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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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

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

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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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