The Wolf’s Bite [official site], the fairytale 1v1 competitive choose-your own adventure game (yep, you read that right), is coming out on August 21st. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s all about the big bad wolf’s attempt to set up a small-town restaurant after failing in the demolitions industry – and the three little pig’s attempt to bring his new venture crumbling down.

Basically, one player is the wolf, one player the pigs. The decisions that each makes will lead to one of more than twenty endings in which either the wolf succeeds or the pigs get their revenge for that time he blew their homes away.

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First person hack-and-slash-and-magic ’em up Mirage: Arcane Warfare [official site] this week received its first major update since launching in May, with new weapons, maps, and abilities added to the game. Most importantly, the Gladiator Update added bot-assisted servers in which AI combatants will make up the numbers if players don’t fill all the slots.

The reason that’s important is that barely anybody is playing Mirage. There are 13 players online as I wrote this, according to SteamCharts, and the peak number of players in the last 30 days is just 49. Which is a great shame, because it’s genuinely a lot of fun. It’s from the makers of the excellent Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, and if you think what that game would be like with magic then you’re not too far off.

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The fantasy sandbox MMORPG Albion Online [official site] launched this week. It draws inspiration from MMOs like EVE Online and Ultima Online, with headline features including an economy where every item is crafted by players and PvP where people might yoink everything from your corpse. Albion does have PvE with monsters to bash but PvP is the focus, from open-world scraps to full guild vs. guild warfare. It also has no classes, so the way you fight is purely dependent on the gear you’re wearing.

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A new class of Space Marine has just dropped into Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site], the Warhammer 40,000 FPS. The new update adds a staff-wielding Interrogator Chaplain – the first class that can revive his teammates. Clearly, he likes skulls. There’s skulls on his weapon, skulls on his shoulders and, er, a skull where his head should be.

If you recall, the game was released back in April and was a real mixed bag. The single player was repetitive, but the co-op was an intense, backs-to-the-wall affair where you and three other Space Marines waded through rivers of Tyranids and worked together to survive.

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If you were balking at the £30/$40 price tag for the Early Access physics-based building game Planetoid Pioneers [official site] then balk no more. Previously you could only buy a Contributor Edition of the game that gave you developers’ tools to craft some of the game’s world, but now you can buy a ‘Game-Only Edition’ that unsurprisingly, includes only the base game – or part of it, anyway.

The new £7 edition will eventually be upgraded to have the editors when the game leaves early access. But if, for now, you and your mates simply want to hop in, solve 2D physics-based puzzles, and make robots fall over comically, this has you covered. There’s lots of crafting of contraptions, vehicles and weapons, if that’s your thing. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a sucker for oldie-worldie town builders. Banished, Anno 1401, The Settlers – I’ll take them all. So Kingdoms and Castles [official site], which released this week, has got my tower watchman interested.

You build a town and then defend your citizens from Viking raids, dragon attacks, and harsh winters. Simple enough. What appeals to me, really, is the low-poly art style, and the way the tiny villagers bob up and down as they scamper around. It’s also got changing seasons and a “stylised procedural cloud system” – basically, the clouds are pretty.

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You might have heard that a little film called Dunkirk has just come out. The folk at New World Interactive certainly have: they’ve updated their hardcore WW2 shooter Day of Infamy [official site] with two new maps, one of which is – you guessed it – the beaches of Dunkirk.

The Dunkirk map fights from the fields, through the streets, and to the beach. The other new map depicts the Battle of Breville, which in real life saw British paratroopers liberate the village of Bréville-les-Monts in France just after after D-Day.

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Pyre [official site], the party-based RPG from the creators of Bastion and Transistor, is out next week, and there’s a fiery new trailer out to celebrate the launch. You control a party of exiles trying to escape from a pretty purgatory by taking part in ancient competitions, called Rites, which are 3v3 real-time arena battles. You’ve got to extinguish the other team’s pyre (hence the name) while keeping yours alight.

The hand-painted art style shown in the trailer trailer is absolutely stunning. It’s no surprise, really, given Supergiant Games’ past efforts.

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THERE ARE HOT SINGLE DADS IN YOUR AREA JUST BEGGING FOR A DATE! No, seriously, there are: Dream Daddy [official site] is out now, and you’re a dad trying to date other hot dads.

It’s got a branching narrative, multiple endings, and a total of seven date-able dads. And with all those dad comes lots of dad jokes, naturally, which I’m always in favour of (“Are you ready? Hi ready, I’m Dad”), and punnage galore. And havarti (look it up).

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Noted wrestlemaniac Mat ‘MDickie’ Dickie has returned to PC after several years focused on pocket telephones, now delivering Wrestling Revolution 3D [official site] to us. MDickie is perhaps best known for the astonishing biblical sandbox RPG The You Testament but his wrestle ’em ups offer fine fightfun. Resident slamfan Adam even declared that MDickie’s old Wrestling MPire Remix was probably the best wrestling sim. I’m glad that PC matmasters can once again smell what MDickie is cooking. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes I don’t think we make the most of being a blog and thus less formal than our online counterparts. I mean, I was thinking about it today and there’s… nothing stopping me from writing a news story just to announce that Warriors by Imagine Dragons is still out there and I’m still listening to it and that it’s still the pinnacle of League of Legends’ transmedia pro gaming metanarrative output. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always wanted to visit the Winchester Mystery House, which Wikipedia describes as being renowned for “its architectural curiosities, and its lack of any master building plan”. There’s something about mis-matched and confused architecture that I found both exciting and faintly terrifying. It’s at least in part because every house and apartment building I’ve ever lived in has lacked any architectural curiosities. Not even a single doorway to nothing or secret chamber.

That’s why I want all of my Sims to live in this extravagant and convoluted masterpiece of erratic design built for The Sims 4 [official site]. They’d have a ball, right up until the point they realised the ballroom is probably haunted by its own design.

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The promised PvP multiplayer mode for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] will arrive in autumn, Ubisoft confirmed today, and be preceded by an open beta test this summer. If rolling around invading a country with the lads isn’t enough japery for you, you’ll be able to team up to shoot a squad of four rival blokes. With the scale, vehicles, and different playstyles of Wildlands, 4v4 could be a pretty interesting prospect on a big-enough map. Unfortunately, Ubisoft have named the mode Ghost War, which has me hoping for something quite different. Still, at least they didn’t name it World War G. Here, watch this: Read the rest of this entry »