State of Decay 3 studio Undead Labs lay off "a significant number" of "exceptionally talented developers" after gaining independence from Xbox

Less than 24 hours after confirming they've managed to secure a future outside of Xbox by going independent, State of Decay 3 studio Undead Labs have announced that they've had to lay off "a significant number" of staff as part of that transition. The news follows a second round of mass layoffs this year at the studios still under Microsoft's thumb. Undead Labs were one of the five studios Microsoft announced plans to split with during an initial round of layoffs in July.

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Age of Empires studio World's Edge reportedly lose nearly half their staff and a new game project in mass Xbox layoffs

Further details have emerged of the impact that Microsoft’s Xbox consolidation and job cuts programme is having on affected workers. World’s Edge, the studio that effectively manages strategy megaseries Age of Empires, has allegedly been hit hard, with an unnamed but verified creative director posting on industry forum ResetEra that "just under half" of all staff had been let go in the process of moving from Xbox’s direct control to Activision’s.

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Stuntboost is a Tech Dech, skateboarding platformer all about doing sick flips on cardboard constructs in your bedroom, and it's out now

I was not a child that was built for skateboarding. Child me was a tad too wimpy to ever do anything so wicked cool as that. What if I scuffed my knee a little bit, or worse, embarrassed myself? So I did what any skateboarding curious child would do and bought a Tech Deck. And then I never learned how to get good at it. I am only slightly bitter about this adolescent failure of mine, yet all is not lost, for there is an entire video game out today that can let me experience such a feat digitally: Stuntboost.

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I taught an old man new tunes in rhythm-action shopkeeper sim Mr. Records, and now you can try the demo yourself

One of the bright spots of a miserably grey Summer Game Fest 2026 was Mr. Records, a mashup of rhythm-action autorunner and casual vinyl shop management by music game specialists Glee-Cheese Studio. I’ve since played a demo – which you can now try yourself on Steam – and was pleased by the apparent confirmation that it can induce that head-nodding, foot-tapping thing that rhythm games should. Big fan, usually, of games that force me into involuntary body movements.

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Bungie decide their destiny is to do more Destiny after all, pledging to bring back vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns while declaring that Marathon "needs to evolve"

Not long after announcing changes to how they'll handle majorly updating Marathon going forwards, Bungie have reversed course on their decision to stop developing Destiny 2 - a move they followed with layoffs. Promising to bring back vaulted bits of Destiny 2 and declaring that the series is "foundational" to their future. A future which they've kicked off with a lot of grovelling for forgiveness.

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Nighthawks review – a series of vignettes that sometimes excel but more often falter

Nighthawks, the 1942 painting by Edward Hopper, is generally described as portraying loneliness. The four people at the diner counter are dwarfed by the empty, cold openness of the street. But the inside of the diner looks warm. One man sits apart, but the other two patrons might be a couple, their hands close. The worker seems to be watching them, perhaps thinking of somebody he’ll return to after his shift. Nighthawks, the 2026 vampire RPG, takes this same sensation, connection in the middle of isolation, and plays it much less subtly. When it works, it manages to tell sub-stories that will stick with me like the glow of a friendly building late at night.

But it doesn’t always work.

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The Steam Frame’s first post-launch update speeds up charging and ungarbles a mic bug

Having launched though the same system of reservations and waitlists as the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame is still navigating that inscrutable void betixt "on sale" and "actually out." Nevertheless, it’s had its first software update, SteamOS 0.3.0, which brings – among other technical tidbits – a microphone bug fix, smoother controller tracking, and "substantially faster" charging to the VR headset. Yeah, nice one Valve. Would have been useful to have that last one when reviewing the thing on a deadline but whatever.

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Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar warn modders against against making unofficial main story expansions, unauthorised ports and mods that combine GTA maps

There still might not yet be a release date for GTA 6's PC port, but Rockstar appear to be preparing for the massive uptick in mods for their games that'll inevitably accompany it. In new modding guidelines posted this month, the studio have expressly warned against a bunch of things modders could do, including building on established storylines from the base game, pulling over bits of older GTAs, and porting the game to platforms it's not hit yet.

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Silent Hill: Townfall review - an often inspired, if slightly lumbering trek into the fog

Once a fictional town in Maine, Silent Hill has broken containment and become a transferable oral history mechanism, offered to videogame developers worldwide as a way of investigating, even celebrating local culture. I'm still in two minds about whether this licensing outreach project, begun with Silent Hill f, is more inspired than it is vampiric. I picture Konami's invitation being pushed under the door of potential collaborators like Mary's letter to James in Silent Hill 2: "in our restless dreams, we see that town... let's touch base there sometime, expand our concepts further."

There's opportunity and peril for any studio who answers the letter: opportunity, because Silent Hill is an uncommonly rich way of thinking about the past, with its parallel realities, monster metaphors, and woozy grounding in both mysticism and psychoanalysis. And peril, because licenses have a way of engulfing licensees, forcing them into a straitjacket of tropes: fog, sirens, antagonists with geometric heads. Thankfully, Silent Hill: Townfall's creators Screen Burn (previously No Code) haven't gotten lost in the murk, though I don't think Townfall is their finest creation, not least because it's overreliant on stealth. Like the makers of Silent Hill f, they've taken what they need from Silent Hill to tell a story of their own.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays - well, very early Sunday mornings - are for watching a whole queue of hungry wild animals pass your kitchen window, because a neighbour has decided to leave a bollard-sized catfood dispenser outside the block entrance while they're away on holiday. I'm pretty sure the neighbour's cat wouldn't eat from the dispenser even if there wasn't a badger wedged eagerly inside it. She's an aloof and disdainful creature, who hates going near the front door because that's where those stinky humans come from.

Will I try to feed the poor moggy, denied her dinner by a bunch of Farthing Wood rejects? No I will not, because I'm too busy reading articles about videogames, and things that are vaguely in the orbit of videogames. Here are a few of those articles. Look, please stop fretting about the cat. She's perfectly plump and glossy, whereas that badger looks like he hasn't had a square meal since August.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

It's well and truly not summer now. I'm writing this with the lights on because the screen's backlight is suddenly too bright for these eyes grown weak and lazy by the abundance of natural illumination.

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"If the player trusts you enough, they are not going to savescum": Why the makers of some of the best RPGs on PC want you to get used to failing

When it comes to RPGs, I am an irredeemable savescummer. I admit it. I'll slam F9 at the drop of a hat (perhaps the hat was dropped as a result of a failed dexterity roll. Unacceptable. Reload).

So when I recently found myself reloading a Divinity 2 save for the umpteenth time in a single session, I started to wonder - in a genre that's supposedly about storytelling first and foremost, why am I viewing botched persuasion checks as something to be studiously avoided? And why is it that I feel totally different about making a horrible mess of things in tabletop roleplaying games?

After all, some of my fondest memories of real-life roleplaying are moments of extravagant failure: sometimes of the bathetic stepping-on-a-rake-instead-of-slaying-the-necromancer variety, and sometimes of the much more grounded, human, and affecting type.

It all got me thinking: how do RPG developers think about player failure? Would they recognise the distinction between digital and tabletop that I'm describing? And can they convince a savescummer like me to renounce my ways?

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Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West delisted from Steam in the UK, Sony say they're "working with Valve to address the issue"

Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West have disappeared from the Steam store in the UK, something that's happened rather out of nowhere and looks like it might've even taken publishers PlayStation by surprise. Said publishers have issued a statement noting that they've already reached out to Valve to get the games back up.

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"They often don’t make it in the door": Wardogs studio Bulkhead check for "anti-crunch messaging" on prospective hires' social media, CEO says

Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer has revealed that the studio behind recent FPS hit Wardogs check the social media accounts of prospective hires for public criticism of crunch practices, and deliberately prefer to avoid bringing such folks on board. In the exec's view, devs working extra or long hours to get a game or update out of the door - otherwise known as crunch - "is going to happen at some point", even if the studio "always try and avoid it".

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Total War: Shogun 2's Complete Edition adds 50 minor factions in return for breaking your mods, but fear not, players who stick to the old version will get legacy DLC for free

If you recently glanced at Total War: Shogun 2 and thought "gosh, lovely hip-and-gable roofs on that miniature of the temples in Kyoto, but this could really do with oh, let's say 50 additional groups of quarrelsome swordsmen", then congratulations, Creative Assembly are adding "50+" minor factions in Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition, an all-in-one remaster hamper due to launch on 13th October via Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store and GOG.

This fancified and expanderised, 64-bit edition of the 2011 strategy game will include both the Rise and the Fall of the Samurai DLC expansions, together with updated lighting, shadows and textures. Also: "modernised controls", which makes me frown a little in the absence of details, together with 1440p and 4K UI scaling, and Japanese and Chinese voice acting and localisation.

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Lies of P's sequel is a Wizard of Oz homage called Wonders of O, going by a Neowiz trademark, and probably not a videogame based on a famous work of French erotica

Earlier this week, trademarks were spotted over at the European Union Intellectual Property Office for a videogame or videogame-related Something called 'Wonders of O'. The trademarks were registered by South Korean company Neowiz, who also happen to be the publishers of excellent puppet-powered soulslike Lies of P.

Given the shared title format, online sleuthyfolks have wasted no time identifying the project as the Lies of P sequel developers Round 8 teased back in 2024, alongside an untitled horror game.

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Valve considered making a new VR game for the Steam Frame, before tackling the "ludicrous" task of getting Half-Life: Alyx running standalone

Valve have sometimes – if perhaps not often enough to call it a grand old tradition – massaged interest in their hardware by pairing the kit with a new game. For the Steam Deck it was Aperture Desk Job, and for 2019’s jammy sod of a VR headset, the Valve Index, it was Half-Life: Alyx, a full-length City 17 adventure that reviewer Graham (RPS in peace) called “a masterclass of first-person shooter design.”

Still, people rarely want to take the same class twice, hence why padding-compacted eyebrows have been raised by Alyx again being a tentpole of the new Steam Frame headset – this time, to showcase the game running in PC-less, standalone VR. Why not make something new, even a smaller tech demo like ADJ or the Index’s own The Lab collection of Portal-themed minigames?

According to Valve staff, several of whom I spoke to prior to the Frame’s Monday night launch, there were several reasons why a return to Alyx was considered more valuable – even though a brand new VR game was, at least briefly, on the table.

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As Civilization 7 devs Firaxis prepare to unleash the nukes, the strategy game's latest update whips out a fresh take on the classic Real Earth map

The September update for Civ 7 arrives today, September 15th. It's got a handful of new maps, including a fresh version of the real life-mimicking True Start Earth playing field, and updates to diplomacy that'll stop you being automatically dragged into your allies' wars.

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"Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier": Nighthawks devs claim vampire RPG has erroneously been slapped with Steam adult content label

Disclosure: Nighthawks writer Richard Cobbett has contributed articles to RPS, with his most recent as of writing being a Fable-themed feature from 2018.

Vampire RPG Nighthawks has been slapped with a mature content label just as its release beckons, in the latest high-profile instance of Valve's determination of what constitutes an adult game proving controversial. Developers Richard Cobbett and Wadjet Eye Games say they're working on convincing Valve to reverse the decision, which would allow the game to once again show up in Steam searches and no longer be banished to horny jail in some countries.

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Roblox plan to grow their absurd gaming empire even further by letting devs release games as "standalone apps", potentially via Steam, Epic, and GOG

Not content with pulling in daily active user counts roughly equivalent to the population of Japan, game creation platform Roblox are planning to let developers release their games "as standalone apps across mobile, PC, and consoles, with Roblox powering the technology and services underneath." The news comes via this year's Roblox Developers Conference. They are calling the new initiative "Roblox Everywhere", two words that can surely only ever be uttered in the form of a Machiavellian giggle or a scream of purest terror.

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A StarCraft open-world shooter that's "Deadwood in space", Diablo 5, and a new classic-ish World of Warcraft branch out this year make up Blizzard of reveals

Well, that report earlier this year was bang on the banana. A new StarCraft shooter, creatively dubbed StarCraft, has been announced for a 2030 release at this year's BlizzCon. Joining it among the headliners were Diablo 5 - which is due out in 2029 - and a new World of Warcraft branch dubbed WOW: Forever. Brave of them to name a Warcraft fork after the inevitable response which follows a WOW player revealing how long they've been playing the MMO.

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Moss developer Polyarc share that they're shutting down just two months after releasing a VR-less port of the beloved mousey adventure games

Another sad one today, unfortunately. Back in July, Polyarc released Moss: The Forgotten Relic, a new version of the original two games combined together that ditched its VR headset origins. Now, unfortunately, it sounds like the studio is shutting down, as the developer's LinkedIn page shared a message this week noting it's ending "active development."

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for realising that after playing The Blood of Dawnwalker, you've developed a craving for blackcurrant juice. There's none in the cupboard, so you venture out to get some, floating across the rooftops as a trail of mist as you go. You arrive at the supermarket, fangs bared and claws out. You parry and dodge attackers armed with trollies as you fight your way up the aisles. There it is. The sweet crimson nectar. You reach out to grab a bottle. A hand reaches out through the display and grips your wrist.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

I’m a big fan of these September weekends where I wake up and my bedroom has neither the humidity nor the ambient temperature of an Eden Project rainforest-o-dome. Autumn was previously my third favourite season at best, but I think we need to have a serious conversation about top two.

The additional thermal headroom to comfortably run a toasty graphics card also makes this one of the better times to play games. Including these, and also, the ones you’re going to tell us about in the comments.

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GTA 6 online mode appears to receive Rockstar's first public acknowledgment, via mention of in-development "32 player format" in legal docs

Up until now, Rockstar Games have kept mum about what plans they have for the future of Grand Theft Auto multiplayer once GTA 6 releases on consoles in November. Thanks to filings submitted by the studio as part of the final hearing in a legal battle over the firings of 34 developers last year, that silence appears to have been broken.

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EA's Saudi Arabian owners are reportedly considering forming an ubermegacorp by merging them with Savvy Games

Just over a month on from a consortium led by the Saudi Arabian government's Public Investment Fund taking over EA, in a buyout worth $55 billion, said new owners are reportedly considering merging the publishers with their existing gaming firm Savvy Games Group. The result would be an ubermegacorp to serve as a vehicle for all of the Saudi wealth fund's future video game-related biz.

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Shroom and Gloom is a positively mycelial roguelike double deckbuilder that's now out in early access

There are probably many jokes one could make about mushrooms being edible, and mushrooms being like, edible, man in relation to Shroom and Gloom, a positively mycelial roguelike deckbuilder where you roam spore-filled dungeons with two decks of cards in tow. I won't do that though because that would mean having to think of them, and like Edwin before me, I just don't have it in me. What I do have is the ability to tell you about Shroom and Gloom, which is out in early access today.

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No Man's Sky's 10th anniversary update will let you rule space stations, built floating orbital bases and go on holiday to the sun

No Man's Sky is a decade old. Let that sink in. No, seriously, you'll need plenty of water to survive the trips that the massive space game's 10th anniversary update allows you to embark on. It's now possible to get up close and personal with the stars that serve as suns in each system. Or, if the risk of fiery death's not your cup of tea, you can establish a new home by taking over as director of a space station or building an orbital base that floats among the stars.

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Cult classic shoot-em-up Touhou Koumakyou: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil has a remake out now

Touhou Project is Schrödinger’s shoot-em-up series: simultaneously a decades-running, 20-game strong (not counting spinoffs) multimedia juggernaut spawning one of the most active fan communities of the post-Trekkie age, and also some weeb curiosity that no-one I’ve ever spoken to has ever heard of. Either way, it’s been around for yonks, and has just seen the launch of its first official remake, of foundational 2002 entry Touhou Koumakyou: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

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Steam achievements for Persona 6, Fable, Stranger Than Heaven and a host of other upcoming PC games appear to have leaked

Uh oh. Steam achievement lists for a smorgasbord of unreleased and unannounced PC games appear to have leaked via trophy tracking site Exophase. Atlus RPG Persona 6, RGG brawler Stranger Than Heaven, and Thief: The Dark Project Remastered have all seemingly had their trophies blabbed by the leak, with more imminent releases like Control Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, and Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve also affected.

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Trump regime's Tetris ripoff yanked from White House website after Tetris Company declare they "take copyright infringement very seriously"

Goodbye, Build the Wall. The Tetris-style game that the US government had stuck on the White House website as a way of promoting the Trump administration's commitment to brutalising and persecuting immigrants in the name of securing borders. After the Tetris Company hinted that they might be eyeing legal action, Build the Wall is gone, replaced by a far more palatable 404 error message.

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It's still very much possible to make good Skyrim mods "without any use of AI" in 2026, declares the maker of a new DLC-sized Black Marsh expansion

The latest beefy expansion mod to hit Skyrim is an adventure to the Argonian homeland of Black Marsh, complete with hist trees and humid swamps. Though, its creator seems to be hoping the trip to the southern tip of the mysterious province will do more that just entertain, serving as a reminder that it's still possible for solo modders to make ambitious works happen for free without resorting to using generative AI.

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Combat and socially agonised teens impress in Persona 4 Revival, the RPG that series director Kazuhisa Wada feels a "duty" to make

Look, before you say it, I know. Persona 4 Golden is held up by some as one of the best and most important RPGs ever. After all, it was the series' Final Fantasy 7 moment, where many of the mechanical and thematic threads of the earlier games finally knitted together and became something greater than their parts. You step into the shoes of Yu Narukami, a Japanese transfer student freshly arrived in Inaba. There, you use your limited time to make friends, study for your exams, and dive into a metaphysical dimension to turn-based battle the literal manifestations of your friends and rivals' twisted perceptions of themselves. Its story and characters particularly celebrated for their honest and painful looks inward at the parts of ourselves best left unseen. I’m a fraud for not having played it yet, with that sin only compounded by having had it in my Steam family sharing library for years. I have no excuse. I’ll face the shame-filled shadow version of myself, eventually.

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"We believe in the power of connection": Donald Trump Tetris parody game rouses the mildly worded wrath of the Tetris Company

Those terrible firebrands at the Tetris Company have publicly rebuked the US government for publishing a Tetris parody game that promotes the Trump administration's brutalising rhetoric about securing the border with Mexico. They've even hinted that they're prepared to sue over it.

The parody game in question is called Build the Wall, and sees you stacking bricks along "the Southern border" in order to repel invading zombies. Unlike in regular Tetris - yes, I've played the Trump game, I'm definitely going to hell now - you aren't trying to clear lines of blocks. Instead, blocks defeat wandering undead of the same colour.

The game appeared last week alongside a swathe of other Trumpist propaganda games, based on the likes of Snake and Flappy Bird. A few of these games include goofy reworkings of Sony, Nintendo and Xbox console logo screens. The three platform holders have yet to comment. But the Tetris Company? They're coming out swinging with a... gently worded appeal to human community.

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"You'll be able to engage in these high stakes arms races": Civilization's Arc of Tomorrow update is trying to make the threat of nuclear apocalypse more interesting

Civilization 7 is getting a new free update that takes the 4X strategy series into the atomic age, while trying to make nuclear era conflict a little more elaborate than just being first to research the requisite city-killing technology. Add in some new city state proxy war functionality, and you seemingly have everything you need to go full Henry Kissinger.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for luxuriating in the chill of the September air and hoping for more of the drenching rain that's ended the summer heat. Though, it's a luxuriating that's quickly pierced by the worry that we've seen the last warm weather of the year. Winter isn't far off and all the gaps around the windows in the living room are going to start making themselves known again.

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Deliver packages in foresty mountains and avoid thieving boars in the Death Stranding-adjacent and quite calm-looking Pinetrail

I can take or leave a majority of Death Stranding's story (BB forever, though), but I gotta give it to Kojima: delivering stuff is fun. There's a genuine complexity to the process of deciding what to pack and how you pack it, making the simple act of delivering something like a pizza legitimately challenging. So I'm quite tickled by the look of Pinetrail, a much less apocalyptic delivery game where you drive a tiny three-wheel rickshaw truck transporting packages across luscious forests and mountains.

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The ESRB wouldn't let Valve release the cinematic trailer for Left 4 Dead 2, so what did they do? They "leaked" it, obviously

My only experience of Left 4 Dead 2 is a handful of sessions in my youth where a friend handed me a controller (me, a person whose shooter experience extended to Ratchet and Clank at the time), told me nothing, and let the chaos unfold. I did not do a good job. But it left a lasting impression! Though perhaps that impression would have changed had I seen its cinematic trailer as soon as Valve had wanted to release it. The problem was, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board weren't so hot on the game, including its marketing materials, so that left Valve with one option: leaking the trailer themselves.

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Mortal Shell 2's latest update adds in an experimental new mode that adjusts the challenge based on how much you do or don't die

Another week, another Mortal Shell 2 update! The first proper one arrived a week ago, and smoothed down some of the game's rough edges to make for a (slightly) more generous experience. This next update brings with it a bevy of changes, but most notably is an experimental adaptive difficulty mode that changes depending how well you're doing.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

This is the first Saturday in a month I've woken up without a blocked nose or a mucus-hurling cough. Trips to Spain, Sweden, and Germany in quick succession and loaded on top of a cross country bike ride may have been a touch to much for my ageing body.

Still, at last, I am well. In body, if not in spirit. So, better start playing some games then, right?

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I’m an ethical muncher in The Blood of Dawnwalker, which means I’ve forced poor Coen to slurp up nine million rats

Coen, the half-man and half-vampire protagonist of The Blood of Dawnwalker, doesn’t like chomping down on rats.

I know this because he’s told me multiple times, after I’ve made him slurpily drain a rodent like it’s a furry Frube (other brands of tubed yoghurt are available). Sometimes he shudders a bit and makes noises of disgust. Other times he straight up says things like "This is not a nice thing to do". I know it’s not, farmboy whose family needs saving, but what’s the alternative?

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Blood of Dawnwalker's first patch offers relief from buggy tutorials and tight-lipped NPCs, but Rebel Wolves are still working on fixes for the stuttering and shader crash problems

Witcher-flavoured vampire RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker has received its first post-launch patch, with developers Rebel Wolves dipping their fangs into a modest neckful of problems with blocked quest progression and general controller behaviour on PC. They've also taught a blacksmith a new recipe. Alas, the devs are still working on fixes for those problems with stuttering, PlayStation button-mapping, and shader compilation we covered last night. Still, at least your brother Lunka will no longer get hopelessly lost while walking you through the tutorial.

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Miami-Dade police outraged by proposals to turn parts of Miami into GTA 6, saying that Rockstar's game embodies what they "work every single day to prevent"

The mayor of Miami-Dade, Florida has been pitching Rockstar Games about transforming parts of the county into recreations of areas from Grand Theft Auto 6, in the face of complaints from law enforcement and members of the judiciary. GTA 6 is itself inspired by Miami, so yes, this is one of those "simulation colonising reality" situations. The proposed publicity event would include "an immersive arrival experience" at Miami International Airport. with signs for Vice City and planes coated in GTA 6 livery, together with branded Metromover skytrains and specially designed manhole covers.

It's a predictable bid to snaffle a few of those GTA marketing dollars, while driving up the regional circulation of affluent Vice City nuts. Also predictable: a few people, and specifically the cops, find the idea of their neighbourhood being mocked up to resemble a Grand Theft Auto game problematic. Miami-Dade sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz and commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez have already spoken out against the potential deal, observing in a joint statement that "we should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence.”

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Constantly reshape the world beneath your feet in the reality-bending "puzzle-first" Uncanyon, the next game from the devs behind the trippy Maquette

A problem that games have, I find, is that it's quite hard for them to inspire a sense of wonder. The kind of thing that old movies, before CGI, that would make you think, "how did they do that?" But games are all CGI, spiritually anyway, so it's a bit harder for the craft itself to truly wow in terms of not being able to comprehend how something works. However! I felt that today when I saw the reveal trailer for Uncanyon, a puzzle game from the devs behind Maquette set in the seam between unparallel realities where the very shape of the world is constantly in flux.

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"A game for everyone is a game for no one": Don't expect an easy ride in Carcass Clad, the co-op tank horror game from the makers of Mouthwashing

On my final day of Gamescom, strolling (running) around the indie area to make sure I don't miss anything good, I stumble upon Wrong Organ’s upcoming Carcass Clad. Set in a wartorn Soviet city, empty of people but littered with tanks wearing coats of Frankensteined cattle corpses (light stuff!), Carcass Clad is a three-player co-op experience that shares the stressful responsibility of piloting a tank and taking down enemy units between those unlucky three.

If you read the name Wrong Organ and thought, ‘Wait, the Mouthwashing team? They're making a multiplayer co-op game?’, I can't fault your surprise. Edwin did interview them about it back in June, but I walked up to the booth knowing the devs themselves and little more, so I was experiencing all of Carcass Clad and its heavy departure from their previous work for the first time.

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You can't pet the talking rat wall in Ontos, the new space horror game from Soma's creators, but surely it can run Doom

When Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Soma developers Frictional announced Ontos, their philosophical horror game set in a mad science hotel on the moon, the internet's jimmies were rustled by the presence of an AI server made out of rats. I have several questions for Frictional regarding that talking rat wall, based on my peerless track record of arts and technology journalism.

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Aiming to supercharge The Blood of Dawnwalker's early mods, Nexus Mods release their own "streamlined" open-source Unreal modding tools

The Blood of Dawnwalker, Rebel Wolves' vampire RPG with more than a touch of Witcher 3 running through its veins, is about to claw-slide down a wall into release street. Depending on where in the world you live, it'll either arrive late on September 2nd or first thing on September 3rd. Ahead of that, in a bid to accelerate modders' early attempts to put their own spin on the game, Nexus Mods have released some of their own open-source tools designed to cut some of the faff out of Unreal Engine modding.

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The adult game crackdown is "ridiculous for our art form", say Hellraiser devs, but they think they'll survive thanks to that Clive Barker association

Last year, Australian anti-porn group Collective Shout pressured payment processors, such as Mastercard, Paypal, Visa, and Paysafe Limited to withdraw their services from Steam and Itch.io if the stores didn't remove adult games from their shelves. The campaign was successful and many games were impacted. The campaign's had a chilling effect, leaving developers making games including any sexual content in a kind of limbo as to whether digital storefronts will host their work. Some are ushered through without issue, while others are banned with little recourse.

Just last week, we saw how Valve blocked Molleindustria's Future? No Thanks! due to its scenes of minor nudity. Then, only after public lobbying, did they manage to get Valve to reconsider and rescind their ban.

So, after playing a half hour demo of Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, a demo set almost entirely inside a fetish club, and one featuring male nudity, female nudity, and some pretty sexually explicit content, I asked the developers if they were worried about a Steam ban or if it had led to any changes to the game.

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Drive a train around an ash-covered world collecting ingredients for the last ever s'more as an anthropomorphic bird in the surreal and comically ominous Cinderline

There is perhaps no genre I love more in this world than "game where you run around as a little guy," for the subgenres within that are almost endless. A new entry is soon to find itself within that genre, and it's called Cinderline, a game where you play as an anthropomorphic, silent bird who wants to make the last ever s'more, gathering the various pieces required to do so by travelling from town to town in a tiny train.

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Nvidia DLSS 5 releases this week with NBA 2K27, so the AI yassification filter's busy beautifying basketballers early doors

After being prematurely dug out of game files by modders late last week, Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering tech is making its official debut in a matter of days. Yes, it's the filter which was criticised on reveal earlier this year for giving a bunch of game characters weird genAI makeovers. Unsurprisingly, given where those modders pulled the aformentioned files from, the tech's arriving with NBA 2K27.

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