Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Built for that world doesn't mean built to require it": Unity reveal their next game engine while walking a careful line around generative AI

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:34:08 +0000

Unity have announced Unity 7, the latest incarnation of their game creation platform. In a pleasant shock for people who've been keeping up with Unity's doings these past couple of years, it doesn't appear to ruin anything. Aside from more routine promises of "speedier workflows" and tastier graffix, the company are promising a more "open" approach whereby collaborators using third-party tools can contribute more easily to Unity projects, without using the full Unity editor. This being the year 2026, there are of course some new features for genAI fans, though Unity appear interestingly guarded on this front, stressing that these can be ignored.

"LawBreakers tripped so Concord could faceplant": Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski looks back on his career so far and struggle with alcoholism

Mark Warren — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:29:52 +0000

Former Gears of War and Unreal Tournament designer Cliff Bleszinski has opened up about his struggle with alcoholism and how it's impacted his life and career in game development to this point, as he eyes a possible return to making games. Bleszinski's currently four months sober after suffering a drinking-related seizure in March this year.

FBI accuse Steam user of stealing over $220,000 via malware-infected games like BlockBlasters, Lunara and Dashverse

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:43:24 +0000

A Florida-based student has been arrested by the FBI after allegedly stealing over $220,000 in cryptocurrency by means of malware-packed free games on Steam.

Samsung 990 review: a lower-spec SSD that’s weirdly great for games

James Archer — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:32:20 +0000

Launching a new SSD in the current hardware climate, even a simple, DRAMless, QLC-packing SSD like the Samsung 990, may seem like starting up a roof thatching business during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius: innocuous idea, apocalyptically bad timing.

First-person explorer Sketchy Fables is a twitchy, teeming feast of hand-drawn art with acting from Hades 2's Sarah Grayson

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:28:17 +0000

Sketchy Fables is a first-person explorathon in which, if you kill things with homing butterflies, the world will grow more beautiful, whereas if you kill things with shotguns, the world will slowly succumb to "dark layers filled with loss, decay, and the end of lives". Sure beats Paragon/Renegade.

In a pinch, you can also batter creatures with the stickerbook housing all the bizarre artefacts you've discovered. I'm not sure how weaponising the very inventory contributes to the landscape's transformations, but I do know that I'd like to see this kind of diegetic design in, say, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which has menus made of solid wood.

Valve see the great RAM shortage "getting worse," just in case you were clinging to hopes of a cheaper Steam Machine

James Archer — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:43:32 +0000

As Oisin reported over the weekend, Steam Machine engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais gave a big Valve thumbs-down to the practice of platform exclusives – a hot topic in the context of Xbox owners Microsoft retreating back into whatever kind of shrivelled, joyless husk Xbox is nowadays. The same interview, with Bloomberg scoopsmith Jason Schreier, also touched on the acutely PC-spoiling subject of RAMnarök and its subsequent, en-masse embiggening of hardware prices. Good news? No! Obviously it’s all terrible!

Bethesda's Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters won't stop the modders who've already spent years recreating the RPGs in Fallout 4

Mark Warren — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:04:53 +0000

With Bethesda having begun to dip their fingers into the remaster bucket in recent years, some modders who'd decided long before that to get the ball rolling on such things themselves have had to reckon with the idea that official siblings of their passion projects could be in the works. It happened last year with Skyblivion and Oblivion Remastered, now it's happened for the crew behind The Capital Wasteland Project, an effort to recreate Fallout 3 in Fallout 4, and Fallout 4: New Vegas.

Thankfully, both teams of modders have made clear they plan to keep on trucking with their efforts following the confirmation of the official remasters.

This week in PC games: a Mass Effect-style RTS, a gamebook RPG for back-stabbing nobles, and a civilisation builder that offers to teach you kanji

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:37:16 +0000

Hello all! This week, there are a lot of new cat-themed games for some reason. One suspects that some dire cat anniversary is underway. Maybe week of 20th July 2026 marks 30 million years since the invention of cats? Or since cats invented us? In any case, there is already far too much cat discourse round these parts, so I've only allowed one of those sinister feline diversions into the Maw. Without further ado, the list.

Game Of Thrones: War For Westeros delayed to 2027, as PlaySide take more time before playing their turn to ensure the RTS hits a "high level of quality"

Mark Warren — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:00:25 +0000

Game Of Thrones: War For Westeros, the Age of Empiresy RTS teeming with Targaryens and laced with Lannisters, has been delayed to 2027. Developers PlaySide have decided that while development's "progressing well", they need a bit more time to nail their strategical rendition of the Seven Kingdoms.

The Sunday Papers

Mark Warren — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for realising that there's a car in Japan's Super GT racing series this year which is sponsored by horse girl game Umamusume Pretty Derby. Here it is. It's been racing in the GT300 category against, among other cars, a Mercedes sponsored by Hatsune Miku. I'm not sure I like them as much as my all-time favourite GT300 car, the Mooncraft Shiden (I mostly just dig its name), but hey, they exist. I often wonder if their small crews of drivers - Super GT has pilots swap over after a set time behind the wheel - gather at the back of the garages and think about some bloke in the UK writing for a games website. They probably don't.

"During the training sequence, we make a false promise": IO Interactive on the ensemble James Bond game that 007 First Light never was

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 21:55:09 +0000

It sounds like IO Interactive's take on the world of James Bond in 007 First Light was going to be quite different at first. Where the game as it currently is focuses on just Mr. Bond, once upon a time there was an idea for it to be something of an ensemble cast, where he would have been working with a number of double-O agents across his missions. Spoilers ahead!

You're probably not going to see everything your friend does in The Blood of Dawnwalker, and its director is just fine with that

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 20:29:05 +0000

The Blood of Dawnwalker is, if done well, a game that might not land with everybody. For one, there's the lack of a traditional main story quest, and then there's the fact that you only have 30 in-game days and nights to beat it. Neither are necessarily massively novel, the brilliant Unsighted, for example, also forces a timer upon you, but this is still a notable AAA game taking a risk. This thing likely won't have been cheap to make, and crafting a scenario where not everyone is going to experience the entirety of what it offers, on purpose, is certainly a touch bold at the very least. So it's a good thing its director is happy with people missing things.

Valve aren't putting any exclusives on the Steam Machine because they see "the whole PC catalog as our 'launch exclusive'"

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 18:04:54 +0000

The Steam Machine is going to sit in an odd place when it arrives. It's technically a PC, but shaped and presented like a console, which is obviously the whole point. But it differs from most traditional consoles in that it won't be coming with any games exclusive to the hardware. That's because for Valve, they want the Steam Machine to be as open as possible.

A month after mass layoffs at Bungie, Marathon game director Joe Ziegler is leaving the studio

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 17:00:48 +0000

Another regular day in Marathon Land. Following on from mass layoffs at Bungie after the final major update for Destiny 2, and ahead of next week's mid-season 2 Marathon patch, the extraction shooter's game director Joe Ziegler has announced that he's left the studio, with Del Chafe III taking over his role. Chafe, up until this point, has served as Marathon's assistant game director.

ZA/UM are set for more layoffs only two months after launching Zero Parades: For Dead Spies

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 16:04:02 +0000

It's been almost two months since ZA/UM released their second game Zero Parades: For Dead Spies (and obviously first after years of controversy. Unfortunately for workers at the studio, the game does not appear to have sold well enough, as more than 30 devs are being laid off or are at-risk of being laid off.

Esoteric Ebb is the D&Disco Elysium I never knew I needed, but more importantly it's proof I'll never be cut out for political canvassing

Mark Warren — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Which way are you voting in the election?

There’s an election coming, could I trouble you to ask which way you’re voting?

ELECTION. YOU. VOTING? WHICH WAY?

The time to place the great slip of paper into the holy box of ballots is almost nigh, my honoured friend, wherefore will thou be placing thine vote and whom will it be in favour of?

There are a lot of ways you can ask someone which way they plan to vote. All of them are awkward. The awkwardness isn’t helped by the fact that, in these situations, you might be standing on a doorstep having just interrupted their dinner or be butting into a chat they were having in the street with someone they actually like. Esoteric Ebb revels in that awkwardness.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0000

What are we all playing this weekend?

This weekend is the eye of the wedding storm, a brief reprieve before heading up to Sheffield next week for further nuptials. Though, that doesn't mean I can relax. My body is in a finely tuned state that I can't let slacken with the finish line is in sight.

I will, of course, be following my wedding guest training regime.

Fallout 5 is in preproduction alongside The Elder Scrolls 6's development, while Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are on the way, Bethesda confirm

Mark Warren — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:40:45 +0000

Following Microsoft's mass layoffs, Bethesda have clearly been told to be a bit more active in communicating exactly what they've got in the works. Cue a big blog post announcing that Fallout 5's in preproduction alongside the studio's main focus, The Elder Scrolls 6, with both being assembled on a version of the Creation engine put together following Starfield's launch. Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters have also been confirmed to be on the way, though with no concrete release dates as of yet.

"I'm saying this on camera and millions of people will believe it": How Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens lets you shape the news

Julian Benson — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:06:09 +0000

The original Suzerain, a political strategy game presented as a visual novel, cast you in the role of Anton Rayne, the newly elected President of fictional country Sordland. You had to tackle political turmoil as the leader of a country coming out of years of authoritarian rule, while also dealing with an economic crisis, and threats from the powerful nations neighbouring your borders. In the Kingdom of Rizia DLC, you left elected politics behind and, instead, sat in the inherited throne as King Romus Toras. Though your absolute power was tempered by anti-monarchists, breakaway states, and corrupt vassals.

The stakes in new DLC Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens are significantly smaller. You are just a journalist, Ilias Moris, the anchor on international news program The Neutral Lens. The decisions you make don't restrict trade in ports, pass laws that limit freedoms, or send citizens to war. Instead you're picking what question to ask in an interview or where to send your reporters for a scoop.

But how much impact decisions the press can make on the world is exactly the point.

"I would fight it tooth and nail": The Sims artist would challenge any mandate to reduce diversity after EA Saudi buyout

Julian Benson — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:50:00 +0000

Answering concerns that The Sims team may face pressure to reduce support for diversity following the Saudi Arabian-backed buyout of EA, senior character artist Jess Hyland says she's not "heard anything" about such a mandate and, if one were introduced, she "would fight it tooth and nail."

Unions accuse Microsoft of having "unlawfully fired people" in unfair labor practice complaints filed over Xbox layoffs

Mark Warren — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:46:43 +0000

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union and their Canadian offshoot CWA Canada have filed unfair labour practice complaints against Microsoft, accusing the company of having mishandled the recent mass layoffs at Xbox.

"Id Tech is there, the Doom team is here": Doom: The Dark Ages director pushes back against idea studio have been "nerfed into the ground" by Xbox layoffs

Mark Warren — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:28:08 +0000

While reports about Microsoft's mass layoffs have painted a devastating picture, the company and affected studios like Doom developers Id Software have been publicly trying to reassure players that the cuts aren't the end of the world. Doom: The Dark Ages director Hugo Martin has stuck to that line while acknowledging the layoffs during on official livestream of the game's Revelations DLC, which came out the same week 136 Id workers were shown the door.

Control a human proxy on an abandoned spaceship by typing in every command or risk losing your job in Remote Control

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 21:53:06 +0000

The idea of another person controlling every action my body takes is one that keeps me awake at night more often than I like to acknowledge to myself. So how about a game all about that! It's called Remote Control, and in it you most titularly remote control human proxies to explore a derelict spaceship and figure out what went wrong on it.

I don't like football, but I do like platformers, so Kick is a pretty little bridge that closes that gap

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:36:00 +0000

I've never been a football person, so this whole Global Mug thing that's going on at the moment is as important to me as eyelids for a fish. What I have always been is someone who likes platformers, however, even when they're all about that thing they call the beautiful game. And in the case of Kick, it seems that sidescrolling ball dribbling is actually quite delightful.

Marathon's experimental PvE roguelite mode is, bafflingly, only around for two weeks when it drops next week

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 17:58:21 +0000

Marathon's already announced mid-season 2 update is set to arrive next week, bringing with it the shooter's first proper, albeit experimental, PvE mode, Vault Breaker. A new blog post has gone into a bit more detail as to what you can expect with the new update, with a teaser trailer showing off some extra bits, but the biggest bummer is the fact that Vault Breaker will only be around for a short while.

Fix up your van with a bunch of your best pals and escape an onslaught of tornados in survival co-op game Funnel Runners

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 17:10:38 +0000

Outside of the entirety of the ocean, the thing that probably scares me most about the things the world produces are natural disasters. You're telling me that sometimes the wind gets so fast it can pick up a dang cow? I'm smaller than a cow! I'd have no chance. And it's this fear that I, and I assume many of you, have that sits at the core of Funnel Runners, an online co-op game where you have to fix up a fan to escape a massive tornado.

Roguelike bullet heaven Divine Comedy but with anime girls Hell Maiden is out today in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:04:59 +0000

As strange as it might sound, there truly might be no better piece of writing to turn into an anime girl roguelike than Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It's the original self-insert fic after all (arguably, anyway), so why shouldn't Hell Maiden put its own little spin on it? That's the nature of these sorts of works. And today, you'll be able to get a bigger taste of the game and see if it's able to pull all of this off, as it's now out in early access.

Roblox announce plans to let people AI generate basic games using text prompts stuck into a mobile app, but claim that won't fill their homepage with AI slop

Mark Warren — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:32:31 +0000

"Play is humanity's oldest technology for connection and learning," Roblox's CEO yells at me through my monitor. "Before agriculture, before commerce, before civilization, we played together." Right, so, where's this going? Oh. They're rolling out a tool on their mobile app which allows people to generate basic games by sticking a text prompt into an AI model, then do some light rearranging of said game so they can pretend it's in any way unique or artful before they publish it for others to give a go. The tool's called Build.

Thief Gold with updated graphics and integrated modern controller support is the latest addition to GOG's preservation program, ahead of Nightdive's full remaster

Mark Warren — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:04:27 +0000

GOG, famed revampers of classic PC games, have done just that to the Gold edition of beloved purse-snatching stealth romp Thief: The Dark Project. Through the storefront's preservation program, the GOG version of Thief Gold boasts a number of handy tweaks to help it run seamlessly on modern hardware.

Xbox's gut-wrenching layoffs include the Elder Scrolls Online dev who became studio head around the time of last year's gut-wrenching Xbox layoffs

Mark Warren — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 10:41:39 +0000

Last week's Microsoft layoffs, a seemingly never-ending source of terrible and sobering news, included several members of the Elder Scrolls Online's leadership team. According to a WARN notice, studio head Jo Burba is among those departing, despite having only stepped into that role around the time of last year's mass layoffs at Microsoft. With him and several other key figures on the outs, a "transition" to a new leadership team for the MMO is reportedly underway.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's latest update stops unexpected mutinies triggered by ship shopping trips and forces skies to be sunnier

Mark Warren — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 09:20:08 +0000

We've all been there. You're a pirate captain whose pockets are overflowing with freshly nicked doubloons and you fancy blowing it all on some shiny new cannons or a figurehead carved to resemble a bag of money. So, you sail on down to a port with a harbourmaster and start perusing ship upgrades. Then, when you get back to the docks, your ship's disappeared into thin air. Ah. Yarr've got to be kidding me. Completing the rest of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced might be rather difficult now. Thankfully, these impromptu mutinies are a bug Ubisoft have fixed in the title update set to arrive in the game today.

"Never say never": Criterion aren't ruling out a return to Need For Speed, but Battlefield is their only focus for now

Julian Benson — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:45:00 +0000

Last week, to mark its 30th anniversary, EA rebranded Criterion as Criterion: A Battlefield Studio. The storied studio that created Burnout and in recent years has shepherded the Need For Speed series, as well as working on the rebooted Star Wars: Battlefront, will become just one of the four studios supporting EA's fresh Battlefield push.

This isn't the first time Criterion have contributed to Battlefield, the Guildford studio have been involved since 2015's Battlefield 1, but the rebranding marks an end to working on other projects.

Or is it?

Denshattack review: one of 2026's best games so far is a racing ruckus of railways, rebellion, and ramen

James Archer — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:21:30 +0000

I fear I’ve authored some kind of Boy Who Cried Wolf situation, vis à vis Denshattack. It’s shown signs of greatness ever since its reveal last year, but in hindsight, I wonder if my enthusiasm for its silly side – it is undeniably a game about trains doing skateboard-style flips and grinds, sometimes while chased by giant baseballs – ever contributed to an impression of it as a mere novelty. A joke game, disinterested in anything beyond breakneck wackiness.

I hope not. Because Denshattack is utterly and genuinely brilliant, and not just because it lets you blow up an AI data centre by ploughing a locomotive through it.

As GTA 6's PC portless launch looms, ex-Rockstar producer says prioritising consoles first is primarily about being "better off starting with the constraints"

Mark Warren — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:34:44 +0000

The wait for GTA 6 on PC lasting past this November's been a foregone conclusion for a while now, but if you're interested in a bit of developer perspective as to why Rockstar opt to do things that way, a former producer at the company's offered some. Essentially, it's a matter of it being less of a headache to scale up after initially getting a game working on hardware with stricter limitations than it would be to strip back an all-singing, all-dancing PC port for consoles.

"We've seen how close you can get": How studio closures pushed Suzerain's maker to create two new DLCs and a turn-based strategy spinoff

Julian Benson — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

"For the longest time, we went one by one," Ata Sergey Nowak, co-founder of Torpor Games, the studio behind strategy game Suzerain, tells me, explaining the four year gap between the game's release and its first DLC. "Our games take a long time, our staff was very limited, and our financing was very project-to-project." So it was a little surprising he was also telling me Torpor are today announcing not one but three new projects - two DLCs and a spin-off. All of which are due to be released before their next flagship title, The Conformist.

Each of the three newly announced projects will take you deeper into the world of Suzerain, and let you see its states and people from new perspectives. But, Torpor aren't only making these games to expand Suzerain, they're also using it as a defence against a punishing industry.

Dead Space creator Glen Schofield announces he's retiring from "the day-to-day work" of making games while in the vicinity of some chirpy nature

Mark Warren — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:54:12 +0000

Dead Space creator Glen Schofield has decided it's time to walk away from game development, or at least "the day-to-day work of making them. Thus concludes a career which kicked off all the way back in the early 90s, and saw Schofield work on games ranging from Disney World racing to Call of Duty and The Callisto Protocol. The latter will now go down as the developer's last game, provided he hasn't got any surprise un-retirements up his sleeves.

"There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft": Xbox owners accused of cultivating a "disposable worker mentality" in damning report on layoffs

Mark Warren — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:48:46 +0000

A fresh report has shed light on what played out behind the scenes last week as Microsoft laid off around 1600 people and parted ways with a number of studios. While news of the various affects the cuts have had on specific studios still under the Xbox banner since that pint, the report also paints a damning picture of the effect these layoffs and the ones which still loom have had on the mindset of remaining workers, with unclear goals having contributed to a situation whereby staff feel they're disposable regardless of what they make.

As unionised Microsoft workers rally against Bethesda layoffs, Fallout 4's been filled with protest signs and OneBGS logoed vault suits by modders

Mark Warren — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 09:20:31 +0000

Today, July 15th, unionised Microsoft workers are set to hold a series of co-ordinated rallies outside the offices of Xbox-owned studios, in protest of the mass layoffs the company set in motion last week. According to the Communications Workers of America union (CWA), over 400 union-represented jobs across Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax, and id Software are being cut. In solidarity with the union marches, modders continue to fill Bethesda games with union logos. Skyrim was the first and Fallout 4's the latest.

Deckbuilder Grail quells the fear in my heart of playing the wrong card by pinning all of the strategy on the deckbuilding

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 22:01:32 +0000

There is an anxiety to deckbuilders that I don't find with many other games, in that I get incredibly stressed about which cards I should play. I feel this way about card games in real life too, for reasons I truly cannot understand. It's just a game! And yet I can't help but scold my tiny, silly brain in moments where I pull the wrong move. So I am quite keen on how Grail sounds, the latest little game from little game aficionados Sokpop, where after you build your deck, the deck does the fighting for you.

RuneScape revamps its housing customisation with a snazzy looking build mode and the option to make your own neighbourhood with your pals

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:47:24 +0000

RuneScape is having a bit of a home improvement moment, quite literally. An update went live yesterday that focused completely on player-owned housing, revamping how you both use and construct it, bringing it honestly quite close to The Sims in how it handles house building, amongst other tweaks and additions.

With Dragon's Dogma 2's new infinite fast travel, Dark Arisen's director wants you to know they're "not forcing" you to use it

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:06:22 +0000

Dragon's Dogma 2's fast travel system is a pain in the ass, and depending on who you ask and even when you ask it, this is a good, bad, fine, annoying, interesting, frustrating, clever thing. But as part of a recent free update that has arrived in the leadup to the game's Dark Arisen expansion, it is now less of a pain in the ass. And for the expansion's producer Naoto Oyama and director Kenta Kinoshita, it's about giving people more choices.

22 trade union leaders have signed a letter joining the call for GTA 6 developer Rockstar to recognise the IWGB Game Workers union

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:08:51 +0000

Another step forward has been made by IWGB Game Workers in their efforts towards calling for Grand Theft Auto 6 developer Rockstar Games to formally recognise the studio's union. A new letter addressed to Rockstar studio director Jennifer Kolbe and head of HR Rob Spampinato has been signed by 22 trade union leaders joining in the call for the developer to start bargaining with the IWGB.

"They would feel a kind of sadness, right?": Slay the Spire 2 dev on using slightly rubbish placeholder art over AI

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:02:12 +0000

Those of you that have been playing Slay the Spire 2 in its current early access form will have seen that some of the placeholder art looks, well, arguably bad. I am not necessarily making this argument! But it could be made. As it turns out, according to Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano, this is very much the point, and has more purpose behind it than just being easier to do.

"Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve": Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's release followed by union strike over planned Ubisoft Barcelona layoffs

Mark Warren — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:52:23 +0000

Following the release of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, an undertaking by a bunch of Ubisoft studios based all over the world, union protests at one of said studios have kicked off over plans to lay off staff now the remake's out of the door. Ubisoft Barcelona, the studio in question, were reported last month to be set for a restructure that'd see them focus solely on Rainbow Six games going forwards.

Fallout: New Vegas gets a Mojave interpretation of Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood, thanks to this assassin-focused faction quest mod

Mark Warren — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:41:58 +0000

While there's never been any shortage of characters who'll pay you to splatter some brains across the desert with your trusty anti-mat rifle in Fallout: New Vegas, a new mod adds a whole extra faction based around being a post-apocalyptic assassin. They're dubbed the Dark Family, and you get no prizes for guessing which robed gang of Elder Scrolls dagger-enthusiasts they're based on.

GoldenEye-inspired FPS Agent 64: Spies Never Die finally releases in August, complete with optional big heads

Mark Warren — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:20:23 +0000

2026 has already had a modern take on James Bond in game form thanks to IO Interactive's 007 First Light, and now it's getting some retro bondage thanks to a throwback spy FPS that's been in the works for a while. Agent 64: Spies Never Die, a GoldenEye-inspired romp from solo developer Replicant D6, releases next month.

Following Xbox split, South of Midnight devs Compulsion are looking for work as a co-development or support studio

Mark Warren — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:05:15 +0000

Having recently parted ways with former owners Xbox as part of the console maker's mass cuts, South of Midnight and We Happy Few developers Compulsion Games have announced they're seeking opportunities to collaborate with other studios. Likely to help them keep the lights on until they've got a new game of their own well on its way, Compulsion look to have turned their focus towards landing a co-development or support gig on someone else's project.

"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.