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Gangstalk is a cat-and-mouse game in which you play both cat and mouse. It’s a stalking game in which you are the person stalking you and also, you are the person being stalked. By you. Yes, I too am wearing an expression of puppy-eyed dismay and confusion. But it sounds interesting, sufficiently interesting that I can disregard the very loud DYSTOPIAN WORLD framing in the trailer.
If you’re fondly dreaming of an actual Steam Deck 2, not some half-and-half OLED travesty, you should also be fondly dreaming of a better class of battery. Valve designers Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat have shared a little of the company’s thinking regarding “generational leaps” in hardware, commenting that they don’t want to release a Steam Deck sequel that is “only incrementally better”, and in particular, that they don’t want to release a new Steam Deck that is drastically more powerful at the expense of battery life.
Back in the protean stink of 2013, the beast we call Factorio sprouted in lowercase early access form and began its meticulous, ravenous conquest of the emerging factory sim genre. Some say that Factorio gave that genre life, though I’d point at Dwarf Fortress as one among many notable forebears. Today, the terrain of factory simming is hotly contested by rival piles of conveyor belt spaghetti. I’m not just talking about Satisfactory or Shapez – they’re even making philosophical factory sims these days. They have cosy factory sims now.
Accordingly, the immense, smoke-rimmed cyborg eye of Factorio has turned from the exhausted soil to the relatively untapped heavens. Somewhere up there, there is unspoilt territory. Somewhere, there is land that has never known the roar of a smelter – and in Factorio’s behemothic Space Age DLC, out today, you will find it.
Vampire Survivors was our best game of 2022 and one of the best roguelikes, period. And over the years it’s received a slew of updates that make it a bit bigger and a bit better, but nothing that’s been mega substantial. That is, until today’s announcement that it’s getting an Ode To Castlevania expansion, classed by developers Poncle as the game’s biggest DLC yet. More characters, more weapons, a weapon selector, an enormous stage. I simply can’t wait to devour more packets of crisps as I play this.
RailGods Of Hysterra is one of those games that, as it were, shovels a bunch of relatively dried-up concepts into the squirming furnaces of something appealingly ghastly. On the one hand, it’s burdened by talk of “crafting”, “base-building” and “survival” – all things I have enjoyed but am currently weary of, and which together make the game sound interchangeable with half of Steam. But it’s elevated, on the other hand, by talk of living helltrains that eat crocodiles for breakfast. Without further ado, here’s a trailer.
In a climactic scene of the original Final Fantasy VII, hero and amateur snowboarder Cloud Strife stands with his fellow adventurers as they are about to face a final, possibly fatal battle. With the steely glare of a polygonal warrior on the verge of killing god, he turns to them and says: “Let’s mosey!” It’s an unintentionally comical moment – an easy-going phrase, as if they’re all going to the shops and not jumping into a big glowing pit at the end of the world.
It’s a result of the RPG’s famously rushed translation. But maybe not in the way you think. A fan translation of Final Fantasy VII has now fixed a bunch of mistakes that were present in the original, and “let’s mosey” is one of them. The fix? Have Cloud say it way more often.
Earlier this month, we learned that Star Citizen studio Cloud Imperium Games were mandating overtime for employees in the lead-up to their fan convention, Citizencon, which was held this past weekend. Additionally, this TOIL (time off in lieu) wouldn’t be made available until the release of space game Star Citizen’s accompanying single player campaign, Squadron 42.
At CitizenCon over the weekend, CIG head promiser Chris Roberts said that he’s “confident” that Sqorty-two will release next year, 2026, via Ian Games. CIG also released a video of the entire first hour and fifteen of the game, which you can watch below.
No cool industry person this week, I’m afraid, but I do have a consolation prize for you. A comment from valued RPS community member #1694 a few weeks back reminded me that I once spent a long time tracking down good SF/Fantasy/Horror short story magazines. Partly for pitching purposes, and partly because I was just really excited such things still existed.
Deadlock gives me the shakes. Valve’s not-so-secret third-person MOBA shooter is a fiercely competitive game of push and pull through monster-peppered city streets. You’ll get into hectic scrapes with a giant blob man and come out of it sweating and swearing, and possibly alive. It is tactical, deep, instinctive, and an interesting work-in-progress. It elicits adrenaline almost as much as it forces murder economics down your piehole. This is the kind of game that puts you into a blistering, exciting (and confusing) battle for survival, then displays a graph when you lose. I need to get as far away from it as possible.
Deep beneath my desk lies a secret shame: impenetrable black thickets of power leads, sprouting forth across two overlapping extension units. Such a failure of cable management pierces my conscience like the beat of Poe’s tell-tale heart, and yet I’m forever powerless – as in, I can’t be bothered – to do anything about it. Yet even I was soothed by the Steam Next Fest demo for Plug It In, a chilled-out puzzle game about clicking chunky plugs into the right outlets.
