A Reader Of News I wonder whither there be'est any new PC games on sale this week, perchance?
Enter A News Editor, With Alarums And Excursions
A News Editor On Monday 4th November, terraform hexagons to save princesses in Zero Orders Tactics. On Tuesday 5th November, take turns to run and gun in Metal Slug Tactics. On Wednesday 6th November, discover a kinder, cosier Runescape with the early access launch of free-to-play MMO Brighter Shores. Alternatively, build an incredibly unsafe waterslide in Planet Coaster 2. Or answer the call of Stardewty and strike the earth of Mirthwood. On Thursday 7th November, click mischievously upon bawdy Renaissance art in Death Of The Reprobate. And on Friday 8th November, swap/hack bodies in Slitterhead.
A Reader Of News This list seemeth thin, my lord, and citeth not sundry auspicious PC releases that I have encountered on my travels.
A News Editor Vex me not, sirrah, for I have a headache. Hie thee to the comments to share thy bounty, assuming our comments system is working again.
Age Of Mythology: Retold has been updated with a new Arena Of The Gods mode, encompassing 35 skirmish missions with various modifiers and randomisable bits. Read more on Steam.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
If you're in the mood to be a knifey little freak in a world of sour pixels and abstract catacombs, Brush Burial is currently around the price of a posher sandwich.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Stream a lot of GeForce Now games? Nvidia think you might be having too much, and will impose a 100-hour monthly limit (with charges for extra hours) from January 2025.
– James Archer
Sharing this one purely because of the unbelievably niche pitch: "Proverbs is a picross/minesweeper hybrid featuring a single ENORMOUS puzzle, inspired by Bruegel the Elder's 1559 painting "Netherlandish Proverbs". Steam demo here.
– Nic Reuben
I can't tell if sci-fi horror adventure game Escape the Charon is bad-good or just bad-bad, but it's giving Limbo Of The Lost, which means I have to play it now. There's a demo on Steam anyway.
Again via VGC, Sony president Hiroki Totoki has said a bit to investors about what Sony have learned from the "failure" of Concord, which was pulled from sale barely a week after launch. A quick excerpt: "we probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported by Pocketgamer, there have been layoffs at Sharkmob London following a game cancellation. The developer's Malmo office is unaffected and still working on open world extraction shooter Exoborne.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported by VGC, Sega have sold Humankind and Endless Dungeon developers Amplitude, as part of a management buyout.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been patched. They've added some cosmetic Mass Effect armor. Also, "NPC necks no longer grow unexpectedly", and "global banter should no longer start too early". It's never too early to banter, BioWare!
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Shakespeare week was such a terrible idea.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
PERICLES, PRINCE OF FRIDAY
The blind mole casts copp'd hills towards heaven, to tell the earth is throng'd by man's oppression; and the poor worm doth die for't. Nonetheless, FEED THE MAW.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Kojima Productions have quietly announced that they now have "full ownership" of the intellectual property rights for Death Stranding.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
I'm curious about Homocipher, a SeekerX recommendation. It's about chatting up boy monsters, though you'll need to translate their dialogue first. One for Heaven's Vault and Slay The Princess fans, maybe?
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Death Of The Reprobate is out on Steam. It's another "Rabelaisian" adventure game from The Procession To Calvary developer Joe Richardson, in which you click most awfully upon animated Renaissance art.
Dystopian foot-racer Deathsprint 66 is getting an offline mode on 11th November. Find it on Steam. We never reviewed this one, but I like the clone-jockey premise and the WipEout-ish aesthetics.
The dust has settled after a frenetic opening series for #DEATHSPRINT66 – and the Bachman Media Network has been working tirelessly in the background to up the stakes with multiple rounds of major updates.
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– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The Division 2 is 75% off on Steam. I've got a real spot for this one, despite the Clancy-ness of it all. Worth it just to soak up the environments and go animal spotting, if nothing else.
I've just remembered that Zephon is out tomorrow - a post-apocalyptic 4X from them wot did Warhammer 40,000: Gladius. It's got cyberpunk bits and eldritch horror - the classy combo. Steam page here.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Some fighting words from Blizzard veteran David Kim, nowadays developer of putative genre-reinventing RTS Battle Aces at Uncapped. "For me it's very personal, because [real-time strategy] is my favorite genre of all time, and I just can't accept the fact that players, or I guess developers even, take the stance of 'the end-all peak of RTS is StarCraft 2 and nothing can ever be better than StarCraft,'" Kim told PCGamer.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
A pinch more about the future of Manor Lords. Greg is thinking about ale.
As some of you have requested, changes to ale and water distribution are finally coming. They are now in closed testing (plus I attached an extra shot from the new map). pic.twitter.com/lwiFhPb9Yn
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– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
From the above Take-Two financial call via Gamesradar, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has told investors that the company are "seeing great growth in PC right now", adding that: "I have been of the view that open formats would continue to grow and PC is an open format. I do think PC will continue to be a more and more important part of the console business going forward, and that isn't complicated for us to support at all." To which one might respond: GTA 6 PC release date when?
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Speaking to VGC, Sega have discussed plans for bringing back a bunch of their old licenses, including a new Virtua Fighter.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
In a fiscal year 2025 conference call, Take-Two have sold their Private Division label to an unnamed buyer and confirmed the closure of OlliOlli World developers Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2 studio Intercept.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
THURSDAY AND CRESSIDA
Who shall be true to us, when we are so unsecret to ourselves? FEED THE MAW.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Don't Nod staff are striking this Friday 8th November in response to recently announced mass redundancy plans, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Lucky Tower Ultimate - the throwback 2D cartoon roguelike in which you can use corpses and broccoli as weapons - continues its early access journey with a new cave area. I get the sense that this is good, but I haven't had a chance to play.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Trade association TIGA have sent over a report about the state of the UK games industry in 2024. Some takeaways: during the period May 2023 to May 2024, a record 248 companies closed down or exited the games industry, the highest ever recorded at around 10.4 per cent of all companies surveyed. However, the number of "full time equivalent development roles" has grown by 3,932 positions, versus 2,353 job losses. Overall, the survey suggests that there are 25,419 people working in FT equivalent dev positions in the UK right now.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
343 Indust- sorry, Halo Studios have treated Halo Infinite to a Halo-2-themed update, with specially recreated legacy game settings and a Halo 2 map playlist. They've also added a third-person mode. There are plans to release a fully playable version of the apparently famous E3 2003 Halo 2 demo as well.
Rift Riff is an "open field" tower defence game with visuals that put me in mind of Cocoon and Monument Valley.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
As reported by PCGamer, Twitch have changed their new "politics and sensitive social issues" label following a backlash. In particular, they want to reassure trans people and others with marginalised and oppressed identities that "you don’t need to label your stream if you’re talking about your lived experience".
We have made some updates to our policy language to better clarify what needs a "Politics and Sensitive Social Issues" Content Classification Label (CCL).
We want to make clear that you don’t need to label your stream if you’re talking about your lived experience. We’ve made… https://t.co/kPQ6r97dgA
Incentivised by the Tom Petty song from the GTA 6 trailer - which includes the line "wait for the moon" - players are still trying to glean release dates for additional trailers and the game itself from depictions of the moon in Rockstar key art.
Rockstar Games has potentially teased GTA 6 Trailer 2’s date in a picture they posted featuring a moon in the Waning Gibbous phase, which occurs on November 22nd. pic.twitter.com/wqJsrBMEHL
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– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The major plot point in the Helldivers 2 live-service metagame right now is the construction of a space station super weapon, with labour kindly donated by families displaced by Super Earth's war efforts. The question is whether said space station will ever have a presence in-game.
MAJOR ORDER: The Helldivers valiantly achieved two of the three objectives set by High Command, capturing the Automaton Database and limiting the bots' territorial expansion, but falling short of re-securing the Terminid Research Preserve. Security has been doubled at the… pic.twitter.com/aaHTorIJgS
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– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Crusader Kings 3 has a new update and paid expansion. The paid expansion adds "Wandering" lifestyles, which almost sound like the CK3 equivalent of Adventure mode in Dwarf Fortress, with characters exploring the world as they please. The free bits include breweries, a brewing culture tradition, and several new historical battle points of interest. Also, "a salacious Grand Wedding event chain".
Stardew Valley has a a new update, and once again I find myself turning mournfully to Alice B's empty chair, because she used to be our Stardew Valley person. Some superficial highlights of my own: the update adds a mysterious wood-dwelling character who'll return lost items for a price. You can now place beds and sleep inside any constructed buildings that allow furniture. Objects dropped in ponds now float briefly, giving you a few seconds to rescue them.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
BioWare are working on their first patch for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It'll land later this week, and will fix issues where certain character customisations (beware spoilers in the full post) were being incorrectly applied, together with weirdly greyed-out DLSS options for 40-series Nvidia GPUs, and an issue that caused Companion Skill Points to reset.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Plentiful is an upcoming nature sim from former Grand Theft Auto developer Obbe Vermeij, who is fond of sharing GTA titbits on Twitter. Its a god game with hexagonal maps where you raise and lower terrain to create bodies of water. Seems quite From Dusty.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
New Star Wars Outlaws game director Drew Rechner has blogged about forthcoming updates, describing three major areas for improvement: combat, stealth and the overall reliability of controls.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
The New York Times staff are on strike, and would like you to stop playing Wordle and Connections in solidarity. Speaking as a journalist myself, I'm cool with this as long as you promise to spend your Wordle time repeatedly refreshing our Wordle guides pages instead.
ULP STRIKE ALERT (Thread, 1 of 4): Our @NYTGuildTech members have walked off the job despite making every effort to negotiate with management. Our members know their worth and they will prove that at the picket line today. Read more here.... pic.twitter.com/FaPtLCwW9J
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– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Sorry for all the obnoxious Shakespeare quotation/punning - I didn't have a great start to the week. Next week we'll do Battlestar Galactica puns or something.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
TITUESDAY ANDRONICUS
O, why should nature build so foul a den, unless the gods delight in tragedies? FEED THE MAW.
From Podcast Unlocked via Gamesradar, Diablo 4 lead and former Gears Of War dev Rod Fergusson has shared old plans for a Gears of War 6 that would have taken the cast to other planets.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Afraid to say that our new comments system needs another day to sort itself out - they're aiming to launch it tomorrow.
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Via Rolling Stone, BioWare's creative director John Epler has shared that BioWare did consider making the latest Dragon Age more of an open world game. “We had been doing Dragon Age pre-production on versions of Dragon Age 4, and we did have a version that was a lot more open-world,” Epler says. However, the studio struggled to make the larger environment "compelling or narratively interesting", with Epler noting that "the reception to [Mass Effect] Andromeda definitely solidified that."
– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Here's a crunchy breakdown speculating on why Monster Hunter Wilds's beta combat felt 'off' to some players.
– Nic Reuben
Linkin Park nicked someone's League Of Legends world championships tickets, via VGC.
– Nic Reuben
Against The Storm is testing a new biome, and you can play it via an experimental update branch. Thanks, PCGN!
– Nic Reuben
A MONDAY NIGHT'S DREAM
Hell is empty, and all the video games are here. FEED THE MAW.
