Hyper Light Breaker - Heart Machine's fully 3D rogue-lite spin on its acclaimed 2016 action-adventure Hyper Light Drifter - has had its early access launch bumped back a bit, and is now targeting an early 2025 release.

In a post shared on Steam, Heart Machine founder Alx Preston said the team needs a bit more time to ensure the gameplay experience is up to the "polished" standard the studio is aiming for.

"We don't want to ship a project, even in Early Access, that we're not satisfied with on a number of fronts. Especially in the current state of the industry, we need to put as good a foot forward as we can," Preston wrote.

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A time capsule is a boxful of objects from today's world, buried or otherwise hidden away so that people from the future can rediscover and understand current Hot Trends such as wearing mismatched socks or electing washed-up businessmen with fascist tendencies. Unless, that is, it's a time capsule in sci-fi ocean survival game Subnautica, in which case it contains: THE FUTURE. Developers Unknown Worlds have been sneaking pictures of the forthcoming Subnautica 2 into the original game's time capsules, offering glimpses of its flora and fauna.

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A time capsule is a boxful of objects from today's world, buried or otherwise hidden away so that people from the future can rediscover and understand current Hot Trends such as wearing mismatched socks or electing washed-up businessmen with fascist tendencies. Unless, that is, it's a time capsule in sci-fi ocean survival game Subnautica, in which case it contains: THE FUTURE. Developers Unknown Worlds have been sneaking pictures of the forthcoming Subnautica 2 into the original game's time capsules, offering glimpses of its flora and fauna.

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Chaos and comedy. Death and rebirth. Luck and, uh, running out of luck. A good roguelike doesn't treat the player like other games do. Roguelikes won't guide you helpfully along a path, or let you cinematically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They're more likely to dangle you deep between the jaws of defeat and fumble the rope until you go sliding down defeat's hungry gullet. This is their beauty, and it's a part of why we keep coming back for another go. Next time everything will go right. Next time you'll find the right pair of poison-proof loafers, the perfect co-pilot for your spaceship, a stash of stronger, better ropes. Next time.

Here's our list of the 19 best roguelikes on PC you can play in 2024.

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Chaos and comedy. Death and rebirth. Luck and, uh, running out of luck. A good roguelike doesn't treat the player like other games do. Roguelikes won't guide you helpfully along a path, or let you cinematically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They're more likely to dangle you deep between the jaws of defeat and fumble the rope until you go sliding down defeat's hungry gullet. This is their beauty, and it's a part of why we keep coming back for another go. Next time everything will go right. Next time you'll find the right pair of poison-proof loafers, the perfect co-pilot for your spaceship, a stash of stronger, better ropes. Next time.

Here's our list of the 19 best roguelikes on PC you can play in 2024.

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Risk Of Rain 2 is one of my fave action roguelikes, as it's a good time with pals and has all the hallmarks of things I enjoy most in my games: shooting and looting. That's why the latest free update excites me so, as it introduces an artifact that makes chests malicious and another that lets you hatch angry lizard companions. Oh, and there's a new map, too.

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Have you played Homeworld 3 yet? I have. I thought it was *gestures at review*. I bring it up because, as is often your way, the readership commented me into thinking about something I’ve been wanting to cover: the outdated relic that is the easy/normal/hard difficulty trifecta. "Ohoho," I warbled chuckilishly. "I shall craft a blistering manifesto, sharper than the apex of a Toblerone on the roof of your mouth when you try to eat it as god intended. I will solve this problem." And then I thought, "Actually, no. That sounds hard." So, instead, here are some wazzock-tier ramblings.

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Nic reckons Homeworld 3, the long-awaited spacefaring RTS, is mostly pretty good. Qualified hoorays for that, as well as for the fact that it doesn’t make especially mad demands of your hardware: besides netting a Steam Deck Playable badge from Valve, its minimum PC specs only list the likes of the Intel Core i5-6600 and Nvidia’s GTX 1060. Easily doable, for most aspiring galactic admirals.

Once a battle gets underway, however, Homeworld 3’s performance can start tanking, turning an initially smooth engagement into a more stutter-prone light show. The good news? You can more than double your framerates with a relatively small handful of graphics setting changes, even if some these (including the DLSS and FSR 2 upscalers) can be a tad inconsistent in their own right.

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Spacefaring RTS Homeworld 3 is good sci-fi. Monolithic structures scorched with plasma burns. Sleek spacecraft. Alien sunrises. It’s also good sci-fi because its characters converse through reams of inscrutable but cool-sounding space science, and at no point does a grinning quipster tell a scientist: “Whoa there, professor. Why don’t you try saying that again... but in English!” Basically, if your wishlist for Homeworld 3 has tone and atmosphere at the top, rest easy. At no point did I get the sense that Blackbird ever took making the first proper Homeworld in eight years lightly.

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Hello and welcome back to What To Play! We've returned from a little hiatus, which you definitely noticed and have been very sad about, of course. It's finally edging towards spring here in the UK, but don't let that tempt you into going outside, there's video games to be a-playin'!

As ever, this is where we'll round up the best games from the month gone by, and the things we're most excited to play from the month ahead - plus, any other suggestions for what might complement it. Here's What To Play This May 2024.

Availability: Out now on PC, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

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Microsoft has revealed its next batch of Game Pass titles, taking us into the start of May.

Notable additions to this wave include the return of the original Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Cloud, Console, and PC), which will arrive on 14th May ahead of the forthcoming new-gen remake, and Little Kitty, Big City (Cloud, Console, and PC) coming on 9th May.

This particular release is a day one addition to the service, and will pop players into the shoes - or paws - of a curious cat trying to make its way back home. "Explore the city, make new friends with stray animals, wear delightful hats, and leave more than a little chaos in your wake. After all, isn't that what cats do best?" Xbox asks.

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Blackbird Interactive, the team behind upcoming strategy game Homeworld 3, have released details on both the planned roadmap and the game’s chunky-looking collector’s edition, ahead of the game’s release next month, 13th May.

The roadmap details three pieces of paid DLC for the year ahead, plus an additional planned paid piece in 2025. This is alongside several free content updates. Together, they’re all targeted at fleshing out the game’s ‘War Games’ three player co-op mode. Specifically, the roadmap details new playable factions, starting fleets, challenges, emblems, and maps.

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I like co-op shooter Remnant 2, because it doesn't pretend to be much more than what it is: a dodgerollathon where, in between dodge rolls, you fill demons with bullets. I've been meaning to go back to it, so it's convenient that there's more DLC arriving soon. Dubbed The Forgotten Kingdom, it adds a new Invoker archetype, fleshes out an existing jungle biome, and introduces more gear, more monsters, and the like. Yes, count me in.

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Mary Kenney, associate narrative director at Insomniac Games, has discussed the current online discussion surrounding narrative development and consultancy firm Sweet Baby Inc.

To recap, Sweet Baby Inc. recently became the target of a group which claimed the company was forcing studios it worked with to increase diversity within its games, and accused it of pushing a "woke agenda" into the industry. Following a report into the claims by Kotaku, a number of game developers have spoken up to clear up misconceptions about what companies like Sweet Baby Inc. actually do.

Kenney, who has written for games including Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Telltale's The Walking Dead and the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine, posted a thread on X yesterday. "Some of you don't seem to understand how narrative consulting on games works," she began, "but don't worry: I do!"

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It's looking increasingly likely that Gearbox Entertainment is going to be sold by Embracer. In a town hall with staff earlier this week, CEO and co-founder Randy Pitchford reportedly told staff that a decision had been made regarding the studio's future, with more details to be shared in March.

Embracer bought Gearbox for $1.3 billion (around £1.02 billion) in 2021, but it was reported that they were looking to sell last year as part of ongoing layoffs, closures and divestments.

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Gigantic, the free-to-play team brawler from a former StarCraft and Guild Wars designer, which launched (fully) in 2017 and closed the following year, is returning as Gigantic: Rampage Edition. It's no longer free-to-play, but a "premium and definitive release" of the original, and it's due on April 9th.

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The studio behind Homeworld 3, Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker have cut a number of jobs, explaining this is "part of a realignment plan that's necessary because of new projects that were shelved by some of our partners". Blackbird Interactive haven't confirmed the number of people who lost their jobs, nor have they said what the mystery projects were. It's been a grim year for people working in the video games industry, with thousands losing their jobs, and we're only halfway through February.

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February's Steam Next Fest demo bonanza officially concluded on Monday, and Valve have now revealed the 50 most played games you all tucked into across the week-long event. Ordered by the number of unique players that spent time with them during Next Fest proper (meaning all those early demo plays from earlier in the month haven't been counted), the most popular game of the lot was one that was only formally announced right at the end of January. So congratulations Dungeonborne - your blend of PvPvE dungeon crawling and fantasy skelly monsters clearly struck a chord with this year's Next Festers.

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