StarCraft 2 production director pitched WarCraft 4 and a Call Of Duty RTS before leaving Blizzard, claims report

It's been over a decade since Blizzard, developers of StarCraft and WarCraft, released a new real-time strategy game, but not for want of enthusiasm from certain Blizzard developers. According to a report, former StarCraft 2 production director Tim Morten and unnamed accomplices pitched several RTS projects to higher-ups at Activision-Blizzard, before Morten jumped ship to co-found Stormgate creators Frost Giant in 2020. These pitches included WarCraft 4, as you'd expect, and also a Call Of Duty RTS, as you'd probably also expect, though seemingly no new StarCraft.

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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?

Halloween is barely a month away and the Maw hoots and hiccoughs, demanding that I fill it up with original low-budget horror games, but I have no time for such things, because my thoughts are full of bread. Bread! There is nothing so horrible, and nothing so seductive. I'd like to cut back on the stuff to minimise middle-aged corpulence, but there's a place down the road that sells this amazing, tearable sourdough, and I can't get enough of it. Fortunately/unfortunately, there don't seem to be any bread-themed PC games out this week. Here's our round-up.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for squishing nids. I...was at least 35% wrong about Space Marine II. The new patch and a trick I learned to deal with Zoanthropes means I can play on Veteran now, and a lot of the issues I had with feeling overpowered have been sorted. I still think the guard are more interesting, but it's a very fun bit of smashy. Before I continue to never be wrong about a videogame ever again, let’s read some writing that I personally found interesting about games (and game related things!)

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This arcade space combat game is inspired by the golden age of "prestige anime"

Rogue Flight is an arcade space combat game with some StarFox somewhere in its DNA, "inspired by the landmark style of '80s and '90s prestige anime", also known as "the only good anime." It's due for release later this year and there's an announcement trailer below.

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Minecraft's Bundles Of Bravery update will add hardcore mode and carrier bags

Minecraft's yearly showcase stream took place this evening. As part of the show, Mojang showed off some of the future updates coming to the game. First up: the Bundles Of Bravery update, which will add a proper hardcore mode to Bedrock Edition, as well as bundles, which will allow you to carry more items in your inventory when out adventuring.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

The weekend has arrived, right on schedule. And I refuse to go outside, because as my Glaswegian partner would say, it's fookin BALTIC out there. Now is the winter of our discount tents, and all that. Here's what we'll all be clicking on this weekend!

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Print isn't dead, insists origami platformer Hirogami, in which you fight a digital Blight

What exact percentage of unacknowledged irony is it when a digital game wants to sing the praises of paper-based art in the context of a story about fighting off a "blight" of digital creatures? If you were serious about that moral, Hirogami, you'd actually be printed on hammered-down treemulch. I decry thee, pretender! You're one of the very electronic critters you want me to battle. On the other hand, you do let me transform into an origami armadillo which can roll around like a pinball. Here's the announcement trailer.

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Strategy autobattler Mechabellum has hit 1.0 after over a year in Early Access

I don't know why we haven't written about Mechabellum before now, but we haven't. Let's correct that. It's an autobattler in which you plonk down squads of stompy robots then watch them win or lose against your opponent's army based on the formations and upgrades you've chosen. After more than a year in Early Access, it's just released version 1.0.

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Airships, dinosaurs, and robots meet in “spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger” RPG Threads Of Time

Bravely he stood, alone on his hill, unwavering in the face of backlash: Chrono Trigger should have just let Frog be a talking frog instead of being a knight turned into a frog. So, trash game. Fortunately, I can finally experience what it’s like to actually enjoy Chrono Trigger - Canadian Studio Riyo Games are making what they describe as a "spiritual successor". It’s called Threads Of Time, it’s "aided by legendary developers and composers from Japan who have helped define Xenoblade Chronicles, the Mana series and more," and it looks beautiful. Hop on over to the trailer below.

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Cold And Afraid is a PS1-style murder mystery aiming to be "Law & Order by Squaresoft in 1999"

Indie developers love making retro-styled games that look like PlayStation games you rented from Blockbuster and blitzed through in a feverish winter weekend. I'm glad, so here's another. Cold And Afraid is a murder mystery that aims to channel the 1990s with chunky characters and lots of lovely dithering. You play a detective out to stop a serial killer with a grisly pattern who's preying on the young women of an unnamed US city. On top of the obligatory tank controls, it aims to have "consequential dialogue choices" and a "Time Event system where you must meet certain people at specific times to forward different story threads". Ah, forgive me, you're here to see the chunky limbs. Here's a recent trailer that shows 'em.

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Slay The Princess gets three new chapters and more when The Pristine Cut releases 24th October

A year and a day after wonderful horror visual novel Slay The Princess first released, the promised Pristine Edition is arriving this October on the 24th. Like a very loud sticker on a very large bag of crisps, it promises to have “roughly 35%” more stuff in it. It’s a great game, and this sounds like the perfect time to pick it up, especially if you previously pirated it after the devs said they didn’t mind.

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Monster Hunter Wilds releases 28th Feb 2025, which gives modders enough time to silence the uncanny talking Palicos

Something magical occurred to me this morning: fit-flaying RPG Monster Hunter Wilds will be the first time I get to play a Monster Hunter game while also being a cat dad. It’s going to great! “What’s that, eh?!” I’ll say, pointing to a Doshaguma in a manner that might foolishly suggest I expect her to give a damn. “Mraow”, she’ll reply, knock over my coffee, then go back to sleep. “It’s you!” I’ll exclaim, pointing to the Palico I’ve spent six hours making look just like her. “That looks nothing like me, you odorous lummox,” she’ll insinuate with a cocked eyebrow, then go shout at an ant for a bit.

Ah well, at least I have videogames - this one is out on the 28th of Febwar, 2025. Here’s a trailer from last night’s Sony-me-doo:

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Alright fine, Neva makes me want to pet the dog

I'm not someone who's ever been on board with the "Can You Pet The Dog?" craze that swept and/or still sweeps video games. As a heartless individual, I am more concerned with whatever the dog's capable of: general savagery, a howl that replenishes my HP bar, letting me climb atop its glorious mane as it strides across the barren wastes. If it's none of these things, I would much rather have a shiny turret on spindly steel legs skitter besides me.

Nomada Studios have, incredibly, thrust their hands into my chest cavity and given me a blood-pumping mechanism. Having spent some time with upcoming action-platformer Neva (the game) and Neva (the dog from the game), I have to admit: I did enjoy petting Neva (the dog).

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Buddy, if you’re only buying two lousy packs you can leave my TCG Card Shop Simulator store immediately

While I’ve been known to enjoy a few of them in my time, I tend to view a lot of more mundane simulator games in the same way I view sports games: Looks fine, but I could do this stuff in real life, were I inclined and also social and also vaguely limber instead of owning a spine with roughly the flexibility of a rib n’ saucy Nik Nak.

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I didn’t play Shadowgate, but this skeleton reminds me of HeroQuest and that’s good enough for me

Raise your thumb if you’ve ever impaled it on a HeroQuest skeleton’s scythe. Country’s gone soft these days, I tell you. I’ve seen those new Heroquest skellies. You couldn’t injure yourself on those scythes if you tried. It’s polearm-ical correctness gone mad! Well, good news if you’re nostalgic for a simpler time, where tiny scythes could maim you for life, and binary digits came in lots of eight and not a binary digit more. RPG Beyond Shadowgate is a vastly-expanded, modernised sequel to the classic NES adventure, created by the original’s designers, and it just released last week.

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The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?

This week's Maw, quantified: one compound eye with nine hundred and two quicksilver facets. One and a half wings with the texture of freshly peeled orange. Fifty tentacles, proboscises or flagella, some slender as cheesewire, some thick as a conifer. Ten sets of amethyst dentures shared by ten thousand mouths. One utility coat of muscles. One bowler hat. And now, an accompanying inventory of this week's most eye-catching new PC games.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for eating Biscoff spread and rewatching Better Call Saul, again. Crunchy, ofc. Before that, let’s read some writing that I, Nic Reuben, personally found interesting about games (and game related things!)

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Homeworld 3's coming paid DLC and free updates will now all launch in November, instead of running into 2025

Homeworld 3 is condensing its release schedule for post-launch updates. Instead of free and paid content arriving into 2025, it will all - three free updates, and two paid DLCs - arrive together in a "one major update" in November.

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Sokpop's possibly haunted gardening game Grunn will launch next month

Grunn is a self-described "extremely normal gardening game", in which you tend to a garden, explore different realities, and try not to die. We've been excited to get our hands on its shears for a while, thanks in part to an excellent demo, and in part due to it being from Sokpop Collective member and Bernband developer Tom van den Boogaart.

Now it has a release date: October 4th.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Sad news, all. I'm currently being sued by Nintendo for making myself a nice soft boiled egg for breakfast on Tuesday, the bright yellow yolk of which was apparently too reminiscent of Pikachu’s ballsack. They’ll likely take everything I have, including my typing keyboard, so this is goodbye from me. With my last digital breath, I only wish to inspire a bit more joy in the world, so I’m demanding everyone in the comments give me cat updates whether or not they own a cat. Just make up some lore for the cat you don’t have and tell me about it. Here's what we're all clicking on this weekend.

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Rain World's new slugcat will explore icy wastes and desert sands as The Watcher DLC gets a release date

The post-apocalyptic wastelands of Rain World are stunning, brutal, and full of strange creatures that would like to eat your kittenish face. It's a landscape of wonder and pain, and it's about to get a little more wonderful and painful. The upcoming Watcher expansion, which adds new places to visit and a new type of slugcat to play as, will be coming out early next year, say the developers. There's a trailer to say so. Look at this slippery gastropodal feline, standing calmly in the rain, as if the torrential and lethal weight of the water will not crush that little fuzzy head. The gall!

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Store these system requirements in your head compartment before Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 takes off

Me, I'm a simple sort. All I want from my flight simulators is an unerringly accurate recreation of dozens of aircraft, a perfect physics model that includes the spectacle of relevant weather events, and a complete, photorealistic and 1:1 scale depiction of the entire planet earth.

You, you might be one of those fancy types, you might want to be able to get a job in your flight simulator, like crop duster or fire waterer. That's what Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is adding to the package when it launches in November. We now know its system requirements.

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Minecraft console developer 4J Studios are making Reforj, their own open world survival game

A few months ago, Minecraft's original console developer 4J Studios showed off a new in-house engine they had created, called the Elements Engine. Now they've announced what game they're making with it. It's called Reforj, and it's an "open-world multiplayer survival sandbox." But it's not aiming to be Minecraft 2, they say.

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Copycat forced me to refuse a dying elderly woman emotional comfort, then steal her chicken

“Guided by your moral compass: reflect on themes of home, loneliness and belonging through a complex, three-act story told effortlessly through three hours of video game narrative,” the press release for cat simulator Copycat told me. Morals? Daddy Karch, it’s happening again!

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The Lethal Company developer's next game is an open world where you can't see

Lethal Company was one of last year's surprise horror hits. It was a brilliant dystopian scavenging sim in which you searched cellars for bolts while avoiding the attentions of creatures that hate being looked at, or which only move when they're not being looked at, or which look like your friends, from a distance. The developer's next game, Welcome To The Dark Place, is more about hearing. It's an "open-world, auditory text-based adventure" which mostly takes place in pitch blackness.

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Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are suing the Palworld developers for "infringement of patent rights"

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Palwoods and hunt large, electric yellow animals of entirely original design whose names rhyme with "peekaboo", Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have announced that they're taking Palworld developers Pocketpair to court for "infringement of patent rights".

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LYMBUS is hostile to my existence and keeps demanding brain cells I haven’t grown yet

What are you LYMBUS? In what vat were you grown? I feel like I’ve sluggishly ambled my way down to the fridge and tried to scoop a gherkin from the jar, only to find a disconcertingly tasty sliver of my own brain. Like a creature from Flatland trying to play 4D chess, and all the pieces are just tiny carvings of my face with “lol get a load of this prick” whittled into the forehead. I quite like it.

“We combined your favorite genres into one grotesque piece of software! You're welcome, game journalists,” reads the Steam page for the demo. That is a very polite way to kick me in the head and call me a bitch, LYMBUS.

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You're now much stronger against tanks and armour in Helldivers 2, as Arrowhead patch for "more versatile" tactics

Last month, Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead thrust a white flag out from their shelled position in an attempt to placate mutinous fans of the co-op shooter. In response to a community sentiment best summed up by a popular Reddit post titled “Let the super earth burn”, Arrowhead released a statement. “In short, we didn’t hit our target with the latest update…what matters most now is action. Not talk.” Said action (which it must be pointed felt a bit troublingly reactive to the loudest and most histrionic voices in the roo..uh, subreddit) was foreshadowed in a list of issues to be tackled over the coming months.

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I completely missed that ace wizard battle royale Spellbreak had been brought back from the dead

I started playing and enjoying battle royale wizarding sim Spellbreak just in time for Spellbreak to get shut down. Developers Proletariat, Inc announced plans to yank the servers back in August 2022 in the course of being acquired by Activision Blizzard, bringing an end to many happy hours spent skating on conjured ice ramps and hurling boulders around like bunny rabbits. Yes, I am the kind of wizard who hurls a bunny rabbit, if there are no boulders to spare.

Happily, it transpires that Proletariat have resurrected their creation and handed it over to posterity in the shape of a free standalone Community Version, available on Itch.io. You’ll need to host your own server or join another group if you want to play multiplayer, but all the same, this is a lovely gift and one I’m delighted to transmit unto you, the active and efficient Magenauts of Rockus Paperus Shottegonne.

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The next Battlefield is a return to the "peak era" of Battlefields 3 and 4, with a modern setting and smaller headcounts

Having shot up the near-future in Battlefield 2042, DICE and EA are using a modern-day setting with the next instalment of their military FPS series. According to EA studios group general manager and Respawn chief Vince Zampella, the new, currently untitled shooter will be one of those "back to basics" sequels that tries to rebottle the lightning of Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 - these being the "peak" Battlefield games, in Zampella's view.

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ECHOSTASIS’s curious and thoughtful horror doesn’t overlook the importance of an excellent shotgun

ECHOSTASIS is the third entry in Enigma’s Studio’s horror trilogy, and it’s one of the more interesting games I’ve played this year. There’s a demo on Steam, and you should grab it if you're interested, since everything I have to say about it is going to be a spoiler of some kind. I’ll attempt a brief description below, but a lot of the fun here is discovering how all its parts fit together, and how even its more prosaic game conventions are defamiliarised through a spooky, static-drenched ensorcellment.

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Satisfactory 1.0 review: yes, it is

I am lost in my own factory. From every direction, every angle, conveyor belts and smelters and assemblers obscure my senses and envelop my being. Twenty hours ago I placed my first manufacturer somewhere around here. Back then it represented the state of the art, hatching me a pristine batch of 1.25 computers every minute - now I’ve forgotten where I put the damn thing, after delving into my factory’s guts to hook that piddly yet still useful batch of old relics up to my main production line. I’m building supercomputers now, and the many manufacturers that make those are hungry.

Something is always hungry in Satisfactory, and that hunger pulls you from task to task in a near-seamless and frankly beautiful daze of ever-escalating industry. It is mesmerising and it is fearsome, and after five years of early access it’s finally complete.

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This action roguelite’s demo has more stuff in it than some full games, plus some very good goblins

For all the nightmarish enshittification modern life throws at us, we can at least feel warm and fulfilled about the resurgence of demos. Bountifully they await on Steam, like a friendly worker offering you toothpick-skewered cheese chunks at your local supermarket. And, oh, would you look at that: this cheese has some guns in it. Deeply customisable guns! SULFUR is a shooty roguelike with some excellent goblins and a deep RPG equipment system. And, if the Steam reviews are to be believed, some players are squeezing out dozens of hours from the demo alone.

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What's on your bookshelf?: Firaxis, Hindsight, and Life Is Strange writer Emma Kidwell

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! This week, it’s writer on Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Hindsight, Life is Strange Season 2 and more, Emma Kidwell! Cheers Emma! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for eating chocolate spread straight from the jar and rewatching Better Call Saul. Before that, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

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One Million Checkboxes players hid binary, QR codes and rickrolls among the boxes during its two week war

Back in June, Edwin covered One Million Checkboxes, a website with one million checkboxes that players could check or uncheck, with any change visible to all other visitors of the site. It became an obsession for some in the two weeks the website was online, as players fought to fill all the boxes, or undo the work of their peers.

The fight was far more complicated than it seemed, as the developer recently explained, with some players finding ways to encode hidden messages in the checkboxes.

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Cosy life sim Tales Of The Shire needs more time in the oven, delayed until 2025

Tales Of The Shire: A The Lord Of The Rings Game has been delayed into early 2025. The cosy life sim set in the home of the hobbits had initially been aiming for a late 2024 release, but developers Weta Workshop Game Studio announced they need more time.

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Wonderful photography adventure Toem will be free from Epic next week

Toem is a black-and-white photography puzzle adventure that delighted us back in 2021. Next week it's going to be free to keep from the Epic Games Store.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

Good Saturday, friends! It's finally hitting Autumn, isn't that lovely? The leaves are doing that cool visual glitch where they look nice for once. All pretty and crunchy and satisfying. It's just a shame it only lasts a week or two before turning into mulch on the pavement. Reminds me of a Regina Spektor lyric: "Leaves become most beautiful when they're about to die". And now, inevitably whatever I write below this will be a lie, because I'll actually spend my weekend listening to old Regina Spektor songs, because she's just the best.

But for now at least, let's keep up the pretense that we're not all lying through our teeth every weekend with these posts. Here's what we're all (allegedly) clicking on this weekend!

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50/50 is a cheerful, deeply heinous free game about cutting things perfectly in half

We're having a bit of an indie freebie morning, it seems. My humble contribution is 50/50, a downloadable or browser-based game which I suspect will fill some of you with the deepest aggravation. As the name suggests, it's about cutting things in half - specifically food items, such as fried eggs (easy enough) and candy canes (WTF). You draw a line down each object with your mouse, then click or hit space bar to perform a slice. Then, the game calculates a percentage. If it's bang-on or very close to 50/50, you'll pass. If not, you'll have to start over. I know: this is how entire days are wasted. Sorry.

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Portal To The Cosmobeat is a brilliant, ridiculous and currently free mix of QWOP and Dance Dance Revolution

Haha. Hoho. Yes. Hehe. Yes. This rules. This rules so hard. Portal To The Cosmobeat is a rhythm dance battler where you copy the moves of your opponents by controlling each of your limbs, and your head, with a separate key. If you look down at your keyboard right now, you’ll notice your W, A, D, Z and X form a five pointed star - with the W key a bit off, granted. That’s you, that is. You hold down the limbs you want to wiggle, then control them with your mouse. It’s simple, silly, and very fun. Here’s a tray-tray:

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Annapurna Interactive’s entire staff resign following dispute with owner

Annapurna Interactive - the publisher behind games such as Cocoon, Stray, and Neon White - have seen their entire staff resign after an internal dispute this month, via Bloomberg.

The resignations came in the wake of a dispute between Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary and Annapurna studio head Megan Ellison. As Bloomberg report, negotiations were taking place to "spin off the video-game division as an independent entity." After failing to reach an agreement, Ellison pulled out of the negotiations, resulting in the resignation of Gary and “other executives.” Further resignations followed, with a reported two dozen other staff leaving the company.

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Steam Families is out of beta, letting you share games with up to five others

Steam’s family sharing feature Steam Families is now available to everyone on the platform, letting up to six total people share games from a single library, with each individual having access to their own saved games, achievements, and workshop files.

This means that, yes, when you all sit down together in the evening, you can enjoy a hearty family meal in the knowledge that between you, you technically own six copies of the Cities Skylines Big Butt Skinner Balloon.

Each person on the account will have one of two roles: adult or child. Adults can manage parental controls, set hourly or daily playtime limits, approve purchase requests, and control store access. Valve appear very proud of making it easier for parents to spend money, streamlining the “time-consuming” task of buying games for their kids.

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Wild Bastards review: a messy roguelike shooter that's nonetheless full o' beans

There are cold opens and there are freezing ones. Sci-fi roguelike shooter Wild Bastards doesn't start on its strongest cowboy boot. You are dumped into the middle of an interstellar chase and summarily shown the ropes. The guns feel simplistic, the arenas bare, the loot vanilla, and the entire loop of beaming down to a planet and getting into small-scale "showdowns" threatens to become stale within the first hour or so. But then you find an outlaw buddy who offers a new way to shoot human dirtbags. Then another fellow bandit. And another. By the time your spaceship is half-filled with scoundrels and weirdoes shouting at each other, the game has warmed up enough to reveal its central idea. This ain't no grand FPS campaign, nor is it quick as roguelikes go. It's a snacky shootout sim with tumbleweed towns that feels best when you savour the pre-fight suspense.

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Space noir roguelike Ostranauts is aiming for 1.0 in 2025, with help from Kitfox as publisher

Post-apocalyptic roguelike Neo Scavenger is one of my favourite games, but its spacefaring followup Ostranauts, currently in Early Access, is currently too fiddly and complicated for me. Here's some good news, then: Kitfox, masters of making impenetrable roguelikes more welcoming, have joined the project as publisher ahead of a planned 1.0 release in 2025.

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Ubisoft are adding offline modes to The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest after getting savaged over junking The Crew

If you partake of some virtual rubber-burning, you might remember Ubisoft shuttered its open world racing game The Crew in March by turning off its servers. Given that The Crew is an online-only game, that signalled its death knell… or death horn, more accurately. Then in April, they tow-trucked the game out of people's libraries and revoked their purchases. This led to a backlash, as you'd expect, and Ubisoft are accordingly taking a different approach with The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest. They're giving both an offline mode to "ensure long term access to both titles".

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Co-op blunder sim Chained Together now lets you make your own hellish maps

Abandon all hope, ye who are shackled to your workmates in Chained Together. The "co-op" game about escaping hell now has a map editor that'll let you make your own infuriating obstacle courses for condemned souls to throw themselves upon. Finally, you can make the endless mountain of perdition you have dreamed about since being emotionally scarred by Getting Over It.

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s PC performance is alright, even without much help from its settings

I’ve been looking forward to playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for yonks, but had convinced myself that performance-testing it would have some of my lesser graphics cards quivering in their PCIe slots. All those onscreen 'Nids, yeah? And the stutterfest that was the recent preview build? Surely enough to make a Tech-Priest shed at least one oily tear.

But nah, turns out it’s fine. Pretty good, actually – perhaps not to the extent that you should tackle Space Marine 2 on a crusty notebook (or, for the record, a Steam Deck), but it runs decently on minimum specs and is noticeably more stable than in that preview. The only thing that might offend your PC’s machine spirit is some quality setting weirdness, where dropping or raising the graphics options can produce inconsistent results.

Fair warning then that this might be a 'whack on DLSS/FSR and be done with' kind of job, if it’s faster framerates you seek. But we’ll get to that further down; first, a newly post-launch sitrep of how Space Marine 2 performs on different hardware.

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Diablo IV support studio hit by layoffs putting 139 people out of work, proving that Embracer's "restructuring" is not over

In March, the CEO of Embracer announced that the company's widespread removal of workers across their many owned studios was over. That has turned out to be false, as the megacorp continues to enforce layoffs and close down studios. Now, a support studio for Diablo IV and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has suffered further layoffs, with over half the employees at the studio losing their jobs.

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Bungie says Destiny 2's future lies in "unusual formats", like "roguelikes or survival shooters"

Following major layoffs and project cancellations at Bungie, the company has since announced their plans for Destiny 2, a game whose future was very much unclear. In their latest blog post, they've announced that they're taking "Destiny to places it has never been before". This means it'll get two expansions per year, alongside four free major updates. As for what's in these updates, they want to make the game more approachable, give you better loot, and are even toying with the idea of roguelikes or survival shooters for future updates.

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