If Inscryption was a fantasy-themed roguelike dungeon crawler, it might look a lot like this

Apologies if I’m starting to sound like a broken record these days, but here I am, back with another edition of “Have you heard about this cool new roguelike deckbuilder?” I swear I’ll find a new/another niche one of these days, but listen, Pyrene is very cool indeed, and I lost a good hour to its free demo last week on Steam. On the surface, this might look like your typical fantasy dungeon crawler, but Pyrene has some neat tricks of its own, combining its own blend of resource gathering and roguelike citybuilding with Inscryption‘s number-crunching battles and a dash of Foretales‘ card-based exploration. And it has a lovely piano soundtrack to boot, too.

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This roguelike has you batter mutants with ricocheting footballs

I’ve never been a true “Football Enjoyer”. I’ll weirdly get into it at certain times, like when the World Cup is on and I get suckered into the belief that, “It’s actually coming home this time”. But maybe I could be a football enjoyer, now that there’s a roguelike out there that combines football skills with room-clearing. I’d give Footgun Underground‘s demo at least 90 minutes of your time.

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Apex Legends Season 20’s skill trees see the battle royale take a surprising MOBA turn

I’ve played Apex Legends Season 20, and it might be the fastest and fiercest that the battle royale FPS has ever been – while also being the richest in tactical opportunities and metagame theorycrafting. It’s all thanks to a drastically expanded Evo experience system, one that now not only boosts your shield capacity, but unlocks the branches of a MOBA-style skill tree that permanently buffs your character for the duration of a match. Even for a season with no new playable Legend to headline, it’s an update that feels exciting and genuinely game-changing – if a little scary at the same time.

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Naughty Dog have a Last Of Us Part 3 “concept” and it’s not the previously revealed “small story” about Tommy

Naughty Dog’s grand panjandrum (co-president) Neil Druckmann has a concept in mind for The Last Of Us: Part 3, following on from the original PlayStation 3 action-adventure’s tale of parental love and the PS4 game’s theme of “justice at any cost”. This isn’t confirmation that a third single player Last Of Us game is in development, with Druckmann reiterating comments from this time last year that Naughty Dog feel no obligation to continue the tale. Nonetheless, “it does feel like there’s probably one more chapter to this story.” Will we ever really see the last of The Last Of Us?

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Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Flushing the urinal and kiting the rat ball

Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. We’re a bit short this week because of the rolling technical disaster that is modern Twitter, but I’ve still enjoyed ogling everything from a must-have immersive sim feature and a very unpleasant nighttime drive to lovely simulated water and strange spaceship shenanigans. Check out all these attractive and interesting indie games!

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The Maw – 5th-10th February 2024

The clouds over London have settled into the shapes of loading icons. The birds are singing old Celtic ditties. There are extinct species of fern growing through the vents of my i7 12700F. All these troubling signs point to but one, dire outcome: it’s time for another week of new videogame releases, and another week of feeding videogame gossip and reportage to the Maw, our weekly news liveblog.

Here are a few games we’re aiming the ol’ scrying crystals at this week: alchemy-themed puzzle adventure CLeM (6th Feb); 1980s-styled “Tetris + flying car” puzzler Space Garbage (6th Feb); Coven-building “4X card game” WitchHand (7th Feb); spoofy sci-fascist shooter Helldivers 2 (8th Feb); alt-theological dark fantasy The Inquisitor (8th Feb). Mind you, this week it’s all about the demos. That’s right, it’s time for another Steam Next Fest – have you had a chance to play any demos so far? Participating developers have taken to stuffing them up a few days in advance to beat the rush.

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News Tower lets you manage a newspaper in 1930s New York, and there’s a demo

If you pay attention to industry layoffs, you’ll know the news media – media in general, really – is in a bad spot right now. I can’t remember the last time it wasn’t in a bad spot. Perhaps in the 1930’s, which is the setting for News Tower, a newspaper management sim in which you attempt to construct your empire in New York from 1929 onwards.

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