Citizen Sleeper 2 still has “around a year of development left”, likely coming in 2025

When we published our most anticipated games of 2024 list last month, eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that there was one notable absence: Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still very much looking forward to continuing my journey through the Helion System in the follow-up to 2022’s exquisite sci-fi RPG, but when developer Jump Over The Age first announced it last June, I got the sense it would take quite a bit longer than the next 12 months to come out. Now, Jump Over The Age has confirmed that, yep, “there’s around a year left of development” to go on the game, putting its release firmly into 2025 territory.

Read more

Devolver cutting 28 jobs at Showgunners studio Artificer

Devolver Digital have confirmed they’re cutting 28 people’s jobs at Artificer, the Polish studio behind Showgunners, the turn-based tactics game about a dystopian murderous gameshow. Most are gone immediately, while some will stay on until Artificer release their yet-unannounced next game. Artificer were previously owned by Good Shepherd Entertainment, a publisher Devolver bought in 2021.

Read more

Get our favourite 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for just £130

The Crucial T500 is our current recommendation for the ‘best high-end PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD for gaming‘, a title it earns through exceptional performance and a more reasonable price than competitors like the Samsung 990 Pro and WD SN850x – no mean feat!

Right now there’s a great deal on the 2TB version of the T500 at Amazon UK, where you can get this size for just £130 when you use a £10 voucher. This price also includes one month’s worth of access to all Adobe Creative Cloud apps, like Photoshop, Lightroom and Premiere Pro (worth £34).

Read more

Palworld’s skin-deep Pokémon parody is part of a bigger horror story

Dig back far enough into the history of any word and you’ll find something sinister. Take “cute”. Nowadays it means pretty, lovable or charming, albeit perhaps with an undertone of mistrust or contempt, as in the phrase “that’s a cute observation, Edwin”. But the word originally evolved from “acute”, which very broadly means sharp or intense. “Acute” was once a Middle English word for a short-lived fever – it’s related to “ague”, a word you’ve likely come across in a medieval fantasy RPG somewhere, which refers to fits of sweating and shivering. The word “cute”, then, is secretly diseased, and so, perhaps, is the experience of cuteness. There’s a psychological phenomenon called “cute aggression” which refers to the desire to physically envelop, dominate and even abuse the thing you find cute – “I just want to squeeze you till you pop”.

Read more

Watch out Prince Of Persia, there’s another platforming-packed Metroidvania coming to steal your crown

Confession time, folks. Of all the games shown off during The Game Awards last December, Tales Of Kenzera: Zau was the one I glossed over the most. Listen, it was very early in the morning at the time, and it must have come at a peak eyes-glazing-over moment for me. However, having now played the first 30 minutes of Tales Of Kenzera thanks to its just-released early Steam Next Fest demo, I have seen the error of my ways. The demo might only cover the game’s opening, but this 2.5D Metroidvania already looks to be quite the promising newcomer in this ever-crowded genre – so much so that it may even be able to go toe to toe with Ubisoft’s Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown. Yep, I went there.

Read more

Wizards deny reports that Tencent are buying D&D with Baldur’s Gate 3 studio Larian’s help

Tencent Holdings – the biggest videogame company in the world – are looking to buy Dungeons & Dragons off Hasbro, with Baldur’s Gate 3 creators Larian serving as an intermediary. Or maybe not. The above claim surfaced yesterday, while everybody was going nuts about Hideo Kojima’s latest shenanigans, and has swiftly been shot down by Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, originator of all things D&D that haven’t been created by D&D’s vast and imaginative modding, fanshipping and spin-off-making communities. Curious.

Read more

The Electronic Wireless Show S3 Episode 4: Steam Next Fest recommendations and general indie game enthusiasm

Here at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we like indie games (inasmuch as “indie” can ever really be a helpful term; as the “good” doctor Peterson would no doubt say, what do words even mean? It’s bloody complicated!) and thus are using the news that Day Of The Devs is a non-profit (what does non-profit even mean? What does profit mean? It’s bloody complicated!) as a flimsy excuse to talk about indie games. Plus: Steam Next Fest kicks off next week, and there were indie game demos a-plenty, so we talk about some favourites of those, too. Plus: we’ve been playing JRPGs! And I was wrong, it’s episode 4. Please ignore every time I say it’s episode 5. I told you my notes aren’t to be trusted.

Read more

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, my favourite dwarven mining autoshooter, descends into early access this month

Surprise, miners. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, the Vampire Survivors-like spinoff that puts a bullet heaven twist on one of the PC’s best co-op games, is launching into early access just a couple of weeks from now. It’ll be out on Steam from February 14th, incidentially gifting the possibility for all kinds of cheap Valentine’s Day slogan gags. You are my Rock and Stone? My Ommoran Heartstone belongs to you? Drill you be Mine? Hilarious. Also, there’s a trailer.

Read more

Mechanised Stardew-like Lightyear Frontier hits early access on March 19th

You know what game I’ve been secretly hankering for after playing so much Palworld recently? It’s Lightyear Frontier, the upcoming farming/crafting mech adventure game from Frame Break and Amplifier Studio, and happily, we now know when it’s finally coming out. Lightyear Frontier will be launching into early access on both Steam and Game Pass on March 19th, and you can go and play a demo of it right now, too. The demo is technically part of Steam Next Fest next week, but it’s live now for all to enjoy (just like every other Steam Next Fest demo, it seems).

Read more

RPS Game Club kicks off today with Cobalt Core

RPS Game Club is back in action for 2024 today, and our first pick of the year is the exceedingly good Cobalt Core, a spaceship roguelike deckbuilder where you’re slipping and sliding out the way of incoming missiles to get to the bottom of why you and the rest of your animal pals seem to be stuck in a pesky timeloop. I had an absolute blast with it when it came out at the end of last year, and really, this is just the perfect excuse to shove it back in front of your faces again.

Read more