The Forge Of The Chaos Dwarfs expansion is hot out of the oven, but Creative Assembly have already detailed what’s next for Total War: Warhammer 3. A fresh roadmap shares what’s coming in the next twelve months, which includes three paid expansions: Shadows Of Change (Summer 2023), Thrones Of Decay (Winter 2023), and To Be Revealed (which I’m hoping is the official title, coming Spring 2024). Each expansion will be accompanied by a free update that brings Legendary Heroes for everyone, as well as interim patches in between content drops.
Take-Two’s “indie” publishing label Private Division have announced a partnership with Game Freak, the long-standing studio behind every mainline Pokémon game, plus a few extras. Details are scarce, but the pair are working on a brand new action-adventure IP codenamed Project Bloom. We’ve been teased with a single piece of concept art that shows off a brooding character dressed in traditional Japanese clothing, contemplating something in a very dreamy forest.
Last summer’s Xbox Games Showcase stated that every featured game would release in the following twelve months, which included the much-anticipated metroidvania sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong. Developer Team Cherry have now shared that Silksong likely won’t hit that “1st half of 2023” mark as the bug-squashing adventure has “gotten quite big”.
Armor Games are a conventional PC publisher nowadays with games such as Bear And Breakfast and the upcoming Tartarus Key under their belt. But they’re perhaps best known for their history as a browser games heavyweight, having hosted hundreds of free Flash games back in the day. Armor Games are now going back to their Flash game roots to publish The Elephant Collection, a remastered decalogy featuring some of the most famous, relephant elephant games from creator and CEO John “jmtb02” Cooney.
I hereby vow for all the world to see that when Starfield launches in September, I will do my damndest to avoid having any sex at all in Bethesda’s spacefaring RPG. The North American ratings board have detailed the types of content which earned the game a Mature 17+ rating, including “suggestive material” in dialogue “after sharing a bed with characters”. Oh no. The listing includes several examples of post-coital pillow talk, and they are about sexy as you would expect from the studio whose dialogue is best known for inadvertently spawning memes about mudcrabs and knee injuries.
The beautiful watercolour vistas of Dordogne have been on my radar for a whilenow, and happily developers Un Je Ne Sais Quoi have just announced exactly when we’ll be able to smoosh our faces in its lovely, puzzle-y paint pot. It’s coming to PC and consoles on June 13th, making it the perfect palette cleanser to all the preceding not-E3 nonsense that will be taking place in the days beforehand. I recently played a short demo of Dordogne, and it really is as lovely as its gorgeous screenshots suggest. I’m looking forward to this one a lot.
Minimalist subway management sim Mini Metro and its overground follow-up Mini Motorways are getting a crossover update on July 24th to celebrate the series’ tenth birthday, developer Dinosaur Polo Club have announced. Maps from Mini Metros are headed to Mini Motorways and vice versa, along with some other additions as part of the nicely named Miniversary Update.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday (or Tuesday, following yet another three-day weekend), I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by artwork made by baking cookies (yes, actual real cookies), some Moebius-inspired citybuilding, stylish getaways, and more. Come admire these games!
It’s been a harrowing few years in our real world, and I often feel like I’m just trying to keep my own little flame of hope safe from the howling winds of indifference and despair. So Darkest Dungeon 2, a party-based dark fantasy roguelite centered on the idea of doing just that, ended up being a bit too familiar and also a bit therapeutic. Having well over a hundred hours in the first game, I was also pleasantly surprised by some of the ways this carriage-bound journey into existential dread changes up the formula… and not so much by a couple of others.
Just like its predecessor, Darkest Dungeon 2 leads with vibes and attitude. Every bit of art and atmosphere is subtly (or not-so-subtly) menacing, worn down, and melancholic, with Wayne June’s unmistakeable narration laying out the compelling story of a quest for answers that went too far. The background on how the world got this way is doled out in tiny morsels of tragic exposition after the conclusion of each run, so I always had new details to look forward to whether I won or lost. It’s very clear that reality is, as they would say in the Bay Area, “hella broken,” and that it’s somehow your fault as the nameless financier of these soul-rending expeditions into the darkness. But the nature of your crimes takes a long time to reveal itself.
During the noughties, developer ID Software adapted some of their iconic shooters into curious mobile spin-offs with Doom RPG, Doom 2 RPG, and Wolfenstein RPG. These mixed old-school Doom engine graphics with old-school dungeon-crawler design, letting you shoot monsters at a considerably slower pace. Over a decade after their initial releases, developer GEC.inc unofficially ported Doom RPG onto PCs and now the team is back with a port for the sequel.
