Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by a whole lot of water, which I swear is a coincidence. Ships! Ponds! Otherworldly pools! Ponds! Sharkgirls! Come admire these attractive and interesting indie games.
What lies beyond Limgrave? I honestly don’t know. I’ve muddled my way through Elden Ring’s starting peninsula three times now, but have yet to step foot beyond the crumbling gatehouse of Stormveil Castle. The second Godrick The Grafted is reduced to a sickly pile of wobbly limbs, I turn the game off and walk away.
It’s not that I don’t like Elden Ring. I’m not struggling to connect with its open world take on the Souls genre. I’m not put off by the difficult encounters that await me, or the obtuse challenges I’ll be forced to overcome. The answer is weirdly simple. Limgrave provides me with everything I could ever want from a Souls game to the point that when Godrick croaks his final rancid breath and his (presumably) four tongues comically lop out of his stupid mouth, I’m left with the deep satisfaction that comes with the end of a journey, rather than the beginning of one.
Mortal Kombat constantly tries to one-up itself with increasingly bloody fatalities, as the series has gone from simple spine-ripping moves to finishers that incorporate hellish portals or a hungry dragon. Mortal Kombat 1’s latest trailer takes things one step further with really outlandish (and kinda fun) fatalities. It also confirms that Geras is joining the roster. Take a look below, but be warned: it’s gory, of course.
'Soulslike but in the Han Dynasty' game Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty released earlier this year, but developers Team Ninja are gearing up for another five months of updates and DLC. A recently revealed roadmap details all the changes coming to the action RPG, from the seemingly small balance tweaks to the hopefully exciting crossovers with fellow Soulsian bedfellows Lies Of P and Nioh.
Sundays are for seeing what this new Nolan flick is like. Before you reach for the popcorn, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
"I'm going to put on my golden spike fists and start punch the air rapidly, like this", Amid Evil expansion The Black Labyrinth seems to say. "And if all you monsters in the mist should be pulped, then that's your own fault."
Set before the events of the base game, it looks every bit as bloody, and Blood-y, as its throwback first-person shooter predecessor. It also now has a release date: August 18th.
Palworld is comfortably summarised as 'Pokémon with guns', thanks to its too-familiar character designs and third-person machinegun combat. It's got more going on than that, though. It's also Pokémon with base building, Pokémon with sweat shops, Pokémon with corpse piles.
A new developer tutorial explains how you can 'use Pals efficiently' by putting them to work for you.
Well hello again, you. That was supposed to be nice but I sound like him off of You. It's unreasonably muggy where I am, which is a type of weather I'm not built for. I'm not built for rain or snow or sunshine either, to be fair - and if you're like me you could maybe have a crack at Wood And Weather's free demo on Steam this weekend, a game where you can change the weather to whatever you want. It's very sweet. I like games where it's like you're smashing lovely toys together. I've already played that, though, I'm telling you that maybe you'll like it. Oh, you want to know what we're playing this weekend?
When Path Of Exile 2 was first announced in 2019, it was billed as an extra large expansion patch to the original game - an update, so to speak, rather than a standalone sequel. Since then, however, the scope of Grinding Gear Games action RPG has grown so much in the intervening years that they've now decided to make it a "completely separate game". The news comes from tonight's ExileCon, which also marks the first time we've seen Path Of Exile 2 in action since that original announcement.
I bloody love Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. It’s a meaty and satisfying action-platformer with possibly the best-executed comedy and character work of the entire series; a series that’s essentially grown up alongside me, in tone as much as technical sophistication. I wish I had the time to review it properly but, with a weekend and a Baldur's Gate 3-shaped boulder bearing down, I’m staying in my hardware lane to focus on the performance of and best settings to use in Rift Apart’s new PC version.
Hello! It's RPS Game Club chat time! As you know, this month's pick is Unpacking, and here at RPS, we've been writing a bunch of lovely words about Witch Beam's block puzzle tidy-em-up. I've really enjoyed returning to this indie gem and have noted the irony of my Unpacking house being spick and span but my own house being, well, a bomb site. But we wanna hear what you have to say, so put that kettle on, grab some bourbons, and tell us what you think. The chat below will start today at 4pm BST / 8am PDT. See you then!
Every year when I ask the team to vote for their favourite games of all time ahead of us putting together our annual RPS 100 list, I'm regularly astonished by the sheer breadth of games that fly into my inbox. Everyone on the team has such varied, individual tastes, and it heartens me to see so many different genres and types of games represented every year. This year's list (available to read now in Part One and Part Two is another great testament to that.
But as we (sometimes) jokingly say any time we compile a big list like this, the games that didn't make the cut are always at #101. Well, this year I thought supporters might like to see those games at #101 this year, and crikey, there are a lot. There are so many here, in fact, that we would have had to have stretched to an RPS 200 to include them all. So here are our honourable mentions this year (listed, for ease), and I'd love to see you try and guess which games belonged to which member of the team.
With the imminent release of Baldur's Gate 3 next week, Larian have released another villain spotlight video showcasing the RPG juggernaut's final character in its trio of antagonists, and Lady Dimitrescu actor Maggie Robertson will be playing her. Hell yeah. Orin the Red is an angry, evil, shapeshifting lady who seems to have a major chip on her shoulder and a lust for destruction and blood. The video doesn't go too much into Orin's role in BG3 beyond the fact that she's super evil, but if you'd like to see snippets of Robertson as Orin in action you can watch the video below:
In a move that, if it happens a third time, will become a trend known as "doing a Dwarf Fortress", Kitfox Games are taking on publishing duty for Caves Of Qud, a proc-gen roguelike retrofuturist epic that generates funny patch notes and terrifies me, personally. Development started in 2007, before the game hit early access on Steam in 2015. And now, 1.0 is on the horizon.
Japan’s biggest yearly indie games event returned to a blisteringly hot Kyoto last weekend, just in time for the world-famous Gion Matsuri taking place in the city that same weekend. Bitsummit Let’s Go was the name given to the 11th incarnation of the event, expanding to three days for the very first time - also featuring over 100 games, the largest showcase yet. With so many games on show it’s hard to narrow them all down. Keeping with the event’s spirit of showcasing independent talent and undiscovered gems, I’ve chosen to pick out some of the smaller games peppering the show floor and highlight just a few favourites.
It's always a sad day when someone leaves the Treehouse, and today we bid adieu to Rachel Watts, as she leaves being our reviews editor for pastures new. Rachel definitely left an impression here, and I know she'll do the same wherever she goes. For now, join us in saying goodbye with some nice comments, and a look at some of Rachel's coolest work for us here.
Welcome to Part Two of The RPS 100 for 2023, our annual countdown of our favourite PC games from across the ages. Earlier this week, we ranked our favourite games from 100-51, which can be found over in Part One of this year's list. But now it's time for the big 50, going all the way to our collective number one. And I'll tell you now, it's not the same as last year.
Homeworld Remastered Collection, the bundle which contains prettier versions of cult-classic RTS' Homeworld and Homeworld 2, is currently free to keep from the Epic Games Store. We thought it was a corker of a collection when it first released eight years ago, so strategy-heads who like to build space fleets may want to get on this one.
As listeners of our Indiscovery podcast will probably know by now, our Rachel is sadly leaving RPS this week for pastures new. There will be a separate goodbye post for her tomorrow so you can say your farewells, but as that old saying goes: where one door closes, another one opens. Reviewing the best and most interesting games on PC is still a critical part of what RPS stands for, and we're now looking for a new Reviews Editor to carry that work forward. Applications are open now, and you can find more details below.
Most racing fans daydream about being Lewis Hamilton rather than Toto Wolff, and there are tons of games that cater to that majority. If you'd rather be signing cheques and contemplating tyre strategy, though, there are only a handful of games out there for you, and F1 Manager is one of the big ones.
The Sims has gone unchallenged in the life simulation genre for a quarter century and the wait for a challenger is about to get a few months longer. Developers Paradox Tectonic have pushed back the early access launch for their human dollhouse rival Life By You to March 5th 2024. Rod Humble, the studio’s general manager and former Sims boss, said the game will be “a more robust experience out the gate” thanks to the six-month delay.
CD Projekt Red have announced another batch of layoffs, this time affecting “around 100” employees, or roughly 9% of the company’s total headcount. The redundancies won’t take place immediately, according to CDPR, as some employees won’t lose their jobs until early next year at the latest.
“There’s no easy way to say this, but today we are overstaffed,” said CEO Adam Kiciński in an ‘organisational update’ posted to the company’s website. “We have talented people on board who are finishing their tasks and — based on current and expected project needs — we already know we don’t have other opportunities for them in the next year,” he continued.
“To meet our own high expectations and ambitions to create the best role-playing games, we not only want to have the best people but also the right teams,” says Kiciński. “What we mean by that is having teams that are built around our projects’ needs; teams that are more agile and more effective… After reshaping our development process and incorporating Agile methodologies, we’re now focusing on refining the shape of our teams.” Those projects in question include another Witcher trilogy, a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, and an all-new IP codenamed Project Hadar. That’s in addition to the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion called Phantom Liberty.
After a year in early access, developer Afterschool Studio have announced that Cantata is fully launching on August 15th. Cantata is a turn-based strategy game with some production chain management thrown in for good measure, alongside the massive maps and base building. Take a look at the candy-coloured Dune-esque world below.
Ubisoft have apparently aborted plans for a sequel to Immortals Fenyx Rising, according to a report on VGC. They cite "multiple development sources" who, speaking anonymously, say that the project was scrapped earlier this month.
The 30 minute demonstration back in June communicated the scope of Bethesda's spacefaring RPG, Starfield. If what you want is more flavour, tone, some player motivation, then three new animated shorts released today might help. Each tells a short 2-3 minute story of a different character in Starfield's galaxy, as they attempt to resolve their deep yearning with spaceships. To which we can all relate.
Another day, another Eastern MMO picked up by Amazon Games and repackaged for a Western audience. What's the grind this time? Blue Protocol, an anime MMO developed by Bandai Namco that's already out in Japan, and is due out in the West sometime in 2024. I played it for an hour and I've come away thinking it's a slick operation, with some slight Monster Hunter edge to its combat. While the future sounds promising, questions remain around a world which seems a bit eh, and the ever looming march of the microtransactions.
Hello folks. You may have noticed that our game tag pages have had a bit of a face-lift recently. Previously, these pages were quite plain lists of everything we'd written about the game in question, but thanks to your feedback and some fancy design work from our tech team, these pages are now (hopefully) a lot more useful and better-looking. Here's what's changed.
Media conglomerate Tencent are throwing more money at game studios as part of their never-ending shopping spree. Today the studio behind zombie-smasher Dying Light, Techland, announced that Tencent will become the developer’s majority shareholder.
“Whenever I think about the future of Techland, I want the best for our games, the team, and you,” said Techland’s CEO Paweł Marchewka in today’s blog post. “And while I am very proud of our achievements as an independent studio over all these years, I believe the best is yet to come.”
Marchewka continued to say that “teaming up with Tencent” would allow the team to “move full speed ahead” with future plans for the Dying Light series and their in-development fantasy RPG. Marchewka emphasised that the studio will retain “full ownership” of their intellectual property and “maintain creative freedom.” Marchewka will also continue to serve as Techland’s CEO.
Three decades have gone by since the original Myst graced the world, providing endless online debates about whether it's smart or just pretentious. Magical or plain bad. Some indie developers chose the latter with a Myst FPS remix that spoofed the senior adventure game. The RPS readership seemed split on the subject when we asked "Have You Played Myst?" years ago. But Humble Games leans toward the former as it’s choosing to celebrate the classic's whopping 30th birthday with a returning charity bundle, available now until August 3rd.
The Humble Myst & More Bundle packages the titular point-and-clicker, alongside several other sequels, spiritual successors, and odd offshoots from developer Cyan Worlds. You can pay anything over £7.80/$10 for the 11-game bundle, or you can pay at least £15.60/$20 to also grab the Myst remake from 2021.
Cyan Worlds loves a good re-release, and this latest bundle is a reminder of how many Mysts have Mysted over the years. There’s Myst: Masterpiece Edition which remasters the music and imagery, and is otherwise as close to the original as you can get. Then there’s realMyst: Masterpiece Edition which added changing weather, day-night cycles, free roam movement, and a bonus epilogue. And finally, there’s the most recent pretty remake that’s also compatible with VR.
This month's Game Club Pick is the wonderfully cosy puzzler Unpacking, so as is Game Club tradition we'll be doing another liveblog chat with you lovely lot Friday 28th at 4pm BST / 8am PDT. If you have opinions about Unpacking, we wanna hear them.
King Of Dragon Pass’ spiritual successor Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind is about to get an actual successor with Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out. The storybook sequel follows the strategy-RPG formula from its ancestors as you lead a clan through political disputes, a world-ending crisis, and disagreements about who owns sheep or a magical baby. And best of all, developer A Sharp have announced that the game will come out on August 21st.
Set before the science fiction Amazon Prime series, The Expanse: A Telltale Series will debut its first episode this Thursday - July 27th - with four more episodes rolling out every two weeks. That won’t be the end, though. During San Diego ComicCon, developers Telltale announced that a bonus episode called Archangel would release sometime after the other episodes wrap up.
Star Wars Outlaws is the next upcoming game in a galaxy farfaraway, and since it’s a Ubisoft Original (TM), our adventures with the main scoundrel Kay Vess take place in an open world. Outlaw’s newest behind-the-scenes featurette delves deeper into the game’s free roaming planets, both old (Tatooine, of course, because we play as a Han Solo-type) and new (Toshara, which actually looks pretty cool). Find it below.
Sundays are for descaling your kettle. Before you watch the fizz, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
Survival citybuilder Patron is nearing its two year anniversary, and to celebrate its developers have released an update which adds a new creative game mode. Instead of struggling to quell social tensions and navigate disasters, creative mode unlocks everything, gives you infinite resources, and lets you adopt "the role of ultimate medieval urbanist."
Digital storefront GOG is experiencing "technical issues" related to an outage at their storage provider and content delivery network (CDN). As a result, people may be unable to download and update games purchased through the store via both GOG.com and their GOG Galaxy client.
Diablo 4's major 1.1.0a balance patch was released this week and was met with sweeping criticism, specifically for the way it seemed to reduce the power and usefulness of some character builds. In a livestream yesterday, Blizzard acknowledged the feedback, calling the patch "not the greatest play experience", and saying they wouldn't release a patch like it again.
Here's a TV recommendation for you: Deadloch on Amazon Prime. A dark comedy cop show set in a small Tasmanian town where traditional culture clashes with artsy newcomers, and there's murder, and it's funny, and the characters are such delights. It's a bit like Top Of The Lake with jokes. But what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
Based on the shooter series of the same name, the Borderlands film now has an official release date: August 9th, 2024. The action-comedy adaptation wrapped principal shooting in 2021, but it’s been somewhat stuck in post-production limbo ever since with several rounds of reshoots pushing out the release further than expected.
This comes after reports that co-writer Craig Mazin - best known as the showrunner behind HBO’s The Last Of Us and Chornobyl - removed his name from the project in favour of a pseudonym. More recently, Mazin confirmed to Variety that the pen name reports were false and he’s instead “not a credited writer” on Borderlands at all anymore. Mazin is instead focusing on The Last Of Us’ second season.
The Borderlands was mostly directed by Eli Roth, known for his work on the Hostel films and Cabin Fever. Roth was reportedly busy during reshoots, however, so studio Lionsgate enlisted the help of Tim Miller, the director behind Deadpool, to helm the project for a few weeks.
Krillbite Studio are good at making unsettling games, from the toddler-horror Among The Sleep to the eerie corporate follow-up Mosaic. But the team have announced their next project and - surprise - they’re putting on a happy face with Fruitbus, a joyful open world game about running a food truck. Yummy food and seemingly friendly animals? That's good vibes. Get a taste below.
Crime O'Clock is a game that should (apologies in advance) tick (sorry) a lot of boxes for me. There's a time-travelling detective story at the heart of it, in which you and a very Minority Report-style AI work together to stop crimes that will disrupt the one true timeline throughout history, and it's all played out on gorgeous black and white tableaus like Adriaan de Jongh's wonderful Hidden Folks. You'll rewind and fast forward time to plot suspicious movements, track stolen objects as they move across town, and work out who (or what) is causing all this chaos. I'm having good fun with it, but I do wish it would stop whisking me away from its lovely maps to go and complete yet another tedious mini-game.
The Asus ROG Ally has once again made itself impossible to write about without also mentioning the Steam Deck. Its latest BIOS update - out now via the MyAsus app – includes a fix that allows the handheld Windows PC to correctly run in its fastest, power-hungriest Turbo mode when connected to sufficiently high-wattage, third-party docking stations and USB-C hubs. In other words, it now works with more of the best Steam Deck docks.
Developer Videocult have announced Airframe Ultra, a multiplayer battler where you race across a grimy industrial city on sick hoverbikes. I certainly wasn’t expecting the team behind Rain World’s cute slugcats to make such a drastic left turn. Take a look at the cool bike slides and low-poly world below:
The Steam Sim Fest is the latest genre-specific event, discounting dozens of games about emerging cities, dad hobbies, tactical warfare, and other stimulating simulations. Heavy hitters such as Disney Dreamlight Valley and the newest Bus Simulator are enjoying nice discounts, but as always, some hidden gems require a little bit of scrolling. The sales last until July 24th, so here are some good old recommendations from the event.
Surprise! Lakeburg Legacies is a hybrid between village management and mediaeval matchmaking , and it’s out now with a 15% sale bringing the price down to £16.50/$19.50. Love is almost as hard-to-manage as the economy, but worry not, a soothing storybook aesthetic should make this one slightly less stressful than couple’s therapy and/or mayoral duties.
Wobbly person sim Human: Fall Flat has a hefty 70% discount and is currently £4.80/$6.50. To celebrate the puzzle-platformer’s seventh anniversary, the team are also sharing some mysterious news tomorrow. That’s in addition to a new level coming in August, so look forward to more clumsy flailing.
The RPS 100 is our annual countdown of our favourite PC games of all time, and this year, we're finally doing it at a sensible time - in that semi-quiet lull between notE3 and Gamescom, and definitely not during October when it's actual silly season for end of year releases. And like last year, we're bringing back our Readers Edition so you can join in with the endless debate about what's the correct number one PC game of all time as well. So vote now for your favourite PC games of all time, to be published as a separate list that will be yours and yours alone. Here's how to get involved.
Another week means more freebies are available from the Epic Games Store, and this week two very different games have slashed their price tags. Starting today, The Elder Scrolls Online and Murder By Numbers are both free to keep from the digital store. Something for multiplayer dragon slayers and solo picross lovers alike.
The Elder Scrolls Online is, well, The Elder Scrolls but online. The long-running MMO has been unlocking doors into every corner of Tamriel, most recently with the Necrom expansion’s otherworldly tentacles and massive mushrooms. It's good at accommodating solo players who are looking to scratch a Skyrim-sized itch - since the next Elder Scrolls is at least five years away. That approachability got the game into our list of the ten best MMOs on PC.
On the other end of the humanities versus maths spectrum, we have Murder By Numbers, a murder mystery visual novel where you complete picross puzzles to further the investigation. Plus there's a robo-friend who pulls out a monocle every now and then, which is just plain cute. AliceB said the game was “worth a poke around if you’re a fan of either genre involved,” in our Murder By Numbers review. Even though neither half “are given enough space to breathe,” it should be worth a try for the affordable price of zero pence, though.
I thought Exoprimal somehow managed to make dinosaurs versus mechs, aka the coolest concept ever, boring in my review-in-progress. I held out hope it would improve, though, as lots of commenters assured me it's fun side would finally surface. "Just play several more hours and things really open up! Variety in the dinos, in the modes, in just about everything!". To some extent, they were right. There are fun moments to be had as you queue up for Dino Survival and suddenly, remarkably, things have changed a bit.
But the game doesn't respect your time. It forces you to sit through hours of repetitive dino-slaying and then only offers you the chance, the chance to slay dinos in a way that isn't excruciatingly samey. Even as someone who finds the fun in mindless carnage, I'd much rather ditch my mech suit and let the dinosaurs run rampant. The dinosaurs don't deserve this.
Bandai Namco Online have announced that Gundam Evolution, the free-to-play shooter based on the popular anime, will no longer be playable after November 29th. The mech FPS was released last year but executive producer Kazuya Maruyama now says it’s “no longer possible” for the team to provide ongoing support.
Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes was one of those Nintendo DS games that I never played at the time but had always heard was very good. Its unusual triple-decker sandwich of strategic, match-three RPG puzzling hasn't really been replicated in the fifteen-odd years since it first came out, unless you count its own HD remaster that came out in 2011. Alas, with that version now having gone off sale on PC in favour of this further spruced up Definitive Edition, this is now the best and only way to play it. Originally developed by the same core team at Capybara Games that went on to make the excellent Grindstone, this Definitive Edition has been handled entirely by remake house Dotemu, and yep, I now see what all the fuss is about. However, I also have quite a lot of reservations about it. For all its clear, obvious brilliance, it's also a very hard game to love. Because it really is very hard, and I still can't quite decide if I'm having fun or not.
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Remnant II has a lot of moments that will make you say things not appropriate for children’s ears. Then again, given the mild horror themes in many of the levels and the general terror the excellent enemy design invokes, you probably shouldn’t be playing it around kids in the first place. As a fan of this sequel’s predecessor, Remnant: From The Ashes, I had my hopes set unreasonably high, and not only has Remnant II completely met my expectations, but it also kept messing around with what I thought I should be expecting. It left me in a constant state of awe. This is a furiously ambitious follow-up and has everything I could have ever wanted.
