PC

I took a longer lunch break today, and must now Pay The Reaper by staying after work. Fortunately, I’ve spent my penance playing the demo for Witching Stone, which applies the magic of shape-matching to the magic of, well, magic. Out on 16th September, it’s a pixelart charmer that “combines elements of puzzle games, roguelites

How do we save the open world? is an irregular series about the state of open world games and associated ideas about exploration, curiosity and discovery. In the first post for my series on “saving” open world design, I complained that many of today’s open worlds feel like checklists of formulaic tasks and rewards, their

It is with quiet anticipation (and some nervousness) that I await to be stepped upon by a freaky mech in The Forever Winter. If you missed its announcement in May, The Forever Winter is a co-op extraction shooter set in a grim future where you struggle to survive amid an unending hyperindustrial war. Since that

The first time I encountered Jack King-Spooner’s work, it was when he sent me a copy of Sluggish Morss: Pattern Circus over hospital wifi late at night. The game was a bright spot in a bad time, which might seem peculiar given that Sluggish Morss often looks like a whale’s upset stomach, but it’s such

Unionised workers at Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 studio Raven Software have filed a complaint with the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against parent companies Activision Blizzard and Microsoft, as reported by Game File (paywalled), and covered by Game Developer. The complaint, write Game Developer, is over “bad faith bargaining” and “concerted activities”

Every now and then I reflect on the statistically determined average age of a Gamer – what is it now, 36, 37? Please let it still be under 40 – and realise with alarm that, by extrapolation, a lot of the people reading this probably have children. Augh, children! Please excuse me while I go

Stormgate early access reviewStormgate’s weak campaign and messy pricing system make for an awkward introduction to this StarCraft-inspired RTS, but multiplayer strategy fans might find something to enjoy in mastering its tactically diverse factions. Developer: Frost Giant Studios Publisher: Frost Giant Studios Release: Out now On: Windows From: Steam Price: Free Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen

Nintendo Direct brings us a gift, and one in the form of exciting news about history’s most squirrel stuffed RPGs. Can you really claim 108 characters when five of them are flying squirrels with different colour capes? Never mind all that. Suikoden 1 & 2 HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars has a

This morning I left my torpid flat in search of coffee, sniffed the restive wind, noted with approval the gloom gathering beneath the trees, and thought: at last, summer is over. At last, we quit the disgusting sunlit months. At last we leave all that is green and good behind, and return to the time

Almost a decade after his acrimonious departure from Konami, the shadow of Hideo Kojima still looms over Metal Gear Solid. He’s there, barely camouflaged, in the undergrowth of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater – a remake of the fifth Metal Gear game, originally released in 2004, which tells the tale of a lone US

Booked For The Week is our weekly chat with industry folk about the books they love, have loved, and are hoping to love in the future. 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!

Stranger Video is a website that wants access to your webcam. Grant it and it will show you a close-up of your own face, the background around you cropped out. Close your eyes to tell it you’re ready, and open them again when you hear a chime. It’ll now connect you to a stranger doing

Valve have their own rating system for measuring how games run on Steam Deck, but even following the guidance of whether something is “Playable” or “Verified”, I’ve still run into games that simply do not work on the handheld device. Enter Steam reviews. Reviews from players who primarily played on Steam Deck will now have

Tens of thousands of people have been playing Deadlock, a new multiplayer shooter from Valve, for the past several months, but in that time there’s been no official announcement or acknowledgement of the game’s existence by its creators. Until now. Valve have posted an extremely barebones Steam store page for Deadlock, describing it as a

If you like jumping on enveloping pixelly architecture while basking in an atmosphere of pathological sadness, set aside some time on 20th September, because that’s when Rubeki’s first-person spelunker Lorn’s Lure launches on Steam. Ah, I’ve been waiting a while for this one. Catch a new trailer below.

Everything I know about the French Revolution has hitherto come from two literary works: Hilary Mantel’s excellent doorstopper A Place Of Greater Safety, and Kate Beaton’s webcomics. Neither Mantel nor Beaton mention mechs, which are a core feature of Studio Imugi’s new “ideology driven” turn-based strategy game Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution. I, for one, feel

We haven’t written about Diplomacy Is Not An Option since it launched in Early Access in 2022, when it was a light and frothy strategy game about smashing thousands of peasants to bits with physics magic. It’s still that, but now it’s getting a 1.0 release on October 4th.

I recently wrote about a game that aimed to recreate the old magic of Tokyo Xtreme Racer, a series of late-night, urban racing games that hadn’t had a new (non-mobile) entry in 18 years. Oh, what a neglected niche those indie developers were filling! Yeah, a new Tokyo Xtreme Racer was just announced from original