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Mojang want to release smaller updates more frequently for Minecraft, instead of one major update each summer. This evening’s Minecraft Live stream detailed the Bravery And Bundles update, coming next, but also another update to follow in the next few months. A creepy update.
It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’ll add The Pale Garden, a new biome of eerie, grey trees and hanging moss that’s quiet during the day, but which at night is inhabited by a new mob, the Creaking.
I must confess, it was not till this very hour that I envisaged the possibility of an RPG party consisting exclusively of clowns. There’s a fine tradition of clown characters in RPGs – Sylvando from Dragon Quest XI, Harle from Chrono Cross, the Jester in Darkest Dungeon – but a whole party’s worth? The full big top? The maximum cabaret? Madness! Delightful madness! Here’s the trailer for Clowned King, the next game from Moonana, developer of the colourful and melodious Keylocker. I like it better than a custard pie full of razorblades. I like most things better than a custard pie full of razorblades, but this comes reasonably high up that list.
The beauty of cards is that they can be anything. You can slap together a working game with them in a couple of minutes. Take 12 blanks, doodle some faces and landscapes, and lo, you have a procedural narrative generator. Make some duplicates, invent a few rules and lo, you have systems.
Conversely, the great drawback of cards – especially in those roguelite deckbuilders people have been churning out since Slay The Spire – is that everything can be reduced to them. For example: last night, I played a round of Fungi with my partner, Fungi being a charming tabletop foraging sim in which you gather scrumptious chantarelles and boletus from the forest floor. This morning I resumed playing Breachway, out now in early access, in which you guide a starship through a series of wartorn solar systems, with battles unfolding as a turn-based exchange of cards corresponding to ship components.
As befits the “very normal gardening game” that puzzly mystery box Grunn winkingly bills itself as, the first tool I obtained was a pair of shears. The second tool I obtained was a trumpet. It doesn’t really work like a trumpet, and it does things no regular trumpet could or should do. I got a trowel next. Here’s the thing about the trowel: it’s a pretty good trowel. Nothing fancy. But recently, I keep digging up… objects. Objects most peculiar. I’ve got the weekend to sort this garden, and a cosy little shed to sleep in, so I really should just get on with it. Again, though, I must reiterate: I keep digging up… objects.
I go to clean some rubbish from the bathroom. I interact with the mirror and the game says: “You do not see anything in the mirror”. I take a note that says: I do not see anything in the mirror. I check the game again and no, I still do not see anything in the mirror. Sure it’s fine. Just a shit mirror, probably. They should get it replaced. What good is a mirror you can’t see anything in?
Two monitor-themed Should You Bother Withs in a row? Normally my desire for editorial heterogeneity wouldn’t allow it, but while ultrawide screens have been around for donkeys’ years, 2024 seems to be welcoming a genuinely new take on gaming displays: the dual-mode monitor.
Alice Bee (RPS in peace) wrote about platformer System Purge a while back, saying it starred a witch with a nice hop. So I tried out the demo for its sequel, System Purge: Hollow Point, and can confirm that the witch still has a nice hop. I’m thankful for this, because if the witch did not have a nice hop, the game would be maddening in a bad way. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still maddening. Just in a good way. The hop is good.
Valve instituted a fairytale punishment for cheaters in its unreleased laney shooter Deadlock yesterday. Cheaters will now be turned into frogs, provided the other players in the match vote for it. A Counter-Strike 2 modder proved the effect in a post on Xitter after the change was mentioned in some out-of-the-way patch notes by a Valve developer.
A new shooter set in the StarCraft universe is in the works at Blizzard, according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier’s book Play Nice, via Eurogamer. The project is headed up by Dan Hay, who worked various leading roles on Ubisoft’s Far Cry series, and also a 1999 CGI film starring Jim Belushi named “The Nuttiest Nutcracker”. The real-time strategy spinoff was also mentioned during an IGN podcast that aired yesterday.
I don’t know why we haven’t written about Mechabellum before now, but we haven’t. Let’s correct that. It’s an autobattler in which you plonk down squads of stompy robots then watch them win or lose against your opponent’s army based on the formations and upgrades you’ve chosen. After more than a year in Early Access, it’s just released version 1.0.
Do I like citybuilders such as Cities: Skylines and SimCity 4, or do I simply like roadbuilders? I spend most of my time in both those games tweaking the network of roads and junctions that form the veins of my cities, after all, and attempting to solve traffic jams via public transport and simulation-expanding mods.
Enter Junxions, a traffic engineering game which focuses entirely on the simulation and construction of roads, railways, and pedestrian walkways, right down to the coding of the traffic lights. It’s aiming for a 2025 release and you’ll find its trailer below.
