The Maw – 17th-22nd June 2024

Beloved friends, hated enemies – last week, we let the side down. Due to a shortage of hands at the pump and persistent clouds of Geoff Keighley activity, there was no weekly Maw liveblog, and this has bred disaster. Shaken, stirred and finally ignited for want of two-sentence updates about Dragon Age, the Maw emitted a full 13% of its cosmo-puissance into Mundus and took a grievous bite out of the ailing and fearful lasagne of reality itself. Hated friends, beloved enemies – I am very sad to say that the proud nation of Dimplexland is no more.

Never heard of Dimplexland? Ah, but this is what happens when the Maw escapes containment and gets its infinitesimal, polychromatic fangs into something other than a news story about video games. Whatever the creature devours is stripped from the empirical realm and becomes the merest fantasy, be it a person or an entire country with 15 ethnic groups, a prosperous silver mining industry, and a royal family that traces its history back to the early 1200s. Why, I could almost have made Dimplexland up while writing this post, based on the logo of the radiator behind my desk! Pray for Dimplexland. You shall be avenged, just as soon as I’ve had my coffee.

Let us strike the drum and proceed to this week’s most ravishing new PC games releases with an air of appropriate solemnity and despair. Actually, let’s not do that, because it’s a pretty attractive haul this week. On Monday 17th June we’ve got El Dorado: The Golden City Builder, one of Alice B’s (RPS in peace) ones-to-watch, whose name very much sums it up. On Tuesday 18th June, we’ve got The Chinese Room’s Still Wakes The Deep, a game about Scottish oilmen dealing with an undersea threat in the 1970s, together with the early access launch of Pax Dei, which Matt Cox describes as “an attempt to pull off EVE Online in medieval Europe”, and the Forges Of Corruption expansion for cherished Space Marine shooter Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Wednesday 19th June brings Scars Of Mars, a first-person real-time RPG which looks like Ultima Underworld put through the teleporter with Cosmic Encounters, and Murky Divers, which looks like Lethal Company but underwater. On Thursday 20th June, there’s a regular meteor strike in the shape of Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree. Assuming there’s any games industry left after Erdtree makes landfall, we’ll be simmering down on Friday 21st June with offworld newspaper intern sim Times And Galaxy and cyberpunk citybuilder Dystopika.

As ever, it’s possible these are not in fact this week’s most important new PC game releases. It’s possible I am abysmal at this job, and there are a bunch of other games that deserve your attention. Go on, there’s the comments thread. PC game news aside, there will be a two minute silence in memory of Dimplexland at 2pm today. If you’re participating, please wear the official Dimplexland colours and use the hashtag #Dimplextinguished.