Studio Imugi has given fans a brief glimpse at their new upcoming title, Bonaparte, which answers the question ‘What if the French Revolution had Steampunk Gundam?’

Studio Imugi has finally unveiled their debut strategy simulator, Bonaparte, an homage to the former Revolutionary’s skill in identifying weaknesses in opposing battle plans, placing the player firmly in control. My knowledge of the French Revolution comes from two sources: college history courses and the 2006 film Marie Antoinette. This means I know practically nothing.

However, one thing is certain—France did not have ‘steampunk Gundams’ as their main force. This is where Bonaparte introduces a paradigm shift to the French Revolution formula. Studio Imugi has also released a trailer to coincide with their announcement, which you can view below.

Bonaparte places the player firmly in the commander’s seat, allowing them to not only make battlefield decisions but also wield a politician’s greatest weapon: diplomacy. The trailer showcases an in-battle scene where Céline Bonaparte discusses her allegiance—whether to the subjects of France or the mighty monarchs—adding a notable Fire Emblem feel to the turn-based combat. These decisions will likely lead to battles playing out differently, considering “Rewrite History” is central to Bonaparte‘s identity.

What sets this strategy simulator apart is the reliance on advanced machines to decimate the enemies of France, we are talking Steampunk-humanoid-shaped vehicles that use weaponry (similar to Code Geass‘s nightmare frame, or Neon Genesis Evangelion units) to rule the battlefield. This title allows the player to enter the capable boots of either Céline or César Bonaparte and change the course of history by siding with notable historical figures (like Marie Antoinette) or taking up arms against them.

Bonaparte launches at a TBD date in 2025, and fans can check out their Steam page for more info.

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Sony is pulling Horizon Forbidden West from its PS Plus subscription service in the coming weeks.

The first-party Sony game is now listed under the 'Last Chance to Play' section on PS Plus, along with the likes of NieR Replicant, Marvel's Midnight Suns and Alien Isolation.

This upcoming removal of Forbidden West comes just a few months after Horizon Zero Dawn was also removed from the service, which as Tom wrote at the time seemed a surprising move by Sony.

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Paradox Interactive's streak of game delays continues with the news its Chinese-Room-developed Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is now targeting a release in the "first half of 2025", rather than its previously announced "late 2024" window.

In a post on its website, Paradox called the delay a "proactive decision" derived from its commitment earlier this year to deliver "high-quality games" to its players. "Though [Bloodlines 2] is in a good enough place that we could have maintained our planned release window," it wrote, "Paradox and The Chinese Room collaboratively decided to prioritise polish."

Paradox says the delay will "create a quality assurance buffer, giving more time between testing and launch, ensuring we release the game when it's ready." More specifically, The Chinese Room will use the time to expand Bloodlines 2's story, providing twice as many endings as its predecessor, and to "adjust certain areas" such as Fabien - the voice in its protagonist's head.

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A flurry of Pokémon news has confirmed a launch date for the long-awaited Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, and a look ahead at what's next for Pokémon Go.

Pokémon TCG Pocket, a digital version of the phenomenally-popular trading card game, will go live via the iPhone App Store and Google Play for Android worldwide on 30th October.

As previously announced, you can open two packs of Pokémon cards for free per day - just enough to get you hooked - and it's interesting to see the pack-opening mechanic front and centre in the game's trailer below.

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It's rather appropriate that the idea for Paper Trail - a game where you have to fold paper to solve puzzles - came from a brainstorming session where Newfangled Games' founders and brothers, Henry and Fred Hoffman, folded the paper of their hand drawn levels, then noticed that the puzzles on the front and the back could combine to make an even bigger puzzle. This one magic idea stuck from the off - but Newfangled Games' debut indie didn't always look like the polished puzzler it is now. There were some conceptual design bumps in the road, a trip to Boxpark Shoreditch, and a Netflix deal to chase before they could reach Paper Trail's true potential.

In the release version of Paper Trail, you play as Paige, who runs away from the 'forgotten seaside town' of Southfold to pursue her dream of attending university and becoming an Astrophysicist. Instead of just catching the train like the rest of us, Paige bends the space-time continuum to fold the world around her. You see her rural world from a top-down perspective, like looking at a piece of paper, and then you fold the world, just like that paper, to reveal the pattern on the other side to create paths, move objects, and combine symbols. A simple mechanic that creates some deceptively hard, but rewarding, puzzles. However, initially, Paper Trail was more of a sidescroller, but "there wasn't a huge amount of variety you could do with it," Henry Hoffman tells me as I chat with him on a video call. "It was interesting one-off interactions, but it didn't really have any scope beyond that."

So then Paper Trail transformed into more of a Metroidvania, where you fold the map itself rather than the levels. "And it's funny," Henry tells me, "because we weren't aware of Carto at the time, and I don't think Carto had come out, but that's very much what that ended up doing, where you're zooming out and manipulating the environment and rearranging." But this map folding didn't work for them either, "because there wasn't any real immediate feedback from folding the macro environment," Henry explains. "You would do that and then you wouldn't really see exactly what had happened, it would be a little bit confusing and disorienting."

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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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Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has said he has "no regrets" over his company's decision to break Apple and Google's terms of service back in August 2020 - something that saw the hugely-popular Fortnite booted off both iPhone and Android storefronts.

The carefully choreographed stunt sparked four years of legal wrangling over Apple and Google's app store policies - and has ultimately led to Epic Games launching its own mobile store today on Android worldwide and on iPhone in mainland Europe, thanks to policy changes demanded of Apple by the EU.

"We've probably lost a billion dollars not having Fortnite on iOS the past four years," Sweeney said, in a briefing to press ahead of the Epic Games Store on mobile going live. "But what's the price of freedom?"

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Fans were jubilant when Persona 3 received a remake earlier this year, but this turned to disappointment when it became clear its Episode Aigis epilogue DLC was not included. Multiple versions of Persona 3 have been released since the game's initial PS2 launch in 2006 - namely Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable, each with unique additions. The release of this year's Persona 3 Reload was an opportunity to provide the definitive version of the game, but without Episode Aigis fans were upset it would remain incomplete.

That's why Atlus relented and has now additionally remade Episode Aigis: The Answer with all the trappings of Reload - though no doubt the fact it's the fastest-selling Atlus game ever was also persuasive. Finally, fans will get the complete story experience they've craved (though still without the alternative female protagonist from P3P). But after going hands-on with the DLC, I'm still left with a lingering question: what exactly was the main game missing?

I played Persona 3 for the first time this year and really enjoyed its twisted teen drama, even if the series as a whole is starting to feel formulaic. Yet after receiving the true ending, the story felt complete and I wasn't left with unanswered questions. So what kind of answer can The Answer provide?

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UPDATE 6.45pm UK: This evening's big new Dragon Age: The Veilguard trailer has landed, confirming what we knew already - that BioWare's upcoming RPG will arrive at Halloween. Also in the trailer? Well, Dragon Age fans will get to see a very familiar face - we'll let you watch for yourselves and read more below.

Yes, that is absolutely Morrigan, the fan-favourite returning character voiced once again, it sounds like, by Farscape and Stargate SG-1's Claudia Black. It certainly looks as if Morrigan's clothing here is inspired by her mum Flemeth - which probably isn't good news.

Excited yet?

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I've been playing Arco on and off for the last few weeks on Switch and PC. I'm loving it - I think Arco's pretty wonderful. But the builds I've been playing on are also rather buggy, and I haven't been able to get to the end, either because of show-stopper bugs or random crashes.

What we're going to do in this case is hold back the review until next week, when I'm able to play retail code and know how the final thing runs. Until then, I wanted to give you a brief taste of what this game is like and why I think tactics fans should be excited. Hopefully next week we'll find that the final code is a lot more stable.

I'm going to focus pretty tightly on the combat today, which is an absolute gem. Just to set the scene, though, Arco's a Western story of indigenous people and greedy colonisers, and it plays out across a number of acts with the player shifting between different roles in each act. You take on missions and move from one area to another, helping people, fighting, and generally learning the story of this place.

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Among Us developer InnerSloth has announced a collaboration with Dungeons and Dragons web series Critical Role.

This collaboration means players can now bedeck their little space beans with a number of items worn by those intrepid members from Vox Machina, Mighty Nein, or Bells Hells. I am talking about Artagan's Incredible Brows Visor or the Dust of Deliciousness Nameplate, to name but two.

"Getting to work alongside the wonderful crew of the hit TTRPG show Critical Role to bring some of their magic to Among Us for Gilmore's Curious Cosmicube has been mind blowing," InnerSloth said. "Be sure to go to our in-game store and spend some Stars before the Cosmicube is gone."

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A Witch In Time

HIGH Fast action. Intense enemy design. Impressive visuals.

LOW Puzzles can be offputtingly difficult in single-player.

WTF There are challenge modes to make things harder???

Teagan wasn’t expecting to start her morning tied to a stake and being burnt as a witch. She certainly wasn’t expecting to be rescued by the spirit of a deceased witch and forced to run for her life without time to mourn her fallen brother, Edwin. 

Finding out that she is descended from a line of witches tasked with maintaining the flow of time and preventing the fall of mankind was almost too much to bear.  Now she must master her newfound powers, attempt to save Edwin by going back in time, and also defeat hordes of enemies under the thrall of the mysterious Dark Puppeteer. 

TimeMelters is a game that nearly defies genre classification. 

It’s partially an action title where players control Teagan from a third-person perspective as she navigates through a fantasy equivalent of the Scottish Highlands while battling foes with an array of magic bolts and life-draining powers. 

However, it’s also something of a strategy/tower defense hybrid.  Teagan gains the ability to go into spirit form, allowing her to fly above the map for a quasi-bird’s eye view to activate summoning and infusing powers while time slows to a crawl. 

Alas, the Dark Puppeteer’s forces are legion, and Teagan, while powerful, is a glass cannon. It takes only one enemy slipping through her defenses to kill her.  This is where TimeMelters debuts its game design coup-de-grace in the form of a third aspect — a time rewinding feature that grants the ability to reverse the flow of time and create copied echoes of herself. These echoes will repeat Teagan’s previous actions exactly, up until the moment that echo would have been killed. 

For instance, the player can move Teagan past a group of enemies the previous version of her has already have killed (tenses are hard when it comes to time travel!) allowing her to concentrate on other foes or achieve other objectives the first echo wasn’t able to. It’s even possible to further alter the timeline by using an echo to distract an enemy that the player can now ambush or lead in yet another direction towards a trap.  It’s astonishing to watch in action. 

I know how this sounds, but read it all again — it makes sense, even if it makes one’s head hurt — but the brilliance of this design cannot be understated.  Using time manipulations and copies of Teagan to defy the odds and solve puzzles that would otherwise be impossible made me feel like a genius. However, therein lies the rub.  I am not super-great at three-dimensional, multi-linear thinking, so this was a real challenge. 

Thankfully, handy markers display the numbers of enemies in a group and the route they are currently taking, which then help the player plan the best use of the limited mana and small number of clones Teagan has at her disposal. For instance, she can kill enemies closing in on her position to gain mana, then switch to spirit mode to scour the map for groups she can ambush so she doesn’t have to deal with them later.  While this all takes a little bit of getting used to, it becomes second nature far more quickly than I would have believed when I first started playing. 

…Then I discovered the co-op campaign. 

With a friend joining in via the Playstation Network, two people can take control of Teagan and her brother, traversing the many levels in TimeMelters‘ campaign, though with slight adjustments in the storyline, dialogue and mission structure. 

For instance, Edwin starts one mission at the opposite end of the map from Teagan, providing cover for an NPC who needs to be protected as he slowly meanders towards the mission goal — a task which Teagan had to coordinate on her own alone in the singleplayer version. 

Players share a mana pool and the rewind feature but they otherwise act independently, so planning and coordination are a must. However, this is offset by bringing double the firepower, which makes battles and puzzles much more manageable than in the single-player campaign.

Despite the fact that I was being pushed to creatively think and temporally strategize in ways that games have rarely asked me to, TimeMelters is a must play — especially for players who have someone to share the cognitive load with. 

Even at its most frustrating, the brilliance on display here is addictive. It would be goofy to say TimeMelters is the best action/strategy/time clone hybrid involving witches I’ve played all year, so let me broaden it a bit and say that it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year, bar none.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Autoexec Games.  It is currently available on PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. Three hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. This game features witches using magical forces to kill both human and non-human enemies.  The protagonist absorbs the souls/spirits of dead opponents to power further magical attacks.  The game features heavy occult themes and not-for-kids moments like burning suspected witches at the stake as well as necromancy used as a secondary attack for the protagonist.  There is blood, but not excessive amounts, and most players have seen far worse in other games.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All story-based dialogue during cutscenes is fully subtitled. The majority of in-game dialog is fully subtitled, with occasional declarations by the main character(s) being voice-only.  These additional declarations do not cause the player to miss anything plot specific, but they do add flavor to the moment. I’d say the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Puropu Defense Squad is a wacky third person action tower defense game where weird looking aliens defend their base against waves of horrible humans.

Playable with one to four players in online co-op, in Puropu Defense Squad you control a team of customizable heroes, each with unique abilities and weapons. The game combines tower defense mechanics with real-time combat, requiring strategic placement of units and … Read More

Endzone 2 is a survival city-builder game set in a post-apocalyptic world where players must manage resources, lead a group of survivors, and rebuild civilization.

A sequel to the 2021 original, in Endzone 2 players will expand their colony, explore dangerous and irradiated zones for resources, and defend against threats like raiders and environmental hazards. It features dynamic weather, a day-night cycle, vehicles, improved settler … Read More

Worshippers of Cthulhu is an eldritch horror colony sim game where you build a city and perform rituals to awaken the almighty Cthulhu.

In Worshippers of Cthulhu you are a cult leader who is seeking to bring about a cosmic rebirth at the hands of Cthuhu and other maddening eldritch entities. After your ship washes up on a strange land with a giant pit that … Read More

King’s Orders is a mediaeval strategy game where you command your away with letters that may have difficulties reaching their destination.

In most strategy games the orders you give are instantly followed and you can instantly see them take effect. That’s not how things actually worked throughout history though – messengers had to relay the information back and forth between the frontline and command, which … Read More

Esports has come a long way: from high-score chasing, to the Battle By the Bay, the World Cyber Games, and much more. It wasn’t until the 2010s that the legitimacy and ubiquity of esports reached a fevered pitch, with studios chasing after this market and the push to give esports as big of a profile as traditional sports. But as I looked at genres like fighting and RTS, I started to think about whether esports has helped or hurt game development.

The Intended Effect

Esports and live service have gone together since the 2000s and the rise of League of Legends. The idea was that by creating an esport, a game would become popular outside of just playing the game; people would follow the esport and sponsors could sell ad revenue. There has always been this dream in the US to have esports reach the same level of recognition and impact that we saw in South Korea with StarCraft.

By continuing to support a game with more content, it would mean people would spend money on said content, and more support would keep a game going for years. When you look at the big successes — LoL, CS: GO, Rainbow Six: Siege, and so on – it does turn into that. For multiplayer, it has been a godsend in terms of keeping these games relevant and playable for years thanks to people continuing to play for the competitive side. This symbiotic relationship has been the envy of publishers and developers who all tried to make their own take on these games, as we saw with the numerous battle royales, MOBAs, shooters, and so on. And while esports has been good to these games it hasn’t been good to the health of these genres.

The problem is that making an esport and making a marketable game might not be as compatible as you think.

Making an Esport

Esport design is different from the traditional design and mechanics we see in other games. When you are building an esport, you must focus on the competitive side — all map design, all balancing, all future content, must be built around what the competitive people want to see. This has been the driving factor for fighting games for years and was part of what led to the decline of traditional RTS games in the mainstream in favor of MOBAs.

An esport is all about “the match” and everything that isn’t related to it is seen as fluff to the competitive side.

Matches are meant to be as balanced as possible and favor player skill above all else. With every esport game mentioned in this piece, you’ll find very little content outside of that. For the games that do add in single-player or story content, with rare exceptions (that I’ll come back to below), it is kept minimal and seems like something added to check off a list.

Casual vs. Competitive

When we look at games and genres that have gone out of their way to be the next esport, it’s time to face an important truth: esports suck the fun out of those games. From a community standpoint, some of the worst games imaginable, with regard to community management and moderation, are from the esports side. You have those who send horrible messages to other players, players who look down on everyone else, and reports of corruption and cheating from time to time.

From an onboarding and UI/UX point of view, these games are ineffective at providing accommodations and educating new players on how to play competitively. When it comes to the importance of UI/UX design, esports games fail this test time after time, and a lot of it comes down to their player base, specifically the esports side. Just as single-player gamers often fail to understand the difference between complexity and depth, so do a lot of multiplayer fans. Some immediately fume the second someone wants to change a game to make it easier to play or modernize it for audiences today, as we saw with the modern controls debate from Street Fighter 6. The problem is that teaching someone how to play against an AI is not the same as teaching them how to fight another player. For games that introduce new rules and mechanics, onboarding and tutorials may never cover those advanced elements.

In the last section I mentioned that esports players tend to focus on match design and match balancing above all else, however, the “else” in this regard is what attracts people to play these games in the first place. An esports player wants something that is consistent across however many matches they tend to play over the game’s lifespan and this is also why progression, outside elements, or those that don’t fit within the match are viewed as negatives. For everyone else, this kind of stuff is what makes these games appealing. Something I wrote about in my RTS book with unit design is that at the end of the day, cool trumps balance. Are the different factions in the Command & Conquer universe or the races in StarCraft 2 perfectly balanced? Heck no, and any self-respecting fan would say the same.

Keeping with StarCraft 2, it's the only game I can think of that came out with a fully supported esports model with its competitive play and a completely original campaign for each faction featuring unique units and progression not seen anywhere else. This is in line with how NetherRealm Studios revitalized the fighting game genre in the late 2000s by focusing on content for people who have no interest in the competitive side.

Esports players, no matter how much money gets thrown at sponsorships and tournaments, represent a fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction, of your consumer base, and it's why only catering to them does not keep a game financially afloat.

Where the Money Comes and Goes

Live service game design is all about money coming in and going out in a continuous cycle. If you’re not creating new content, money stops coming in, which means no more budget to create new content. And if you’re not creating “attractive” content for people to buy, then you are just wasting development time and money.

The issue with catering only to esports players with your game’s content and growth is that it doesn’t leave room for anyone else to keep playing. You’ll see this with any competitively-driven game — the first month or two will have peak player counts with new players trying to learn the game and see if it works for them. And then, without fail, those numbers plummet and the people who stick around are just the competitive side or those trying to be competitive.

This group only cares about one thing: content that plays into the competitive side of the game. Anything else is not of interest to them, and if you think new cosmetics are going to be enough to bring casual players back, that’s not going to work. To that point, trying to create new game modes, new mechanics, or anything that runs counter to the esports/competitive side will be met with angry esports players, and still may not be enough to get people to come back. Blizzard’s strategy of splitting StarCraft 2 down the middle between the competitive and casual sides with its content was a brilliant move. Conversely, trying to shoehorn competitive and casual together is what doomed Command & Conquer 4.

The problem with trying to cater to an esports market is that instead of being able to grow your game with new content and interest over the months and years, it starts to shrink. Once a game’s audience becomes fixed like this, no one new is going to join, and if they do, chances are they won’t stay long. If players feel like they are just there to be served up to the expert players, they will leave even faster, as Activision’s report on Skill-Based Matchmaking covers in detail.

The Better Live Service

Some of the most popular live service games today come from the mobile space and are as far away from competitive experiences as a game could get. Creating attractive content for a live service game requires making sure that all segments of your audience can experience it. If there are new missions, storylines, etc., then they should be accessible to all groups. For bonus challenges or limited-time events, there needs to be content for each group of players.

Whenever there is content that only one group of players can use or will support, it’s going to push the other ones away; you need as wide of a consumer base as possible if you want your game to keep growing.

What Is the Future of Esports?

Esports is in a very awkward place now; it’s no longer the new thing on the market, and tournaments like the LoL Championship Series and EVO have reached the mainstream, but prospects for continued growth are debatable. Part of the problem is that it’s not about organically making a game an esport, where the process would look like this:

1. The game comes out
2. People like to play it
3. Tournaments are developed
4. The game becomes an esport

Now, many developers and publishers are chasing the market to will their games to become an esport. The ones that specifically are built for esport players are not finding a market outside of just those players.

Just as the RTS genre needs to have a hard talk about modernizing and appealing to more people, the fighting genre needs a similar one.

Despite how many copies Street Fighter 6 sold and how popular it was, less than half the player base on PC tried a multiplayer match. Designing additional content for mainstream and non-competitive players has helped, but it doesn’t fix the inherent problem of trying to get someone who isn’t a pro player interested in playing a game designed around that mindset.

What do you think: Is esports going to keep growing, or has it reached its limits?

If you’re reading this preview, it’s likely that you already know what Civilization is on some level. A 4X game encompassing the entirety of human history may sound like a bit of a stretch, but that’s exactly what Sid Meier and the rest of the team aimed for when creating the first - and every subsequent - Civilization game. I think it’s fair to say they’ve done a decent job at it.

It was only a short while ago that we got our first glimpse of Civilization 7, the much anticipated latest entry to the long running series. As with any fresh instalment to classics from the strategy genre—games like Homeworld 3, Company of Heroes 3, Total War: Pharaoh, or Age of Empires 4—there's a lot of excitement surrounding the next Civilization, especially regarding when it's set to come out. Gamescom's Opening Night Live has just revealed that date, and, fortunately, it's much sooner than many might have anticipated.

Enlarge / Firaxis has upped the ante on presentation for the cities. It's still a bit abstract and removed, but they have more vibrancy, detail, and movement than before. (credit: 2K Games)

2K Games provided a flight from Chicago to Baltimore and accommodation for two nights so that Ars could participate in the preview opportunity for Civilization VII. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

From squares to hexes, from tech trees to civic trees, over its more than 30 years across seven mainline entries, the Civilization franchise continues to evolve.

Firaxis, the studio that has developed the Civilization games for many years, has a mantra when making a sequel: 33 percent of the game stays the same, 33 percent gets updated, and 33 percent is brand new.

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Announced at this year's Geoffcom, RoadCraft is a new game courtesy of the vehicular bods behind MudRunner and SnowRunner. This means it's very much a simulation game where you're fighting terrain with tyres, except this time you aren't just driving about, but managing a fleet of machines to carry out heavy construction work. Think a mixture of logistics, cars, cranes, and paving some lovely new roads from a once dilapidated junk heap.

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Oh, hey, would you look at that? Total War: Warhammer 3's patch 5.2.0 (arriving later today) has some new orcs and goblins in it.

Look at 'em! They've got swords and shields now!

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Tactical Breach Wizards is a tactics game for people that don’t like tactics games. Magically, it’s also a tactics game for people who love them like nothing else. It’s permissive and demanding; playful and tense. Its globe-spanning plot covers conspiracies, PMCs, and brutal theocratic dictatorships. It also features a traffic-summoning warlock named Steve wearing a hi-vis robe. It’s finding that one absolutely, perfectly ridiculous XCOM turn, every turn…and at the same time knowing it’s absolutely, perfectly fine if you don’t. In short: it’s one of the most enjoyable tactics games I’ve ever played, and the only tactics game with a pyromancer so rubbish he relies on making his enemies pass out from heatstroke.

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I’ve likely mentioned hitting Lovecraft fatigue so often that it’s now evolved into a second phase of Lovecraft-fatigue fatigue. This is not the same as Lovecraft refreshment, no matter how much I might want to return to the days before old one plushies and Cthulhu children’s books terrorised the internet en masse. There’s not quite enough information about “story generator” sim Marry a Deep One: Innsmouth Simulator for me to confidently say it’ll cut through my exhaustion with all things tentacular and horrifically be-gilled. But it is beguiling, isn’t it? There’s all sorts of little widgets and details shown off that remind me of everything from Sid Meier’s Pirates to classic adventure games, and maybe even a little Rimworld? It’s a heady soup, although one I’d recommend against quaffing, given where the water comes from.

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There you are, rambling through the woods of Interactive Entertainment with an empty pack and a spring in your step. Here I am, lying in wait behind a tree. Wham! Bam! You reel back in consternation as I bounce into the path and clobber you with a sack containing no less than eight venerable RPGs, from Baldur's Gate to Warhammer 40,000: Rogue's Trader - well over a thousand hours worth of dungeons, dragons, dicerolls, dwarven shopkeepers and many other things I refuse to spend time alliterating, all of which will (currently) set you back just £32.07.

Were you planning to spend this weekend playing some cute two-hour artgame sideshow, without any levelling at all? Shut up, you DOLT. You will play what the nice journalist tells you to play! Best lay in extra caffeine tablets, because it's going to take you till Monday just to get through the character creators alone.

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Any gags I could make about an update that lets Total War: Warhammer 3’s dawi play tall are far too obvious for the discerning comedic palette that brought you such bangers as that time I just wrote “(penis)” a bunch so the Overkill’s Walking Dead page wouldn’t quote me out of context, so let’s just dive right in to the details. The strategy game’s 5.2 update is on the horizon, and tagging along with it are the first of the “extra bits” the team teased in June. I’m very excited about them. They sit somewhere between the usual patch fare of stat tweaks and errata, and the weightier faction facelifts that come alongside paid DLC. They’re also focused right where Immortal Empires needs them the most: depth, rather than width. In the dawi’s case, quite literally.

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I am forever looking for a game to replace Transport Tycoon (or OpenTTD) in my affections. I know there are several railway management sims kicking around Steam, but I haven't found the one that does it for me yet. Could it be Railroad Corporation 2? It's a train tycoon game in which you lay tracks through the early 20th century, and it's launching in Early Access on September 9th.

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Space 4X strategy game Stellaris launched in 2016, but Paradox can't stop adding to the universe. Last time I checked in, it was school trips to other dimensions. Now, it's Cosmic Storms. Due for release alongside the Stellaris 3.13 Vela update on September 10th, these are a paid "mechanical expansion" (priced at a rather chunky £11, $13 or €13, and available as part of the current season pass) that builds upon the game's existing Space Storms, "providing a deeper experience with strategically meaningful gameplay and beautiful upgraded visuals". Wash that down with new civics, precursor narratives, anomalies, archaeology sites, techs, edicts, a new Ascension perk, and new galactic community resolutions.

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Over 2000 hours spent in various factory games makes me a bit of a purist, I suppose. In theory, I should then be the ideal reviewer to enjoy Shapez 2. But I'm also the ideal reviewer to tear it apart over the most minor hiccups and defects. I'm the Anton Ego of factory games. I don't like food, I love it. If I don't love it, I don't swallow.

Ah, you needn't worry. This is by far the most fun I've had reviewing a game, and Shapez 2 has, in my mind at least, turned the holy trinity of factory games (Factorio, Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program) into a holy quartet. Its pared back, everything-is-free-forever approach is quite liberating, and I've never had so much fun placing conveyor belts in my life. But 40 hours into my save file, I've often found myself yearning for a bit more creativity in the challenges, a few more curveballs sent in my direction.

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The release date for Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been revealed in a last-minute leak thanks to a naughty video advertisement. Electronic Arts had planned to share the game's debut-day in about... *checks watchless wrist* ... 7 hours, as part of a special release date trailer. But the internet will ever internet, and thanks to some slip-up or other, we have the knowledge just a smidge early. Will I tell you what the actual release date is? Sure. I guess so.

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The next advance in video game graphics technology is not ray-tracing or tray-racing or any variation thereof - it's janky stop motion and rubbish plastic dolls, and it actually began about 30 years ago, when I watched the Adam and Joe show for the first time. If you never watched the Adam and Joe show, they used to do home movie recreations of famous films like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan using stuffed animals and action figures. I found these "Toymovies" hysterical as a kid - I suspect they are less so now. Probably, they are full of jokes we might tentatively class as "of their time". The point is, Reptilian Rising is sort of Toymovie: The Game.

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Announced at this year's Geoffcom, RoadCraft is a new game courtesy of the vehicular bods behind MudRunner and SnowRunner. This means it's very much a simulation game where you're fighting terrain with tyres, except this time you aren't just driving about, but managing a fleet of machines to carry out heavy construction work. Think a mixture of logistics, cars, cranes, and paving some lovely new roads from a once dilapidated junk heap.

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Oh, hey, would you look at that? Total War: Warhammer 3's patch 5.2.0 (arriving later today) has some new orcs and goblins in it.

Look at 'em! They've got swords and shields now!

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Tactical Breach Wizards is a tactics game for people that don’t like tactics games. Magically, it’s also a tactics game for people who love them like nothing else. It’s permissive and demanding; playful and tense. Its globe-spanning plot covers conspiracies, PMCs, and brutal theocratic dictatorships. It also features a traffic-summoning warlock named Steve wearing a hi-vis robe. It’s finding that one absolutely, perfectly ridiculous XCOM turn, every turn…and at the same time knowing it’s absolutely, perfectly fine if you don’t. In short: it’s one of the most enjoyable tactics games I’ve ever played, and the only tactics game with a pyromancer so rubbish he relies on making his enemies pass out from heatstroke.

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I’ve likely mentioned hitting Lovecraft fatigue so often that it’s now evolved into a second phase of Lovecraft-fatigue fatigue. This is not the same as Lovecraft refreshment, no matter how much I might want to return to the days before old one plushies and Cthulhu children’s books terrorised the internet en masse. There’s not quite enough information about “story generator” sim Marry a Deep One: Innsmouth Simulator for me to confidently say it’ll cut through my exhaustion with all things tentacular and horrifically be-gilled. But it is beguiling, isn’t it? There’s all sorts of little widgets and details shown off that remind me of everything from Sid Meier’s Pirates to classic adventure games, and maybe even a little Rimworld? It’s a heady soup, although one I’d recommend against quaffing, given where the water comes from.

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There you are, rambling through the woods of Interactive Entertainment with an empty pack and a spring in your step. Here I am, lying in wait behind a tree. Wham! Bam! You reel back in consternation as I bounce into the path and clobber you with a sack containing no less than eight venerable RPGs, from Baldur's Gate to Warhammer 40,000: Rogue's Trader - well over a thousand hours worth of dungeons, dragons, dicerolls, dwarven shopkeepers and many other things I refuse to spend time alliterating, all of which will (currently) set you back just £32.07.

Were you planning to spend this weekend playing some cute two-hour artgame sideshow, without any levelling at all? Shut up, you DOLT. You will play what the nice journalist tells you to play! Best lay in extra caffeine tablets, because it's going to take you till Monday just to get through the character creators alone.

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Any gags I could make about an update that lets Total War: Warhammer 3’s dawi play tall are far too obvious for the discerning comedic palette that brought you such bangers as that time I just wrote “(penis)” a bunch so the Overkill’s Walking Dead page wouldn’t quote me out of context, so let’s just dive right in to the details. The strategy game’s 5.2 update is on the horizon, and tagging along with it are the first of the “extra bits” the team teased in June. I’m very excited about them. They sit somewhere between the usual patch fare of stat tweaks and errata, and the weightier faction facelifts that come alongside paid DLC. They’re also focused right where Immortal Empires needs them the most: depth, rather than width. In the dawi’s case, quite literally.

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I am forever looking for a game to replace Transport Tycoon (or OpenTTD) in my affections. I know there are several railway management sims kicking around Steam, but I haven't found the one that does it for me yet. Could it be Railroad Corporation 2? It's a train tycoon game in which you lay tracks through the early 20th century, and it's launching in Early Access on September 9th.

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Space 4X strategy game Stellaris launched in 2016, but Paradox can't stop adding to the universe. Last time I checked in, it was school trips to other dimensions. Now, it's Cosmic Storms. Due for release alongside the Stellaris 3.13 Vela update on September 10th, these are a paid "mechanical expansion" (priced at a rather chunky £11, $13 or €13, and available as part of the current season pass) that builds upon the game's existing Space Storms, "providing a deeper experience with strategically meaningful gameplay and beautiful upgraded visuals". Wash that down with new civics, precursor narratives, anomalies, archaeology sites, techs, edicts, a new Ascension perk, and new galactic community resolutions.

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Over 2000 hours spent in various factory games makes me a bit of a purist, I suppose. In theory, I should then be the ideal reviewer to enjoy Shapez 2. But I'm also the ideal reviewer to tear it apart over the most minor hiccups and defects. I'm the Anton Ego of factory games. I don't like food, I love it. If I don't love it, I don't swallow.

Ah, you needn't worry. This is by far the most fun I've had reviewing a game, and Shapez 2 has, in my mind at least, turned the holy trinity of factory games (Factorio, Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program) into a holy quartet. Its pared back, everything-is-free-forever approach is quite liberating, and I've never had so much fun placing conveyor belts in my life. But 40 hours into my save file, I've often found myself yearning for a bit more creativity in the challenges, a few more curveballs sent in my direction.

Read more

The release date for Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been revealed in a last-minute leak thanks to a naughty video advertisement. Electronic Arts had planned to share the game's debut-day in about... *checks watchless wrist* ... 7 hours, as part of a special release date trailer. But the internet will ever internet, and thanks to some slip-up or other, we have the knowledge just a smidge early. Will I tell you what the actual release date is? Sure. I guess so.

Read more

The next advance in video game graphics technology is not ray-tracing or tray-racing or any variation thereof - it's janky stop motion and rubbish plastic dolls, and it actually began about 30 years ago, when I watched the Adam and Joe show for the first time. If you never watched the Adam and Joe show, they used to do home movie recreations of famous films like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan using stuffed animals and action figures. I found these "Toymovies" hysterical as a kid - I suspect they are less so now. Probably, they are full of jokes we might tentatively class as "of their time". The point is, Reptilian Rising is sort of Toymovie: The Game.

Read more

Shapez 2 will launch in Early Access on August 15th, bringing the relaxing, shape-cutting factory builder into 3D.

In a new post, its lead developer has laid out what to expect from Early Access. In the main: a polished, 40 hours-or-so experience with no known major issues, and a post-release roadmap waiting to be defined by player feedback.

Read more

Shapez 2 will launch in Early Access on August 15th, bringing the relaxing, shape-cutting factory builder into 3D.

In a new post, its lead developer has laid out what to expect from Early Access. In the main: a polished, 40 hours-or-so experience with no known major issues, and a post-release roadmap waiting to be defined by player feedback.

Read more

You're a long time undead. 7 Days To Die was shuffling along in early access for 11 years, until version 1.0 finally burst through the windows. In that time, many other survival games have sprouted, blossomed, and gently faded away. I first visited the burnt-out ruins of this zombie-infested world a decade ago and I returned to it this week to find a tree-puncher that, despite bearing the pockmarks of early access, retains much of what made it enjoyable back when the survival genre was still wearing its baby onesie. Instead of a review, I figured I'd scribble together a mini starter guide for new (or returning) players. Partly because the game is a proper time sink and it was taking me so long to get through everything. But mostly because I wanted to use that numberful headline. So, here you go: 7 dos and 7 don'ts in 7 Days To (7) Die.

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