The Maw - 5th-10th February 2024
Our weekly newsblog with this week's top videogame releases
The clouds over London have settled into the shapes of loading icons. The birds are singing old Celtic ditties. There are extinct species of fern growing through the vents of my i7 12700F. All these troubling signs point to but one, dire outcome: it's time for another week of new videogame releases, and another week of feeding videogame gossip and reportage to the Maw, our weekly news liveblog.
Here are a few games we're aiming the ol' scrying crystals at this week: alchemy-themed puzzle adventure CLeM (6th Feb); 1980s-styled "Tetris + flying car" puzzler Space Garbage (6th Feb); Coven-building "4X card game" WitchHand (7th Feb); spoofy sci-fascist shooter Helldivers 2 (8th Feb); alt-theological dark fantasy The Inquisitor (8th Feb). Mind you, this week it's all about the demos. That's right, it's time for another Steam Next Fest - have you had a chance to play any demos so far? Participating developers have taken to stuffing them up a few days in advance to beat the rush.
As ever, if there's a game or a story you think we should cover, feel free to tip us off in the comments. Happy videogaming all.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
IT IS MONDAY. Spin up the Infinite Improbability Drive and FEED THE MAW.
Early on in development, The Last of Us Part 2 was envisaged as a "purely melee focussed" open world game inspired by Bloodborne, according to co-game director Anthony Newman. You can hear/see more about that in this Making-Of:
In the same Making-Of, we learn that Naughty Dog whizboss Neil Druckmann has ideas for a third The Last of Us game. "I don’t have a story, but I do have that concept," he said. "That, to me, is as exciting as 1, as exciting as 2, is its own thing, yet has this through line for all 3. So it does feel like there’s probably one more chapter to this story."
Oh lord, Starfield might not remain Xbox console exclusive, with Microsoft reportedly set to introduce a new strategy of bringing first-party games to Switch and PS5. It makes little direct difference to us over in the secluded solar systems of PC Gaming, of course, but it does mean that online discourse will be extra-stinky this week.
Some insight from Hideo Kojima about the origins of Fragile's creepy shoulder hands in Death Stranding 2 On The Beach.
A leaker (one of the more reliable ones) claims that there are "five Resident Evil games in development right now, including Resident Evil 9".
Steam have added "elf" and "dwarf" tags, following a sustained campaign from the creators of Dwarf Fortress and Deep Rock Galactic. Do orcs next please.
Here's one we missed from last week - the 1.0 launch of Moonbreaker, a turn-based tactics game and "true digital miniatures experience" from the Subnautica devs. Ed Thorn found the early access build to be a fairly good time back in 2022.
A new Manor Lords video emerged over the weekend which delves into the game's music. Lots of very nice strings, and some neat talk about the wider process of creating the soundtrack.
Apparently, people are using footage of Dorfromantik to advertise their own games. The developers have put up a Steam post asking players not to call attention to these ads, for obvious reasons.
There's a demo up for Silent Hilly exclusion zone thriller Hollowbody.
Footgun Underground also has a demo. It's a roguelike in which you fight things using your soccer skills and some accompanying 2D ricochet physics. I know, it's a "genre + gimmick"-type thing, but the footage seems fun.
The Caribbean has come to Microsoft Flight Simulator, care of the latest free update.
Last week's Factorio Friday Facts blog entry was particularly interesting to me. It was all about the sound improvements coming to Factorio's 2.0 update, and talks through some very cool sound layering implementations, with plenty of demonstration video clips as well.
Spaceship RPG Between The Stars leaves early access on March 7th, adding a full campaign and various other features and fixes. Anyone here played it? I'm not sure anybody in the Treehouse has.
Your friendly neighbourhood TCG fan is here to let you know that a bunch of classic Yu-Gi-Oh! video games are headed to PC - and outside of Japan - for the first time! The Early Days Collection will bring the likes of 2000 Game Boy Color title Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelist to the English language and Steam as part of the card game's 25th anniversary celebrations.
Roblox has added the ability to instantly translate text chat between 16 different languages using an AI-powered tool, effectively allowing for real-time conversation between players speaking different dialects. The developers hope to apply a similar technology to voice chat next, aiming for translation that recreates the speaker's intonation and rhythm in translated speech.
As Edwin noted this morning, Moonbreaker - the Warhammer-like tactics game from Subnautica devs and Brandon Sanderson - has exited early access into 1.0. There's a new Boss Run mode, extra painting tools and more besides. Here's a full rundown of what to expect.
Take the 2D colony management of Fallout Shelter with the trap-laying tower defence of Orcs Must Die, mix them both together in a wizard’s cauldron, and you end up with Artificer's Tower, a magical tower defence game with just one, really big, tower.
IT IS TUESDAY. Whisper it: feed the maw.
Sorry for the site outages last night everybody. We had a Cascade Event and the Maw expanded past the 19th parallel, overwhelming the server farms. All hope seemed lost - but then, in our darkest hour, young Beetle Brownings, a News Writer Third Class out of Texas, rose from the trenches with a Witcher 4 Linkedin citation in one fist and a Nightingale overview trailer in the other, galloped into the breach and arrested the Maw's advance for just long enough to allow the Resplendent Journomat to achieve Maximum Torque and reestablish the Wards. Glory to Beetle Brownings! A statue will be erected in her honour.
The creator of Daggerfall's Unity version is making a brand new, "Daggerfall-style" game, as reported by Dualshockers.
There's a "future of Xbox" event coming next week, according to Phil Spencer. Does this one involve more layoffs, Phil? Or is it about Xbox console exclusives coming to PlayStation, like the leakers have been saying?
Here's a video of new maps coming in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Season 2. I share this mostly because I want to live in the mountain-top resort depicted.
Laralyn McWilliams - an influential and widely respected game developer of 30 years standing, whose projects include Free Realms, Full Spectrum Warrior and Sid Meier's Pirates - has passed away.
It's claimed that Tencent have a free-to-play mobile version of Elden Ring on the boil - here's my full write-up.
Enshrouded has an update that, amongst other things, fixes the unlocking of the Rake recipe and lowers the timer for chunks of world resetting in the player's absence to 30 minutes.
Here's a 20 minute walkthrough trailer for Pixelsplit's Reveil, a Daedalic-published horror game set in a rather nasty circus.
IGN has a big piece on the gruelling development of Ubisoft's naval pirate sim Skull And Bones, featuring on-the-record comment from the developers. Amongst other things, we hear about the cancellation of a planned single-player campaign and the effects of changes of studio leadership.
Well, this is a surprise. Nightingale is launching two days earlier than planned, devs Inflexion Games have announced. It's now coming Tuesday February 20th.
Also a quick end of day plug for the brilliant little Bore Blasters Next Fest demo, which is sort of like Vampire Survivors meets Dome Keeper. The full game is also coming to Steam on March 8th.
An end-of-shift demo recommendation from me - Dusky Depths.
Helldivers 2, which is out in a couple of days, apparently has game masters who shape the co-op experience. Essentially developers who have the power to watch your co-op matches and put their fingers on the scales to help you against the aliens - or to help create dramatic scenarios, at least.
Anna Megill, writer on Control, Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider, and the upcoming Fable reboot, has joined CD Projekt Red as lead writer on the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. Megill's hiring was announced alongside several other high profile new joiners on the game, which is currently in "early stages of development".
Crusader Kings 3 is getting another year of DLC, under the name Chapter 3. It includes two major expansions: one which adds the Black Death, and one which adds the Byzantine Empire. The first is called Legends Of The Dead and it's out in March.
Infinite Craft is a free browser toy in which you can seemingly craft anything. There's no objective to it, but experimenting with it is great fun.
Someone has made a 12-hour long video essay about Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace. Whether someone else has yet had the fortitude to watch all of it, I do not know.
IT'S WEDNESDAY. More steam, more steam! FEED THE MAW.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth got its very own State of Play showcase last night. Embarrassingly for all concerned, the game has yet to be announced for PC, but here's the video anyway.
Lies of P is borrowing some weapons and gear from Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. Worth returning to the game for? I'm still in the opening third myself.
Via DSOGaming, there's an unofficial PC port of 1999-released RPG The Legend of Dragoon. It's called Project: Severed Chains. Here's a video of the graphical tune-ups.
As reported by PCGamer, Rocksteady may have given away one of the DLC characters for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. Spoiler: it's Mr Freeze, though according to one self-described leaker, this version of the character will be a woman.
Valve have added Arms Race mode to Counter-Strike 2 as part of the latest round of tweaks and fixes.
They've patched Palworld again. This one fixes "an issue where if a Pal that was manually assigned to a breeding farm went to sleep, it would not wake up forever." Chilling.
Ed has dug up an offbrand Armored Core game that puts him in mind of certain supermarkets. It turns out the "A" in "double-A" is for "Aldi".
Final Fantasy 8's director Yoshinori Kitase has told IGN that if he were remaking FF8, he'd change the game's combat, and specifically the Junction system, noting that it's hard for new players to get into. Good lord, the sleepless nights I spent trying to figure out the bloody Junction system. It seems fairly transparent in hindsight, but teenage Edwin was in over his head.
As picked up by PCG, NetEase Games lead designer Paul Sandler has written a blog about Activision's 2009 firing of Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella. (The pair would go onto form Respawn Entertainment, who are doing pretty well for themselves these days.)
Paralives will heat up the race to be the next Sims with its early access release in 2025, with the life sim's developers confirming there'll be no paid DLC - only free expansions.
More details on those layoffs at WWE, NBA and Lego 2K Drive developers Visual Concepts Austin, as mentioned by Edwin earlier.
Don’t expect us to remake Final Fantasy 8 after FF7 Remake, the RPG's original director has suggested - it’s simply too much dang work.
PlayStation’s creative game-making toybox Dreams apparently almost made it to PC - with ray tracing support to boot - but now it’s dead.
IT IS THURSDAY. The Maw manifested inside a toilet cubicle this morning - we had to go ask the janitor guy from Alan Wake 2 for tips. FEED IT.
A joint statement from Gearbox Publishing and Blackbird Interactive: "After careful analysis of feedback, we made the decision to delay the global launch of Homeworld 3 until May 13, with advanced access set for May 10, to ensure that we’re making the final tweaks needed to deliver at the level of quality that we strive for and you deserve." I didn't think the controls were that unwieldy.
cpt_freakout says: Huh, what's up with The Inquisitor? Had completely missed it, it looks interesting, like a Vampyr kind of thing? Hope you guys cover it!
I'll see what we can do, but it looks like a larger game - fitting it in might be tricky.
Disney have sunk $1.5 billion into Epic Games and will collaborate with them "on an all-new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences". It can only be a new Unreal Tournament set in Disneyland, right? Fortnite what now?
Polygon's Nicole Carpenter has a report on the lack of funding for marginalised developers.
The latest from Elias Toufexis, voice of Adam Jensen.
Free-to-play turn-based tactics game Feud leaves early access on February 23rd. I've not played this but it seems fun. "Imagine chess, but on a four-by-four grid, where pieces are swapped rather than moved, each piece has its own special ability and-- OK, not so much like chess."
Kadokawa Corporation have - no, I refuse to make the obvious joke here - bought Acquire, co-developers of Octopath Traveler and, way back in the day, the developers of Tenchu and Way of the Samurai. Here's Gematsu's report.
Turn 10 are overhauling car progression in the latest Forza Motorsport.
Do you like Elden Ring? Not as much as this guy (spotted by Alice0), who has created a 600-page illustrated manuscript of his entire playthrough.
I just wishlisted this new point and click adventure Whirlight on the basis that one of the screenshots appears to reference Audrey II from The Little Shop Of Horrors (as well as many classic point and click adventures). My largest complaint right now is that the genius scientist should be the woman and the eccentric artist should be the washed up dude in shorts, but we can't have everything.
Ooh eck, I like the cut of Hyperspace Deck Command.
CVC Capital Partners, backers of Six Nations Rugby, are rumoured to be in talks to buy Runescape developers Jagex for £900m.
I have just stumbled on tasty-seeming 1972-set immersive sim Spectra. Steam blurb excerpt: "You are Number 6, one of the Soviet Union’s top secret agents, sent by your superiors to infiltrate the dystopian fortress city of Hiawatha and help spark a revolution by destabilizing the local warlord, a massive corporation called Saturn."
Fruits says: The Guardian published an article about games industry layoffs which reads like a more digestible version of that massive report linked in the Sunday Papers last weekend.
It's a good piece!
Artisan Studios have announced Lost Hellden, a new RPG with contributions from Gravity Rush and FFXIV artist Takeshi Oga and Valkyria Chronicles and Tactics Ogre composer Hitoshi Sakimoto.
Assassin's Creed's visit to feudal Japan should arrive before March 2025 according to the latest Ubisoft financial report. The same update also confirms that Star Wars Outlaws is due to release sometime in 2024.
Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton described the survival sequel as a "game-as-a-service" in a financial report, causing much panic among lovers of the original. Developers Unknown Worlds have clarified that it'll simply be an Early Access release with patches and optional co-op, with no plans for a battle pass or content seasons, in a blog post.
Helldivers 2 has been selling well since its release earlier today, but its Steam users reviews currently sit at "Mixed" due to crashes and matchmaking bugs. Developers Arrowhead say they're working on a hotfix.
Fantasy roguelike citybuilder Against The Storm has outlined its 2024 development roadmap, which includes two more substantial free updates before its first DLC.
IT IS FRIDAY. The Maw beckons. FEED IT.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has defended the $70 US price tag of Skull And Bones in an investor call, describing the piracy sim as a "quadruple-A game". Ubisoft will you stop trying to make "AAAA" happen, it's not going to happen.
Take-Two are trying to reduce costs but have "no current plans" for layoffs, chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick has told IGN in an earnings call. "I would just note that our biggest line item of expense is actually marketing," he told the site. "We do think we can optimize that. We also have third-party expenses, software, other vendors, supply services. And we always find opportunity there. The hardest thing to do is to lay off colleagues, and we have no current plans."
Card Craft is a roguelike homage to Final Fantasy's Triple Triad cardgame. It's been in early access since 2022 and now has a release date. As a recovering Triple Triad player, I could see myself losing a lot of time to this.
Timemelters - a third-person tower defence game in which you rewind time to fight alongside your clones - also has a 1.0 release date. Set your Tardis to February 28th.
Time Extension has a feature on Perfect Entertainment's Discworld games, from which PCG plucks the story that they might get a long-overdue re-release - the major difficulty being that only 50% of the rights are now in the hands of Perfect's cofounder Gregg Barnett. The other half are in the hands of King Charles.
As reported by Eurogamer, the US Federal Trade Commission say that Microsoft's recent mass layoffs "contradict" what the company said would happen after it gobbled up Activision Blizzard - specifically, that the layoffs undermine Microsoft's earlier claims that the companies would continue to operate independently.
Pucker up for better kissing when Baldur’s Gate 3's “hefty” latest update arrives next week, with Patch 6 also bringing new camp idle animations, Legendary Actions for Honour Mode and bug fixes for those less smooch-inclined.
Surprise! RuneScape makers Jagex are being bought by the multibillion sports giant behind Six Nations and LaLiga, for a reported £900m.
Ex-Fortnite devs' 'collaborative RPG' Project ORCS aims to let you make your own Baldur's Gate 3, and it's launching into early access later this year.
All Rise channels Ace Attorney, Disco Elysium and Slay the Spire in a courtroom card battle to save the planet - both in-game and in reality, having started life as an effort to fund real legal-life battles against corporate polluters.
The Finals' latest patch makes progression faster along its battle pass, granting quicker access to cosmetics - but not faster access to its weapon unlocks.
Hideo Kojima decided to listen to fans asking for him to return to the action-espionage genre after a serious illness in 2020 made him consider his own mortality. The result is Physint.
WitchHand is a worker placement 4X card game - or, perhaps more succinctly, Stacklands but about leading and growing a witch's coven. It's out now.
Steam Remote Play Together 2024 Fest kicks off on Monday with discounts and demos on co-op games - which, let's face it, are the best kinds of games.
The French union STJV has expressed concerns about worker wellbeing at French developer Don't Nod. The report includes mention of staff being reassigned at short notice, while teams are understaffed due to the studio working on 8 games simultaneously. In a response, Don't Nod say they take the allegations seriously, and that they "understand the importance of transparency and accountability, and we are committed to addressing any issues raised constructively."