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.
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.
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.
The Caribbean has come to Microsoft Flight Simulator, care of the latest free update.
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.
There’s a demo up for Silent Hilly exclusion zone thriller Hollowbody.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A leaker (one of the more reliable ones) claims that there are “five Resident Evil games in development right now, including Resident Evil 9”.
Some insight from Hideo Kojima about the origins of Fragile’s creepy shoulder hands in Death Stranding 2 On The Beach.
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.
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.”
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:
IT IS MONDAY. Spin up the Infinite Improbability Drive and FEED THE MAW.