Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Sunday Papers

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, Sundays are only for rounding up videogame criticism and journalism. I try to cast a wider net when my turn comes to deliver the Papers, because I figure you've probably been reading about videogames all week, and would appreciate e.g. an essay on the mating habits of snails or the top 7 most elaborate UFO conspiracies, but this Sunday, there are no snails or UFOs within easy dredge. So instead, please accept a boatload of finest mitherings on Duke Nukem, oracular visual novels, sociable space sims, and 'search action' games.

Raise up a mech pilot and make sure she doesn't get Evangelion-level depressed in the sci-fi visual novel Valkyrie Iteration: Mecha Pilot Raising Pocket Simulator

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 21:52:12 +0000

Raising sims aren't a genre I've partaken in, partially because so many of them are geared towards a sort of father, daughter vibe that doesn't quite fit me. Raising a mech pilot, however, seems like something a bit more my speed, so you won't be surprised to hear of my interest in Valkyrie Iteration: Mecha Pilot Raising Pocket Simulator, a visual novel with a name that seems to do what it says in the tin.

Chromatic aberration is made manifest in NECHROMIA, a high contrast survival horror set in a castle made of something else's memories

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 20:34:41 +0000

Look, I love a PS1 horror throwback as much as the next whatever Gonzo is, but they don't all have to look like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, do they? There have been some aesthetic divergences in the renewed interest in the pseudo-genre, like with 2024's excellent and queer as hell Sorry We're Closed, but I'm hungry for more. Hence my interest in NEHCROMIA, a high-contrast survival horror set in a castle made of memories that aren't yours (a seizure warning is in order for the trailer below).

Tulpa the Unseen Lover is a psychological visual novel about a depressed manga artist manifesting a cute, ominous anime girl made by former Spider-Verse animators

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 19:03:25 +0000

It's very rare that I'm not thinking about the works of Satoshi Kon (pop on Tokyo Godfathers this Christmas, you won't regret it), but the one that I always come back to is Opus. It's a manga the director made in the mid '90s that he ultimately never finished before his death, following a manga artist who gets sucked into his own creation and forced to deal with the consequences of his writing. Tulpa the Unseen Lover, a psychological visual novel made by former Spider-Verse animators, is sort of like that, only in this case it's about a manga creator bringing an anime girl to life in his mind.

Gorgeous and hazy pixel art horror farming sim Neverway has been pushed to 2027, but you can at least have a gander at some of the NPCs you can smooch

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 17:16:48 +0000

Sorry folks, some bad news: Neverway, the horror life sim and RPG combo from one of the artists behind Celeste and the composer of Fez, has been delayed into 2027. While it never had an exact release date anyway, developer Coldblood Inc. shared word of the delay in a Steam blog post earlier this week.

"Buying any of our games helps support the studio": Psychonauts studio Double Fine are the latest former Xbox-owned studio to get the rights to their games back

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:18:43 +0000

Earlier this week, South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games shared word that they now own all of the publishing rights to their games, a welcome update in light of the ongoing BDS boycott against Microsoft and Xbox. And now, another studio is joining the realm of boycott freedom, this time Psychonauts studio Double Fine, as CEO Tim Schafer has confirmed that they too now own the publishing rights to their own catalogue.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0000

For the past ten days or so I've been whinging my way through a chest infection. My partner's been sent out for lemsips, tissues, the blood of a vital youth filled with hopes of a bright future, and chicken soup. With the last dregs of the lurgy coming out of me in runs of coughs I'm starting to feel well again, meaning I've a weekend of ignored chores to catch up on. That and attending a one-year-old's birthday party.

Fingers crossed my immune system is now in fighting form because, with Gamescom next week, it would be right annoying to pick up something else.

Indecently cool FPS platformer Cicadamata" is out now - please get yourself down that rabbit hole

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:35:28 +0000

I've already humiliated myself attempting to describe the sensory enormity that is Cicadamata", the new movement shooter from flowergarden with the tricksy title punctuation, so instead of writing additional sentences such as "this game is like drinking the aurora borealis" (OK, one more) or "this game is like surfing the Niagara Falls during a freak shower of potassium pellets" (enough!), I'm just going to transcribe the latest trailer.

Sandustry is the first factory simulation game I've played that gets heaps right

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Before we talk about Sandustry, the excellent new spelunking factory builder from Lantto Games and Hooded Horse, we need to revisit that most quintessentially vidyagame of topics, the post-industrial countryside of Wales. Early on in my recent 105-mile "review" of the MSI Cyborg 14 laptop, I walked through the old slate quarries near the village of Aberllefenni – the longest continually operated slate mining setup in the world until its closure in 2003.

GTA 6 leaker hunt is on, as Rockstar owners Take-Two file subpoenas asking Microsoft and Discord for records

Mark Warren — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:45:04 +0000

Well, the chase has begun. Rockstar parent company Take-Two are after the identity of the hacker or hackers behind this week's GTA 6 leak. Having spent a number of days swatting clips with takedowns, while the leakers dumped more and more across the net, Take-Two have filed multiple subpoenas in federal district court asking Microsoft and Discord to share records related to accounts which have been involved in posting and sharing the leaks.

"The lines between redemption and revenge will blur", promises Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2's latest trailer as the series locks in a late October release

Mark Warren — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, the second series of the anime CD Projekt Red and Netflix grafted onto the former's cyberverse following Cyberpunk 2077's release, will premiere on October 20th. Having previously revealed the four new Night City dwellers its plot will be following, the show's creators have now put out another trailer teasing the tale of "revenge and redemption" in store.

Among Shadows is a Nightreign-style dark fantasy RPG with a touch of Among Us that makes me think wistfully of Dark Souls at its most treacherous

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:42:55 +0000

Among Shadows is the kind of videogame genre arithmetic that often proves less than the sum of its parts, but I'm cautiously enthused by its talk of disease, betrayal and Elden Ring: Nightreign-flavoured swordwizarding. The gist: this is a fantasy action-RPG with an Among Us-style social deduction element. You are a member of the Order of the Secret Fire, sent into a supernaturally blighted region to track down sources of corruption, while looting gear and levelling yourself up.

“We’re going to take things slow": South of Midnight devs now own the rights to all their games again, after quitting Xbox, and are working on a new game

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:25:45 +0000

We Happy Few and South of Midnight developers Compulsion Games have announced that they are fully broken up with Microsoft and Xbox, after completing a management buyout. They now once again own the rights to all their own original intellectual properties. Amongst other things, this means that you can buy South of Midnight – summarised by Brendy (RPS in peace) as "a beautiful folkloric tale" and a "plain and unambitious" action-adventure – while still taking part in the BDS boycott against Microsoft's Israeli military connections. When you buy the Steam version of South of Midnight, all your money (after Valve's revenue cut) will go to Compulsion.

PSA: In the latest GTA 6 leak's aftermath, it's not a good idea to download files with names like totallylegitgta6leakedbuild.exe

Mark Warren — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:31:41 +0000

While scammers and other ne'er-do-wells leaning into the allure of playing GTA 6 as part of their efforts to spread malware isn't anything new - cybersecurity companies have been issuing warnings about it for months - there appears to have been an uptick in such behaviour following the latest GTA 6 leak. With speculation rampant as to what exactly the hackers known as Cyberleek may have access to, now is not the time to be downloading any files claiming to be GTA 6.

Mortal Shell 2's first balance patch makes its in-game economy a lot more lenient and nerfs some enemies and bosses for a smoother ride

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 21:53:50 +0000

Heavy is the burden of being a game developer, as even as a game launches, there is always still work to be done. Mortal Shell 2 is out today, and while it generally seems to be doing quite well for itself, a game of its ilk, i.e. a Soulslike, doesn't necessarily get everything right the first go around (or I guess second first in this case). So, to smooth out some edges, developer Cold Symmetry have already released the game's first balance patch.

Active development on League of Legends fighting game spinoff 2XKO will be coming to an end at the end of the year

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 20:33:50 +0000

Riot Games' fighting game take on the world of League of Legends, 2XKO, is winding down development. The developer shared word today that active development on the game is ending December this year, citing a lack of a strong enough adoption and retention rate for the fighting game.

This game inspired by classic Minecraft dropper maps can't work out whether it wants to rapture you or make you throw up

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:10:43 +0000

"I wanna see how much abuse gamers can take," a voice over opens the trailer for Sensory Overload, a game that will likely be taking home the Geoff "IMAX" Keighley Award for Most Appropriate Title For A Video Game later this year. It's a simple concept for a game: you are constantly falling, and you must avoid walls in various shapes as you do so to wrack up points. Simple! And disgustingly disorienting.

"Do questions like that create a self-fulfilling prophecy?”: Dishonored director Harvey Smith on the fear of asking if immersive sims are dead

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:05:02 +0000

It appears that August is the month for having thoughts on the success of immersive sims! Earlier this month, one of the original designers behind Thief: The Dark Project shared his feelings on developing imsims at triple-A scale, coming to the conclusion it doesn't really work. Just yesterday, Arkane veteran and Dishonored director Harvey Smith revealed his new studio that's entirely dedicated to the genre. And now, Smith, alongside fellow leads at the new studio Ben Horne and Ricardo Bare, answers the evergreen question: are imsims dead?

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles composer Kumi Tanioka says that she didn't make the new, very likely AI-generated album on her Spotify page

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:14:06 +0000

Well, here's something that's a bit of a bummer. You'll probably best know Kumi Tanioka as the composer behind Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, though her work can also be found across the likes of Final Fantasy 11, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and more recently, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. But lately, it seems like someone's been trying to pass off an entirely AI generated album as her work, much to Tanioka's own confusion.

Hold the throne, NBA 2K27's new MyNBA Legacy mode sounds a lot like basketball Crusader Kings 3

Mark Warren — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:59:32 +0000

Lo, a new power rose in the East. The warlord Michael of Jordan united the people of Chicago under the crest of the bull, then with his general Scottie of Pippen and the triangular religion of bishop Phil of Jackson, conquered the whole realm. Alas, those feeble heirs who inherited Michael's fiefdom upon his passing into retirement failed to retain all he'd won, and soon kings named Kobe of Bryant and LeBron of James vied for supremacy. This, I assume, is how a playthrough of NBA 2K27's new MyNBA Legacy mode might go, given it seems to have taken cues from Crusader Kings 3's multi-generation dynasty-crafting.

Black Myth: Zhong Kui shows off 15 minutes of rollparrysliceage, and I've just learned that the bloke it's named after was a lethally effective headbanger

Mark Warren — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Game Science have put out a fresh trailer showing off Black Myth: Zhong Kui, their follow-up to Chinese mythology-stuffed action-RPG Black Myth: Wukong, in action. A year on from its reveal at 2025's Gamescom, Zhong Kui's looking as slicey and rolly as its predecessor, despite a switch in protagonist.

A playable build of GTA 6 appears to have leaked, as Rockstar and Take-Two scramble to take down videos

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:19:55 +0000

The crypto-peddling hacker group who leaked footage of GTA 6 earlier this week appear to have access to a playable version of Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive's forthcoming open world game, if recent videos are any indication.

All of the pirates in Hooded Horse city builder Corsair Cove hate me because I can't make them eyepatches fast enough

Julian Benson — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Stories of pirates are full of swashbuckling, daring-do, and grog. But Limbic Entertainment's city builder Corsair Cove reveals those hijinx are only a sideshow: logistics is the star. As the proud owner of a tropical island surrounded by high seas dotted with patrolling Spanish galleons, pirate hunters, and kraken, your focus is squarely on building the infrastructure to support pillaging, rather than taking a firsthand approach to the scallywaggery.

To keep your pirate populace happy, initially they'll only need basic food, drink, and shelter. In time, though, they'll start asking for finer things, like leather boots, jolly roger flags, and turtle soup. All of which you'll need to produce by rinsing the resource deposits on your island. Keep them happy, however, and they will set out on the ocean, crewing your vessels, and risking their lives against the threats that circle your enclave.

As a fan of the Anno series, the first hours of Corsair Cove were enthralling, but the sheen did begin to rub off after eight hours or so. Right about the time my pirates started to hate me.

EA's Saudi takeover wouldn't have happened if the company's culture "had any semblance of a moral backbone", say staff fearing layoffs and ownership meddling

Mark Warren — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 09:58:26 +0000

Now the ink's starting to dry on the Saudi Arabian government and Jared Kushner-backed takeover of EA, which has seen the company go private, staff are getting to grips with what the ownership change might mean for them going forwards. Fears of layoffs and teams or game series being sold off following the leveraged buyout hang in the air alongside unease about the effect the Saudi state's values might have on what gets the green light in future, with staff suggesting EA haven't done a very good job of alleviating such concerns.

Sony are rebooting their live service Horizon game as a more traditional co-op affair, claim sources, with a proper Horizon Forbidden West sequel still years away

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:10:15 +0000

Horizon Hunters Gathering, the live service multiplayer spin-off for PlayStation's post-apocalyptic Horizon series, is being rebooted as a smaller and more traditional co-op experience with a story mode, according to anonymous insiders. In the process, we're told, several of the project's staff are being reassigned within Sony's gamedev empire, even as a small team of Guerrilla Games work on the next "proper" singleplayer Horizon game.

Amid accusations of a post-beta difficulty bump, Mortal Shell 2 devs patch the new soulslike to stop players riposting so hard they steal enemy weapons

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:16:46 +0000

Belated congratulations to everybody who correctly guessed that Mortal Shell 2 was the mystery game our guides team were raving about a couple of weeks ago. You'll hopefully have read Jeremy's glowing review, in which he calls the new Soulslike RPG "an incredible second outing that capitalises upon the potential of the first Mortal Shell and brings forth nostalgic memories of DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, and other PC gaming gems." Now, let us speak of difficulty thresholds, hotfix patches, and turning the tables on enemies so badassedly that you accidentally pinch their weapons.

STALKER 2 gets serious performance and visual upgrades with its 2.0 update, testing confirms, polishing up one of the biggest flawed gems in FPS games

James Archer — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:30:00 +0000

I don’t begrudge anyone who’s waited to try STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl until it got its technical defects fixed. They’re still wrong, obviously - an absorbing and eerily atmospheric survival FPS is still an absorbing and eerily atmospheric survival FPS when it has the structural integrity of baked beans. But it was spectacularly broken at launch, and although nearly two years of patches have swatted countless bugs and beefed up the series’ signature A-Life NPC simulation, it’s remained a heavyweight GPU-puncher on general performance.

Thank the Zone, then, for the 2.0 update, which rolls out tomorrow in tandem with the also-good Cost of Hope expansion. It ambitiously migrates STALKER 2 to a newer, sleeker version of Unreal Engine 5, and makes sweeping (though handcrafted) changes to lighting and environmental deets. Based on what I’ve played, the result is both a better-looking game and a better-performing one. So get in here, stalker - there’s never been a better time to have your skeleton melted out by an anomalous soap bubble.

"Through the looking glass": as Arkane fight for their future, Dishonored veteran Harvey Smith reveals new studio dedicated to immersive sims

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Days after Deus Ex director Warren Spector announced that he was quitting the business, another former Ion Storm developer, Harvey Smith, has revealed Black Pony Immersive - a new studio dedicated to the creation of "imaginative first-person action RPGs set within well-realized worlds, where players create their own memorable experiences with expressive, emergent game systems." The announcement features the maxim: "through the looking glass, we’re chasing a dream of mystery, meaning, and creative play." Hey, I understood that reference! Sure sounds like an imsim shop to me.

STALKER 2: Cost of Hope review: An expanded Zone that begs to be explored, even as its faction war fizzles

James Archer — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Like the technical fix-uppery of the 2.0 update it’s launching alongside, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s Cost of Hope expansion arrives with a determinedly furrowed brow; that kind of enthusiastic, if just slightly contrite, look of someone hellbent on righting their own past wrongs.

Of course, most of the open-world shooter’s past crimes are long absolved, if not forgiven immediately on the grounds that they were committed amid an actual war. But Cost of Hope does serve as a second chance for this bleak, beautiful, tense, thrilling, imperfectly brilliant game to address certain omissions it made back in 2024 – even if some of these restorations gleam brighter than others.

"Without us, Bethesda games aren’t Bethesda games": Rallies against Microsoft layoffs at Elder Scrolls studio continue, with unionised devs' morale "on the upswing"

Mark Warren — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Yesterday, August 18th, further union rallies against Microsoft's mass layoffs across Xbox studios were held across North America. As the One Bethesda Game Studio (OneBGS) union and the Communication Workers of America (CWA)-supported protests continue, one unionised Bethesda developer has said that while work-related morale for those who remain at the studio is low, there's optimism about their efforts to organise.

Immersive sim Retrospace, aka '70s System Shock, gets an October release date plus a trailer full of funky guns and sentient black holes

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:00:57 +0000

Space horror immersive sim RetroSpace will launch on 1st October 2026, developers The Wild Gentlemen and publishers Kwalee have announced. New to RetroSpace? In brief: you are a 3D-printed clone janitor, trapped aboard a space station that has been swallowed by a "sentient black hole". Now, you must deploy a mixture of stealth, violence and swaggering "discopunk" ingenuity as you go up against a bunch of mutant plants and animals, together with the station's own security systems.

Latest alleged GTA 6 leak "risks tarnishing the reputation of our communities", say Stop Killing Games after hackers claim pro-consumer motivations

Mark Warren — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 09:15:38 +0000

As you might have seen, there was another alleged GTA 6 leak yesterday, with apparent footage of Rockstar's crime sandbox in action spread across the net and in many cases swiftly hit with DMCA takedowns. The group seemingly behind the leakage this time have claimed that their motivations have to do with ranging against anti-consumer practices by publishers, prompting the Stop Killing Games campaign to step in and issue a statement condemning and distancing themselves from the hack.

Clipmatrix is a Counter-Strike-like, bunny hopping, platforming romp through surreal and industrial locales

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:52:28 +0000

A thing that always tickles me in a particular way is when a game takes a beloved mechanic from an iconic game that doesn't technically exist. By not existing I'm talking about something like wavedashing in Super Smash Bros. Melee. You can't play that game professionally without doing it, and yet it's just an exploit as opposed to something purposeful, but there are derivatives that directly bake it in. So, despite never playing its source (pun intended (you'll see what I mean in a second)) of inspiration, I'm quite intrigued by Clipmatrix, a momentum platformer set in surreal, industrial locales built around Source Engine bunny hopping found in the likes of Counter-Strike.

GTA 6 footage once again appears to leak online, this time because of a group that wants games like The Crew to have offline modes and the end of digital preorders

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:31:08 +0000

Yeah, it's happened again: some GTA 6 bits appear to have leaked. I'm not going to link to any of them for I hope obvious reasons, as well as the fact I don't want John Rockstar to send me an email wagging their virtual finger at me. But, having seen them, they do seem to be legit, consisting of a couple of clips and a handful of screenshots showing the in-game map.

Entropy, a deliciously miserable Final Fantasy-esque RPG where your party members can permanently die, is now out in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:07:12 +0000

I was already aware of Entropy before Edwin called it a game that looked like a PS1 game fished from a toilet, primarily thanks to the stellar work developer Lovely Hellplace carried out in their previous game Dread Delusion, but I'm sure that would have hooked me in conceptually just as easily. And now you can dive into this turn-based, post-apocalyptic RPG yourself, as it's launched into early access.

Subnautica 2's Buddy System update brings in the promised proximity chat, easier trading, and emotes so you can sarcastically applaud your friends

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 17:15:38 +0000

Another month, another Subnautica 2 update! Last month's focus was on changing creature behaviours to make it a bit less frustrating for those of you that just wanted to go on a killing spree. This month puts the focus on your friends, with the 1.2 update being titled "Buddy System," adding in some neat new features that'll mean you'll have a smoother time playing with your pals.

The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, a Morrowind-inspired RPG weirdfest out this week in early access, has immediately seduced me with dialogue camera hijinks

Mark Warren — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:14:29 +0000

I've woken up on a beach. I'm staring up into the nostrils of a bald man whose face looks to be made of wet clay. He's saying vaguely threatening things about a tower and my race and an island and the fact I'm far from home. The dialogue camera of The Lantern of the Laughless Saint clearly picks up on how unnerved this introduction to its adventure has made me.

Marathon's limited time Ordnance Heist is a multi-run and map event that nets you a cool gun you can't keep

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:09:20 +0000

Marathon's Vault Breaker, an experimental PvE mode that allowed even solo folks to take on the endgame map Cryo Archive, is wrapping up today, but Bungie does at least have a new event for you to have a go at in kind. It's called Ordnance Heist, and while it doesn't offer any major new features or radical changes, the big thing it does focus on is completing multiple runs across multiple maps, netting you an explosive weapon called the Firestorm.

Trainwatch is a life sim, a horror game, and a time management experience rolled up into a haunting story about the eerie places you see from a speeding carriage

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:24:19 +0000

Recently, RPS has seen a mighty renaissance of train game reporting. Look to east, and you will find James doing locomotive kickflips in Denshattack, a J-pop stunt racer turbocharged by the hope of a better world. Look to west, and you'll witness Julian bopping bandit Pullmen in Fogpiercer, or chuffing gaily between the plumpest asteroids in Profits 2167.

Rather than calling for GTA 6 boycott, fired Rockstar workers urge players to support them in their legal battle against the studio by buying union merch

Mark Warren — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:20:46 +0000

Former Rockstar staff currently embroiled in a legal battle with the company over their firings last year have asked supporters not to boycott GTA 6, but instead to consider helping cover the costs of their fight against Rockstar by buying specially-designed union merchandise.

Stare at an imprisoned god to stop the apocalypse in Sarco, a no-saves horror game in which you'll also, somehow, have to explore a gutted scientific base

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

In Hello Andromeda's Sarco, you're trapped in a scientific research base with a sarcophagus housing a cosmic being that starts to open when you aren't looking at it. Friends, I am never going to beat this game - not because I dread to gaze into the abyss, lest it gaze into me, nor because as with Schrödinger's cat, I do not credit the sealed cosmic being with a stable existence prior to the box's opening. No, I'm going to fail because my parents taught me that it's rude to stare and they did not add the disclaimer "...unless you're trying to keep the lid on Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young."

Talking trees, flying witch heads and an unsettling rabbit man await in the shrubbery of cursed woodland ranger sim I Hear the Forest

Mark Warren — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:09:33 +0000

Nature's relaxing, yeah? Life as a forest ranger, wandering around amid the trees and making sure none of the animals are getting up to mischief sounds a bit like bliss. Unless you're the forest ranger in freshly announced horror game I Hear the Forest, who's been cursed and is thus not having a relaxing time in the woods.

Death Stranding meets party-based tactical combat in open world RPG Fog'n'Silence, in which you lead twisted humans through the Afterlife

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:30:13 +0000

On viewing the trailer for Fog'n'Silence, I transformed instantly into a caricature of a Texan oilman. "Hoowee!!" I whooped, hurling down my ten gallon hat and firing my ivory-handled six shooter into the air. "I have got to get me some of that Fog'n'Silence!!" The best thing about this reference is that it tells you absolutely nothing about Fog'n'Silence.

Created by Kyiv-based Hello Andromeda, this is a grim and enveloping party-based open world RPG that, according to studio co-founder Vlad Muntian, takes inspiration from Kenshi, Death Stranding, and Outer Wilds. It puts you in charge of a group of Vagrants exploring the vast plains of the Afterlife. You'll deal with transmogrifying fog, sneak around blind monsters, tackle esoteric physics, and (if you must) take part in freeze-time combat that sees Vagrants and adversaries plotting actions, then playing them out simultaneously. All the while dealing with lasting injuries, mounting hunger, and rapidly decreasing sanity.

Deus Ex director and immersive sim legend Warren Spector is retiring, despite having "three games in particular" he'd still like to make

Mark Warren — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:28:51 +0000

Warren Spector, Deus Ex director and general household name of the PC gamingverse, has announced his retirement from game development. Though, he's not completely closed the door on making a comeback down the line, alluding to three games in particular that he'd still like to make if the right circumstances popped up.

The US Senate are investigating Roblox for prioritising "revenue and engagement metrics over the safety and well-being of our children"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:30:00 +0000

US senators have launched an investigation of game creation platform Roblox on a broad charge of putting money before child safety. They accuse Roblox of being a venue for "sexually explicit (and often violent) virtual 'experiences' with children", and have requested a range of documents and records, including details of the company's collaborations with Sesame Street, the NFL and FIFA.

I'm not saying Bethesda are trolling me specifically, but Fallout 4 and Skyrim updates are imminent just as I've modded up the latter for the first time in ages

Mark Warren — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:51:22 +0000

Right, just a couple more location overhauls and there we go. A fresh Skyrim load order created for my first modded toe-dip into Tamriel for quite a while, outside of grabbing the odd article image. Phew, now to relax and sink another 50 hou-wait. Fallout 4 and Skyrim updates are inbound, say Bethesda? Well, that would be my luck, wouldn't it?

Mortal Shell 2 review: A monumental heavy metal sequel with the spirit of a '90s PC game

Jeremy Blum — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:33:22 +0000

A few hours into your sojourn across Mortal Shell 2's harsh realm of Fainweald, you might stumble upon a tavern called The One Legged Wolf. In a monstrous land inhabited by pasty-faced brigands who refer to you as "brev" right before shanking you, this watering hole exudes novelty. Here, said thugs congregate to make merry and listen to the strums of the shirtless lute-player on stage. Even if you do as I did, and accidentally massacre the guy with a shot from your sidearm, nobody minds. The One Legged Wolf is a weird, memorable place where folk are free to do their own thing.

In many ways, The One Legged Wolf is emblematic of Mortal Shell 2, a sequel that stands out from the pack by melding the modern dark fantasy Soulslike with a willingness to ditch genre formula, a cheeky sense of humour, and the DNA of a PC-only game from yesteryear. The result is a goth cousin of more mainstream fare like Elden Ring, not to mention a phenomenal effort that outclasses its predecessor in a manner that we probably haven't seen since The Witcher III.

Boardroom beat-em-up Stick It to the Stickman punches its way out of early access next month, complete with neurolinkage and an "absolutely absurd finale"

Mark Warren — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:01:07 +0000

Fetch your finest presentation materials about lines on graphs going upwards and proceed to try and beat your colleagues to death with them. Stick It to the Stickman, the roguelite beat ’em up which Anger Foot devs Free Lives have been bashing into shape for a year and a bit is set to emerge from early access on September 23rd.

Sraëka Lillian's one-a-week RPG "sketches" are a lovely series of experiments with hoary old conventions from Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:39:43 +0000

There's a running joke in the world of THEA-TAH that Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play made up entirely of quotations. I often get the same feeling when I play a fantasy RPG, and especially a fantasy RPG created with toolkits such as EasyRPG or RPG Maker that come with their own freely reusable assets, resulting in a slew of homebrew RPGs that can seem interchangeable, on the surface.

Witcher 3 cut quest restoration mod The WAR Project is finding a new voice for its fresh Vernon Roche lines, following alleged "severe incident of gross misconduct"

Mark Warren — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:33:24 +0000

The creators of massive in-development The Witcher 3 mod The WAR Project are recasting their version of Temerian commander Vernon Roche, citing "a severe incident of gross misconduct" allegedly committed by the person they'd initially given the role. Said person is no longer involved with the mod and those working on it say they don't think this incident "will impact [their] current schedule significantly".

This week in PC games: survival horror in a waterlogged city, kaiju chaos in a destructible city, and old school GTA vibes in an isometric insurgency simulator

Julian Benson — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:19:50 +0000

Videogames. Gosh there are a lot of them. We're not even into the hell month of September – where every major developer besides Rockstar seems to be releasing their big games of the year – and we're looking at a packed week.

Below you will find the whittled down pickings that stood out to me, but head over to Steam and you will find ten times more. It's a good time for wishlisting, if nothing else.

Kingdom Hearts 4 releasing in late 2027, according to a trailer in which Donald Duck and Goofy go to hell, miss a skeletal fiesta and rock up as creepy force ghosts

Mark Warren — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:18:23 +0000

I'll be honest, having just watched the latest trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4, I'm less confident I know what's going on in the game. Protagonist Sora's in a realm visually inspired by Mexican Día de Muertos celebrations, while Donald Duck and Goofy ship of the Greek underworld, then end up as force ghosts before rocking up in the Mexican realm without Sora. At least the game's freshly announced release window is less confusing to non-hearts heads. It's due out in late 2027.

The Sunday Papers

Julian Benson — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for getting up early and testing the legs are still in working order after potentially overdoing it with a crosscountry ride. All week, climbing stairs has been a struggle, like the muscles contain only vapours of energy. Just a little test cycle out to the woods to see if everything's tickety boo.

Then, inevitably, when I collapse into bed afterward, it will be time to settle into some heavy reading. Exercise for the old noggin, you know?

Ron Gilbert talks the untraditional way he got Thimbleweed Park 2 funded, and his frustrations with modern publishing deals

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 21:52:43 +0000

I think it would be a tad fair if you heard that Thimbleweed Park 2 is in the works and thought, "who funded that?" Not because it doesn't deserve funding, but because adventure games aren't exactly in vogue (even though it's not as dead a genre as many think), and also there's that whole video game industry crumbling around us day by day thing. When it was announced last month, creator Ron Gilbert said that it was thanks to the help of a private investor, and now the developer has shed a bit of light on how that came to be, and how that relationship works.

O EMPIRE! WARD OFF THY ROT puts you in an abandoned, dithered world with a cursed object and asks you to do one thing: survive the journey

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:36:44 +0000

Do you remember, or do you even know, about the Game Boy Camera? It's exactly as it sounds, a little camera attached to an original Game Boy cartridge that you could plug in and take photos with. You could even get a printer! The aesthetic therewithin is a particular one, utilising a tiny 128x128 pixel sensor, the end result being an incredibly dithered and pixelated yet charming look. There are few games that capture such a vibe, but O EMPIRE! WARD OFF THY ROT, a game about carrying a cursed object through an abandoned world, might just manage to.

"For a few weeks, women were just dropping their babies": The Witcher 3 lead on designing NPCs that react appropriately

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 18:08:30 +0000

Gone are the days where a developer could give an NPC maybe two lines of dialogue and call it a day. The steady shift to realism essentially enforces the idea that characters must behave realistically, which is why whenever some kind of glitch or bug makes an NPC move about in an impossible manner it does numbers on Your Favourite Social Media App. And according to CD Projekt Red quest designer Philipp Weber, getting The Witcher 3's NPCs to react appropriately was a tad tricky.

Slay the Spire 2 updates are slowing down again, but don't fear, it's all in the name of more modes, an alternate Act 2, and a character with a bandaged foot

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:08:21 +0000

Slay the Spire 2 has been moving at a solid pace since it launched into early access back in March, but back in May developer Mega Crit shared that updates would be switching to once every two weeks as opposed to the previously promised weekly updates. Now, as outlined in the game's August Neowsletter, Mega Crit say they'll be slowing down once again, though not necessarily forever.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl's meaty 2.0 update brings functional fog, a suite of A-Life improvements, and more when it arrives next week

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:10:14 +0000

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl's big 2.0 update is right around the corner, and developer GSC Game World have shared a plethora of details of what you can expect from it. For starters, the shooter is getting a visual upgrade, with a particular emphasis on lighting adjustments. Indoor lighting should look more realistic, the general landscape and foliage should look more natural, and hundreds of items that were previously inadvertently floating have been fixed too.

What are we all playing this weekend?

James Archer — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 07:01:00 +0000

Bit of a quiet one this week, gang. Half the RPS team are on holiday, ill, or off at some preview event, maybe in a less melty part of the world like Scandinavia, the lucky bastards. Games, however, must be played, and if it happens to be over a weekend, well...

The Watcher is a creepy surveillance thriller with shiny Unreal Engine props - I just hope it's not as talkative as its trailer

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:41:16 +0000

Some pressing personal context: I live in a very small flat with huge windows and curtains that only ever seem to cover about 80% of the view, no matter how ingeniously I yank them around. Every laundry day, I have to decide between letting the sunlight in, and hiding my drying underpants from the eyes of the commuters walking to the bus stop. But it could be worse. I could be living opposite the protagonist of The Watcher, an Unreal Engine surveillance sim in which you, the stooge of a totalitarian state, spy on an opposing apartment building using a range of devices, searching for deviations in the routines of the inhabitants.

Rideshare Stimulator finally gets its genAI disclosure after much Saber-rattling, and it turns out the game also uses the tech for in-game music

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:26:30 +0000

Update, 17/8: Former Rideshare Stimulator writer Stella Sacco says, via BlueSky, that she's receieved and accepted an apology from Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch for the disparaging comments detailed in this article. "None of this changes my stance on AI," Sacco adds. "Matt and I obviously differ on this, and as a CEO the consequences of its use fall on him, and unfortunately also on his employees."

Have your say on the RPS Supporter program with this short, yet deeply opinion-absorbent survey

James Archer — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:28:06 +0000

You’ve heard our ideas on how to make the RPS Supporter program more betterer, now we want to hear yours. Everyone, regardless of whether you’re already signed up or not, is invited to take the RPS Supporter survey: a succinct questionblast where you can tell us, to our wretched faces, what you think of the program.

I love the Dark Soulful architecture of The Canon of Balls, a rolling open world game inspired by Sega, Fumito Ueda and Minecraft parkour

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:22:54 +0000

What do Dark Souls, Super Monkey Ball, Shadow of the Colossus, and Minecraft have in common? They are all explicit inspirations for The Canon of Balls, a spooky and unforgiving new open world platformer in which you are a horrified statue's face with a fleshy pink tongue, floating inside a rolling cage. You can use your tongue as a springboard.

Look, stay with me on this. I think The Canon of Balls could be good. Yes, I know that we've done "Dark Souls in a ball" already this month, but I think this game stands apart. It reminds me a little of Straftat in being a very specific, even obstinate throwback project that's less about nostalgia - less about sheer recreation, and more the feeling that a deserted vein of weirdness has more to give, that there's another future down here somewhere.

Total War: Warhammer 3 is getting a big free vampiric update in September, alongside the epithet-stuffed Lords of the End Times DLC

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:28:33 +0000

Creative Assembly have announced a release date for Total War: Warhammer 3 expansion Lords of the End Times. Consisting of four new legendary lords, each with a distinct retinue, campaign and battle map abilities, it's billed as "the biggest DLC that we’ve ever released in the series 10-year history". It'll accompany another, reportedly gargantuan free update with yet another legendary lord, the Vampire Queen Neferata, together with a rework for the Vampire Counts and Archaon The Everchosen, some new endgame scenarios, and updated victory conditions.

There are over a hundred legendary lords in Twarhammer 3 at this point. I feel like the legendariness is at risk of being diluted. Can we organise some kind of spin-off game where every Warhammer army consists entirely of legendary lords? How about the legendary lords all go live on a big New England college campus and solve mysteries together? How about a Warhammer legendary lord adaptation of Guess Who?

Invisum Piscium 嫌魚 is a dreamlike walking sim about fragments of conversations and a deep craving for water fish haven't procreated in

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:54:43 +0000

I won't dive into why this is happening to me at the moment, you'll either need to pay me £20 or let me pay you to be my therapist to get that explanation, but I've been having some odd dreams lately. They're frequently temporally confused, mixing and matching people from across my life that should never have crossed paths. This has left me looking to ground myself a touch, so of course I decided to take a look at Invisum Piscium 嫌魚, a walking sim that's not quite about dreaming, but is about looking for distilled water that's free from fish sex contamination.

Five years after acquiring Oxenfree developer Night School Studio, Netflix are shutting them down

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 20:29:25 +0000

In 2021, in their bid to get more of a hold on the games industry after dominating film and television streaming, Netflix acquired Oxenfree and Afterparty developer Night School Studio, the first developer they had ever acquired. Now, five years later, the streaming giant is shuttering Night School Studio, as well as Moonloot, another developer they owned that was yet to put out a game. This comes six weeks after the release of Night School's latest game, the Netflix exclusive Unhinged.

Phasmophobia devs Kinetic Games mosey into publishing with a witchy delivery game, a parasitic Metroidvania, and more

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:01:11 +0000

Kinetic Games are keeping busy! You may have heard yesterday that the Phasmophobia developer is publishing the next game from Her Story and Immortality's Sam Barlow (who's roped in Brandon Cronenberg this time around). That's not all that was announced however, as there's a bevy of other, not even scary at all, actually, games that are coming up from the new publisher.

Amiga strategy classic Defender of the Crown is back with both old and fresh graphics, and an all new roguelite mode

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:10:23 +0000

What's old is new (and also old) again! It's been 40 years since the release of the classic Amiga strategy game Defender of the Crown, and to mark the occasion it has received a new PC port called The Legend Returns that packages in the original game alongside a complete visual revamp and a totally fresh roguelike mode.

Sandustry, the factory game where every single pixel is a resource you can build with, is out in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:32:07 +0000

It's quite the month for sand-related games! Sandcastle, a literal sandbox game, received a demo earlier this month, and now here we are today with the release of Sandustry, another, entirely different literal sandbox game. Where Sandcastle is about building, uh, castles out of sand, Sandustry is about building entire factories, and also, apparently, discovering an ancient civilization's secrets. Sure!

"Obvious tells and subtle hints" - Alien: Isolation's lead designer on the lethal variety of The Lost Wild's dinosaurs

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:00:00 +0000

First-person sneakalot The Lost Wild is about surviving on an island overrun by dinosaurs, from the relatively affable diplodocus to the absolutely intolerable allosaurus. I'm not sure how you survive a brush with an allosaurus, because allosauruses appear to be provoked by any and all objects in their vicinity. "An area [of the project] I find particularly fascinating is the difference between dinosaur behaviour for each species, and what that could mean for gameplay and character," says game director Gary Napper, who joined developers Great Ape Games in 2025 following stints at Rare, Supermassive, and Creative Assembly.

"Taking the team's expertise and current day understanding of dinosaur findings has allowed us to really lean into some of these theories," he continues. "One of my favourites is a fact that they know that the allosaurus was quite an erratic and aggressive creature, because they found its teeth embedded in things like rocks and logs as well as other creatures, implying that it would just attack or go for anything around it." OK, so - what's my exit strategy, when facing an allosaurus? Do I just try to look like the least pugnacious rock?

Troubled Witcher multiplayer spinoff Project Sirius struck with new round of layoffs

James Archer — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:32:11 +0000

Project Sirius, CD Projekt Red’s unsettled attempt at a multiplayer Witcher spinoff, is facing further difficulties. Following a Kotaku report, the Polish dev-publishers confirmed to IGN that they were cutting 18 staff members from the project – believed to be around a quarter of the game’s overall team size, which was already dwarfed by the CDPR crew assigned to mainline singleplayer sequel The Witcher 4.

Of the affected developers, half have been made redundant, while half "have been invited to internal recruitment processes for potential roles on other CD Projekt Red projects." This is also the second time the company have slashed Project Sirius staff, with layoffs following an effective reboot in 2023.

Necrons are "extremely arrogant aliens that feel like they cannot die," so their weakness in Dawn of War 4 is an obvious one: greed

Julian Benson — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:02:02 +0000

Dawn of War 4's Necrons are the hard nuts of Warhammer 40,000. Each one of their soldiers is a >soul trapped in a living metal body, practically immortal thanks to the faction's reanimation technology. Like a clothes moth infestation, once they've made their home on a planet, they're virtually impossible to get rid of. They lend themselves to wars of attrition, constantly expanding their borders while absorbing enemy attacks.

"Players love this type of playstyle," Dawn of War 4's senior game designer Elliott Verbiest tells me, "but it's something that isn't necessarily conducive to interesting multiplayer gameplay. It's kind of the same deal as rock, paper scissors where both players are just throwing rock over and over and over again."

To counter this, developers King Art Games have introduced a chink in the Necron's armour, and it's a very human impulse: greed.

Do a literal monster mash in Dance of Theseus, a strangely undisgusting blend of plastic surgery and Balatro-style fashion battles

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:03:08 +0000

It is time to confront the terrible truth that I once took part in a school fashion show. I ran in two categories, Ballroom and Street, a serious test of range for a kid who had only just mastered the daredevil technique of wearing a shirt without a tie. In the Ballroom bracket, I was asked to do a waltz in an Indian wedding gown provided by a local sponsor who, I can only assume, immediately went out of business after the event. In Street, I had to wear a Gap hoodtop and shoot a fire-eater (one of the Cool Teachers) with a Super Soaker, while some other lost soul moonwalked down the runway in a golden suit.

In retrospect, I am filing all this under the secret umbrella category of God's Greatest Mistake. There is exactly no photographic evidence, and I will thank you not to search for any on Facebook. It's so much less upsetting being a fashion model in Dance of Theseus, which might sound weird given that in Dance of Theseus, you don't just swap outfits – you graft on new heads, arms and legs, either bought from sniffy griffon dressmakers or moulded together out of seashells, horned skulls, and scraps of shimmering hide. Created by Shanghai-based Citreat Studio, it's a cheerful, colourful and somehow unrevolting life sim RPG with a kind of Balatro-esque Frankensteinmaxxing element. I've been playing the demo, and it's both entertaining and a source of endless inspiration. Argh, if only I'd had access to this, when I was 16!!!

"We're not really sure what Big Walk's future looks like," say the waddling co-op puzzler's devs, though it probably doesn’t involve DLC

James Archer — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 11:31:00 +0000

I’ve spent something like seven hours in funny-thinky cooperative puzzler Big Walk, and the concept of more Big Walk is something that confounds and, just a little bit, frightens me. What, you spent an entire evening stubbing toes in the dark and overconfidently barking incorrect solutions at friends, only for the opening of the map room to reveal the humbling significance of your progress thus far, and you want more? Friend, if I play this until my forties, I might make it halfway through.

Even so, questions on future content were repeatedly put to developers House House in a recent reddit AMA. The response: no plans at the moment, though there’s nothing stopping completionist players from making their own fun with its freeform systems.

Twitch are scraping streams for AI training by default, and even their own execs don’t know what user data may have been swept up

James Archer — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:01:24 +0000

Livestreaming giants Twitch have admitted using streamed content to train the generative AI models of parent company Amazon. While it’s not clear when the platform began feeding its users’ work into Jeffy B’s Planetkilling Machines, yesterday’s announcement of an opt-out toggle – buried deep within Twitch’s security settings, and set to enable AI stream-gobbling by default – sparked outrage among streamers and viewers that such scraping was occurring at all.

Twitch’s chief product officer Mike Minton and head of community Mary Kish were wheeled out to explain the policy in a stream of their own, though it’s possible the only ones reassured by the discussion were the Amazon bots themselves. Although Minton was upfront about the models’ use of streamed video, he conceded that he didn’t know if users’ personal data had also been caught up in the scraping net, and that he wasn’t actually sure what Amazon "has done in terms of model training." Awesome. Awesome.

Immortality developer Sam Barlow reveals Precognition, a sci-fi horror collaboration with Brandon Cronenberg about "really terrible things that are just around the corner"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:30:00 +0000

Immortality and Her Story developer Sam Barlow has announced Precognition, a new sci-fi horror game in development at Half Mermaid Productions, which features writing from Antiviral and Infinity Pool director Brandon Cronenberg. That's Brandon, not David, yes, but still, having any kind of Cronenberg in your credits is a win, right? When's the last time you made a game with a Cronenberg?

Besides, I thought Infinity Pool was good fun. And I quite like the sound of Precognition, which stars a woman with brain implants who can choose between visions to weave a range of possible dark futures. It began life as a slightly random idea for a Metroid game, apparently. Here's a trailer.

Subnautica 2 now has a beta update branch, letting players try out patches before they're finished, but beware, your saves won't carry over

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:44:24 +0000

Ocean survival sim Subnautica 2 now has an experimental beta branch on Steam, allowing the intrepid PC owner to test out updates before they're officially live. If there's one thing Subnautica 2's toothy underwater ecosystem has taught us, it's the value of taking risks. Just be aware that any savegames you create in the experimental branch will be specific to that version of the game - you won't be able to carry progress back to the main release.

The Steam Frame needs to be more than a cool device if Valve want to reshape the VR market

Rick Lane — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:44:06 +0000

Hi! I'm Rick Lane, and you might remember me from such columns as Reality Bytes, RPS' erstwhile monthly goggle at the world of virtual reality. I've spent the last couple of years trapped between the second and third dimensions, my flattened body doomed to forever spin to face the camera. But RPS has whipped out its bicycle pump and popped me back into stereoscopic 3D, so I can ~~seek revenge~~ tell you all about the state of VR in 2026.

And boy, what a state! The headlines make for grim reading. VR headset shipments are in decline. Notable VR studios are either laying people off or being shut down outright. And VR's hitherto biggest champion is going all Distracted Boyfriend, ogling passing market trends in its ethically dubious smart glasses.

The all-in-one Steam Frame headset is on the way - very soon, if rumours are to be believed - but in short, things don't look great. Then again, things don't look great anywhere in the games industry, so why should VR, gaming's most niche market, be any different? To truly understand the state of the VR scene, we need to try to separate the generally bad from the specifically bad. When we do that, it becomes clear that VR broadly isn't faring any worse than the industry at large, and in some areas at least, is healthier than you might expect.

Amazon are getting out of the MMO game, handing control of Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty to developers, but it won't all be smooth for players

Julian Benson — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Smilegate, the developer of South Korean MMO Lost Ark will be taking control of the Western servers that were previously run by Amazon Game Studios. Likewise, FireSpark will be taking control of Throne and Liberty's servers. Though, the transition will cause some disruption and data loss for players.

While Amazon have poured money into in-house game development, they have also acted as a global publisher on several MMOs, such as Lost Ark, and found considerably more success than with their own projects. That said, as Amazon slowly backs out of the MMO room, shutting down development on New World and canning their in-development Lord of the Rings MMO, the future for these arms-length games has been uncertain.

"The world's becoming so bleak": How Soulframe hopes to escape Warframe's shadow, with a little insight from Elden Ring

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:17:32 +0000

Fantasy RPG Soulframe's great advantage and possible curse is that it's from the studio behind Warframe, the free-to-play sci-fi bonanza that has kept chugging away since 2013, amid increasingly rocky prospects for live service games in general.

Warframe continues to pull a crowd, as was evident at this year's somewhat dystopian Tennocon expo, in which there was a whole auditorium set aside to house the queue for a bunch of T-shirt stands. That popularity gives Soulframe leeway to experiment and screw up, but it also creates temptation for developers Digital Extremes (who are owned by Tencent) to stick with what they know. Still, Warframe won't be a hit forever. As such, Soulframe's creators are trying to walk the line between lifting ideas from Warframe, and luring a new following with combat mechanics that take inspiration from Elden Ring.

You can hug the Super Earth grunts in Helldivers 2's Devoid of Liberty update, which revamps NPC troops and adds new Illuminate enemies

James Archer — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:57:12 +0000

The secret of the floating bear is revealed: Helldivers 2 is gearing up for an assault on the Void, that icky hellmouth gobbling up a chunk of Illuminate-controlled space. The co-op shooter’s big new update, Devoid of Liberty, sees the intergalactic nasties throwing out two new mutant enemies to fight on the field, while your bosses on Super Earth deploy better equipped, better trained, generally less all-round useless infantry troops to help you out.

Saber admit Rideshare "Stimulator" features generative AI writing, but deny they replaced taxi game's lead writer with ChatGPT

Julian Benson — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:30:00 +0000

When Saber revealed Rideshare "Stimulator", Oisin was guardedly interested in the unofficial Uber simulator. You play a taxi operator picking up and dropping passengers around town while listening to their stimulating conversation. You thought the name referred to a different kind of stimulation? Get your head out of the gutter.

Though, maybe not too far out of the gutter. After all, since its reveal, Rideshare's gained more attention for its odd swipes at Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford and that time he left a USB stick at a Medieval Times restaurant which contained sensitive business documents and videos he described as "barely legal porn". Saber CEO Matt Karch told Gamefile “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4. Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.”

However, now Rideshare is coming under even greater scrutiny because the game's former lead writer, Stella Sacco, said on Bluesky that "Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development". And, while Saber denies her account, they have admitted the game features generative AI. Use they've not disclosed on the game's Steam listing, contravening Valve's AI policy.

All Haul The King is a co-op comedy corpse-dragging simulator from the makers of Eclipsium, one of 2025's best horror games

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:43:17 +0000

"That game with the massive dead body was created using generative AI!" roared the masses. "Oh shucks," said I, "Don't worry, I'll soon find another massive dead body game to write about." Reader, never let it be said that I am not as good as my word. In All Haul The King, players team up to drag the huge, elastic carcass of a goblin sovereign from one end of the world to the other. Your goal is to get him onto the Throne of Resurrection. This might go easier if you transform him into an anvil. Anvils don't wobble around quite so much, after all. Here is a trailer.

Spaceship bullet heaven Seven Suns of Orion has what Vampire Survivors lacks: semi-Newtonian physics and railguns

Julian Benson — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

I don't truly want to say a bad word about Vampire Survivors. I've adored the many hours I've spent in its endearingly slapdash dungeons. It's also responsible for spawning a thousand imitators, many of which I have also poured hours of my life into playing. But, for all of its joys and successes, I can't defend its lack of railguns.

I don't know what Poncle were thinking when they let you loose on a world filled with monsters and ghouls and didn't arm you with an electromagnetic gun that launches projectiles at more than 3 km/s.

It may not be a stake doused in holy water, but I reckon the railgun in Seven Suns Of Orion would do just as good of a job against Dracula.

As Peak gets its final big update, developers Landfall and Aggro Crab explain why it isn't a "forever game"

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:54:38 +0000

We have reached peak Peak. By that I mean, the final major update that was teased last week, The Final Ascent, is here and ready for you to try out. The big thing here is the two new variant biomes, Gloom and The Citadel. Gloom, unsurprisingly, is an incredibly foggy area filled with massive trees, mysterious bells and ominous spikes, whereas The Citadel is mostly just that; a castle-like structure with swinging spiky balls, secret arrow traps and those floors where a bunch of spears shoot upwards and you have to time walking across them just right.

"I think that might be a misread": Thief designer on why making a triple-A immersive sim doesn't really work

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:50:23 +0000

Broadly speaking, it's fine for something to exist as a niche. Whatever form of media a thing might be, to fulfil a niche is to meet the expectations of at least a handful of people with a particular taste that many others don't, and I think that's a delightful thing to do. In video games, immersive sims might not be the most niche genre in the world, but they've historically not done gangbusters sales wise, meaning that triple-A takes don't quite make their money back. If you ask Randy Smith Evergreen, a designer on Thief: The Dark Project, perhaps avoiding the world of triple-A is the way to go for immersive sims.

As Xbox head Asha Sharma reportedly visits Bethesda HQ, workers put up red flags representing laid off staff and a giant inflatable rat outside

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:03:21 +0000

It's probably a weird day to be working at Bethesda's Rockville headquarters. In a week's time, on August 18th, the Communications Workers of America have organised numerous rallies across the US and Canada in support of Xbox workers, 1600 of which may lose their jobs over the next year, on top of the 1600 who have already been laid off. Today, as shared by Game Developer's Chris Kerr, CWA union members have already initiated a protest outside Bethesda HQ in the form of a giant inflatable rat, and a huge number of planted red flags, each one representing a laid off worker, as Xbox CEO Asha Sharma reportedly.

Paralives' latest update throws out its wonderfully awful homunculi babies and makes it so that dead bodies should no longer litter the streets

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:30:59 +0000

The beauty of an early access game is being able to look at something funky, say "that's not right," and as long as you're correct and not an irritating know-it-all making feedback that's not actually helpful, see it changed in (very slow) real-time. Paralives' latest update is here, and with it comes an improvement (?) to the life sim's babies after a number of people complained at how they looked.

I'm enjoying leaving my body behind in Project Looking Glass, an astral horror game in which you telewarp around a map of your terrible memories

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:00:00 +0000

The great enemy of my sanity is 4.15pm. That's 45 minutes of workday remaining - just enough time to find and turn around a news story before Julian sounds the Thrice-Girdled Klaxon of Labour's End. The sensible thing to do would be to pick a nice, easy write-up like "Developers XYZ are still making that videogame they were making before, say it's going pretty well". But inevitably, my appetite defeats my reason, and I find myself firing up the demo for something like Project Looking Glass, a cathode ray horror game in which you are a grieving woman participating in secret Cold War astral projection experiments.

Even 10 years on, Sean Murray feels like he could work on No Man's Sky "forever," even if he knows "there probably is some end date" for it

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 16:28:30 +0000

What's that? It's been 10 years since No Man's Sky launched? Oh! That's gone by a bit too quick! In that time the planet hopping survival game has changed drastically, starting life frequently derided for missing promised features, slowly morphing into what it is now. The game now has a massive mish mash of features that have kept people coming back year after year, and according to Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray, he could keep going as long as they do.

Supermassive Games are the latest studio to announce layoff plans, with 75 jobs at risk just three months after Directive 8020 launch

James Archer — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:30:29 +0000

Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology devs Supermassive Games have announced the beginning of redundancy consultations for up to 75 of its staff, a process that will almost certainly add to the thousands of layoffs endured by the games industry over the past few years.

Posted on Not Twitter earlier today, the announcement of these imminient cuts comes just three months after Supermassive’s most recent horror adventure, Directive 8020, and contains wording that’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the studio’s last round of mass redundancies in July last year. That, too, followed a previous round in early 2024, in which an estimated 90 workers at the UK-based studio lost their jobs.

"Time will tell": Bit Reactor talk queerness in Star Wars: Zero Company and whether they'll keep working with Saudi-owned EA

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:00:00 +0000

In Bit Reactor's XCOM-style tactics RPG Star Wars: Zero Company, you play a custom character called Hawks who is referred to using they/them pronouns. With my armchair producer hat on, I suspect this is partly just a way to avoid recording several sets of voice lines for different player pronoun choices. But Zero Company as a whole does support expressions of gender that differ from heteronormative male and female archetypes – or at least, which differ enough to make me, a cisgender writer, curious about expressions of queerness and transness elsewhere in Star Wars.

While creating a character for the beta, I wondered about how notions of gender might differ across the humanoid species depicted in the game, including Mirialans, Devaronians and Togrutas. In the end, I created a Devaronian character with green hair and copious freckles, whom I would gingerly designate as "Trying Their Best".

Knytt, one of 2006's most charming indie platformers, has a surprise Steam re-release - and it’s still free

James Archer — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:35:05 +0000

2006 saw, among such other major events as analogue TV being switched off in Luxembourg, the release of Knytt: a breezy freeware platformer in which you spend a nice couple of hours gathering up parts for your crashed spaceship. While not entirely devoid of light peril, so tranquil and airily atmospheric was Knytt’s run-and-jumpery that someone once asked, among these very pages, whether you could consider it a walking simulator.

Solo dev Nifflas has long since moved on, but Knytt itself has just been reborn as Knytt Classic: a "pixel-perfect port" for modern hardware, developed by Wolfhound makers Bit Kid and freshly launched on Steam. Still for free, of course, and with Nifflas’ blessing.

Mortal Shell 2 will let you lower its difficulty by making executions refill your health, or up the challenge by turning off the sun

Julian Benson — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

While Soulslike Mortal Shell 2 doesn't feature traditional difficulty modes, developers

Cold Symmetry have included a set of special items that let you tweak the challenge to your liking.

As someone who just got back from a three-day cycle trip with friends who coasted up the hills on bikes fitted with fancy 12-speed rear cassettes loaded with extra, larger gear cogs, while I huffed and puffed on my 11-speed, this is an approach to difficulty I both recognise and envy.

Stop Killing Games join lawsuit against the PlayStation Store's "Sony Tax," in latest venture beyond game preservation

James Archer — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:42:49 +0000

"It’s time to sue Sony," game preservation advocates Stop Killing Games have declared, as the group throws its weight behind a Dutch lawsuit targeting the PlayStation Store’s alleged monopoly and "Sony Tax" on digital games.

While the case originated back in 2024, as part of an effort by Dutch consumer group Stichting Massaschade & Consument, the core complaint – that Sony wields monopoly power by only making digital PlayStation games available through its own store – has been compounded by the recent reveal that Sony plans to ditch physical games entirely in 2028, effectively cutting out its only source of competition. Allegedly. For Stop Killing Games, it’s also the latest in a string of non-preservation-specific causes the organisation have amplified, possibly indicating a widened advocacy mandate after failing its key goal of securing new European Commission legislation to keep discontinued games playable offline.

Shipping ore between the asteroid mining stations of Profits 2167 would be much easier if it weren't for the darn space bug infestation

Julian Benson — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

After a 90-second electrical fault left me stuck for two hours at Wilmslow station this weekend, I could be fooled into thinking trains are delicate fickle things. However, PROFITS 2167: Planetary Resource Optimization & Freight Infrastructure Technician Simulator is here to set me straight. The game puts you in the driver's seat on a train rattling along the tracks of a deep space mining operation. A mining operation under assault from thousands of space bugs.

Avanti West Coast might struggle on hot days (and cold days, and wet days, and windy days…), but when you're behind the wheel of Profits 2167's locomotive, you'll have to plough straight through the swarming insect masses.

Over the Hill, SnowRunner's hippie off-roading cousin from the Art of Rally devs, gets an October release date

Mark Warren — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:15:00 +0000

Fire up the Landy! Over the Hill, Funselektor and Strelka Games' off-roader which takes the hardcore trail-running you get in a sim like SnowRunner and sands off the edges a bit to make for more chill countryside-roaming, finally has a release date. It's set to motor onto the scene in October, following a Steam Next Fest demo which I dug.

In cosmic roguelike The Carcass, you build a colony inside the corpse of a god that's slowly becoming aware of you

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Update 10th August: Seems I may have been naive about this one! While there's no AI disclosure on the full Steam page for The Carcass, there is a disclosure on the separate store page for the demo. Here's the disclosure in full.

"The entire vision, design, and core structure of this game are the result of human effort. AI tools were used strictly as a coding assistant during development—to speed up programming, debug, and optimize performance. This project is the result of a year of hard work; it was not 'generated' with a few simple prompts."

Disclosure aside, there are a bunch of Steam reviews of the demo accusing the developer of using generative AI to create the game's writing and art. I've mailed PiqFocus for further details.

Someone's head is killing me in Memoirium, a PSX-styled soulslike about battling through bizarre dreamscapes and decorating your bedroom

James Archer — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:41:17 +0000

I don’t know whose dreams Memoirium warps into action-RPG soulslike levels - it may not even be the player character’s - but whoever they are, they need to lay off the post-10pm Babybels. Besides being filled with chair-wielding thugs and hornfaced monsters, this blocky sleeprealm is lousy with the kind of shattered fantasy geometry that could send an innocent dodgeroller tumbling fatally off a hundred-foot-high-ledge. Also, the ledge is a giant sword.

Such was just one of my deaths in Memoirium’s generously proportioned demo, which is available now on Steam ahead of the game’s launch this Thursday. Even in these introductory stages, it’s clear that the subconscious you’re stuck in probably doesn’t belong to a contented vicar, opening up with a void-ravaged cemetary before routing you across a crumbling statue into a cultish school. Mundane respite, however, is available through Memoirium’s unusual take on bonfire rest spots: a bedroom that, resources permitting, you can furnish and decorate to your liking.

"Expect fake messages": A load of Steam user personal info has been stolen thanks to a cyberattack on one of Valve's partners, claims report

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:56:46 +0000

If you live in Europe and have bought hardware from Steam in the past three months, then watch out, your personal information might have been stolen thanks to a cyberattack on one of Valve's shipping partners.