Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Abelina is a strange, platforming romp through a natural afterlife from a former League of Legends animator and the composer of Zach Cregger's Resident Evil
I have no particular thoughts on what the afterlife may look like, namely because if there is one, and I'm allowed to hang out in it, I don't wan...
Posted on 24 October 2026 | 9:52 pm
"System Shock and Deus Ex, they were RPGs. People called them RPGs": Gloomwood's publisher isn't too keen on using the term immersive sim despite it being one
You know, I think at this point in my life there is a non-zero chance I will die before anyone is able to settle comfortably on what defines an i...
Posted on 24 October 2026 | 8:29 pm
HELENA : Cloud District is a megastructure photography game laser targeted at my interests, and it's out next week
Yes, I'm doing it, I'm writing about a megastructure game for the second time this week because come on, HELENA : Cloud District just looks stunn...
Posted on 24 October 2026 | 6:58 pm
Paralives' first major update slips to next year, but when it comes you can expect some pretty meaty improvements for all of its main features
Since launch back in May of this year, life sim Paralives appears to have been trucking along nicely, with the dev team offering up fairly regula...
Posted on 24 October 2026 | 5:03 pm
I've got egg on my face because Steam's Personal Calendar feature has apparently been a test this whole time and is only now actually a fully fledged component
I'll be honest folks: I didn't know that Steam's Personal Calendar feature was still technically in testing. I've been using it here and there to...
Posted on 24 October 2026 | 3:57 pm
Mass Effect 3 ending discourse ignored the RPG's scale, ambition, and exuberance, including that of its oddly great co-op
Ah, come on, it was fine. Better than fine. We can argue for another fourteen years about whether BioWare should have redone the ending or not, bu...
Posted on 24 October 2026 | 2:00 pm
What are we all playing this weekend?
After months of umming ahhing over paint colours, covering our living room wall in little swatches of testers, we've finally got exasperated with ...
Posted on 24 October 2026 | 7:00 am
Factorio's final major update has rolled off the assembly line, adding "the things we wanted to do for 2.0 but didn't have time for"
In one of the happier endings to occur in games this week, impossibly enormous resource management sim Factorio has just released its last-ever ma...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 5:30 pm
Future? No Thanks! dev removes AI-generated voices from game and offers refunds to players who feel "betrayed"
Open world ecosatire Future? No Thanks! has been updated to remove some AI-generated voices, after lead developer Paolo "Molleindustria" Pedercini...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 5:26 pm
BioWare staff "should be given the first opportunity and the federal support" to buy the studio and keep it running, says Canadian political party leader
Hope. It's in short supply at the moment. Regardless, I hope that something a Canadian politician's proposed in a post scoring easy likeability po...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 4:30 pm
"This was not a Creative Assembly developed game": Total War boss points the finger at external partner for Shogun 2 Complete Edition disaster
Last week, Creative Assembly and Sega pulled Total War: Shogun 2's remastered Complete Edition from Steam, after an avalanche of complaints about...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 4:01 pm
Woim is the earth-guzzling, self-bisecting sokoban pick-me-up I needed after a week of games industry disasters
While ladling city-builders into the Maw's feeding trough this week, I remarked that being a worm must really suck. Then came the closure of BioW...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 3:09 pm
Arkane survival negotiations reportedly seeing "several forms of takeover" considered ahead of November deadline, as Marvel's Blade production nears end
Negotiations over the future of Dishonored and Deathloop developers Arkane Lyon are reportedly seeing "several forms of takeover" considered as a ...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 2:43 pm
Helldivers 3 "only makes sense" if it’s so unlike Helldivers 2 "that both games can exist side by side", says Arrowhead boss, discussing their new prototype game
Arrowhead Game Studios will only make a Helldivers 3 if it's lightyears apart in style from Helldivers 2, or if Helldivers 2's playercount falls ...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 12:20 pm
Half-Life 3 speculation reignited by Valve dev mentioning three sweet little rumored codenamey letters amid technical chat about video game noises
Wake up. There's Half-Life 3 chatter occurring again. This time because, about an hour into a panel about sounds in video games, a Valve composer ...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 11:27 am
"What if Larian had shut down after Divine Divinity?": Star Trek Online exec scorns publishers who close teams like BioWare in favour of "AAA veteran" start-ups and AI "magic beans"
Breaking up established game development teams in favour of "AAA veteran" start-ups and "magic bean" technologies is like "setting fire to million...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 10:51 am
Cyberpunk 2077's new dual wielding has already been modded to include shotguns and rifles, provided you're down to get "janky and wildly overpowered"
It was only ever going to be a matter of time, but I'm still surprised just how quickly Cyberpunk 2077 modders have taken pistol dual wielding mec...
Posted on 23 October 2026 | 9:30 am
A Line Held Tight is a charcoal visual novel about a miner's strike in the 32nd century and choosing your relationships wisely
We've had about roughly four decades of games as we generally know them now, and yet somehow, so often their stories feel so limited in scope. I'...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 9:50 pm
Robot smashing catharsis game Virtue and a Sledgehammer is out next week, but there's an experimental visual novella prologue you can play right now
Virtue and a Sledgehammer looks like a satisfying game. There is perhaps no more wonderfully chunky and impact frame friendly a weapon than the r...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 8:36 pm
An internal Mass Effect 5 trailer has reportedly leaked, offering you a glimpse at the sequel you'll never get to play
Yesterday, only a couple of months after EA went private after having been acquired by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, equity firm Silver ...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 5:45 pm
Dispatch celebrates its first anniversary with commentary and storyboard modes for every single episode, if you've got the deluxe edition anyway
I'm going to park my feelings of unease at the fact that it's somehow already been a year since Dispatch came out, as developer AdHoc Studio have...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 5:08 pm
Even at their most chaotic and conflicted, BioWare were the heart of the western computer RPG
Life... is strength. The gears of this world are tuned for a quick death. Doomity-doom-doom! We is all doooooo-oooomed! The Guardian says for me t...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 4:30 pm
Captivating cosmic megastructure adventure game Hypnos leaves early access next week, offering up a world I'm desperate to dig into further
I just love me a megastructure, I do. I'm not entirely sure why, to be honest. My best guess is that growing up in a major city with concrete pil...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 4:01 pm
Xbox reportedly mandate four days a week in office for staff close to Microsoft's Washington HQ, up from three day requirement brought in last year
Xbox have reportedly informed staff that, from the start of February 2027, those within commuting distance of Microsoft's Washington base will hav...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 2:53 pm
"It just seemed arbitrary, and not very smart": EA was never a responsible owner for Bioware, but the developer never seemed to learn from their mistakes
19 years after buying Bioware, Electronic Arts have closed the veteran RPG developer. But as saddening as this is, bringing an end to series such ...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 1:33 pm
Resident Evil makers Capcom reveal data breach has affected over 11 million Capcom ID accounts, warn against potential phishing emails
Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter publishers Capcom have revealed that a data breach has seen a third-party gain access to informa...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 12:00 pm
"We made a very difficult decision": Australian indie showcase Freeplay reject antisemitism claims after delisting a Jewish sponsor who was allegedly accused of being a "zionist"
The organisers of Australian independent games showcase Parallels have rejected accusations of "prejudice" and say they've received "violent threa...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 11:30 am
While EA shuts down BioWare, developers of The Sims, Skate, and Battlefield say they've also lost their jobs
Apparently the cliché "when it rains, it pours" also applies to corporate feculence. In addition to shutting down storied RPG makers BioWare, EA a...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 10:30 am
Mass Effect 5 was aiming to offer a "level of autonomy and choice" that could vault it into orbit with Larian and CD Projekt's top RPGs, former dev says post-cancellation
Following EA's decision to shut down BioWare, the game that would've been the fifth entry in the Mass Effect series is being dumped out of an airl...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 9:49 am
EA is shutting down RPG veteran Bioware "to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth"
Venerable RPG studio Bioware announced on it is shutting down after more than 30 years of making RPGs. The studio is responsible for making the or...
Posted on 22 October 2026 | 6:56 am
Cyberpunk 2077's Edgerunners 2 update adds two new quests, handgun dual wielding and the ability to pimp your mantis blades
A beefy new Cyberpunk 2077 update arrives tomorrow, October 22nd, fresh on the heels of the second series of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime which...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 4:09 pm
A puzzle game where you must avoid doing the most awkward of things: facing someone while riding an elevator
You know when you follow someone into the elevator and when they turn around to face the doors, you choose to stand still and instead meet their e...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 3:29 pm
I keep embarrassing myself in front of the nature gods in handpainted 2D roguelike Talaka, whose colourful, combative demo is out now
One of the most memorable demos I played at Gamescom Latam 2026 was that of Talaka, a watercoloured 2D action-roguelike that - like many games at ...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 2:45 pm
"I want room to make a wrong turn": Following Samson dev's bankruptcy, its founder is considering how AI might factor into new studio plans
Over the weekend, Swedish reports revealed that Samson studio Liquid Swords have gone bankrupt less than a year after releasing their debut crimeb...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 12:30 pm
Dawn of War 4 clearly loves the Warhammer 40K strategy games that came before, but it misses that they loved to reinvent themselves
I may have set my expectations for Dawn of War 4 too high, but it's a series that, to my mind, never retreads the same ground. It's therefore been...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 12:12 pm
"AI is a technofascist, anti-human and anti-art project", says creator of lefty tech satire Future? No Thanks!, before explaining why he used it anyway
Prominent capital-p Political game developer and left-wing academic Paolo "Molleindustria" Pedercini has revealed that he used generative AI tools...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 11:42 am
Further Xbox layoff rounds reportedly planned for this month, November, and January, while a Game Pass overhaul is in the works
Further rounds of layoffs as part of Xbox's ongoing efforts to eventually have fed 3200 people into the furnace are reportedly planned to take pla...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 10:34 am
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review - superlative playing power with familiar Windows handheld caveats
Welcome to my review of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, a handheld PC that went on sale four months ago. And if you think that’s bad, tell it to the 2025-...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 8:40 am
Subnautica 2's next major update adds "the scariest region we've ever done", together with frog mechs and a very welcome tweak for dashing
Bracingly moist open world survival game Subnautica 2 is embarking on the "voyage to early access 2.0" - this being developer Unknown Worlds' exci...
Posted on 21 October 2026 | 8:07 am
Reel out garbage from a flooded planet and make number go up as satisfyingly as you can in the incremental fishing game Selkie's Salvage&Co.
The wonderful thing about video games is that they can take something that is, quite frankly, terrible, and turn it into an experience where you ...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 9:52 pm
I have seen the future of sports games and it is called just volleyball
Earlier this year, I embarked on a pivotal journey, one that I'm sure upon finishing will change me for good: I started watching Haikyu!! It's my...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 8:32 pm
Dig through an infested planet with your giant drill-city and try not to die while you do it in the roguelite city-builder CitaDrill
You've heard of the drill that will pierce the heavens, so introducing: the drill that is attached to an entire city that will pierce the earth. ...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 7:15 pm
I know you probably don't have mushroom in your backlog, but fungus looter shooter Mycopunk is now out in 1.0 and looks like the opposite of a shiitake time
And lo, mushrooms! This is what I imagine an old timey tour guide might say while on a hiking trail, but we aren't on one of those, so get that w...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 5:34 pm
Steady yourself, Mortal Shell 2's Rotten Autumn update comes packed with 15 new dungeons, a photo mode, an alternative soundtrack, and a neat pumpkin helmet
How's your autumn going? Mine's fine so far, I've switched back to hot beverages, as much as every cell in my being screams to ask for ice. But I...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 4:03 pm
The demo for city-flattening fighting game Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is a roaring good time, no nostalgia required
Despite being a lover of the King of the Monsters, I was unfortunately too young to experience Pipeworks Software's Godzilla trilogy of 3D kaiju-f...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 3:30 pm
"It doesn’t have to always be triple-A": Galactic Racer and Zero Company’s success has Lucasfilms wanting more smaller-scale Star Wars games
Star Wars: Galactic Racer has been fucking everywhere recently, seemingly both due to its actual quality as a game and also due to vast swathes of...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 3:00 pm
Games with loot boxes and other "paid random items" re-rated PEGI 16 as new rules come into force, hopefully cutting down on kids gambling somewhat
I'm strongly of the opinion that loot boxes, gacha mechanics and whatever other form of gambling remains present in games is a scourge that ought ...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 2:45 pm
The latest game event to fall afoul of US visa rules is a live concert for horse girl racer Umamusume: Pretty Derby
Umamusume: Pretty Derby has turned out to be one of the most popular games in the world, partly due to being a gacha game and partly due to making...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 12:05 pm
Abiotic Factor's second year of updates confirmed to include official mod support and a DLC taking science to the tropics
Following its 1.0 release last July, Half Life-esque sci-fi survival game Abiotic Factor has been having a pretty good run of post-early access up...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 11:00 am
Penguin Colony is not messing around with its statement on the Palestinian genocide, banning sale in Israel and calling out the games industry in-game
You might remember 2021's Umurangi Generation, developed by Māori studio Origame Digital. It placed its focus on its first-person photog...
Posted on 20 October 2026 | 10:27 am