The Elder Scrolls mobile game, The Elder Scrolls: Castles, is set to launch on 10th September.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles - which was quietly released into early access in September 2023 - is now open for pre-registration on both Apple and Android.
From the same "award-winning team" behind Fallout Shelter, The Elder Scrolls: Castles lets you reign supreme over your very own castle and dynasty within The Elder Scrolls universe.
Title: Minecraft Dungeons Type of Game: Action RPG, Dungeon Crawler Developer: Mojang Studios, Double Eleven Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Released: May 26, 2020 Platforms Available: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 4 Level of Maturity: E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) Reading Time: 8 minutes
Action RPG spin-off Minecraft Dungeons doesn’t put the famous brand to shame and delivers fun and accessible gameplay. It’s an ideal family game that excels with up to four-person co-op and a hilarious audiovisual aspect. More demanding players may be put off by the short game time and the simple and repetitive game mechanics at its core, but for fans of Universal Minecraft or Diablo, it certainly has something to offer. The original Minecraft ranks as one of gaming’s biggest phenomena. Numbers in excess of 300 million units sold on every possible platform speak for themselves. It was only a matter of time before brand owner Microsoft leveraged the popularity of the cube world in other games.
In addition to various ports of the original Minecraft, the first derivation was the story adventure game Minecraft: Story Mode by Telltale Games. After that, the original Swedish developers from Mojang Studio returned to their gem with the help of the Double Eleven team. Of course, the entire project was created without the company’s founder Markus Persson, aka Notch, who hasn’t been with the company since its sale. Even so, expectations were not low. Minecraft Dungeons is an action RPG that takes partial inspiration from titles in the dungeon-crawler genre. The gameplay itself is, for obvious reasons, geared towards younger and less active players who will be interested in the game primarily due to its branding. It’s worth mentioning that fans of Diablo may be satisfied with Minecraft Dungeons, but certainly not the most hardcore members of the community.
After a character selection, a short tutorial, and an introductory story cutscene, the developers drop you into the first of nine levels. The individual levels feel linear at first glance, but upon closer inspection, you may discover various detours or hidden areas. The primary focus of the game is the elimination of various enemies. In addition to the classic melee weapon, you get a long-range bow and three slots for special abilities. These allow you to summon, for example, an animal companion for a short time, launch a special fire arrow barrage, or reduce the damage taken. New abilities, bows, armor, and various melee weapons can be found as you progress through the levels. Either they fall out of some slain enemies, or you can find them in various crates scattered around the map.
In addition to new equipment and abilities, you also collect in-game currency in the form of the familiar green emeralds. These can be used to buy new equipment and abilities between levels. The developers have created a sort of home area or base for this purpose. This is very nicely done, but it definitely deserves a bit deeper use. For example, add the possibility of upgrading your house or playing some mini-games between adventures. Personally, enough gear always fell out of enemies or chests that I didn’t feel the need to buy more stuff with in-game currency from merchants, and rather just upgrade these items to keep them at the recommended level relative to the current difficulty of the area I was in.
The combat system is fairly foundational and easy to understand. You intersperse basic melee weapon attacks with ranged arrow shooting, feints, and the occasional use of special abilities combined with a healing potion that replenishes itself after a certain amount of time. You have three lives for each level to complete. The first three deaths within a level are therefore not fatal. Bosses and regular enemies do not replenish health. Therefore, after losing one of the first three lives, you respawn at the exact point where your opponents overwhelm you; the end of the level occurs only in the case of the fourth death, after which you are forced to repeat the entire mission.
At least the first pass through the game is relatively easy for more experienced players. The only major difficulties I encountered were with the last level. This is characterized by a large number of bosses and numerous hordes of common enemies. With this exception, the difficulty of the game goes hand in hand with the gradual improvement of equipment. As you play, you’ll constantly encounter new weapons and stronger enemies. Their numbers and the aforementioned frequency of boss fights will also increase. In terms of the variety of opponents, there is nothing to complain about in the end. It’ll take you about four to five hours to beat all nine levels and the tutorial, which at first glance seems little, but the crucial thing is that with each level you’ll need a slightly longer grind to be able to conquer the next one so definitely don’t expect to go half-naked from the beginning of the game to the end in one five-hour session. More realistic is like fifteen hours, and in case you like platinum trophies on the PlayStation platform like me then expect up to twenty-five hours.
Despite the solid game time, the game would certainly welcome more content just due to the variety of enemies. However, the price set at a pleasant 20 euros for the basic edition, excluding discounts, must be taken into account. Following the example of other Microsoft titles, Minecraft Dungeons also headed to Xbox Games Pass on release day and, some time ago, to PlayStation Plus Essential monthly games. If you’d like to spend more time with the game, a possible second playthrough isn’t a bad idea either. Aside from exploring the maps more thoroughly yourself, you may also be motivated by the newly unlocked difficulty. The game additionally makes partial use of random generation. Thanks to this, you’ll always come across a slightly different enemy composition or boss type when repeating levels.
Among the game’s greatest strengths is the possibility of offline and online cooperation for up to four players. While the entire campaign can be played alone, the fun is still much greater in co-op. Minecraft Dungeons, like TT Games’ LEGO games, can work as ideal family fun for a couple of evenings. The content that expanded the game later includes a new island area, by the way.
From the attached images, you will have noticed the typical Minecraft block world and the distinctly stylized graphics, which still look interesting and clearly recognizable even after all these years. The visually appealing lighting effects and explosions are particularly noteworthy. Many players may be surprised to learn that the title runs on Unreal Engine 4. I must also praise the hilarious sounds and soundtrack. At the very least, Minecraft fans can’t complain about the graphics and will feel right at home in the game.
It is not easy to attach a numerical rating to Minecraft Dungeons. Hardcore gamers and fans of the dungeon-crawler genre can easily condemn the game as too simple, childish, and short. However, it is precisely by making the gameplay easily accessible and unpretentious that the developers have opened the door to younger audiences and less experienced players. The result is ideal family entertainment that benefits in particular from the possibilities of up to four-person cooperation, the hilarious audiovisual aspect, and the interesting world of Minecraft.
Where to Buy The Game?
Steam (PC): Available for $19.99. You can purchase it directly from Steam. Xbox Store (Xbox One): Available for $19.99. Check it out on the Xbox Store. PlayStation Store (PS4): Available for $19.99. You can find it on the PlayStation Store. Nintendo Shop (Switch): Available for $19.99. Purchase it from the Nintendo Shop. Epic Games Store (PC): Available for $19.99. Purchase it from the Epic Games Store.
Official Page: Visit the official Minecraft Dungeons page for more information. Subreddit: Join the discussion on the Minecraft Dungeons Subreddit.
There's just something satisfying about laying down tracks, and then slamming a train into your enemy. Battle Train is an interesting spin on deck-builders and there's a demo out now.
Dragon Eclipse has not long hit Early Access, and while it’s a little light on stuff to do right now – what with it currently only having one run boss, three difficulty levels and a few different monsters and tamers to pick from – it’s already an incredibly cool take on the roguelike deckbuilder that […]
This Cataclismo Achievements guide will detail how to 100% the game on Steam by completing all of the tasks. This is only for the completionists but can be fun for some who enjoy the grind of fully completing a game. Cataclismo has had a pretty high profile release over on Steam, shooting up the charts and getting positive reviews from players.
That is all for this Cataclismo Achievements Guide. Did we omit anything? Is there any other Cataclismo content you’d like to see? Be sure to chime in and let us know.
Check out the rest of our tips & guides to find our other builds and tips for games across all genres including NBA 2K, MLB: The Show, Smalland: Survive the Wilds, Demonologist, achievements guides, and a lot more.
Stay tuned to Last Word on Gaming for all the latest gaming news and reviews You can always count on LWOG to be on top of the major news in the gaming world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the world of video games.
Hello fellow gamers. Giveaway Of The Day holds a new giveaway for Falco Builder. This is what they say. Falco Builder is available as a Giveaway of the day!You have limited time to download, install and register it. A few words about Falco Builder Falco Builder – An exciting game! In it you have to build a structure from one point to another! In this game you will find 10 levels, each of whi...
One of the neat things about Norland's fantasy medievalism is that specialist knowledge is tied to characters. So if there's only one person in your village who knows how to brew tastier beer, and they die after being freakishly savaged by a passing wolf (it happens), suddenly your village will have no artisanal lager master. The results may be devastating. Luckily, you can share knowledge in a number of ways - by copying books, or having "wise conversations". The exception to this is child characters, whose pea-sized brains can't learn specialist knowledge, only soaking up basic attributes like "manners" from the teachers you assign to them. Well, until now. The developers for the Rimworld-meets-Crusader Kings catastrophe simulator have made kids a little smarter. They'll now learn more important things from their adult teachers.
One of the neat things about Norland's fantasy medievalism is that specialist knowledge is tied to characters. So if there's only one person in your village who knows how to brew tastier beer, and they die after being freakishly savaged by a passing wolf (it happens), suddenly your village will have no artisanal lager master. The results may be devastating. Luckily, you can share knowledge in a number of ways - by copying books, or having "wise conversations". The exception to this is child characters, whose pea-sized brains can't learn specialist knowledge, only soaking up basic attributes like "manners" from the teachers you assign to them. Well, until now. The developers for the Rimworld-meets-Crusader Kings catastrophe simulator have made kids a little smarter. They'll now learn more important things from their adult teachers.
The visitors to my town in Go-Go Town have a lot of suggestions. One wants water, so I build a water fountain on the street. One thinks I should sell 20 pet rocks. Oddly specific, but I can do that—once I build a craft shop, hit the mine, and gather more stone. In between satisfying the demands of tourists, who then move in as I build houses for them, I explore the limits of my little town. On the northern fringe, on the far side of a lake, there's a crashed drone that keeps beeping. It seems messy. I ride around on my bike and clear it up, at which point I'm surprised to find a text log.
I was not expecting lore in my cute early access town management sim. Yet here it is, a report from a town scouting agent explaining the parameters of their search, which include "low economic turnover + high levels of misplaced community trust." Rude! My pet rock-based economy is going to take off any day now.
Cheryl Vance, game director at indie studio Prideful Sloth, explains that Go-Go Town does indeed have a story. "We do actually have a setup for it in a cinematic," she says, "but we just never had time to get to work on it before we got into early access. At some point, we will go back to that cinematic and actually fix it."
As the introductory cutscene will show, you didn't inherit Go-Go Town because your grandfather died or anything like that. Instead, you read a leaflet that promised an opportunity to be your own boss and make your own hours. "It's the total internet scam job basically," Vance says. As soon as you sign up you're abducted and dropped off in the remote town you're now in charge of.
To be fair, even without a cinematic the beginning of the game sets this up just fine by having you arrive in a duffel bag dumped out of a van, with the tutorial delivered by suit-wearing men in black. It's an unexpectedly sinister introduction to a miniaturized city builder that's all about whimsy, where you ride around town on a skateboard or in a dinky little pickup fixing your town to attract the tourist dollars of guests who include aliens and a pack of friendly wolves.
Unlike, say, SimCity, you don't spend a lot of time looking at the menu. I physically grab a chainsaw to chop down trees so I can turn the wood into planks, and hit stone with my drill before I can make bricks. Then I scoot over to a block of land, clear some weeds and leaves by hand, and plonk down the next structure I need.
(Image credit: Prideful Sloth)
"We wanted all of the actions in the game to be very hands-on, very tactile" says Anthony Massingham, programmer on Go-Go Town. "A term we used when we were developing was 'no hidden pockets'. A lot of these sorts of games, you collect something, it goes in your backpack, and it's invisible. It's hidden. But we wanted to make everything very tactile. When you pick up something it's visible in your backpack. When you want to interact with something you have to use a tool or you physically interact with the object yourself."
"Anything an NPC can do a player can do," Vance adds. "And anything a player can do an NPC can do. There's probably a few roles that aren't quite there yet."
"The general eventual goal is, yeah, anything that an NPC or a tourist can do, the player should be able to do as well," Massingham agrees.
(Image credit: Prideful Sloth)
All those actions have a pleasing physicality thanks to the animations. When you hop off a bike with a full inventory the contents of your backpack leap in the air before settling back in place. Every time you dedicate a new building to its task you cut a ribbon to open it, and the cleaning tool for removing street garbage is a gun that shoots bubbles of cleaning fluid.
"I believe the term we use is squishy," Vance says. "Keep things squishy. That's been a pillar in a way, the nice little squishy jumpies that you see."
"I mean, the characters are only so big on the screen," Massingham adds. "It's all about making reactions visible enough and emotive enough that you can see what's going on, understand what's going on, but also enjoy what you're seeing."
(Image credit: Prideful Sloth)
Go-Go Town is a low-poly game, which adds to its readability but also ensures it runs well on handheld platforms. I imagine it'll get a lot of play on the Steam Deck. "We have designed the game for handhelds in general," Massingham says. "Font size and interface size and control schemes and all those sorts of things. And performance obviously, try and make sure the game runs as well as possible. We've got the Steam Deck dev kits, and Cheryl does a lot of her own personal playtesting on hers. I've got a ROG Ally so I do a lot of stuff on that."
Getting hold of a Steam Deck in Australia, where Prideful Sloth is based, isn't as easy as it is in some parts of the world. Steam Decks aren't available directly from Valve here yet, and so Vance had to get one indirectly.
"That was a rather amusing process that felt like some sort of illicit smuggling scheme," Vance says. "Our community manager's based over in the US so last year, when I went over to GDC, she ordered one and brought it up to me and then handed it to me in a bag. I was like, I shouldn't feel like I'm some sort of criminal just because I got a Steam Deck!"
(Image credit: Prideful Sloth)
One of the best things about the small scale of Go-Go Town is that you're not handling a faceless mass like you would in a traditional city builder. Everyone who moves to town has a name and a distinctive look, which makes it easier to remember who I've put in charge of the fried "gronut" stand. "You can remember specific people in specific roles," says Massingham. "The guy with the green skin, Grumbo, you remember him, and you remember the ghost and you remember the mummy with the Pharaoh hat."
"I'm waiting for all the player feedback about wanting to romance Grumbo," says Vance.
Prideful Sloth's plans for Go-Go Town include more player customization, expanded industries, and a bigger map. "Probably the biggest piece of feedback we've had from a lot of people is when they've reached the end of the game, their map is as full as it can be, but they want more space," Massingham says. It's not as easy as just moving the boundaries further out, however. Tourists all arrive at the train station and propagate from there, so if the town gets too spread out they won't have time to explore the whole thing and see all its attractions before they catch their train home. The solution? "We'll add subways to the map," Massingham says. "The player can set up various subway buildings and different lines, and the tourists and the player can use those to fast travel around the map."
Go-Go Town is currently available in early access on Steam.
Between Against The Storms’ critters, Manor Lords’s perfect oxen, and now Cataclismo, Hooded Horse’s roster of strategy games share a common thread that many guard-the-village-em-ups can fatally overlook: they present a civilisation that’s worth protecting. Even if the fallen culture you’ll defend against waves of gribblies offers fascinatingly few concrete details on its origins, there’s a lithe and impressionistic otherworldliness and use of colour in Cataclismo’s art that evokes unearthed layers of history. Also, everyone is just so gosh darn likeable, with their foppish hats plopped atop stretched bodies, and dialogue that remains resolute, chirpy, and eager, even when you’re click-marching these poor folk straight to their deaths.
Still, none of this will stop me will sacrificing every last man, woman, and child of these beleaguered warriors if it means preserving a single one of my immaculately crafted staircases.
Between Against The Storms’ critters, Manor Lords’s perfect oxen, and now Cataclismo, Hooded Horse’s roster of strategy games share a common thread that many guard-the-village-em-ups can fatally overlook: they present a civilisation that’s worth protecting. Even if the fallen culture you’ll defend against waves of gribblies offers fascinatingly few concrete details on its origins, there’s a lithe and impressionistic otherworldliness and use of colour in Cataclismo’s art that evokes unearthed layers of history. Also, everyone is just so gosh darn likeable, with their foppish hats plopped atop stretched bodies, and dialogue that remains resolute, chirpy, and eager, even when you’re click-marching these poor folk straight to their deaths.
Still, none of this will stop me will sacrificing every last man, woman, and child of these beleaguered warriors if it means preserving a single one of my immaculately crafted staircases.
Terra Nil is kind of like a reverse city builder—instead of planning and managing a bustling town, you expand its base into the wilderness that surrounds it, bringing nature back to a desolate wasteland, trying to restore dead biomes as you go. There's already a lot to love with this strategy game, but now developers Free Lives are getting ready to add even more.
An upcoming major update will be the first of its kind for Terra Nil and will expand "on its deeply satisfying nature restoration gameplay… and a dramatic overhaul of the wildlife system," according to a press release.
"New levels include Polluted Bay, a dead landscape carved in half by a badly polluted river, and Scorched Caldera, a vast volcanic crater that you must terraform into a life-filled freshwater lake. These, and all the new maps in the Vita Nova update, will put your reclamation skills to the test in interesting and unusual ways."
Another change that may not be as impressive as the various new levels but is still undeniably great is the new Vita Nova map. Now it's fully 3D, players can freely rotate it letting them get their bearings and also find locations easier, and plan projects out with more accuracy. It may be a small detail, but I always find static maps quite frustrating for city builders—I like to pay pretty close attention to mapping out current and future builds and have found the rotating maps let me paint a more accurate mental image of what the future of my builds will look like.
Aside from this, there's also a new overhauled wildlife system to look forward to in this update. Apparently, it should make "these transformed landscapes feel more alive than ever," the press release says. "Animals emerge more naturally as you play, and have a deeper set of needs to fulfill to keep them happy and abundant. This not only adds a new dimension of strategy to the game but gives you more animals to admire—including a brand new species, the jaguar—as nature is steadily restored."
I usually go for city builders that actually let me build a city, but Terra Nil's nature-first approach is refreshingly pleasant. It's nice to not just try to restore the natural environment but to put some real thought into making the ecosystem habitable for the animals that'll take up residency there.
Terra Nil is also really relaxing which may be surprising considering the fate of several biomes and the lives of its inhabitants rest in your hopefully capable hands. One of the features that helps with its meditative vibe, alongside its simple puzzles, is definitely the fact that after all your hard work is done, you pack all your equipment up and move on, leaving no trace that you were ever there. It's a nice change from the usual megacities that I leave in my wake and is definitely a more morally sustainable way to play city builders.
A little over five years after it launched into Early Access, city builder Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic has released its completed 1.0 version. Standing out from other city builders by its emphasis on industry, transportation, and the use of material goods in manufacture, Workers & Resources has a reputation as a hardcore simulation that's quite good at its chosen areas of focus. If you've ever disliked how buildings in other city games just pop up without the requisite amount of steel, wood, concrete, and bricks produced and delivered beforehand—well, this one's probably for you.
Workers & Resources has come a long way since launch, but maintains its focus on the mining of resources, manufacturing of goods, and construction of buildings. That, of course, also means keeping your workers happy, healthy, fed, and loyal to the state—otherwise they'll abscond with themselves over the border for a life in the affluen capitalist West. It's a challenging game on its highest difficulties and realism modes, but an enjoyable industrial city-designing sandbox on its infinite money modes.
If you're the kind of city building enthusiast who obsesses over industrial layout in factory games, logistics in transport games, or just loves the kind of hyper-detailed materials gameplay you get in Dwarf Fortress, I really can't recommend Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic enough.
The game launch also came alongside the release of a new DLC, Biomes. That adds three new maps to build in: an arid desert, snowy tundra, and monsoon-stricken tropics. I've played around with them a bit, and while the map variety is low the gameplay tweaks are fun if you've been playing a lot of this game over the past five years.
Besides the tweaks, fixes, and stability boosts you'd expect from the release version, the 1.0 patch has also added some new stuff to build. There're new cultural buildings like an amphiteater and larger stadium, as well as playgrounds too keep young kids healthier. There are also a few new Western vehicles to import.
"This project has taken 7 years of my life, and it has changed my life," said developer 3Division lead Peter in a release post. "Thank you to all the team members: Martin, Michal, Vlado, Karel, Robs, Krzysztof, and many others who dedicated their souls to this project and helped me finish this monster."
He was clear that the 1.0 release was not the end of development: "While you play the game, we will continue updating it and even adding new features," he said.
Ubisoft has unveiled Anno 117: Pax Romana, a new entry in Ubisoft Blue Byte's long-running economic city builder series, which is set to whisk PC and console players back to ancient Rome and the Roman Empire when it launches next year.
"It is the year 117 AD," Ubisoft explains, "as a Roman Governor of twin provinces of the Empire, your choices matter to your citizens. Build, trade, expand. Seize opportunities and harness the unique advantages and challenges that Albion and Latium provinces present."
"Will you encourage economic growth or expand your rule through dominance?," it continues. "Lead with rebellion or unite a diverse culture? The cost of peace is yours to decide."
Ubisoft Forward showed off a bit more than just what we expected today (such as Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows), like a new entry into its long running Anno city builder series. Anno 117: Pax Romana was announced, and that's exciting news since it's the first Anno game to tackle Ancient Rome. Anno 117: Pax Romana is planned for release in 2025.
The short live-action trailer, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing: I would have preferred at least a glimpse of gameplay and art, especially for a series known for its beauty and aesthetic. All we got to see today is a public herald (known as a praeco) who in Ancient Roman times would orate messages aloud for an audience while pantomiming.
IGN talked to the developers at Ubisoft about Anno 117: Pax Romana, and this praeco will indeed appear in the game. (Side note: I'm amused by this because I'm currently watching the Rome series on HBO for the first time, and I'm always appreciative of the praeco filling everyone in on the events that occur between episodes, like a human "previously on Rome" announcer.)
IGN also reports that you play as a Roman governor dispatched to manage provinces outside of Rome, such as "the Celtic Wetlands of Albion and the traditional Roman heartlands called Latium."
It's been a minute since the last Anno game launched: Anno 1800 was released in 2017. We'll share more information about Anno 117: Pax Romana when we learn more.
The city builder genre has never been healthier, and not only are there more new city builders coming out than ever before, but there's an amazing diversity on display: urban builders, survival builders, strategy builders, roguelikes, puzzle games, and even cozy, no-stress city builders.
Best of all you can play so many of these upcoming city builders this week during Steam Next Fest. In fact, there are so many free city builder demos that you can actually play three new ones every single day for the next week and not run out. Amazing! To help all of you aspiring mayors out, I've collected a heaping truckload of city builder demos below you can play this week.
Citadelum
Strategy city builder Citadelum takes you back to Ancient Rome to grow your settlement from a tiny camp to a city so resplendent it would please the gods. That's no exaggeration: towering gods will visit your city to walk the streets and help, or perhaps hinder, your efforts.
Airborne Empire
I've already put a few hours into Airbone Empire, so you've got some catching up to do. The sequel to Airborne Kingdom features a bigger world to explore, lots of aerial combat, and so many quests the lead designer jokingly worried the game was almost too big.
Beyond These Stars
Why not build a city in space? Beyond These Stars takes place on the back of a giant space whale slowly swimming through the void. Build supply chains, encounter alien societies, and travel the galaxy while carefully balancing the ecosystem of the gentle giant you're living on.
Kaiserpunk
Kaiserpunk blends city building with grand strategy in an alt-history setting where World War 1 and 2 are basically just one big, unending conflict. Grow and manage your city's production chains and the supply lines that keep your armies stocked during the greater global conflict.
Ark of Charon
Another city builder where you're expanding atop a living creature, the settlement you construct in Ark of Charon serves as a mobile fortress. The walking tree you build on is the sapling of a sacred World Tree which is traveling through a perilous realm. Gather, build, and keep the sapling safe from relentless attacks.
Goblin Camp
You've heard of Dwarf Fortress, but now it's time for the goblins to do some building. Construct and manage a thriving settlement, survive harsh winters, and protect your tribe from disasters both natural and supernatural in Goblin Camp.
Super Fantasy Kingdom
I love how city building can crossover into so many different genres, and that includes roguelikes. Build your city while engaging in some frenetic Vampire Survivors-like action as you battle mobs of monsters swarming your castle in Super Fantasy Kingdom.
More city builder demos
Those seven city builders are just the start, though. There are even more city builder demos to try this week during Steam Next Fest. Lots more!
Gourdlets The adorable and stress-free sandbox builder is back with a new demo. Create a little island town and watch your blobby little citizens move in and enjoy it.
Hollywood Animal
An unusual entry, for sure: you're managing a show business empire but also building Hollywood itself and guiding it through "decades of creative achievements" as well as "tough choices and unpleasant compromises."
Technotopia
A city builder card game where you're an AI trying to build and balance the perfect futuristic society. "Build districts, meet the needs of diverse communities and maintain the delicate balance between factions vying for control over you!"
Republic of Pirates Pirates can't spend all their time at sea, right? Establish and grow a pirate settlement with a resource-based economy, while engaging in real-time naval combat with your rivals and exploring the Caribbean.
Pax Augusta
A strategy city builder set in Ancient Rome. "Build flourishing cities and look after your citizens. Earn gold with production and trade of goods and build impressive monuments."
Humanica A survival city builder set in ancient times, where you manage and grow a small Stone Age tribe while battling against other settlements. "Experience the journey from sticks and stones to iron tools and windmills!"
Lunar City Builder
Build and manage a city on the moon while meeting the needs of your moon-citizens. Plus, you can walk around inside the city yourself, visit shops, and talk to every single person living there.
Even more city builder demos!
(Image credit: Irox Games)
If that's not enough, don't worry, there are somehow still even more city builder demos for you to check out this week:
⛏️ EcoGnomix: Manage a city in the surface world while delving deep for underground resources in this roguelike builder. 💀 Endzone 2: Lead humanity to a new start in the bleak badlands of the post-apocalypse in this challenging survival colony sim.
🎂 Chocolate Factory: Build your own sprawling sweet manufacturing business, like Willy Wonka meets Satisfactory.
🙏 Fata Deum: There's some strong Black & White vibes as you oversee a settlement and compete with other gods for influence.
🧩 Townframe: In an interesting twist on the genre, you recreate cities from people's memories in this chill puzzle game.
🚗 Go-Go Town: You're the mayor of this adorable but rundown little city, charged with giving it new life and a healthy tourist trade.
🧝♀️ Elven City Simulator: Build and manage a colony of elves living in a mystical forest while protecting them against the encroaching darkness.
Shown off at the PC Gaming Show the other day, Generation Exile is a sustainable turn-based citybuilder with some real talent behind it. It's being developed by Sonderlust Studios, headed up by Mark Of The Ninja's lead designer Nels Anderson, alongside other talented developers like Karla Zimonja, who worked on Gone Home. Yeah, it's definitely one to watch.
Hollywood Animal is a management sim about turning a bankrupt movie studio into a money printing machine, set in Hollywood’s golden age. While a Frostpunk 2 or Manor Lords might have you grapple with the elements, here it’s all about balancing a fickle audience and Tinseltown’s seedy underbelly. Maybe making some worthwhile art, too? Sorry, did I say ‘worthwhile art’? I meant to say “lots of money.” Let’s get clicking!
First up, I need to name my studio (I settle on Horace's Revenge) as well as my crack new team of business bastards. There’s my chief legal officer, Jebediah End. My CCO, Anne Egg, and CFO, Rummy McLastdrink. He doesn’t have a sauce problem, because obviously I wouldn’t put him in charge of money if he did. In the wreckage of the studio, we find an unedited film reel hidden in the waffles n’ cocaine cupboard. It’s a noir thriller named ‘Messenger Of Death’. Whatever influential critic is currently directing this era’s discourse has chosen to categorise each film as genre percentages (‘60% detective/40% thriller’), and setting (‘modern American city’.) Let’s just hope those pigs in the stands recognise a solid gold picture when they see one!
I should be further in than this. My supposed rebellion has thus far eked out a territory that could be described as "where?". My personal reputation is great only among people who love mushrooms and hate deer. It's been long enough that I should probably be a fierce warlord running a large chunk of the kingdom in opposition by now, but instead, I have the skillset of fifty peasants, and the outstanding work of fifty three. And I know why. Bellwright has taught me what I already knew in theory, but had not truly appreciated:
Good managers are rare and precious. And I'm not one of them.
There are management games and there are micro-management games. Prison Architect 2 is the latter. I don't mean this as an annoying thing, like when Harold from corporate starts commenting all over your document at 4.30pm on a Friday. I mean it as a distinction between those games that let you plop down a house, and others that need you to stack the bricks, install the plumbing, fit the lights, and select the wallpaper. The first Prison Architect allowed you to finesse every detail of a secure correctional facility, down to each cell and dog kennel. Unsurprisingly for a sim about prison, it encouraged obsessive control. The 3D-ified sequel isn't finished yet, but it's taking a similar approach. Maybe a little too similar.
Manor Lords is still in early access, and despite developer Greg "Slavic Magic" Styczeń releasing a massive patch that fixes a great deal of the small issues players have encountered so far, there are still some pretty helpful and wacky mods that can also get the job done.
If you haven't seen the latest experimental patch yet or just don't want to encounter the King's tax, then this mod can help smooth out ale production for you. It can be difficult to get the balance of crops right to maintain constant ale production, especially since villagers tend to go through the supply so quickly.
This is where the Jesus Ale Tech mod can help you out, as it removes the need for malt to make Ale and so makes production cost nothing. The description gets right to the point: "Oh god, those crazy bastards figured it out. That upgraded church sent Jesus to your people and taught them his ways. Except they learned Ale instead of wine." There may even be a possibility for churches to brew beer in the future, something that many monasteries and churches were well-known for during the Middle Ages.
But not all the mods need to make your game easier. Some, like Adaptive Bandits, will challenge your skills as Lord. This mod stops bandit raids from being capped at a specific number (which is usually four): "The size and frequency of bandit raids now increase according to your total wealth (regional wealth + treasury) and your total units." But if you're not happy with that number, then you can customise the mod's configuration. It's also recommended to use mods Unlock Militia Limit, Increased Garrison Limit, Mercenaries Pool Fix, and Hildebolt's Vanguard Army (Difficulty mod) alongside it, as they'll make sure it's a fair fight.
It's pretty amazing that Manor Lords already has 144 mods of varying sizes, considering it's been out for less than a month and is only in early access, but despite the sheer amount out there, most players don't actually use any.
A discussion on r/ManorLords revealed that most players are going bare bones, at least until Styczeń can work through the initial issues and updates. 85% of people who responded to the question of if anyone is actually using mods said that they weren't. "I'm waiting for the game to be more "finished" before I start slapping mods onto it," one player says.
And while players have found some funny aesthetic mods, like the one that lets you walk around your villager as Geralt from The Witcher 3 or another that gives Manor Lords a VR mode for you to enjoy, most are just happy to wait for fixes, and play the game like Styczeń intended.
I love building games, but it's not that often that put one down and feel particularly tempted to get straight back into it again. Of Life And Land is one of those, but thankfully not so much so that it threatens to consume my every waking moment.
It quietly does several things in a modest little way, that are all the more impressive for its lack of fanfare. The core one though, is that it takes the kind of simulationist foundation normally reserved for the punishing Dwarf Fortress derivatives or gnarly logistics games, and builds on them an approachable, gentle, even philosophical game instead. In a word: it's lovely.
The story of Manor Lords’ soundtrack begins, as all inspiring tales do, with hunched-over late-night doom scrolling. It was pre-covid, and Pressure Cooker Studios’ composer Daniel Caleb was flicking through reddit posts when a trailer cut through the glare. He’d never heard of Manor Lords before. It looked like a new IP, but already had a huge Reddit following. Caleb loved what he saw. At that point, Pressure Cooker mainly worked on film scores, but both Caleb and fellow composer Elben Schutte had always wanted to eventually move on to bringing their storytelling from cinema to games. Even more so than film, games were the passion. Manor Lords would be perfect for them.
As a lover of medieval history and swords, I was attracted to Manor Lords from the very first time I heard about it. Manor Lords is a city builder strategy game that has you fostering a thriving medieval village and ushering it into a new dawn filled with trade, farming, and - of course - at least one Manor. After picking it up for myself and getting fully into the medieval ambience thanks to some tavern ambience YouTube videos, I was surprised to find that on peaceful difficulty it could actually be considered a cosy game, just like Stardew Valley and similar farming simulators. Manor Lords also has surprising similarities to Cult of the Lamb, so if you're up for something less cult-like but still with lambs involved in one way or another, look no further.
Describing Manor Lords as a city builder is an oversimplification. It's much more than just putting buildings down and making the good numbers go up - over the seasons you can transform a bundle of tents to a thriving village in a thoroughly organic manner, from putting winding roads through the houses and workshops to planning out which of your fields are going to be fallow from year to year. At peaceful difficulty, Manor Lords really is a slow living cosy medieval game, with some valuable additions that make it novel amongst the typical city builder video game genre.
Don't believe me? Watch our video to see all the reasons Manor Lords should be your next go-to cosy game, or at the very least be in consideration - with a couple of caveats.
As a lover of medieval history and swords, I was attracted to Manor Lords from the very first time I heard about it. Manor Lords is a city builder strategy game that has you fostering a thriving medieval village and ushering it into a new dawn filled with trade, farming, and - of course - at least one Manor. After picking it up for myself and getting fully into the medieval ambience thanks to some tavern ambience YouTube videos, I was surprised to find that on peaceful difficulty it could actually be considered a cosy game, just like Stardew Valley and similar farming simulators. Manor Lords also has surprising similarities to Cult of the Lamb, so if you're up for something less cult-like but still with lambs involved in one way or another, look no further.
Describing Manor Lords as a city builder is an oversimplification. It's much more than just putting buildings down and making the good numbers go up - over the seasons you can transform a bundle of tents to a thriving village in a thoroughly organic manner, from putting winding roads through the houses and workshops to planning out which of your fields are going to be fallow from year to year. At peaceful difficulty, Manor Lords really is a slow living cosy medieval game, with some valuable additions that make it novel amongst the typical city builder video game genre.
Don't believe me? Watch our video to see all the reasons Manor Lords should be your next go-to cosy game, or at the very least be in consideration - with a couple of caveats.
"Nosophobia" is the fear of disease, "bathophobia" is the fear of depths, and "devlogphobia" is a mixture of nosophobia and bathophobia produced by reading Steam posts about Norland, a systems-rich and plague-ridden medieval colony sim from developers Long Jaunt and Hooded Horse, publisher of Manor Lords. Norland is sort of The Sims meets Dwarf Fortress meets RimWorld. It gives you charge of several new kingdoms that have sprouted from the corpse of a fallen Empire and are now feuding for supremacy.
Enlarge/ This peaceful, pastoral scene actually represents a ton of hard work! (credit: Slavic Magic)
Do you ever look around at modern civilization and boggle at the sheer complexity of it all? Do you ever think about the generations of backbreaking labor needed to turn acres and acres of untamed wilderness into the layers of interconnected systems needed to provide basic necessities—much less luxuries—to both early settlers and their generations of descendants?
All that infrastructure work is much harder to take for granted after playing Manor Lords. The Early Access version of the game—which netted a million Steam sales in its first 24 hours last month—forces you to do a lot of the heavy lifting that many other city builders tend to gloss over. And while there are still a lot of Early Access rough spots, what's already there can make you appreciate just how hard it is to build a functioning society from nothing but raw materials and hard labor.
Let go of my hand
In many other city builders, you act as something of a detached, bureaucratic god. Lay down some roads, set aside some zoning, and watch as the microscopic masses automatically fill in the details of the housing, commerce, and industry needed to create a functional society.
Manor Lords developer Greg Styczeń wants your help deciding what he should do about the game's global market supply mechanic.
Addressing the game's considerable fanbase on the official Discord, Styczeń asked for feedback on whether the mechanic – introduced after critics and content creators noted the trade system was "too OP" – should stay or go.
"When press and content creators got the build two weeks ago, they often said that the trade is OP and that it's too cheesy/exploity to just sell one type of good and make your town rich that way," Styczeń said.
The high-fidelity rustic hurly-burly of Manor Lords is all very well, but some of us yearn for a simpler and perhaps, more elegant age, when city builders looked like a bunch of copulating squares, and could run on PCs with approximately the computing power of a slice of bread (toasted, but not buttered). Step forward Mini Settlers, which has a free prologue version you might try if you're weary of Manor Lording, or you've already exhausted the play possibilities of early access Franconia.
“Given the opportunity, players will become a merciless egg baron and sit chuckling on a throne of shells while medieval Europe cowers beneath their imperious yolk,” is what I assume Soren Jonson once said, and it looks like Manor Lords is proving this timeless adage right once more. Despite shifting over a million units and hitting the highest concurrent player count of any ‘city builder’ on Steam, creator Greg ‘Slavic Magic’ Styczeń is already looking to the future of how the building game handles trade.
While playing Manor Lords for review, I kept making mental notes to spend time watching the individual routes its villagers and beasts take each day. It’s one of those interestingly granular games that actually becomes more so by remaining a bit mysterious in ways I’m sure will annoy some, so I reasoned some people-watching would be illuminating. And by people, I mean oxen.
Mayors in RPG games are rarely given the spotlight. They're mostly just there to give you an early quest involving goat banditry or windmill rats or some such other domestic drudgery. Or, in the case of Tristram’s mayor in Diablo, to fret behind the scenes about how to properly fit considerable cathedral repairs into this month’s budget. Well, no more must this valuable civil servant hide behind balance sheets, occasionally popping out to cut a big ribbon in celebration of a nearby mausoleum being turned into a Wetherspoons. Tristam is a 72 hour Ludum Dare project where you play as said town’s mayor. And this time: It’s ceremonial!
Eco-conscious village builder The Wandering Village sees you raising a settlement on the back of a huge wandering creature called Onbu. For the most part, you live in a symbiotic relationship with this gentle giant, as your villagers keep the gargantuan trundlesaur healthy while being ferried about on its back. Awww. Well, the wholesome city-builder now lets you feed villagers to the creature and start a cult in the great devourer's name. Okay. Why not?
Cataclismo is the new game from Digital Sun, the team behind Moonlighter, so I was waiting for the twist from the moment I started. Moonlighter's a straight-up dungeon crawler, until you crawl out of the dungeon with all your loot and have to face a far more terrifying foe than any monster you encountered in the depths: supply and demand. Moonlighter was a dungeon crawler, then, and also a game about stocking a shop and making a profit. Risk your life to find stock, and then return to the surface and try to find the right price for it. The horror!
So what's the twist with Cataclismo? My recent demo began in a dark autumnal woods. I'm controlling an archer, clicking to move them through forest paths between spectral, bronzing trees and dark abysses that make the whole thing feel very claustrophobic. Is this an action RPG? No, up ahead I find another troop type, a lobber, who flings bombs or rocks or somesuch. Height and distance come into play as we fend off an attack by mysterious horrors, who all look like plucked but uncooked turkeys. Oh, this is an RTS!
And it is. But then we come to a clearing with a broken bridge and no way to get across. Here is the twist! It's an RTS in which you can build. It's an RTS in which you have to build, in fact. Pretty soon I'm fixing the bridge with wooden pieces, making sure that each piece I place is supported and safe. Further on I get a staircase that needs repairing with stone, so I'm dealing with cheap, flimsy wood, and heavy, more dependable stone. Next comes a proper castle, already built, and night is falling so I place my troops and fend off hordes of those turkey enemies. It's tower defence! Stop it already.
I like a city builder, me, and newly revealed Beware Of Light, from tiny indie studio Bajka Games, has a interesting hook (and a Ronseal-type name, which you know I appreciate). Your advanced colony ship has veered off course, and you've crashed on a dead, desert planet with no water or fossil resources like oil. It's sort of a hot Frostpunk, because you have to manage manpower, there are limited resources to distribute, and nobody is going to help. You must live. What do now?
It starts, much as when writing articles for videogame websites, with a blank page. More accurately, a white space of indefinite extent. In the middle of the white space there is a curious little yellow machine, a kind of motorised plunger akin to an oil derrick. In the story of Sixty Four, you're late to some kind of social engagement, somewhere beyond that beaming expanse of whiteness. But there is time, even as texts from a friend appear down the lefthand margin, to mess around with the strange yellow machine.
Developer Sand Sailor Studio and publisher Thunderful Games revealed today that the upcoming Viking sandbox survival builder ASKA will be getting a Closed Beta test in April. The Closed Beta will run from April 15 through April 21, with sign-ups open now through April 5.
https://youtu.be/QzWcnOEUxWs
Players can embark on a Viking expedition solo or with up to three friends as they work together to build a Viking empire. Collecting resources, building a thriving settlement, and summoning intelligent NPC villages are some of the tasks required to do so. Players will also need to automate, manage, and defend their tribe especially to survive the bitter cold winter.
"ASKA stands as a testament to what a dream-team of just 10 people can achieve over the course of 4 years: an ambitious co-op survival tribe builder where you're never alone, where you work alongside lively AI villagers that are almost indistinguishable from players, all woven into a deep city builder-like economy system. We’re entering the final phase of our beta testing period and we can't wait to give players the power to build their very own truly functional Viking village, who knows what they'll build."
- Cristian Diaconescu, Creative Director at Sand Sailor Studio
We've seen quite a few survival builders released recently. But honestly, all you had to say was Viking and I'm in. Based on the trailer it looks like you can get pretty creative with actually building out your settlement. And hopefully, they mean it when they say intelligent NPC villagers. I've seen several games in the genre recently add NPCs to help players with tasks like gathering, building, and even fighting. But none of them have quite gotten it right.
Those interested in participating in the Closed Beta that runs from April 15 through April 21 can ASKA Discord server before April 5.
Balatro Wants You to Play Poker – and Then Break It Apart
When I first heard about Balatro (out now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One), I wondered how you could make a roguelike deckbuilder – a genre already stacked with greats like Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Inscryption, Hand of Fate, and more – using only poker as an inspiration. After accidentally playing 15 hours of Balatro in only a few short days, I’ve come to realize that this isn’t about playing poker, it’s about breaking poker – and it’s incredible.
Balatro has a simple premise – every poker hand is assigned a points score, and a multiplier for that score. You’re dealt a hand, offered the chance to discard up to five cards at a time, and then try to find the best possible way to hit the highest points total. There are no opponents, per se, just higher and higher points totals you’re tasked with beating (although there are “boss levels” that introduce extra, often painful, mechanics to work around). It’s a simple, elegant set-up. But the ways you can go beyond that set up are anything but simple.
Between each round, you can purchase new cards and abilities from an in-game shop, using money earned by playing each round efficiently, or stylishly. The key to understanding Balatro is to realise that everything you can add to your deck isn’t a way to cheat as such, but a means of literally changing how poker works. The most obvious of these tools comes in the form of Jokers, cards that live separately from your deck, and offer 150 different ways to change how your other cards react – from buffing certain suits, to earning you more money to spend, to truly wild abilities I won’t spoil.
But beyond Jokers there are ways to add extra abilities to your deck as a whole, enhance the potency of certain hand types, add extra cards to your line-up, remove or change suits, and much, much more. It’s overwhelming at first, but as you begin to understand how many variables there are, and how they interact, you start to realise that the game of poker, in Balatro‘s hands, is a mutable, mercurial thing.
I’ve built decks where a simple pair is more powerful than a straight flush. I’ve built decks that mean straights no longer work the way they should, and allow me to create wild combos more frequently. I’ve built decks where I’ve experimented and discovered that there are valid poker hands here that don’t even exist in the real-life game – five of a kind, anyone?
I’ve discovered a new way to play Balatro on every single run I’ve played, quite literally –and I’ve played a lot. This isn’t a game about working within the rules to succeed, it’s about changing the rules to help you redefine what success is. I’ve already hit point scores I didn’t necessarily think were possible when I started playing – and, looking in the unlocks menu, I’ve realised that there are point scores that still feel baffling this far into my time with the game.
Speaking of unlocks, this is where Balatro offers you a meaningful sense of progression. Every new run is a total reset – you can’t keep abilities or receive passive upgrades, but hitting (often very specific) targets will unlock new cards for you to use in future runs. I’m now looking through menus between each run, working out what bizarre goal I want to hit next – a run where I somehow have 30 club cards in my deck? Let’s give it a try.
Perhaps my biggest reservation going into Balatro is that there was no story to anchor this all to – I’ve loved roguelike deckbuilders’ many approaches to slowly but surely offering up a narrative through what amount to simple games of cards. But I’ve come to realise that part of the beauty here is that this game swaps story for atmosphere.
There’s a digital spookiness at work, from the faux-CRT scanlines across the screen, to its heavy reliance on tarot imagery, to the general sense that something is broken about all of this – like we’re playing a virtual poker machine in some haunted casino. I’ll never truly know what’s going on beyond my newest deck’s abilities, and that feels like the point.
Balatro already feels like a game to file alongside the pinnacles of the genre, and I know I’ve only seen a portion of what it has to offer. I can’t wait to see where the cards take me next.
Balatro is out now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
Balatro is a poker-inspired roguelike deck builder all about creating powerful synergies and winning big.
The poker roguelike. Balatro is a hypnotically satisfying deckbuilder where you play illegal poker hands, discover game-changing jokers, and trigger adrenaline-pumping, outrageous combos.
Combine valid poker hands with unique Joker cards in order to create varied synergies and builds. Earn enough chips to beat devious blinds, all while uncovering hidden bonus hands and decks as you progress. You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.
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.
In the event that I walk in front of a particle accelerator, get converted into digital data and am promptly isekai-ed into a gameworld, I hope that gameworld is the opening port town from the original Grandia, released on PS1 way back in 1997 (and ported to PC in 2019). There's something about that game's isometricky vantage point and precise combination of 2D pixel characters and 3D environments. The last sentence describes many virtual worlds of the late 90s, but none have stuck in my mind like Port Parm: that hodgepodge of green and rusty roofs, the canals cutting through the cobblestones, the smoky chimneys and people filling the alleyways. Bliss. I can still hear the seagulls blowing around the screen.
Oh sorry, I rhetorically lost myself for a minute there! I'm supposed to be telling you about Terra Memoria, a new RPG featuring time travel, magic crystals and animal wizards. Here's a trailer.
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