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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.
You probably still know Fullbright as the studio behind Gone Home, a delicately experimental first-person yarn about a girl exploring her family home after travelling overseas, and learning about the turmoil in her absence. Picture that game in your mind: the quietness of the hallways versus the crash of a thunderstorm outside, the sickly-sweet 90s décor, the fairy lights and screwed-up balls of paper, the gentle amber pressure of cloistered teenage memories. Now, imagine a faint scuttling behind the skirting boards. A rattling in the pipes. Was there a toilet in Gone Home’s autumnal mansion? I can’t recall, but you should probably steer clear.
Following their remasters of Star Wars: Dark Forces and PO’ed, the sickos at Nightdive have done it again, this time with 1995 FPS Killing Time. Despite being one of the eight people in the world with a 3DO in the house, I missed this one the first time around. Let’s learn about it together. Best start with the trailer.
Genre tags are slippery, fickle things at the best of times, but I feel like each one I use to label Dunebound Tactics almost diminishes it, as I’m sacrificing something precious for the sake of powering on through the arid sands of easily comestible, digestible, poop-estible online content. Ah well, circle of life and all that. Plus, at least it’s thematic: you’ll have to make sacrifices yourself if you want to progress across its unforgiving deserts. This one’s got shades of roguelite, RPG, strategy, and turn-based tactics. Nothing too uncommon, but it’s the shades of Red Faction, Frostpunk, and Sunless Sea that have me interested.
Alan Wake developers Remedy have announced their very first multiplayer game, a three-person co-op shooter set in the world of Control and thereby, the Remedy Connected Universe. Previously codenamed Condor, it’s called FBC: Firebreak – and I am going to immediately recommend they shorten it to Firebreak, because that caps-into-colon combo is going to wind me up when I’m writing news posts at speed. While I’m throwing my weight around, let me also instantly rebut the pedants who are even now racing to leave a comment saying that, actually, Remedy did work on Smilegate’s multiplayer shooter CrossfireX. Yes, they did, but only the single player bits.
Anyway, Firebreak! Here’s the announcement trailer.
Developers Unknown Worlds and publishers Krafton have given us our first proper look at their next open world exploration sim, Subnautica 2, which will launch on PC via Xbox Game Preview in 2025. It’ll support four player co-op, alongside the returning singleplayer survive-o-buildy experience, and it’ll take place on a brand new planet. Here’s the reveal trailer.
Bohemia Interactive have announced that Arma 4, the next big instalment in their shooter simulation series, will release in 2027. The announcement came at the tail-end of Bohemia’s 25th Anniversary Concert, alongside some disturbingly gun-less footage of a coastal promontory with rippling ocean waters against a cloudy sky – it reminds me more of The Elder Scrolls 6’s announcement teaser than any tactical mili-banger. Perhaps they’re secretly making an open world walking simulator? I kid, I kid. Please put the chair down.
Ever been in a position where two people are really going at each other, hurling pointed jabs and insults back and forth, and you’re stuck in the middle? Well then, perhaps you’ll empathise with the enemies in Archons, a twin-stick Vampire Survivors-like where you control two characters at once, and attacks bounce between them automatically as they move about the arena. I gave the Steam Next Fest demo a quick whirl today, and after a couple of swift attempts (I died horribly fast), I realised this could become a bit of a danger to my free time, so I’ve put it away for now.
Praise the gods, it’s Hades 2 update day, and developers Supergiant are not mucking about. They have bolstered the nippy roguelike with a heap of shiny new things in this “Olympian Update”, including a new weapon with homing attacks, a liver-pecking boss fight, two new animal familiars, and the home region of the Gods – mount Olympus. It’s probably the biggest update they’ve made yet in terms of fresh sights. And by “fresh sights”, I mean Dionysus sporting a leopard-print thong. Yikes.
In a recent chat with the Ian Games Network, IO Interactive boss Hakan Abrak said the Hitman developer “absolutely feel(s) like 20 plus years of training for the agent fantasy, creating an agent that travels the world and globetrotting whatnot, has given us some know-how” on bringing James Bond to the greasy screen (“greasy screen” is my new attempt at coining a “the big/small screen” but for games. I foresee big success.)
Abrak is so confident, in fact, that he reckons their Bond project might end up mirroring the World Of Assassination’s trilogy format. “But what’s exciting about that project is that we actually got to do an original story,” Abrak says. “So it’s not a gamification of a movie. It’s completely beginning and becoming a story, hopefully for a big trilogy out there in the future.”
It’s a fine interview, worth a read. But I must ask: how are the queues, Abrak? How am I supposed to get excited about a new IO game if you don’t mention the queues?
