At some point every proud ruler must ask themselves the question: what should I do with all this stupid, tiresome civilisation I’ve built? Do I let it spin on forever, a gleaming machine of prosperity bathed in an eternal twilight, or do I, as the case may be, unleash a horde of voluptuous hellwomen to gather spirit energy for the resurrection of my tragically slain beloved? If you picked option B you should probably play My Lovely Empress, a plush empire management sim with a dastardly twist, from Indonesian team GameChanger Studio. Find a trailer below.
Facebook and Oculus Rift owners Meta are reportedly closing Ready At Dawn Studios, the outfit behind the excellent Echo VR and Lone Echo games, as part of wider reductions at the company’s Reality Labs division.
Fallout London launched late last month, but the huge, long in-development mod is so buggy Nic had to abandon his attempts to play it. Its developers have already promised hotfixes, and now say a “huge” update is also on the way.
UK arts and entertainment union Equity have unveiled a raft of “best practice guidelines” for video game developers hiring voice actors, including some suggested minimum rates that are designed to address “systemic low pay” for performers. Other measures are designed to improve voice actor working conditions, and stop companies using their voices and likeness as fuel for generative AI tools without their consent. It’s both a praiseworthy endeavour and an interesting breakdown of the voice-actor’s trade.
Former Ubisoft and Eidos-Montréal developer Stevan Anastasoff has announced Tales from the Mabinogion, a third-person narrative game based on ancient Welsh folklore that’s written primarily in the Welsh language. The game puts you in charge of a wandering monarch, who is embarked on quest to save the realm from a horrible fog. Find a trailer below. Yes, there are English subtitles.
What if the company that sold your cheese also sold your PC gaming hardware? This is not the murmuring of some poor sod on a nineteen-hour Dota 2 binge who’s started thinking that the crumbs in his keyboard resemble a viable snack, but a bold new reality, one I recently found myself staring down during a trip to Asda. The supermarket chain – third biggest in the UK by turnover and purveyors of ill-fitting clothes and surprisingly good doughnuts alike – has added light-up gaming mice, keyboards, and headsets to its mountain of own-brand wares.
Asda being what it is (Americans, if you’re unfamiliar, think Walmart with less gun violence), it’s all dirt cheap as well. £17 for a full-size keyboard. £16 for an FPS mouse. Overwhelmed with curiosity, I ended up taking home a complete starter set (keeb, different mouse, headset, and mousemat) for £45, or about a third of the price of the Logitech G515 Lightspeed TKL that I’d shortly kick off my desk. Could this be a new frontier in affordable PC hardware, bringing tech to the masses in a way no specialist retailer ever could, or should supermarkets stick to cereal and meal deals? Surely the Asda Tech (real name) 4-in-1 Gaming Kit would have the answers.
Hmmm… it could be nothing, but the technomancers at Nvidia have just updated their graphics drivers, and among the list of game profiles now listed in their control panel tool is Final Fantasy XVI. The blockbuster JRPG isn’t out on PC yet, and developers Square Enix have not given a concrete release date for it, but this does seem to be prep work for the inevitable. And with Squeenix in attendance at Gamescom, it’s possible we’ll know more soon.
Back in June, strategy bods Creative Assembly put out a chunky, chatty video discussing the next expansion for Total War: Warhammer 3. Aside from a not-so-subtle hint that the orcs, ogres, and Khorne pack would feature at least one colossal squig, it also ended with a tease at smaller bits of new content coming alongside regular patches. As of the game’s latest hotfix blog, we’ve now got a better idea when we’ll start seeing some of these “smaller bits and pieces.” Bits and pieces? In this economy? Yes, and this month in fact. “Late August” to be precise by quoting a vague statement precisely.
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only War, unless you don’t have a 64-bit PC with an Intel Core i5-8600K equivalent and at least eight gigs of RAM, in which case you’ll have to, I don’t know, live in everlasting peace, or something. I’m pretty sure not having eight gigs of RAM is heretical, but never fear, you can probably compensate by taking a leaf from the God-Emperor’s book and arrange for a host of dying psykers to pour their brain energy into your motherboard.
All of which is to say that Focus Home have released the system requirements for huge-shouldered action game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Find them proudly emblazoned across the header image above, and written out for easier copy-pasting in the blockquote, below.
As the wait lengthens for Hollow Knight: Silksong, other Soulsy creature features are scurrying to fill the breach. We had Deviator last week – now, it’s time for a bumper helping of the heebie-jeebies in the shape of Perennial Order. The title makes it sound like an eBay delivery of potted geraniums. The game festering beneath is actually a “plant horror” boss rusher with twin stick melee controls, unlockable “Instinct” abilities and one-hit deaths.
In a gift to headline writers everywhere, the developers, four-person Gardenfiend Games, are calling it “Hollow Knight meets Titan Souls”, and who am I to deny them? It’s got one of those “painterly” art styles, too, though other words come to mind, such as “rotted” and “unhallowed” and “manky”. It’s out on 6th September. Find a trailer nested below this paragraph like a venus flytrap poised to clamp around your fingers.
.png?width=1920&height=1920&fit=bounds&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
