If you need an absorbing dungeon RPG this winter, here's one with over two billion floors

Last week, Brendy left a note in our weekly Maw liveblog about a player-made map of Caves Of Qud, the reportedly excellent sci-fi roguelike RPG that lets you "chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations", represented as 2D Dwarf Fortress-esque layouts. Glancing over that map as a newcomer to the game, my eye was caught by the creator's casual mention that Caves Of Qud is technically 2,147,483,646 levels deep.

"Is Caves Of Qud really 2,147,483,646 levels deep?" I asked Brendy, like a wide-eyed child asking whether there is such a thing as dog heaven. Brendy wasn't sure. (About Caves Of Qud, I mean, not dog heaven.) So I put the question to one of the developers, Freehold Games co-founder Brian Bucklew. In brief, the answer is yes, but with some significant caveats.

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Hyperdrive Inn is a Lucasarts style adventure game made entirely from scanned fabric samples

One of the many high concept ludonarrative experiments I’d one day like to bring to fruition is an immersive sim in which the player has access to many guns, but their default arsenal selection is an open packet of crisps which they hold out in front of them, in first person, and offer to NPCs. Some NPCs wouldn’t be swayed by this, but some would lower their weapons at the offer of a prawn cocktail treat, and so you’d be constantly playing chicken with various guards: edging closer toward them, your shaking hands rattling the delicious disks inside the oily packet, mentally weighing up whether it's worth risking them turning hostile at the last second.

Obviously, I’d scan some real crisp packets and just alter the logos for maximum immersion. One game that’s already taken this scanned bricolage concept and run with it to beautiful effect is Hyperdrive Inn. It’s an avant garde point and click adventure from Finnish studio Horsefly, where the entire world is constructed from scanned fabric samples. Have a looksee.

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

To your stations, colleagues! December has ambushed us like a hideous hairy man in a red bobble hat, and time is of the essence. In just a handful of weeks, Horace the Endless Bear shall strike the brazen gong labelled "Happy holidays" and atomise the world, that it may be born anew in 2025. Before that, we must heap the Maw's plate high with any remaining new video games or video game news from 2024. Find below a few new PC releases for the pile. I thought it was going to be a quiet week, but it's actually quite a boisterous haul.

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What's on your bookshelf?: Games journalist and Slann butt-sculptor extraordinaire Kiera Mills

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! As both Ollie and this immaculately-crafted Green Stuff Slann butt have already foretold, Kiera Mills is leaving RPS for pastures more dog-like. As such, she’s joining me to talk about books! Cheers Kiera! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 1st

This year’s RPS Advent Calendar has arrived, and it’s time for us to fill the nook behind each door with 24 delightful game-shaped chocolates. But man, it’s hard work making these chocolates. Too much manual labour. I wish we could automate the process somehow - perhaps we just need to exploit the planet’s resources and turn it into a giant chocolate-making factory spanning the entire solar system. Yes, that should work.

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The dazzling and desirable RPS Advent Calendar 2024

December is here! It has snuck up on us once again, hidden as it always is behind November's back. It's arrival heralds the beginning of the RPS Advent Calendar 2024, the yearly list of our favourite games of the year. Step inside, open the doors, and celebrate another year's gaming survived.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays! Sundays are for going quickly.

Gabriel Winslow-Yost wrote for Harper's Magazine - not an outlet typically known for their videogame coverage - about Elden Ring and the role of death and failure in games.

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