PowerWash Simulator’s next paid crossover after Warhammer 40,000, Back to the Future and Spongebob Squarepants will sprinkle a little something in its tank of water. That something, of course, is 19th-century literature, as developers FuturLab let us wash our way through their take on the surreal world of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Southfield cropped up earlier this year as the joyously chaotic meeting of a physics sandbox in the vein of Gang Beasts or Human: Fall Flat with a farming/management sim like Stardew Valley or Satisfactory. The colourful title had been due to release this coming Monday, but developers Radical Forge have now pushed back its launch date indefinitely in order to prioritise “the health and well-being of our team”.
Champion Shift is a Vampire Survivors-like I’ve been having quite a bit of fun with for the last few weeks. That’s partly because it’s a solid top-down auto-shooter with roguelike elements, and mostly because you can transform into a freakin’ car.
After years of anticipation, Elden Ring’s first - and only - expansion Shadow of the Erdtree is finally out as of today. While there are plenty of intriguing secrets hiding in the new corner (it’s a big corner) of the Lands Between, Steam Deck players might stumble upon a not-so-welcome new discovery too, courtesy of a bug that can make your game unresponsive.
Look, who knows when we’ll see Fallout 5 - there’s an increasingly less-than-zero chance we’ll all be living in a real post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland by the time Bethesda get around to revealing anything, if their deliberately slow approach to The Elder Scrolls 6 (it’s been nearly THIRTEEN years since Skyrim) is much to go by. Still, even without a full sequel, Fallout is all around us - in multiple seasons of a television show, in Fortnite, and now in Call of Duty.
If you were playing Final Fantasy XIV in December 2021, you will remember the launch of its last expansion Endwalker - though not for all the right reasons. The otherwise fantastic cap to the near-decade-long Hydelyn-Zodiark was beset by a barrage of technical problems at launch, as the MMO’s servers buckled under the weight of record numbers of players, leading to hours-long queues to login that would often end in an error that then kicked you back into the queue. As someone that sat there for literal hours watching the numbers tick down, it wasn’t a great time - even if the wait was, ultimately, worth it.
When it comes to the ultimate showdown of all-time great fighting games, Marvel vs Capcom 2 might well take my personal bet for being the best of the best. I spent countless hours throwing down with housemates, friends and random passers-by who looked like they were up for a brawl during my teenage years. Yet the arcade classic has - as far as I can tell - never been given a proper PC release before the recent announcement of a new bundle of the comic-book crossover series headed to Steam this year.
The original Resident Evil might be returning to PC - and soon! - if recent signs hold true. An age rating for the 1996 survival-horror classic was recently confirmed by European suitability judges PEGI, hinting at an impending (re-)release for the almost three-decade-old zombie game.
A Quiet Place is a very solid horror movie that seemed primed for a video game adaptation from the off. After all, it already had all the ingredients of a video game right there: the whole film is essentially one overlong stealth mission with a punishing fail state - any crunchy glass or other noise would immediately draw the attention of deadly alien monsters - and at one point there’s a whiteboard with the narrative equivalent of Dead Space’s “CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS” graffiti scrawled on it. Lo and behold, we’re getting a Quiet Place video game.
Baldur's Gate 3’s upcoming mod support update, which will introduce official modding tools to the sprawling Dungeons & Dragons RPG later this year, will effectively serve as Larian’s swan song for their work on the game.
Remember Lords of the Fallen? No, not that one. This one. Last year’s reboot of the 2014 game of exactly the same name - despite the successor originally being a numbered sequel, then at least having a ‘The’ at the start of its title to help tell them apart a little - will now get its own follow-up in a third Lords of the Fallen game. The upcoming sequel doesn’t have a name yet, but I really hope they stick with the bit and just call it “Lords of the Fallen” again.
There’ve been a ton of Jackbox Party Packs over the last near-decade, each following a fairly similar structure: one or two standout games you’ll want to replay, a couple you might dip into every now and then, and at least one you’ll try once and then never bother with again. With 10 different packs to pick from, it becomes an increasing fuss to remember which pack has which game in, and then boot it up just to play its highlight before repeating the process when you choose to play something else.
Cities: Skylines 2 has found a delightfully straightforward solution to the very real-world problem of greedy landlords demanding excessive rent payments. The city-builder sequel will simply delete all its virtual leeches in its next patch, helping to bring down the cost of living in your digital metropolis.
A remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, the grid-based strategy spin-off from the RPG series that easily ranks as one of the best Final Fantasy games ever made, is reportedly in the works - giving hope of its first official PC release.
Look, everyone wants to play Bloodborne on PC. It’s one of those universally accepted truths, like gravity or pizza being delicious. And, yes, nobody really knows why Bloodborne isn’t on PC yet, almost a decade after it released on PlayStation 4 - despite Sony’s apparent delight in bringing every other PlayStation exclusive to PC, just to mock us. It’s one of those universally accepted unknowns, like how gravity works or the actual best pizza topping. (It’s glue, if you believe AI.)
It’s been a decade - 10 years! - since Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s fair to assume that you might’ve forgotten what happened during the last Dragon Age game, or some of the specific choices you made back in the misty ages of 2014. Whether you remember or not, this year’s long-awaited sequel Dragon Age: The Veilguard should have you covered, with the ability to carry over your story choices from the previous game and get a refresher on what happened last time around.
Shadow Of The Erdtree is out in under 10 days, but some players must be in for a surprise if they expect to be able to jump in straight away. As it turns out, most players on Steam haven’t even progressed far enough in the original game to access the DLC - something publishers Bandai Namco have now issued a friendly FYI about.
When I was a kid, one of my absolute favourite things to do on the PC was to mess around with a free virtual Felix - like the cat from the cat food adverts - who would roam around the Windows XP desktop, chasing balls of string between program windows and curling up to take a nap on the taskbar. I have no idea where the game came from - a dream, perhaps - but 30 years later, I still think about it as a perfectly formed way to lose hours on the PC without actually doing anything.
Sumo Group, the British video game collective which owns developers Sumo Digital, publishers Secret Mode and more - including Everybody's Gone to the Rapture devs The Chinese Room - is laying off hundreds of staff, cutting 15% of their workforce “to better navigate the upcoming challenges expected in the coming months”.
PowerWash Simulator’s next paid crossover after Warhammer 40,000, Back to the Future and Spongebob Squarepants will sprinkle a little something in its tank of water. That something, of course, is 19th-century literature, as developers FuturLab let us wash our way through their take on the surreal world of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Southfield cropped up earlier this year as the joyously chaotic meeting of a physics sandbox in the vein of Gang Beasts or Human: Fall Flat with a farming/management sim like Stardew Valley or Satisfactory. The colourful title had been due to release this coming Monday, but developers Radical Forge have now pushed back its launch date indefinitely in order to prioritise “the health and well-being of our team”.
Champion Shift is a Vampire Survivors-like I’ve been having quite a bit of fun with for the last few weeks. That’s partly because it’s a solid top-down auto-shooter with roguelike elements, and mostly because you can transform into a freakin’ car.
After years of anticipation, Elden Ring’s first - and only - expansion Shadow of the Erdtree is finally out as of today. While there are plenty of intriguing secrets hiding in the new corner (it’s a big corner) of the Lands Between, Steam Deck players might stumble upon a not-so-welcome new discovery too, courtesy of a bug that can make your game unresponsive.
Look, who knows when we’ll see Fallout 5 - there’s an increasingly less-than-zero chance we’ll all be living in a real post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland by the time Bethesda get around to revealing anything, if their deliberately slow approach to The Elder Scrolls 6 (it’s been nearly THIRTEEN years since Skyrim) is much to go by. Still, even without a full sequel, Fallout is all around us - in multiple seasons of a television show, in Fortnite, and now in Call of Duty.
If you were playing Final Fantasy XIV in December 2021, you will remember the launch of its last expansion Endwalker - though not for all the right reasons. The otherwise fantastic cap to the near-decade-long Hydelyn-Zodiark was beset by a barrage of technical problems at launch, as the MMO’s servers buckled under the weight of record numbers of players, leading to hours-long queues to login that would often end in an error that then kicked you back into the queue. As someone that sat there for literal hours watching the numbers tick down, it wasn’t a great time - even if the wait was, ultimately, worth it.
When it comes to the ultimate showdown of all-time great fighting games, Marvel vs Capcom 2 might well take my personal bet for being the best of the best. I spent countless hours throwing down with housemates, friends and random passers-by who looked like they were up for a brawl during my teenage years. Yet the arcade classic has - as far as I can tell - never been given a proper PC release before the recent announcement of a new bundle of the comic-book crossover series headed to Steam this year.
The original Resident Evil might be returning to PC - and soon! - if recent signs hold true. An age rating for the 1996 survival-horror classic was recently confirmed by European suitability judges PEGI, hinting at an impending (re-)release for the almost three-decade-old zombie game.
A Quiet Place is a very solid horror movie that seemed primed for a video game adaptation from the off. After all, it already had all the ingredients of a video game right there: the whole film is essentially one overlong stealth mission with a punishing fail state - any crunchy glass or other noise would immediately draw the attention of deadly alien monsters - and at one point there’s a whiteboard with the narrative equivalent of Dead Space’s “CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS” graffiti scrawled on it. Lo and behold, we’re getting a Quiet Place video game.
Baldur's Gate 3’s upcoming mod support update, which will introduce official modding tools to the sprawling Dungeons & Dragons RPG later this year, will effectively serve as Larian’s swan song for their work on the game.
Remember Lords of the Fallen? No, not that one. This one. Last year’s reboot of the 2014 game of exactly the same name - despite the successor originally being a numbered sequel, then at least having a ‘The’ at the start of its title to help tell them apart a little - will now get its own follow-up in a third Lords of the Fallen game. The upcoming sequel doesn’t have a name yet, but I really hope they stick with the bit and just call it “Lords of the Fallen” again.
There’ve been a ton of Jackbox Party Packs over the last near-decade, each following a fairly similar structure: one or two standout games you’ll want to replay, a couple you might dip into every now and then, and at least one you’ll try once and then never bother with again. With 10 different packs to pick from, it becomes an increasing fuss to remember which pack has which game in, and then boot it up just to play its highlight before repeating the process when you choose to play something else.
Cities: Skylines 2 has found a delightfully straightforward solution to the very real-world problem of greedy landlords demanding excessive rent payments. The city-builder sequel will simply delete all its virtual leeches in its next patch, helping to bring down the cost of living in your digital metropolis.
A remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, the grid-based strategy spin-off from the RPG series that easily ranks as one of the best Final Fantasy games ever made, is reportedly in the works - giving hope of its first official PC release.
Look, everyone wants to play Bloodborne on PC. It’s one of those universally accepted truths, like gravity or pizza being delicious. And, yes, nobody really knows why Bloodborne isn’t on PC yet, almost a decade after it released on PlayStation 4 - despite Sony’s apparent delight in bringing every other PlayStation exclusive to PC, just to mock us. It’s one of those universally accepted unknowns, like how gravity works or the actual best pizza topping. (It’s glue, if you believe AI.)
It’s been a decade - 10 years! - since Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s fair to assume that you might’ve forgotten what happened during the last Dragon Age game, or some of the specific choices you made back in the misty ages of 2014. Whether you remember or not, this year’s long-awaited sequel Dragon Age: The Veilguard should have you covered, with the ability to carry over your story choices from the previous game and get a refresher on what happened last time around.
Shadow Of The Erdtree is out in under 10 days, but some players must be in for a surprise if they expect to be able to jump in straight away. As it turns out, most players on Steam haven’t even progressed far enough in the original game to access the DLC - something publishers Bandai Namco have now issued a friendly FYI about.
When I was a kid, one of my absolute favourite things to do on the PC was to mess around with a free virtual Felix - like the cat from the cat food adverts - who would roam around the Windows XP desktop, chasing balls of string between program windows and curling up to take a nap on the taskbar. I have no idea where the game came from - a dream, perhaps - but 30 years later, I still think about it as a perfectly formed way to lose hours on the PC without actually doing anything.
Sumo Group, the British video game collective which owns developers Sumo Digital, publishers Secret Mode and more - including Everybody's Gone to the Rapture devs The Chinese Room - is laying off hundreds of staff, cutting 15% of their workforce “to better navigate the upcoming challenges expected in the coming months”.
It’s been almost a decade since Rebel Galaxy ably picked up the sci-fi trading and exploration mantle handed down by Freelancer, but it looks like a successor to the serene galaxy-venturing vibes of both is finally upon us. Star Trucker is exactly what it sounds like, transplanting the chill A-to-Z courier journeys of Euro Truck Simulator to the interplanetary, uh, roads of space. It’s out this September, and it looks wonderful.
For me, sandbox games are never better when there’s an inherent chaos about to erupt at any given second. In a literal sandbox that might be anything from a kid burying a freshly-laid turd like a mischievous cat ready to be stepped on by an unsuspecting trespasser, gathering handfuls of grit to lob in a another kids’ eyes or swallowing a bunch of sand (hopefully turd-free) in pursuit of alchemising diamonds in their stomach. There don’t seem to be turds of any kind in upcoming sandbox RPG Streets of Fortuna, but that’s about the only thing that this ambitious “megasim” appears to be missing in its sprawling go-anywhere, do-anything open world.
It’s been five years since Anno 1800, but we’ve finally seen what’s next for Ubisoft’s history-hopping city-building series. Anno 117: Pax Romana will be the earliest period for the franchise yet, travelling back to the time of a peaceful Ancient Rome. After the biggest gap between Anno games yet, we at least won’t have to wait too long for the newly revealed entry: it’s out next year.
Ubisoft’s remake of time-rewinding Prince of Persia classic The Sands of Time has finally reappeared to tease - with the emphasis on tease - a release not this year, not next year, but in 2026.
The Artful Escape developers Beethoven & Dinosaur are following up their musical platformer with another soundtrack-driven narrative game. Mixtape draws on the classic tropes of coming-of-age teen flicks, adds striking stop motion-style visuals and completes the package with a soundtrack that would feel right at home in a John Hughes movie.
The rumours of a new Gears of War appearing at today’s Xbox Games Showcase were accurate - well, mostly. The next Gears of War won’t be a sequel like Gears of War 6, but instead looks to be a prequel to the entire series that returns to the very beginning of the bloody battle between humanity and the alien Locust.
Max Caulfield is back! The time-bending protagonist of the first Life is Strange is returning in a new entry in the series, Life is Strange: Double Exposure. It’s out this October.
The Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake - aka Metal Gear Solid Delta - resurfaced during tonight’s Xbox Games Showcase. We still don’t have a release date, despite signs we might see the remake of the 2004 game this year, but we did get a pretty good look at a bunch of key moments from the original remade in the shiny Unreal Engine 5 do-over - including a look at The Boss and the familiar gravelly tones of Snake actor David Hayter.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will release this October, including a day one launch on Game Pass, with an open beta on the way - and it’s certainly looking like a Call of Duty game.
UFO 50 is a collection of fictional retro games designed as if they were made for a non-existent games console 40 years ago, but in reality have been developed as brand new titles for an upcoming collection from indie devs including Spelunky creator Derek Yu. With the ambitious project nearing a decade in its own development, though, those games have now taken on their own real history in addition to their made-up one. Those histories will meet this September, when UFO 50 finally sees the light of day.
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