Donnerstag, 29. Februar 2024

The making of Cobalt Core: how Tabletop Simulator and Inscryption were the secret catalysts behind this clever deckbuilding roguelike

Rocket Rat Games co-founder John Guerra remembers the exact day he started working on Cobalt Core's first prototype. He and his fellow co-founder Ben Driscoll had just spent a week playing Daniel Mullins' mysterious roguelike deckbuilder Inscryption at the end of October 2021, but the combination of a bad storm and a power outage ended up forcing Guerra to decamp from his home in Massachusetts and stay with some family until it all blew over. "I got back late on Halloween, just in time to put out a bowl of candy for some kids, and then the next morning we started Cobalt Core," he tells me.

The pair had been working on a range of different prototypes in the months leading up to this lightbulb moment. As development on their debut game, the spaceship building puzzler Sunshine Heavy Industries, began winding down, "we were throwing all kinds of stuff at the wall," he says, including games in 3D, a platformer, with Driscoll revealing they even had "a Terraria-like one for a couple of weeks" with a grid-based world that characters bounced around in. But it was playing Inscryption that brought everything to a head. Both had spent hundreds of hours with Slay The Spire, but "Inscryption proved to us that there was still a lot of space to explore in the genre," says Guerra. And with increasing calls from Sunshine Heavy Industries players begging them to let them fly the ships they were creating in its shipyard sandbox, "you can kind of see how that went from A to B".

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CEO Andrew Wilson tells EA staff 5% of them will be laid off via empty and infuriating email

In Shakespeare's Anthony And Cleopatra, said famous woman says "Give to a gracious message an host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt." I.e., when you have good news you can go round the houses, but if you have bad news - like sending an all-hands email to the staff at EA to let them know that, less than a year after the last round of layoffs, a further 5% of them are getting booted - then you should just come out and say it as quickly and simply as possible.

This is, apparently, not a sentiment ever internalised by Andrew Wilson, EA's CEO. Yesterday, when he announced to everyone at EA that a bunch of them were losing their jobs (again), he first spent three paragraphs talking about how EA is doing great, leading the industry, getting increasing engagement from fans, optimising their global footprint and sunsetting games oh yep, there it is, that's the "you're about to be unemployed" language right there. The company is moving away from "the development of future licensed IP" and toward "our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities". Therefore: 670 ish devs (by Eurogamer's count) must go.

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Helldivers 2 mech video surfaces alongside rumours of meteor Stratagems and deployable AI squad mates

We knew the Helldivers 2 team were looking ahead to the future now that they'd largely overcome the game's most significant server issues. But we weren't expecting to see new additions quite so quickly, as rideable mechs have been spotted in the wilds. When are they actually being added to the game? No idea. Do they look cool as heck? Yes, absolutely.

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The Brew Barons is a sumptuous, Ghibli-inspired flight sim that's also a brewing sim for some reason

The Brew Barons unfolds in a horrifying world where most agricultural tasks and outdoor mechanical activities are carried out using the medium of heavily armed seaplanes. Need apples for cider? Fly through the trees, cannons ablazing. Need to gather wheat? Fly the plane through the field using its propeller as a scythe, with hardier types of wheat requiring tougher propeller blades. Need to haul up scavenge from the ocean floor? Use the plane's sea anchor as a rudimentary fishing claw. Need to open a box you found on the beach? The plane's the thing, etcetera.

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Mittwoch, 28. Februar 2024

There's a new Paranormal Activity horror game in the works from the creator of The Mortuary Assistant

DarkStone Digital, solo developer of The Mortary Assistant, is making a new horror game based on Paramount's Paranormal Activity films. Titled Paranormal Activity: Found Footage, it's being published by DreadXP and features some kind of reactive haunt system, with scares dialling up and down based on your actions. DreadXP have shared a teaser consisting of some crackly logos against a backdrop of radio chatter. Given that this is a Paranormal Activity adaptation, it's possible the trailer harbours spooky secrets. You may wish to experiment with turning the brightness up and down, playing the video backwards, or watching it again at the next full moon, perhaps while standing in a cemetery loudly declaring that ghosts aren't real.

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Dienstag, 27. Februar 2024

Our favourite wireless gaming headset is down to under £100 at Amazon UK

SteelSeries make some of my favourite gaming headsets - and RPS' favourite wireless gaming headset, which today is discounted to under £100 versus its normal price of £175. That's a good price for the Arctis 7+, a comfortable and great-sounding headset that works not only on PC but also on Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S - that's all the consoles!

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Connect All The Things with this £19 7-port powered USB hub

Here's something a little different: a seven-port powered USB hub from Sabrent that makes it easy to connect a huge amount of peripherals and drives to your PC without having to fumble blindly with the back of your PC - or turn one of your laptop's USB ports into many many more. It normally goes for £30 to £40, but today you can pick it up for just £19 at Amazon UK.

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Shashingo, out today, helps you learn Japanese through photography

As someone who's learning Japanese, I crave other methods of language acquisition that don't feel like studying. Textbooks, flashcards, even watching Japanese media can all feel a bit too close to being back in a classroom. Shashingo, a game that helps you learn Japanese through taking cute photos, may be the study companion I've craved. And having covered it two years ago when it was first properly shown off, I'm very happy to see it's finally arriving later today.

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Latest Palworld update defaults your Pals to "Relax" and lets you create artificial volcano conditions

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Palwoods, Pocketpair have revealed a new Palworld update - Steam and Xbox patch v0.1.5.0. This is a larger overhaul, encompassing a juicy mixture of balance and technical tweaks that together make this spring's breakout survival game easier to play, less buggy and, dare I say, a little kinder, with various tweaks aimed at making life more liveable both for trainers and Pals. I have run my eye over the changelog at the bottom of this page and picked out a few highlights, like somebody fishing a stray banknote from the laundry.

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Like A Dragon’s localisation team explain how they bring the series’ singular storytelling to the west

“Ever since the very first Yakuza on PS2, the Like A Dragon series has always tried to capture the cultural zeitgeist of Japan, reflecting and satirising whatever’s trending around when the game comes out. This means that the way people speak in Like A Dragon is constantly evolving to match the times,” says Dan Sunstrum, senior translator at Ryu Ga Gotoku’s localisation team. Keeping things current is, says Sunstrum, “a challenge in some ways but also means we’re justified in using modern English slang to match, whereas such modernisms might feel out of place in a game set in a completely fictional world.”

Sunstrum uses an example from the studio’s latest, RPS Bestest Best winning RPG Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where permed protagonist Ichiban Kasuga meets a dating app designer. “The app’s creator goes on a mini-rant about ungrateful, entitled users, complaining how when anything goes wrong they’re quick to demand wabi-ishi,” slang for free premium currency. “This would have been a tricky word to localise, but it was made easy by the fact that fans of gacha games had already done it for us: they refer to them as ‘apologems’, and that’s what we ended up using in the game.”

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Montag, 26. Februar 2024

Nightingale is "not officially supported" on the Steam Deck, and it shows

Nightingale’s dapper cast of cross-dimensional pathfinders are right about one thing: realmwalking is dangerous business. Attempt to tele-portal between realities on the Steam Deck, for instance, and you may find yourself trapped in the Stygian void, naught but a frozen loading screen tip for company and suspended hopelessly for all eternity. Or until you hold down the power button.

This crashing tendency alone means that while Nightingale can technically run on the Steam Deck, even without resorting to rock-bottom graphics settings, the current early access build isn’t yet ready for regular handheld play. That’s nothing developers Inflexion Games won’t tell you themselves – they’re "not considering [the Deck] officially supported at launch," after all – but if you were thinking of giving this gaslamp fantasy survival sim a portable whirl, you might want to let that call to adventure go unanswered.

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Dungeons Of Hinterberg's latest trailer shows off Alpine mountains, glaciers and, yes, a swamp (poison not yet confirmed)

Austrian developers Microbird released a new trailer for their upcoming Alpine dungeon-crawler Dungeons Of Hinterberg over the weekend, giving us a closer look at some of the eponymous dungeon environments we'll be biffing monsters in come its release later this summer. In addition to the previously revealed mountainsides and glacial snow peaks, it looks like Hinterberg will have a big green swamp to travel to as well. Question is: will it be a poison FromSoft variety of swamp? Or something more innocuous? Hard to tell with that searingly green water on display, but one thing is certain: with Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree and its confirmed poison swamp launching on June 21st, this summer won't be short on big bog energy.

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Age Of Mythology Retold tilts for the modern esports crowd with changed god power mechanics

When I did my undergrad degree in the nowadays-blissful-seeming early noughties, I swore off videogames entirely. I sternly and sorrowfully turned my back on such hit releases as Shadow of the Colossus, Far Cry and yes, even, that PC gaming essential Half-Life 2, so as to spend 11-hour days boning up on Aeschylus and Samuel Johnson. Then, two weeks before my final exams, I somehow went out and bought Ensemble's Age Of Mythology.

I'm not sure why - blame the devil on my shoulder, I guess. It wasn't even a new release at that point. I managed to get good marks in the exams despite several nights of binge-playing, but what direction, in general, would my life have taken if I hadn't bought Age Of Mythology at such a fateful hour? Better or worse? Could I have been some kind of billionaire don with a Pulitzer by now, if it weren't for Age Of Mythology? These things keep me awake at night. Anyway, here's a little more info about the forthcoming reboot Age of Mythology: Retold, which broadly aims to turn this wrinkled titan of the strategy genre into a proper modern esport.

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The Maw - 26th February-2nd March

New week, yet more videogames! Gosh, those developers are incorrigible. I would characterise this week's new game releases as a gentle blend of cosy simulation and nostalgia, served on a bed of fantasy roguelikes. If I had to pick a most-anticipated, it'd be a toss-up between the remaster of a shooter I adored in my teens and the breezy amateur photography game that teaches you the kanji for "flower".

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Samstag, 24. Februar 2024

Night-Runners Prologue demo is a stylish throwback to PlayStation racing classics

I've entered a stage in my life during which I have enormous nostalgia for the PlayStation era, and most of that nostalgia is focused on racing games and drum and bass. Enter Night-Runners, a racing game set between 1990 and 2009, scored by drum and bass, smeared with VHS filters, and just for good measure, set on and around the expressways of Tokyo.

There's a Kickstarter for the project now, but also a substantial prologue demo on Steam that's worth your time.

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Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown is getting "free content and modes" in updates soon

Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown, Ubisoft's highly polished prototypical Metroidvania, was released last month and instantly earned its place on our list of the best of the genre. Now Ubisoft Montpellier say they're planning free updates to add extra content and modes, with the first to arrive soon.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Look, I know you've come here purely to read my trite wittering about weather and daylight, but I don't have time for it today. I need to go play Bolatro. Every additional word I type is another half-second I could have used to play Bolatro. Oh god that was 8 seconds of unBolatro, and for nothing. That's another 6! I must stop this. Go on, tell me, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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Freitag, 23. Februar 2024

Some Elden Ring devs had "concerns" about its open world style, which the DLC will make "denser and richer"

From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki has acknowledged that members of the Dark Souls studio had misgivings about Elden Ring's shift to a full-blown open world format, while qualifying that Elden Ring's vision for an open world was never "traditional". Rather, Elden Ring is an "open world" game in the same way that Dark Souls is a "hard" game, Miyazaki feels. Confused? Well, this is the godfather of the notoriously unforthcoming Souls series we're talking about. I've never interviewed the guy, but I suspect he composes his responses using the game's soapstone messaging system.

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Sons Of The Forest 1.0 adds a new ending, proximity chat, creative mode, and Artifact answers

Sons Of The Forest launches out of early access and into 1.0 today, bringing with it a whole host of tweaks and improvements. Most notably, there's a new ending, new mutants, new points of interest, proximity chat, a creative mode, and new uses for the game's mysterious artifacts. The rest of the changelog is an exhausting list of bullet points with the occasional hidden gem, like the introduction of raccoons and golf cart radio stations to give your drives some added pizazz.

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Get Intel's legendary Optane 905P 1.5TB SSD at a discount in the US

Intel's Optane drives are legendary in PC tech circles, offering random performance and low latency that remains unmatched amongst PCIe 3.0 drives. This Intel Optane 905P drive is the biggest they ever made at 1.5TB, and now it's reduced to $380 when you use code SYADP2Z384 at Newegg.

For systems that accept PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 drives, I'd recommend sticking with our usual gaming SSD recommendations, but for PCIe 3.0 systems this is a fascinating option that emphasises random performance against sequential speeds. I recorded some of the very fastest game load times with this drive when I tested it against other PCIe 3.0 options, and its random write speeds are competitive even with later generation PCIe 4.0 alternatives.

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This Steam Deck dock is down to £26, the cheapest we've ever seen it

Steam Deck docks are a great upgrade for anyone that wants to use their Steam Deck (or similar PC handheld) with a TV or monitor, but the official Valve option is a little pricey at £69. Thankfully, cheaper third-party options are available, including this discounted Ugreen option that costs just £26 thanks to a voucher available at Amazon UK.

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Donnerstag, 22. Februar 2024

2024's release schedule just got a lot brighter, starting with Pepper Grinder and Snufkin in March

Yesterday's Nintendo Direct got rather overshadowed by a certain trailer for Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree, but there were still plenty of good news nuggets to be had in there for us PC folks - which I've summarised for you below. The long and short of it is: more release dates! Loads of 'em! And they're all coming in the first half of 2024 as well. I love it when a schedule comes together.

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You'll soon be able to play Sea Of Thieves with PlayStationeers, and Grounded with PlayPals and Switchers

As expected, Microsoft yesterday confirmed that four of their games are headed to rival consoles: Pentiment to PlayStations 4 & 5 and Nintendo Switch; Hi-Fi Rush to PS5; Grounded to PS4, PS5, and Switch; and Sea Of Thieves to PS5. It's nice to see barriers between systems coming down and all, and it'll likely have consequences of note to serious businessheads, but what relevance does this have for us as a PC gaming website? Well! Grounded and Sea Of Thieves will support cross-platform multiplayer, so we'll be able to play them with our consolatory chums. That's nice.

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The joy of Cobalt Core's screen-wide walls of incoming death attacks

There's a little masochistic streak in me that croons with joy whenever I reach the moment of impending doom in turn-based strategy games. You know the moment I mean. The one where the world fills with enemies patiently bobbing and snarling while you try to conjure up an impossibly perfect set of moves that'll keep things going for one more turn? Cobalt Core is great at this. I've only played a couple of runs so far, but boy, you'd better believe I know when the end is drawing near. It's hard to miss, because the entire screen fills up with rows of damage numbers beaming down onto your hapless little spaceship.

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Shin Megami Tensei 5 is finally coming to PC with newly expanded Vengeance edition

Shin Megami Tensei 5 is getting the Persona 5 Royal treatment, with an all-new Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance edition that's out in June. It features a new story path, an improved battle system, new areas, and more, as you'd expect from Atlus' history of definitive editions. What's more, while SMT 5 was a Switch exclusive when it came out in 2021, the new Vengeance edition will be heading to PC and other consoles, too. Do I have time for another enormous JRPG? Probably not, but I'll admit that it's got me very interested indeed.

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Mittwoch, 21. Februar 2024

Helldivers 2 patch fixes quickplay and crash bugs as Arrowhead work on AFK kick option and login rate limits

Last night I tried to host a Helldivers 2 co-op mission and the "ready up" button froze up. I spammed it in a panic while the randos in my voice channel fumed at the delay. Then I popped us out of the drop pods, attempted to quit the game in embarrassment, and the PC promptly crashed. Another blow for managed democracy!

I'm hoping that the ready up problem is one of the "various UI issues [that] may appear when the game interacts with servers" which Arrowhead are addressing in a future Helldivers 2 patch. Before that, there's patch 1.000.10, which fixes PC quickplay match-making bugs, gets rid of a crash issue when displaying mission rewards, and tunes civilian extraction mission difficulty, amongst other things. It's live now, and the full changelog is below.

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Dienstag, 20. Februar 2024

Kingmakers mashes the medieval era with modern weapons and its trailer is a viral sensation

Kingmakers has too much going on to easily summarise, but I'll try. Really, though, you should just click below and watch the trailer, which will surprise and delight you with its twists and scope in a way my words will not.

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Gigantic: Rampage Edition revives and expands the shuttered MOBA hero shooter

Gigantic, the free-to-play team brawler from a former StarCraft and Guild Wars designer, which launched (fully) in 2017 and closed the following year, is returning as Gigantic: Rampage Edition. It's no longer free-to-play, but a "premium and definitive release" of the original, and it's due on April 9th.

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Temtem: Swarm looks like an enticing mix of Vampire Survivors and Pokémon

Temtem was a brief mega-hit when it launched in Early Access back in 2020, as a Pokémon-like that was both online and on PC. Now it's getting its own "survivor-like bullet heaven" spin-off called Temtem: Swarm.

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Assassin's Creed: Mirage's new free permadeath mode deletes your save when you break the law

The latest Assassin's Creed Mirage update is giving me flashbacks to that inglorious period in game design when every other action game had an insta-fail stealth segment to wind people up between cover-based shoot-outs and, I don't know, three-part glyph puzzles or what-have-you. Out today for PC at 12pm UTC, 1pm GMT, 7am ET and 4am PT, the 1.07 patch adds Full Synchronization Challenge, a permadeath mode (originally teased last year) that not only permakills you when you're slain by enemies, but also deletes your save file when you commit crimes such as slaughtering civilians, or going outside of "authorised map locations".

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PowerWash Sim's Warhammer 40K crossover arrives next week, and the new trailer is very funny

My experience with Warhams isn't flat zero - I had some minifigs when I was a teenager and played a few of the Dawn Of War video games - but I haven't actively checked in on it for a while. I know enough to make "[x] for the [x] throne!" jokes, basically. My experience with cleaning-stuff-sim PowerWash Simulator is extensive, though, and I was excited when the crossover with Warhammer 40K was teased a while back. Last night we got a full trailer and release date of Frebruary 27th - next week! - and I'm now earnestly very excited. The trailer is both very funny and shows off massive things to clean. Win win, innit.

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Montag, 19. Februar 2024

The Maw - 19th-24th February 2024

Another week of PC game releases is upon us and oh heck, slow down. There are an alarming number of games out this week that I want to play, from large-scale 3D productions to itty-bitty time-killers, each sinisterly appropriate to my Steam stats and wider research interests. Are videogame publishers and The Maw in cahoots to overwhelm me with impulse-buys and sabotage my attempts to Report the News? It’s possible. It’s possible. The Maw can be pretty cunning for an indiscriminate force of cosmic famine. The creature has been known to forge alliances with misguided mortals, seeking to flank and overwhelm harried news writers. How else to explain Phil Spencer’s T-shirts?

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Bandle Tale: A League Of Legends Story review: a charming crafting RPG plagued by busywork

Riot Forge’s last stab at publishing smaller spin-offs from indie teams has resulted in Bandle Tale: A League Of Legends Story, which at first glance has all the things I love in self-proclaimed cosy games: gorgeous pixel art, laidback objectives and characters cute enough to trigger primal cheek-squishing instincts. But despite looking like an SNES classic and playing like a mix between Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, Bandle Tale unfortunately ties itself in knots with overly grindy crafting that had me rubbing my temples in an effort not to combust.

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This $10 Lenovo Legion XL mousepad is a great value

I'm a big fan of oversized mouse pads - desk pads, some call them. Today you can pick up just such a mouse pad from Lenovo in a comfortable 900x300x3mm (31.5x11.8x0.12") size for just $10. To get this reduction from the normal price of $18, use code SAVE15ACC at the checkout. This particular model, for your reference, is the well-reviewed Legion Speed Gaming Mouse Pad XL.

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Sonntag, 18. Februar 2024

The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for creating a solution to deal with fungal gnats. Let's mix and pour as we read the week's best writing about games and game-related things.

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Samstag, 17. Februar 2024

Spending on third-party games via the Epic Games Store fell 13% in 2023

Epic have outlined their 2024 plans for the Epic Games Store, which includes a new download manager, a proper offline mode, pre-loading of games, and a focus on game discovery in general.

These plans were outlined in the store's 2023 year-in-review, which paints a mixed picture of Epic's storefront's growth over the past 12 months.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

I have an extremely annoying neck and shoulder ache that I can't get rid of, but on the other hand I found the backing to the right earring in my all-day black studs. On a third hand, I found this after I bought a replacement pair. Less ideal. But at least video games have never let me down. That's an egregious lie, though. Games let me down all the time. Which ones are you pinning your hopes to this weekend? Here are ours.

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Freitag, 16. Februar 2024

Hello Neighbor's creator is making a Home Alone-esque game that looks a lot like Hello Neighbor

I'm kind of fascinated by what happened to Hello Neighbor. The original, a stealth horror game against a creepy AI that learned your likely movements, was hugely popular in alpha in 2016. The series was acquired by TinyBuild in 2020, and since then there has been a heroic number of spin-offs. There's one set in an amusement park, a multiplayer game called Secret Neighbor in which one small child is actually a large adult man in disguise, a direct sequel called Hello Neighbor 2, and a VR game called Search And Rescue. I think everyone got a bit of Neighbor fatigue there, lads.

This might include the original creator Nikita Kolesnikov, as (still under the auspices of TinyBuild) he's made a new thing. Currently on Steam for playtesting, the project currently known as RBO isn't falling far from the home invasion tree, as players will either be a home-owning Protector - a McCallister, if you will - or an Intruder, or Wet Bandit.

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Streets Of Rogue 2's latest dev diary is a crash course in proc-gen map building

The first Streets Of Rogue was an RPS favourite when it launched back in 2019 (we literally couldn't stop playing it), and we've known for a while now that its sequel, Streets Of Rogue 2, is due to arrive later this year. Ahead of the game's launch, developer Matt Dabrowski has started releasing a series of dev diary videos detailing his design process and how it's all coming together. The latest is about how he creates the game's proc-gen open worlds and biomes, and it's a fascinating watch if you've ever wondered how its particular blend of randomised chaos works behind the scenes.

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Donnerstag, 15. Februar 2024

Embracer have laid off 8% of their global workforce since their "restructuring" began

Embracer have released their interim financial results for Q3, October-December 2023, in which they share details of the conglomerate's on-going efforts to "restructure" and reduce their massive debts, to the tune of hundreds of layoffs over the past year.

Amid the talk of revenues, profits and losses, we learn that Embracer have laid off 8% of their global workforce since announcing their restructuring program in June 2023. According to the report, Embracer's total headcount has fallen from 16,243 in the period October-December 2022 to 15,218 in the period October-December 2023. The number of Embracer studio game projects in development, meanwhile, has fallen from 224 to 179.

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Helldivers 2 will "never" get PvP because Arrowhead don't want a toxic community

If you've been yearning to take up arms against Super Earth as either an arachnid, a robot or a filthy (managed) democracy-hating human traitor, then I have bad news, roughneck. Helldivers 2 will "never" get a PvP mode, according to Arrowhead's CEO Johan Pilestedt. The reason? They want to avoid encouraging any toxic behaviour in the new shooter's multiplayer community.

Given that Helldivers 2 is a game with mandatory friendly fire in which you can kill team-mates by respawning right on top of them, I fear the Good Ship Camaraderie may already have sailed, but I'm very early on in my Helldiver career, and I'm... intrigued by how Arrowhead's efforts at community curation sit alongside/within the game's premise of playing a dirty space fascist locked in an endless xenophobic crusade.

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Dienstag, 13. Februar 2024

Microsoft Flight Simulator's free Dune expansion is available now

Microsoft Flight Simulator's free Dune expansion is available now. It features the Royal Atreides Ornithopter from Denis Villeneuve's movies - with this entire DLC being a marketing tie-in with Dune: Part Two, which releases next month. It includes tutorials, time trials, and a "daring rescue mission".

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Immortals Of Aveum cost $125 million and "no one bought it"

Magical first-person shooter Immortals Of Aveum launched last August and by the following month half its development team had been laid off due to poor sales.

In a new report by IGN on widespread industry layoffs, developers who worked on Aveum say it cost around $125 million to make and "no one bought it."

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Play as a sheep with a Cloud Strife Buster sword in this fast and fluid action roguelike

Steam Next Fest may be over for another few months, but dozens of demos are still alive and kicking, it seems - which is good news for me, who still has a good half dozen on my to do list, and also good news for you, as it means you still have time to check out the really quite good demo for Stand-Alone, a fast, 2D hack and slasher where you play as a robot-powered sheep packing a very large sword. Wolves have broken into your home and murdered all your friends, but you play as the one sheep who got away - or rather, a sheep that's been fused with a surprisingly powerful robot capable of producing a honking great greatsword to make their escape with. Thus begins the wolves' hot pursuit - not least because this robot also seems to be kind of sleeper agent for them - and your roguelike-shaped quest to avenge your fallen friends.

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Game-making tool RPG Maker XP is free on Steam right now

Hey, you know that idea for an RPG you've been kicking around your head for years now? Maybe it's time to give it a crack. Right now on Steam you can grab a free copy of RPG Maker XP, an older version of the wildly popular (and quite accessible) game-making tool. It might be fun to kick around an idea or—who knows—maybe you've even got the next To The Moon (made in RPG Maker XP, don't you know?) rattling around up there, waiting to manifest.

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Helldivers 2 server and rewards patch released then rolled back to fix "significant" performance issues

Much like a lone Super Earther descending from orbit, only to Nope The Heck back to their spaceship after glimpsing the insect hordes, Arrowhead have released and swiftly pulled a Helldivers 2 patch designed to address the new shooter's server capacity and progression issues. The bugs were too much to handle, I guess! Lord, this news post practically writes itself.

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Ending Dead Cells updates is a "marketing stunt" to "leave room" for Windblown, claims former lead designer

Former Dead Cells lead designer Sébastien Benard is none too chuffed about publisher Motion Twin's decision to end development of the well-regarded roguelike Metroidvania. A few days ago, Motion Twin announced that the 35th major Dead Cells update, aptly titled The End Is Near, would be its last. Benard feels this is a betrayal of both the game's community and its current development team, Evil Empire, a spin-off studio who took the reins in 2019.

To be specific, he thinks calling time on Dead Cells is an "asshole move" and "a one-way strategy that leaves people behind" and is designed to clear the decks for Motion Twin's forthcoming Windblown. Benard initially posted about the news when asked for his thoughts on Discord. Here's what he wrote, via Eurogamer.

"Since you're asking me, I'd just say MT did the worst imaginable asshole move against Dead Cells and EE. Having seen first hand the actual situation behind the scene, I can honestly say I'm glad to not be part of this anymore. The official statement is total marketing bullshit, the way this situation happened is on a whole different level. I never imagined my former coop studio would turn out to be such greedy people. I wish the absolute best to EE for their next things, and hope people working there will survive this sudden economic cut."

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Montag, 12. Februar 2024

Screenshot Saturday Mondays: A dashing wizard and a grasping church

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 high-speed platforming, a creative use of your own corpse, a contribution to the yellow paint discourse, and more. Check out these attractive and interesting indie games!

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Helldivers 2 updates target server and reward issues as Arrowhead apologise for rocky launch

Helldivers 2 is yet another example of a predominantly co-op game being a victim of its own success. Since its launch, the servers have buckled under the weight of keen conscripts ready to exterminate some bugs. There's been frequent disconnects, matchmaking issues, and post-game rewards not showing up for some folks. But Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt has offered some comfort, saying that they've popped three hotfixes live to fix some of these issues.

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The Maw - 12th-17th February 2024

It's the middle of February, and the games are afoot. This week brings at least one major news event in the shape of a "business update" from Microsoft about "our vision for the future of Xbox", which is widely rumoured to be the announcement that first-party Xbox titles will come to rival consoles. Why is this of interest to us, a PC gaming site? Well, because console gaming can't help but shape the weather for PC gaming; more specifically, Microsoft's alleged multiplatform ambitions seem to reflect the plateauing of Game Pass subscription growth, which has become the cornerstone of the Xbox biz.

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