The Maw - 19th-24th February 2024
This week's new PC game releases and our weekly newsblog
Another week of PC game releases is upon us and oh heck, slow down. There are an alarming number of games out this week that I want to play, from large-scale 3D productions to itty-bitty time-killers, each sinisterly appropriate to my Steam stats and wider research interests. Are videogame publishers and The Maw in cahoots to overwhelm me with impulse-buys and sabotage my attempts to Report the News? It’s possible. It’s possible. The Maw can be pretty cunning for an indiscriminate force of cosmic famine. The creature has been known to forge alliances with misguided mortals, seeking to flank and overwhelm harried news writers. How else to explain Phil Spencer’s T-shirts?
But let’s not worry about that for the moment. Without further ado, here’s a list of PC games out this week that I, for one, consider worthy of a click, if not necessarily a purchase: low-poly vertical shmup Dark Gravity (19th Feb); floral/insectile bullet hell Nidus (19th Feb); dieselpunk Advance Wars homage Empires Shall Fall (19th Feb); roguelike not-Poker Balatro (20th Feb); faerie survival sim Nightingale (20th Feb, early access); biopunk side-scroller Slave Zero X (21st Feb); Skynet-era RTS Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance (21st Feb); build-optimising action-RPG Last Epoch (21st Feb); post-apocalyptic car-whisperer Pacific Drive (22nd Feb); hellish feud ‘em up Solium Infernum (22nd Feb); primordial horror management sim The Tribe Must Survive (22nd Feb); claustrophobic desktop shmup Windowkill (23rd Feb).
As ever, let us know if I’ve missed anything obvious, like a new Half-Life game or something. Also as ever, you can follow our efforts to sift good news stories from the currents of the interweb in our weekly liveblog below.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
IT IS MONDAY
Set up a cordon around the emergence site! Salt the entrances and exfoliate the wallpaper! FEED THE MAW.
Via PCGamesN, the Satisfactory devs still have "a huge backlog of ideas", even as their long-in-early-access factory sim rumbles towards 1.0 release.
Arrowhead are currently capping Helldivers 2's concurrent players at 450,000 players to stop the servers exploding, as reported by PCG.
ZA/UM have formally acknowledged layoffs and a project cancellation reported last week by GHLF. "As with all studios, we adapt the size of our team to the work underway, growing when we start a new project and shrinking if one is cancelled," a spokesperson told VG247. "It is always hard to lose talented colleagues, and we thank those leaving for their many contributions to ZA/UM."
A surprise gift from our tech team - we can now give posts titles without automatically bumping the liveblog to the top of the site (as we generally do when covering major events, such as game conferences). This means we can now do a little clickable "contents page" for days of the week up the top of the feed, there. Bless the techies!
Eleventh Hour Games have been detailing what they're adding to budding Diablo-killer Last Epoch for this week's 1.0 launch. The changelog is so massive they've broken it into chapters. Here's part 1, which covers a couple of new classes, and part 2, in which there is much talk of new items and gear. Do the words "Spine of Malatros" mean anything to you?
Xbox big cheese Phil Spencer has generously told the Verge that Microsoft don't want everybody to become a Game Pass subscriber. "I tell you honestly, running the business, having a diversity of business models that are working is pretty critical," he said. "The one thing I will say about the Game Pass subscriber revenue is that it’s consistent."
PCG have dug up an Elden Ring mod that turns the whole game upside down. Different starting locations! New classes! One to occupy you while you wait for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, perhaps.
Midday music: quite a downbeat choice, but I've been enjoying Metric's Nothing Is Perfect.
Another one to add to the insane list of games coming out this week, but at least this one is a) free, and b) lasts a mere hour. It's the very lovely, Please, Touch The Artwork 2. Here are two of my favourite screenshots from it:
Former Halo designer Kevin Schmitt has been discussing rejected Halo pitches on Xitter.
I've been talking to Aaryn Flynn about the possibility of Nightingale's Realm card system becoming a fully-fledged cardgame of some kind.
Writing these updates from a preview event in which I'm sitting next to possibly the largest quantity of Mini Cheddars I have seen in my life.
Fachewachewa says: Happy Balatro week everyone
And merry Balatro week to you as well!
Helldivers 2 has made its three “hardest” difficulties harder and its actual hardest mission easier in its latest patch, so you might be able to actually beat that Defend event now. The patch doesn't address the ongoing buckling of its multiplayer servers under the game's popularity, which led concurrent players to be capped over the weekend, so you might struggle to log in to begin with, mind.
That Crazy Taxi reboot will apparently be a “triple-A” game, according to the head of Sega's Sapporo studio, who are working on the return of the arcade classic teased at the end of last year. But what does "triple-A" mean? An open-world multiplayer affair? Collectibles galore? Towers to climb in your cab? Your guess is as good as mine.
Huge Elden Ring mod The Convergence is basically a whole new game, with almost triple the number of playable classes (each with unique starting locations), dozens of new weapons, hundreds of extra spells, overhauled crafting and fast-travel systems, and more. The ideal way to pass time while you're waiting for official expansion Shadow of the Erdtree to arrive!
Capcom have apologised for 'not meeting expectations' with Street Fighter V, saying that their “self-reflection” on its messy launch - lambasted for a small roster of characters, thin single-player content and server issues - helped make this year's Street Fighter 6 that much better.
TUESDAY DAWNS
Cry havoc, and let slip the blogs of war! FEED THE MAW.
Last night developer Sirrah messaged me about their story-driven colony builder Trappist, in which you control a movable base exploring a single solar system. I get an ever-so-gentle Outer Wilds vibe from it.
Via Eurogamer, there's a Nintendo third party direct showcase happening tomorrow, 21st February at 2pm UK time and 6am PT. Given that it's a third party dealio, it's likely many of the Switch games shown will also be on PC.
According to PCGamer (specifically, freelance RPS contributor Rick Lane- hello Rick!) there's an open world Terminator survival game set for full reveal at Nacon's Connect event later this month. It's set after Judgement Day, which is certainly a good timeframe for a survival experience. Will we get to infiltrate human enclaves as closet cyborgs? Here's Nacon's teaser trailer from a year back.
PCGamesN reports that Everywhere and Mindseye studio Build a Rocket Boy are laying people off. This is the studio founded by former GTA developer Leslie Benzies. Apparently, the publishing department, QA and art teams have gotten the worst of it.
A quote from Digital Eclipse editorial director Chris Kohler about restoring old games to our screens, taken from Khee Hoon Chan's interview feature over at Techradar about game preservation: "The game actually doesn't need to be fun because, if we're setting the player's expectations correctly, we're not asking you to go in and play this and derive simple enjoyment from it; we're putting this in as a museum exhibit to help you understand the path that a certain company took, or game designer might have taken to get to the final goal, or simply to show you something that's historically fascinating."
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader has received a major patch. According to Owlcat, it spans "over 1800 changes, including brand new voiceover and narrative content, QoL improvements, balance updates, numerous bug fixes and hundreds of fixes for optimization, performance and co-op stability."
Here are the full 1.0 patch notes for action-RPG Last Epoch, which releases tomorrow 21st Feb. As detailed in the notes, the devs are taking the early access servers online for 24 hours later today to make the necessary changes.
As reported by The Scotsman, GTA devs Rockstar North have claimed over a third of a billion pounds in UK tax relief over the past decade.
Assassin's Creed: Mirage has a new update that adds permadeath to the game.
Here's a new trailer for Sand Land, Bandai Namco's Dragon Ball-flavoured vehicular RPG.
People are still having a devil of a time finding a sessino in Helldivers 2. As reported by PCGamesN, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt has said it's not as simple as buying more servers. "We need to optimise the backend code," he said. "We are hitting some real limits."
The Loadout, meanwhile, speculate very plausibly that Arrowhead will one day add the first game's high tech Illuminate faction to Helldivers 2.
Xbox have announced the next batch of games coming to Game Pass in late February - very pleased to see Indivisible on there, and Tales Of Arise and Boltgun!
More than 500 games on Steam generated over $3 million in gross revenue in 2023, according to Steam's annual summary. That's a lot of money, and a lot of games, if you were wondering.
Everywhere developer Build A Rocket Boy have now confirmed the studio is going through a round of layoffs, first reported yesterday, confirming "the removal of a number of roles globally" in a statement to Eurogamer.
"While we have made great progress developing our products, we are now in a position where we need to make changes to the way we work across our business in order to become a more agile studio and to meet the requirements that our projects demand," said a spokesperson.
Build A Rocket Boy is the new studio from former GTA producer Leslie Benzies.
Balatro, the Poker roguelike Katharine awarded a Bestest Best in her review yesterday, is actually out now. You'll find it on Steam.
Huh! Gigantic, the free-to-play team brawler which launched (fully) in 2017 and closed in 2018, is returning as Gigantic: Rampage Edition. It's being published by Gearbox and developed by frequent co-development studio Abstraction. Original developers Motiga closed down with the game.
Rampage Edition won't be free-to-play, but a "premium and definitive release" of the original, and it's due on April 9th. Here's a trailer:
There's a new seven-minute video breaking down the concepts behind Kemuri, the first game from Ikumi Nakamura's studio Unseen. It talks setting, art and character but also gives glimpses of prototype parkour and grapple-hooking:
People (the magazine and website) have a couple of photos of Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart in the coming Borderlands movie. Wild that this could be the nadir of Blanchett's entire career at the same time as being the zenith of Hart's.
Temtem: Swarm is a Vampire Survivors-like spin-off of the Pokémon-like Temtem, mixing topdown bullet heaven with character evolutions and three-player co-op. It's aiming to release this year and there's an announcement trailer now.
Here's an expanded breakdown of what Gigantic: Rampage Edition is, and how it came to be.
Need For Speed: Unbound is getting a second year of live service updates, including a cops vs. racers mode "inspired by NFS: Hot Pursuit".
As MiniMatt mentioned in the comments, Kingmakers is a mashup of many things. Mainly: medieval-era battlefields with modern weaponry, and command-level strategy and citybuilding with on-the-ground third-person shooting. Its trailer has become a sensation in the past 12 hours and you should go watch it immediately.
Xbox have announced a second set of games coming to Game Pass in the second half of February. Popular JRPG Tales Of Arise arrives today, with Bluey: The Videogame, Indivisible, Space Engineers, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun all joining between now and March 5th.
HERE BE WEDNESDAY
Warp factor 4, engage! FEED THE MAW.
Bohemia Interactive have published their 2024 plans for DayZ, the massively influential survival game that entered early access way back in 2013. These plans include "a richer variety of wildlife, improving our terrain tools (Terrain Builder primarily) to make the lives of our modding community easier, and elevating survival mechanics — from extreme conditions to medical challenges — that will test your mettle and encourage players to adapt their survival strategies and manage their nutrition through an extended variety of sustenance options." Keep on trucking, DayZ!
So, Elden Ring DLC time. Any hopes or speculations? Perhaps they will let us play as one of those giant living urns. Heck, I wouldn't mind being an NPC in Elden Ring. It's very peaceful when there are no players around.
Jeppe Carlsen has shared a clip of an early prototype for what would become Cocoon.
Last night Graham popped a note about Seablip in our Trello. I'm going to crudely summarise it as Terraria Sea Of Thieves.
Neostream have shared their first real update on Little Devil Inside since 2021, plus a trailer, or rather, "a series of gameplay clips representative of what we have been working on in the UE5 engine". It sounds like development has been a little messy, with the studio noting that certain people have left following conflicts over the game's direction.
The first Monster Hunter Stories, the hack-and-craft series’ chirpy turn-based spin on Pokémon, will finally see a PC release in a new remaster. While its sequel came to PC, the uprezzed and expanded re-release will be the first time the original spin-off has escaped the Nintendo 3DS and phones since 2016.
Good news, masochists: Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree will have a fight that’s just as hard as Malenia, according to noted sadist Hidetaka Miyazaki - and a poison swamp too, for good measure.
Find room to squeeze one more nail into the coffin scrawled with “Hopes for Bloodborne on PC”, as FromSoftware have suggested that a hypothetical remake of the 2015 PlayStation 4 exclusive (which might then come to PC, who knows) might need to wait on another generation of console hardware first.
Prison Architect 2 has seen its development sentence extended by over a month, pushing its release date into May.
THURSDAY BECKONS
It is the morning after the Elden night before. The Maw seethes and riles. FEED IT.After a slightly rocky start, Inflexion Games have completed their server maintenance on Nightingale last night, so servers are now back up online. They also released a hotfix patch to address a 'Running out of GPU memory' error.
The studio behind February's most played Steam Next Fest demo Dungeonborne have released some fun stats about what players got up to during the demo period - and it's not good news for skeletons. 29 million of them were dispatched, but only just over 6000 players were able to beat the big Cyclops. You can see the full breakdown below.
There's a new trailer for the lovely-looking The Plucky Squire in the wild, thanks to this week's IGN FanFest. Very excited for this one.
In the more immediate release schedule, here are some more neat-looking games hitting Steam today:
- Regency Solitaire II
- Garden Life: A Cosy Simulator
- Pacific Drive
- Solium Infernum
- Sokobond Express
- Quadroids
- Sons Of The Forest (leaves early access)
- Inkulinati (leaves early access)
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed was announced during yesterday's Nintendo Partner Direct, and it'll also bring Warren Spector's cult classic 2010 platformer to PC for the first time.
Gorgeous action adventure Little Devil Inside has resurfaced with its first trailer and developer update in three years, with its creators pledging to finish what they've started. The project was originally funded via Kickstarter back in 2015.
Riot's long in-development tag team fighting game Project L finally has a real name: 2XKO. Everyone hates it.
Millennia, Paradox's take on the history-spanning 4X genre, will launch on March 26th. A new trailer also gives a glimpse of its Variant Ages, which can introduce alternate histories like alien invasions and steampunk technology.
Publisher Thunderful say that citybuilder SteamWorld Build underperformed various expectations, via their fiscal report and as covered by Game Developer. After several years of acquiring other studios, they're also in the midst of layoffs and looking to sell subsdiary publisher Headup Games.
Epic's swing at the MOBA genre, Paragon, was shut down in 2018, and many of its assets made available for others to use. One team eventually got permission to launch with official branding, leading to the 2022 Early Access release of Paragon: The Overprime. Today, it was announced that it too would shut down on April 22nd, 2024. Another revival project using Paragon assets, Fault: Elder Orb, remains live in Early Access.
Sons Of The Forest 1.0 is out now and the full patch notes are live for those curious how the gribbly cannibal survival 'em up has changed.
The Forever Winter is a co-op survival shooter about fighting and looting "under the shadow of terrifying and gargantuan war machines locked in a never-ending conflict", according to its Steam page. There's also a cinematic trailer with some really pleasingly practical, ramshackle mech and exosuit designs.
Nvidia's new app merges their control panel, GeForce Experience and RTX Experience apps together into one, and won't require you to login to use. Truly groundbreaking. Can someone now convince HP to make it so I don't have to login in order to print stuff from my own printer?
Escape Academy is a fun, charming escape room game with co-op, and its latest DLC, set in a magic school, is out now.
FRIDAY AT LAST
Instruct the ion beam crews to open fire! FEED THE MAW.
Here's a video of the forthcoming Adventure mode for the Steam edition of Dwarf Fortress, feat. Tarn Adams of Bay12 Games.
Eleventh Hour Games founder Judd Cobler has written a recap post about Last Epoch's launch. Apparently there were 150,000 people playing within 20 minutes of launch, and the game's servers have been struggling.
To nobody's great surprise, Warner Bros have revealed that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League "has fallen short of our expectations", though Warner Bros Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels didn't specify a sales figure during the associated earnings call. Thanks, IGN.
Age of Mythology Retold, the remastered Age of Empires spin-off, has finally resurfaced with a close look at its new character models - and the news that it will be out on Steam and Game Pass this year.
Age of Empires 2’s Definitive Edition is getting its first “campaign-focused” expansion in next month's Victors and Vanquished, letting you lead Vikings, Japanese clans and more in 19 scenarios - most based on popular community mods.
Age of Empires 4 will follow up the RTS series’ best-selling expansion of all time with the start of its latest season and a new free-for-all mode this spring, as Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition prepares to add Denmark and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth factions in late 2024.
Age of Empires Mobile will bring the storied RTS to your phone screen this summer, as the free-to-play spin-off mixes series’ base-building, resource management and battles into an online multiplayer experience.
Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown, Ubisoft's excellent metroidvania, is getting extra content and modes in free updates soon. It's already an excellent game, if you haven't played it, as Katharine's review explained.
Much-maligned supervillainous live service game Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has fallen short of expectations, according to a financial call from its publisher.
I'm in love with Night-Runners and its free Prologue demo on Steam. It's a racing game which harks back to the classics (and cult classics) of the PlayStation 1 and 2 era, while also bringing its own open world, procedural, and narrative ambitions.
Nadeo have been celebrating the 20th anniversary of Trackmania by gradually adding cars, tracks and themes from the 2003 original to the latest iteration of the game. That work will finish on February 27th with the release of the Trackmania: Rally Update. Here's a trailer:
Turbo Kid is a metroidvania sequel to a 2015 action-comedy-horror movie, and it has a new demo and an April 10th release date. I really like the look of its BMX bike riding.