Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

In writing about games like A Little To The Left or current RPS Game Club pick Unpacking, I often have to point out that I am a weird little gremlin who loves puzzles and putting things in the right place in games, but not actually in real life. In real life, I write to you today from a desk covered in a weird detritus of work and life that wouldn’t quite see me on an exploitative reality TV show with the word hoarder somewhere in the title, but, you know… maybe give it 15 years.

But I bloody love tidying things in games. Getting everything in the right place. And something that makes it extra enjoyable in Unpacking is the sound design. The house itself is quiet, but everything in the game makes a little noise when you put it away or hang it up or slide it in a shelf, and it’s all stuff you recognise from home. It makes the whole experience feel domestic and familiar.

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Following the fast and psychedelic fingertip shooting of Into The Pit, developer Nullpointer Games are now slowing things down with their next project. The team shook together turn-based tactics, tower-defence elements, and a graphic novel style, and the resulting cocktail is Void Warden. See how it sort of works in the teaser below.

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Now that Diablo 4‘s new season has arrived, I thought I’d give the game another shot. So, in an evening spare of stuff to do, I booted the game up and created a druid called ANIMALS. After a few hours of pressing 1,3,2,4, in either the same pattern or different patterns, I’ve come to realise the game doesn’t make me feel anything. I bash some skeletons, I equip a staff, I exit to Windows, I couldn’t care less. Maybe, though, it’s not such a bad thing?

I know I said I’d like Diablo 4 to channel Vampire Survivors and give me an auto-attack switch, so I could just steer my character through encounters without having to think at all. I still stand by my stubbornness! But having obliterated more packs of rabid wolves and legions of demons, I’ve come to develop what I think is ARPG muscle memory.

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CD Projekt Red have announced another batch of layoffs, this time affecting “around 100” employees, or roughly 9% of the company’s total headcount. The redundancies won’t take place immediately, according to CDPR, as some employees won’t lose their jobs until early next year at the latest.

“There’s no easy way to say this, but today we are overstaffed,” said CEO Adam Kiciński in an ‘organisational update’ posted to the company’s website. “We have talented people on board who are finishing their tasks and — based on current and expected project needs — we already know we don’t have other opportunities for them in the next year,” he continued.

“To meet our own high expectations and ambitions to create the best role-playing games, we not only want to have the best people but also the right teams,” says Kiciński. “What we mean by that is having teams that are built around our projects’ needs; teams that are more agile and more effective… After reshaping our development process and incorporating Agile methodologies, we’re now focusing on refining the shape of our teams.” Those projects in question include another Witcher trilogy, a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, and an all-new IP codenamed Project Hadar. That’s in addition to the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion called Phantom Liberty.

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After a year in early access, developer Afterschool Studio have announced that Cantata is fully launching on August 15th. Cantata is a turn-based strategy game with some production chain management thrown in for good measure, alongside the massive maps and base building. Take a look at the candy-coloured Dune-esque world below.

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Arma 3‘s latest Creator DLC is out now. Called Spearhead 1944, it takes the realistic military simulator to World War 2 for a co-op campaign featuring over 90 period-accurate weapons and vehicles, as well as singleplayer and multiplayer scenarios.

The launch trailer below, and it looks great.

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Ubisoft have apparently aborted plans for a sequel to Immortals Fenyx Rising, according to a report on VGC. They cite “multiple development sources” who, speaking anonymously, say that the project was scrapped earlier this month.

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Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 are two of the finest CRPGs ever devised, with incredible stories, characters and settings, and now you can relive one of the highlights of my childhood for just £2.99. That’s a 90% savings on the two Enhanced Editions of the game, which run out of the box on modern PCs and even Steam Deck.

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You know how some games are notebook games? Well, The Banished Vault is a manual game, no two ways about it. Sure, you could theoretically make meticulous notes about all the planetary symbols and construction costs of the various buildings you’ll need to harvest and convert resources into fuel, alloys and elixirs as you hurtle through space trying to escape the terrifying Gloom based on its in-game manual. But when there’s a physical paper booklet that replicates all that for you in a much more easily accessible format, with several gorgeous illustrations of its mysterious space monastery to boot, not to mention infinitely better explanations of what everything does than I could ever hope to describe, it’s quickly become an essential part of my play experience.

I’m still working on my review for The Banished Vault (hopefully coming later this week), but as it launches on Steam today, I’d strongly recommend spending the extra £5/$5 to get one if you’re at all interested in Lunar Division’s space survival management ’em up. I don’t think I could have survived in the game without it.

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Thief-but-with-guns game Gloomwood continues its early access crawl with today’s update, adding a delightful market district to the game. You can get your hair cut, buy a new outfit or two, and generally have a nice time. There definitely won’t be any murder or dangerous reasons to skulk through the shadows. And that dog? He doesn’t bite, honest. Take a look at the bustling shopping centre below.

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