Vampire Survivor’s first DLC gave fans exactly what they wanted: more Vampire Survivors. The bullet-hell auto-shooter’s next DLC is aiming to do the same in just two weeks as the Tides Of The Foscari expansion launches on April 13th, developer Poncle have announced.
Hot (weeks) off the back of Sons Of The Forest and the Resident Evil 4 remake coming out, we're celebrating your bestest best, most favourite survival games this month. Your votes have been counted and tallied, and your accompanying words of praise and affection matched accordingly. But which game has survived to make it to the top of the pile? Come and find out as we count down your 25 favourite survival games of all time.
PAX East is a great place to play the latest games, sure, but as anyone who's attended the event will tell you the games are just a small part of a wider medley of things to see and do. Last year we highlighted the show's thriving pin collecting scene, for instance, interviewing a bunch of Pinny Arcade enthusiasts about the hobby and discovering that physical badges are just a minor part of the appeal.
Encouraged by the lovely warm feeling making that video left in my belly, we set out to shine a light on other lesser-known parts of PAX East during our time at this year's show. This led us to discover the PAX East Facebook group, a community of over 8,000 members brought together through their shared love of video games, pop culture and PAX itself. The page is dominated by a striking banner image, a photograph that shows a large group of people crowded around the PAX logo that's a permanent fixture in the main hall of the Boston convention centre.
Rachel and I found this photograph fascinating. Who were these people? Do they take this picture every single year? How did something like this start, and who was responsible for organising it in the first place?
There’ll be all kinds of horrors present in Fallen London’s spin-off, Mask Of The Rose: green-tentacled creatures, underground Londoners, and most frighteningly, love. Sometimes two or more of these horrors intersect, and by that I mean you can romance that tentacled man in this gothic, alternative-history dating sim. Spooky suitors will need to wait a while more, though, as Mask Of The Rose has been delayed to June 8th - previously slated for April.
The BAFTA Games Awards were held last night - an annual show where a jury of developers throw weighty man-head statues at the crowd, celebrating the best games of any given year. The 2023 BAFTAs celebrated the best of 2022 with a mixed bag of games, awarding big blockbusters alongside popular indies, but the jury agrees with RPS on one front: Vampire Survivors is the best game of 2022. Good BAFTAs.
E3 2023 has been cancelled. The Entertainment Software Association announced the news to its members earlier today and confirmed it publicly shortly thereafter. The ESA's email said that the event "simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry."
Not many video game series reach the 40-year mark, but that's the anniversary Nobunaga's Ambition celebrates this year. The historical grand strategy series is celebrating with the announcement of a new western release, Nobunaga's Ambition: Awakening, which will launch this July. You'll find the first trailer below.
Indie studio Majorariatto have released small, experimental games every March since 2017 - barring the cursed year of 2020 - and now they’re back with another thought-provoking adventure called Pineapple On Pizza, this time asking the profound question: can video games convey such a complex flavour? It’s out now, it’s free, and it’s only about ten minutes long.
Man, do I love the feeling of jamming out a guitar riff in games. Sure, in reality, I’m slumped on my couch in a position that my body will give me payback for when I’m thirty, but in my fantasy, I’m a musical prodigy whose guitar licks are so epic it would make Slash cry. My joy for virtual jamming came as a direct result of playing hours and hours of Guitar Hero. Harmonix held my music taste in its death grip, and almost breaking my fingers on those flimsy plastic buttons trying to conquer Through The Fire And Flames is a precious memory of mine.
So yeah, I love a good guitar sesh, so when I saw that Hi-Fi Rush was about a wannabe rockstar that smacks evil megacorp robots with his guitar to a catchy rock OST, Tango Gameworks had my attention.
Layer up with your thickest snow coat and a pack of cards because Wildfrost is coming to PC soon, on April 12th. One of the standout games we played at last year's EGX, this roguelike deckbuilder has a healthy dose of Slay The Spire about it as you venture out to defrost an eternal winter, battle baddies, and expand your card collection with elemental items stronger, cuter companions and elemental items.
Fans of Octopath Traveler have likely had their eye on Live A Live for some time now. Last year, it came to the Nintendo Switch as an exclusive remake of the 1994 RPG. Bu that exclusivity period has been brought to a surprising end as Square Enix have announced Live A Live is hitting PC and PlayStation consoles on April 27th. A demo is available now for PS owners and later today for those on Steam, if you want a preview of the first three stories from the time and genre-hopping adventure.
A trio of Corsair peripherals has gone on flash sale at the company's US web store, making it a nice time to pick up a matching all-Corsair setup for about 50% off. There are three items included; the HS65 headset, the Sabre RGB Pro Champion Series mouse and the K70 Mini Wireless 60% mechanical keyboard. I've tested all but the keyboard, and they're fantastic pieces of kit - and now at surprisingly low prices.
The WD SN850x is something of a favourite around these parts, capturing our 'best PCIe 4.0 SSD for gaming' crown, and today it's also one of the best value SSDs thanks to a heavy discount as part of Amazon's Spring Sale.
Are you a fan of RPGs where you make friends with adorable critters? Not a fan of trapping said friends into small balls, only letting them out to fight gangs and other Godlike creatures? Well, Cassette Beasts might be the game for you. It's a Pokémon-like where you’ll still be beating up wildlife creatures in turn-based combat, but rather than capturing them, you record their likeness on the titular tapes and then transform into those same street cone-wearing crabs and metal-clad wolves. It looks like an energetic, nostalgic romp, and it’s coming to PC and Game Pass on April 26th.
Bloober Team have issued a statement about their upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, clarifying rumours about the project’s release schedule and sales expectations. Last week, Polish site Bankier spoke with Bloober Team’s CEO Pitor Babieno in an interview that was mistranslated and began to circulate online. The mistranslations mentioned the remake was “technically ready” for launch, but Bloober Team have clarified these “statements have been taken out of context, due to inaccurate translations.”
The federal government in Australia have today proposed a number of changes to their National Classification Scheme as they seek to crack down on digital gambling and video games that promote it. The proposed changes would apply an R18+ (over 18s) rating to any game with simulated gambling, and an M for “mature” (over 15s) rating to any games with paid loot boxes, potentially changing the classification for games such as FIFA which were previously G-rated (for everyone).
Just in time for the upcoming film, Mojang announced that Minecraft is getting an ambitious Dungeons & Dragons crossover. Like any D&D campaign, the crossover begins around a blocky table with an open pizza box, and then it escalates into a roughly ten-hour, action-RPG take on Minecraft as you trek through the classic tabletop’s fantasy world.
Balsa Model Flight Simulator launched into Steam Early Access last year, to positive reviews and few sales. It is, like its developer's previous game Kerbal Space Program, about building a machine designed to fly, crashing it back to earth, then constructing something better.
Now its developer has announced they're doing something similar with the game itself. Balsa Model Flight Sim will relaunch later this year with a new name, Kitbash Model Club, a more ambitious physics construction sandbox, and a plan to release as a complete game rather than into early access. Existing owners of Balsa Model Flight Simulator will get Kitbash Model Club for free.
Tax Heaven 3000 changed its release date a couple of times, moving from a March 31st date that was suspiciously close to April Fools' Day, to April 4th after its removal from Steam, to yesterday, March 27th. For the uninitiated, Tax Heaven 3000 is the anime dating sim that claims to do your taxes and asks you for identifying info such as your email and Social Security Number. It’s likely a joke app, partly because of its waifu Iris (like, the IRS) and partly because it’s from MSCHF, the art collective behind Lil Nas X’s Satan Shoes and other viral drops.
Good timing if you recently picked up a Steam Deck on discount, as now you could also save a few quid on one of the best microSD cards for the Valve-made handheld. Two, in fact, as the Amazon Spring Sale is currently cutting prices on the super speedy SanDisk Extreme Pro and the more budget-oriented, but still quick, SanDisk Ultra.
As is so often the case in systemic turn-based tactics games, things started to go wrong in my preview session for The Lamplighters League when a nearby torch met a cunningly placed oil slick and erupted into flames. A load of enemies were instantly enveloped in its hot sea of death, as intended, but one of our heroes - the tank-like bruiser Fedir - also ended up getting burned by mistake. As an ex-mob enforcer, he's certainly built to take a few punches, and his abilities are all focused on making him the centre of attention, his attacks growing more powerful as his rage levels continue to grow. "You want him to get attacked," game director Chris Rogers tells me, calling on the phrase 'you wouldn't like him when he's angry' as the basis for Fedir's ability set. But with that extra fire damage he receives, it's just a little too much all at once. He gets knocked down, and the tide of battle quickly goes south.
In truth, I played no part in this downfall. Rogers was in the control cockpit for this one, showing me exactly how Harebrained Schemes' latest game actually works. It's quite a different proposition from their last game, Battletech, and in this quite literal trial by fire, studio head and co-founder Mitch Gitelman actually pulled a dollar out of his pocket at one point and put a bet on whether Rogers would make it out alive. He certainly had his work cut out for him. Rogers won that dollar, and here's how the game's emphasis on deep, customisable character builds set him up for success.
Rejoice, fellow Nintendoers! Dolphin Emulator - the open-source emulator for Nintendo GameCube and Wii games - is coming to Steam in Q2 2023. The Steam page is quick to note, for probably legal reasons, that “this app does not come with games” and “you must own an original copy of any game” you want to emulate. Dolphin allows you to emulate retro games with 4k support, modern controllers, and it’s totally free.
Warner Bros. crossover brawler MultiVersus is disabling online services on June 25th until the game’s full launch in early 2024, developer Play First Games have announced. Two seasons deep, the studio say they’re taking MultiVersus offline because it’s been in Open Beta this whole time (I know, shocker), so an extended break will give them time to prepare for their proper launch.
Last month, veteran game developer Brenda Romero called out Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow - a bestselling novel about three aspiring game devs - for leaving her out of the acknowledgements page. Romero’s acclaimed board game Train inspired the in-book video game Solution, by the author Gabrielle Zevin's own admission, which resulted in Romero speaking out. The book’s publisher Knobf Doubleday have now issued a statement refusing to credit Romero since “the only games listed in the author’s acknowledgements are video games.”
Since some people apparently can’t go a few months without some sort of mega money-off event, here’s a guide to all the best Amazon Spring Sale deals on PC gaming hardware. This doesn’t look to be as much of a wide-ranging sale as Prime Day or Amazon’s Black Friday dealings, but there are still some decent savings to be had on plenty of RPS-approved gear, from gaming mice and keyboards to SSDs and gaming monitors.
It has been said (by me) that a lot of games journalists are generalists in terms of what we play, especially if we're talking about people who are staffers at an outlet, or have ever worked in guides. Though we all have stuff we prefer, or series that we serve as the go-to expert on for in-house needs (I think vid bud Liam might actually walk around wearing an ASK ME ABOUT RESIDENT EVIL badge in his day-to-day life), we - unlike the blue-haired neo-Gods of streaming - often can't focus on one game all of the time. You have to know enough about enough to be able to write about enough.
There are, however, a bunch of big important games that I haven't played. Sometimes it's because a bunch of other people have, so that gap in the site's knowledge is already plugged (and I do always make sure to be aware of their impact and basic facts). Other times, they might be games that I'm not really interested in playing, either because they're not my genre or they seem too overwrought. Or, in some cases, it's because everyone says they're really good and I have to try them, though I've been burned before on this method (you people said the same about Ready Player One). But you know what would make me take in info about these games, even if it's just by osmosis? If they all got PowerWash Sim DLCs.
Terra Nil is a puzzle-citybuilder about reclaiming the environment. You replace pollution with lush life across a series of four randomly generated dioramas (plus four slightly more complicated challenge levels), covering the landscape in fynbos and forests, lichen and lagoons. When it all comes together and you can look over the fruits of your labour, birds chirping and piano melodically playing in the background, it’s beautiful. Getting to that point, though, is an often repetitive experience marred with frustration.
Slay The Spire has remained an incredibly popular deckbuilding roguelike, so it naturally invited a healthy modding community that added fun stuff to the game - goofy googley eyes included. One of Slay The Spire’s most popular mods was called Downfall, a huge fan-made expansion that added tons of playable characters, a new mode, and more. Those developers - Table 9 Studio - are now back with their own not-modded game: an auto-battling, fantasy Chess roguelike called Tales & Tactics.
You might have heard of Dark And Darker, a dungeon-crawling take on Escape From Tarkov’s PvPvE that’s been gaining popularity over the last few months. Alice0 enjoyed its alpha playtest last December, and it ended up becoming one of the most popular games of February's Steam Next Fest. It wasn't due to launch in full until sometime this winter, but that window's now up in the air after Dark And Darker was removed from Steam over the weekend, following a messy legal dispute between Nexon and developers Ironmace, who have been accused of “using trade secrets and copyrighted information,” allegedly stolen from Nexon.
Jokes about Valve’s inability to count to three practically write themselves, but in fairness, the publisher have reportedly reached the mythical number in Counter-Strike 2’s files. The mention of “Left4Dead3” was recently spotted in CS2’s files (thanks, Reddit) which sparked online speculation for a third game in the series. The files state that the “severity” is “high”, the “version” is “2”, but what about the “priority?” Bad news for fans of the run-and-gunning zombie shooter: according to the files, the priority is “none.”
Imagine for a moment, if you will, that Persona 5 let you suplex your opponents. Even better, imagine if those moves were pulled off through timing based minigames that resembled the battles found in Nintendo's excellent (and underrated) Mario & Luigi RPG series. Sounds good, right? Well guess what, that game exists! It's called Wrestle Story and it's definitely a project to keep an eye on.
After spending twenty glorious minutes with its colourful demo at PAX East, I was keen to chat to creative director Steve Jimenez about the team's inspirations, the challenges of translating wrestling into a turn-based RPG and the exciting locations that players will attempt to liberate from a group of devious heels.
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Liam and I had a fun time chatting with the folks over at Mega Cat Studios about their upcoming wrestling RPG WrestleQuest last year at PAX West, and this time at PAX East we finally cornered them in the ring for a proper interview.
Watch below to learn about how the developers created their zero to hero story, how they're addressing myths and persaonl issues in the world of pro wresting, as well as sharing a story about how one of the team got their nose broken in a wrestling accident during development.
My main take away from the interview is how much of the RPG incorporates all aspects of Wrestling, not just the ring fights we see on TV. Another interesting thing is that Mega Cat reached out to a handful of real-life wrestlers to ask their permission to use their likeness in the game - not an easy feat to secure, I'm sure.
I've played a bunch of indie game demos at PAX East, but none left my head reeling as much as 43 Studios' fiendishly frantic action platfotmer Hell Of An Office. It's a super fast parkour adventure in the vein of Neon White, and after ten minutes with the demo my heart race was through the roof. If I owned a fitbit it would have been screaming at me to have a nice sit down with a cuppa. Check out my full impressions in the video below:
Hell Of An Office puts your platforming reflexes to the test as you're tasked with sprinting ad jumping your way straight outta hell. With only a stapler as your means of survival, you need to navigate through each level before it slowly sinks into the burning lava. React quickly, or fall victim to Hell's scorching pools.
If you love the blood-pumping, sweaty palm inducing action-platforming of Neon White, make sure to keep an eye on Hell Of An Office as it makes it's way through Early Access.
Have A Nice Death's dark art and quick-slashing combat bring Hollow Knight to mind, but it has more in common with Hades and Dead Cells. One of the things it has in common with those games is that it was released in early access. After a little more than a year, version 1.0 arrived this week, bringing a final area, a new boss, and the end of its storyline.
Honkai: Star Rail has been hinting at an April 26th release date for months, but now it's official. The free-to-play, turn-based Genshin Impact spin-off will be available for pre-download from April 23rd and will be available via its official site and the Epic Games Store come the 26th. A presentation streamed yesterday also revealed its first two banners.
I somehow missed the news two weeks ago that Wargroove 2 was on the way. The actual successor to a spiritual successor to Advance Wars, Wargroove 2 is another 2D turn-based strategy game, but with new factions, a new roguelike mode, and a new co-developer.
There's also a demo available to play right now, although only until the end of the weekend.
Out of all the game demos Liam and I have played at PAX East, we both agree that Animal Well is something special. It's a 2D metriodvania where you play as a little blob trying to navigate a subtterranean labyrinth filled with creatures - some cute, some not so cute.
To find out more about this strange puzzle platformer's beginnings and development, we spoke to solo develeoper Billy Basso and Bigmode's Leah Gastrow which you can view in the two videos below.
You can watch me interview Billy here:
A combination of work trips to America and regular time offs means that there are actually only four of us here to fill in the WAP on the what we're playing this week. Given that it would make for a very short article for you, the reader, I have decided to fill in for the various absent members of the treehouse myself, in character, italicised for clarity. Anyone actually here and writing for themself is in regular text.
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Join us for another PAX East game highlight straight from the show floor, and this time we decided to revisit a cult horror classic: Alone In The Dark. This psychological horror is being developed by Pieces Interactive with publishing backing from THQ Nordic and is a love letter to the original game released back in the 90s.
As someone who had played the original, and RPS' Resident Evil uber fan, Liam decided to check out the demo and you can hear his impressions in the video below:
According to the devs at the THQ booth, this demo is a stand-alone prequel story that will not be in the final game, but shares the same eerie atmosphere and action that'll be in the main game. This reimagining is set in the Gothic American south and in the main game you'll be playing as Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood as they navigate the monster infested Derceto Manor, the same mansion featured in the demo.
I can't remember if I've already banged on about what a terrible, unhelpful term "metroidvania" is, so let's skip past to say that Angel's Gear reminds me of the one Castlevania game I've ever played.
It's partly the tone: a compelling blend of gothic and biomechanical horror, with a 90s game boy goriness that's cartoony enough to feel colourful rather than repulsive. "Camp" isn't the right word, but a hint of melodrama gives the story severity without self-seriousness. I mean, within the first minute of the game, your soldier goes from a terrified Normandy-style amphibious assault on a fortified metal church to seeing their war made irrelevant when the moon explodes. The whole thing is kind of metal, to be honest.
Everywhere (not to be confused with Everything) was a big fat question mark at last year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live. It comes from Build A Rocket Boy, the studio founded by ex-GTA boss Leslie Benzies, and despite its cryptic reveal trailer, AliceB theorised it was some kind of Robloxlike. Turns out her hunch was correct - Everywhere is a platform that allows players to create their own custom content. To show off what the tools can do, Benzies and the team unveiled MindsEye, an episodic “blockbuster” adventure available inside Everywhere. A game set inside a game, if you will.
The Resident Evil 4 remake is a mostly cool runner on desktops, and good news if you’re recently picked up a certain handheld PC in the sales: its Steam Deck performance is alright too. Maybe not to the battery-sipping, framerate-abundant extent of the very best Steam Deck games, but with the right settings, nu-Resi 4 can keep its burlap sacked head well above 30fps even in its most visually demanding scenes.
Unlike Liam, I started on the Resident Evil 4 remake without the roundhousing know-how of someone that repeatedly beat the 2005 original. Still, twelve maulings, three beheadings, and one chainsaw disembowelment later, I’ve got enough of a handle on Leon S. Kennedy’s disappointing Spanish holiday to help you get the most out of the new model’s PC performance. Including a guide to its best settings, which can especially help on lower-end rigs.
This year's Game Developers Choice and IGF Award ceremonies were really heartening stuff. Getting to see so many great developers have their games celebrated by their peers will always warm the old cockles, especially when we celebrated so many of them in our own RPS Advent Calendar at the end of last year. Well, I say 'see'. In truth, I was tucked away backstage at this year's IGF and GDC Awards, clutching my dictaphone with a single question in mind: if each winner had to give away their award to another game in their category, who would it be and why?
It's an idea Brendan (RPS in peace) came up with back in the primordial mists of 2018, and it was so good I just had to knick it and do it again. It might be cruel to wrench these awards away so soon after receiving them, but it's all in the name of spreading good vibes and extra shoutouts, I promise. So here are the games of the year 2022, according to the people who just won awards for games of the year 2022.
It's day one of PAX East and what better way to kick off our show coverage than highlighting a great indie game! We first came across Demonschool back at PAX West last year and have loved it ever since. It's a slick, tactical Persona-like where you play as a band of university students navigating school life by day and beating up ghosties and ghoulies by night.
I had a chat with Demonschool's Jenna Stoeber who talked me through what Demonschool is about, the game's many horror inspirations, and what spooky shinanigans players can expect. If the giant skeleton lad in the game's trailer and demo is anything to go by, we're in for a treat. You can watch the full interview by watching the video below:
If you've haven't yet, set your peepers on Demonschool's slick trailer to see what demon hunter Faye and her gang of misfits are up against. There's no concrete release date, but like Jenna said, Demonschool should be out sometime in 2023 with a playable demo available in May.
We've got plenty more interviews, demos, and highlights lined up for the rest of the week and you can find all our PAX East coverage by checking out our RPS@PAX tag.
Men Of War 2 doesn't do anything by half measures, as I discovered during a recent tussle with its online multiplayer modes. Whereas Relic's recently released Company Of Heroes 3 will let you pick from its four broad faction types in its WWII RTS battles, Men Of War 2 takes a much more granular view, offering up 14-15 different unit types for each of its three playable nations. That's a dizzying array of infantry, tank and artillery battalions to choose from, and that's before you account for all the individual nuances between its Soviet, USA and German army types. Throw in seven game modes across several different maps, and it's a veritable strategy smorgasbord to stuff your face into.
Crucially, though, everyone gets access to some sort of tank, which let's face it, is always going to be the MVP of any WW2 strategy game, and probably the sole reason why we're here in the first place. As Men Of War 2 heads into its first open multiplayer tech test on Steam today (running until March 27th), here's my full report of my mildly doomed multiplayer tankventures in its Combat, Front Line and Incursion modes.
After some early leaks these last few days, publisher 2K have officially announced Lego 2K Drive, an open-world racer that looks surprisingly awesome - if you’ll excuse the low-hanging adjective. The game features co-op, multiplayer modes, and the ability to transform between air and land vehicles, Team Sonic Racing-style. The downside? Its collection of pre-order bonuses probably needs a graph of some kind to understand.
Something terrible lurks beneath the waves in Dredge. Actually, scratch that. There are a lot of terrible things that call the oceans of The Marrows home in this melancholy fishing adventure, but what they are, I couldn't possibly tell you. In all my hours sailing these cursed waters, I've only ever seen brief flashes of them - their ungodly, slippery masses, long spiny fins, and a dozen different combinations of glowing eyes, teeth and tentacles. They're forever fading in and out of view, cloaked by the thick fog that blankets the sea every evening. Sometimes your ship lights will catch them for a split second before they slip away, or maybe you'll only hear them hurtling toward you, with a scream of a jet engine and a maw that's white hot, ready for gnashing your flimsy wooden carcass into sawdust.
It's unnerving, being out at sea after dark, but that's the time when the rarest and most vile catches raise their scaly heads. So the question becomes: are you willing to risk your own sanity for the sake of a quick buck? Or are you too afraid of what you'll find in Davy Jones' locker? In Dredge, the answer is always yes. Yes, you will be frightened of what's out there, whether it's real or born from your own fearful imaginings, but you'll sputter out into the darkness regardless, because the allure of this supernatural fishing sim is just too good to resist.
AMD's Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" CPUs are brilliant performers, but as they use a new AM5 socket, upgrading to the new CPU means picking up a new motherboard - and DDR5 RAM. Thankfully, we've started to see a host of discounts on CPU and motherboard combos, including this one from Newegg that bundles a Ryzen 5 7600 CPU and MSI Pro B650M-A WiFi motherboard for $324.99, an $84 savings compared to buying both separately.
As the prophecy foretold (and by prophecy I mean weeks of teases and a bucket of rumours) Counter-Strike 2 is real, coming this summer, and a limited test is available right now for select Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players. The sort-of-sequel is being built on Valve’s Source 2 engine and will launch as a free upgrade to CS:GO, carrying over all of your unlocks and purchased items.
