A Skate Story demo has me yearning for its knee-shattering flow state

I too desire to eat the moon. In Skate Story, you are made of glass and you will burst into a thousand miniscule shards if you bail. You have signed a four-page contract with the Devil, cursing you with this fragile body yet blessing you with a fearsome skateboard with which to fulfill your quest to digest Earth’s only natural satellite. I’ve only now got hands on a demo shared earlier this year at Tribeca games festival, and I’m reverberating with pleased energy at the dreamlike atmosphere of this demonic kickflip simulator.

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Pizza Hero is Vampire Survivors with toppings as upgrades, and it’s free on Steam for a limited time

As a quick glance at my Papa John’s account will tell you, I’ve enough of an addictive personality that I’ve consciously avoided Vampire Survivors and its -likes, in the fear that the carefully balanced professionalisation of my dedicated goblin lifestyle will tip over the edge. As such, I don’t have enough experience to tell you whether the currently free Pizza Hero is an especially interesting or innovative riff on the formula. However, I am simple-minded enough to enjoy the epic bacon 1.5 humour of a sentient pizza slice with a dog for a companion upgrading itself one topping at a time. This action roguelike reeks of concentrated internet like a week old-slice nestled amidst a stack of free AOL disks. But! It’s cute and fun and free, and that’s enough for me.

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If you want to play that whopping Fallout London mod you’ll need to downgrade Fallout 4’s “next gen” version

We haven’t written nearly enough about Fallout London, a gargantuan Fallout 4 total conversion that takes place in a whole new map based on England’s capital city – the Big Smoke and/or Great Wen, whose real-life incarnation probably harbours at least one nuke at any given moment, though I haven’t asked the King about that lately. Best not speculate.

Anyway, Fallout London is a huge effort from modders Team Folon that was recently sabotaged when Bethesda treated Fallout 4 to a next gen update to capitalise on the Amazon TV show’s popularity, rendering several mods incompatible and breaking a lot of stuff. Team Folon have now fiddled with the workings and sent a Fallout London build to GOG for QA testing, which suggests that release is imminent. The catch, however, is that you will need to downgrade your copy of Fallout 4 to play the mod, because even with Team Folon’s last-minute adjustments, Fallout 4 next gen and Fallout London simply don’t get on.

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Why haven’t Sonic Team made a Sonic RPG yet, asks Sonic Team boss

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka wants to know why the hell Sonic Team haven’t made their own Sonic The Hedgehog RPG yet. He sounds positively hysterical about it, hopping mad, which you know, mate, you’ve been running the show since 2008. You’ve been working on Sonic games since 1994. I too yearn to bound through the Star Post portal and into a world where Sonic has to min-max his trainers and do companion quests for Big The Cat. The spinning ball of spines is in your court, Iizuka-san. The people of Mobius are ready. Mario has had that genre all to himself for long enough.

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Star Wars Outlaws gangs will send hit squads after you if you upset them

The open world action game Star Wars Outlaws is coming out next month and developer Massive Entertainment have already shown off some of the speeder biking and laser-trading in various trailers. But recently they’ve spoken a little more about the player’s scummy travels across the galaxy, including how big some of the explorable planets will be, and what happens when you piss off the Hutts. In short, you’re going to have a price on your head. Makes sense.

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The King Is Watching’s free demo turns city building into a brilliant balancing act of feudal surveillance

A watched pot never boils, so they say – ‘they’ presumably all being dead now after having their minds physically melted after hearing the first kettle click in readiness while stubbornly staring in the opposite direction. Yes, yes, it’s a metaphor, but we don’t have time for all that. Your kingdom is under attack by goblins, and the only way to get your useless underlings to chop the wood, till the fields, and train the guards needed to defend it is to provide constant surveillance. The King Is Watching is a minimalist resource-chain-em-up and wave defense goblin-knocker with a brilliant twist. I’m now a little bit obsessed with it, I think, and what is RPS if not a vehicle for chronicling my many fleeting obsessions?

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s companions can fall in love with each other, not just you

We already know that you’ll be able to romance all your companions in the upcoming RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Sounds a bit synthetic on the surface, right? Even fantastic games like Baldur’s Gate 3 suffered from this overly obliging approach to relationships. A game letting you tell your own tales is dandy and all, but those stories don’t mean much if the cast feel like input/output affection bots, ready to drop trou like a clumsy Levis temp once you’ve adequately filled their invisible bonkometer.

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Mistborn author Brandon Sanderson thinks you could apply Elden Ring storytelling to novels, comparing it to Dune and Watchmen

Prolific fantasy author and number one Ranni stan (“I’ll pick the ending where my character gets a waifu”) Brandon Sanderson has been thinking a lot about how to apply Elden Ring and the Souls games’ signature storytelling approach to novels. During a recent playthrough on his YouTube channel, he was asked if he thinks there’s a way to replicate Souls-like descriptions in books. “I’ve wondered that. I really have,” Sanderson replies.

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Tomoe is back in the free demo for Sekiro-like indie Bloodless

That was…slightly cheeky of me. The Tomoe you play in parry-ful action adventure Bloodless is not the same Tomoe that was conspicuously absent from undeniable influence Sekiro. They might be based on the same historical figure, but that’s simply Sek-ulation. However! You can make your mind up yourself for zero money, since Bloodless has a free demo on Steam. Trazzer below.

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