The enhanced version of classic point-and-click adventure Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars now has a release date: 19th September.

This "Reforged" version will be available across PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Series X S, Nintendo Switch and PC (Windows, macOS and Linux).

The game's redrawn visuals have been upgraded to 4K, but there's also a new story mode UI including subtle hints aimed at new players.

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The Crimson Diamond is a proper old-school style puzzle adventure. It's 2D pixel art, with a limited colour palette as in EGA games, and you control it with a text parser, like King's Quest or one of them other Sierra adventures old men like Graham remember. It's important to mention this up front because it's very possible that, despite The Crimson Diamond's tale of betrayal, murder, and mineral rights in 1914 Canada, the text parser element will be a Rubicon you instantly can't be arsed to cross. A not unreasonable stance - though I think the text parser in The Crimson Diamond is fantastic. Such beef that I have with this adventure game is down to the specificity required to solve some of the puzzles.

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The Crimson Diamond is a proper old-school style puzzle adventure. It's 2D pixel art, with a limited colour palette as in EGA games, and you control it with a text parser, like King's Quest or one of them other Sierra adventures old men like Graham remember. It's important to mention this up front because it's very possible that, despite The Crimson Diamond's tale of betrayal, murder, and mineral rights in 1914 Canada, the text parser element will be a Rubicon you instantly can't be arsed to cross. A not unreasonable stance - though I think the text parser in The Crimson Diamond is fantastic. Such beef that I have with this adventure game is down to the specificity required to solve some of the puzzles.

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If you miss Myst, but feel only vertigo and disgust for its recent 3D reinventions, you might find yourself salivating over first-person point-and-clicker Neyyah - a Mystalike or more precisely, Rivenalike from Defy Reality Entertainment and MicroProse, which has just been dated for early access release on 27th August. Real-time movement and exploration? Rotatable polygons? Pfff. These are firmly pre-rendered worlds, just like Grandpappy Atrus used to bake.

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I've never been a poetry guy, not because I don't like it, I've just never gone out of my way to read them over books or whatnot. The poems I've engaged with the most are those read out during wedding ceremonies, those that pop-up before the start of a horror game, or The Tiger by 6-year old Nael that occasionally pops up as I'm doomscrolling. But thanks to the multiplayer web game "fridge poetry", where you drag words to create poems, I might become a day-to-day poem guy. Going off my first effort, I don't think many will appreciate my career switch.

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In the heyday of Sierra's adventure game years, there was a series called Space Quest that featured an intergalactic janitor named Roger Wilco. The series was more satirical than King's Quest, less preachy than Police Quest, and not quite as adult as Leisure Suit Larry. Spearheaded by Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe - a pair of devs who called themselves "Two Guys from Andromeda" - Space Quest was renowned for its humour, and there was a nice sense of progression throughout most of the series, with Roger Wilco leveling up from working class spaceman to the head of his own Star Trek ship.

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If you miss Myst, but feel only vertigo and disgust for its recent 3D reinventions, you might find yourself salivating over first-person point-and-clicker Neyyah - a Mystalike or more precisely, Rivenalike from Defy Reality Entertainment and MicroProse, which has just been dated for early access release on 27th August. Real-time movement and exploration? Rotatable polygons? Pfff. These are firmly pre-rendered worlds, just like Grandpappy Atrus used to bake.

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I've never been a poetry guy, not because I don't like it, I've just never gone out of my way to read them over books or whatnot. The poems I've engaged with the most are those read out during wedding ceremonies, those that pop-up before the start of a horror game, or The Tiger by 6-year old Nael that occasionally pops up as I'm doomscrolling. But thanks to the multiplayer web game "fridge poetry", where you drag words to create poems, I might become a day-to-day poem guy. Going off my first effort, I don't think many will appreciate my career switch.

Read more

In the heyday of Sierra's adventure game years, there was a series called Space Quest that featured an intergalactic janitor named Roger Wilco. The series was more satirical than King's Quest, less preachy than Police Quest, and not quite as adult as Leisure Suit Larry. Spearheaded by Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe - a pair of devs who called themselves "Two Guys from Andromeda" - Space Quest was renowned for its humour, and there was a nice sense of progression throughout most of the series, with Roger Wilco leveling up from working class spaceman to the head of his own Star Trek ship.

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Indie dev Black Tabby Games has deleted a series of tweets in which the studio had encouraged would-be fans to pirate the game after it went viral courtesy of a Markiplier playthrough.

Initially, Black Tabby encouraged players to hop on over to Steam and buy a copy themselves before watching a YouTube series, as the game is described as being "wildly reactive to your choices", and "every playthrough [is] personalised" to the person playing it.

As spotted by PCGN, even though Black Tabby threw up a Steam sale to entice players to pick it up, it then went even further, suggesting players pirate a copy if they don't have the money to purchase the game legitimately right now.

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Loom might be one of the most underappreciated games in the LucasArts library. This is a library in which almost every game is considered a classic: Monkey Island is endlessly quotable, Grim Fandango is a noir delight, and even The Dig has plenty of fans. Loom has always struggled for recognition in comparison.

That said, I sense a growing appreciation for Loom among people who write about games. You don't have to look far for essays recognising Loom as a succinct, often beautiful experience that remains singular nearly 35 years after its release. For me, it also provides a bright example of how to create a family-friendly adventure that intrigues adults, doesn't condescend kids, and is driven by a sense of wonder.

The game is the creation of Brian Moriarty, a developer who doesn't have enough credits to his name. His skill is indicated by the fact that Loom was his first foray into graphical adventures following an early career spent working on text-based games such as Wishbringer. Wishbringer was purposefully commissioned by its publisher Infocom to be an accessible introduction to the genre, and the skills needed to strip a genre back and create something streamlined and inviting - not to mention less infuriating than its stablemates - clearly fed into Loom. You can complete Loom in two or three hours without too much in the way of challenge and with no obvious roadblocks. What Loom has instead is atmosphere. It's transporting. It's little wonder that Moriarty was subsequently brought on board to create the story for the Steven Spielberg-produced game The Dig, even if production challenges led to him eventually leaving the project.

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Limited Run Games has announced that 20 new-old games will be released in physical form, including Fear Effect, Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, Starship Troopers: Extermination, and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus.

As part of its LRG3 2024 showcase, the distributor confirmed not only the 20th anniversary edition of Beyond Good & Evil, but also physical releases of classic PS1 games Gex Trilogy, Tomba Special Edition and Tomba 2, Fear Effect, and more – much, much more.

In true LRG style, the Limited Run Games editions of the following games will be released in physical form only, including:

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You forgot about Habbo Hotel, didn't you? Habbo Hotel. With those words and the above image, it is possible I have sent a shocking dose of neurochemical nostalgia through your brain and into your various internal organs. Your vision blurs. You sweat. You are 12 years old again, frightened and intrigued at the idea of graduating to teenhood, bathing in the cool glow of a cream-coloured CRT computer monitor. "Habbo Hotel is back!" is what I might shout if I did not know better, snapping you back to the present day in an act of psychological whiplash. The truth is the pixellated hangout zone of the early 2000s never went away. It has been alive this whole time. You forgot about the Hotel. But the Hotel did not forget about you.

Today, developers Sulake are doing something to jog your memory. They are calling it Habbo Hotel: Origins. I ask you to think carefully before you go there.

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You forgot about Habbo Hotel, didn't you? Habbo Hotel. With those words and the above image, it is possible I have sent a shocking dose of neurochemical nostalgia through your brain and into your various internal organs. Your vision blurs. You sweat. You are 12 years old again, frightened and intrigued at the idea of graduating to teenhood, bathing in the cool glow of a cream-coloured CRT computer monitor. "Habbo Hotel is back!" is what I might shout if I did not know better, snapping you back to the present day in an act of psychological whiplash. The truth is the pixellated hangout zone of the early 2000s never went away. It has been alive this whole time. You forgot about the Hotel. But the Hotel did not forget about you.

Today, developers Sulake are doing something to jog your memory. They are calling it Habbo Hotel: Origins. I ask you to think carefully before you go there.

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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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This piece is being written on a train as I trundle towards our very first staff meeting with Rock Paper Shotgun's new overlords. The morning is cloudy but bright and calm, the north London suburbs are a blissful checkerboard of red roofs and flourishing lawns, hope glistens faintly in the gutters and ditches beside the tube. How unlike the innards of Centum, a point-and-click horror game (Steam page here) that begins with a dreary retro desktop interface on which there are curious text files, curioser decryption tools and most curious of all, an .exe of some kind that drops you into a simulation consisting of a stone prison chamber. Hang on, I'm changing trains...

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The music in haunting 2D adventure Norco was so good it’s one of the few soundtracks I’ve actually bought on Steam, so I’m deeply intrigued to learn that developer Geography of Robots are putting music - and dancing - front and center in the new demo for their next project, Silenus. You can bop your way between screens, reader!

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Hellblade 2 leads the new games coming to Xbox Game Pass this month, alongside Soulslike Lords of the Fallen.

The sequel to Senua's Sacrifice, Hellblade 2: Senua's Saga will be a nightmarish visual feast when it's added to Game Pass on day one, though it only runs at 30fps on Xbox consoles. PC specs have already been released.

Lords of the Fallen released in October last year and has since received a large number of updates to improve its performance on both PC and console. Its most recent, and final, update adds modifiers for a rogue-lite challenge.

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Today I learned Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert is working on a new game, which he describes as "Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park". Well, hello there!

Work on this project actually started several months ago, but it only came to my attention this afternoon thanks to TimeExtension. I have since done more browsing, and come across some posts on Terrible Toybox, as well as Gilbert's own Mastodon page.

Now, admittedly there still isn't a huge amount of information on Gilbert's upcoming project at this time. The game doesn't even have a proper name yet, and rather has been labelled as Game Name TBD on Terrible Toybox's website. Meanwhile, Gilbert has been using the hashtag #rpgtbd to tag his social media posts.

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Genuinely legendary game designer Ron Gilbert – whose works include the classic adventure game Monkey Island, the RTS Total Annihilation (as producer), and the term “cutscenes” – is making a new game.

The Terrible Toybox website describes it as “Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park”, and one of the other people working on it is Elissa Black, co-designer and writer of the wonderful Objects In Space… who is also, I’ve just learned from her personal website, working on a retro 90s style turn-based spaceship command game influenced by the 1971 mainframe adaptation of Star Trek. Argh, so many good things in one article.

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Deep in my heart I know that Hall of Fame-type accolades are largely just a way of dressing up a way of marketing your awards show/museum/whatever, but I also like to occasionally cast away the cynic in me and imagine a world in which this industry’s most important games and creators are rightly recognised, celebrated and preserved rather than being locked away in the vault of billion-dollar companies and left to rot. Imagine!

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

The more I've tried to pin down the definition of a god in a game, the harder time I'm having with it. I began by thinking 'out-and-out gods only', the kind that represent the dominant powers in the games we play, whether we fight against them or with them. But the more I thought about it, the more that definition broadened, because aren't we always a kind of god when we play a game - don't we always have a kind of godlike power? We are able to die and keep trying until we've - usually - defeated a godlike boss or bosses, depending on what the game is. What does that make us if not a god? I am open to any and all arguments here, so have at it. Which gods in games do you think are the best?

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

The more I've tried to pin down the definition of a god in a game, the harder time I'm having with it. I began by thinking 'out-and-out gods only', the kind that represent the dominant powers in the games we play, whether we fight against them or with them. But the more I thought about it, the more that definition broadened, because aren't we always a kind of god when we play a game - don't we always have a kind of godlike power? We are able to die and keep trying until we've - usually - defeated a godlike boss or bosses, depending on what the game is. What does that make us if not a god? I am open to any and all arguments here, so have at it. Which gods in games do you think are the best?

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

The more I've tried to pin down the definition of a god in a game, the harder time I'm having with it. I began by thinking 'out-and-out gods only', the kind that represent the dominant powers in the games we play, whether we fight against them or with them. But the more I thought about it, the more that definition broadened, because aren't we always a kind of god when we play a game - don't we always have a kind of godlike power? We are able to die and keep trying until we've - usually - defeated a godlike boss or bosses, depending on what the game is. What does that make us if not a god? I am open to any and all arguments here, so have at it. Which gods in games do you think are the best?

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I'm not sure how to classify Leila, a hand drawn, sort of point and click, sort of puzzle adventure out this summer. I'd say it's maybe a Gorogoa-like, but the demo is also a series of little vignettes that sort of reminded me of Edith Finch, but way less in depth. It's about a middle aged woman navigating her past and present by taking a closer at her mind, which means sorting through a load of magical realist meldings of memories. It's very pretty, and I liked the demo a lot.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week we've gone with a bit of a theme: matchmaking. We've pulled on some of our most memorable matchmaking experiences from games we loved. Can you remember any of yours?

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

RuneScape is a game with a lot of grinding and, in many cases, this means a lot of standing around. Be it Woodcutting or Fishing, you'll find yourself fixed to one location where the only movement is between skill-spots or when it's time for a bank run to deposit your goods. (Unless you're a litterbug who just dumps everything on the ground.) Due to this I, and many other RuneScape players, have partaken in the long standing tradition of chatting away as your XP slowly climbs to the next level.

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Remember a couple of years ago, when Funko announced a collaboration with Jon Burton's 10.10 Games to release new big budget video games? Well, the time has come to see exactly what this collaboration has produced, and it all looks rather chaotic.

The appropriately-named Funko Fusion is described as a co-op action "extravaganza" full of more brands than you can shake a stick at: Jurassic World, The Umbrella Academy, Battlestar Galactica and Nope. The Simon Pegg-fronted Hot Fuzz is even making a big-headed showing in the upcoming game, and that's far from all the properties players can expect to see on release.

Don't believe me? Well, you can see for yourself in Funko Fusion's reveal trailer - which features more giant head decapitations than I was expecting - below:

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Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler has compared its new game No Rest for the Wicked to Lord of the Rings, stating there's plenty to come after the game's 1.0 release - so don't expect a third Ori game "any time soon".

The dark fantasy action-RPG released in early access earlier this month, but after its forthcoming full 1.0 release Moon Studios plans to work on the game for "another five to 10 years" according to a post by Mahler on social media site X.

"Folks, we're nowhere near done with No Rest for the Wicked. There is so much that we've already built that none of you even know about and we want to deliver this in a masterful way!" said Mahler.

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Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is a legendary drawing of a nude with his arms and legs reaching towards the rim and corners of a circle and square. It's often invoked as an archetype for the humanist worldview of Man the Measure and Centre of all Things, holding a perfectly proportioned universe in shape. Rin D'Lorah, the heroine of new narrative RPG Sky Of Tides, is a bit like the Vitruvian Man, and the result is a game I find at once bewitching and powerfully offputting in its refusal to satisfy the conventions of the genre.

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Your feelings on Funko Pop probably fall into one of two categories: you either hate the black-eyed, copy-paste figures modelled on pop-culture characters with a burning passion, or you own enough of them to construct a small fortress and defend your newfounded Funko nation from the government. Either way, it looks like the first video game starring the ubiquitous toy collectables might somehow scratch your itch.

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Trailered last night, Centum is "an unreliable narrative-driven adventure where everything may be a lie", according to the Steam page. Does the suggestion that everything may be a lie also apply to the suggestion itself? Is this an unreliable Steam page? Perhaps the game is secretly a cheerful Playmobile platformer with plentiful ledge-assist, rather than a horrible point-and-clicker that starts you off in a dark cell with a bunch of obviously cursed artefacts, and gets steadily worse.

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As the calendar continues its ceaseless onward march, Epic has announced its next batch of weekly Epic Games Store freebies, which this time look very much like Cold War shooter Industria and post-apocalyptic RPG bundle Lisa: Definitive Edition.

Both games are free to add to your Epic Games Store library starting Thursday, 25th April, and if you need a nudge toward the 'download' button, here's what you can expect from each:

Industria, coming from developer Bleakmill, describes itself as an atmospheric first-person shooter set in Cold War-era East Berlin. "Unravel the secrets of a mysterious parallel dimension while searching for a missing colleague," goes the official blurb. "Explore a haunting reality where the truth awaits. Discover the dark past that lies beyond."

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No Rest for the Wicked is out now on early access, giving us our first glimpse at Moon Studios' latest project. The developer's prior offering - Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and The Will of the Wisps - turned the Metroidvania style of game on its head, offering a powerful, fresh experience that is difficult to forget. And now, four years later, Moon looks set to do the same for action RPGs with No Rest for the Wicked. Simply put, No Rest for the Wicked couples a stunning visual design with elements inspired by From Software's Souls titles, Blizzard's Diablo and even Animal Crossing - and yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

At its core, Wicked remains a game rooted in the Unity Engine but with a vast range of customisations transforming it into its own thing, hence the nickname - Moonity. This, however, is used only for the game's presentation layer - the graphics you see on-screen. Moon has also built a new simulation engine - built on top of Exit Games' Quantum Engine - to handle game logic, including a fully deterministic 3D physics system for networking, which No Rest for the Wicked will feature at a later date.

What makes this setup work well is the division between rendering and simulation - basically, input responsiveness is separate from frame-rate so, if you're playing on a lower end platform, like a Steam Deck, at 30fps, the game will still feel as responsive as a game running at a higher frame-rate. The visuals, however, are striking. First and foremost, Wicked supports HDR on day one - this is important as we have largely considered Ori and the Will of the Wisps to stand out as one of the best examples of HDR in any game released to date. The HDR implementation is superb and just as intense and engaging as Ori. It makes a gigantic difference if you use an HDR display.

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At the end of last year I played the demo for An English Haunting and got very excited. I like horror that has a generally spooky, creeping dread vibe rather than being wall-to-wall cheap jumpscares and gore, and that sort of stuff is thin on the ground. But it'll be less so from May the 15th, cos that's when this ghosty point and click puzzle adventure is out! Hooray! The demo is still on Steam if you want a taste before then. In the meantime, the release date announcement comes with a new trailer to enjoy.

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As the calendar continues its ceaseless onward march, Epic has announced its next batch of weekly Epic Games Store freebies, which this time look very much like Cold War shooter Industria and post-apocalyptic RPG bundle Lisa: Definitive Edition.

Both games are free to add to your Epic Games Store library starting Thursday, 25th April, and if you need a nudge toward the 'download' button, here's what you can expect from each:

Industria, coming from developer Bleakmill, describes itself as an atmospheric first-person shooter set in Cold War-era East Berlin. "Unravel the secrets of a mysterious parallel dimension while searching for a missing colleague," goes the official blurb. "Explore a haunting reality where the truth awaits. Discover the dark past that lies beyond."

Read more

No Rest for the Wicked is out now on early access, giving us our first glimpse at Moon Studios' latest project. The developer's prior offering - Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and The Will of the Wisps - turned the Metroidvania style of game on its head, offering a powerful, fresh experience that is difficult to forget. And now, four years later, Moon looks set to do the same for action RPGs with No Rest for the Wicked. Simply put, No Rest for the Wicked couples a stunning visual design with elements inspired by From Software's Souls titles, Blizzard's Diablo and even Animal Crossing - and yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

At its core, Wicked remains a game rooted in the Unity Engine but with a vast range of customisations transforming it into its own thing, hence the nickname - Moonity. This, however, is used only for the game's presentation layer - the graphics you see on-screen. Moon has also built a new simulation engine - built on top of Exit Games' Quantum Engine - to handle game logic, including a fully deterministic 3D physics system for networking, which No Rest for the Wicked will feature at a later date.

What makes this setup work well is the division between rendering and simulation - basically, input responsiveness is separate from frame-rate so, if you're playing on a lower end platform, like a Steam Deck, at 30fps, the game will still feel as responsive as a game running at a higher frame-rate. The visuals, however, are striking. First and foremost, Wicked supports HDR on day one - this is important as we have largely considered Ori and the Will of the Wisps to stand out as one of the best examples of HDR in any game released to date. The HDR implementation is superb and just as intense and engaging as Ori. It makes a gigantic difference if you use an HDR display.

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No Rest For The Wicked, the top-down soulslike that released yesterday in Steam early access, is already seeing its fair share of performance and QOL issues, including instability, lack of keybinding options, and players losing their progress. In response, developer Moon Studios have put out a blog saying that, yes, they’re aware of the problems and, yes, they’re actively looking to address the most common hiccups.

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Last time, you decided that gliding powers are better than Dragon's Dogma 2's Unmaking Arrow. Honestly I'm surprised it was that close (66% vs 33%—don't sweat the rounding), and I'm proud of your ability to weigh a whole concept against a single-game implementation. We are so good at this. Onwards! This week, I ask you to choose between placing things in two very different ways. What's better: a 'put back' action, or standing atop another player's head in an FPS?

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The indie studio behind last year's incredible Saltsea Chronicles has halted production entirely, citing difficulty securing funding.

Die Gute Fabrik is also known for 2019's Mutazione and the local multiplayer compilation Sportfriends from 2014.

The studio halted production last week on 19th February, it revealed today, and said it made the news public to help its members find roles elsewhere.

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The two Ori games were gorgeous platformers that challenged your dexterity while tugging on your heartstrings. The next game from developers Moon Studios seems more likely to do the former than the latter. No Rest For The Wicked is a Souls-ish action RPG that apparently thinks you're extremely wicked.

It also got a release date today during a showcase stream: April 18th.

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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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2024 continues its efforts to be the worst year in my memory, as delightful indie development studio Die Gute Fabrik have halted work. The studio, notable for its lovely story-driven games about forging personal connections in strange or difficult worlds - e.g. Mutazione and the more recent Saltsea Chronicles - was unable to find funding for its new project, after a year of searching, so is shutting up work. All of the staff, including the leadership team, will be looking for new work come mid-march.

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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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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by handcrafted art, intense fighting game violence, cosy management, and heaps more attractive and interesting indie games. Check these out!

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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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Jagex, the British developers of veteran fantasy MMO RuneScape, have announced their acquisition by a potentially surprising new owner: the private equity firm best-known for owning major sports brands including Six Nations Rugby, Spanish football league LaLiga, French football governing body Ligue de Football and the Women’s Tennis Association. The deal was reportedly closed for almost a billion pounds.

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