The Maw - 22nd-27th April 2024
This week's least outwardly offputting game releases, plus our weekly newsblog
Ugh, I do not have the energy to feed the Maw this week. Sometimes the creature manifests as a proper monstrosity, with B-movie prosthetics and sound effects, and sometimes, it's more of an... unfathomable annoyance, like a nose that won't stop running, or a single player game that requires an internet connection. In either case, the Maw must be sated, and fortunately, there are quite a few appetising video-or-computer games out in the next seven days, with at least one behemoth landing on Friday.
Here they are: fantasy medieval survival town-builder Bellwright (23rd April); shamanic metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: Zau (23rd April); gangland horror FPS Jawbreaker (23rd April); cosmic horny simulator Sucker for Love: Date to Die For (23rd April); Pikminish factory RTS Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure (24th April); anime mech brawler Megaton Mushashi W: Wired (25th April); Dragon Ball X Mad Max tank 'em up Sand Land (25th April); not-a-Total-War-killer Manor Lords (26th April).
As ever, this list of releases is but the product of our pitiful brains. Your, vastly more developed intellect may have identified other games that are equally deserving of a mention. It's just as well, then, that the MawTron 5000 comes equipped with a Comments-O-Matic feature - please let us know what we've missed, and have a good week.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
IT'S MONDAY AGAIN
Why do they keep doing this to us. FEED THE MAW.
Like a Minecraft slime but not as cuddly, Embracer Group are splitting into three separate companies – Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends.
Uncapped Games boss and former StarCraft 2 multiplayer lead David Kim is teasing a new RTS, which will be revealed during Summer Game Fest in June. Catch word of it in the below documentary.
An English Haunting has a release date, and it's soon! May 15th. I'm stoked for this one - I wrote about the demo as a supporter post and whacked it on our most anticipated list. It's a spooky point and click adventure set in Edwardian England, where you play a professor who has to prove the existence of ghosts. I dunno what else I can say to sell it to you, but here's a new trailer the devs put on Xitter.
I spent a fair bit of Friday trying to pin down a story about cold fusion in Fallout. This being RPS, I suspect there are actual cold fusion experts lurking in the comments - any thoughts on the show's portrayal of it?
Via VGC, an EA Japan exec has complained about the country's ratings board banning Dead Space despite recently approving Stellar Blade, which has a similar level of violence. I don't think this is much of a story, but I keep wanting to write it up because it has me picturing Isaac Clarke with the Stellar Blade lady's bottom, which is making me feel a bit hysterical.
Uncover the Smoking Gun has you solve a murder by interrogating ChatGPT-speaking suspects, with AI's habit of just making stuff up apparently just adding to the mystery.
The co-creators of WipEout and Skate are teasing a sci-fi sports game and roguelike strategy sim from their new studio Starlight Games.
The Fallout TV show’s popularity has blown up popular mod site Nexus Mods as everyone rushes to play Fallout 4 again (and then remembers they need mods to make it worth playing).
As Edwin shared earlier, StarCraft 2’s former lead multiplayer designer David Kim is teasing a new RTS he feels is a “paradigm shift” for the genre. We'll hear more this summer.
TUESDAY REGNANT
To the barricades, nooze gatherers! We have nothing to lose but our ears, index fingers, select portions of our kidneys and staff discounts with official merch partners! FEED THE MAW.
Tarnation! The Xbox people are doing another indie showcase next week. They've partnered with Ian of the Games Network, and we can expect new stuff about Vampire Survivors, Dungeons of Hinterberg, 33 Immortals and Lost Records Bloom & Rage, amongst others.
Epic have added a setting that lets you hide "confrontational" emotes from other players in Fortnite - instead, you'll see a standing still emote with no sound effect, which surely makes Standing Still the most aggressive emote of all. The setting affects four emotes at the time of writing: Laugh It Up, Take the L, Whipcrack, Make It Plantain. Why is plantain-making considered hostile? I like plantain!
Cereballers is a brief, free football parody that had me cackling like a witch when I played it in bed last night.
The Book Of Clarence's LaKeith Stanfield is in talks to star in and produce a film based on El Paso, Elsewhere, according to Deadline. WritNelson's conquest of pop culture continues apace.
F1 2024 is out 31st May, and here's a video about its new car physics system.
The No Rest For The Wicked devs have been steadily hotfixing the game since release. The latest, biggest patch appears to target performance in particular while adding a few new settings.
We missed this last week - I may have been flathunting? - but it's still worth a poke: Arkane Lyon's co-creative director Dinga Bakaba has thoughts on whether multiplayer immersive sims are the genre's next "evolutionary step".
Building Relationships lets you play as a house exploring an island and shacking up (hah!) with other houses. Seems very jolly, "secret hellhound" aside.
A devlog trailer for zombo-penguin tactics game South Pole Bebop, explaining how it takes inspiration from Into The Breach.
How has it taken me this long to notice Sweet Transit? The game hit 1.0 yesterday and is as busy with moving parts as Factorio, its developer's previous joint, but much, much less desolate.
Rain-slick townbuilder Against The Storm's 1.3 update is out now, adding a little new content and a lot of quality-of-life updates. Most excitingly, it lets you zoom the camera out further.
Handsome strategy-RPG Songs Of Conquest will leave Early Access on May 20th with the addition of a fourth and final campaign. There will be post-release updates, however.
Zenless Zone Zero, the next game from Genshin Impact developers HoyoVerse, is now available for pre-registration. The urban fantasy action-RPG is expected to release sometime in the first half of 2024.
Retro first-person shooter Phantom Fury is out now on Steam. It's a sorta sequel to 3D Realms boomer shooter Ion Fury, with a new engine, a new developer and seemingly mixed results.
Ubisoft have released a bunch of older Anno citybuilders on Steam with a "History Edition" label. Anno 1503, Anno 1602, and Anno 1701 are all included, each packaged with their respective DLC and optimised to support modern PCs and 4K resolution. All three are also currently 50% off.
Safe but cosy Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicles launched yesterday. It's currently sitting at a 'mostly positive' on Steam, and our Edders enjoyed it plenty. Speaking to XBOX Wire, leads at Rabbit & Bear have given more insight into the late Murayama’s design philosophies:
“Murayama always talked about the makunouchi bento when explaining RPGs. He would say that “RPGs had a variety of side dishes, and every one of them is delicious”.
IT'S WEDNESDAY
...and I am off work flat-hunting, but others are here to FEED THE MAW.As Nic shared earlier, the head of Moon Studios - developers behind Dark Souls-like early access game No Rest For The Wicked - has made the fairly bold claim that Dark Souls would’ve been a better game in early access. Hmm.
GTA5 nearly had story DLC that made Trevor a 007-style spy - and even got as far as recording - until it was cancelled and turned into a GTA Online heist, according to new details from the chaotic criminal's actor.
Former Fable devs over at Fowling Fowl Studios have revealed a new co-op RPG... only to announce at the same time that its development is on hold amid layoffs and a struggle to find funding.
PUBG, the game that Fortnite copied, is copying Fortnite by bringing back the battle royale shooter’s original map for two weeks next month - complete with "vintage" UI and gunplay from, uh, 2017.
THURSDAY ONCE MORE
The Maw's current height is 1000 lightyears. Its current width is that of an espresso served on a Friday in Paris in the year 1965. FEED IT.
In a Reddit AMA, Assassin's Creed Mirage creative director Stephane Boudon has said that there are no major updates planned for the game but they do have ideas for "how we could extend the story of Basim".
Here's the "phase 1" demo for dev_hell, a roguelike deckbuilder about working in software development.
The Last Spell's Dwarves of Runenberg DLC and accompanying free update are out now - read more on Steam.
Manky submarine sim Barotrauma has a big update too, which adds "two new monsters, a medical system mini-overhaul, extra difficulty settings for campaign mode, and new wrecks and beacons for you to explore".
Via VGC, Blizzard are staffing up for an unannounced game - they're looking for a creative director and narrative director, amongst other roles.
The unsettling NPC-killing disease known as Dragonsplague in Dragon's Dogma 2 has now been nerfed in an update across all platforms, according to an update post from Capcom. This was something they announced as planned just last week.
At last, some decent food: Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers is out, and free to download. It's a fangame from the Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart team, built using Doom Legacy, and it looks terrific.
Blizzard have announced that their fan event BlizzCon won't happen in 2024. The previously yearly event only returned physically last year, but Blizzard say they're going to focus on smaller standalone events instead.
People Can Fly, the Polish studio behind shooters such as Painkiller, Bulletstorm and Outriders, have cancelled devleopment on a co-op action RPG. The game was being self-published, after initial publishing partner Take-Two dropped out in 2022. People Can Fly have two other projects for Microsoft and Square Enix still in-development.
Korean MMO ArcheAge is closing down its servers in Europe and North America after ten years. ArcheAge 2 is currently in development.
Cosy survival hamletbuilder Diluvian Winds has released from Early Access. It's about building a home for anthropomorphic animals around the foot of a lighthouse and attempting to survive periodic tsunamis. Cute.
Wonderful third-person climb 'em up Jusant is now available via GOG.
TopSpin 2k25, the first in the tennis series in over ten years, is currently out via Steam for those who purchase its £90 Deluxe Edition. It'll be out for those who buy its meagre £50 edition at midnight PST tonight. It's the latest in 2K Games' broader franchise of sports-derived microtransaction-delivery platforms.
FRIDAY EMBRUED
Once again in this harsh world we must draw our breath in pain to FEED THE MAW.Fallout 4's much-anticipated big update is out - here are the full patchnotes.
Here's a new trailer for Karma: The Dark World - "a first-person cinematic psychological thriller" and also, a game of Dystopian Future bingo. It's set in East Germany in 1984 and casts you as an employee of the Leviathan Corporation's Thought Police. "What is time?" asks the Steam page. "A measurement of fleeting events we perceive as they pass, where terrible and joyous experiences fade into memory, obscured by a desire to leave our sadness in the past as we struggle to hold on to our fondest moments as they drift toward nostalgia." I think I'm getting a migraine. The trailer seems swish though.
cpt_freakout says: Light management game Diluvian Winds also came out today, in case anyone's interested.
This does look nice. It's got a lighthouse in it and everything.
A new Counter-Strike 2 update which adds the option to put the gun in your character's left hand, amongst other things.
By apparent popular request, Stray Fawn Studio have added the option to feed villagers to the monster your village is built on in The Wandering Village. The survivors may be terrified into forming a cult. The monster can also get parasites now. I'm pretty sure this started out as a Wholesome Game. It seems to be slowly turning into The Shrouded Isle.
Famed Viewtiful Joe creator Shinji Mikami (think he worked on some zombie games too), apparently wanted to leave Tango Gameworks 8 years before he actually did. If you missed it, Mikami left the Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Hi-Fi Rush studio last year.
"I think a lot of people were under the impression that I was the representative," said Mikami, via IGN, "but I was very close to a rank-and-file employee. I had 'producer' attached to my name, but I wasn’t an executive or anything of the sort." Mikami started a new studio earlier this year.
A new trailer for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
Arrowhead want you to choose the next Stratagem for Helldivers 2, by picking which planet to liberate. Rocket launcher or anti-tank mines? The eternal conundrum.
Celeste’s slick movement meets Zelda’s hookshot in Oyster Wars, an “intense” platformer by an actual oyster farmer about revenge against Big Oyster - and built on some of Celeste's own player code.
The Ace Attorney Turnabout Collection - bundling five Phoenix Wright games - is about to disappear from Steam, so grab it while you can (and cheap, for the next week).
A month after the Alone in the Dark reboot’s release - following multiplae delays out of 2023 - it looks like developers Pieces Interactive are suffering layoffs.
Escape From Tarkov's developers have doubled down in their belief that their new game mode is not DLC, but say that paying players will get access to it whenever the game is finished.
A banned WWE 2k24 modder has been reinstated following player backlash. WhatsTheStatus' mods will seemingly return soon, minus certain creations that impacted the stability and performance of the wrestling game.
Rusty's Retirement is an idle-farming simulator designed to sit at the bottom of your screen while you do other things. It launched on Steam this week. It's like the Petz of crop gathering?
Shinji Mikami, the director of Resident Evil 4 and The Evil Within, left Tango Gameworks - a studio he founded - because he wanted to move away from the survival horror genre. Mikami explained the decision in an interview with Famitsu, now translated by Automaton Media. Mikami has founded a new studio called Kamuy.
Bloober Team, currently working on the Silent Hill 2 remake, also have two other projects in-development. Twitter user pl_evil translated the Polish studio's annual report, which mentions the two games. Project C will be announced this year and is an original IP developed in partnership with Private Division, and Project R is a game due in 2025 based on a Skybound IP. Skybound Entertainment was founded by Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead.
Early access citybuilder Manor Lords has seemingly had a successful launch, sitting at number one in Steam's top sellers chart. It reached a peak of 170,000 concurrent players today. If you're tempted, read our Manor Lords review first.
Stardew Valley's 1.6.6 patch is out now. The full patch notes detail several tweaks and fixes.