Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024 is done and dusted for another year, but it's certainly kicked off this year's Gamescom with a bang - and we've got all the news, trailers and announcements right here in one handy summary. Whether you missed the show itself or just want a handy reminder of everything announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live this year, read on below.

Of course, alongside the main show, this year's ONL also had a 30-minute pre-show that was stuffed with announcements as well, which we'll quickly run through here before getting into the detail of the main show announcements below. Here, we got new trailers for Dave the Diver's latest crossovers, spooky co-op adventure Begone Beast and construction sim Roadcraft, alongside Italian Soulslike Enotria: The Last Song, Cairn (that shouty, but lovely looking climbing game from Summer Game Fest), life sim Inzoi from PUBG publishers Krafton, as well as a Terry showcase for Street Fighter 6.

There were also new game announcements in the pre-show in the form of Sniper Elite Resistance (coming 2025), the Donkey Kong-esque platformer Nikoderiko: The Magical World (with music from David Wise, no less), "first person farming horror allegory" We Harvest Shadows, the also quite spooky-looking Aila, a tease for the sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet (aptly named Revenge of the Savage Planet), action RPG Tribe Nine from the creators of Danganronpa, and the Lashana Lynch-led Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Game.

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Black Myth: Wukong is nothing if not ambitious. As many of its early trailers and tech demos implied, this was a game punching above its weight. It wasn't just a lavish retelling of the epic Chinese novel Journey to the West, a work that games have rarely engaged with outside of Asia (Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West notwithstanding), but it also seemed to be demonstrating a level of technical mastery and visual pizzazz we hadn't quite seen before. It immediately put developer Game Science on the map, even if it wasn't always for the most savoury of reasons.

But now, after spending upwards of 40 hours retracing the steps of its titular simian hero as the silent but deadly Destined One, Black Myth emerges as a game that frustrates more than it delights. Its plentiful supply of grand, sweeping boss battles set the heart alight at regular intervals, its mythological menagerie bristling with the same kind of malicious energy and intent as their FromSoft equivalents. They are the tentpoles that hold this game aloft, their sharp claws, vicious fangs and powerful hoofs often tearing up the screen in exquisite and sumptuous detail. Indeed, they're the kind of bosses that will probably go down as some of the most dramatic of this generation, with its glistening dragons that rage across icy lakes and rippling pools, muscular tigers that sup in temples of blood, and giant bears, wolves, rats and spiders that command the elements to devastating effect.

But outside of those pulse-racing encounters, Black Myth is an altogether more mind-numbing experience, its thrilling highs undone by baggy world design, an uneven difficulty curve and disjointed storytelling. Ostensibly, this is a quest about reviving the legendary Sun Wukong, who scattered himself to the wind in the form of six relics after being defeated in battle centuries earlier. As the Destined One, you'll travel through forests, sand, ice, ash and more to bring them back to your mountain home, winding your way through its alternately narrow and wide linear environments until you reach the big bad in possession of it.

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In the roiling waters of the northern sea, a mysterious oil rig has appeared whose lights can be seen for miles in the darkness. The foreman is a bit jittery, clearly worried about the platform's somewhat shoddy construction and his overbearing boss docking his pay for being behind schedule. When the drilling does begin, it's not oil they strike, but something far more sinister that splinters the sea floor with an ominous red, volcanic glow. And the resident scientist and his corporate suit boss only seem to want to feed this supernatural terror, the safety of their fellow workers be damned.

To some, I've just described the plot of The Chinese Room's recent walking horror, Still Wakes the Deep. But in a strange coincidence, Dredge is now following the same trajectory with its latest DLC, The Iron Rig - albeit with fewer left hooks throwing errant Coke cans to distract wandering nasties and more actual hooks reeling up yet more fresh horrors from the deep. This new chapter in Dredge's faintly cursed archipelago finally puts the spotlight on the mysterious Ironhaven Corporation, whose CEO is a dead ringer for Wake's weaselly boss Rennick, right down to his last-minute escape on the corporate helicopter. It's all profits before people in this unfortunate corner of the ocean, though unlike Wake's poor Caz, at least you can share in some of those benefits this time thanks to the plentiful supply of upgrade opportunities for your boat.

Over the course of three to four hours, The Iron Rig will see you revisit each of Dredge's main island clusters, hunting for fresh fish in new micro-habitats created by pools of ungodly ooze that have sprung up from the fissures created by the rig's drill. Each time one of these clearly very bad cracks opens up, the rig's scientist will task you with collecting various samples to bring back to him for further analysis, but some of these aren't easily won with your default set of equipment. Cue, then, a gentle and well-paced upgrade back and forth that will see you construct new buildings on the rig to unlock enhanced versions of your rods, nets and winches, as well as blueprints for new engine parts, bait types and other gadgets to help speed the process along.

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Cor, it feels good to be ricocheting hats off chrome skulls again, let me tell you. It's been almost ten years since the original SteamWorld Heist showed us how XCOM could work in a 2D play space, and Thunderful's sequel has only doubled down on what made this particular bag of bolts such a joyful offshoot in the turn-based strategy genre. Case in point: the hats that you could whizz off the head of your enemies and claim for your own (for no other reason than sheer cheekiness) are back in full force, with 101 of them ready to be pilfered in your search for tasty loot. Its new cast of characters are also daft and brilliant in equal measure, and I'm not ashamed to admit that one of my first recruitment decisions was based purely on the pun work. Why yes, Dame Judy Wrench, I will have you on my crew with your Harsh Language special attack that can shame an enemy for three damage. Why is that even a question?

SteamWorld Heist 2 isn't just more of the same, though - even if that is a large part of its overall appeal. Apart from the shift in setting from space to a more explorable and connected ocean planet, there's a new class system that lets you pinch skills learned in other jobs you've undertaken. Of course, Heist 2 isn't the first game to land on this particular idea, and its execution is perhaps only partially successful in practice (more on that in a sec). But given this sequel is easily double the size of the original, it does need some form of progression support like this to help prevent its missions from buckling under the weight of its lengthy environmental crisis story. In truth, that reach for something bigger and better is arguably SteamWorld Heist 2's undoing in many ways, but what's here is still eminently enjoyable - and you're certainly not left hungry.

Let's start with the good stuff. Aside from its copious array of optional headwear to parade and pilfer, the heists themselves are as sharp and thrilling as ever. In your bid to find out what's causing this world's freshwater shortage (salt water doesn't play nice with a Steambot's metal work, after all), you'll be raiding all manner of moored ships, rigs and naval facilities to find the source of the problem. Unsurprisingly, there are several hiccups, detours and other obstacles you'll need to deal with along the way, taking you from the balmy, tropical shallows to deep, icy northern trenches and more - which you'll pootle around in your trusty submarine in real-time, travelling from one mission to the next on the high seas.

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Cleansing the land of an ancient evil, purging its demon spawn in a flurry of Japanese artistry, and watching new life spring forth as nature returns to peace and harmony… Nope, I'm not talking about the brilliant inkwash battles of Okami, but the demon-slaying kagura dances of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess. It is, in fairness, a connection that Capcom has increasingly leaned into in the run-up to Kunitsu-Gami's release. If the shared themes and free Amaterasu and Waka costumes for its deuteragonists Soh and Yoshiro weren't a sign that, yes, this is likely as close as we're ever going to get to a pseudo-spiritual successor to Clover Studio's 2006 romp through Japanese folklore, then the option to substitute Kunitsu-Gami's musical score for remixed Okami tracks surely seals the deal.

But to say Kunitsu-Gami is simply a sheep in this particular white and red wolf's clothing would also be doing it a great disservice. For underneath all the Ammy nostalgia, this is a finely crafted action strategy game that has both the brains and brawn to stand on its own, marrying fast and visually hypnotic swordplay combos with the cerebral plotting of quick-witted tower defence. Of course, this being Capcom, these towers aren't static objects to slap down and hope for the best. They're fellow villagers you can move about the battlefield and assign different roles and classes to in order to help you combat the waves of yokai monsters that pour out of torii gate portals every time the sun goes down. As Soh, your goal is to protect and escort the priestess Yoshiro toward these torii gates so she can banish their corrupting influence for good, though with the risk of defeat ratcheting up the closer you get to victory, you'll need to do plenty of thinking on your feet to help win the day.

The expert pacing of Kunitsu-Gami is arguably what binds it altogether. Thanks to the inherent ticking clock of its day-night cycle (beautifully portrayed as a reflection of the sun arcing round a bowl of water), each individual level rarely exceeds 10-15 minutes in length. These bursts of concentrated action make your days feel tense and urgent as you make your preparations, but sharp and punchy when nightfall comes and you battle the menacing Seethe monsters. Combat isn't simply about living to see a new dawn either. With every Seethe defeated, you'll collect crystals that can be ploughed back into assigning your villagers new roles if you need to switch up your strategy, as well as carving a path for Yoshiro so she can shimmy up to the big torii gate at the end of level to perform her cleansing ritual.

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Cor, it feels good to be ricocheting hats off chrome skulls again, let me tell you. It's been almost ten years since the original SteamWorld Heist showed us how XCOM could work in a 2D play space, and Thunderful's sequel has only doubled down on what made this particular bag of bolts such a joyful offshoot in the turn-based strategy genre. Case in point: the hats that you could whizz off the head of your enemies and claim for your own (for no other reason than sheer cheekiness) are back in full force, with 101 of them ready to be pilfered in your search for tasty loot. Its new cast of characters are also daft and brilliant in equal measure, and I'm not ashamed to admit that one of my first recruitment decisions was based purely on the pun work. Why yes, Dame Judy Wrench, I will have you on my crew with your Harsh Language special attack that can shame an enemy for three damage. Why is that even a question?

SteamWorld Heist 2 isn't just more of the same, though - even if that is a large part of its overall appeal. Apart from the shift in setting from space to a more explorable and connected ocean planet, there's a new class system that lets you pinch skills learned in other jobs you've undertaken. Of course, Heist 2 isn't the first game to land on this particular idea, and its execution is perhaps only partially successful in practice (more on that in a sec). But given this sequel is easily double the size of the original, it does need some form of progression support like this to help prevent its missions from buckling under the weight of its lengthy environmental crisis story. In truth, that reach for something bigger and better is arguably SteamWorld Heist 2's undoing in many ways, but what's here is still eminently enjoyable - and you're certainly not left hungry.

Let's start with the good stuff. Aside from its copious array of optional headwear to parade and pilfer, the heists themselves are as sharp and thrilling as ever. In your bid to find out what's causing this world's freshwater shortage (salt water doesn't play nice with a Steambot's metal work, after all), you'll be raiding all manner of moored ships, rigs and naval facilities to find the source of the problem. Unsurprisingly, there are several hiccups, detours and other obstacles you'll need to deal with along the way, taking you from the balmy, tropical shallows to deep, icy northern trenches and more - which you'll pootle around in your trusty submarine in real-time, travelling from one mission to the next on the high seas.

Read more

Cleansing the land of an ancient evil, purging its demon spawn in a flurry of Japanese artistry, and watching new life spring forth as nature returns to peace and harmony… Nope, I'm not talking about the brilliant inkwash battles of Okami, but the demon-slaying kagura dances of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess. It is, in fairness, a connection that Capcom has increasingly leaned into in the run-up to Kunitsu-Gami's release. If the shared themes and free Amaterasu and Waka costumes for its deuteragonists Soh and Yoshiro weren't a sign that, yes, this is likely as close as we're ever going to get to a pseudo-spiritual successor to Clover Studio's 2006 romp through Japanese folklore, then the option to substitute Kunitsu-Gami's musical score for remixed Okami tracks surely seals the deal.

But to say Kunitsu-Gami is simply a sheep in this particular white and red wolf's clothing would also be doing it a great disservice. For underneath all the Ammy nostalgia, this is a finely crafted action strategy game that has both the brains and brawn to stand on its own, marrying fast and visually hypnotic swordplay combos with the cerebral plotting of quick-witted tower defence. Of course, this being Capcom, these towers aren't static objects to slap down and hope for the best. They're fellow villagers you can move about the battlefield and assign different roles and classes to in order to help you combat the waves of yokai monsters that pour out of torii gate portals every time the sun goes down. As Soh, your goal is to protect and escort the priestess Yoshiro toward these torii gates so she can banish their corrupting influence for good, though with the risk of defeat ratcheting up the closer you get to victory, you'll need to do plenty of thinking on your feet to help win the day.

The expert pacing of Kunitsu-Gami is arguably what binds it altogether. Thanks to the inherent ticking clock of its day-night cycle (beautifully portrayed as a reflection of the sun arcing round a bowl of water), each individual level rarely exceeds 10-15 minutes in length. These bursts of concentrated action make your days feel tense and urgent as you make your preparations, but sharp and punchy when nightfall comes and you battle the menacing Seethe monsters. Combat isn't simply about living to see a new dawn either. With every Seethe defeated, you'll collect crystals that can be ploughed back into assigning your villagers new roles if you need to switch up your strategy, as well as carving a path for Yoshiro so she can shimmy up to the big torii gate at the end of level to perform her cleansing ritual.

Read more

Citizen Sleeper 2 is coming in early 2025, publishers Fellow Traveller have announced, and it's also going to be releasing on PlayStation 5 and Switch alongside the already confirmed Xbox Series S/X, Game Pass and PC versions.

Unveiled at tonight's PC Gaming Show during its first proper gameplay trailer, Citizen Sleeper 2 will see you wake up in the body of a brand-new Sleeper android who's fighting for survival out on the Starward Belt on the edge of the Helion System. We've known for a while that Citizen Sleeper 2 is going to be a much bigger game than the original, but tonight's trailer gave us a taste of just how large the Belt actually is, as it will have its own navigable map screen, along with lots of different space ports and unique locations to visit along the way.

We also get to see some of the characters we'll be meeting when we get there. Unlike the first game, though, they'll be joining your crew as valuable team mates here, and will live alongside you in your ship as you travel between locations. You'll also be able to draw on their unique skills and character traits when taking on big contract jobs, too, as each crew member you recruit will have their own set of dice rolls to use to help you complete tasks and get the job done.

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The Case of the Golden Idol was one of 2022's best surprises. A detective murder mystery like no other, its 12 strange deaths (or more if you count its equally exceptional DLC) all centred around a mythical golden statue whose supposed life-giving properties put it at the heart of a decades-long conspiracy. As we unravelled the tangled history of the double-crossing Cloudsley family, we poked around stuffy country manors, dingy, candlelit inns, blood-stained beaches, and hallowed cult chambers in our search for the truth, gradually picking up clues in the form of names, nouns and verbs to work out whodunnit and why in each deadly tableau.

In its best moments, its deduction process called to mind the knotty blank-filling of Return of the Obra Dinn. While the words you collected during your mouse-clicking were important, they were nothing without all the dozens of other little visual clues you'd pick up simply by surveying the scene in question, as the aftermath of each murder would be frozen in time for you to pick through the incriminating evidence stashed in pockets, bins and swapped coats.

All this returns in full in its even more elaborate sequel, Rise of the Golden Idol, which moves the action forward a couple of centuries to the even more paranoid era of the 1970s. Developer Color Gray Games has given it a gorgeous glow-up in the process, too, its gurning grotesques taking on fresh, animated life as they choke, gasp and dab insincere handkerchiefs to their eyes as we find them yet again in media bloody res. Yes, there is a twinge of sadness here. Part of the original's charm did indeed come from its exquisitely detailed pixel art dioramas, but having spent an hour in Rise's company, I have to say the broader brushstrokes of these more modern 3D gargoyles have just as much charm and character as their historical counterparts.

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The maker of superb village builder Dorfromantik has lifted the lid on its next game, Star Birds.

Unveiled at the PC Gaming Show this evening, Toukana Interactive's new space puzzler is being made in collaboration with German YouTube science channel Kurzgesagt: In a Nutshell, who are providing the cheerful, cartoon visual style for this asteroid-themed base builder.

Designed to offer a "fresh and accessible" approach to resource management games, Star Birds is all about helping its titular avian explorers establish a thriving mining empire on as many asteroids as they can sink their beaks into. The asteroids in question will be procedurally-generated, and you'll need to work around their unique shapes, sizes and terrains in order to tap the precious materials they hide beneath the surface.

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I feel like we've already got a pretty good idea of what Obsidian's upcoming RPG Avowed is all about by now. But just in case you needed a reminder, or wanted a closer look at its colourful fantasy landscape, tonight's Xbox Games Showcase brought us a new 'story trailer' for it. Have a watch below.

As per previous Avowed trailers, you play as an envoy of Aedyr sent to investigate a mysterious plague known as 'The Dream Scourge' that's spreading through the wild frontier of The Living Lands - an all-new region of the Pillars of Eternity world we haven't seen before.

But as the masked, flame-eyed knight in the trailer suggests, there's more going on with the Dream Scourge than meets the eye. They call it a "symptom of a deeper, more dangerous rot" in the land, and ask you to tame the chaos so that they might rise up and shape The Living Lands' future.

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Arguably one of the more intriguing new game announcements from tonight's Xbox Games Showcase, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a new turn-based RPG from French studio Sandfall Interactive.

Combining fantasy and 'Belle Époque' art influences, you'll be leading the titular expedition to try and stop the mysterious Paintress, a being who's slowly wiping out the last remnants of humanity by painting numbers on a strange monolith - with each number killing off everyone who's that particular age.

A slightly convoluted setup to write down in words, perhaps, but the idea of your 'number being up' and having fewer and fewer folks to help aid you in your fight against fate with every passing year is strong indeed, so why not have a gander at the reveal trailer below:

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Fallout 76 players will be able to turn themselves into Ghouls in early 2025, Bethesda announced during the Xbox Games Showcase this evening. It's a series first for the Fallout universe, and a move that's sure to make the millions of new players who have started playing the Fallout games in the wake of the Fallout TV show jump with irradiated joy.

You'll need to reach Level 50 before you can become your own version of Walter Goggins' gun-slinging Ghoul in Fallout 76, and there will be a specific questline to complete that kicks off the path toward your eventual transformation.

Bethesda's keeping the exact details of this quest close to its chest for now, but in a press briefing ahead of tonight's reveal, creative director Jonathan Rush told Eurogamer that turning into a Ghoul will have a significant impact on how you play the game going forward.

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Listen, I've got nothing against coffee games - they're some of my absolute favourites - but I've got to admit, I'm a tea-drinker at heart, and it always makes me a little bit sad when all I can serve in these games is a hot cuppa joe while tea gets relegated to the sidelines. Good on the developers at Ivy Road, then, for finally doing us tea-drinkers justice with their debut game Wanderstop.

Revealed this evening at the Summer Game Fest, Wanderstop's development is being headed up by Davey Wreden, creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide, as well as Karla Zimonja, co-creator of Gone Home and Tacoma, along with music duties being performed by Minecraft's composer, Daniel 'C418' Rosenfeld.

You play as Alta, who desperately wants to get back in the fighting arena but must instead run a tea shop in the heart of a magical forest. Tough break, eh? I know which one I'd rather do.

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After its intial reveal last year, the sad and beautiful wolf adventure Neva has got its first gameplay trailer. It's the next game from the maker of the equally sad and beautiful Gris, and yep, I'm stocking up on tissues now, this one looks to be a real tear-jerker.

Revealed during tonight's Summer Game Fest, Neva's new gameplay trailer looks properly gorgeous, with sun-dappled landscapes aplenty, as well as cool, midnight blue caves, and hazy swamps where you can practically feel the moss squelching beneath your feet.

You play a young woman named Alba who forms a mysterious bond with your young wolf pal Neva, and together you'll travel across these stunning vistas, encountering other beasts of all shapes and sizes - though not all of them are as friendly as they first appear. I spy some very Spirited Away-inspired No Face creepy crawlies in there, and nope, don't you even think about getting your gloopy mitts on my wolf's bright white coat, matey, how dare you.

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Sony's PlayStation State of Play May Showcase 2024 may have been announced at short notice, but packed within its 35-minute presentation we got a look at a whole host of brand-new PS5 games coming in 2024 and beyond. There were also two new PSVR2 games announced here, as well as the surprise return of one of PlayStation's most beloved mascots, Astro Bot.

Whether you missed the showcase or just want a handy round-up of all the trailers again, here's everything that was announced in Sony's State of Play May Showcase.

First up, we got a long-awaited look at Concord, Firewalk's upcoming PvP shooter, both in the form of a cinematic vignette and a proper gameplay trailer (embedded below). Big Guardians of the Galaxy energy, this one. Lots of big guns, lots of colourful moons and planets, and a very chatty cast. Could this be the perfect second course after Helldivers earlier this year? We'll find out when it launches on PS5 and PC on August 23rd 2024.

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The games industry is in a worrying state of flux right now. Beloved and storied studios are being shut down left, right and centre; others are having their teams gutted from the inside out. It's hard to know which games and teams will even still be around next month, let alone in a year's time, and it must be daunting in the extreme for new, independent developers trying to make their debut games.

But XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns designer Jake Solomon is used to dealing with chance and probabilities. During his 23-year career at Firaxis, Solomon helped transform the turn-based tactics genre into what it is today, teaching us just how dramatic a well-timed overwatch shot could be, as well as how to howl in agony as our gunners repeatedly missed a 99%, point-blank hit chance window. Now, he's taking an even bigger step into the unknown, as today he's not only unveiling his brand-new independent games company, Midsummer Studios, but he's also given us a tease of what he's working on: a next-generation life sim where players "can't help but write an interesting story" as they steer their characters through the ups and downs of modern life.

Well, perhaps it's not too much of a step into the unknown, as Solomon reveals to me that his new base of operations for Midsummer is actually the very same place where he first cut his teeth as a games designer. "This building we're in, these are actually the old Firaxis offices," he says. "This is where me and a bunch of people [at Midsummer] started our careers, and a lot of people at Midsummer are people that have worked with me for a long time." And his first hire? The son of his former mentor, Sid Meier.

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The surreal pop synth of Sayonara Wild Hearts may have been the game that put Swedish developer Simogo on the map for PC players, but for me their earlier iOS puzzler Device 6 stands in my memory as being one of the most distinctive video games I've played. An interactive mystery novel at its heart, Device 6 took full advantage of its mobile-based hardware, asking players to turn and rotate their device to read certain lines of text, and scroll through its chapters searching for audio visual clues to solve its puzzles. I've often lamented that it never made its way to other platforms, even though part of its magic is inherently tied to physicality of its tactile origins.

Happily, after playing a few hours of Simogo's latest game, Lorelei And The Laser Eyes it's clear this equally classy detective story shares much of the same DNA as Device 6. It has the same love of riddles and mysterious, cryptic puzzles, only now they're writ large in a fully explorable 3D setting - a monochrome and maze-like hotel belonging to a reclusive artist. But Simogo's love of text hasn't been diminished in the process. Early on you find an instruction manual for Lorelei And The Laser Eyes within the game itself, which straight away tells you to have a pen and paper nearby to help solve its numerous conundrums. Heck, publishers Annapurna Interactive even sent me a full-blown notebook in the post just to hammer it home. They're not kidding, either. Even the opening section of the game had me scribbling down names, sums and symbols, much like Tunic, Return Of The Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds did before it. Which is just as well, really, as I'll definitely be needing some reminders when I come to play the full version on May 16th.

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Since the summer of 2020, Unknown 9: Awakening has only existed as a 90-second cinematic teaser trailer. In it, a young girl called Haroona is chased through the narrow streets of Calcutta by a rabble of boys armed with sticks. It's not clear why she's attracted their ire, but as one moves to strike her, a shockwave pulses out from her small body, the world turns grey, and time slows down. As she deftly moves out of harm's way, she turns back to look at her stunned onlookers, a confident smirk rising on her face.

It was a striking, if utterly ambiguous debut, and with talk of accompanying podcasts, books, comics and a web series also on the way to help build out this new world even further, it felt like developers Reflector Entertainment were really setting out to make a bold and ambitious first impression. But it's now been four years since that trailer. The books, podcasts and comics have all come and gone, seemingly making little impression, and Awakening, the game aiming to pull this big, expanded universe together, has arguably slipped from both time and memory. Perhaps this will change with its newly-dated summer 2024 release window on the horizon, but having seen a small, hands-off slice of an early mission in the game at publisher Bandai Namco's offices a couple of weeks ago, Awakening's certainly got its work cut out for it.

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When we first meet The Thaumaturge's hero Wiktor Szulski, we're told he's a man cursed by the vice of pride. It's a trait that sits at the heart of his personality, and in this particular alt-history telling of Polish turmoil in Warsaw at the turn of the twentieth century, such 'Flaws' can also attract the attention of otherworldly beings called Salutors - vicious creatures of myth and folklore who follow their quarry around like dark and gloomy shadows, amplifying their worst qualities and, in many cases, driving them to emotional, and often violent, extremes. It's these outbursts that Wiktor will be investigating over the course of this curious detective RPG from the makers of Seven: The Days Long Gone and the upcoming The Witcher 1 Remake, as fortunately for him, Wiktor comes from a long line of storied Salutor tamers, his thaumaturgic know-how allowing him to see these monsters made flesh, exorcise them from their human host, and use them for his own gains.

He's a man that's ultimately made peace with his own arrogance, then, but considering everything he goes through during The Thaumaturge's 25 hour-odd run-time, I reckon his pride is pretty justified. Not only is he able to brush off multiple stab and gunshot wounds and clubs to the face when he gets in a fight, but he also achieves several feats of thaumaturgy that we're repeatedly told are thought to be nigh on impossible. Indeed, at the start of this game, his connection with his original Salutor Upyr is hanging by a thread, his worst instincts having got the best of him in a recent attempt to tame and capture a second beast from the ether. By the end, however, I had six Salutors at my beck and call, out of a total of eight. Wiktor is very much a force to be reckoned with, and he makes for a highly compelling lead as you navigate the branching storylines in Warsaw's political hotbed.

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I come to you with an important question today, readers. Has there ever been an actually good sewer level in a video game before? I propose to you that there has not. Sewer levels are the worst. They have always been the worst, and will always be the worst. There is no redeeming feature that can make sewer levels good, fun or enjoyable, and I come to you today saying they must stop. No more sewer levels, developers. Please. I beg you. Especially you, Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster. You're the chief offender in this whole mess, and both my nostrils and my sanity simply cannot take it anymore.

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When Ori And The Blind Forest developers Moon Studios announced that their next game would be a top-down, online action RPG, my initial reaction was, 'Heck yes, sign me the hell up for this Souls-y, Diablo-y hack and slash.' Having now played the opening 90 minutes of the game ahead of tonight's Wicked Inside showcase, that initial excitement has settled into more of a 'Hoo boy, this thing is hard as nails. Folks who like Elden Ring and Dark Souls are going to go absolutely bananas for it.' It's definitely verging on the edge of being just a teensy bit too punishing for my personal taste, but even though my arse got thoroughly whomped time and time again during this initial prologue section, there's still something about No Rest For The Wicked that's left me quietly captivated.

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It's a tale as old as time: when a great, popular game rises to the top of the Steam charts, scammers and chancers will do everything in their power to steal some of that glory for themselves. The latest victim is Helldivers 2, with scammers putting up two separate fake pages for it on Steam over the last 24 hours. Each page listed Arrowhead as the developer, and PlayStation as the publisher, along with big discounts of 50-75% off to tempt players into buying the cheap version instead of the real one.

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First announced in May 2022, colonial fantasy RPG Greedfall 2 now has a release window. It will be coming first to Steam early access later this summer, a new cinematic trailer from tonight's Nacon Connect stream has revealed, but don't worry if you haven't played the first game yet. This sequel is actually set three years before the events of 2019's Greedfall, and stars a completely separate protagonist.

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Today's the day of the RPS Game Club liveblog, where we'll all pile into a single article to talk, in real-time, about February's game pick, Cobalt Core. We'll be kicking off shortly at 4pm GMT today (Thursday February 29th), so go and grab a cuppa, switch on some appropriate music, and we'll get this liveblog started.

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Rocket Rat Games co-founder John Guerra remembers the exact day he started working on Cobalt Core's first prototype. He and his fellow co-founder Ben Driscoll had just spent a week playing Daniel Mullins' mysterious roguelike deckbuilder Inscryption at the end of October 2021, but the combination of a bad storm and a power outage ended up forcing Guerra to decamp from his home in Massachusetts and stay with some family until it all blew over. "I got back late on Halloween, just in time to put out a bowl of candy for some kids, and then the next morning we started Cobalt Core," he tells me.

The pair had been working on a range of different prototypes in the months leading up to this lightbulb moment. As development on their debut game, the spaceship building puzzler Sunshine Heavy Industries, began winding down, "we were throwing all kinds of stuff at the wall," he says, including games in 3D, a platformer, with Driscoll revealing they even had "a Terraria-like one for a couple of weeks" with a grid-based world that characters bounced around in. But it was playing Inscryption that brought everything to a head. Both had spent hundreds of hours with Slay The Spire, but "Inscryption proved to us that there was still a lot of space to explore in the genre," says Guerra. And with increasing calls from Sunshine Heavy Industries players begging them to let them fly the ships they were creating in its shipyard sandbox, "you can kind of see how that went from A to B".

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A long time ago on a desktop far, far away, my family once owned a demo disc for the original Star Wars: Dark Forces. I cannot remember for the life of me which level(s) it contained. My only surviving memory of it is having quite a good time blasting Stormtroopers and the chaps in black with the swoopy, knock-off Vader helmets, but also getting terribly lost and not really knowing what the heck I was meant to be doing. Now, playing Nightdive Studio's Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster as an adult probably close to three decades later, both these feelings have come roaring back, as this is very much a Star Wars FPS in the vein of Doom and other early 90s shooters (thumbs up). But it's one that leans so hard into its maze-like level design that it can regularly feel like a little bit of a tough hang in the cold hard light of 2024 (thumbs down).

Crucially, though, not to the point where it's best left consigned to the history books. This is still an enjoyable and worthwhile artefact in Star Wars' PC gaming history, and if your eyes (and general patience levels) can't quite stomach the 'Classic' and still available 1995 original, then this remaster is a pin-sharp glow-up for modern hardware.

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It's been a hot minute since we last wrote about UFO 50, the 50-games-in-1 8-bit retro collection from the makers of Spelunky, Downwell and friends. It's been MIA for several years now (and no wonder, given these are 50 full-sized games being made by several different, and likely very busy, developers), but at long last, Spelunky creator Derek Yu has posted an update on Steam saying the project is finally nearing completion. "We should have a complete game in a few months but are planning for a release in the second half of the year to give us time to do more testing and then marketing," he said.

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Out of all the Nintendo Direct announcements last week, the one I was most sad to see not get a PC release date was the sequel to the much beloved Metroidvania Ender Lilies. The announcement came as a bit of a surprise, all told, and I was worried I'd have to consign it to what I've now dubbed my Unicorn Overlord pile of games that are never coming to PC. Happily, publishers Binary Haze Interactive have now confirmed that Ender Magnolia: Bloom In The Mist is, in fact, coming to PC (and other consoles) after all, and that it's coming real soon, as its PC early access release has been set for just weeks away on March 25th. Result.

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Hello folks. With the end of February fast approaching, here's a reminder that we'll be diving into our reader liveblog discussion for February's RPS Game Club pick, Cobalt Core, this coming Thursday, February 29th, at 4pm GMT (which is 8am PT / 11am ET for our American friends). Looking forward to seeing you there!

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Austrian developers Microbird released a new trailer for their upcoming Alpine dungeon-crawler Dungeons Of Hinterberg over the weekend, giving us a closer look at some of the eponymous dungeon environments we'll be biffing monsters in come its release later this summer. In addition to the previously revealed mountainsides and glacial snow peaks, it looks like Hinterberg will have a big green swamp to travel to as well. Question is: will it be a poison FromSoft variety of swamp? Or something more innocuous? Hard to tell with that searingly green water on display, but one thing is certain: with Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree and its confirmed poison swamp launching on June 21st, this summer won't be short on big bog energy.

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Petroglyph, the makers of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection and The Great War: Western Front, have just released their next RTS game into early access. 9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far is a sequel to their 8-Bit Armies series of real-time strategy games, the first of which came out all the way back in 2016. 9-Bit Armies retains the cute, voxel look of its predecessors, only now maps are even larger (4x bigger than the original, say Petroglyph), with naval battles, superstructures for your base and lots more to dig into either alone or in online co-op.

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Lil Guardsman is a game that wears its heart on its sleeve. In a victory for normative determinism, this is a fantasy adventure about a small girl named Lil who somehow becomes the first (and seemingly only) line of defence at a city’s border patrol as a guardsman. At various points, both Lil and those around her frequently call attention to the fact that, yes, you are merely a 12-year-old child who is massively underqualified for this task, and that if you’re going to continue filling in for your good for nothing father who’s down the pub gambling on the latest ball game, then really, what do your superiors expect? It’s very self-aware in that sense, and occasionally verges on breaking the fourth wall. This alone will probably be a fairly good indicator of whether you’ll gel with Lil Guardsman’s sense of humour or not, but for the most part, this is a sweet and jovial narrative adventure whose characterful animation and charming voice cast help bring this oddball tale of fate and consequence to life.

It's also not shy about where it’s taken its main source of inspiration from either. This is fantasy Papers, Please through and though, albeit one that’s more about interrogating and probing would-be citygoers for information than checking documents and spotting inconsistencies. During the day you’ll be working your post, dealing with the increasingly large, but fixed queues of fantasy species all trying to enter the city gate to go about their business. When you're off the clock, it's time to pick up the game's wider plotlines, with Lil able to travel around the city to set locations where she can chat with other townsfolk, sometimes partake in the odd mini-game or two, and visit the local shop before toddling off to bed. It’s admittedly quite a straightforward interpretation of Lucas Pope’s magnum opus, with star ratings denoting clear right and wrong answers for how you deal with each day’s horde, but you know what they say about first impressions. Good ones go a long way.

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I know this sort of thing has been said before around these parts, but in scanning through the endless reams of Steam Next Fest demos earlier this month and trying to work out what these games are and whether they're worth downloading, I truly believe it's a sentiment that's worth repeating. When I first saw the name C.A.R.D.S RPG: The Misty Battlefield appear on the Next Fest landing page, I instantly thought, 'Yes, here we go, now we're talking'.

Well, my first thought was actually, 'Gee, if only there was an easy way to know what this game's about based on just the title alone,' but that's just me being facetious. Ultimately, I have a lot of respect for this kind of naming convention, and the fact it's also being made by the Octopath Traveler developers Acquire is really just the icing on the cake.

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This week's Nintendo Direct was stuffed full of games that will also be making their way to PC over the next few months, but the one I haven't been able to stop thinking about is the newly-announced Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. It's the debut game from a team of indie devs that include Braid artist David Hellman, Carto writer Nick Suttner and Ethereal designer Nicolás Recabarren, and they've also partnered with composer Tomás Batista, who did the music for both Ethereal and Martian colony builder Per Aspera. It's a pretty stacked line-up as these things go, but it's Arranger's world of constantly shifting sliding tiles that's really piqued my curiosity. Come and watch the lovely announcement trailer below and see what I mean.

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Yesterday's Nintendo Direct got rather overshadowed by a certain trailer for Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree, but there were still plenty of good news nuggets to be had in there for us PC folks - which I've summarised for you below. The long and short of it is: more release dates! Loads of 'em! And they're all coming in the first half of 2024 as well. I love it when a schedule comes together.

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As promised last month, a new thing we're doing for RPS Game Club this year is asking you, our dear readers, what you think of each month's game pick in dedicated posts like this. Not just to foster some good old fashioned discussion among your good selves in the comments, but also as a way for those who aren't able to join us for the end-of-month liveblog session to still take part in what everyone has to say about it. We'll also try and stuff as many of your thoughts and observations into the liveblog discussion proper, too, to try and make it feel as communal as possible (and not just us waffling on about it for a full hour).

So, folks, tell us what you think about the excellent Cobalt Core below. What you like, dislike, your favourite moments (or your most hated moments)... Anything goes.

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Every year, there are a couple of game soundtracks I become properly obsessed with. In 2022, I more or less had the music of Tunic and Citizen Sleeper on repeat whenever I left the house. In 2021, it was Chicory. In 2020, it was Coffee Talk and Signs Of The Sojourner, and in 2019, it was all Mutazione, all the time. 2023 was a pretty great year for game music as well, as we not only got Alan Wake 2's exquisite musical set-piece that's honestly just been getting better and more insane as time's gone on, frankly, but also the toe-tappingly brilliant soundtrack of Cobalt Core, which has somehow risen even higher on my forever playlist after revisiting it for this month's RPS Game Club.

Composed by Aaron Cherof, Cobalt Core's music alternates between high-energy battle tracks and calmer, more relaxed ambience. It's so dang good, and an absolutely perfect backdrop for sliding in and out of oncoming missile fire in its roguelike spaceship fights. So come along and jam to some of its best tracks with me below as I pick out some of my musical highlights.

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Xenonauts 2 received its biggest update yet last night, adding a bunch of new things to the early access X-COM-like that will be sure to please your rude Chief Science Officer Gaius Baltar James Callis whatever his name is SMUG FACE. Alongside a brand-new Cruiser UFO to pilfer for new technology to help fight back against your alien invaders, the Milestone 3 update also brings new story missions, weapons and vehicles, extending the campaign's play time from 180 in-game days all the way up to 260.

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There's a particular boss encounter in Balatro that always feels like it's cheating a bit. In this mesmerising poker roguelike, each stage is made up of three blinds - small, big and boss - with the blind essentially being a high score you have to hit by playing different kinds of poker hands - your traditional flushes, straights, pairs and so on. Each hand has its own number of chips and multiplier bonuses associated with it, and Balatro's whole deal is about shuffling closer to victory by making the most of the cards you're dealt. While some blinds are tiny, stretching to just 300 or 450 early on in a run, they quickly start ramping up into the tens of thousands as each successfully defeated boss blind ups the ante and the accompanying stakes. Reach an ante of eight, and bingo, you've won a run of Balatro.

The boss blind I keep coming a cropper with, though, is The Flint. This sucker not only halves a hand's chip score, but it also cuts its multiplier in two as well, and I've yet to figure out exactly how to defeat it. Sometimes it appears with a blind of just 600, but other times it's been an enormous 22,000. In fairness, all bosses have little tricks like this. Some will debuff certain card suites, making them useless in your overall score count. Others may only let you play one hand type the entire match, while the cheeky Tooth will deduct you $1 for every card used. But Balatro isn't simply about beating the odds with smart and intelligent card plays. It's about bending, twisting and abusing those odds to your will - also through smart and intelligent card plays. Cheating isn't just encouraged in Balatro. It's damn near mandatory, and it's all thanks to the brilliantly conceived joker cards that give the game its Latin-based name.

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As time-travelling fantasy APRG Last Epoch gears up for its 1.0 release this week, developers Eleventh Hour Games have revealed the final crop of character classes that will be arriving in the game on February 21st. Technically, they're the final pair of the 15 mastery classes that you'll be able to unlock after working through one of Last Epoch's five base classes, but listen, I don't even need to look at the other 14 masteries to know what I'm going to be aiming for come release. The Falconer specialisation of Last Epoch's Rogue class just sounds too good to pass up.

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Modern art puzzler Please, Touch The Artwork was a bit of a surprise hit when it came out in 2022. It not only poked fun at the reverential distance enforced on us by stuffy old art galleries, but it also invited us to recreate abstract modern masterworks by clicking, tracing and generally getting up close and personal with them with our big, colourful in-game fingers. Now, solo developer Thomas Waterzooi is back with Please, Touch The Artwork 2, which takes us on a slightly different journey through the art world as a hidden object point and click game. It's out today, is completely free, and was made to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the death of the Belgian expressionist and surrealist painter James Ensor.

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I promise I'm not trying to turn RPS into a Soggins the Frog fansite, but... If you have a) been enjoying Cobalt Core as part of RPS Game Club this month, and b) especially like it when Soggins turns up with his ship of malfunctioning missile launchers, then I implore you to make Sunshine Heavy Industries your next port of call in your Steam library. It's what the Cobalt Core devs Rocket Rat Games made first, and you can immediately see a lot of shared DNA between the two games - not least its chunky, charming pixel visuals and some crossover between its cast of characters - including our pal Soggins.

It is, I should stress, a very different game to Cobalt Core - it's a sandboxy spaceship builder with zero combat involved, for starters - but I've been playing it again this week ahead of some other Game Club-themed articles I've got cooking, and I've been having a lovely time with it. Not least because I get to spend more time with Soggins the very smug frog, all while listening to even more excellent chill tunes from Cobalt Core composer Aaron Cherof.

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The first Streets Of Rogue was an RPS favourite when it launched back in 2019 (we literally couldn't stop playing it), and we've known for a while now that its sequel, Streets Of Rogue 2, is due to arrive later this year. Ahead of the game's launch, developer Matt Dabrowski has started releasing a series of dev diary videos detailing his design process and how it's all coming together. The latest is about how he creates the game's proc-gen open worlds and biomes, and it's a fascinating watch if you've ever wondered how its particular blend of randomised chaos works behind the scenes.

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If you've been enjoying the excellent Cobalt Core as part of this month's RPS Game Club, you may well have stumbled into Soggins the frog along your travels. Running into this hapless buffoon is always a delight in Cobalt Core, as he's one of the few special characters who doesn't instantly attack you on sight. Rather, the task here is always to try and save him from his own idiocy - namely, his malfunctioning ship that keeps firing his missiles right back toward him. He's an ungrateful little sod if you do rescue him from certain doom, but I kinda love him for it anyway - and thanks to an industrious pair of modders, you can now have Soggins join your crew to inflict his own special brand of personal chaos on you.

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Readers, consider this is a public service announcement for (deep breath) Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Trilogy Starring Lara Croft. Do not, for the love of all that's ancient and holy, play this game with its newly-added modern control scheme. The original tank controls are by far and away the best (and only real) option for going back and experiencing Lara's OG adventures from the late 90s, and I'm not just saying that out of nostalgia. The modern controls are bad, plain and simple, and are as much an enemy to Tomb Raider's incredibly precise mode of 3D platforming as the tigers and wolves that stalk its trap-filled catacombs. They are utterly maddening, and the antithesis of everything Tomb Raider stands for. I implore you, do not go anywhere near them, for your own sake as well as Lara's.

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February's Steam Next Fest demo bonanza officially concluded on Monday, and Valve have now revealed the 50 most played games you all tucked into across the week-long event. Ordered by the number of unique players that spent time with them during Next Fest proper (meaning all those early demo plays from earlier in the month haven't been counted), the most popular game of the lot was one that was only formally announced right at the end of January. So congratulations Dungeonborne - your blend of PvPvE dungeon crawling and fantasy skelly monsters clearly struck a chord with this year's Next Festers.

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By now you'll probably have read quite a bit about our preview adventures in Inflexion Games' upcoming fantasy survival adventure Nightingale - including our slightly raucous attempts to interview CEO Aaryn Flynn while instant KO-ing tree monsters and abusing our supplies of ice bullets. But outside this guided co-op session, several members of the RPS Treehouse were playing it on their lonesome last week, too, getting to grips with Nightingale's particular flavour of sticks-and-stones crafting, cooking up meat and berry wraps to keep ourselves fed, and generally being cajoled and maybe even lightly seduced by our fae Shakespearean guide, Puck.

With so many folks playing it - some diehard survival heads and others who are mostly just glad to be having a break from Palworld for a spell - it quickly became apparent that lots of us had quite different takes on how Nightingale worked as a craft 'em up. I swear, I don't think our RPS Slack chat has ever seen such passionate discussions about UI layouts and hotkey assignments, so we thought it might be fun (and useful) to try and distil some of those thoughts for you. Will Nightingale succeed in capturing survival newcomers with its peculiar blend of gaslamp tea leaves, or will it chaff like a Victorian corset for the survival hardcore? Join us as we discuss some of its finer points below.

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Steam Next Fest may be over for another few months, but dozens of demos are still alive and kicking, it seems - which is good news for me, who still has a good half dozen on my to do list, and also good news for you, as it means you still have time to check out the really quite good demo for Stand-Alone, a fast, 2D hack and slasher where you play as a robot-powered sheep packing a very large sword. Wolves have broken into your home and murdered all your friends, but you play as the one sheep who got away - or rather, a sheep that's been fused with a surprisingly powerful robot capable of producing a honking great greatsword to make their escape with. Thus begins the wolves' hot pursuit - not least because this robot also seems to be kind of sleeper agent for them - and your roguelike-shaped quest to avenge your fallen friends.

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When I first saw Never Grave: The Witch And The Curse rising up the Steam Next Fest charts at the end of last week, I thought, "Oh! That's a neat Hollow Knight-looking Metroivanida roguelike, I'll definitely give that a go." And having played its demo over the weekend, I can confirm: it's certainly an intriguing little thing that I'll be keen to keep an eye on when it launches into early access, possibly sometime next month.

The biggest surprise was that, despite its very Hollow Knight-looking visuals, it actually plays more like Dead Cells in practice. Instead of being a sentient lump of flesh able to inhabit infinite bodies, you're a magical witch's hat that can possess, discard and rematerialise your chosen sack of limbs at the touch of a button. The second thing that surprised me was that it also has quite a substantial base/village building aspect to it on the side, and the third - well, perhaps this isn't so much of a surprise given everything I've just said, because it also turns out this is the next game from Palworld developers Pocketpair. Yep, it all makes a bit more sense now.

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