The Crew Unlimited devs have prevented the Ubisoft racer’s “3rd imminent death”, this time via a “Y29K” bug

Ubisoft racer The Crew has avoided yet another shutdown after being ressurected in server-emulated form by fans earlier this year. According to the modders behind its revival project, The Crew Unlimited, a bug would have seen the game stop working once 2029 rolled around. Thankfully, they say a solution’s been found.

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This week in PC games: warriors, painters, roguelikes, sailors, shotguns, subs and metroidvanias

November is… merry! As the great grim centipede of people and property that is Videogaming continues its progress of the midnight wood, a dozen auteur designers from theatre backgrounds don coxcomb hats and sequined codpieces. They climb onto carts and stage a chariot race, beating each other with bladders decorated to look like Roger Ebert. There is laughter up and down the train. Meanwhile, the industry seers and marketing-mancers have received hopeful tidings from their friends among the owls and bats. The trees are thinning out ahead. The stars can sometimes be seen. There is wild talk that third-person cover shooters are about to come back into fashion.

That isn’t all the owls and bats have seen, however. As the path curves, we find ourselves in the courtyard of a squat and forbidding tower. Five levels of blood-flecked obsidian and pixelated braziers, each named for a day of the week, each infested by perfectly terrifying new PC games. Never mind that the edifice has clearly been slapped together using assets lifted from a webinar. Never mind that you can see fuchsia checkerboards everywhere. The tower’s frightful denizens must be defeated – or possibly even bought – if the convoy is to proceed.

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Celebrate the fictitious 35th anniversary of Ruin, a faux point-and-click adventure game that never was

Gosh, can you believe it? It’s already the 35th anniversary of Ruin! It came out before I was born, but even I’m feeling the passage of time with this one. With such a momentous occasion upon us, a special 35th anniversary edition of the legendary RPG has been released by its developer Official Electric, split across just four floppy disks… except, well, you’ve definitely already clocked that Ruin isn’t quite real. At least not in the way it’s been presented.

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Who knows if we’ll ever get another Hollow Knight, but if we do, you can expect it to be as standalone as Silksong

Let’s get something real clear here right off the bat: I couldn’t possibly tell you if Team Cherry are planning to make any more Hollow Knight games. That isn’t to say there isn’t more Hollow Knight on the way, as Silksong will be getting… something, at some point, in the future. However! Studio heads William Pellen and Ari Gibson have at least floated a hypothetical idea around how the world of Hollow Knight might get bigger.

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Varsapura adds some flashy-but-plain-looking, pyschic action to miHoYo’s Genshin Impact formula in its first gameplay trailer

I think miHoYo might just have a bit too much money. Somehow, they have yet another game on the way called Varsapura, yet another anime-looking, open-world action game, this time by way of psychic mishappenings. As many have pointed out, there’s a vague Control-like quality to it, at least in its newly shown off, lengthy gameplay demo.

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Hytale gets a cheap price point, all because its devs don’t think the game is good yet

Hytale has had a bit of a rough go of it, given how it’s been in the works for a decade, still isn’t finished, and was unceremoniously cancelled. Not to worry though, as it’s back! And it’s in the hands of its developer’s original co-founders. With the announcement that Hytale will live on, it was also noted that the game’s pricing would be revealed soon, and soon it was as it’s already been confirmed.

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Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is free to keep forever on Steam, as long as you’re quick about it

It’s been 10 years since Fatshark’s Warhammer Tide years kicked off, starting with Warhammer: End times – Vermintide, and to celebrate that anniversary the developer has been offering up various in-game events and updates in both Vermintide 2 and Darktide. Earlier this week Vermintide 2 received a free new level, a point we’ll come back to, but the big thing you should know first is that you can pick up the co-op dark fantasy game for free on Steam right now, and keep it forever.

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Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord War Sails designer on ships that mimic horse archers and dredging for inspiration in French bogs

Can a ship be a horse archer? This is one of the many maritime musings Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord‘s devs had to grapple with when putting together the flotilla of vessels which make up its naval warfare-themed War Sails expansion.

Ahead of War Sails’ release on November 26th, I chatted to a couple of its developers. Naturally, I was keen to hear about what the process of assembling the expansion’s armada. A particular challenge as each of Calradia’s historically-inspired nations has access to unique ships.

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Seasons Of Solitude is a wistful turn-based strategy game with constantly changing prehistoric maps

Seasons of Solitude is a soulful balance of survival game and turn-based strategy about an exiled prehistoric tribesman who is trying not to trash his own habitat. It’s the work of Estonian developers Ninjarithm Studio, and is based on Estonian myths.

There’s a demo on Steam, which I’ve spent barely any time with, but this seems Interesting – Interesting enough that I wanted to get a write-up in front of you before the weekend. Please disregard the rapid-fire editing of the trailer below: it works as an overview of the mechanics, but doesn’t really convey the sleepy pensiveness of the actual game.

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