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I know that with winter on the way, you might be wanting to play some summery games to remind you of what life was like before Jack Frost started nipping at your chestnuts. Put that to the side, perhaps, just for a while, as developer 11 bit studios have revealed the release date for Frostpunk 2’s first bit of DLC, Fractured Utopias.
How do you follow on from making a game that essentially popularised a whole new genre? I can only imagine that question is one Brendan Greene, aka Player Unknown, i.e. the creator of PUBG, has asked himself a few times. The answer to that question is Prologue: Go Wayback, a game that has been in the works for a little while now, and at long last has an early access release date.
Things aren’t sounding so hot over at Grand Theft Auto 6 developer Rockstar right now. Yesterday, a report came out from Bloomberg (paywalled) that a number of employees have been allegedly fired, with the UK’s IWGB Game Workers Union claiming it was an act of union busting. Two-Two, Rockstar’s parent company, have denied this allegation.
Sure looks like Arc Raiders is off to an alright start, ‘ey? Success doesn’t mean there’s any rest for the wicked, i.e. a live service game, however. Just yesterday, only a day after launching, developer Embark Studios revealed their Arc Raiders roadmap for the rest of 2025. It’s light on details, but does offer a good outline for what you can expect at the very least.
It’s often pointless to wish a game series would come back once it’s been thrown on the great pile of dormant names. I try, and regularly fail, to stop myself yearning too forlornly for a new Midnight Club, a new Motorstorm, or a new Burnout.
Mostly because it means that when a game like Wreckreation comes along, there’s a temptation to go into it with lofty expectations inflated by a rose-tinted longing for something the game more than likely isn’t. Despite drawing plenty of elements from the anarchic arcade racer and the Criterion credentials of devs Three Fields Entertainment, Wreckreation isn’t Burnout, coming home after all these years getting takedowns in the wilderness.
Europa Universalis 5 is a forever game. Insofar as you might be able to play this grand historical strategy forever, but also because – my god – it takes forever to play. After a mere 45 hours of conniving, trading, battling, and scratching my head at menus, I have just about scraped my way through 150 years of Neapolitan history. I have yet to come across a single pizza with buffalo mozzarella on it, but there are approximately 250 years left to find one. This is the blessing and curse of a typically dense playthrough of Europa Universalis. Paradox’s trademark blend of intricate geopolitical clockwork, hands-tied confusion, and “one more year” compulsion is all here. You just need to set aside a few centuries to enjoy it.
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Brethren! Cease your prattling and pick up your GameCube controllers. It is time to start playing Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem at an unhealthy velocity, while funding lawyers to uphold the legal rights of LGBTQ+ people in the USA.
You head down to the pet shelter in Fortnite. It’s full. Woof, says one invincible banana dog, I barely see my owner because they wanted me to be a banana dog who regularly changes colour. Alas, this cannot be, so they’ve had to spend their V-Bucks on a small army of invincible banana dogs in a variety of hues. You try to cheer up this Sidekick by telling them that their owner can at least change their name and hat at any time. It provides little comfort.
Existing PC vampires of Seattle, you should now have access to the expanded wardrobe Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 devs Paradox and The Chinese Room have rolled out for Halloween. The free update’s fresh hairstyles, makeup styles, and eye colours were only on offer to folks who started fresh saves initially, something that it turns out wasn’t intentional.
Onion Games have released the English language version of Stray Children, a “bittersweet, fairytale RPG” I hadn’t heard of till Oisin wrote it up in June, and then became very excited about.
Created by Onion Games, the developers of Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, Stray Children takes place in a world of kids besieged by monstrous adults. The kids live in a stronghold, while the adults, aka Olders, roam the landscapes beyond, each “carrying the heavy load of their own inadequacies, self-doubt, and all of the grievances that grown-ups gather”.
