Solve a murder mystery by flying people around on your giant crane in the Disco Elysium and Chinese folktale inspired The Crane Rider's Tale

Nothing will put me on to a game quicker than having a concept so laser-focused on the thing it's trying to do, and, seemingly, doing it well. This is the case for The Crane Rider's Tale, the next game from the developer of Butterfly Soup, a visual novel/adventure game hybrid that takes cues from Disco Elysium and Zero Escape where a serial killer is on the loose who has killed your friend, so you ferry around your local townsfolk around on your giant crane to figure out who did it, all wrapped up in a medieval Chinese painting and woodblock print aesthetic. It is so much, and so much my exact vibe.

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The War to End all Wars is a colony sim now, with an Acceptable Losses gauge

If Dig In were called a 'historical wave defence strategy base-builder' or similar I wouldn't have been jarred by it. Odds are I'd have skimmed right past. Instead, Icelandic developers Vitar Games are calling it "a WW1 trench warfare colony sim", and this wigs me out a little. We are colonising the Somme! Nothing is too sacred for artistic depiction, and people have been commodifying memories of the World Wars for decades, but throwing in an ultra-compacted gravitational mass of a concept like "colony" really turns it all up to 11/11.

It's a gift to cultural essayists. Within the combinatory logics of Steam, it's also a harbinger for such genres as the "WW1 life sim" or even "cosy WW1". I am trying to imagine what Wilfred Owen might have written about bladder gauges. Here is a trailer.

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"This isn’t just something that affects Wizards of the Coast" - Magic: the Gathering Arena team vote to unionise for protection against layoffs, genAI and forced crunch

Magic: The Gathering Arena developers at Wizards of the Coast are set to unionise with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The CWA say they've secured a "supermajority" in favour of unionisation among the workers, and have given Wizards of the Coast until the end of the week to voluntarily recognise the union - dubbed United Wizards of the Coast—CWA - and filed an election petition with the US National Labor Relations Board.

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This beefy 850W Asus ROG Strix 80+ Platinum PSU is a third off from Amazon

Just like the 'Apple tax' of a certain phone and laptop manufacturer, the 'ROG tax' is an increasingly well-established concept in PC hardware circles; Asus' components do often carry a bit of a premium to them, for various reasons. Nonetheless, Amazon UK currently have a decent deal on the 850W 80+ Platinum ROG Strix PSU, taking it down to £120. That's the lowest price it's ever been, by the looks of price tracking graphs, and a tasty 33% saving on its £180 RRP.

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Alien Isolation 2 teaser video shows the horror game heading planetside, but those panic-inducing save stations are following it

It's been well over a year since the announcement of Alien: Isolation 2, or whatever Creative Assembly and Sega end up calling the sequel to 2014's xenomorph horror romp. There's been no further word about the game, and the protracted quiet may have given you a false sense of security. "False Sense Of Security", by happy coincidence, is the title of a spooky new video just uploaded to the Alien: Isolation Youtube channel.

True, there are no Aliens in the footage, and they don't explicitly label it "Alien: Isolation 2" or similar. It could be wholly unrelated! In much the same way that a rogue dot on your motion tracker is probably just a cat trapped in a locker. Go on, then. Open your locker.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for realising that you aren't who you thought you were. You thought you were Jonathan Frakes. You thought you'd starred in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and 1995 video game Multimedia Celebrity Poker. You thought you'd played an unnamed dug dealer in a 1982 Hill Street Blues episode named 'Of Mouse and Man'. You thought you'd directed an episode of Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce called 'Rule No. 155: Go with the Magician'. You thought a man named Trim Jinca had used your face as a profile picture a time or two. You were wrong on all counts.

You are Jonathan Frakes. But not that Jonathan Frakes. You don't ask the questions here. You answer them. And so I ask: who are you?

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ShatterRush is obviously an indie take on Titanfall, but considering the lack of threequel, I'm sure you won't mind

There is a Titanfall-shaped hole in this world that could be filled by Respawn, yet won't be, for silly reasons like money. I hate money! It is a scourge we must do away with. Until that point, we could of course moan and lament the absence of a Titanfall 3. That sounds quite dull, so instead I will point you towards ShatterRush, a game that is oh so evidently picking up what Titanfall 2 left behind, and adding into the mix some fresh elements of its own.

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