, and developed not internally by Konami but by the indie studios responsible for roguelike Dead Cells (including its Castlevania-themed DLC), Evil Empire and Motion Twin, it manages to stand on its own as a modern interpretation of a classic series. That said, it's far from a perfect evolution. And, just to get this out of the way: yes, it feels a little like Dead Cells in its movement, and no, since there has been some confusion online, it's not a roguelike.