December 2022

First-person adventure Roman Sands RE:Build was announced during Nintendo’s House Of Indies holiday event, and it’s coming to Steam in summer 2023 too. Described as an “end of time adventure gacha puzzle apocalypse visual novel simulation horror trip”, Roman Sands RE:Build hails from the devs behind horror game Paratopic. It’s got a vaguely vaporwave sensibility that reminds me a smidge of Paradise Killer. Watch the trailer for Roman Sands RE:Build below, and please explain to me if you understand what’s going on.

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If 'Satisfactory but underground and with destructible terrain' sounds appealing, you might want to stop reading this and start downloading Techtonica's demo - then come back and finish reading this, so I still feel useful. It's a first-person factory-building game set in an alien cavern complex with pretty bioluminescent plants. I am excited to lose dozens or hundreds of hours to it when it launches on early access.

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People like Them's Fightin' Herds, an accessible fightin' game about controlling ponies that punch other ponies. I don't know whether it's as good as its name, but I do know it's the latest game Epic are handing out in their 15 days of Christmas freebies. Grab it now, keep it forever - but only if you click the button before the next game lands.

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Riot Games are attempting to get out of a silly sponsorship deal they made last year with now defunct crypto exchange company FTX. The deal involved FTX paying many millions of dollars to League Of Legends developers Riot, who have only received $6.25 million of the $12.5 million FTX were supposed to cough up in 2022. This is on account of FTX being a) bankrupt and b) formerly lead by Sam Bankman-Fried, who was arrested last week in The Bahamas. It is hard not to LoL.

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Duelyst 2! It's a thing! It's a thing with a free public beta you can play right now, and it's a good enough thing to be worth the risk of your boss coming over to ask why your screen is full of gorgeous battling wizards and creatures rather than spreadsheets.

Duelyst the first boasted a dead clever combination of card-battling and physical manoeuvring, a bit like Marvel's Midnight Suns but better and multiplayer. I was sad when it died. This is by a different team of developers, and it's more of a revival with a few tweaks than a true sequel. Who cares, I can play Duelyst again.

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I love a courtroom visual novel and after dealing with the wonderful nonsense of the Ace Attorney and Danganronpa series, I barely batted an eyelid at Aviary Attorney’s schtick of playing as a bird-brained lawyer (who is literally a bird). At first glance, it seems kinda gimmicky, but this short visual novel has a special flair for melodrama that can turn a boring, stuffy courtroom into a theatre of drama and spectacle (plus some lavish visuals to boot).

The setting is 1840s France, a time when Paris is on the brink of revolution against the (literal) fat cats. You play as the dapper defence attorney Jayjay Falcon who alongside his witty lackey Sparrowson take on four seemingly unrelated cases. Travelling around Paris, you collect evidence and interview witnesses then present your findings in the courtroom and bring justice to your client.

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Fortnite developer Epic Games is settling two complaints made to the US Federal Trade Commission by paying out a total of more than half a billion dollars. Wall Street Journal report that the FTC alleged Epic had violated protections intended to secure children’s privacy, and tactically drove players to make unintended purchases that amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars. The company are now settling for $520 million (£427 million).

A federal court case claimed that Epic breached the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting details about Fortnite players who were younger than 13 years old without getting parental consent or contacting their parents. That’s been settled for $275 million. The complaint also alleged Epic illegally enabled real-time voice and text chat for young players as Fortnite’s default, which the FTC said put them at risk from strangers.

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After all these years of going fast, it would appear that Sonic (T. Hedgehog) has finally arrived. He’s thrown off the shackles of individuality and joined the open-world herd with Sonic Frontiers, a game that sees the blue blur himself canter and gambol across primarily barren environments that closely resemble the default assets that ship with certain game engines. Do I seem embittered? Perish the thought. I’m happy for Sonic, honestly. He’s made it. He’s on top of the world right now, getting review scores he never could have dreamed of since the salad days of the Mega Drive. A Metacritic in the 70s! He may as well have been kissed on the nips by Jesus Christ himself.

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As fun as it is to declare something "a tradition" and blithely repeat it year after year to entertain myself, it has been quite magic to see other people anticipate and adopt the things I've declared RPS Christmas traditions. That's all you need to form tradition: people who want to experience something together. No matter how slight or daft the thing is, what really matters is that we do it together. So please, reader dear, join me for an annual play of Skeal, a wonderful (and free) festive single-joke game.

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JRPGs can be grindy affairs at the best of times, but imagine playing through one while actually swinging about Cloud Strife’s cumbersome giant blade. Custom controller maker Super Louis 64’s done just that, crafting a Buster Sword that lets him play through Final Fantasy 7 Remake in true Cloud style. When he shared a clip of his antics on Twitter, Super Louis insisted the whole game is playable using the big knife. The honorary Soldier says he’s hoping to have a full video of his time spent pretending to be Cloud up on his YouTube channel today.

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On the nineteenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree a little fox with a can-do attitude. Sadly, he doesn't speak the same language as me.

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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. Twitter is still alive, against all odds, so let's admire more indie games. This week, my eye was caught by a cute frogfishing scene, several handcrafted horrors, modular synths, and cryptid photography. Come see!

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Microsoft may be considering a lower-priced tier of their Game Pass service, with a few adjustments from the current standard options. A Spanish-language survey shared on ResetEra has allegedly shown the company asking current subscribers whether they’d be up for cheaper Game Pass for PC and console, if that reduction came with a delay for first-party games or running ads. It’s worth taking this with a heavy pinch of salt though, as there’s no confirmed source to the survey.

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Sandy hoverbike-riding climb ‘em up Sable’s being given away for free on the Epic Games Store up until 4pm GMT on December 19th. That’s today, if you’ve not checked your advent calendar yet. This one’s got my attention because I’m a sucker for a fishing minigame, something Sable added in a free update just last month. It’s also a relatively peaceful game to add to your pile ahead of the beckoning wintertide break, thanks to the complete lack of combat. John Lennon would be chuffed.

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On the eighteenth day of our Advent Calendar you find yourself curiously, suddenly alone. A fog rolled through town and suddenly everyone has disappeared. Oh, wait, that looks like a bunch of school kids over there, maybe they'll hel- OH GOD OH NO.

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I played hundreds of hours of Minecraft in the years after its original release, but hadn't returned again until recently. It turns out the standalone expansion I needed was a son. He's six years in development and today I introduced him to a private Minecraft multiplayer server for the first time. Exploring, building, and the vibes are all as wonderful as I remember.

Perfect timing: Mojang have just released a series of Minecraft "Soothing Scenes". There are five in total and each one is an hour-long video featuring a recreation of a Minecraft setting, from rainy swamp to cosy fireplace, to help you unwind.

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John Carmack has left his positiion as Chief Technology Officer at Meta, saying that the company "constantly self-sabotage" in their virtual reality efforts and that he has "never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage". Carmack made the comments in an internal memo which was leaked to Business Insider (subscription required). Carmack says he's now focusing his efforts on his artificial intelligence startup.

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Costume Quest 2 is the current freebie on the Epic Games Store, offered up as part of their 15 days of free games. You've got until 4pm GMT/8am PT tomorrow to add it to your account, after which it's yours to keep forever.

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For day 17 of the RPS Advent Calendar this year, you're feeling the need - the need for speed. There's a beautiful load of levels to leap through out there, and if you can take out all the enemies in your way then so much the better.

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While some of my pals (and colleagues!) are now off for Christmas, the gits, we're still officially here next week. Down a few people, sure, but doubtless filled with enough festivity to compensate. By Jove, I'll stuff everyone full of festivity. But first, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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Valve have announced that the Steam Winter Sale will begin next week on December 22nd. I can already see myself standing in front of my mirror, chanting "I do not need more games" before sitting back down at my desk and splurging on everything I missed from this year's RPS advent calendar.

Valve have given us a peek at what's going to be on sale, so click through to see what you should avoid buying until it starts.

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All the flap about World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight has made it easier than ever to forget there's a whole New World out there, but there is, and it's temporarily free. You can jump into the frontier of Amazon Games vaguely piratical MMO without paying a penny this weekend, where you're free to lark about until December 19th. Has the recent early game overhaul alleviated the opening grind? Perhaps!

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I can't think of a better place for turn-based fights than in the margins of medieval manuscripts. There's a wealth of weirdness to draw on, and Inkulinati seems admirably willing to dip its quill into messed-up cats and donkeys playing double-ended trumpets. We've been waiting a while for it, but we'll only have to wait a little longer, as developers Yaza Games have just announced they'll be launching on Steam Early Access on January 31st.

They've also sketched out a new demo to tide us over, and I've enjoyed my little poke at it.

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Don't you just love Christmas? The music, the food, the laughter, the screams of elves getting shoved into boxes in a cold dark space mine. It's the most magical time of the year, especially now that charming co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic has launched its annual Yuletide Elf Hunt. It's time to dress up your dwarves, grab your pickaxes, and get back to hauling rocks for an oppressive corporation. There's double XP in it for you.

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As has seemingly become a yearly tradition in my gaming calendar, I have ended up finishing 2022 in much the same way I finished 2021: reviewing yet another Final Fantasy VII game. Last year, it was the PC release of Final Fantasy VII Remake, this year it's Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII - Reunion, a remaster of the original game's PSP prequel. As such, I've been thinking a lot about Final Fantasy VII these last few weeks, and playing them so close together has ended up highlighting one key thing for me. Namely, that story chapters that break up the action by giving players some 'downtime' to 'hang' with your party pals, either by doing side or fetch quests for them MUST DIE.

Drop a meteor on them or let them go the way of Aerith and be skewered into oblivion, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, because please, Square Enix, I simply cannot with the interminable sidequest chapters any more.

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The universe that began with Horizon Zero Dawn is expanding, with devs Guerrilla Games confirming that they’re working on a new single-player games for Aloy, and a separate "Online Project" set in the same universe. Announced in a tweet today, it confirms previous rumours that Guerrilla were working on an online multiplayer Horizon game, and a recent batch of job listings for the project have given us a glimpse of what we might be able to expect once it's ready.

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Two months after leaving early access, Vampire Survivors yesterday launched its first paid expansion. Its name is Legacy Of The Moonspell, and it adds a new map along with new characters and enemies and weapons, all inspired by Japanese folkore (including a variety of yokai and oni). For a mere £1.50, it is perfect. Do you like Vampire Survivors and want more? Buddy, it's right here.

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It's not all that easy for an action platformer to stand out, even if it does a lot of things right. I'll talk a bit about how Wavetale does it, but the first one is obvious within a few minutes, because if you're anything like me you'll be ignoring the danger your family is in to slide around with your newfound powers going "wheeee!".

Very quickly, you see, you gain the ability to not just walk on water, but run up a little and you'll start power sliding freely around. Hold the jump button and you even charge up a big boosted power charge. Jump off the land and press sprint and you'll dive, briefly powering through the water before smashing out again. It is delightful.

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The NZXT H510 Elite is a rather excellent mid-size case, offering beautiful visuals courtesy of its glass-heavy design and an easy build experience thanks to the company's long-ass history of case-building. The H510 Elite also comes with a controller for its integrated RGB lighting, so you can easily plug in other NZXT gubbins for a pretty sweet setup.

Anyway, why am I bringing this up? Of course, it's because the case is discounted on Amazon US, where it's been reduced to $79.99, exactly 50% off its $159.99 MSRP. Given that the case has been selling for $145 or higher outside of Black Friday, when it dipped to $100, this is a pretty awesome deal!

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When I previewed High On Life at Gamescom earlier this year, I came away with a little skip in my step. Justin Roiland and Squanch Games might be on to a winner, I thought. The talking alien guns weren't that irritating and the gun fights seemed solid! And it appealed to my juvenile sense of humour too. Poo and wee? Yeah, you'll get a cheap chuckle from me. I understood then that it might not be for everyone, but hey, I can roll with that if the FPS bit is good.

Having now spent a few hours with the final game, I've concluded that my mind must've been chemically altered by the doner kebab I consumed the night before. You can switch off your gun's verbal diarrhea through the in-game menu, but what you'll find behind the brown curtain is a very unimaginative shooter. For a world so colourful and zaney, it's a shame the FPS side can't match it.

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Nothing beats the audio design of Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II. You know when you look at a light for too long and then close your eyes, and you see an imprint of the light against your retinas? The sound of an elevator in Dark Forces II is similarly burned into my memory, whether I like it or not. As is the excellent "EUURRYAAAARRGH!" death-cry that protagonist Kyle Katarn makes as he takes one blaster bolt too many and collapses onto the ground.

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The Crucial P3 Plus is our best cheap PCIe 4.0 SSD for gaming, so I'm happy to report that the giant 2TB model is down to a modest £128 at Amazon UK. This isn't the lowest price it's ever been - it was £119 once before - but it is still an excellent price for a high performance PCIe 4.0 SSD and well below its £182 RRP.

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Legendarily complicated (and just generally legendary) colony sim Dwarf Fortress launched on Steam a few weeks ago, bringing sprite graphics, more players and millions of dollars for developers Bay 12 games. Brothers Tarn and Zach Adams have spent the past 16 years relying on donations, so actually selling their game has now allowed to expand their team and hire someone from their community to help with the programming. They say "Putnam" will be the first non-Adam to ever see the code behind the curtain. Cue the Indiana Jones face-melting gif.

An update yesterday also added Steam trading cards, as well as giving you the option to flick between classic and premium graphics.

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I find myself alone. I am the only person left in the treehouse right now. I think it's the first time this has happened. It is interesting to consider that I could try to wipe the website, delete loads of articles, do something to burn down my job. I don't particularly want to, but the coiled potential to do it exists, because I am unsupervised. There is no other member of staff between me and all of you. The great filter is removed. Any typos are on purpose. How you doin'?

This gives me a great opportunity, because I get to have, in a sense, the final word on RPS this year. There are a lot of posts coming up (if we include the Advent Calendar posts that have already gone, we have 50-ish bits of hashtag seasonal hashtag content this year, which I think is the most I've had to schedule for a Christmas break yet), but almost everything after this point is a scheduled post, made of time travel words written days or weeks ago. I'm live and uncensored, baby. I'm going to fire up Among Trees. Let's go and be alone together. But don't worry, I take my responisbility seriously, so I'll make sure the final word is a joke.

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Serious racing games are not, as a rule, my thing. If the goal is to repeat a course 20 times to trim 0.2 seconds off a number, and not to cackle like a petty chaos gremlin as you slam someone off the track at a tight corner, I am probably not going to enjoy myself much.

Rush Rally 3 isn't all that serious, but it's still on the wrong side of the tracks for me, I thought, before accidentally playing it for 3 hours. This is an excellent bundle of rally trials, challenges, and simple circuit racing with a cheerfully mid-2000s feel. I might prefer the messy nonsense of Trail Out, but if you value actual driving skill more highly, this is well worth your time.

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Last week I spoke to Larian's founder and director Swen Vincke about the latest big update to Baldur's Gate 3, and the road to 1.0 release. But also it was December the 16th, so I saw fit to waste his time asking a bunch of fun seasonal questions that blended the love and goodwill of Baldur's Gate 3, with the companion-wrangling and clutch strategy of Christmas. D'you see what I did there?

My questions are in bold, and Vincke's answers are undeneath - and they are both amusing and instructive. I for one hope that Wyll's romcom visit home becomes a future winter DLC.

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Behind today's RPS Advent Calendar door is a game that was only just beaten into second place. Luckily, after said beating it can just pop back to life at the last Site Of Grace it visited and then dive back into the fray again.

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Can you hear that gentle rapping, tapping at your chamber door? 'Tis some visitor tapping at your chamber door - only this, and nothing more!

No it isn't. It's the Nate Files bonus podcast, funded by our supporters supporters, and we have an egg for you. Quoth the egg "Yolk!"

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December always feels like a good month for VR gaming. Perhaps it's because Christmas and VR headsets go together like mangers and Messiahs, or perhaps its because virtual reality is the only place I'm likely to see sunlight before March. In any case, if you're giving or receiving a pair of magic goggles this festive season, I'll be recommending a couple of stocking fillers to go with it at the end of this article.

First though, it's time for a more general bit of stocktaking. 2022 was a big ol' shrug of a year for VR gaming. Which is not to say it was bad, plenty of fun and interesting games launched in the last twelve months, one of which I'd probably put in my personal top ten. But from both a hardware and software perspective, nothing released this year is likely to shift the needle.

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