Over and above its management and strategy groundings, Big Pharma [official site] shines a light on the billion dollar, often unscrupulous, pharmaceutical industry. While Alec enjoyed his hands-on time with Twice Circled’s medicine manufacturing sim last year, he noted it didn’t “go for pharmaceutical industry’s jugular”. Its first expansion – Marketing and Malpractice – takes a distinguished step towards doing exactly that by introducing dodgy tactics and the ability to manually set medicine prices.

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When Big Pharma [official site] appeared last year, Alec approved but pointed out it perhaps went a little easy on a severely dodgy target. Today’s announced expansion, Marketing And Malpractice, looks like it might add a few more teeth to the management satire. With your drug developed, you now need to ensure doctors think it’s the right one for their patients. “Take them to dinner, buy them some drinks, maybe a new set of golf clubs? It’s no biggie! Everyone does it.”

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It’s been five months since Pillars of Eternity [official site] was released, which is categorical proof that the wheel of time has spun completely off its axis and is careering down a hill toward a cliff edge. Before we’re all plunged into the abyss, there’s another big chunk of RPG from Obsidian to delve into, in The White March Part 1, a snowy expansion for the main game.

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Every faction in Endless Legend [official site] feels like it required as much playtesting and balancing as some entire strategy games. There are eight major factions in all, from the Necrophages, who devour those they meet rather than engaging in diplomacy, to the Cultists of the Eternal End who cannot create new settlements of their own but can convert those that they conquer.

Amplitude have just announced an expansion, Endless Legend: Shadows, that adds a new faction – The Forgotten. They’re experts in espionage but the new spying and stealth features will be available to other factions as well.

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Forget Big Brother, the real gods of surveillance are ardent fans. A keen-eyed dude(ette) over at the Bohemia Interactive forums recently shared a shocking geographical discovery: a new South Pacific island has been spotted in the waters of Arma III [official site]. It seems a new expansion will be announced real soon.

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Democracy 3 is a political simulator that works best when treated as a toy rather than a strategy game. Put aside your instinctive desire to win and instead just tinker with its societal web and play out different what-if scenarios. “What happens if the welfare state is dismantled,” you ask. And in the game.

The last expansion let you push those what-ifs into extremism, and the just-released Clones & Drones DLC seems to exist on a similar knife-edge between timely, politically-charged issues and ‘ooh won’t that be fun to make people do.’ Check the trailer below.

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Savant Ascent is a simple game, but it feels so good. Controlling Savant – avatar of Norwegian music producer Aleksander Vinter – you ride higher and higher into a tower, pushing your right analog stick to fire and aim and your left analog stick to dodge and jump between prescribed positions. It was a fun diversion when it was released on Steam last year, and now there’s a free expansion called the Void Update.

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To my eye, Star Wars The Old Republic was an awkward marriage of BioWare’s singleplayer storytelling and World of Warcraft-derived MMO mechanics. It’s a marriage which seemed to satisfy no one, dooming SWTOR to a brief honeymoon and a slowly diminishing life of quiet desperation. A sad, science fiction Revolutionary Road.

Nice of BioWare to throw the game and its players a little lovin’ then, in a new expansion called Shadow of Revan. It’s raises the level cap to 60, adds a couple of new worlds like Yavin 4, offers new high-level raids, and introduces a new “discipline system” which will affect everyone, including those who don’t buy this $20 add-on. There’s an announcement trailer below.

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FUN FACT: it’s quite difficult for two or more people to starve in close proximity, because inevitably one will begin to eat the other. With that cheeriness in mind, I’m here to tell you that sign-ups are now open for the closed beta of top-down survive-’em-up Don’t Starve‘s to-be-free multiplayer component. You don’t even need to own Don’t Starve to apply, as those accepted will be given a limited version of the client that only allows for multiplayer. All you need to do is fill in this form and hope fate smiles upon you.

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Age of Wonders III! I liked it well enough and keep meaning to play some more and, as is increasingly the case, an expansion may be precisely the excuse I need to do just that. Golden Realms, which is due on September 18th, is a meaty great wedge of new content, spearheaded by the inclusion of tiny little halflings. I’m not one for campaigns when random maps are available for conquering, so it’s pleasing to note that all of the new features have been integrated into the upgraded map generator. Rather than releasing a short CGI film about a halfling rogue to announce the expansion, Triumph have delivered seventeen minutes of developer walkthrough explaining everything that’s new. That’s below.

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Don’t Starve Together is the sort of stern instruction that was once delivered by frowning parents to their newly married offspring as they set out to find a partner for life. The ruddy-faced matron wouldn’t tell her son to make sure he wooed a girl who always washed behind the ears, and the cracked lips of an aged farmer would not part to instruct his daughters in the ways of romance and wedlock – instead, mother and father both would have one piece of advice. “When you settle down with a spouse and begin a life of your own, eternal bliss can be yours if you follow this advice – Don’t Starve Together.” Then they’d slip a withered turnip out of their breeches, pass it across and shut the door of the family home for good.

Don’t Starve’s upcoming multiplayer mode will allow you to relive the good old days with your own friends and it’ll be entering closed beta before September 23rd.

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Company of Heroes 2‘s main point of differentiation was that it took the original game’s blend of bombast and squad tactics to the Eastern Front. What is it that therefore sets apart this new multiplayer-only standalone expansion, when The Western Front Armies does as its name suggests and replaces cold climes, Russians and Nazis with grass fields, Americans and yes still Nazis?

The expansion came out yesterday, and perhaps the answer is to be found in the live action launch trailer embedded below.

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While the internet is all a-bustlin’ with news of the latest Call of Duty, another maker of military manshoots announced their future plans. Except we like these military manshoots. Arma 3’s three-part campaign is out and finished, but a development roadmap posted on the official Arma site makes clear that they’re not done yet. Things to come: Steam Workshop support, new DLC and a full expansion.

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Path Of Exile has expandamofied. The enormously successful online aRPG has been out of beta since October, with estimates showing approximately 13 billion people are playing at any one time. (These are my estimates, based on my inability to count.) And now there’s more of it. Sacrifice Of The Vaal pours in a ton of new content to satisfy hungry, hungry gamers.

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There are too many Jagged Alliances all at once! Two! I can barely cope with two of anything, my arms constantly getting tangled as I try to do simple tasks like combing a pony. But be told that Jagged Alliance: Crossfire has nothing to do with Jagged Alliance: Online. Well, not nothing, but you know what I mean. It is, in fact, an EXPANDALONE! to Jagged Alliance: Back In Action, the delayed reboot of the formerly turn-based series. And it has a release date: September. Okay, it has a release month.

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