Puzzles in Knotwords look a lot like crosswords, but gone is the list of clues. Instead, the board is split into segments and you are told precisely which letters must fit within each region. Your objective is to fit all the letters in as required, while still correctly spelling out words both down and across.
Late last year, block-and-slasher Minecraft Dungeons introduced seasonal events in which solo players could fight through escalating floors of a big, shifting tower. Now the second seasonal event is live, Luminous Night, which lets you fight through that same tower at night with new biomes, enemies and rewards.
The Bethesda launcher is closing its doors on May 11th, which means players need to migrate any games they own on the platform to their new home on Steam. It turns out that the process isn't going well for some players, however, with reports of deluxe editions and DLCs going mission, and others receiving outright errors.
Happy May Day weekend, reader dear! Whether you consider this a celebration of spring, the start of summer, a day for workers, or just a long weekend, may you have a good'un. We've had a busy fortnight, with CJ Wheeler joining us as a news reporter and me becoming associate editor (I am still not sure what that means). So how nice that we'll be away on Monday, returning on Tuesday. What are you playing until then? Here's what we're clicking on.
Our Nate (RPS in peace) is a big fan of Age Of Empires 2, calling it the best strategy game ever made and, in his Definitive Edition review saying it was still that, "but now, there's a lot more of it."
Well, there's more of it again, now, with the release of the Dynasties Of India DLC. If you want to watch an elephant headbutt a pyramid until it bursts, watch the trailer below.
For me, the fun of Rocket League lies entirely in how its supersonic acrobat rocket-powered battle cars control. That means it's still fun even if you remove the ball and, say, turn it into a free-for-all battle royale about punting opponent cars out of bounds. That's what the time limited Knockout Bash mode does, which is available from now until May 10th.
Creative Assembly have laid out the 2022 development roadmap for Total War: Warhammer 3. It contains detailed descriptions of the fixes and balance tweaks to come over the next few months, but the exciting stuff will all land this autumn, including the series-spanning Immortal Empires, mod tools and the first of several revamps for the series' older races.
Battle royale spinoff and subtitle collector Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt launched this week , following a delay to address feedback from its early access phase. That included ample reports of performance issues, but fortunately, what I’ve played over the past couple of days points towards a much more stable brand of last-vamp-standing shootery. Let’s take a look, then, at Bloodhunt’s PC performance, system requirements and the best settings to tweak.
QA contractors working directly on the next Dragon Age with BioWare Edmonton have filed to unionise, just the latest in a string of such decisions affecting high-profile companies throughout the industry. The workers are employed by the internationally-operating contract services company Keywords Studios but contracted out to BioWare. They’ve now formed the KWS Edmonton United group and have named low pay and concern at being instructed back into the office while Covid-19 remains a danger as their reasons to seek collective bargaining.
A rooster calls, and the sun rises as I stock the shelves for another day in Winkeltje: The Little Shop, a business management game about running a little store in a fantasy town. I recently inherited Hefford’s Hovel and, after a manic start, have managed to become well-known for my loaves of bread. Each day customers charge into the store and raid the various displays, tussling over freshly-baked rolls before scrambling home to slap them on a plate. It’s mass hysteria, but what can I say? I make damn good bread.
Fresh meals are just one of six item categories you can sell in Winkeltje, but I don’t need to worry about the rest. Over a few in-game days, your store starts to specialise in the goods you stock, so customers will visit expecting to find those same items. When you enter the Hovel, you’re greeted with the toasty warmth of the oven as the scent of baking dough drifts through the air. You won’t see us preparing potions or crafting clothes, no sir. For that, you’ll have to go elsewhere.
Take chess, reduce one side to only the king, fill him with a terrible wrath, hand him a shotgun, then watch him go. That's Shotgun King, a roguelikelike turn-based shooter where units (mostly) move like chess pieces, only our lone king has a shotgun. It might sound like a throwaway joke game but Shotgun King is an interesting and fun challenge, especially when your upgrades also bestow different buffs upon the opposing army. And it has a free early version so you can have a go yourself.
The latest backstory video for Apex Legends has arrived, but it turns out Respawn and EA pulled a fast one on us when they supposedly confirmed the identity of rookie Legend Newcastle as Jackson Miller. So Newcastle isn’t the Newcastle that's been in the Apex Legends backstory for ages, yet he is Newcastle. How does that work? Well, Jackson Williams is Newcastle now. He just wasn’t always.
Shareholders in Activision Blizzard approved overwhelmingly to accept Microsoft Corporation’s offer of $68.7 billion (£54.66 billion) to acquire the company at yesterday’s Special Meeting of Stockholders. More than 98% of the shares voted in favour of the buyout offer, Activision Blizzard confirmed in a statement released on their website. The largest payment for a technology company in recorded history, toppling Dell’s acquisition of EMC Data Storage from 2016, it’s now expected the deal will conclude during Microsoft’s fiscal year, which ends on June 30th 2023.
Exciting news today, folks. Our esteemed Alice0 is stepping into a brand-new role at the RPS Treehouse, morphing from News Editor into our very first Associate Editor. Alice0 has done an incredible job leading the news desk since she joined the site all the way back in 2014, but this new role will give her the space and freedom to step back from the daily news cycle and focus on writing the things she does best: the What's Betters of this world, elegies to exploding mouse mats, intriguing mod scene and esports stuff, and posts about more bikes in video games please. Come and congratulate her in the comments below.
You've survived Silent Hill and escaped Raccoon City, but are you ready to visit Sunderland? A pleasantly unpleasant new free horror game goes down inside the real Sunderland metro station of Park Lane, and I can't think of any other game set in the Northern English city. I am delighted when hyper-local mundanities appear in video games.
Two more aircraft have dived into Microsoft Flight Simulator’s roster in its second Famous Flyers pack of paid DLC, the 1930s Gee Bee Super Sportster air-racers. The stubby-winged, compact Model Z and Model R-2 arrive as the game sees its ninth update, with plenty of bug fixes, a new Spotlight Event landing challenge and an authentic vapour cone for when you go supersonic in the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Developers Asobo Studio have also patched in their own office in Bordeaux if you want to fly past and wave hello.
Combine the peg-pinging action of Peggle with the roguelikelike dungeon crawling of Slay The Spire and you get Peglin, a delightful game which launched into early access on Monday. Off your cute wee peglin goes on an adventure, battling baddies and claiming treasures, but damage is dealt by pling-plonging orbs down Peggle/pachinko boards and you have a bag of different orbs instead of cards. I like it, and it has a demo you can try for yourself.
