Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I imagine Industries Of Titan started out as an ambitious concept. A hybrid of a factory layout/logistics sim, integrated into a city builder, combined with an RTS, all wrapped up in a satirical dystopia encouraging you to be the most appalling villainous hypercapitalist possible.

All of those parts are present, and as a bonus it's incredibly gorgeous, with strong voice acting and a distinctive soundtrack that will haunt my head for weeks. Most of its parts are made to a high standard, it's tragic that its final design just doesn't work at all.

Of all things, IOT reminds me of Fragile Allegiance. You're a 'founder', sent to an already colonised and abandoned Titan to build a new city at the behest of the Council. You're a 'founder', sent to an already colonised and abandoned Titan to build a new city at the behest of the Council. First, by salvaging its ruined buildings for minerals and isotopes, then mining for surface deposits, all of which goes back into your building resources. Curiously, you never combine two resources to produce a third, you can only upgrade minerals through a tier system. Higher tier resources are more potent, meaning, for exmaple, a building site will accept 100 raw minerals or four higher tier units. It’s a bit strange, but it mostly works. Double clicking on your starting buildings summons an interior view, where you lay out machinery, little modules for workers and storage, power pylons and so on.

Read more

Honkai: Star Rail is the first turn-based RPG in the Honkai / Genshin Impact universe, and its final beta started earlier today on PC and mobile. Pre-registration has now closed, but you might be able to gain access through the game’s FAQ page. While HoYoverse haven’t announced a release date for their cosmic fantasy adventure, eagle-eyed fans have spotted a potential April date on the IOS App Store.

Read more

If you don't know that I like puzzle games by now then hello, welcome to the first post of mine that you've ever read. Recently I've been searching for jigsaw puzzle-y things to add to Jigsaw Puzzle Dreams and Glass Masquerade 2, but I also really like cute diorama things like Tiny Lands. Wouldn't it be ideal if there was a game that kind of combined both of thos th- BAH GAWD! That's Harmony's Odyssey's music!

Read more

Vampiric survival game V Rising continues its early access with a free expansion coming in May. It's meaty, overhauling a few areas of the game including magic progression, spellcasting, and lair building in preparation for the endgame. But it’s also “giving you more of what you already love” with new weapons and spells, boss battles, areas, and factions. Quite a lot to sink your teeth into, then.

Read more

Start at the beginning, right? When faced with a self-imposed task as massive and daunting as writing a retrospective on The Sims franchise, going back to the very first game was the obvious launchpad. The original The Sims — now sometimes called The Sims 1 for the sake of clarity — was released in February 2000, and received regular updates via expansion packs through to October 2003. The game was the brainchild of Will Wright, the designer behind the SimCity series, who had decided to approach the world of his popular city-building franchise from a new angle. Switching from macro- to micro-management, Wright's new spin-off project aimed to focus on the architectural design of individual houses. As time went on, his creative interests would shift again, to also take in the lives of the people inside the buildings.

Read more

Recent multiplayer games seem to shut down almost weekly, but 16 years after release, good ole’ Team Fortress 2 is still chugging along with a new “full-on update-sized update” coming this summer. Valve’s hero shooter has been in maintenance mode for a few years, only receiving seasonal updates and patches to fix exploits and fight bots. So, judging by Valve’s “bleeding-edge communication” blog post, this will be the game’s first major content update in years.

Read more

As Magic Week reaches the halfway point here at RPS, we've covered a pretty broad spectrum of wizard games over the last few days. There's your chill little potion brewers that let you coo over a bubbling cauldron all nice and cosy like; there's your darker, more supernatural witchy adventures that dig into the spookier side of the fae realm, and then you've got your lovely genre mash-ups that add spicy, magical seasoning to well-worn action tropes, like the excellent bullet-hell Metroid-like The Knight Witch I wrote about the other day. But if I thought that was pushing against my limits of gamepad dexterity, Contingent99's 2018 roguelike Wizard Of Legend is on another level entirely.

Read more

Katharine and I were lamenting earlier today that Square Enix seem inconsistent when it comes to releasing demos of their games on Steam. Forspoken's demo only came to PC months after its console release, and Harvestella's demo remains exclusive to Switch. Likewise, the Octopath Traveler 2 demo which was released on console yesterday was nowhere to be found on PC.

Uh, until today. It's out on Steam now.

Read more

Razer's Nari Essential headset is a nice wireless option, with oversized and super-comfy ear cushions, a THX spatial audio certification and a relatively sturdy design. It retailed at $100, half the price of the ultra-premium Nari Ultimate, but today it's significantly cheaper at Best Buy. You'll pay just $35 for it now, a $65 discount and a great deal for an older but still great-sound wireless headset.

Read more

Kingston's 1TB DataTraveler Max USB-C flash drive is an unusual beastie, matching NVMe-SSD-grade speeds with a slim, portable flash drive form factor. This drive is capable of reads up to 1000MB/s, putting it alongside some of the best external SSDs, and it's currently discounted at B&H Photo Video to $80 for a 1TB size - not bad!

Unfortunately this deal is only live for the next six hours, so I hope that you see this post in time!

Read more

The Etrian Odyssey series is a huge blindspot for me, and I imagine many others. They're a series of dungeon crawling JRPGs in which you pilot a party of adventures through first-person, grid-based mazes and turn-based battles. Now is your chance to fill the gap in your knowledge: the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection is headed to PC on June 1st.

Read more

The Adata XPG SX8200 Pro was one of the best value NVMe SSDs when it launched in 2019 - and indeed, we have the RPS review from erstwhile hardware editor Katharine to prove it. Nowadays, PCIe 4.0 drives are becoming more common and PCIe 5.0 is on the horizon, but the SX8200 Pro - in a newer 2TB size - is still an awesome value for the performance on offer. It's down to £117 at TechNextDay when you use code TND-10, a healthy £35 below the next-lowest price at CCL.

Read more

Intel's Arc graphics cards debuted to surprisingly warm reviews late last year, including over at Digital Foundry where I endorsed them as a "pleasant surprise" that were "already cards worth buying" thanks to better-than-expected performance in modern titles. Six months of patches and performance improvements later, and these GPUs look even better - especially as neither AMD or Nvidia has launched mainstream desktop graphics cards from their most recent generation.

Today, the cheaper of the two cards, the Arc A750, is available for £250 plus shipping at Overclockers UK, a steep £80 reduction from their £330 launch price.

Read more

Atomic Heart looks like an exceptionally shiny first-person shooter in the vein (geddit?) of Metro, which suggested that its system requirements might be the sort to bleed (geddit) your machine or your wallet dry. Not so, it turns out. The target specs have been released today and they're relatively modest at both the low and high end.

Read more

Once again, the age ratings don't lie. It was widely reported last year that Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, the 2010 Nintendo DS banger from the creator of Phoenix Wright, had been rated in Korea for release on PC.

It was confirmed last night during the surprisingly PC-relevant Nintendo Direct. A remaster will come to Steam this summer.

Read more

When Pacific Drive was first announced during one of Sony's State Of Play streams a couple of months ago, my initial thoughts were, 'Hey, that spooky first-person driving game has some cool sci-fi vibes about it that makes it look like Control on wheels,' and, 'Man, I want to find out more immediately.' Well, thanks to a recent press presentation, I have found out more about Ironwood Studio's survival roadtrip game, and it's a lot more roguelike-y than I was expecting. Here's everything I learned.

Read more

Although the demo is relatively short, I’ve really been getting into the roguelike deckbuilding of Dungeon Drafters. I like the colourful pixel art, the classic fantasy enemy archetypes, how spell cards feel super punchy when activated, and I love love love the magical, fluffy wizard rabbit.

Called The Explorer, this rabbit is not only super cute - his little brown booties are adorable, as is his helmet which has holes so his massive fluffy ears can poke through - but a bonafide badass in magic casting. This rabbit can majorly throw down.

Read more

It’s been almost 30 years since the management RTS The Settlers was first released. The series is still going strong at Ubisoft, but its original creator Volker Wertich is returning to the genre with Pioneers Of Pagonia, a similar city-building sim. The game is currently in development at indie studio Envision Entertainment and it’ll be entering early access on Steam by the end of this year.

Read more

What a week its been! Not a great one if you like zany battle royales, as it turns out. This week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we discuss the recent sunetting of Rumbleverse and Knockout City, and how long is a good run for games anyway? But in happier and more ridiculous news, we also get to talk about how massively popular Dwarf Fortress's steam release has been. Good ol' Dwarf Fortress. Plus: the Dreadwolf is leeeeeaaakiiiiing.

Nate's mini-game this week is offering us both dark bargains (I think I did pretty well out of mine), and in a Good Day To Ware Hard James explains why the graphics card market is broken, with a cowboy metaphor. This is a thing now.

Read more

A lot (most) of the magic games we're highlighting this week are in some manner lovely and nice, because witches these days tend towards the cottagecore (ily, Little Witch In The Woods!). It's nice that witches have changed in our minds to "unmarried lady who lives alone and is good with herbs and cats :]", when they used to be "unmarried lady who lives alone and is good with herbs and her cat is the devil and she has sex with the devil".

There's still room for witches with some threat to 'em, though, and I love a weird horror game, so you can imagine that when I heard about The Salt Order my interest was immediately piqued. It's a low-poly PS1-style game where an order of witches has tasked you with retrieving a grimoire from a cursed realm of endless trees. You are largely defenceless, except for the ability to draw on the ground with salt. "In many stories that I knew as a child, salt was one of the very powerful magical protective elements against evil spirits," solo dev Khamelot tells me over email. "During invocations, drawing a circle of salt could act as a basic protection. To prevent the spirits from entering one's home, you could put salt in front of the openings of the house."

Read more

We’ve all been busy here at RPS picking out our favourite demos in this spring’s Steam Next Fest. Looking at both the popular upcoming demo list and the most wishlisted list, survival crafting game Voidtrain sits comfortably in second place on both. I decided to download the demo and see what the fuss was about, and wow, is Voidtrain completely wild.

I thought Voidtrain might be relatively new, but it's actually been knocking around for a couple of years. It’s been in early access on the Epic Games Store since 2021, and after announcing a Steam release for October 2022, the game got indefinitely delayed. Voidtrain's Steam page currently has a vague release date of sometime in 2023, but the demo is a good reason enough to check it out while the team is still tightening some loose screws.

Read more

I had still thought the Life Is Strange team were called Dontnod, not Don’t Nod, so I didn’t pay too much attention when the unfamiliar logo popped up at last night’s Nintendo Direct. That was a mistake, since their newest story-focused adventure Harmony: The Fall Of Reverie looks amazing. Best of all, it’s coming to PC and consoles this June.

Read more

As a PC player, watching Nintendo Directs can be finicky business. Everything simply has a Switch logo, so how do you know what to be excited for? We hear your (very important) woes, so we’ve compiled every PC game featured in last night’s direct. There were plenty of goodies coming to PC including paranormal detectives, retro throwbacks, a new game from Don’t Nod, and more. So let’s get started.

Read more

Here it is, then, the RTX 4070 Ti – the 12GB RTX 4080 that wasn’t. "Unlaunching" this GPU, rebranding it, and releasing it for £100 / $100 less may have bruised egos at Nvidia, but at least it’s left us with an intriguing silicone prospect. Finally, there’s a high-end, DLSS 3-capable, Ada Lovelace architecture-based graphics card that doesn’t cost four figures.

Read more

Last time, you decided that mixed dual-wielding is better than VR support. Good. Very good. It's always nice when objective science produces the correct result. Well done you. This year, I ask you to decide between a cool (and sometimes practical) form of violence and a fun risk/reward element. What's better: throwing knives or active reload?

Read more

I don't mean to alarm anyone, but I think Urbo might be my Dorfromantik of 2023. It's a chill, citybuilding puzzle game from the devs behind the altogether more violent Diplomacy Is Not An Option, and it's all about building tiny little villages on top of rocky outcrops. Except when you stick three of the same building type together, they all zhuup together to create an even bigger one. And a bigger one, and a bigger one. It's very satisfying. The smooshing lights up all the same parts of my brain that Threes did when I became obsessed with it about five years ago, while the tile planning hits scratches that big Dorfromantik itch, making for an excellent Steam Next Fest demo experience.

Read more

Another month, another fresh batch of Game Pass goodies. February’s PC Game Pass additions have plenty of variety and should appeal to fans of the following subjects: American ‘football’, the Dark Ages, stabbing Japanese demons, and shooting Soviet robots. February’s Game Pass picks kick off tomorrow with the online action-RPG SD Gundam Battle Alliance, and EA’s Madden NFL 23 - which corrupted a number of players’ saves last month.

Read more

Apex Legends is going to look a little different in a week's time. Respawn have broken the mould a little bit with Apex Legends Revelry and the game's four year anniversary - instead of adding a new Legend as usual, they've spent their time elsewhere to bring a host of Legend meta and weapon meta changes, alongside the new Team Deathmatch game mode and improving player onboarding that we reported on earlier in the week.

Apex Legends Season 16 is going to break a surprising number of targeted adjustments to various different guns, Legends, and abilities. And all that on top of the entirely revamped Legend class system, which gives every Legend a brand new perk (or in some cases two!) to play with. Read on for a full list of all the major changes that are coming to Legends and weapons with Apex Legends Revelry.

Read more

Bullet hell shooters have never been one of my fortes in games. There is certainly something magical about watching masters of the genre weave effortlessly in and out of flying orbs in the likes of Gradius, R-Type and Ikaruga, but whenever I attempt to step up to the gamepad myself, my movements have always proven too flighty, too seized by panic, to make much headway with them. Enter The Knight Witch, which takes the thrill of the bullet hell shooter and wraps it up in a lovely Metroid-like-shaped package my brain can actually understand. It's a fantastic little game, and I'm only sorry we didn't cover it in more detail when it came out at the end of November last year.

Read more

As part of Steam Next Fest, I gave pixel-art, sidescrolling fantasy RPG Greedventory a go. It takes your mouse and turns it into a sword, or a shield, or an arm that's capable of swatting away an explosive potion. It may be like something you, dear reader, have played in the past, but me? Nah, never played anything quite like it! Well, that's a lie. If anything, it's the first fantasy RPG that's made use of my latent - and highly dubious - CS:GO skills and brought to mind a rhythm game called Osu! I am very impressed indeed.

Read more

Bramble: The Mountain King is an upcoming adventure that mixes a charming fairytale world with twisted monsters inspired by Nordic folklore. Expect cute garden gnomes and sleeping giants, alongside all manner of horned beasties and nasties when it releases on PC and consoles April 27th.

Read more

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have released their provisional findings on Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition, laying out their concerns with the $69 billion deal. The CMA say the buyout “could result in higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation for UK gamers.” Since these concerns are provisional, both parties will have a chance to respond before the CMA makes its final decision on April 26th. Both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard believe the deal will encourage competition in the gaming space, rather than hinder it.

Read more

Wow, is it episode three of RPS’ indie podcast Indiescovery already? How time flies! In this episode, the Indiescovery squad reccomend a handful of awesome demos from this spring’s Steam Next Fest for our lovely listeners to check out - six demos to be exact! We recorded this episode on a Friday instead of our usual Wednesdays so, yeah, major end-of-week vibes in this one. Have a listen below!

Read more

Childhood delusions of godhood will come to life with Wood & Weather, an upcoming sandbox god game about manipulating weather as you oversee a small wooden toy town occupied by Notplaymobil figures. Someone wants coffee? Fetch them a coffee. Oh it's too hot for coffee? Turn on the rain. Oh, and after all you do, they throw the empty cup on the floor? Great, thanks, lovely, pick it up and bin it for them. Check out the cute trailer below!

Read more

RPS’ favourite game of 2022 Vampire Survivors is getting even more content to suck me back in. Does this make it eligible for 2023’s Game Of The Year? Developer Poncle announced the new 1.3 Chaos Update is coming to Vampire Survivors on all systems tomorrow, February 9th. The Chaos Update brings a new challenge stage, two relics, and more features to the bullet-hell indie, but some fans are convinced the 1.3 update is actually an homage to Sonic The Hedgehog.

Read more

It doesn’t have a demo or even a release date yet, but I am loving the look of Reka. It’s a 19th-century witch sim being made by Emberstorm Entertainment, where you play as a traveling witch whose chosen mode of transportation is the legendary chicken-legged Baba Yaga house, which is the coolest thing ever.

Details on Reka are still super light, and the Steam page mentions a release year of 2024, but I’ve been following Emberstorm’s Twitter intently, looking at all the cool gifs for Reka and the house looks incredible! For one, it’s huge. It towers above the forest trees and looks like it could easily stomp unwanted visitors to death. When the young witch approaches the towering beast, it bends is legs to sit down, almost burring itself in the earth for her access to the house on top.

Read more

OpenTTD 13.0 been released, which is "one of the largest releases we've done in several years" according to the developers. If you don't know OpenTTD, it's an open source and free fan remake of Transport Tycoon which greatly expands, polishes and modernises the beloved business sim. This latest update improves the interface further, tweaks the world generation, and more.

Read more

Last week, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was delayed until April so that Respawn could polish their lightsaber until it truly glowed. Now IGN have released a new, nine minute video showing some exploration and much stabbing from an early section of the game.

Read more

If you're still intimidated by base building in Dwarf Fortress's Steam release, then there's good news. Patch 50.06, released today, has added Arena Mode into the Steam version. Arena is a sandbox mode where you can spawn any of Dwarf Fortress's various creatures, kit them out with gear, set special conditions, and then watch them battle it out. It is great.

Read more

Sonic Colours was first released on Wii in 2010, prompting Sonic fans to declare, "hooray, Sonic is good again!" and non-Sonic fans to declare, "alright, fine, I agree this one is OK, but can we now talk about something else?". Sonic Colours: Ultimate upscaled the graphics and added a new mode when it released on console in 2021, but seemed to also add new bugs in the process.

As of today, Sonic Colours: Ultimate is available via Steam after a period of Epic exclusivity.

Read more