After delaying the launch of Homeworld 3 by two months to address criticism of the spacefleet shoot-o-strategy game’s demo, developers Blackbird Interactive have now laid out what they’re changing. Improved controls, tougher ships, more useful formations, better Attack Move command, more HUD options, and more types of War Games mode objectives are among the tweaks and improvements detailed by game director Lance Mueller in a 3000-word blogblast. “This past month, everyone was heads down discussing every post we saw from Steam, social, Reddit, Discord and beyond,” he explained. They have plans.
Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft’s game-streaming platform, finally lets you actually use a keyboard and mouse to play on PC. There’s a bit of a catch for now, though, in that it’s only a beta test for now with a small selection of games supported. Still, it’s something!
I went into Open Roads pretty cold, knowing only that it was a story-driven road trip game with some element of mystery to it. The mystery is really just a backdrop, though – a device to better bring forth the themes of family and secrets. Most specifically it’s about mother-daughter relationships, as we join single mum Opal and her sixteen-year-old daughter Tess on a short (from our point of view) but bittersweet road trip when, going through Opal’s mother’s home post-funeral, they discover she may have had an affair decades before. Can you ever really know the people you love? Does it matter? If you left your daughter’s early-00s flip phone back at the motel, would you turn around and lose four hours, or hope it’s still there on the way back?
When Herbert Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” to describe Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, I’m pretty sure he didn’t envisage the rise of a species of videogame, the survival sim, which would one day itself suffer an unsustainable population explosion during the layoff-ridden years of 2023 and 2024. What does it take to survive as a survival sim, in these days when every other game seems to be a survival sim? What separates the fit from the extinct? If you’re Palworld, the answer is gleefully borrowing and travestying monster concepts from a celebrated Nintendo series. If you’re Enshrouded, it’s all about having a really neat building system. And if you’re Dune: Awakening, the next game from Conan Exiles developer Funcom, the trick may lie with sandworms.
Is there a definitive geological difference between rock and stone? Google tells me the main consensus is that stones are just smaller rocks, which sounds like a flimsy distinction to base a catchphrase on. I’m not sure when this would come up, unless maybe you were a biblical heretic trying to dunk on the people bludgeoning you to death by correcting them in some last gasp pettiness, but it still bothers me. Anyway, colony survival game First Dwarf cares not for rock, only stone, along with the wood you’ll use as the building blocks of your colonies. This is me burying the lede deeper than the mines of Moria, of course, because First Dwarf also has a tiny talking dragon companion that sits on the shoulder of the giant dwarven mech you use to swing a hammer at horrible toxic shitlizards. The dragon learnt your language by sneaking herself in a library. Do go on, game.
Fallen London and Sunless Skies developers Failbetter Games have blogged about the dark art of running a sustainable business, while sharing a tiny bit more about their next, unannounced game. Said game is apparently a change of genre from Failbetter’s previous, exceedingly narrative-driven open world titles and free-to-play RPGs. It’ll also be a little less oppressive, aiming for a feeling of “fireside menace” – that is, “an awareness of the world’s dangers, but also warmth and comfort”, which certainly feels like an appropriate mood for a time of mass layoffs and game cancellations, to say nothing of recent conspiracy-fuelled harassment campaigns.
Lego Fortnite’s latest update lets players construct their own vehicles. The Mechanical Mayhem update, out now, adds three vehicle builds, and new items which let players craft their own custom designs. It’s the second major update to the blocky survival game since its launch last year.
I find myself increasingly turned off these days by simulations that boast of endless butterfly effects. I guess my misgivings can be boiled down to “a chain of dominoes is still a chain of dominoes even if it’s 1000 metres in extent”. Without some reason to care supplied by a narrative or broader question of theming and aesthetics, it all risks being admirable of execution but also like sheer technical maximalism – systems for the sake of systems. What do I care if I can make the 567th domino fall over by kicking the first?
Still, I’m very interested to see more of City 20. In development since 2018, it’s the work of Untold Games, a studio hitherto known for VR projects, location-based “immersive experiences” and ports of games such as Journey To The Savage Planet. As a piece of mechanics, it’s a top-down sandbox survival experience with a highly reactive environment and procedural storytelling, influenced by the likes of Rimworld (and not, the developers insist, created using latter-day generative AI tools). As a story scenario, meanwhile, it’s inspired by Cold War conspiracy theories about Soviet “secret cities” given over to uranium enrichment and nuclear experiments. The titular City 20 is one such burg, though not a direct recreation. As the game begins, a nuclear accident has led to a radiation spike and a partial evacuation: you play one of the poor suckers who didn’t make the last bus out of town.
Good news for people who don’t cringe violently every time they encounter the phrase “Narrative Legos”! We’ve finally got some more details about the extremely Bioshock-adjacent Judas, courtesy of the Ian Games Network, who spent six hours playing the game and chatting to Levine at Ghost Story Games in Boston. It’s a massive interview, but very broadly, it’s an FPS game that gives you guns in your right hand and “various organic powers” in your left. It’s got a big focus on story and choosing your own path through character interaction, and it also has roguelike elements. “The ship is different every time you die and come back, the ship layout can be different,” says Levine.
Judas, it terms out, is the name of the woman you’ve likely already seen in the trailers, who is also your player character. The game takes place aboard the Mayflower, a spaceship the size of a city doing that thing from Hitchhiker’s Guide with the hairdressers, only the Earth seems to have been in actual danger this time. You start the game being resurrected, or “reprinted”. You’ll then start chatting to holographic projections of the three leaders of the ship; all of which have different goals, roles, and Bioshock-ian quirks. They’re at odds with each other, and you’ll get to decide who to work with and against, hence “Narrative Legos” and “No two playthroughs ever…” yadayada, which is a phrase that seems almost quaint in terms of comparative obnoxiousness.
