Atelier Lydie & Suelle is coming to PC early 2018

Gust’s Atelier series – a console-centric series I’ve had some positive experience with – is a recent arrival on the PC, first turning up this February with the release of Atelier Sophie. Finishing what they started, Koei Tecmo are making good on their promise to bring the entire localised ‘Mysterious’ sub-trilogy to PC, concluding with the release of Atelier Lydie & Suelle: Alchemists of the Mysterious Painting [official site], due for release on PC early next year.

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RuneScape’s PvP tournament went badly wrong

RuneScape [official site] remains one of the most enduringly popular MMORPGs around, but the finals of its most recent PvP tournament ended with the winner and several others disqualified, accusations of staff favouritism, allegations of targeted DDoS attacks, and a $20,000 prize pot with nobody to go to.

In short, it all went a bit Wacky Races.

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20 years ago today, Fallout set the world on fire

The world ended on September, 30 1997. Or, rather, that was the day we were first shown what would become gaming’s enduring definition of the end of the world. Interplay’s Fallout, a very different game from Bethesda’s Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 (not that this seems to bother anyone; no sirree, not a soul), was and is a landmark roleplaying game. It disrupted ideas that RPGs meant elves and kobolds; it disrupted ideas that RPGs were a straight march to the finish line; it disrupted ideas that RPG heroes should be heroic.

War never changes, but Fallout changed most everything else.

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Clay-punk fever dream Dujanah rises from the sands

I’ve only played fifteen minutes of Dujanah [Steam page] thus far, and I am still trying to process what I just experienced. Jack-King Spooner (creator of Beeswing and the cheerfully hellish Will You Ever Return series) has always made very strange and experimental, if heartfelt games, but Dujanah is on a whole new level. An open, exploratory world of clay and FMV, sadness and unsettling laugh tracks all filtered through an interface that feels like half overtaxed VHS player, half malfunctioning Commodore 64.

And then there was the incident with the Spider Man’s sperm.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Welcome to Saturday, gang. We did it. We’ve reached the weekend. More than that, we’ve reached the end of September. If these distinctions are arbitrary, why are they so exciting?

Alternatively, if you’re reading this on Sunday: pinch and a punch for the first of the month – and no returns!

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on. (more…)

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Skyrim’s Creation Club enters beta, offers Survival Mode free for starters

After a less-than-successful initial foray into the realm of monetising Skyrim mods, Bethesda are presently rolling out a public beta of their Creation Club – their DLC-esque, more corporate alternative – to the revamped Skyrim Special Edition [official site]. To sweeten the pot, they’re offering early adopters the option to claim a free copy of Survival Mode, a major gameplay modification adding the management of simulated hunger, tiredness and cold to the already-hazardous environment.

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Unknown Pleasures: the best new little-known Steam games this week

Welcome back to Unknown Pleasures, our weekly round-up of the most excellent hidden gems we dug up from the past week of new releases on Steam.

This week: endless runners remixed, spaceship life simulation and Dark Souls vs Ico.
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Co-op crawler Freaky Awesome gloops out in Oct

As RPS’ slime and blisters correspondent I am duty bound to report that the dungeon crawler Freaky Awesome [official site] has vomited up a release date – October 18. For those among us whose brains are a soupy green mess, it’s the one where “toxic multiplayer” doesn’t mean what you think it means. Here you can play co-op with 1-4 players but any time you kill an enemy you can roll through its glowing entrails to mutate and absorb its power. (more…)

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Cheap Golf is daft, quite fun, and knows your name is Susan

Cheap Golf [Twitter page, apparently] was one of the first projects to try out Kickstarter’s week-long fundraisers, a silly scratchy project from Pixeljam offering a minimalist minigolf game, with extra nonsense.

It came out this week (in early access), having previously raised its $9,000 goal via a splendid figure of 666 backers, and it’s – well, it’s as silly as it looked. And quite fun. (more…)

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Cuphead is now out. CUPHEAD!

Our cup runneth over, then it runneth away to shooteth enemies. The mighty Cuphead [official site], a shooty platformer with smooth jazz and a gorgeous hand-animated style using techniques of 1930s cartoons, is now out. After several years of shouting CUPHEAD at each other, we can finally play. Don’t mistake its fun style for an easy game, mind, as Cuphead will drink you up and spit you back out if you’re not careful.

God, CUPHEAD! (more…)

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‘You will lose both hands’ – How the biggest theft in EVE Online history ended in death threats

It seems every time sci-fi MMO EVE Online [official site] is in the news, it’s because someone has been screwed over in the most spectacular way imaginable. From record-breaking heists and scams to public assassinations and spy infiltrations, New Eden has been home to some incredible tales of espionage, theft, and political intrigue. This month another chapter in EVE’s long and bloody history came to an abrupt end as two players conspired to pull off the biggest political betrayal and theft of assets in the game’s history.

But the real story began over a year earlier, with clandestine discussions between a thief and his spymaster at a restaurant in the capital of Iceland, and it finishes far outside the game world, with threats of real life violence. Depending on who you ask, this is the story of a greedy individual who robbed his friends and ran away, or the spy handler who manipulated his enemy into destroying an alliance, or even the tale of a player trapped with an abusive leader and finally finding a way out. (more…)

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Steamworld Dig 2 is a gentle jewel

I’ve got a hookshot. Have you got a hookshot? I bet you don’t. I bet you’ve just got hands. Borrrring. Despite Steamworld Dig earning John’s admiration (so much so that he also used the comedy word “aplomb” when describing it) I had never played it. But I’m glad to have picked up its sequel, Steamworld Dig 2 [official site], in which a friendly robot called Dorothy goes looking for her uncle Rusty, the hero of the first game, in the deep mines beneath a western-style town. To get ever-deeper she has to dig, fight insects, plant bombs, and most importantly, hookshooooot.
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Have You Played… The Great Escape?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.

The Great Escape is neither a great game nor a great adaptation of the film of the same name, but it is at least an interesting adaptation.

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