The thing you need to understand about Fogpiercer is that this deckbuilding roguelike, in which you control a train battling Mad Max-style road bandits, knows the secret joy of artillery. It is one of the few games that recognises that while it's satisfying to hit an enemy with a shell from a howitzer, it's even more satisfying to target the space next to them and use the force of the blast to give them a sideways shove into a wall.

It's a mechanic that puts Fogpiercer into the same fine company as Into The Breach.

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Another intriguing Baldur's Gate 3 custom campaign mod has emerged to confront your party of quirky RPG adventurers. This one's a short story which lets you take a break from BG3's main story to attend a dinner party at the house of a not-at-all creepy rich bloke, who happens to be very good at jamming out on the organ via illusions.

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Why is everything rolling sideways on my desk all of a sudden? What’s this mysterious force, dragging my chair towards the wall? Why are all the cars in the vicinity tumbling and rolling in the direction of *checks press release* ...North Carolina, USA? It can only be gravitational disturbance caused by the impending 1.0 release of a massive strategy project. This time it’s Heart of the Machine, a “4X-style”, “dimension-busting” sci-fi game developed by Arcen Games and published by Hooded Horse.

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"You will get anywhere between a fairly surgical battle with the more simple moves and synergies, to a downright-drunken-disaster run. [They] act with basically zero understanding of enemy mechanics, no regard for their ability order, and they couldn't give less of a damn about tile hazards." This is a section taken from the description of a mod which turns Mewgenics into an auto-battler, but turning the controls over to an AI chessmaster. That AI chessmaster just happens to play almost exactly like I have in my seven hours with it thus far.

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The developers of Mewgenics, the cat breeding indie hit from the creators of The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, are "getting a little bit excited" about what's next for the hit roguelike.

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Balatro developer LocalThunk has marked the second anniversary of his hit indie roguelike with a heartfelt blog post that ended: "Yes, I'm still working on 1.1."

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Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we've been playing. This week, Victoria knows something her husband doesn't; Tom endures the perennial terror known as entertaining a child over half-term; Bertie realises he's missed something important again; and Will makes mech combat somehow sound rather fun.

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Jake Solomon, a decorated game designer known for his work at Firaxis on games like XCOM and Marvel Midnight Suns, has announced that his studio Midsummer is going to close. In doing so, he also shared a pre-alpha look at the "Life Sims + The Truman Show" game the studio was making, called Burbank.

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Mewgenics, the cat breeding indie hit from the creators of The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, has broken a rather impressive Steam record.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 secured five awards at this week's Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' (AIAS) DICE Awards (not to be confused with EA's Stockholm studio of the same name), including the coveted Game of the Year prize, while Sucker Punch's Ghost of Yotei secured three, including for Adventure Game of the Year.

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HoYoverse just wrapped up a big Honkai: Star Rail Special Program. We’ve been waiting for this one for a couple of weeks now thanks to a delay, but the developer has finally delivered all the news on Version 4.0, which will arrive February 13.

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HoYoverse just hosted a sizeable Honkai: Star Rail Special Program, revealing more than just the game’s next major update. Version 3.8 was the big highlight, of course, with the new release arriving soon, on December 16-17 depending on your server region.

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Hello and Happy New Year - is it okay to say that now? I'm not sure where the cut-off point is. Some people still have their Christmas trees up. We had ours out before New Year. Welcome back to What We've Been Playing! Or as I like to call this particular edition of it: What We Played Over Christmas, because it's been a couple of weeks since we've talked.

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Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian has changed its stance on generative AI following backlash faced at the end of last year.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall underestimated just how much players would engage with the game's various sidequests and optional content, and as a result of this extra grinding would find the final boss fight a tad underwhelming.

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We've been hearing rumblings of a full-blown remake of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag for the longest time now. After Skull & Bones' troubled development, those current-gen assets could boost the production of such a project, so the idea never sounded too far-fetched. We've yet to receive official news on it though. Now, a new Raid: Shadow Legends event has got hungry Assassin's Creed fans all hot under the collar.

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Kazutaka Kodaka is one of the most recognisable names in the games industry for those who really enjoy anime-inspired visual novels. Recently, he led The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy's development, and the his name may be familiar to anyone au fait with the Danganronpa series. But the creator's journey to get back into the world of game development wasn't exactly a straight line.

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The Duffer brothers, creators of Stranger Things, have said the final battle of the TV series was partially inspired by Baldur's Gate 3. Matt Duffer was apparently playing the game while devising the showdown.

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Toshiyuki Itahana, character artist for the Final Fantasy series, including games like Final Fantasy 9, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, and Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, has left Square Enix.

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There are a few series staples you can expect from Final Fantasy: a guy called Cid, moogles, chocobos, that lovely arpeggio motif in the music, and… surveys? If you've been reading this site for a while - or, indeed, following the Final Fantasy series - you'll know that Square Enix likes to lobby the fanbase to hear our thoughts about the series' identity and future.

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