Capcom plan to make Dragon’s Dogma 2’s dragonsplague less frequent, and more obvious

Capcom are working on another Dragon’s Dogma 2 patch, and this one take as its target the dreaded dragonsplague, which causes the game’s AI-controlled pawns to go nuts and murder everybody, including story-critical NPCs, if you allow it to go untreated for long enough. It’ll reduce the infection frequency of dragonsplague, which is spread when pawns mingle with other pawns online, and make the symptoms more obvious. Pawns already get glowing eyes when they’re dragonsplagued – I guess they’ll be all the glowier in future.

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Grow your very own grandpa in this wonderfully unpleasant little indie horror game

I don’t remember much about my grandfathers anymore, only that they were once there and they loved me, and now they are gone. So if I were a small child with quarreling parents and I stumbled across a hidden abandoned lab housing a horrifying shapeshifting psychic lifeform, perhaps I would also try to want this maybe-a-demon to be my grandpa. That’s the premise of Growing My Grandpa!, a delightful little indie horror game about feeding, teaching, and caring for “a grandpa-like entity”. It came out in 2022 and I kept forgetting to post about it, but it’s still great so I’m telling you now, okay.

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Stardew Valley gets yet another update, adding new mine layouts and ominous-sounding “fish frenzies”

It’s starting to feel like ConcernedApe (aka Eric Barone) may in fact be a modern day Sisiphus, destined to work on Stardew Valley forever. Following on from the mega update of 1.6 a month ago, and 1.6.3 soon after that, the hardy perennial farming game has a new 1.6.4 mini update. The key addition this time is more new layouts that will appear after you reach the bottom of the mines, and more layouts for the volcano mines too. If you’ve not played Stardew Valley you might wonder why there are deep mines and volcanos, and to you I say “Pah! You should play Stardew Valley.”

1.6.4 also has a lot of bug fixes (including fixing disappearing pets, new pets being a key feature of 1.6) and some balance changes, as well as a host of fixes for modders and modded players. ConcernedApe said early on that 1.6 would be an update for modders, so it’s nice to see that being supported. You can read the full patch notes here.

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Alice0 is leaving RPS, come and celebrate her work and make lamentation

We’ve suffered some body blows recently, but perhaps none will ever be as winding as the news I now deliver to you: Alice0 is leaving RPS. She recently celebrated 10 years here, so that should tell you something about how much of an influence she’s had over the tone of the site over it’s lifespan. Truly, the site won’t be the same without her – so let’s take the opportunity to celebrate here work here.

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Fallout 76 has a hellish new area and Bethesda want you to nuke it

Timed perfectly off the back of the Fallout TV show’s success, Fallout 76 players can start testing out Skyline Valley, a new woodland area in the game’s upcoming major update. There’s a new public event to try, as well as combat readjustments that’ll be drip fed over the course of the test period. Anyone who owns the game on Steam can give these things a go, which is a bonus, too. I think I own it? I genuinely can’t remember. Anyway, yes, maybe I’ll hop in and see how things have changed since, errr, launch.

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Cities: Skylines 2 devs apologise for “rushed” DLC, offer refunds, promise conciliatory fan summit

While Cities: Skylines 2 has made progress on the performance front, not everything about the troubled citybuilder is on the up. In fact, player reception to the recently released Beach Properties DLC has proven so un-sunny that both developers Colossal Order and publishers Paradox Interactive have issued a joint statement apologising for the state it launched in.

The letter, addressed to Cities fans and signed by Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen and Paradox Interactive deputy CEO Mattias Lilja, also promises refunds for anyone who bought Beach Properties. Or, in the case of those who got it through snapping up Skylines 2’s Ultimate Edition, compensation in the form of three Creator Packs and three radio stations. The contentious DLC is also going free to anyone who’s yet to put money down.

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Boys will once again be boys in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, revealed today for 2024 release

Warhorse have revealed Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, sequel to the 2018 open world action-RPG which you will likely remember for a couple of reasons: 1) its ostensibly faithful but inevitably skewed representations of race, gender and class in medieval Bohemia, which were amplified by its creative director Daniel Vávra’s qualified endorsement of Gamergate, and 2) being a moderately entertaining, buggy and mucky chivalric fable in which you have to worry about keeping your sword sharp and eating food before it rots.

Going by the announcement video, the new game is the same game but with more cash to burn. It’s the work of 250 people, with Jan Velta returning as composer. According to Vávra, “what we are making now is what it was supposed to be in the beginning, but we were not able to do it because we didn’t have enough resources and experience.”

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Arma and DayZ makers’ free-to-play looter-shooter Vigor is coming to PC, half a decade after consoles

Despite military sim series Arma and its zombie survival spin-off DayZ having their de facto home on PC, developers Bohemia Interactive opted to snub us keyboard-and-mousers for their post-DayZ game Vigor. The free-to-play survival shooter hit early access on Xbox way back in June 2018 – almost six years ago – and subsequently made its way to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. And yet, for more than half a decade, no whisper of a PC release was heard – until now, that is.

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New Nancy Drew game Mystery Of The Seven Keys is out in May, thus making my life very slightly harder

The problem with deciding to play every single Nancy Drew mystery puzzle game for a column is that, because they have been coming out since the 90s, Her Interactive have built up enough steam that I may never catch up to the front of the plucky citizen detective train. They have today announced a release date of May 7th for Nancy Drew: Mystery Of The Seven Keys, along with the official trailer.

This time Our Nance is heading to Prague, for a sort of old-world-meets-new story about hacking, medieval myths, and a stolen necklace. Nancy is hired to find said heirloom, and interview a bunch of suspects, one of whom is creepy puppet guy up there (there are no screens of Nancy because she never actually steps out from behind the camera in these games; she may as well be a cryptid). I realise this may not be of interest to regular readers of this site, but while I may not have seven keys, I do have one to the back end of this website, so nobody can stop me.

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