Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

After its gorgeous Steam Next Fest demo last month, tiny little house builder Summerhouse has now arrived on Steam in full, launching just a couple of weeks ago on March 8th. I’ve been having a swell time with this over the last few days, particularly as I noodle about in the other big backdrops that weren’t available in its earlier demo.

But there’s been another Summerhouse development this week that has arguably delighted me even more. Solo developer Friedemann took to Xwitter on Monday to detail all the games that inspired him to make Summerhouse in the first place, and there are some really surprising, but fascinating call outs in there, including Stronghold Crusader and Sword & Sworcery. I love it when developers go in-depth about things they’ve seen in other games and tried to riff on in their own creations, so please, let’s make this a tradition for all new game releases, yeah?

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Last time I checked, my pawn Bronco sat at 80 in the monthly leaderboard of the pawn global rankings. Not forgetting that this is pre-release, so his place within the top 100 isn’t quite as good as it seems. This pains me. I am saddened that my sweet, sweet boy Bronco isn’t being picked up by adventurers as much as I’d like. He may not be a 1:1 recreation of a popular anime character or like, Tony Blair, but he is fantastic at shredding monsters.

Thing is, his ranking means that I’m not doing enough. Right now, I need to make his CV more appealing to prospective clientele and I need to become the agent he deserves. Dragon’s Dogma 2 may be an action RPG, but it is also about being the best agent you can possibly be.

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While nearly all of the best Amazon Spring sale deals are available to all, some Prime-exclusive offers are popping up every now and then. Take this Ugreen Docking Station, a longtime member of our best Steam Deck accessories guide: Prime members can have one for 30% in the UK and 40% in the US. Gated as they are, these savings make Ugreen’s dock less than half the price of Valve’s official Steam Deck Docking Station, despite it providing a similarly healthy supply of ports and jacks.

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Larian Studios, the makers of the enormously successful and multi-“so-many-awards-they-probably-need-ten-new-trophy-cases-to-house-them-all”-winning Baldur’s Gate 3, will not be making Baldur’s Gate 4, founder and CEO Swen Vincke has announced. Nor will they be making any DLC or expansions for Baldur’s Gate 3, for that matter – a stance I 100% respect as the studio starts to think about what’s next for them.

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Dragon’s Dogma 2 is, as a game per se, very good! It’s creative and intelligent and lets you fill other players’ worlds with recruitable humanoid versions of your pet cats. Still, a technical masterclass it is not. In my performance analysis, I touched on DD2 being particularly unplayable on the Steam Deck, suffering from sub-10fps framerates and a bunch of broken settings. Since that was based on pre-release code, I had quietly hoped that Capcom could pull something – anything – out of the bag to salvage handheld PC play in time for launch day, but now the time has come, I’ve checked again, and nope. This RPG adventure simply doesn’t work on the Steam Deck, and probably never will.

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The developers behind the wonderful tile puzzler Dorfromantik have revealed the first teaser trailer for their next game. Currently known as Project Mango, the game will be made in collaboration with the German animation and edutainment YouTube channel Kurzgesagt – In A Nutshell, releasing in 2025. Not much is known about it right now, but come and have a watch of its teaser reveal below.

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Mention Lionhead’s ’05 management sim about running a film studio and someone will crash through the wall, Kool-Aid Man style, to say they really liked it and there should be a remake or a sequel. In recent years there have been a few attempts to make a game like The Movies, with games like Moviehouse and Filmmaker Tycoon sitting pretty at ‘mostly negative’ status on Steam because they are not, in fact, like The Movies beyond the basic premise. But Blockbuster Inc. has shouldered its way into the conversation, wearing big puffy trousers, shouting through an old-timey megaphone, and openly billing itself as a “spiritual successor” to The Movies. It’s launching on June 6th this year, but you can play the prologue on Steam for free right now.

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In November last year, the Australian post-apocalyptic CRPG Broken Roads was abruptly delayed mere days before it was meant to come out. Review code had even been sent out to press. But it was clear that the game needed more time in the oven, as developers Drop Bear Bytes acknowledged they needed “additional polish time and QA manpower” to test the “thousands of permutations” available in its deeply decision-driven storyline. Happily, that polish time has now come to an end, as the devs have today announced a fresh release date of April 10th.

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Welcome to the final part of Electric Nightmares, a short series about generative AI and games. So far we’ve seen the past, the present and the problems surrounding this new buzzword as it filters its way into our games and communities. In this final part of the series, I want to try and think concretely with you about what the future might hold; to go beyond what we think is just or legal, what we might be excited by or fearful of, and instead think about the practicalities of making and playing games today and how that might be impacted by generative AI’s growing dominance.

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No James this week, but I am joined by Nate for this week’s Electronic Wireless Show podcast to discuss Ubisoft’s new NEO NPC prototype – an NPC you can have a stilted, weird conversation with using the power of AI! It’s fair to say we are quite partisan about this and do not want it, but we discuss why anyway. In counterpoint, we think World Of Warcraft’s new piratey battle royale game mode sounds pretty cool and good, actually?

Plus: I ask Nate to explain cool things that I’ve seen in Warhammer 40K: Darktide, and Nate tries to convince me to take a devil’s bargain where I have to play WOW for at least 12 hours a day, but I get a sort of increasing MDMA high while doing so.

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