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I try to avoid describing video games in mathematical terms, but I can hardly avoid it here. Treasure Planet’s flying galleons plus Spirited Away’s bath house plus Spiritfarer’s gentle building and management mechanics equals Hotel Galactic. Watch the trailer below and tell me I’m wrong.
Caves Of Qud has been under development for over 15 years, but it’s finally reaching a 1.0 release later this year. Ahead of that happening, it’s received a final major content update which seeks to make the complex, detailed roguelike more approachable. The Spring Molting update, which is out now, makes the user interface work with both mouse and gamepad, adds Steam cloud saves, and more.
It took over a month of racing and 220 hours of playtime but a Trackmania player has finally beaten the racing game’s most horrendously difficult map. For those of you only now noticing that tens of thousands of Twitch viewers have been religiously watching video game Hot Wheels, let me elucidate. Deep Dip 2 is a fan-made tower of racetracks that was published as a challenge to the racing game’s community last month. It is 16 floors of unfathomably difficult ramps, tunnels, ledges, pipes, and beams. A simple mistake sees drivers plummeting to the bottom, like the sad cauldron man of Getting Over It. The first three players to finish would share a prize pool of over $32,000. Over the weekend, one player has now managed it, and another has since joined him. Third place is still up for grabs but, mate, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Good news, everybody! Dragon Age: The Veilguard – previously Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, strictly speaking Dragon Age 4 – is not the bantzy heist romp suggested by its debut trailer. Less Good News for returning players: going by the 45 minute segment I was shown at Summer Game Fest, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is more of a single-character action-RPG plus entourage, than a proper party-based affair in the vein of 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition. You do get a party, drawn from a retinue of seven, larger-than-life, romanceable companions encompassing a range of classes, abilities and go-faster hairdos, but control of that party has been streamlined, and there’s a God Of Warlike emphasis on booting Fade demons into pits. Hmmm.
I’ve always loved the art of the Metal Slug series of side-scrolling shooters, so I’ve been keeping a keen eye on the fetching grid strategy antics of Metal Slug Tactics ever since it was first announced. For as long as I’ve been excited, I’ve also been worried. It’s been a polarising experience, like being alternately fed delicious sandwiches and those inedible rotlogs they sell at Subway. Still, I’ve remained cautious: is all this great pixel-art just a shroud pulled over a ho-hum tactics game to rescue it from naffness? It’s with this in mind I hungrily dove into the Steam Next Fest demo, as one might hungrily dive into a bin to eat literal garbage if their only other option was Subway.
AI nowadays is big business and it’s pretty terrifying, honestly. FACEMINER captures both of these things well, as it sees you build a biometric data processing empire from scratch. And most scary of all, is you’ll relish upscaling your organisation as you mine mugshots. I mean, I went from, “Hmmm, this is dubious”, to a sicko excited by the fact I didn’t have to click much to harvest strangers’ portraits. Nic wrote about it a while back, but I’d like to draw attention to it again as it’s very good.
What a thrill! Oh, wait, actually no. It’s just a release date. We get those all the time. Still, I’m not entirely un-thrilled to learn that stealth action game Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater could be arriving as soon as the 17th of November this year, according to a hastily scrubbed X post by retailer GameStop. Thankfully, the folks at the (good, handsome) Ian Games Network grabbed the offending information square before it was deleted. Here’s said square:
It’s a well known phenomena by now that if you want to level up very quickly in Elden Ring, the best place to do so is a cliff’s edge by Mohgwyn Palace. Nearby to this now-famous site of grace camps a merry band of blood-cursed Albinaurics, as well as a stupid gross bird you can trick into killing itself over and over again. I do not give a single solitary biscuit about that leperous avian, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my new-found position of prominence on this glorious website by not moralising at you heartless rune-hoarders about the unconscionable violence you keep inflicting on my bulbous, shiny frog sons. With Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree out soon, the amount of violence the community is collectively inflicting is breaking my tiny heart.
It’s been almost a decade since Rebel Galaxy ably picked up the sci-fi trading and exploration mantle handed down by Freelancer, but it looks like a successor to the serene galaxy-venturing vibes of both is finally upon us. Star Trucker is exactly what it sounds like, transplanting the chill A-to-Z courier journeys of Euro Truck Simulator to the interplanetary, uh, roads of space. It’s out this September, and it looks wonderful.
For me, sandbox games are never better when there’s an inherent chaos about to erupt at any given second. In a literal sandbox that might be anything from a kid burying a freshly-laid turd like a mischievous cat ready to be stepped on by an unsuspecting trespasser, gathering handfuls of grit to lob in a another kids’ eyes or swallowing a bunch of sand (hopefully turd-free) in pursuit of alchemising diamonds in their stomach. There don’t seem to be turds of any kind in upcoming sandbox RPG Streets of Fortuna, but that’s about the only thing that this ambitious “megasim” appears to be missing in its sprawling go-anywhere, do-anything open world.
