Autumn is upon us, or "fall" if you're from the other side of the pond. The leaves flake from the boughs like the dandruff of Pan, god of the wild - pandruff, perhaps? The waters of the rivers thicken, rejecting the fading sunlight, and the big coffee chains start doing monstrous things with hazelnut syrup. The Maw is ascendant during the darker months, its constellations growing visible to the naked eye. We will need a steady dosage of new PC games to keep it quiescent. Fortunately, this week is looking quite bountiful.
Monday 9th September kicks off thunderously with the full public launch of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Find comedy racer What The Car? running alongside the Warhammer behemoth like, well, a car with legs running alongside a Space Marine. On Tuesday 10th September, there's revenge thriller FPS I Am Your Beast, created by a few of the terrible tinkerers behind El Paso, Elsewhere, and the early access launch of action-RPG brawler Towerborne, created by a few of the mournful intellects behind The Banner Saga. On Wednesday 11th September, make way for farm simulator Mirthwood, which is sort of Stardew Valley but more storybook. On Thursday 12th September, it's an avalanche: the early access launch of witchy chicken-legged house sim Reka, closely pursued by dystopian blood racer Deathsprint 66, cosy open world van adventure Caravan Sandwitch, spacey six-shooter Wild Bastards, PS2-inspired sci-fi horror Hollowbody, and open world racer Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown . On Friday 13th September, finally, a choice of revolutionary period photography in Mexico, 1921: A Deep Slumber, creepy card-dungeoneering in Pyrene, and teenage cabin fever in Nocturnals.
Phew! Too much? Probably too much. As ever, it's possible that all of the above games are actually rubbish, and there are a bunch of other games I haven't mentioned that you should play instead. What was I thinking? Be sure to tell me so in the comments, and follow our weekly newsgatherings in the liveblog below. Have a lovely autumnal week.
Star Wars Jedi Survivor has been patched with a focus "primarily on performance and quality of life improvements" - they've also removed the game's Denuvo DRM.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Here's 50 minutes of open world fantasy game Crimson Desert. All the shiny helmets you can eat.
SeekerX says: Most obscure from that roundup is Celestia: Chain of Fate on Thurs 9/12 -- a visual novel about going to a magic school to sort out a tangle of angel and demon heritage, and maybe also romance some pretty lads while doing so.
Hey, I've just been sent a press release for this. Here's the Steam page.
Former Rez, Lumines and Meteos artist Noboru Hotta has unveiled Twin Souls, an action adventure game based on Japanese mythology. Some blurb: "What is justice? What is love? What is death? A journey of the soul begins to reexamine what flows at the root of humanity."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
FRIDAY NIGHT'S ALL RIGHT FOR MAWING
FORD THE MERE!
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Grand strategy city builder Kaiserpunk has been delayed till February 27th 2025. It'll now skip early access and release as a feature-complete game.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
A surprise update for free open world Superman homage Undefeated, to celebrate the console launch.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Low-poly Tokyo-set action horror Nightmare Operator has a new trailer and looks cool, albeit tactically fiddly.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
More layoffs at Microsoft: 650 Xbox workers, "mostly corporate and supporting functions," according to Phil Spencer. These follow the 1900 layoffs made in January, plus the closure of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog, via Eurogamer.
– Nic Reuben
Archons is a roguey bullety slashy where you control two characters at once, with a demo here.
– Nic Reuben
Epic has told Eurogamer that PC crossplay is a requirement for all multiplayer games on its store. An ungenerous person might say that this is because there aren't nearly as many potential multiplayer opponents or allies on EGS as on, say, Steam.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has received a small hotfix that includes a bunch of crash fixes and optimisations for CPU behavior on high end CPUs. Further afield, we can expect ultrawide support, a sparring arena on the Battle Barge, and private PvE lobbies.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Melting Encyclopedia is a collection of dimensions reminiscent of older point-and-click games. Your job in each one is to charge a battery and leap to the next. Seems... lurid.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
"All the world's a corpse - the men and women merely big stringy worms climbing around inside," declares the blurb for Crypt Worlds: The Only Videogame™, a free 3D escapade in which you can run around and pee on cowboys.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Payday 3's creative director Miodrag Kovačevićas is "stepping away" from the role and "focusing his efforts as a designer elsewhere in the project". While the statement below doesn't give a reason, it's possible this has to do with Payday 3's extremely mixed showing versus its predecessor, which continues to attract more players on Steam. Andreas Häll Penninger and Almir Listo are serving as an interim "creative force" while Starbreeze research and plan the game's second year of updates.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Via PCGamer, there have been "significant layoffs" at Deadrop developers Midnight Society due to "multiple unexpected challenges". According to a statement, the studio remain "dedicated to launching Deadrop in 2025." Yes, this is the company Dr Disrespect co-founded before it was revealed, earlier this year, that he'd sent inappropriate messages to a minor.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
IT IS THAWSDAW
Set phasers to attack position and lock S-foils to stun. MAW THE FEED.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Important weather update: it's hailing in London. I'd really love snow this year.
Shadow Of The Erdtree's final boss has gotten some nerfs in the latest Elden Ring patch, and more importantly, some of the more visually messy attacks in the final phase look to have been toned down somewhat. Here's the patch notes.
– Nic Reuben
Remnant 2 is getting a third big DLC pack on 24th September. It's called The Dark Horizon - here's some blurb: "Return to N’Erud and uncover a mysterious place preserved in time, where alien farmlands are tended by robots for inhabitants who have long since perished. But time corrupts all, and rogue AI and robotic creations threaten at every turn while you search for the secrets of the colossal entity that dominates the skyline." The pack will launch alongside a free update that includes a boss rush game mode.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Cape Hideous, meanwhile, is a shortform mystery in which you explore a surreal pirate ship as it sails into a storm. "Disturb a parrot, pet a cat".
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Ooh, I like the look of Shroom And Gloom. It's a deckbuilding roguelike played from a first-person perspective with a touch of Inscryption and a lot of angry fungus. You can eat your enemies.
Season 6 of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone is Halloween-themed, as you'd expect. Expect B-movie cameos, drive-thru diner maps, and a "trick-or-treat" mechanic which, in practice, should have been labelled "shoot-for-candy". Here's a trailer.
Duos mode is returning to battle royale game Apex Legends, developers Respawn have announced in a jokey tweet. I'll be honest, lads, I didn't even notice it was gone.
– Brendan Caldwell
Open world racing game The Crew 2 will get a fully offline mode, says Ubisoft. This is a response to complaints players made when the developer killed previous racer The Crew stone dead, as Eurogamer point out. The sequel is also one sale for a dollar, notices PC Gamer. Good will gesture? Or sign of a server shutdown to come? Guess we'll find out.
– Brendan Caldwell
PC players have dodged a bullet as Microsoft yank a bunch of big games from their standard Game Pass on console. Starfield, Diablo IV, Hellblade 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Still Wakes The Deep, and many other games are no longer playable for console folks who subscribe to the standard tier of the service, Kotaku discovered. Enshittification continues apace! But PC pass-holders still have these games, and will still get day one releases for their £10 a month. For now...
– Brendan Caldwell
WEDNESDAWN
Who put these video games in the toilet cistern? They've been turning the flush water a funny colour. Stop it.
– Brendan Caldwell
Sorry it's been a slower day for the RPS news section - I had something come up and had to step out this morning. We'll be back at the oars and singing journalistic shanties on the morrow!
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Project Omen is a free Itch.io mecha action-RPG, made in one month using Godot v4.3 for Low Spec Jam 3. Inspirations include Pokemon and Mega Man. They recommend downloading over playing in a browser.
Via GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft minority investor Juraj Krupa of Slovakian hedge fund AJ Investments and Partners has said that Ubisoft are too focussed on "pleasing investors" and need a change of management. This follows a share price slide apparently triggered by worse-than-hoped results for Star Wars Outlaws.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Locomotive management sim Sweet Transit is getting some electric train DLC.
In We Harvest Shadows (which has a demo) you are a very sad man growing tomatoes in first-person on a farm at the centre of a woody open world. Stuff goes a bit wrong after dark.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The grim darkness of the far future is now, for Space Marine 2 is officially out. The first patch is coming this week, and the developers say it'll cover the following: "Multiple crashfix (start of the game, 1st cutscene crash, etc...); Optimized CPU usage; Server improvements; Render bug improvements".
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
If you like rushing bosses, top-down actioner NanoApostle might appeal. "Play as Anita, a child augmented with lethal nanomachines, as she battles against twisted cybernetic experiments to escape a top-secret facility."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported by CNBC via VGC, Roblox players will soon be able to sell their games for real cash, not Robux. Here's how the revenue split will work: for a game that costs $50, the creator gets 70% of the earnings. For a game that costs $30, it's 60%, and for a game that costs $10, it's 50%.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
What does the future hold for Edwin? Another cup of coffee because it's 9.20 and I've already run out of brain. You know what goes well with coffee? The Guilty Gear OST.
What does the future hold for Minecraft? "Instead of providing one free update during the summer, as we’ve done in the past, we’ll now be releasing a number of free game drops throughout the year," explains a Mojang missive. "These game drops will vary in size and will bring you features to explore more frequently."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
What does the future hold for Destiny 2, after all those layoffs at Bungie? Two expansions and four major updates across summer and winter 2025. Here's a Bungie blog with more.
Image credit: Sony
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
TUESDAWNING
Somebody has uncoiled the Tesla coils! Fetch the largest forks you can find, and a generous helping of Tesco bolognaise. FEED THE MAW.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Ack! Evidently unwilling to be fed to the Maw, Mirthwood is no longer coming out this week - it's been delayed till November 6th.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
With Konami's blessing, Japanese streaming channel 兄者弟者 (Siblings) has published the first 90 minutes of the Silent Hill 2 Remake. Ta, EG.
Embracer studio Lost Boys Interactive have laid off an unspecified number of people, following a similar round of layoffs in January. This reflects "the need to adapt to shifting market conditions within the video game industry". Best of luck to everybody affected. If you're working at a studio that has vacancies, Lost Boys would love you to get in touch via assistance@lostboysinteractive.com.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Moonwatch is a Survivors-a-like in which you can stop time to cast ability cards. It's from the people behind Backpack Hero. There's a browser-based demo through the link, there.
Sashiko is a sewing game where you actually have to sew. Do Corsair or Asus sell thimbles these days?
Just spent the last week updating the controller for Sashiko - a meditative sewing game where players have to sew with a real needle and thread! 🧵🎮💙 pic.twitter.com/KTYIVqjt0p
I stumbled on Terror Of Hemasaurus over the weekend, which is a pixelart sidescroller in which you play an offbrand Godzilla wrecking cities. Not new, but seems fun.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
IT IS MAWNDAY
Stay weird, have principles, have fun, and FEED THE MAW.
