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Another day, another Crimson Desert patch. The devs behind the everything but the kitchen sink RPG, Pearl Abyss, seem deadset on somehow eventually including the sink too, as while this update is a small one, it continues to add yet more features, things to discover, a pet to own, and a good bit more besides.

Cruelty Squad is quite quietly influential. It obviously isn't the first game to opt for visuals that look are debatably an affront to every sense you have and a few you don't, but its surprise level of popularity has bled into the design sensibilities of other indie devs in the years following. Games like Splatter and Dungeons of Blood and Dream certainly feel like they fit into a post-Cruelty Squad world with their ocularly maximalist approach to visuals, and now Grindset T.V. will be joining them in the ranks, an "open world speedrunning first person platformer for the freaks."

While I've never really played all that much of The Sims (does maybe four hours of My Sims Kingdom from when I was 11 count?), my partner certainly has, expositing all of the surprisingly deep lore to me from time to time. Yet nothing shocks me more than hearing both the cost of expansions and the contents therewithin. What do you mean you have to hand over legal tender for bloody seasons? I'm supposed to pretend that this simulation of life exists in a post-weather world right up to the point of handing over 40 bucks? All of this to say, Paralives continues to sound convincing for the expansion fatigued Simmers thanks to its first roadmap.

Birds, as we all know, are dinosaurs. Yet there exists a higher being above birds that answer the question "what if dinosaurs really were birds?": dragons. I can only assume the exact same logic I've laid out here was used during the design process for the board game Wyrmspan, the dragon-oriented follow-up to the bird-focused strategy card game Wingspan. And now, much like Wingspan before it, Wyrmspan too is getting its own video game adaptation.

All roads lead to, and sometimes return to, XCOM. In this case, it's more of a return, as a sequel to Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters was announced this week, replacing its demonic subtitle with an equally gloriously edgy "Deathwatch." This one's apparently a direct sequel to Daemonhunters, now putting you in charge of the Imperium's "most elite alien-hunters," once again taking the form of a turn-based tactical RPG.

Ah, it's a Saturday and the start of a heat wave. What to do? What to do? Pull out the plastic storage box and fill it with cold water and ice cubes for a nice chilling foot bath. Get some damp flannels in the freezer to become an ice pack ready to be deployed at a moment's notice. And get a nice hot cup of tea on, because tea doesn't stop for a poxy heat wave.

(Though maybe I'll get a nice buttery chardonnay in the fridge for afters)

I know I don't have the best knees. My body informed me of this during a drunken dance-off in a Leeds night club when one of them popped out of place and tore a line through the back of my knee cap. It told me again a year later when I did the same thing playing frisbee. And a third time when I slipped on some grass while walking Jeremy Peel's dog on a rainy day. Put kindly, they're shoddy.

Yet, I'm developing a whole new appreciation for their shoddiness while playing through Half-Life: Alyx, Valve's VR spin on City 17.

The latest update for Menace, the turn-based tactics game where you play as space police in a system overrun with aliens and rebels, brings good news and bad news. On the one hand, it gives us two kinds of tank, letting us finally take some heavy armour into battle, but on the other, the cost of your failure just got significantly higher. If you lose a planet to Menace's main enemy, the allied faction on the surface is wiped out.

Plus, there are three new ways to trigger a game over. So, quite a lot more bad news than good, I'm afraid.

The patch also adds wheat fields. That news is neutral.

I’ve been a super sorry spy again. THAT’S AGAINST YOUR AGREEMENT, Mr Wang shouts in text form, subsequently yanking away the bonuses afforded to me by my decision to adopt the Wang way. I didn’t think working the Wang into my thang would be this stressful, to be honest.

Bullet heaven games can already be fairly chaotic. Starting with Vampire Survivors, it's a genre that joyously fills your screen with thousands of enemies and tasks you with somehow killing them all before they reach your character in the centre. While Warhammer Survivors treads much of the same ground of Poncle's original, there is a small mechanical twist at its centre that adds a meaningful extra drip of chaos to the action.

Rather than control a single character, as you pick up weapons, you assemble a small squad, all of whom act independently of you.

Bungie have announced that they are putting together the final update for Destiny 2, bringing to an end the live service shooters 12-year run. The game itself will continue to exist for players to replay the content that already exists but nothing new will be added.

Behind the announcement, as told to Bloomberg by their sources, is the news that Bungie face "significant" layoffs as soon as the update is out the door.

If you watch the Dawn of War 4 trailer showing off the Adeptus Mechanicus faction, you might have spotted a mech that's practically dancing on the spot. The excitable little thing looks to be itching to get into the fight. It turns out, it's not channeling the spirit of a warmongering puppy, it's got to keep moving for very serious lore reasons.

"They can never stop," Dawn of War 4's creative director Jan Theysen tells me. "They're always moving and always walking because the Adeptus Mechanicus fear that if they turn off, they might not be able to turn them on again. So they just keep them moving all the time."

Back in 2024, I wrote about a group of Baldur's Gate 3 modders who were dead set on giving Wyll the same level of depth and attention Larian's RPG dotes on the likes of Shadowheart and Astarion. They dubbed their efforts the "Wyll Cinematic Universe", and kicked off by adding a new romance scene for the Blade of Frontiers to the game's third act. Now, their work looks to have culminated in a substantial revamp of Wyll's companion quest surrounding his pact with evil demon lady Mizora, giving him more agency to make his own decisions as to whether he breaks it.

Remakes are very much in vogue these days, providing developers the opportunity to return to an old favourite and enhance, expand, and correct the wrongs of the past. Some of the best, such as Mafia: Definitive Edition, redraw the edges of an old story, elevating and embellishing what was there in ways that seem so natural you can forget where the original began and the remake ends. With Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, Ubisoft are attempting the same for their much beloved open world pirate 'em up.

Case in point, swashbuckling protagonist Edward Kenway now has nipples.

Finally, a game developer who agrees with my fervently held view that new technology makes everything worse. Celebrated designer Clint Hocking – him wot worked on Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Watch Dogs Legion, and the forthcoming Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe – has publicly opined that realistic modern lighting has made life trickier for stealth game creators, because realistic lighting conditions are harder to lurk in. Now you tell me!

“I actually think one of the difficulties with modern stealth games is the sophistication in the rendering has made lighting so much more realistic,” Hocking told FRVR in an excerpt from an upcoming podcast episode. The simulation of, say, diffusion - light scattering from different surfaces – makes stealth games “so much harder to read”, he explained.

Efforts to start a blaze by huffing on the embers of BioWare's legacy continue with the announcement of Studio Reset - a new Canadian independent whose members include veterans of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Anthem. The key personalities are Kaelin Lavallée, lead narrative designer on Dragon Age: Inquisition (*smiles, nods) and Mass Effect Andromeda (*frowns), who has also served as a designer in different capacities on The Long Dark. Kris Schoneberg, meanwhile, is Anthem's former creative director and a former Mass Effect level designer. Francis Lacuna, finally, is a character artist and later, character director who has worked across Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Anthem.

Following a public hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels last month, European politicians have debated the Stop Killing Games campaign's petition to put more consumer protections around online game server shutdowns into law again today, May 21st. This latest debate took place during plenary session of the Eurpean Parliament in the French city of Strasbourg.

As is the norm, lots of different politicians took turns putting forth different views on the issue and what kind of action might be needed in response to it. A representative of the European Commission also spoke, promising that a reply to the petition that the body are currently putting together will be forthcoming "before the summer".

Today, May 21st, marks the release of ZA/UM's Zero Parades, the studio's Disco Elysium follow-up arriving following years of drama and turmoil surrounding the original game and the people who made it. So, naturally, one of numerous Disco-like games which have sprung up over the past few years has chosen that day to put out a new trailer, while also shouting about having recruited another former Disco Elysium developer.

Many fantasy games deal in the prospect of sacrificing things to gods, but few dramatise the associated exciting logistical pressures. Say you want to chuck a bunch of virgins into a volcano at regular intervals, to stop the regional Vulcan pulling a Pompei. Well, how are you going to procure an adequate supply of vestals, if you keep incinerating the very means of production?

Perhaps you can obtain some from the nearby villages, in return for some steel wire from your furnaces. Ah, but the nearby villages don't want any wire; they're desperate for fish. Fine: sell the steel wire to the villages on the coast, that they may haul in a big catch and sell it to the inlanders, so they can flog their spare virgins to you. What happens when the other villagers run out of virgins? That's their problem. As Valve like to say, we cannot be held responsible for the business decisions of third parties.

Valve have moved to dismiss a New York attorney general lawsuit accusing them of facilitating illegal gambling by way of lootboxes on Steam, after first seeking to try it in the court of public opinion. In a memo filed this week, the company offered a largely familiar defence against the New York AG lawsuit, hinging on the idea that randomised lootbox rewards can't be defined as gambling under state law, because they are bought with virtual currency (which can be used for other purposes) and have no 'real' value as cash or property.

They also position the lawsuit as an attack on free speech, while - to my eye, anyway - skirting around the claim that lootbox design and presentation can be inherently manipulative.

I got a "You must install or update .Net" before running Beltlife Colon Prospector. How quaint. When was the last time I had to install one of those incomprehensible package things? Thankfully it was as easy as before, and didn't demand that I pay rent or inform on everyone I know.

I was already intrigued for a low-frills sim about making a living in space in a most undramatic way. Where Triangle Vee blazed a trail, Beltlife scanned that trail, and spent two days polishing its scanner. It is not glamorous. I don't even love it, and I have some complaints. And yet, I enjoy it anyway. Confusing.

While in the midst of not great financial times at the moment, Ubisoft have revealed plans to have new Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Ghost Recon games out at some point between now and early 2029. Boss Yves Guillemot is touting this to investors as signifying an incoming turnaround following "one of the most ambitious transformations in the company’s history", which is corpospeak for taking a bunch of money from Tencent to rearrange some corporate chairs, delaying or cancelling a bunch of games, and laying off staff.

Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core – Ghost Ship Games’ attempt at plunging the co-op FPS spelunkery of Deep Rock Galactic into an even deeper, darker pit of roguelike tension – is out today in early access. I tried it last year, during one of the early alpha playtests, and it was okay? Ish? Already a functional multi-dwarf shooter, as you’d expect from something built upon the excellent DRG, but also close enough to the original that it resembled an ambitious side-mode more than a standalone game.

These days, though, Rogue Core appears to be doing a better job of carving out its own subterranean space. Last week, I played an updated build with lead game designer Mike Akopyan and game director Mikkel Martin Pederson, and enjoyed a much more distinct delve – even if its heightened brutality made our run one of the bloodiest Danish-English endeavours since the Viking Age.

We get you, Subnautica 2 players who're desperate to kill some fish. That's what Unknown Worlds have said in an open letter to the survival game's community following days worth of debate over the studio's decision to push folks to find non-violent ways to solve their underwater leviathan problems. The studio are sticking to that ethos, but have promised some tweaks to creature behaviour and the effectiveness of tools like flares are incoming.

Embracer Group are threatening folks with a good time. Fresh off splitting themselves into a not at all confusing selection of companies rather than just the one (something they've got form for doing) the publishers have noted that as part of forming a new IP & licensing business, they'll be "more actively" exploring licensing out well-known series like Deus Ex, Saints Row, TimeSplitters, and Thief to external partners. In theory, that could mean new games in said series made by studios that aren't directly under Embracer's thumb.

At Digital Dragons this year I somehow found myself attending a panel about games industry investment and publishing deals, featuring various senior M&A people gathered under the dread banner of "Capital Reality". It felt like visiting another planet, occupied by towering creatures of gold and green paper, who spoke an earwax-curdling vocabulary of phrases like "there's dry powder out there, but I'm seeing dealflop".

The best practice when you are stranded on a strange new world is to bond with local lifeforms in the most elementary and primordial terms. In this case, I established a point of connection with Victor Lee, director of Europe investments for Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton. It turns out he is as weary and confused and petulant about the abundance of roguelike deckbuilders as I.

If you've been hanging on tenterhooks since May 1st, when Edwin reported on the rumours that Warhorse, the developers of medieval sandbox Kingdom Come Deliverance, were working on a Lord of the Rings RPG, then, firstly, that must have been very sore, sorry about that, but, secondly, the rumours were true. You may climb down from those hooks: Warhorse have confirmed they are creating an open-world RPG set across Tolkien's Middle-earth.

Not only that, the studio announced they are also making a new Kingdom Come game at the same time. Used a phrase laced with ambiguity, they called it a 'Kingdom Come adventure', so that could mean a third game in their historical series or a rhythm game where you clop your horses hooves in time to the beat of Greensleeves. At this point, we just don't know.

Hasbro have opted to pull the publishing plug on the Dungeons and Dragons action game they and developers Giant Skull announced last June. Said plug was reportedly pulled at some point earlier this year, leaving the studio headed by former Star Wars Jedi series director Stig Asmussen hunting for a new publishing deal.

The biggest videogames are taking longer to make, according to Diablo 4 lead engine engineer Marcin Undak, and one consequence is that there are fewer junior openings at industry dreadnoughts like Blizzard and CD Projekt, because companies prefer to hire juniors right at the start of development. This isn't ideal, Undak suggested, because "the best teams" have a healthy mixture of crabby old wizards and sparky bantlings. OK, he did not call anybody either a wizard or a bantling. Maybe next time.

The day that all of you Civvers have been hoping for is here. Firaxis have been promising Civilization 7's Test of Time update for a while now, and as I write these words into existence, that very update is available for you to download, complete with the most requested feature, the ability to play as one civ for a whole campaign.