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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Ironically, considering the rampant dysentery moving through my campground in brown, sputtering waves, the problem I'm facing in Transport Fever 3 is a blockage. The trucks I've loaded with antibiotics are stuck in a traffic jam that stretches all the way to the pharmacy in the next city over. If I'm to save the inaugural Woodstock festival, I must find a way to get traffic flowing again before the timer runs out.

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Last June, Jagex - the developers of medieval MMO Runescape - found themselves at odds with players after deciding not to create any new content for Pride Month. Disputed internally at the studio before the discussion then leaked online, the decision appeared to be a retreat in the face of a world turning on minority groups.

Following up in September, Games Industry asked Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy if he stood by the call to simply re-run existing Pride-themed quests and events. "Ultimately, my job is governance and protection as much as anything else, and so sometimes those kinds of harsh decisions have to be made to protect the imminent future of the game," he told them. "If there are tough decisions to be made next year, we'll make them. If the world has changed a bit and the environment is different, we will react accordingly."

Five months on and with this year's Pride Month on the horizon, we've asked if the environment is different.

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Sundays are for lying in bed and listening to the persistent rain beating at the skylight. It's a comforting sound but one that's become all too familiar in this seemingly endless winter. This week has at least brought murmurs of sunlight in the mornings, but for now they're often drowned out by the tap tap tap of rain.

While the sound of the rain is exhausting its welcome, the urge to stay in a cosy bed and pooh-pooh the outside remains very welcome. For now, I will put the thought that I need to go to the shops and pick up food for the week into a shoebox and hide it away under the bed, next to the lost socks and sleeping spiders.

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I thought I would make it all the way through winter without getting ill. We're practically touching March. Yet, despite being within spitting distance of the clocks changing and bright evenings returning, I have the lurgy. This weekend, I will practice the art of the double duvet sausage roll.

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Saturdays are for putting your hand in a bucket of ice, swallowing a mouthful of honey and lemon, and breathing a sigh of relief. All that practice you put into your welcome handshake and 'Here comes trouble!' paid off. Almost every member of the treehouse has been successfully greeted home.

All bar one. But I'll get him. I'll get him good.

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Back in September, studio game director Rich Lambert told GamesIndustry.biz that the Elder Scrolls Online team were exploring a move from big expansions to smaller, more frequent updates. Jump ahead four months and, well, that's exactly what they're doing.

Wait, stop running away from me, I'm not bringing you old news reheated like the last of the (now decidedly whiffy) Christmas turkey leftovers, I come bearing fresh details like… a freshly cooked turkey that is seasoned with patch notes and battlepass infographics.

Yum.

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I regret to inform you, I am once again in the grips of an idle clicker. Feed The Reactor was only released last night, but I've already become one of the 0.1% of players to prestige its tech tree. In my defense, there's something a lot more active and engaging at the core of this 'idle' clicker than I'm used to.

Though, it also helps that Feed The Reactor's theming has me picturing myself as a lab boffin, carefully crafting the mix of fuel and ignition sources that will fire up the heart of a fusion reactor...

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Sundays are for looking at your frost-crusted window and sacking off all plans of leaving the house. After all, the central heating has been broken for a week and there is no hope of a repair for another three. There is nothing outside of the confines of your duvet that's not cold.

How will you occupy your time in bed? How will you stave off the basic needs of food, micturation, and, well, cups of tea? It shall be with articles and essays, dear reader. Articles and essays.

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Saturdays are for eagerly sitting beside the front door to the Treehouse ready to jump up and greet writers as they return home. Sure, most of the team aren't due back until Monday, but this way I can get really good at saying 'Here comes trouble' in just the right intonation. 'Here comes trouble.' No, that's not it. 'Here comes trouble.' Better, but it still needs work.

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While the old saying goes 'A game in the basket is worth two in Steam Wishlist', as we teeter into a new year it's good to highlight a couple of the games shuffling our way. Especially when there are quite so many of them that include big stompy mechs. Some of them as big as cities. My engine oil-starved heart beats and thumps in anticipation.

I've tried to keep the list to games confirmed for release next year – tragically cutting The Free Shepherd, which is planned to release in 2027 – but there is one exception.

So let's begin with the outlier that's likely to wander tardily into 2027.

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While I would go so far as to say that I have an affection for the team here at RPS, they certainly tried my patience when it came to the Advent Calendar voting. How dare they not have played and loved the same games as me through the year? Here I was, new head honcho, and I couldn't find a single one in the bunch who had put the necessary hours into Chip 'n Clawz vs. The Brainoids. Shameful.

Thank goodness I can put that right with my Selection Box.

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Welcome to the third ever RPS 100: Readers Edition. This is the (nearly) annual tradition of you, RPS readers, telling us where we went wrong in our annual tradition of trying to fit all of our favourite games into a list of the 100 best PC games of all time.

The list below is your list, voted for by your fellow readers.

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Vince Zampella, the co-creator of Call of Duty, founder of Respawn Entertainment, and head of EA's Battlefield franchise died in a car crash on December 22nd. He was 55 years old.

"We're heartbroken by the passing of our founder and dear friend Vince Zampella," Respawn Entertainment said in a statement on Twitter. "Our hearts are with his family, friends, and all who love him."

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Since 1873, the team at Rock Paper Shotgun have gathered once a year to select what they believe to be the best PC games of all time. Admittedly, they only started writing the list down in 2021, but try not to hold their spotty recordkeeping against them.

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Dastardly December has done it again. Here I was having a nice time with November, joking about the time February tried to explain leap years to August, and the wintry month snuck up in my blindspot. Now December's in the house, kicking back on the sofa with its feet up on the table. At least it's brought a gift: the RPS Advent Calendar 2025, the list of our favourite games of the year.

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Sundays are for writing your first ever Sunday Papers. Though your excitement, like mine, may slip a little when you realise you've been reading almost anything but gaming articles this week. So, I shall be leaning quite heavily into the "(mostly)" in the column's mission of rounding up "great writing about (mostly) videogames".

I hope you'll be able to find as much joy in writing about bacteria, lighthouses, and life after a nuclear war as I have.

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After forgetting to change my alarm for the weekend, my Saturday has started far too early. I clearly don't respond well to surprise free time, as I spent the morning writing my will. Disappointingly, Co-op don't let you set challenges and riddles for bequestees. This oversight has dashed the mental image of my brother and sister duelling over my gaming PC, armed with those Gladiators-style padded polearms that look like oversized cotton wool buds.

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I get no joy from skills and gear in games that tweak back of house stats. An upgrade that adds 0.5% to explosion radii. A helmet that multiplies your base 'luck' total. A god's blessing that increases your character's attack rate by 4%. On paper these boosts change a game, but I often find them unsatisfyingly intangible in practice. I am but a simple editor of words and, as such, numbers confuse me. If I had wanted to be up to my chin in numbers, I would have followed my uncle into the abacus-making business. (For one thing, I'm glad my house isn't filled with loose beads waiting to be painfully trod on while barefoot.)

Which is why I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying Monsters Are Coming, a game that if you lifted up and shook would rattle with invisible numbers like a rainstick.

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