All long car journeys should start with a checklist. Tyre pressures? Check. Window washers filled? Check. Fresh oil? Check. Fruit Pastilles? Check. Taking much the same approach to the modern open-world racer, The Crew Motorfest ticks a whole lot of boxes in Ubisoft’s upcoming racer.

A day/night cycle, point to point cross-country races, custom avatars, genre-based music playlists, bumper to bumper street racing, online leaderboards, dynamic weather, shops full of clothes and parts and paints. Oh and not to forget a vast array of endlessly upgradable & customisable cars, bikes, planes, and boats for you to recklessly chuck around. This is a celebration of things that go fast, with all tastes being catered for.

Opening up jumping between various car types including F1 style open wheelers and sharp edged Lamborghinis to the sounds of Royal Blood and Nancy Sinatra, the cinematic sequence aims to give you a stylish, tantalizing taste of what’s to come. Following those first few moments, it’s impossible to ignore just how closely The Crew Motorfest follows the Forza Horizon formula, and that’s no bad thing in my books.

For those who have experience of Playground Games series, there’s a strong sense of the familiar, tinged with early 2000s nostalgia. With bright neon signage reflected in streets full of small puddles and the inclusion of nitrous oxide for an extra burst of speed, at times it feels a lot like older, classic Need for Speed titles. Throwing the backend of an Impreza sideways through tight 90 degree turns, you almost instantly feel at home. For those who have yet to experience this style of racer, get strapped in, because it’s going to be one hell of a ride.

Whether you prefer blasting down the open highway on a classic Harley Davidson, drifting tight mountain passes in a Honda NSX, or just soaking up the sights and sounds of modern Hawaii in a classic Aston Martin, there’s sure to be an option here to take your fancy. From tight city blocks to steep mountain climbs, vast muddy hillsides to open sandy beaches, this is an island imploring you to explore the vistas, even if it’s often at over 150mph.

Lush forests and volcanic rock formations fly by your windshield, offering a brief glimpse of paradise. With options for both graphical performance or fidelity, I chose to go with performance. Whilst easily steady at 60fps, there was no obvious drop in graphical quality throughout, with only one instance of texture pop-in during my time with the closed beta.

Including the now obligatory rewind feature, allowing you to rewind up to fifteen seconds before you smashed into that billboard and try the corner again, this game welcomes both seasoned racers and newcomers alike. With myriad assist and accessibility options, as is standard with Ubisoft games nowadays, you can quickly and easily adapt the difficulty to your own personal preference. There’s a full suite of options allowing more experienced racers to tweak brake bias, gearing, and much more to their liking, showing further nuance to the car feel than I would have previously expected.

The AI racing itself feels very human, with mistakes being made by the CPU opponents, often providing you with an opportunity to dive up the inside. This isn’t just cars stuck to the racing line, Scalextric style. This is a more dynamic system and will keep you glancing to the rear, fending off the GTR bearing down on your tailpipe, right up to the finish line.

Much like Riders Republic before it, there’s a lot of character injected into the Hawaii’s locales & NPCs, but with seemingly much less cringe than that game. Racers take verbal pot shots at each other, praise your driving skills and admonish you for those slightly less than gentlemanly racing lines. Between your vehicle’s AI/GPS hybrid and radio chatter from your competitors, there’s never a quiet moment. Depending on your tolerance to a continuous stream of chit-chat, your mileage may vary as to whether this is a deal breaker or not.

Alongside the voice acting, the sounds here offer all of the guttural growl, high pitched whine and squealing rubber that you could ask for. With music and engine notes being filtered out as you launch off a cliffside to drop 50m to the dirt below, bass kicking in hard as wheels regain traction, I’m reminded of SSX. Here too is an eclectic mix of artists and genres, meaning that the perfect track to tear past your opponents is never more than a button press away.

Speaking of which, The Crew Motorfest offers excellent haptic feedback support on PlayStation 5, with every slip and slide of your chosen vehicle being fed back with subtle nuance. It’s easy to underestimate how much this cements you into the world, allowing every opportunity to correct your overzealous acceleration out of a corner.

After my few hours with The Crew Motorfest, I’ve gone from mild intrigue to eagerly awaiting release day. The Crew Motorfest promises hours of frantic fun, preferably with friends, that I can’t wait to get to grips with. Watch your back Forza. I hear trouble coming.

The Crew Motorfest is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X on September 11th, 2023.

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Oxenfree 2 is out now, and Chris Hyde and Mick have been playing a lot of it to talk about it on this week’s podcast. They’ve both actually been through it more than once, so you’d have to assume they like it, right?

But there’s more, as the gang have also been playing Remnant 2 a lot as well, since Mick reviewed it, and so that’s on topic this week. Not enough big games for you? Well Mick has also played Jagged Alliance 3, so we can chat about that as well.

You can contact us to get your listener questions on the podcast via our Discord, but if you upgrade to become a Patreon member (for £1/$1) you’ll gain access to loads of other channels and exclusive an exclusive bonus podcast. You can also send us questions via @GodisaGeek on Twitter, or even email podcasts@godisageek.com if you fancy doing things old school.

Download the audio MP3, here.

Did you enjoy our gaming podcast this week? Are you looking forward to it with baited breath every week? Did you know we’re one of the longest running gaming podcasts out there? You can support us buy clicking the box below. Email us! Subscribe and never miss an episode! Also make sure you find and follow us on Spotify.

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Thanks for listening as always, and come say hi in the live chat next time perhaps? We record the podcast live on Thursdays, usually at  about 5-6pm UK time, so join us there on Twitch or YouTube, if you can! Why not? It’s free!

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As one of the biggest games of 2023, all eyes are on EA Sports to find out how FC 24 Ultimate Team shakes things up for the most talked-about mode in the title. Starting out as a paid addon many years back, FC 24 Ultimate Team is a chance for the developer to make big changes, as you don’t get the chance to make a brand new game in a sports series very often.

We recently had a chance to attend a 90-minute-long producer session, where each of EA Sports FC 24’s producers had a chance to come out and speak about their mode, and of course, Ultimate Team was front and centre, with Garreth Reeder (Senior Producer) and Jean Teather (Producer) kicking things off talking about the brand new feature: Evolutions.

FC 24 Ultimate Team: Evolutions

The idea behind Evolutions is that you can create an ultimate team player card that nobody else has. Reeder explained it’s “a new feature that lets you upgrade player ratings, skills, positions, and the items themselves”, and that yes, these would be permanent upgrades.

EA isn’t ready to show us any ratings for FC 24 Ultimate Team just yet, so used last year’s FIFA 23 ratings for examples.

Using Youssoufa Moukoko from Dortmund as an example, completing challenges they were able to get him from a 69-rated silver card, to an 85-rated gold. Once you start the process, a player is marked as an “in progress player” and the game will track his actions and progress, as you complete challenges. You might hit tier one first, which takes him from 69 overall, up to 77. Even after you hit 85 as a max, that might not be the end. A new evolution might fit the player and can keep growing him, which allows you to have a player you take through your whole season.

Play Style and Play Style+

As per the main game, Play Style and Play Style+ are present in Ultimate Team. Tying into the evolutions mechanic, Teather explained that “Special and campaign items can be upgraded, too”. As an example, FIFA 23 Jude Bellingham Team of the Week got a Play Style+ upgrade and better stats. You can even upgrade the cosmetics of your Ultimate Team cards, and EA Sports has signed a deal with Nike to make custom animations for FC 24.

PlayStyles+ are visible on the cards to the left side of the card. There are going to be some seriously impressive cards fully upgraded. TOTW cards might have added PS+ attributes because of real-world stuff. The producers explained that if someone like Erling Haaland scored an amazing-headed goal in the Premier League, he could end up with a TOTW card that had the Power Header Play Style Plus attribute.

Position Changes

You can finally change players with ease, adding better stats and Play Style additions along the way. Instead of relying on cards from packs or the market to change someone from, let’s say, a CDM to a CM, you can change them wholesale. We’re talking players like Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk moving from centre-back into midfield. We even saw goalkeepers as strikers.

FC 24 Ultimate Team: Women’s football

This new game has given EA Sports the chance to add female players into Ultimate Team, meaning you can mix and match squads, or even have an all-female Ultimate Team squad. This brings in new chemistry options, so Chelsea players like Sam Kerr will have good chemistry with players from the Chelsea men’s team.

There are six new women’s football competitions represented: Women’s Super League, champions cup, Liga F, D1 Arkema, Frauen-Bundesliga, and the NWSL. The player stats are linked to the competition they play in the real world, not against the numbers for the male players.

Icon chemistry, finally fixed

Lastly of major note, EA Sports FC 24 Ultimate Team will have fixes that make the icons easier to use. Now they will give chemistry for every league represented in the squad. So this means that you don’t have to worry about the position modifier step, you can just move players around and they’l;l gain chemistry for their alternate and primary positions.

• Read our FC 24 hands-on feature
• Find out all the Career Mode changes
• What’s new in Pro Clubs and Volta?

EA Sports FC 24 launches on all formats on September 29th, 2023.

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As one of the biggest games of 2023, all eyes are on EA Sports to find out how FC 24 Career Mode shakes things up for the much-loved, but often missed-out mode in the series. Career Mode is often the place many of us will spend hundreds of hours, but sometimes it’s a mode that gets forgotten or left behind a bit.

We recently had a chance to attend a 90-minute-long producer session, where each of EA Sports FC 24’s producers had a chance to come out and speak about their mode, and FC 24 career mode had a big part of that, with Alex Constantinescu (Principal Game Designer) and Pete O’Donnell (Game Design Director) speaking about not one, but two modes, as Player and Manager career are split up this year.

Manager Career: tactical vision

EA says this year the focus is on a “total management system”, offering more control, and a chance to implant your tactical vision onto a team. There are seven tactical visions to choose from, including the likes of Tika Taka, Gegenpressing, Park the Bus, and so on.

This plays into some of the other new features for FC 24 such as Play Styles. For example, you can now focus on individual fixtures in terms of preparation. You’ll get pre-match reports, and therefore you and your backroom staff can prepare a training plan. This means you can select drills that exploit the weaknesses of your upcoming opponent, and will allow you to gain temporary Play Style bonuses for players who otherwise wouldn’t have them. If you’re up against a team that plays “Park the Bus” for instance, you can train with the “Drill Maze” and that will give lesser talented players temporary access to the Technical Dribbler Play Style.

FC 24 career mode: coaches and backroom staff

As well as hiring scouts, now you have to hire backroom staff in the form of coaches. The idea is that you’ve set your stall out as a manager who likes Tika Taka, you’ll hire coaches that also help in that area, making you upgrade your players and get the tactics across more quickly.

EA’s team explained that the idea is to combine your tactical vision with your coaching staff to get the best results.

Tactical view

Tactical view is a new camera angle for spectating matches. You can focus on a single player, or you can orbit the ball. Crucially you can make changes as the match goes on, and honestly, some of it reminded me of the old FIFA Manager games, and more recently, of course, the Football Manager series.

FC 24 career mode: player career

Not to be outdone, Player Career now includes player agents. You will be offered guidance and objectives that will help you try to make your career path trajectory. Basically, on-the-pitch objectives that, should you achieve them, can make your dream move a reality.

Of course, you can also incorporate the Play Style system into your pro, and the player cam will have a larger focus on you as a player. That’s not all, however, as you can now win the Ballon D’or award in-game, with a cut scene playing out and everything. There are other awards you can win, but EA hasn’t revealed them yet.

• Read our FC 24 hands-on preview feature
• Find out what changes have been made to Ultimate Team
• What’s new in Pro Clubs and Volta?

EA Sports FC 24 launches on all formats on September 29th, 2023.

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It’s tempting to say the devil is in the details of EA Sports FC 24. After spending a weekend playing a pre-beta build of the game, there are reasons to be impressed with what EA is attempting with it’s brand new, not-FIFA title, while there are also elements that will undoubtedly feel familiar to people who have ploughed in hundreds and hundreds of hours of the past year, let alone the past few years.

The truth of the matter is, that a lot of what EA is doing to make EA Sports FC 24 stand out this year isn’t on offer to actually play yet. While we have a feature that details all the changes that make it a different prospect, I want to talk about how the game feels on the pitch, at least in the current state, which is admittedly subject to change, and EA says it’ll be listening to feedback to potentially make those changes.

That said, the presentation is another level up for FC 24. New menus and UI is one thing, but EA is attempting to push things a little further than even the broadcasters do right now, and as such has implemented some new unique stat overlays that’ll appear on the pitch, such as “Most Fatigued Players”, giving you an idea of either how much you’re over-using the sprint button, or perhaps just over-doing the wide play, which could even give you an idea why you can’t break down an opposition team’s defense.

Lighting is better, there’s a focus on showing what’s happening off the pitch a little more, and all manner of smaller touches that make it feel both more authentic, and less immersion-breaking than before. New features and buzzwords such as “GPU Cloth” (a fancy way of saying that shirts and kits look and react more realistically) and “EA Sports Sapien Technology” (muscles have been mapped to understand and replicate how the flex and move) are all present, as is the “GTAO” or “Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion” (better lighting and shadows), and all this adds up to make this simple statement true: FC 24 looks great, and better than ever before, with more realistic looking players, crowds, and stadiums.

But without question, the most significant change from FIFA 23 to EA Sports FC 24 is the introduction of “Play Style” and “Play Style Plus”. Have you ever played a match in any FIFA and you’ve gone to tackle an opposition player, won it cleanly, and the ball has somehow remained in their possession? That’s a rhetorical question, because of course you have. Ping-pong tackling has been a problem in football games for as long as I can remember, but the Play Style that the likes of Nathan Ake for Manchester City has now, means he has extra animations and will keep the ball close to him when making that tackle, and thus eliminating the frustration of making a great tackle, but somehow still not winning the ball. While I’d question slightly the choice of Ake in this pre-beta to show off that Play Style Plus, the execution is superb, and something I’ve been waiting to see addressed for the longest time.

There are three tiers to Play Style in EA Sports FC 24. Some players will be more generic, and have no Play Style. The next tier is for more well-known players who have been identified using OPTA (the stats people, no less) to have those Play Styles, while the top-tier professionals have the plus moniker. In practice, this means someone like Bernado Silva who has the Play Style Plus dribbling bonus will be just that bit better on the ball than someone without the plus, who will in turn be better than someone without it.

This all amounts to additional animations that only the right players will have. Speed dribbler, block, power shot, power header, dead ball, tricksters, and more, these boosts are going to make certain players feel very important in the new game, and should combine with things like the improved collision system which should mean that when a physical battle happens, there are fairer outcomes based on who is actually involved in the battle. For example, Rhodri for City isn’t that fast, but he’s economical with the ball and wins his duels, and that’s exactly how he felt in the matches I played. Mbappe is going to outpace him, but that’s no longer the be-all and end of the gameplay, and while my sample pool was limited to just four teams, there’s a lot of early promise here that suggest FC 24 might not just end up a pace-fest like FIFA 23 did.

There are new features worth noting, such as the precision passing that benefits the players who can utilise it. Holding left trigger, right bumper, and triangle will allow you to perform a swerved precision pass, and a line will appear on the screen showing you in advance where it’s going to go. There’s a new effort dribble touch that will make your player stretch out a leg to make contact with the ball sooner, so if it looks like you’re going to lose the ball to a tackle, you can get an extra touch in and move away.

Four new skill moves (skill rainbow, flair nutmeg, ball roll drag, drag back turn) have been added, and a controlled sprint dribble that’s somewhere between a standard jog and a full sprint offers more control over faster movement without hitting a full sprint. It all works, and it’s all very promising. But FIFA 23 wasn’t a bad game on the pitch, for the most part, so these changes don’t feel revolutionary, instead evolving a good game into a better one.

In truth, the biggest changes seem like they are under the hood, with massive updates to Ultimate Team and Career Mode. So far, EA Sports FC 24 looks and sounds the business, and there’s even a new secondary commentary team this year in the form of Guy Mowbray and Sue Smith. It plays a damn fine game of football, offering balanced matches that retain the feeling they could go either way, like proper football should. Tactics matter, players matter, and it really could be something special.

It really does feel like Ultimate Team and Career Mode have been given the biggest boosts off the pitch, and I’m dying to find out how what EA has told us actually plays out when experienced firsthand. Fingers crossed this early hands-on isn’t misleading, then, because so far EA Sports FC 24 is onto a winner, with smart additions, tweaks, and under-the-hood changes. It may not be a full-on revolution on the pitch, but it certainly did leave me wanting to sample the rest of the game in detail.

• What has FC 24 done with Pro Clubs and Volta?
• Find out what changes have been made to Ultimate Team
• What’s new in Career mode?

EA Sports FC 24 launches on all formats on September 29th, 2023.

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As one of the biggest games of 2023, all eyes are on EA Sports to find out if any attention has been paid to FC 24 Pro Clubs. Will cross-play be included this time around, what of the league systems, and can anything be done to stop smurf accounts making new players feel rubbish?

We recently had a chance to attend a 90-minute-long producer session, where each of EA Sports FC 24’s producers had a chance to come out and speak about their mode, including Jeff Antwi, Line Producer for Clubs & Volta, because yes, first things first: they’ve dropped the “Pro” to match the branding of the game now. Introducing FC 24 Clubs.

FC 24 Pro Clubs: cross-play

So aside from that major change to the name, the biggest news is that Antwi confirmed cross-play for both clubs and Volta Football. This will include all match types, so that’s drop-in, friendly, playoffs, and leagues.

There will also be all new virtual pro content produced all year round, including gear by Nike as EA Sports has signed a new partnership with the brand. Play Styles (and the Play Style Plus) will be available in clubs for virtual pros.

League structure

The league structure for EA Sports FC 24 Pro Clubs (now clubs!) has been overhauled. Antwi explained this is to keep the competition “fresh for the entire year”. It will reset every six weeks, and you’ll have an all-new trophy room.

The idea is to build your club’s identity each league season, as every club match will contribute toward a shared club progression, adding fans as you get bigger and better. Fans are an experience bar of sorts, and as you get more, you will unlock bigger stadiums and more customisation content, and your AI teammates will also improve, getting better overall ratings. There are new rewards for every season, from banners to colours, lighting to inflatables, and there are also new animated TIFOs.

Volta mode

While Volta will also get the customisation options that come in through the partnership with Nike, and also benefit from the cross-play functionality, EA Sports hasn’t revealed any other major new ideas or content for Volta in FC 24.

• Read our FC 24 hands-on preview feature
• Find out what changes have been made to Ultimate Team
• What’s new in Career mode?

EA Sports FC 24 launches on all formats on September 29th, 2023.

The post EA Sports FC 24 Pro Clubs | Cross-play and all the new changes detailed appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

If I had to pick my two favourite genres of video game, I think I’d probably choose 2D platformers and turn-based RPGs. As other types of video games come and go from my life, these are what I fall back on. It’s pretty rare for these genres to be combined successfully though. You could argue that the Mario RPGs add a bit of platforming into the mix, and there are some cracking indies like Monster Sanctuary who have managed to make great games involving elements of both, but there aren’t a huge amount of examples of my favourite genres being totally blended. Well Worldless will be doing just that in the near future, and based on the preview build I tried it could be something special.

In a universe that’s only just finding its feet, existence is currently fairly conceptual. Orange and blue lights shine in the sky and clash with each other, but there’s no real explanation as to why. As different creatures made up of various shapes fight for a place in this new world, adapting and surviving is all that matters. Fortunately our glowing sword wielding protagonist is good at all that malarkey, and sets about becoming a powerful being that’s guaranteed to cope in this hostile world. The vagueness of the narrative isn’t normally something I’d be into, but you’re thrown into the action quickly enough that it’s not a big deal.

Combat in Worldless is really engaging even from the start of the game. When it’s your turn you basically have a set amount of time to attack your enemy. You start off with a three hit combo you can unleash with your sword, and a two blast lightning attack for magical damage. Switching between the two will help you juggle enemies and deal a whole lot of damage, but after a few seconds it’ll be time for the enemy to hit back.

Enemies have physical and magic attacks too, which you’ll need to guard with your physical and magic shield respectively. Because these are tied to the same buttons as your attacks it’s easy to remember which is which, and you’ll know which one to use in advance thanks to some handy flashing lights just before impact. You’re also rewarded for perfect timing on your blocks, so getting into the rhythm of combat is key.

Perhaps the most important aspect of a battle though is breaking an enemies guard. When you do this you gain the ability to absorb them, by playing a quick minigame that gets easier the more you break them. Hitting weak points to break enemies is the name of the game here, because any you absorb give you a skill point to put into the skill tree. If you want to get stronger it’s all about assimilation baby.

Even in this short preview build, I was able to power up my character a hell of a lot thanks to these skill points. Extra attacks in a combo, charge attacks and a stronger shield made me feel so much more powerful against the early game I struggled with at the start, but the extra strength was needed against the increasingly tricky shape based foes of new areas.

I’ve talked about the turn based combat, but what about the platforming? Well the movement of the protagonist is floaty but satisfying, and the environments are enjoyable to navigate. It’s actually closer to a Metroidvania than a pure 2d platformer, with new powers to unlock as you explore the world around you. In this build I got an air dash which proved invaluable, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty more where that come from.

The two areas I had access to for this preview were wildly different, with their own fun obstacles to overcome. The opening area was pretty basic with a bunch of platforms to turn on and off with little glowing switches, but the second area had floating rocks that spawned more floating rocks, waterfalls you needed to dash through, and even little trapeze nodes you could fling yourself from. If Worldless continues to add more fun elements in each new area then I’ll be a happy jumping boy when the full game comes a knocking.

I think my only real issue with what I played with Worldless was the setting. It’s quite a barren environment (which I guess makes sense since it’s a newly evolving world) and just feels a bit empty and dull to explore. Hopefully in the full game I’ll get used to it though, and the level variety could help with that.

Worldless is showing a lot of promise, and anyone who loves platforming or turn-based RPGs as much as I do should have their eye on this one. The level variety and upgrades were impressive even in the opening couple of hours, and I can’t imagine that’ll change in the full game. I’m looking forward to evolving more later this year, and you should be too.

Worldless hasn’t got a release date yet, but you can try the demo on Steam.

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Yet Another Zombie Survivors has a silly name. It’s a name that’s obviously intended to poke fun at the fact it’s blatantly and deliberately aping Zombie Survivors and Vampire Survivors, just as the developers’ previous game Yet Another Zombie Defense did the same with tower defense games. I get it, of course, but it still makes me grind my teeth when I read it. That said, if the clumsy title doesn’t put you off downloading it, you’re in for a bit of a treat if reverse-bullet hell auto-shooters are your thing, because it’s a pretty decent example of the genre.

This is an early access release and so right now it’s knowingly unfinished, but what’s here is very addictive and a lot of fun. It follows the exact template laid down by other auto-shooters, where you move a single character around an isometric environment, focusing on dodging the increasing hordes of enemies while the AI does the blasting. The biggest difference in Yet Another Zombie Survivors is that it puts a lot of little bells and whistles on it.

You have, initially, three classes to choose from. Whether the names are placeholder isn’t clear, but you have ranged assault socialist SWAT, close-quarters fella, Tank, and the lightning-wielding Engineer. You can pick any as your leader, but periodically will be able to rescue two others who’ll just latch to your hip like a needy partner and effectively double your firepower while also increasing your health pool and unlocking new abilities.

These abilities are all on cooldowns and will trigger when it’s over without your input. SWAT has a grenade and helicopter that will swoop in and strafe the zombies; Engineer can drop a shock turret or trigger bursts of electrical damage; Tank can drop mines and summon saw blade drones that spin around your group and dice whatever gets in their way.

I’ve also unlocked Huntress and Ghost. The former is slow and precise and can rain arrows on the horde, while the latter is a melee-focused ninja who’s great at keeping the dead at a safe distance. Well, safer. Which survivors you come across is randomised (there’s also a Medic, and three others who’ll be related during early access), as are your perks. You’ll find chests dotted around that contain a choice of buffs, such as increased health, movement speed, or “Happiness”. I don’t know what Happiness does, but the loading screen tips told me it’s very important.

You’ll also level up at a rate of knots just by slaying out and collecting dropped diamonds, and each level gained gives you a choice of boosts to weapons and abilities, eventually upgrading your guns along the path of, say, pistol-SMG-assault rifle. You unlock more upgrades by hitting murder thresholds, a system which is bugged on my Tank and won’t let me hit it no matter what I do.

Finally, you earn money sporadically, which gives you Upgrade Points you can spend between runs on permanent boosts like more health, increased XP gains, damage resistance, etc. It’s basic stuff, but it’s effective nonetheless, and makes you feel you’re always improving even if you fail a run. And you’ll fail a lot of runs.

What begins with a couple of zombies shambling by who you’ll pop in the head just because they’re there and you might as well, soon becomes a frantic run-and-gun game of zombie tag as the horde surrounds and flows towards you like a big sea of jelly with teeth in. Movement speed boosts become your best friend when you’re met with super-zombies who can charge you, unleash swarms of zombie flies, spit poison, explode, or just run at you with a giant axe. Taking these down rewards you with huge amounts of XP, but they’re seriously tough, especially when you have three or four to deal with at once.

So there’s a level of planning and tactics to it that I wasn’t expecting, such as which upgrades to take first, which trio of slayers to pick, which buffs you choose from every chest you find. While it’s mostly random, there’s still an element of forethought required. It’s not exactly taxing, but it does add an extra dimension to the otherwise mostly mindless fun.

The fact it isn’t pixel art is also fairly refreshing at this stage. Auto-shooters are often incredibly low-effort (which is not the insult it sounds like), with simple art and straightforward mechanics, so thtle fact that Yet Another Zombie Survivors does a little more with the formula should be commended. It’s early days for the title right now, and early access will only see it grow and expand, adding new zones (there’s only one at present) and game modes, new survivors, weapons and, therefore, tactics. Get past the awkward title, and there’s a lot to like here, even at this stage.

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Even as a fairly social person I can respect the need for some privacy away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of humanity. In fact, part of what puts me off many online survival games like Ark: Survival Evolved and Rust is the presence of other people. I’d rather not be ganked or griefed while I’m trying to punch trees in peace. Which is why Enshrouded, the new medieval survival game from Keen Games, has my attention. There are no other players to wreck your rock piles while you’re out picking flowers and murdering rabbits. Oh, and you can dig a massive hole and build your entire base underground.

We recently had the chance to attend a hands-off presentation of Enshrouded, where we were shown around an hour of gameplay and were able to field questions afterwards. Taking inspiration from both Minecraft and Breath of the Wild, Enshrouded is an ambitious open world adventure set in a fantasy land that has been overtaken by a dense magical fog. Monsters and beasts lurk within the mist, which means you’ll need to make repeat excursions into the unknown if you want to get your hands on the best gear and materials.

The idea, as with most games like this (the developers cited Valheim as a major inspiration, too) is to allow you to build a base any way you like, whether it’s a thriving hub of industry where you can craft all day long or a menacing fortress from which to survey the lands below you. But in Enshrouded, you can opt to carve out chunks of the landscape and build your base in a cave.

During the Q&A, Antony Christoulaki (Enshrouded’s Creative Director and co-founder of Keen Games) confirmed that “You can terraform anywhere in the world with your pickaxe… but to use the advanced building tools you have to settle down with a base.” But your base is defined by where you build your Flame Altar, and you can put that wherever you like.

Obviously this in itself is cool. You can build vertically to a frankly insane depth, and there are no physics governing what remains above. So yes, you can also carve out a floating island as long as you can get to it (luckily you can also build pre-fab staircases). Getting down quickly, though, won’t be an issue. You have a wingsuit functionally similar to Breath of the Wild’s paraglider, and a stamina meter that will burn away as you climb, run or swim. Interestingly, there’s no carrying weight. Antony said, “We had that conversation and decided we didn’t want to make a puzzle out of your inventory – which can also be fun. But we left it for now as it would add another layer of balancing to deal with.” Again, though, he did say that if the community asks for it, never say never, essentially.

With Enshrouded heading towards early access, it’s nice to hear the Creative Director confirming how open the company is to feedback. Obviously they can’t promise to implement everything the community wants, but knowing that they’ll be going forward with the intent to listen to the players and examine other avenues is very encouraging.

When asked about the possibility of PvP, we were told that, for now, Endhrouded is a PvE/co-op game only. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because there is no PvP, you can feel secure leaving your base unguarded while you head out on expeditions, too. You’ll be able to find summoning items that let you summon permanent NPCs into your base such as a blacksmith. You can bring them recipes which don’t just require materials, but also improved conditions. An example we saw was a blacksmith who would only craft certain armour if you built him a shelter to work in. It encourages the building of a functional base that you can populate, rather than just a collection of workbenches and research tables.

Keen Games also developed Portal Knights which has fixed classes from the get-go. Enshrouded has a more malleable system which allows you to build into ranged, melee and magic skills in whichever way you choose. You can respec whenever, too, which facilitates the co-op multiplayer as you can adjust your skills and abilities to suit the needs of a group. For now the focus is on solo and co-op play, although the dev team are looking forward to seeing “what the public wants” after launch, so don’t rule out a PvP or hybrid mode down the line.

It takes the best elements of a standard open world solo RPG and adds on some super intriguing build mechanics. Combat looks pretty fun, too, with a standard light-heavy dodge-parry set-up, but with a host of skills and abilities as well as weapons to mix it up. You can find legendary armour and weaponry with special prefixes, or find rare ingredients to craft unique powerful gear. Antony was keen to stress that there’s no free-crafting or full sandbox mode coming at launch, though it’s something else the team will look at later. At launch, Keen Games really want people to explore the world they’ve built.

Something else we were shown was a quick tour of some of the world, and it’s huge. It reminded me of the recent Ravenbound with a bit of Kingdoms of Amalur thrown in. The overworld is a dense forest pock-marked with ruins and abandoned settlements, while the underground is blanketed by fog that hides numerous monsters, bosses, and even huge entities that you can destroy to reduce the fog for a while. Everything outside of your build zone will respawn over time, including enemies, materials, and even the fog.

Everything I saw during the hands-off demo convinced me that Enshrouded is the kind of survival adventure that I want to play. It looks more interesting and balanced than the recent Frozen Flame, which I felt suffered from a lack of fresh ideas. The free-form approach to base-building, and the onus on exploration that aspires to Link’s most recent adventures on Nintendo Switch, mark Enshrouded as one to keep a very close eye on as the fog clears.

Check out the trailer below for a sneak peak at how building and terraforming will work in Enshrouded.

Enshrouded is expected to come to Steam Early Access in late 2023.

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It’s been a while since the podcast has been all about that RPG life, but Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is here to fix that. Both Adam and Chris have been playing Rain Code and have a lot to say about it: some good, some bad. But hey, being a detective (a good one) takes time, right?

Meanwhile Lyle has been catching up on Jack Jeanne, and likes it a lot, and Chris Hyde only went and bought Dave the Diver, didn’t he! Nice one, Chris: add that pile of GOTY contenders!

You can contact us to get your listener questions on the podcast via our Discord, but if you upgrade to become a Patreon member (for £1/$1) you’ll gain access to loads of other channels and exclusive an exclusive bonus podcast. You can also send us questions via @GodisaGeek on Twitter, or even email podcasts@godisageek.com if you fancy doing things old school.

Download the audio MP3, here.

Did you enjoy our gaming podcast this week? Are you looking forward to it with baited breath every week? Did you know we’re one of the longest running gaming podcasts out there? You can support us buy clicking the box below. Email us! Subscribe and never miss an episode! Also make sure you find and follow us on Spotify.

You can watch the podcast live as well, either by making sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel, or also, buy following us on Twitch. Did you know that if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can gift us your FREE channel follow once a month and it helps us, while costing you nothing?

Thanks for listening as always, and come say hi in the live chat next time perhaps? We record the podcast live on Thursdays, usually at  about 5-6pm UK time, so join us there on Twitch or YouTube, if you can! Why not? It’s free!

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We’ve reached the point in the life cycle of the games industry where it’s rare to see anything truly innovative. And when you do so see something that feels brand new, it’s hard to predict what will permeate the cultural zeitgeist and what won’t. In a world where 2D Metroidvanias seem to fall with the rain, roughly every third game is a deck-builder, and fucking everything is a roguelite, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint which way the trends have been going for the last decade.

But while it took ages for people to start ripping off XCOM en masse, Mordor’s Nemesis System is still largely untouched, and we’re still waiting for a combat system that can out-Arkham Batman: Arkham Asylum, one innovation that took off like a rocket-propelled kangaroo was From Software’s particular brand of addictive self-flagellation. I refuse to use the term “masocore” in any way other than ironically, but the fact is people seem to like it when games hurt them –  as proven by every second game being a Soulslike.

This is something which I’m by turns both exhausted by and hugely grateful for, though, because without From Software’s Demon’s Souls we wouldn’t have eventually gotten Remnant: From the Ashes. Although, while Gunfire Games’ title certainly presents as a Soulslike, it remains one of the more original versions of the formula.

Root cause

Remnant: From the Ashes sets out its stall fairly early on. When your survivor finds his or herself in a dark, apocalyptic world, it’s made pretty clear that everything has gone to shit and it’s not planning a return visit any time soon. It’s a version of Earth ravaged by a trans-dimensional entity known only as the Root, which has spread its corruption throughout Earth and a handful of other worlds you’ll need to find your way into and out of throughout the campaign.

In trying to unlock the secrets of dimensional travel, humanity created the Dreamers, whose psychic powers opened doorways that allowed the Root to assault us and ultimately decimate our planet. What few survivors there are close to you reside in Ward 13, an underground bunker that also houses a huge crystal that not only allows fast travel but which also resurrects the fallen (and, of course, respawns all enemies throughout the world, natch). Your job is simple enough to understand but almost impossible to achieve: travel across dimensions, seek the source of the Root, and pluck it out once and for all.

This being a Soulslike, Remnant is fairly short on anything resembling meaty story beats. The closest you get to a real plot is when you meet various NPCs you’ll either aid or destroy, some of whom will give you a choice to make. Ultimately, this choice often boils down to whether or not you fancy another boss fight right now.

Remnant: From the Ashes Replayed: A vague tale

Of course, there are those who would argue that Remnant: From the Ashes doesn’t necessarily need a story. In many respects, most Soulslikes don’t need a story, but if you’re going to go the trouble of writing backstory and then hacking it down into flavour text, you might as well just give us it in the actual gameplay. Remnant does not do this, instead opting for a mix of incidental text, NPC dialogue, and environmental storytelling to get its point across.

Sadly though, this is why so much of it is confusing. And there will undoubtedly be people reading this who have played Remnant for ten hours a day for almost four years who’ll leap to the defence of its story and tell me its actually really rich and deep once you’ve read the description of every item umpteen times, beaten every boss, all the DLC, studied the Wiki, married and divorced one of the writers, and watched three-dozen YouTube videos explaining it all – but when it launched (and indeed for a while after), Remnant was as obtuse as Soulslikes come.

What was abundantly clear no matter how many times you played it, was that Remnant is not an easy-going game. It’s intentionally hard, deliberately unwelcoming to newcomers, and never gave much of a shit whether people liked it. Or at least, it always felt that way. Obviously Gunfire wanted people to buy it and play it, but there was an undeniable confidence to Remnant at launch that managed to be self-assured without being arrogant.

Always the quiet ones

It’s important to acknowledge how difficult that is to pull off, too. We’ve all seen hugely confident developers release games with the smug grin of a delusional pageant mum, only to meltdown in the exact same way when it turns out their only child has the same natural talent for entertainment as a hamster in a tumble dryer. It’s a far rarer beast when the developer is quietly confident, and then genuinely humble in the face of praise. Gunfire Games never even predicted Remnant would sell a million units – let alone the three million-plus it has now clocked up since launch – and so the success is all the sweeter.

A lot of its appeal stems from the fact that it was released as a complete experience, without an immediate announcement of DLC, without a cosmetic shop or an online component geared towards selling you things. Remnant launched with a full, multi-branching, semi-dynamic campaign, one that doesn’t always deliver the same encounters in the same order, but which always rewards exploration and perseverance.

Each of its four worlds feels different to the last, from the burned-out, nightmarish streets of the fallen Earth city wherein you begin, to the wind-blown deserts of Rhom and the festering swamps of Corsus. There’s an undeniable personality to everywhere you go, seen in the creative design of its creatures and monsters, in the visual details that help shore up the rickety narrative, in the atmosphere that groans through every gust of wind, creeps across every broken wall.

Remnant: From the Ashes replayed: Master blaster

Atmosphere will only get you so far, though, and sooner or later you’ve got to back up all these pretty sky-boxes with some actual gameplay. Thankfully, this is where Remnant: From the Ashes truly excels. From a worm’s-eye view, it’s a grungy third-person shooter that sees you traversing these decaying locales with a couple of guns, a melee weapon, and a backpack full of home-brewed potions and lotions to stave off the effects of bloodrot or radiation poisoning.

Examined more closely though, it’s not hard to see that Remnant’s appeal lies in the simple effectiveness of its brutal combat. You can equip two ranged weapons at a time, and every weapon can be equipped with a mod. In this world, magic is simply a thing, and so these mods can have a profound effect on your playstyle. From popping a healing fountain to imbuing your bullets with an element, or summoning a full-on demon Rottweiler that gets a buff when you ruffle the scruff of his steaming neck, there’s a mod for every occasion.

Hitting the attack button while aiming down sights will fire your equipped gun, while hitting it without the ADS will swing your melee weapon. It’s so ridiculously intuitive I can’t understand why more games aren’t doing it. You don’t need a dedicated melee button, and it makes every swing feel immediate. You don’t even have to think about it, as any enemy close enough to melee doesn’t require the precision of ADS at all. Also, it just feels so damn good. I’ll argue forever that Destiny 2 has the most satisfying “gun feel” of any shooter I’ve ever played, but Remnant comes incredibly close with some of its weapons, delivering an experience that never stops rewarding you just for blasting holes in demons.

An uncluttered apocalypse

Despite arguably being a weakness where story is concerned, Remnant’s simplicity remains its greatest strength in almost every other department. Even the multiplayer is user-friendly, allowing you to select a game to join, find your friends, or just leave your game open to the public. Story progression is locked to the host’s world, but you keep all the XP and loot you find when you return to your world.

Heading back to Ward 13 allows you upgrade your weapons and clothing, buy items, or improve your Dragon Heart – which is Remnant’s version of an Estus Flask. Here you can talk to NPCs to expand the lore, or take on side concerns to help the survivors, though don’t expect branching side missions that force you to backtrack around the world, killing ten of this or collecting five of that.

You will run some missions and areas multiple times if you engage in multiplayer a lot, but there’s an effortless likeability that stops Remnant: From the Ashes from feeling stale. If you do need a change of pace, the Swamps of Corsus DLC has a survival mode where you begin with basic gear and must stay alive as long as you can. It doesn’t add much to the core experience, but the gunplay is as crisp as ever.

Worth the risk

With the sequel, Remnant 2, landing oh-so-very soon, it may not be the best time to get into Remnant if you missed it first time for whatever reason, but I’d absolutely suggest that any Soulslike fan who hasn’t tried it really should. It’s not a game that stands out because it had a ridiculous budget, overblown marketing campaign, celebrity voice overs, or some kind of eye-rolling controversy. It’s a game that stands out simply because it’s bloody good.

It’s not always about how loud you bang your drum, or how much hype you pay to generate. On any even playing field the only guarantee of success is creating something to the best of your ability that people like. Any game that does anything new is a massive risk, but Gunfire Games managed to mitigate that risk by knowing when to chase trends and when to roll the dice on their own creativity.

Yes, Remnant will frustrate you at times; yes, you’ll get lost and wonder where the hell you’re meant to go roughly every nine-and-half minutes; and yes, the story is spread pretty damn thin (though you can always pick up the better-than-you-remember prequel Chronos: Before the Ashes if you want to fatten up the narrative), but despite all of this, Remnant: From the Ashes is still one of the most unique and interesting Soulslikes we’ve had for the last decade-and-a-half.

Excited for Remnant 2 after reading our replayed? Read our hands-on preview of Remnant 2. And come back soon for more replayed columns.

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I’ve always liked the idea of city building games, but in practice I’m very bad at constructing a functional virtual town. Whether it’s struggling to make enough money to expand or making all my citizens poor and miserable, the end result of my city planning career is always rather disastrous. I am pretty good at card games though, so when I heard that These Doomed Isles would let me use cards to build a fantasy settlement I was more than a little intrigued.

As one of a selection of gods (with two available in the current demo) you are tasked with building and expanding a civilisation centred around your holy relic. This is done by taking structures or other bits of land from the cards in your hand and placing them into the world. First you’ll probably want some cabins for the people of this land to live in, then you’ll need to build places for them to work and gather materials for you. It’s pretty simple in theory, but it won’t take long for you to realise there’s a lot to think about when building a functioning town.

Each card costs materials to play, so making sure you earn enough of these each turn is a good starting point. All the usual suspects like wood, stone, metal and gold are here, but there are other important numbers to keep track of too. One of these is faith, which powers cards that use your godly powers. These include blessings that make your citizens happy, as well as more aggressive powers like lightning bolts and meteor storms. You’ll also need faith to draw a new hand when you run out of cards you want to play, otherwise you’ll have to end your turn and go to the next season.

Moving to the next season will give you all the resources your subjects have gathered, allow any enemies to move, and will visually change the weather. Once a whole year is up, you’ll be presented with a selection of new cards to buy with the gold you’ve gathered. You’ll probably want to focus on extra cabins for your homeless citizens first (because once they’re happy in a new home you can put them to work) but then it’s up to you to decide if you want to buy storehouses to hold more resources, crossbow towers to keep enemies at bay, or extra land so you can expand across the water.

Growing the area where you can build things is incredibly important early on, because you start on such a tiny island. By placing the little Tetris blocks of land across the water, your aim is to connect to other islands so they become part of your domain. What’s really cool about this is that when you gain a new landmass you’ll be given a reward, and these hugely boost your kingdom’s power. Sometimes you’ll be offered the ability to max out one or two of your resources, other times you’ll gain a permanent buff that grants you extra stuff if you max out a supply at the end of a turn. It’s a really rewarding system, and even without it expanding is satisfying.

After a few expansions you’ll probably start getting messages that enemies are on their way from a certain direction. This is your chance to set up some defences before they arrive so they won’t damage your settlement. I found the bow towers to be the best for this, but if you misjudge where the raiders are going to approach from you can also unleash god powers on them when they arrive. Since everything is turn based you don’t have to worry about rushing to wreck your shit, but you’ll probably want to redraw a new hand or two to get what you need to take down the baddies.

In this demo build of These Doomed Isles you’re given three objectives to complete to finish the level, and once you do a boss will appear that needs dealing with. These objectives were all pretty easy, involving keeping a number of citizens happy, building wonders and beating up raiders, but the boss was much more of a challenge. Spawning right on top of my city centre with thirty health (when the highest I’d seen before that was three) it took me building new bow towers and throwing a load of spells at him to eventually take him out, and not before losing a few buildings.

Once he’s beaten though that’s pretty much it, and you can either return to the main menu (which also triggers a level up of your god and gives you some new cards for a replay) or carry on building endlessly with less of an aim. It’ll be interesting to see how the game progresses after this thirty minute gameplay section, because so far I’m loving These Doomed Isles.

Although there wasn’t a whole lot of content in this demo, it got me incredibly excited for the full release of These Doomed Isles. Combining card game mechanics with city building is a wonderful way to make both genres more accessible for newcomers, and expanding across to multiple islands is really satisfying. I’ll be back to continue my godly adventure when the full release comes around, so watch this space.

These Doomed Isles is due to release on PC in September 2023.

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On this week’s podcast, both Lyle and Adam have been deep-sea diving, all in aid of finding sushi for their restaurant. No, they’ve not had a career change, instead they’ve both been enjoying the delights of Dave the Diver, a game that had some buzz during early access, but has now been released fully with it’s 1.0 launch.

Keeping with the feeling of being quite small in a bigger universe, Lyle has also been playing Pikmin 1 and 2 HD, while Adam previewed Pikmin 4, and the demo is also available now as well. Chris Hyde, not to be outdone, has gone BIG by playing Final Fantasy 16, so it’ll be interesting to see if his initial impressions of the demo have continued into the full adventure.

You can contact us to get your listener questions on the podcast via our Discord, but if you upgrade to become a Patreon member (for £1/$1) you’ll gain access to loads of other channels and exclusive an exclusive bonus podcast. You can also send us questions via @GodisaGeek on Twitter, or even email podcasts@godisageek.com if you fancy doing things old school.

Download the audio MP3, here.

Did you enjoy our gaming podcast this week? Are you looking forward to it with baited breath every week? Did you know we’re one of the longest running gaming podcasts out there? You can support us buy clicking the box below. Email us! Subscribe and never miss an episode! Also make sure you find and follow us on Spotify.

You can watch the podcast live as well, either by making sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel, or also, buy following us on Twitch. Did you know that if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can gift us your FREE channel follow once a month and it helps us, while costing you nothing?

Thanks for listening as always, and come say hi in the live chat next time perhaps? We record the podcast live on Thursdays, usually at  about 5-6pm UK time, so join us there on Twitch or YouTube, if you can! Why not? It’s free!

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It is strange to think that Pikmin 4  is the first new title for the series in an entire decade. It is actually even more odd that I can remember reviewing the first Pikmin title back in the mists of time – something that made me feel my age quite significantly when sampling the giddy delights of the forthcoming sequel. But I was also heartened by the fact that Nintendo has absolutely gone to town to make sure that this is perhaps the ultimate version of the game to date. It is like the company acknowledged the slow sales of Pikmin 3 (despite the deluxe Switch edition), and decided to create something huge, loveable, and easy to pick up, with a learning curve that dials down some of the plate spinning anxiety while also being much more accessible to newcomers.

I was let loose in the opening section of the game, which is also going to represent pretty much what Nintendo will serve up in the forthcoming, highly generous playable demo. Unlike previous games, Olimar is not the main protagonist this go-around. In fact, on the finished game, you get to design your very own elfish avatar, and step into the guise of Rescue Corps newest recruit. Captain Olimar himself, then, has ended up crashing on a mysterious Earth-like world. In a failed effort to recover the series mainstay, the Corps have ended up crashing their rescue craft. Pikmin 4 tells the story of how, along with your ultra-cute bipedal dog-like pal and a bunch of willing anthropomorphic beansprouts, you are tasked with finding the Captain and retrieving your fellow rescue comrades.

Straight away you sense the warm Nintendo magic, helped nicely by the familiar cute sound effects and the typically lush Honey I Shrunk The Kids-like visuals. The camera angle is slightly nearer the deck here, which works rather nicely and brings things closer to a third-person feel. You are drip-fed the various mechanics of the strategic puzzling, resource gathering gameplay at a rate that is pitched just about right to appeal to all levels of experience. This time your aiming reticule doesn’t just act as a means of flinging the titular alien plants, you can also switch to control Rescue Pup Oatchi – who has plenty of puzzle-cracking abilities to make your missions easier.

Like with the titular Pikmin, you can instruct him to attack enemies and retrieve resources, but he also has a chargeable dash that can smash through certain breakable obstacles, and you can ride on his back and use his leaping ability to scale new heights around the mysterious world. He can also track things by following a scent, and detect treasures using his expert olfactory skills.

Oatchi is adorable, fun to use, and adds so much to the game, including the ability to eventually level up his stats and abilities and teach him new tricks. He is easy to become attached to and I felt a genuine sense of peril when I inadvertently allowed my pupper to be both set ablaze and frozen all during the same gameplay session. There are also new varieties of Pikmin entering the fray to fall in love with/feel guilty about when they die. Ice Pikmin have a variety of uses including being able to solidify blocks of jelly for Oatchi to smash, and turning water hazards into a traversable lake of ice.

There is a ticking time limit as day turns into night, which lends a nice structure to the main gameplay loop, and there are promised new-to-series night time shenanigans with the introduction of another hitherto unseen version of Pikmin – the Glow variety – who look pleasingly luminescent and serve to distract the more aggressive night-time enemies that you may encounter. As well as the overground, there are subterranean dungeon areas where the passage of time is slowed down to 1/6 of its normal speed for your exploratory pleasure.

The word “Dondori” is used frequently in Pikmin 4. It is a term pertaining to carrying out a variety of tasks with the utmost efficiency and economy, for the best overall results. It sums up the organisational skills needed to pull off being an ace Pikmin player, and is also used to name the excellent looking split screen battle mode which we didn’t get to play but saw in the tantalising trailer and presentation.

The time I spent with the game did not even touch the sides of what is eventually promised for Pikmin 4. The trailer reveals a plethora of diverse areas, enemies, treasures, and puzzles, which I left the preview aching to explore more of. It is a game that any newcomer could enjoy whether or not they have played the preceding games, and looks like a sure fire Switch hit when it drops in July. In the meantime, all three prior Olimar adventures are available on the eShop now, so there has never been a better time to practice herding some adorable space veggies around.

Pikmin 4 is coming to Nintendo Switch on July 21st.

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Although Mortal Kombat 1 isn’t out until September, NetherRealm has put out a stress test to give players a chance to experience the latest instalment in the popular fighting series. I adore Mortal Kombat and have done ever since the ancient days of the SNES, and seeing just how far it has come, being as popular as ever, warms my heart. Although the stress test is limited on what and who’s on offer, there was still enough for me to know the full release is going to be incredible.

There were four fighters available (Sub-Zero, Kenshi, Kitana, and Lui Kang), and three Kameo fighters (Kano, Sonya, and Jax). Before I mention the fighting, it was obvious from the menu just how damn amazing the visuals are. MK11 was consistently stunning, and from the Mortal Kombat 1 beta, they’re even better. The battle environments are so detailed and the lighting is flawless. Watching character animations through simple movement to Fatal Blows and Fatalities left my jaw on the floor, and the thought of how good the campaign will look has made me feel like a kid on Christmas Eve.

In my first fight, I played as Kenshi, and his movements with a blade are so fluid. While not as quick as Lui Kang, he can harness the power of the demon to pull off some beautiful special moves, transitioning into some decent combos, however, he’s a little more complex than Kitana or Sub-Zero. While I played as everyone, Lui Kang was by far my favourite. Connecting a couple of moves can end up with 15-hit combos, and when you find the right balance, he’s an absolute menace. Harnessing fire, quick kicks, and other elemental abilities made him such a force to be reckoned with.

The new Kameo system helps to make the series reinvent itself while keeping the core of the fighting familiar. Much like Street Fighter 6 did with allowing you to call upon your teachers in battle, a simple button press or command can call upon your Kameo to jump in and catch an enemy unaware. Kano was my favourite, especially his laser eye, and the fact that there are so many combinations already gave me hope for the full release. They can attack from afar or come in up close for a grab move, and experimenting with them was half the fun.

Mortal Kombat has always been more methodical in its approach to fighting. While Street Fighter often relies on speed and quick offence, Mortal Kombat 1 is all about patience, drawing the enemy to you, and pulling off smart combinations to achieve maximum damage. There’re more than enough moves in each of the playable fighter’s sets to stack up a varied offence, and getting to play MK1 in its entirety is going to be one hell of an experience.

The beta is obviously not the full game, acting more as a way to tease the fanbase and test the servers, but I don’t see a single problem so far. The four fighters in the Mortal Kombat 1 stress test gave me a good idea of how they play and the styles on offer, and the Kameo system could be a game changer when September rolls around. The visuals took my breath away, and the various fatalities were utterly brutal, especially Kenshi’s sword down the throat performance. Folks, I can’t wait to play more, and when the beta in August happens, I urge you to join me.

Mortal Kombat 1 is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on September 19th.

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Without meaning to sound unfair to an early preview build of a game, Testament: The Order of High Human didn’t make the best first impression on me. For a start, the title feels like it should pluralise “Human”, and every time I say it, it feels wrong. But beyond this, the gameplay itself is something a mixed bag.

From a frantic opening where you must flee from a powerful enemy up to the eventual boss fight that ended the preview, I struggled to settle into any kind of rhythm. Partly this is down to the voice acting, which feels just a little bit laboured. The main character speaks English, but it’s fairly clear that it’s not the actor’s first language. This in itself isn’t a major issues, but it can sometimes feel like the words just aren’t flowing naturally, especially when there’s so much clunky exposition early on. Sometimes the main character, Aran, will just outright tell you things under the pretence of an inner monologue, and it’s jarring at best.

What little backstory I could glean from the opening suggests that Aran was double-crossed by his brother Arva. As the King of the High Humans, Aran’s fall has affected the world of Tessara, leading to an invasion by the forces of darkness. As Aran, you must wield sowrds, bows, and magical spells to defeat the minions of chaos and save the realm.

Almost refreshingly, Testament: The Order of High Human isn’t a roguelite or Soulslike. It’s a first-person action-RPG that draws immediate parallels to Skyrim, although that’s probably not a mirror it should be holding up. While the few environments in the preview are certainly very good-looking and highly detailed, the gameplay itself is incredibly uneven.

Aran soon arms himself with a sword and bow, and the latter is by far the more useful. Aiming is precise and ranged damage is suitably high, so sticking an arrow through the head of what are clearly trolls but are referred to as “halflings” does what it says on the tin. Sadly, Aran is less proficient with a sword, and melee combat feels like your batting at flies rather than attacking bloodthirsty “halflings”.

The primary issue here is that despite ostensibly being of considerable marshal prowess, Aran swings his sword like it’s got a two-seater sofa nailed to it. There’s very little grace to the movement, and the impact is severely lacking. You can perform basic combos on enemies, but you can’t block incoming attacks, and so the only way to avoid damage is to constantly hit and run like you’re doing the Hokey Cokey. You do have a dodge, but it’s on cooldown, which makes absolutely no sense when so much of the combat involves sword-fighting.

As a result, any time you have to fight more than one enemy (which is often), combat becomes a hellish chore of attrition, slapping an enemy across the mush and then back-pedalling like a politician caught leaving a brothel. If the option was there to just shoot everything, I’d have done that, but your supply of arrows is far too stingy.

It’s a shame, too, because there are flashes of cool stuff in Testament: The Order of High Human. For a start, the magic has serious potential. There was only one spell available in the preview, but it worked well in tandem with the sword to weaken approaching enemies so they only needed one or two half-hearted lunges before they rag-dolled into the dirt. The boss encounter, too, is decent, helped by the fact that the hit and run tactic works far better on him than it does in any fight with more than a single enemy.  You can also wall run, which feels fluid and easy, linking together a few areas with first-person parkour that is surprisingly strong. These areas aren’t common, but are always fun to navigate.

I’d like to sat that Testament has potential, but with only a few weeks until its release date, I wonder if there’s enough time to fix everything. The promise of Metroidvania-style progression certainly has my attention, but I’m just not looking forward to having to endure the melee combat for the entire runtime. As an RPG, there’s a possibility for a build that focuses entirely on ranged combat, which might make it more palatable. I’m certainly not completely turned off. It’s a good-looking game with a handful of very decent ideas that could make it stand out in the genre, as long as Fairyship Games can tighten up the combat and dialogue.

Testament: The Order of High Human is due to hit Steam on July 13th.

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On first glance it would be quite easy to dismiss Battle Shapers as just another roguelite FPS following tried, tested, and arguably tired mechanics. Shoot, upgrade, dash, die, restart, right? But it doesn’t take more than a few minutes of action to make you realise that this one is a little bit different.

For a start, the quality is apparent from the off. This is a beautiful, brightly-coloured game, with environments akin to Overwatch and a frantic pace that only lets up when the immediate threat is dealt with. It flows wonderfully, and the gunplay feels tight, precise and responsive, landing in the sweet spot where aim assist and player skill prop each other up as nature intended.

You play as Ada, one of the titular Battle Shapers, cyborgs who can modularise their own bodies to suit different combat and mission parameters. You’ll be introduced to Cores right away, which are essentially Ada’s starting loadouts. Each run will begin with you selecting a core, and spending relevant currencies to unlock secondary weapons, or buffs that can be either permanent or run-based. Once inside the game world, special attacks, new weapons, and boosts to your stats and abilities will be awarded each time you clear a zone.

These will either come in the form of drops you cab swap out, or the option to choose one of three run-based buffs a-la Hades. These buffs are designed to work in tandem with your chosen Core, which altar Ada’s appearance but also fundamentally change the playstyle. For example, the base core is designed for survivability and moderate damage output, making you efficient enough but not allowing you to excel in a given field. Choosing the Strike Core, however, makes Ada far more melee-oriented, boosting your attack power at the cost of some defence and ranged damage.

It’s hard to sell how good Battle Shapers feels in words, but indie developer Metric Empire has captured something that feels immediately special here. For one, it’s balanced well, so even as a roguelite you’re not getting annihilated in moments and clever play or fast reflexes will often save your hide. Coloured loot boxes are dotted around each zone, dishing out money, armour, health, ammo, or the special upgrade currency you spend between runs.

Dealing enough damage to an enemy will cause it to enter a stunned state, wherein a single melee hit will cause it explode, dealing area damage and rewarding you with a shower of goodies. From turrets and drones to mobile robotic enemies, there’s a decent spread of opponents even in the demo. Sadly though, we could only opt to go after one of the three bosses in the demo, the Volt Colossus.

This guy and his buddies have taken over and corrupted the city of New Elysium, and it’s up to Ada to stop them. After the first few zones, you’ll be given the option to choose which one to pursue, locking you in until the boss is defeated or your run ends. Once the run is over or the boss is dead, you can return to the Hub and upgrade or unlock abilities, cores, weapons and various other gear.

It might be anything particularly new, but Battle Shapers is still incredibly likeable. Voice-acting would help, as currently nothing is voiced at all, but even without it, the world is colourful enough to hold your attention. It’s obviously too early to tell you if Battle Shapers is going to set the world alight, but the demo is very strong. There’s already a ton of different gear, weapons, cores, and upgrades to experiment with, and enough content to get a feel for what the full game will present. If nothing else, the demo has me hyped to get hold of the full game later in the year.

Battle Shapers is set to release on Steam in Fall 2023.

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It just keeps getting bigger and better on the podcast, with not one, but two massive games to talk about. Final Fantasy 16 is here, and you can rest assured we won’t be spoiling anything here. That said, that’s not all everyone is excited about, as Chris Hyde is a big fan of Escape Academy, and new DLC for that just dropped.

Then there’s the alien in the room… get it? Mick is back for this week to discuss Aliens: Dark Descent, which he loved, and regaled Adam with stories of his pants being messed every other level. Why wouldn’t you stick around to hear about that? Soiled kecks, ffs!

You can contact us to get your listener questions on the podcast via our Discord, but if you upgrade to become a Patreon member (for £1/$1) you’ll gain access to loads of other channels and exclusive an exclusive bonus podcast. You can also send us questions via @GodisaGeek on Twitter, or even email podcasts@godisageek.com if you fancy doing things old school.

Download the audio MP3, here.

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Thanks for listening as always, and come say hi in the live chat next time perhaps? We record the podcast live on Thursdays, usually at  about 5-6pm UK time, so join us there on Twitch or YouTube, if you can! Why not? It’s free!

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Jurassic World Evolution 2 recently released a free update celebrating 30 years of Jurassic Park. It featured a ton of throwbacks to some of the most memorable moments from the original film that started it all, and we were fortunate enough to interview Orcun Adsoy, Senior Producer on Jurassic World Evolution 2 on a whole host of topics, including what were the most fun features to include, what an honour it was to work on the game, and what the franchise means to him.

What were the first nods or ideas that came to mind first that you wanted to include in the 30th anniversary update?

As a team of Jurassic Park fans, we immediately had a number of decorations we knew we had to make a reality. A statue of Mr.DNA, the Les Gigantes mural, the towering Jurassic Park gate and the wonderous scene of skeletal dinosaurs and banners within the visitor centre.

Then we naturally had a wealth of requests from our community, in particular their desire for the log decoration, the Jurassic Park fence and the pile of… well. Anyway, we had plenty of ideas come from the players’ side too, which was great!

Which features were the most fun to design when working on the update?

Getting Mr.DNA right was a rather iterative process. Looking back at the few scenes of him in the original film, then trying to understand exactly what made his distinctive look, then trying to communicate that to a 3D model. Not only that, but presenting him as a ‘real’ sculpture you might see in a real theme park, connected with bits of metal, rather than his various components miraculously floating in thin air. While it took time to get him just right, the end result looks great!

Are there any references you wanted to include but didn’t have the chance to?

Certainly with such elaborate, finely detailed sets, Jurassic Park had so many references we could include, but we wanted to focus on the most iconic moments and make sure they were well presented in Jurassic World Evolution 2.

What are some of your favourite moments from the original film?

Dark, storming and with mysterious vibrations in my cup of water. The reveal of the T. rex, and subsequent carnage has to be one of the most iconic scenes in cinema to date, and my favourite moment across all the Jurassic films.

That, or every time Dennis Nedry appears on a computer screen saying, “ah ah ah, you didn’t say the magic word”. Both were pretty good.

Jurassic World Evolution 2 Interview: What does the Jurassic Park franchise mean to you?

As with JWE2, it’s a mix of adventure, discovery and dread. The idea that these wonderous creatures filled with beauty and intelligence might also be the very thing which ends up hunting us – or an unfortunate park guest.

Do you have any specific memories of watching the film for the first time?

I believe I was about five years old when it came out (sorry to any readers I just made feel very old!). Having watched it so many times over the years, I’m afraid I can’t even recall when I first saw it.

What’s your favourite dinosaur from the movies?

Strangely, I’ve always loved the giant ill triceratops. The amount of detail they got into the animatronic, the gentle breathing and small flickers of realistic life were really beautiful. 

I also just appreciate examples of a craft being performed to an exceptional level, which I saw all the work surrounding that animatronic to be.

It helps that from my youngest years, Ceratopsids were always my favourite family of dinosaurs.

How much of an honour is it to work on the update/Jurassic World Evolution franchise?

Game development is the process of working closely with some incredibly intelligent and creative people, to build something that countless people play and experience. So as always, it’s an absolute honour to spend my time with these people, creating such an awesome game.

That joy is then always heightened when you have an active and excited audience as JWE2 has. Afterall, we make games for people to enjoy and experience.

When did the decision to work on an anniversary update come about?

From the very beginning of development, authenticity to Jurassic World and the wider franchise has been a central pillar of JWE2’s design and culture. Combined with Frontier Developments’ heavy emphasis on nurturing our games post-release and free content delivery, we always knew we’d want to celebrate this important anniversary with our players.

Do you have any special memories of working on the update?

Any update in which you deliver a literal pile of dung is going to result in a lot of in-jokes, sighs and eye rolls in responses to puns. Glorious.

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As genres of video game come and go, there are always going to be types of game you’re less familiar with. I like to think my gaming diet is pretty darn varied, but there are still plenty of blind spots in my pixelated vision. One of these blindspots houses the auto battler. I love the idea of setting up a team of units with perfect synergy to beat up my opponent, but other than the auto battle mode in Hearthstone I’ve just never found the time to jump into this competitive genre. The perfect way for me to change that though is by transforming this typically multiplayer style of game into a Roguelike, and that’s exactly what Tales & Tactics has done.

If you aren’t familiar with autobattling, here’s the jist of it. The aim of the game is to buy units that work well together, place them on a grid and have them beat your opponent who’s doing the same thing as you. There’s some fairly straightforward strategy to consider when placing your Tales & Tactics monsters on the hexagon tiles of the board that you’ll need to think about too, like putting your archers at the back and your tanks at the front, but really the main way you’ll succeed is by collecting units of the same type so that they’re boosted with powerful effects.

For my first run I noticed that the shop started with a few orc type monsters available to purchase, and once I had three different orcs on my team they all gained the ability to Rage and deal extra damage once their health dropped below half. One of my Orcs was also a Dweller type, and once I’d gathered a couple more of these cave based creatures they grouped together to summon an additional muscly brute at the start of battle who decimated the enemy. Making sure you have the right lineup of units will help turn the tide of battle in your favour, so make sure you keep refreshing that shop.

Each round you can spend your hard earned currency on new units, or on refreshing the shop to look for the ones you need. You get one refresh for free between battles, but often that isn’t enough to find the perfect orc or skeleton for your crew. This is even more true when you factor in how important getting three identical units is. If you can manage to grab a full set of three creatures they’ll fuse together to create one super powerful unit, and because you can only have a limited number of them on the battlefield at a time it’s worth making them as tough as possible.

You can make your army more powerful in a few other ways too. One of these is by leveling up your overall level, and the other is by finding gear and equipping it to individual units. There are even more layers of complexity to this too, because you can also fuse items together to combine their effects. Figuring out what effects would help a specific unit the most isn’t always easy, but with a bit of thought and practice you’ll have the ultimate team in no time.

One aspect of Tales & Tactics I was really impressed by is the variety of unit types. Every single creature you buy has its own unique skill, from healing your weakest unit to stunning enemies so you can overwhelm them. Even the different ranged creatures all function differently, my prized orc threw its axe like a boomerang hitting multiple hexagons on its route, but I also had a more standard single target skeleton archer and a dragon that burned a cone of flame in front of it. Figuring out the best way to arrange all these very different units and which synergise well is really engaging, and is just another layer of strategy you’ll need to keep in mind if you want a run to last.

I haven’t really mentioned the Roguelike elements of Tales & Tactics yet, which are really important in ensuring the game isn’t just made up of back to back battles. In each run of Tales & Tactics you’ll start with a couple of hearts, and winning a fight will give you an extra heart up to a maximum of four. Losing a fight causes you to lose two hearts, and when they’re all gone that’s game over. The Roguelike randomness means the battles you face will be different each time too, and you also have branching paths to choose from with different shops, events and battles down each Slay the Spire esque fork in the road. You’ll only gain access to the best units, equipment and shop upgrades by choosing your route carefully, and with only a couple of losses standing between you and failure you’ll need all the advantages you can get.

In this demo version of the game I was limited to a single character to play as with no unlockable perks or progression available between runs. It’s clear that there’s plenty to unlock based on the menus (which I’m really looking forward to checking out) but at the time of writing I don’t know how this will work or how much each character and perk option will shake up the game.

Even in this very limited demo, Tales & Tactics has me really excited about getting stuck in to the world of auto battling. The Roguelike elements work really well with the strategic automatic battles, and the variety of units and unit types is really impressive. If you’ve always been a little intimidated by auto chess and its peers, then this might be the gateway drug you need to get hooked on the genre.

Tales & Tactics is coming to PC (via Steam) via early access on August 3rd.

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There are infinite possibilities for the setting of a video game, but for my money one of the most underutilised is prison. The idea of being trapped behind bars with no freedom is genuinely scary, and from a design perspective you’d think this very enclosed environment would be ideal. Despite this I could count the number of games I know set in the slammer on one hand, and even less of those are games I personally enjoyed. Thankfully Back to the Dawn is here to bring you all the jailhouse drama you could ever want, but with a colourful cast of animal characters.

Before you get started with prison life, you’ll be given a selection of characters and backstories to choose from. It’s here that Back to the Dawn reveals the RPG systems you’ll be working with, with attribute points and special skills all on offer based on your backstory. I opted to play as a fox reporter framed for drug smuggling while trying to uncover some of the mayor’s shady dealings, who had the charisma to make friends easily behind bars. After a brief bit of backstory, I was shoved into prison with a goal of proving my innocence before the mayor’s election.

Before you get any lofty ideas of sneaking around and finding information in out of bounds areas though, you need to get used to the prison schedule. After your initial headcount in the morning, you’re free to chat to your buddies or go and work in the laundry room for a pittance. Then it’s time for lunch (plain bread unless you bribe somebody) followed by time in the yard. Once you’ve found something to do outside and been suitably extorted by gangs, it’s time for your second meal of the day and a shower and TV time. Once you get the hang of all the things that happen in a day you’ll start to learn where is best place to spend your time to keep your mind and body happy, and might even figure out how to make any money you need.

Just like in day to day life, behind bars money makes the world go round. If you want to use the gym equipment to level up your stats, raise your spirits by watching a sitcom in the evening or buy some extra grub, you’ll need to give some cash to a guard or gang member for the privilege. The only legal way to do this is by working hard at prison jobs, but it’ll take an age to get enough to do anything fun. The gangs have plenty of use for a newcomer like you though, so it might be worth introducing yourself.

Getting in with the gangs might sound like an intimidating task, but each of the three running the prison were more than happy to get some help from a cunning fox like myself. For my first mission I had to take the rap for somebody and spend a day in solitary (which really did a number on my mental health) then my gang leader wanted help getting some loan money back. This involved intimidating a couple of weaker animals, and required some dice rolls on my part. After a couple of failed attempts and rerolls I had to leave it until another day, which made me wish I’d picked a more threatening character or pumped some iron beforehand. The way all the systems work together is really clever, and there seems to be plenty of ways you can use your best attributes to your advantage in this prison setting.

As well as spending time working for elephant mob bosses, you’ll also need to make time for some self care in Back to the Dawn. There are loads of little things you can do every day that give you a boost to your mind and a buff to a stat, as long as you have the required items to indulge. Brushing your teeth will give you six hours of boosted charisma, whereas showers are a great way to unwind and will keep you smelling fresh around anyone you need to impress. You even need to keep track of when you need to take a dump, because if you let that meter max out to 20 a stray fart could spell disaster for your jumpsuit and your reputation.

Once you’ve become suitably capable of handling basic hygiene and toilet needs, you’re probably ready to start finding your way to freedom. My first task in this endeavour was to raise the money to call my lawyer, then I needed to convince a guard to bump forward my visitation by stealing some evidence from a mob boss’s locked cabinet. On your desk you can craft items out of bits and bobs, and a couple of nails and paperclips later I had a lockpick at the ready. The story quests did a good job of teaching me how to play the game, and while doing them I also found a way to start taking my toilet apart in a bid for freedom.

There’s just so much to Back to the Dawn, with all sorts of routes through the game depending on how you want to play. For a demo build especially I was really interested in all the branching paths I could’ve taken, and there’s even a whole other character to play as. In my time with the game I never even started a fight with another prisoner (I figured my measly single point in strength made that a bad idea) and I’m sure there will be even more spicy situations waiting in the full game.

I can’t end this preview of Back to the Dawn without mentioning the visuals, which are breathtaking. It’s great to see the HD-2D aesthetic used outside of the usual fantasy setting, and the lighting bursting through the bars of the prison is truly a sight to behold.

Back to the Dawn is shaping up to be a fantastic prison life RPG, with a whole lot of deep systems to sink your teeth into and plenty of ways to spend your time in the slammer. I can’t wait to see what happens next to my unlucky fox protagonist, but I’m hopeful that with a few lockpicks and a bit of charisma he’ll have a happy ending later this year.

Back to the Dawn is planned for release in 2023.

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Saving the world is fine, but have you ever tried dating? There are loads of epic RPGs about saving the day by beating evil monsters, but sometimes we need a bit of balance in our gaming diet. For most people this is what makes the Persona series particularly special, a blend of battling otherworldly demons and teen drama all wrapped up in a delightful package of Japanese culture. Eternights has a similar combination of fighting and socialising at its core, but in a much more tumultuous setting.

The main character and his best friend Chani are just typical teenage boys. Their life consists of going to school and trying to romance girls, and because of the age we live in that means checking out a whole load of dating apps. This is how they’re spending the evening when the game starts, with idle banter about their favourite idols and a search for love or perhaps something seedier. After trying out a new app that asks users to take a personality test to match with love interests, our protagonist starts talking to a very forward girl who wants to meet up the next day. And so begins the drama.

The next day when on his way to his hot date, a huge wall bursts from below the earth’s crust and takes out a huge chunk of the city. This catastrophic event causes a whole lot of destruction, and also lines up with hordes of monsters appearing in the city and attacking people on site. You and Chani are immediately thrown into an underground bunker and told to hide until help arrives, but before that time comes things start to kick off again and you and some new allies need to escape to a new place of safety.

With monsters roaming the streets now, you’ll need a way to defend yourself. Fortunately that’s something you gain rather quickly, thanks to a girl in your dreams giving you the magic power to turn a recently amputated arm into a big old sword. You can use this to beat up any bad guys that stand in your way in the full on character action combat that Eternights has to offer.

Initially you’ll only have a single basic combo and a dodge roll to use against the monstrous hordes of Eternights, but honestly that’s all you really need. Much like in the Bayonetta games, if you time the roll just before getting hit you’ll activate a slow motion effect and be able to absolutely decimate the sluggish enemies for a decent chunk of time. Unlike Bayonetta though, the window of opportunity for activating this ability is massive, and means that you’ll spend almost all your time laughing at enemies moving at a snail’s pace while smashing their face in. On the one hand this is really satisfying, but it did ensure that the challenge of this ninety minute chunk of the game I played was fairly nonexistent.

After a few fights I was able to unlock a few more powers, like a big elemental attack that required nailing a quick time event to unleash its full potential. Using this attack on enemies of the appropriate type broke their defences and enabled me to take them down with ease, and once a few more of these are available I imagine the combat will really start to open up.

Alongside these power moves, I also unlocked some new attacks on a skill tree that were useful in certain situations. None of these were particularly ground-breaking, but having a lunge to close the gap on enemies, a ranged attack and a slow but massively damaging new weapon really did make the combat much more interesting. I also gained another magical teen who could provide me with some backup, with a cheeky heal as long as my assist meter was full. From this demo the combat was enjoyable if a little on the basic side, but if new abilities continue to unlock I don’t see myself getting bored with the full game.

Outside of combat you’ll spend your time chatting away to your allies, and depending on the conversation options you choose certain stats will go up. In the menus it looked like by focusing on certain types of responses you’d unlock new buffs to your character, but this didn’t happen for me in the demo. The dialogue is entertaining though, if a little on the blue side. In this opening section there were already two jokes made about masturbating into tissues, and one about hiding the weird porn that Chani and I stole from his grandad. You probably already know if this will grate on you, but from this early section I mainly just found it amusing.

Eternights combines engaging character action gameplay with Persona style socialising, and that’s a blend I can absolutely get behind. The combat in the early sections of the game is perfectly serviceable, and I’ll be interested to see how it progresses later on. If fighting demons and talking about porn sounds like something you’ll enjoy, then watch this space.

Eternights is coming to PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), PS4, and PlayStation 5 on September 21st, 2023.

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I don’t tend to say this lightly, but in just the short period of time the Galacticare preview lasted, it really impressed me. It’s not often you get to diagnose and treat a skin infection in a gigantic space whale roughly the size of a London bus named Baz – but in Galacticare, it’s fairly commonplace.

You play as the new Director of the titular Galacticare, a hospital that orbits a far future Earth and treats the illnesses and injuries in patients both human and, well, not. You’re aided by the CEO, Kora Orion, and HEAL, a sarcastic AI with a stiff British accent and a mean streak. Your job is to outfit and staff the hospital, treat patients, decorate and facilitate the various treatment rooms and save as many lives as you can. Which, sadly, won’t be all of them.

This is because far-future medicine is bat-shit crazy. From a skin treatment machine that dissolves a patient’s flesh then reapplies it sans-scars, to a machine that forcefully removes bones and replaces them with fresh ones, the few treatment machines available here were funny and, frankly, mildly terrifying.

The preview began with an empty room that requires a reception desk, some decoration, and a few treatment rooms. You’ll then hire staff, open the hospital, and set about the running of it. Your responsibilities include adding décor and entertainment, vending machines, toilets, seating areas, a staff lounge. Your doctors and patients can be human or “Odhe”, which are little grey men strongly suggested to be the species who visited Roswell, among other things. There are likely many other species, treatments and options in the full game, but the preview is limited to just a few.

Medi-bots whizz around the place and can be assigned to maintenance or cleaning, while you’ll need to constantly monitor the moods of both patients and staff to keep the place operating on an even keel. Placement of items and upgrading rooms or staff couldn’t be much simpler than it is, which is good, because there will be a hell of a lot to juggle in the full game.

The primary hospital setting acts like a sandbox hub, but Kora mentions heading to oversee a music festival somewhere in the next mission which strongly hints at more dynamic fieldwork in the full game. If that’s the case, sign me up right now.

A lot of Galacticare is rooted in humour – even when a machine malfunctions and kills a patient there’s something oddly humorous about it. When HEAL told me I need to pay my staff “due to capitalism”, I sniggered. Even the maladies affecting your patients like Star Warts and Jellification are quite funny in context. Also, strange aliens will occasionally infest your hospital, such as Vomitongues, which literally make people puke everywhere on contact, or Solarks, which deposit vast amounts of cash into your bank account when you catch them.

Now and then your doctors will level up, allowing you to increase their skills. This is important to keeping them happy, as pissed off staff will abandon your hospital and you’ll need to hire rookies to replace them. You can also unlock room upgrades, and some of your patients – like the aforementioned Baz – will give you unique gifts as thanks. Baz even comes back later to sell you some upgrades, items, and a magic space-gel that stabilises critical patients.

While the preview is limited, it hints at a level of creativity and fun in the main game that I absolutely cannot wait to experience. Like Two-Point Hospital, Galacticare splits its time perfectly between genuinely challenging management and tongue-in-cheek humour, but with a distinctly Red Dwarf-ish flavour that I can’t get enough of.

Galacticare is due to launch later this year, and I’m already looking for excuses to go and see the doctor.

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I play hundreds of video games every year, but it’s still hard to imagine how each one I play came to be a final product. The creativity and skill set needed to make the games that bring me so much joy is practically unfathomable, and I salute all the teams that come together to create countless gaming masterpieces every year. Even harder to comprehend is how a solo developer puts out a product, but Tomas Sala is becoming somewhat of a master of it. The Falconeer brought back air combat in a game that looked like it was made by a huge team of experts, and Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is shaping up to be a really interesting take on the humble city builder.

Set in the same universe as The Falconeer, Bulwark sees you playing as one of the factions trying to thrive in this world of chaos. Building in this environment isn’t easy though, there are threats lurking in all directions and the landscape is made pretty much entirely of mountains and ocean. Fortunately the focus of the building is centred on the verticality you’ll need to make an impressive cliffside base, so get ready to gather some materials and build some towers.

Putting a base together in Bulwark is simple enough to learn. You start the game with an outpost, and as long as you have some wood you can expand in any direction by placing a tower within range of it. Your towers are instantly connected by walkways, and as long as there’s places to work nearby they’ll be automatically populated by your citizens. This is important because the more people who live around your factories the more efficiently they produce materials.

There are only three resources you have to worry about while building your settlement, wood, stone and metal. What’s interesting about how these materials work in Bulwark is that you don’t really gather these materials, and instead have a meter that determines how much of them you can use from a specific location. The tower next to the wood mill will always have enough wood to expand with towers in every direction, but as you get further away you’ll only have enough wood if your web of towers have provided enough workers to boost production. This sounds complicated, but really all you need to do is make a big mesh of towers across the cliffs to expand.

Sometimes there just aren’t enough spots of land to get to the resources you need though, and you’ll need a dock to transport your wood, stone and metal. Once you’ve placed two docks where you need them you can assign one of your boats to the route, and it’ll take a specific material back and forth. Setting up the perfect chain of resources is really satisfying, especially when more and more properties and people move into your little cliffside utopia.

If you’re still struggling to get enough people to stay in your town to boost your industry, you can start upgrading your towers. The easiest way to do this is by gathering better resources. When you upgrade a pathetic wood tower into a stone or metal one all the surrounding walkways are automatically upgraded too, so it’s worth remembering to do it. Another way you can upgrade a tower is by adding extra foundations and balconies to the sides of it. This is easy enough to do by just moving your cursor to the edge of a tower and placing these handy ledges wherever you fancy. When you combine this with the fact you can place towers and paths almost anywhere you want, it really ensures that every settlement you build feels uniquely yours.

The final upgrade to any tower turns it into a command tower, which you can place a commander in. This is important, because the world isn’t always (read ever) a peaceful place in Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles. Your commanders pretty much manage themselves, often with hordes of dragons they command flying circles around the tower they inhabit. There’s not a lot more badass than watching these mythical beasts swarming down at an enemy ship, so make sure you recruit as many commanders as you can.

Base building is definitely the focus of Bulwark, but you also won’t get far in this world without exploring. Your handy scout balloon can fly anywhere you want it to, and find new resources and events about the map. It’s always worth checking out the question marks dotted about the map, because it’s often a commander or ship’s captain that’d be willing to join you as long as you don’t mind shaking up the global affairs going on in the background.

There are five main factions in the world of Bulwark, and depending on who you take in they’ll either get stronger, weaker or become aggressive to you. Everyone is a bit testy in this wet and wild world, and it’s easy to upset the wrong people and find yourself facing some hostiles. In the preview build I played I found these negotiations pretty tricks, and often ended up with everyone hating me, but hopefully with a bit more time, and possibly some slightly adapted onboarding, this won’t happen further down the line.

One aspect of Bulwark that I should mention is how its demo is going to work. There will be a constantly evolving demo that can be played by absolutely everyone, that will update with new content and balancing as development continues. This demo will continue to showcase how development is going, but also takes away the ability to save the game entirely. It’s a really cool idea that’ll allow people to test out if Bulwark is for them, so there’s really no excuse to ignore this lovely city builder.

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles has a lot of fantastic ideas, and it’ll be interesting to see how it develops going forward. The city building is really compelling, and every community you make feels uniquely yours. The solo Dev project is shaping up to be something special, and if you don’t believe me then get downloading the evolving demo.

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is “coming soon” to PC via Steam.

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For a lot of people, Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon will be their first foray into the series that, in many ways, FromSoftware was best known for. Most people either aren’t old enough, or don’t care about being cool enough to pretend they were there and into the games back then. And while some of us long for From to revisit 3D Dot Game Heroes, Armored Core is an interesting series to reboot, as those early games in the light of day are impenetrable, confusing, and more than a bit niche.

On the back of Elden Ring, and success after success, the question I kept musing upon is “why now?”, but after a hands off presentation from Yasunori Ogura (lead producer) and Astuo Yoshimura (producer), it seems pretty clear that FromSoftware wants to modernise while revolutionising, and get the Armored Core series the love it clearly craves.

This is “an action game where you fight with your own personal mech”, explains Ogura, before showing off the three pillars the team consider core to Armored Core 6. First up, the “massive and 3D level” design, then the “tactical combat system further expanded by parts and assembly”, and finally, the challenge that modern FromSoft is known for, which is probably why Ogura described this new Armored Core as “combining the fun of the AC series with the action of the current FromSoft games”.

Armored Core 6 looks smooth, with fast moving mechs, responsive controls that are reactive to inputs, and speedy combat. The mission I got to see was interesting, and there were elements of the action that changed depending on how you build your mech. You see, customising your mech changes via the arsenal is not just for fashion-Souls purposes, but more importantly to change how your mech controls, and indeed your play-style overall.

The maps do look absolutely huge, from desert biomes to icy landscapes, it’s a mix of natural terrain mixing with man-made buildings. There are industrial cityscapes and cavernous wilds, and FromSoft says the maps and how you traverse them couldn’t be done with a human character and that this level of exploration is “only possible in a mech game”.

But this is 2023 FromSoftware, the developer who has wowed fans for years with Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls, and Ogura explains that you will still need to observe, experiment, and repeat encounters to overcome the challenges. While assembly offers you a great deal of freedom, this experimentation of build might actually be how you end up winning a more difficult battle.

I got to see an early part of the game where you have to capture a large facility called Grid 086. This is “mega structure” where, essentially, the bad guys are hanging out. There is a large exterior to approach, but the map then gets tight as you go inside to the interior area.

Armored Core 6 is a reboot, so the intention is to follow the flow from those original concepts. You get a briefing video before each mission before a launch, and frankly, it looks stunning. You can fly with your boost right away (so long as you have enough energy to do it), and right away the sense of scale is almost overwhelming. Where in previous, more recent FromSoft titles, you’re faced with paths to travel, here, you can just dash off into the air in any direction you want.

While you need to get inside, you can take any route you fancy, all thanks to that mobility on offer. In my demo, the player just directly attacked enemies, flying straight over and engaging in combat. Missiles were flying around everywhere as the mech skidded across the metal grating, destroying foes.

After hacking a locked gate, the player was ambushed and has to stay calm, avoiding the multitude of attacks spraying at the mech, learning when to attack and dashing in and out to defeat the enemy. Repair kits restore health, and in the demo we saw, the player had 3, but more on that in a moment.

Inside, then, the claustrophobia is palpable. As a huge mech that barely fits inside, thankfully you have a scan function to reveal enemies so they can’t take you by surprise, making it almost feel like a stealth game… only one with a massive mech at your control.

As the demo progressed, the enemies seem to get more and more aggressive, though you have a shield to block the barrage of firepower, and can then dash in to attack when a moment appears.

What’s difficult to tell without playing it myself, is if it’s challenging, or if the person I saw playing was an expert. It really does seem like your build matters. At one point during the demo, the player was able to observe a group of enemies, and Ogura mentioned it was “too far to engage” with his current build. The ideas suddenly swirled around my head about partial sniper builds, and how you can tailor the mech combat to your needs.

But what of death? What of failure? Checkpoints are in the middle of the missions. Yes, checkpoints, in a FromSoftware title. You can even check your build and in the assembly menu, alter your loadout. Head, core, arms, legs: you can change them to be better suited for your current situation, and the numbers will change dramatically to show you a less visual idea of what your changes will be doing. There seems to be a huge amount of weapons, even at the early part of the game I saw. There are even supply points in some missions where you can grab new health kits.

After dying, the producer swapped out the mech’s legs to make it faster, and went to try again., which is when I got to see the “stagger” mechanic. If you are staggered you will receive heavy damage from attacks, but of course you can also stagger enemies, and this sounds vital to taking down stronger opponents. There’s an impact gauge at the top of the enemy (think Sekiro) that, once filled, makes them vulnerable and you can get in close and wreak havoc.

It all seems so fluid, and not like you’d think when hearing the word “mech”. At the end of the mission there are boss fights, like the one I saw against “Cinder” Carla who, wouldn’t you guess it, was a huge boss firing rockets from its body, with grinder arms you can destroy to help you out.

Really, I didn’t know what to expect before seeing it in action, but now I have, it’s clear why FromSoftware is going back to the series. There’s something there; perhaps there always was, but those worried the developer would be leaving the masocore roots behind probably shouldn’t be concerned, because everything I saw makes me think this could be a superb reinvention of the series, making Armored Core 6 a serious one to watch ahead of its August release.

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X on August 25th.

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According to my extensive research (by which I mean a three-minute excursion to Wiktionary), a Gord is “a medieval Slavonic fortified settlement, typically a group of wooden houses surrounded by a wall of earth and wood, with a palisade running along the top of the bulwark”. It’s ironic that despite being a European I could more easily tell you what a tepee or an igloo is. And frankly, it’s only a good thing that more and more developers are leaning into Slavic folklore and history when making games.

Recently we’ve seen titles like Blacktail explore the rich cultural mythology of ancient Europe, delving into legends we all remember just a little differently thanks to their bastardisation by mostly British or American storytellers. Gord is another title that seeks to shine a light on the lesser-celebrated Slavonic heritage, in the form of a survival settlement sim with no shortage of horror elements mixed in.

The two missions I played for the preview reminded me immediately of a dark fantasy version of Stranded: Alien Dawn. Success in Gord relies not just on being able to harvest resources quickly, but on maintaining the physical and mental health of your settlers. The early story follows the servants of a less-than-savoury monarch on a march through a wolf-haunted forest. While the two figures of authority, one a wizened druidic leader and the other an unlikeable little imp of a man, bicker and battle, you must take control of the few common travellers in your party.

Job one is to establish a base of operations, a protective bulwark that serves as the outer defences of your Gord. Having survived the dark woods and blood-hungry wolves, your people are more than eager to build a fence and get to work on a lumbermill, larder, and thatchery. You click on your individual settlers to assign them jobs, and they’ll carry them out exhaustion, collecting food, reeds and wood from both inside and beyond the settlement. The surrounding woods are dark, and you’ll often need to keep one character free as a guard to watch over the workers. The further they travel into the murky shadows, which replace the standard fog of war with a colourless film, the more dangerous it is.

This is a world of magic and monsters. Wolves, giant spiders, wendigos, evil spirits; even capricious gods, exist within the woods, and merely surviving encounters with them won’t be enough. Gord has intricate systems in place that force you to monitor not only your settlers’ physical wellbeing but also their mental health, as they can be deeply affected by ongoing trauma. This trauma can also affect those around them, requiring you to construct buildings like a meadhall and infirmary to help them cope.

Likewise, your people will have families, and slowly grow your population, which requires the gathering of more and more resources. A parent or sibling might be mauled to death by a wolf, or contract some disease from a roaming fey deity, and their state of mind and body will adversely affect their family members – especially if they die.

This kind of intricate human connection is core to Gord, which is why it reminds me at every turn of titles like RimWorld and Stranded. Sometimes you might do everything right, but a random event can set in motion a chain of entropy that sees you lose everything anyway. The two missions in the preview did a good job of introducing me to the broad strokes and mechanics of Gord, the emphasis on looking after my people despite the authority figures in the game either holding them in contempt or being too timid to protect them. It’s an interesting, complex, and multi-branching network of systems that seem almost incomprehensible at first but which will become clearer as you play, and lose, and make small steps of progress.

Although we didn’t see much of it in the preview, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are ways to combat the darkness, from training warriors and forging weapons and equipment, to inviting a witch to join your village who will bless you with temporary buffs against the evil denizens of the wilds. Ultimately Gord is a game about the people under your control, not necessarily the settlement itself. You won’t be using diplomacy to talk to neighbouring towns, and you won’t have to worry about other players or invading factions. The focus is on survival against all odds, and in that it’s almost refreshing.

To top it off, Gord is beautiful in a grimdark kind of way. It may be relentlessly bleak, but the use of light and shadow to illuminate detail is incredibly effective. There’s great attention to detail in the environment and buildings, and the way each of your settlers behaves differently hints at some complex wizardry under the hood. It’s impressive even at this early stage, and I’m looking forward to losing many hours to Gord’s gloomy world.

Gord is coming to PC on August 8th, 2023.

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It’s a great time of the year to be a gamer, what with countless press conferences making a ton of announcements that might not be on your radar yet. One such game I’d heard little about was The Devil Within: Satgat, but after playing a demo of the 2.5D side-scrolling action platformer, I now have it in my sights for the eventual release. Newcore Games has crafted a fluid and fast-paced title that exposes you to a lot of different enemies, yet you’re more than capable of dispatching them thanks to the wealth of upgrades and moves you’ll unlock as you play.

You play as Kim Rip, a member of the Royal Guard who is sent to destroy the Ebon Sting. You see, years before, this mysterious tower began supplying a mysterious substance known as crimson oil to the masses, eliminating sickness and bringing prosperity to all. However, an evil swept the land, and began turning people into demons possessed by its unnatural and ungodly power. Luckily, you’re a badass, and after the evil hits too close to home, you’re on a mission to wipe it out from existence.

To do that, you must you use trusty sword to decimate the creatures that stand in your way. Kim Rip can execute a range of deadly abilities with his blade. Ground and aerial attacks are effective, but you can use a more powerful slash of the sword to do more damage. Parrying plays a big role as well, especially when, if timed right, you can unleash a special attack that looks awesome and acts as a powerful riposte. You can also dash to avoid enemies in combat, and in my time with the demo, I unlocked a gun known as the Wanderer to attack from afar.

In the demo, I saw a range of different creatures, from rabid dogs, zombie-like creatures, and weird squid men, all with varying attack patterns. Some are shielded, and even after killing them, their shield takes on the form of a butterfly, and if you don’t manage to destroy it, can go and shield another enemy nearby. There’re also bosses, and one of them was a huge bug that kept spawning smaller versions of itself. It wasn’t too difficult to destroy, but the challenge came from stopping its mutant babies from becoming an army. There’s lots of variety in what you face, and each one makes you change up your approach.

As much as I enjoyed combat in The Devil Within: Satgat, some attacks can’t be stopped, so if you’re in the middle of a combo, you can’t stop and turn around to attack a flanking demon. It’s something that could be adjusted with further patches and work because, after all, this is an early sample of what to expect when it releases. Fighting is fluid, but switching focus isn’t. That’s why, at present, combat requires strategy, and while you’re not as punished as you would be in similar games, button-bashing isn’t recommended if you want the best results.

There’re various memory fragments scattered around the environment, which was a broken down city filled with rain-soaked streets and dilapidated buildings, giving you background to what is going on. You can also reach points that act as bonfires seen in Dark Souls, where your health can be replenished as can your medical supplies, as well as levelling up Kim Rip. When defeating enemies, you’ll gather engrams which are used to make you level up, unlocking new technique points to spend on your skill tree. There’re multiple options that range from improving vitality, increasing attack power, and skills across dashing, physical ability, and sword/gun manoeuvres.

Although this was only a small slice of The Devil Within: Satgat, I loved what I saw. The gameplay is satisfying and the enemies are varied and challenging. It’s also lovely to look at despite the monstrosities that have enveloped the land, and the story is pretty cool at this point. I’ll be back come release date (at present it’s some time in Q4 2023), ready to slay more demons and become one powerful warrior with myriad attacking opportunities at any given moment.

The Devil Within: Satgat will have a demo as part of Steam Next Fest, and is due later this year.

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There you are, slumped over in a junkyard, with no air left in your lungs and no life left in your body. You’re dead, yet there’s still a spark within you that clings to the forgotten memories of who you were and why you were killed in cold blood. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was a little gem on the Nintendo DS that was praised for its creativity and animation, and it’s now getting a HD remaster. We got to play a demo of it, and by all accounts it’s as bizarre as it ever was, but everyone loves a bit of crazy every now and again, right?

From what I’ve seen so far, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective has a vastly improved resolution, and what took place across two screens on the DS is now comfortably viewable on one screen. Even now over ten years later, it’s a wonderful puzzler that requires a bit of thinking in order to solve the challenges put before you. As Sissel, you have to find out why you were killed, who you were, and what is going on in the city. The thing is, you only have one night to do so.

Before you even start to begin working all of that out, you must save a young red-headed woman from the same fate you suffered. A hitman named Jeego is intent on gunning her down, and by using the environment, you must possess a whole manner of objects to stop that from happening. While there’s only one way to solve each puzzle, there’s still plenty of creativity in how you do it. I possessed a bicycle, a bowl of donuts, a projector, and Christmas-themed mobile with a flying Santa Claus in my time with it, all in the efforts to stop more people from dying.

It’s bonkers and shouldn’t work, but it does. As you play through, you’ll start to unravel some of the smaller mysteries within the demo, but it’s clear there’s a much bigger conspiracy at hand. Gameplay consists of moving around certain objects by activating ‘Trick Time,’ switching between the real world and the ghost world, and as long as you’re close enough to the next item, you’re able to switch into it. Certain actions can move objects to allow this to happen, all playing into the greater puzzle. Once possessed, you can switch back to the real world to activate it.

This can cause a distraction or reveal a new item to possess, offering various ways to move about and keep the puzzles from remaining repetitive. In certain circumstances, you can replay previous events in a ‘4 Minutes Before Death’ scenario that has you trying to beat the clock in order to change the fates of previously murdered characters, such as a fluffy little Pomeranian called Missile. These sections push you to think on your feet and are also more layered than I previously expected.

There’s also the ability to travel through phone lines to reach new areas, but at present these are scripted and don’t necessarily allow you to deviate, at least in the demo I played. If you’re stuck trying to work out who all the characters are and how they fit into the narrative, you can check out your journal to read excerpts about them, giving you the opportunity to catch your breath and remind you what the hell is going on. It’s a crazy story, but one that kept me interested.

The characters are interesting and the dialogue is occasionally funny, if a little silly. Coming from Shu Takumi, the creator of the Ace Attorney series, dialogue is expected to be a touch choppy and unintentionally humorous, but I loved it in its own quirky way. Bringing that pedigree of puzzle and game design over from the series is clear and present in every facet of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, and by the time the demo was over, I desperately wanted to keep on playing, which is a testament to how fun this game is, even now. It’s a bit heavy on dialogue, but the music is wonderful, and with a lot more to look forward to, I’ll be back and ready to play come final release.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox, and Switch on June 30th.

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Many people are excited for Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the latest in the mainline series, because for almost sixteen years, the Assassin’s Creed series has been entertaining the masses with its blend of stealth gameplay and historical settings. The series has evolved significantly since those initial games though, with a whole host of RPG elements added to the huge environments to make games that almost feel too vast.

After a couple of years focused solely on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, fans of the series have been interested in where the series will go next. Well Ubisoft is ready to unleash new details on a whole host of games in the series that are coming soon, so let’s dive in shall we?

Nexus VR

The Assassin’s Creed games have always been very immersive experiences, featuring plenty of ancient locales to explore and historic monuments to climb. Well what better a fit for the series than VR, especially since most of the games essentially take place in a sort of fictional VR anyway. Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR will put you in the shoes of fan favourite assassins from the series, and allow you to feel even more hands on with the stealth takedowns than ever. The idea of playing as my boy Ezio and flicking my wrist to murder a corrupt despot is ridiculously cool, so get your Quests ready to join in the fun.

Jade: mobile Assassin’s Creed

Next up we got to find out more about Assassin’s Creed Jade, which is a fully fledged Assassin’s Creed game coming to iOS and Android soon. Ubisoft clearly wants this game to be essential for fans of the series, because it looks fantastic. Set in 3rd century China (between the Odyssey and Origins games) you’ll be surrounded by Great Walls and gorgeous flora and fauna. It’s also the first Assassin’s Creed game that will allow you to customise the appearance of your character, which is an interesting twist. There’s a closed beta starting this summer, so look forward to more mobile murder news very soon.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage

These two games sound great, but really what we’re all eager to find out more about is the next mainline game in the series – Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Development on this year’s big Assassin’s Creed release is being handled by Ubisoft Bordeaux for the first time, with the support of eleven other studios with experience with the Creed.

The main message Ubisoft had to share about Assassin’s Creed Mirage is that this game is taking Assassin’s Creed back to its roots. Everything from the less RPG focused gameplay to the middle eastern setting really means this game feels like a modern update of the original Assassin’s Creed, with the main focus of the gameplay being assassinating targets and stealthing away.

Set in 9th century Baghdad, you’ll be thrust into an important moment in the history of the assassins. Our hero Basim starts out the game as a street thief, and while trying to figure out what’s going on with his nightmares ends up on a journey up the ranks of the assassins. It seems like a fairly tradition story for the series, but Ubisoft Bordeaux are promising plenty of historical figures to meet and some surprises along the way.

What really surprised me about the gameplay shown of Assassin’s Creed Mirage was how much it looked like the older games in the series. Initially it honestly felt like I was watching footage of a remote of one of the early entries in the series, and that seems to be the vibe they’re going for. Basim had a target to take out so parkoured along the roofs, dived into a bush and then wandered over to a group of people and blended in with them in classic AC style.

It wasn’t long before Basim was discovered though and everything kicked off, which meant we got to see the tools he has at his disposal. Again, none of these feel very revolutionary, it’s just classic stealth tools we all know and love. Smoke bombs will never go out of style, and hearing a guard shout “shit you little bastards” as his buddy fell to the floor with a blow dart in his neck was priceless.

Although very much an old school Assassin’s Creed experience, Mirage does have a few new tricks up its sleeve to shake up the gameplay. One of the coolest of these was his bird Enkidu, who you can control and use to tag enemies to make life easier. Basim also has some sort of time stopping ability that allows him to target multiple enemies within range of him and automatically teleport between them and slash them to death. This looked as awesome as it sounds, and will probably be really bloody useful.

There’s one final aspect of Assassin’s Creed Mirage that needs to be mentioned, and that’s the price. The aim of Mirage was to create a game with a more condensed scope, and because of that the price will be lower than you might expect. $50 will bag you Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and even the Ultimate edition will set you back less than most AAA games at $60. Ubisoft could have easily charged full price for this game, so it’s nice to know you’ll be spending a bit less on the 12th of October.

There’s a lot to unpack now for fans of the hidden blade, with three new Assassin’s Creed games coming soon. Whether you’re excited about playing a VR game, on mobile or the next big budget console release, there’s plenty of opportunities for stealth takedowns in your future.

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It’s always easy to compare games to each other. These comparisons don’t always mean the similarities are a bad thing, nor do they mean you know what to expect. In the case of The Crew Motorfest, it feels like Forza Horizon 5 in a lot of ways, however, it also has potential to rival, in my opinion, the greatest racing game in recent years. This is dependant on one huge factor, though. Yes, from what I played in the preview, Ubisoft looks to have nailed the balance between arcade and simulation, but it is in the events and opportunities in exploration where we’ll know for sure.

Regardless, The Crew Motorfest feels like a dream to play. Not only does the variety in vehicles I raced in feel different enough to challenge you on various terrain, they all offered superb handling and control. While the Lamborghinis zoomed around the tracks at breakneck speed, they were also tight around corners and responsive when turning. The street cars had great drift when tearing it up around the Japanese-inspired streets lit up in neon, and the jeeps across the forests all controlled as good as they possibly could.

In the preview of The Crew Motorfest, I spent a short amount of time with each of the vehicles on offer. This section was more of a taster of what the various vehicles were like and how they felt to race with. It’s too early to tell how they’ll control when taking them across Hawaii, but as of right now, I’m so excited to try them all out and understand what they’re capable of. Once I’d tested them out in a short tutorial, I was able to pick one of the playlists (featuring a dedicated car) and participate in a couple of races.

It was like picking a favourite child, but I decided to go with the Lamborghinis over the vintage cars. As much as I liked the style and class that exuded from them, the Lambos were like racing on air. While you can use nitro to reach great speeds, the acceleration felt perfect, and reaching higher speeds never impacted how much control I felt like I had over them. One of the courses had me reaching certain checkpoints within the time limit, and utilising nitro made all the difference as some sections weren’t as forgiving as others.

I only had 30 minutes with The Crew Motorfest, but it feels as though the influence of Forza is in Ubisoft’s latest is clear, and that’s a great thing because of how accessible it felt to players of all skill levels. I’m not the best racer, but Motorfest was so balanced in its racing that I never felt out of my depth. The visuals are stunning, and the environments within Hawaii were vastly different to one another, yet equally as impressive.

When my time was up, I just wanted to go again. I wanted to explore the island and see what else The Crew Motorfest had to offer. It’s a testament to how good the handling was, and how well-presented everything is. There’s so much more to see and do, but what wasn’t really on my radar before sits now firmly near the top. The playlists are going to give players plenty of opportunities to try out a range of events across the island, and there’re various unlockables and more to discover, including some popular American vehicles (I spied the DeLorean!!) set to arrive. Roll on release day, whenever that may be.

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I’ve never been a big fan of mobile gaming. It’s always been tricky to differentiate between the games made with a clear vision and ambition, and the games made to siphon your cash as quickly as possible. And often when you do manage to separate the two, there’s still significant overlap. But there are plenty around that at least offer a meaty chunk of content before they start stinging you, and surprisingly, The Division Resurgence looks set to fall into this category.

This is essentially The Division 1.5, slotting in-between the two mainstream games in terms of story and lore. It comes after the events of the original, and reintroduces a handful of characters. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them “fan-favourites”, but it’s nice to see certain faces again if you played the original way back when.

At brass tacks level, it plays the same as the main games. It’s a third-person cover shooter that sees you fight your way through a ravaged New York City, fighting down the same old gangs in the same old streets. The “Resurgence” part of the title is the giveaway here: everything you did in the first game has kind of been undone, all the snake-heads you severed have grown back, and it’s up to you to go out and machete them all off again.

It will also feature pretty much all the content of the base release, including the PvP Conflict mode and the Dark Zone, The Division‘s PvPvE mode that gave the original game its legs for quite some time. Both modes will work the same as they did before, with dedicated instances for both and their own line of rewards for taking part.

I played through the first five story missions in the preview build, and took care of a few side missions along the way and it was satisfying to be back in this world. The shooting feels just as smooth as it did before, with a satisfying zip and crackle when headshots drop an enemy or you stich a line of body shots across some ruffian’s windbreaker.

That The Division Resurgence has a full campaign as well as open world gameplay is both welcome and encouraging. With the added emphasis on cosmetic microtransactions, this could easily have been a PvP-focused cash grab, but there’s actually been some work put into it. The cover system is smooth, and shooting feels precise and responsive.

In the interest of science I played with the touchscreen controls for as long as I could. I really don’t enjoy having my massive thumbs obscuring half my screen – but then I was playing on an Oppo Reno-8 which is hardly a gaming phone. The 6.43 inch screen doesn’t lend itself to a UI that’s half-covered with prompts and touch buttons. I switched to my Gamesir X2-36 Bluetooth controller after about half an hour and the experience rapidly improved.

Played like this, it might as well have been any handheld game on a Switch or Steam Deck – though with some fairly massive graphical concessions. Again, my phone isn’t built for gaming so I was thankful I could run it so smoothly on Medium settings. On a low/mid-range phone the environments are covered in low-detail textures, the colours are too bright with very little shading, and there was horrendous texture pop-in throughout. That said, it’s a work in progress, and a more powerful device would likely yield better results for sure.

There were a few noticeable issues though, and not all technical. Your “partner” for the first few missions is Agent Kelly, one of those no-nonsense characters that the writers couldn’t decide on a personality for. She’s either rude to the point of frustration or offering to buy you a cold one, and her repeated cries of “Found some cover!” made it fortunate that I couldn’t turn around and shoot her myself.

Read our interview with The Division 2 creative director

In between missions there’s the standard Division hub where you can buy and sell gear, upgrade your equipment, and access your stash. This is very much The Division all over again and anyone familiar with the franchise will feel right at home. You can jump directly to a mission at any time from the map screen, too, which is convenient, and load times are surprisingly tight.

The Division Resurgence lacks the decayed beauty of the larger games, but loses little of the gameplay flavour. The loot system remains almost unchanged, with an onus on collecting sets for the bonuses they offer, and upgrading to succeed. It is very much the game you played before, with a different selection of Specialities but the same familiar gameplay nestled within each. After character creation I chose Vanguard, a class that carries a section of deployable cover, but I rarely found a use for it as there’s cover pretty much everywhere. Perhaps the Demolitionist would be more up my street.

Ubisoft have yet to show the cash shop in full swing so I can’t speak to prices or what it will sell, but at the very least the gameplay offers something for fans of the franchise to get their teeth into without MTX. It’s early days, but getting me interested in a mobile game is always a tough sell, and I came away from The Division: Resurgence at least looking forward to playing more.

The Division Resurgence is slated to release on iOS and Android in 2023.

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Gunfire Games’ Soulslike title Remnant: From The Ashes was a big hit back in 2019 with its skilful blend of gunplay, aptly described in a 9/10 write up as “if Bloodborne, Diablo, and Destiny had a baby”. Four years in gestation, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to jet across to beautiful Amsterdam and visit Gearbox to play the entertaining and hugely promising sequel, with several hours of hands-on gameplay and an interview with Gunfire and Remnant 2 director David Adams.

Remnant 2 places you in the role of human survivors plunged into a series of terrifying worlds, battling a nightmarish gallery of deadly beasts, deity-like bosses, and uncovering an absolutely mind blowing amount of secrets, hidden pathways, puzzles, and collectibles.

My adventure began in an almost The Last of Us fashion, after creating my avatar from a number of options, entering an underground area of a post-apocalyptic wasteland teeming with horrific alien goo, the air thick with gaseous spores. Pretty quickly the enemies appear and the gunplay kicks in, a mixture of furious ranged and melee combat with some tricky enemy movement and attack patterns and sense of claustrophobia.

Once through the opening sequence, I was able to enter a safe zone which doubles up as the main hub for the game. With plenty of storyline-advancing characters, you are then drip-fed the various abilities, vendors, and skills trees that enable you to go properly equipped in the many biomes that you will have to fight your way through. There are multiple classes (or Archetypes) to choose from depending on how you fancy experiencing the game, or building an effective team if playing in multiplayer. Each of these has their own custom gear, three bespoke weapons and their own signature special move or Trait. Best of all, each of the Archetypes have their own completely unique skills and perks with progression unlocked by levelling up.

There are five types of perks on offer. Prime affects the core fundamentals of your Archetype style; Damage does what it says on the tin; Team affects your whole party; Utility gives tech boosts, whilst Relic alters the function of using an in-game Relic item.

The Archetypes are all really varied. Gunslinger is, quite obviously, a weapons expert with a bunch of perks that are based around the use of ordnance, such as temporary infinite ammo, being able to reload faster, and even sharing the love amongst your team with the Posse Up perk that gives you pals increased ammo pickup percentages.

Challenger is the resident tank class, with some crazy perks that enable such delights as being able to literally survive death, and generate enough brute force and power that they are comfortably the most potentially deadly of the Archetypes, with an equal ability to become surprisingly damage resistant.

Handler was always was the Archetype I enjoyed playing with the most. A support class that employs a canine pal to perform all manner of functions, whether that is distracting enemies, reviving you and your team mates, or using intimidation tactics to scare foes and increase damage. The dog follows you everywhere with all the growling, whimpering and dog-related sounds constantly ringing in your ears. It’s great fun.

The procedurally generated worlds are bonkers. You will traverse dizzying climbs through Imperial Gardens, carve a way through dense jungles, and enter creepy dusty catacombs. There are some superb stylistic choices with clear influences from works of fantasy and sci-fi, including Fey mythology, faeries and the likes of Nimue – better known as the Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legend. There are multiple nods to Guillermo Del Toro’s masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth, but also demonic bosses that were seemingly plucked straight from Hell. I was particularly blown away by the multi-phase Legion boss which needs to be seen to be believed. There are so many secrets and paths to seek and explore. Every single playthrough can present brand new scenarios, puzzles, gear, and nooks and crannies to explore.

I enjoyed playing through the game solo, but I have to say Remnant 2 really comes into its own in multiplayer. Working as a team feels fun the same way as I enjoyed the camaraderie of Left 4 Dead back in the day, with the different Archetypes enabling you to strike a balance between carnage and support. You can enter into another gamer’s run-through and ostensibly snaffle up items and meet storyline challenges and puzzles that you would be unable to encounter in your own run.

Everything is bigger and better in Remnant 2, with increased verticality, larger worlds, more biodiversity, and near endless replayability promised. The gunplay and movement is much improved from the original, and the flora and fauna (and robots) that you have to take down are more fantastical, bigger, badder and more challenging than ever. The feel of combat and the physics engine are tangible, with your avatar being regularly thrown around balletically by explosions and attacks, and there’s a lovely meaty feel to the shooting and melee attacks. It is also hugely challenging and the huge amount of gear and items to find, as well as the diverse skills you can unlock, mean that this is going to be a compulsive and addictive proposition. Just be careful with the Hardcore mode. I watched a few other bods playing on this setting and it looks underpant-soilingly nails.

It was real pleasure to play this arcane belter and it is immediately apparent just from one day with it that this is going to be a huge hit with fans of the original, and will ensnare plenty of new fans too – myself included.

Remnant 2 is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X on July 25th. Impressions based on hands-on time in Amsterdam, flights and accommodation were paid for by Gearbox.

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It isn’t every day you get a chance to speak to someone with a CV like David Adams of Gunfire Games, the Austin, TX based veteran designer of the classic Darksiders series, not to mention ace action RPG shooter Remnant: From the Ashes, which scooped a handsome 9/10 review score on this very site. And that brings me to the reason I ended up in the swanky Gearbox offices in Amsterdam, where not only did I get a hands-on with the hugely enjoyable Remnant 2, but a chat with the affable Texan.

The first thing I wanted to find out, perhaps a tad selfishly, was how Adams would sell this one to someone not particularly au-fait with the kind of Souls-like, procedurally generated action it contains.

“I think that what I like about the game, is it kind of combines two things. If you like really good action games, with cool, fantastic enemies, then it definitely delivers on that front. There is a lot of really tight action, and it is a lot of fun in co-op. It is also a really good exploration game. There are a lot of secrets hidden in the world, and the world is randomised – you may have noticed that some people (gestures towards the room of media playing the game) have different worlds that they are playing in, even from the get go!”

Fresh from playing the game for a solid hour, one of the things I noticed were the epic and at times quite disturbing boss fights. I told our Dave that I was a big fan of confronting any kind of vile, Lovecraftian beasts. “So are we!” was his immediate retort. Which led me to ask just what kind of stuff had influenced the production of the game.

“Well, one of the cool things is the game structure. We can explore different worlds. One of the worlds is inspired by Pan’s Labyrinth”- I immediately had to stop him there, as Del Toro’s horror fantasy masterpiece is among my favourite movies of all time, and I had clocked a decidedly fawn-like character early doors. “It was definitely an influence. There is another world inspired by Victorian England, and Fey mythology. One of the NPCs is Nimue, who is better known as the Lady of the Lake. In the first game we had a stage that was a mixture of Dune and Mad Max.”

In terms of what games the Remnant 2 team themselves like to play, it seems we have a bit in common not just movies-wise but in video games too. “I like adventure games. I like Zelda. As you can see from Darksiders which is basically a Zelda game. I love Elden Ring, the Souls games, any game with any sense of exploration. I love Fallout, again because it is a world I can explore and find cool stuff in.”

Going back to the matter at hand, Remnant II is procedurally generated, which means that no two playthroughs will be the same, and ostensibly you could play for weeks before there is any real noticeable repetition. “I like to call it random reshuffle”, Adams reveals. “Even though it is randomised, every act in the game is handcrafted. I think sometimes that procedurally generated games can sometimes start to get really repetitive, because it really is very algorithmic. But in this case all of the little chunks have been handcrafted. NPCs, bosses and major points of interest you encounter – what the system does is sort of rearranges it all. Even the storylines, and the route through the storyline is changed! Even if two people both went to the same world, for example you both went to the jungle world, you may encounter two entirely different storylines just within that world.”

Like most people of my age, I dabbled with online gaming, but have FPS-fan kids, and the excellent co-op capabilities of Remnant 2 offers me the chance to dip my toe back in, as my kids and friends would love this one. “It’s definitely cool in co-op” David enthused. “All the items in the game are randomised, there are a ton of secrets, and although it comes across as a straightforward action game on the surface, there are plenty of opportunities to go off the beaten path. So if you are playing with someone else – such as one of your kids, you have an incentive to enter their world, as there may be loads of items and secrets in there that you may not be able to get in your game. It is a really fun multiplayer experience, as you can jump into someone else’s game and you get a completely different set of things!”

Adams explained that “We are right at the end now, I mean, Summer is the plan and I think we are going to announce the release date soon”, and he seemed genuinely pleased that I went away looking forward to play more.

Remnant 2 is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X on July 25th. Impressions and interview based on hands-on time in Amsterdam, flights and accommodation were paid for by Gearbox.

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It’s a weird time for us all on the podcast right now, because it’s halfway between the biggest games of the year, and the biggest news cycle of the year, with a Summer of Games on the way. That said, maybe we can find out why Chris Hyde and Lyle were both absent during the same week after all. Maybe the rumours are true and they secretly get on really well?

Anyway, Chris has played some Street Fighter 6, and if you’re reading this and it hasn’t changed, so has Lyle: praise be! Lyle has also been playing We Love Katamari Reroll+ Royal Reverie and Bleak Sword DX, but really all anyone wants to discuss is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

You can contact us to get your listener questions on the podcast via our Discord, but if you upgrade to become a Patreon member (for £1/$1) you’ll gain access to loads of other channels and exclusive an exclusive bonus podcast. You can also send us questions via @GodisaGeek on Twitter, or even email podcasts@godisageek.com if you fancy doing things old school.

Download the audio MP3, here.

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Thanks for listening as always, and come say hi in the live chat next time perhaps? We record the podcast live on Thursdays, usually at  about 5-6pm UK time, so join us there on Twitch or YouTube, if you can! Why not? It’s free!

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At a recent preview event for THQ Nordic, I had the pleasure of seeing an unannounced game set on board a train. Nope, there’s no track-building or managing a train station and subsequent trade routes. Instead, it tells the tale of the Czechoslovak Legion following the end of World War I, who are stuck in a civil war trying to find their way home on board an armoured train. From what I saw, Last Train Home looks excellent. From the unrelenting realism of the visuals and representation of conflict to the variety in gameplay, I had a great feeling that this is going to be something special.

The Great War is over – the fight continues. Command a legion of soldiers, desperately trying to make their way home amidst the chaos of civil war. Lead them through the unforgiving wilderness onboard an armored train. Manage your crew and resources and try to survive.

In terms of the story, Last Train Home is inspired by real history, and in the presentation we learned a lot about how the game was made. Ashborne Games has put a lot of care into dealing with the delicate nature of war and survival, and in what we saw this is abundantly clear. Every character has a name and a history, instead of just being a soldier controlled by AI that becomes lost in the balance of survival and death. It’ll add a personal touch to the decisions you’ll make when playing, especially when you see how the mechanics work.

One of the main missions I witnessed in Last Train Home saw the soldiers try and make their way through the dangerous forests of Siberia. You can control groups of soldiers at a time, or individually, and give them various tasks based on their class. Infantrymen will provide firepower to take out small pockets of resistance, while medics can stay back and provide aid to injured soldiers. You can lob grenades, spy on nearby camps to find safe spots or hidden dangers, and more. It looked fluid, and taking control of your men looked straightforward enough, even when encountering the enemy.

Between the real-time missions, you’ll travel across Russia onboard an armoured train. Each compartment or carriage has a particular feature, where soldiers can be healed up ready to return to battle, and prepare in other ways for what lies ahead. Watching the train move through the country looked rather cathartic, and even when not fighting for your life, there’re moments when you can choose to visit nearby stores for supplies or talk to locals. A fair amount of variety in what you can do was shown off during the presentation, and while it gave off This War of Mine vibes, it had much more going on.

Despite not getting to play Last Train Home, it’s clear from hearing how passionately the developers were talking about it and the footage that was shown off, we’re in for something special. The real-time skirmishes look intense but also engrossing, and the variety of options, whether engaging with the enemy or exploring the unforgiving lands, will provide plenty of ways to approach any given scenario. I’m excited to learn more about the game over the coming months, but as of right now, this has plenty of potential to be great.

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The makers of Oblivion Override have billed it as “Hades meets Megaman”, which is pretty accurate as descriptions go. But while it certainly wears Hades’ coat and Megaman’s hat, the entire rest of its wardrobe used to belong to Dead Cells.

It’s set in one of those vaguely post-apocalyptic worlds where everything is a junkyard, robots have taken over, and only a handful of good robots, sassy mechanics, and grumpy scientists can save the day. What we’re saving the day from isn’t entirely obvious at this point, either. As Oblivion Override heads into early access, it does so with very little superfluity – and by superfluity I mean narrative context.

You play as Crimson, at least initially, a robotic warrior with more than a hint of Dead Cells’ Beheaded. It’s incredibly stylish, looks and sounds absolutely beautiful, and plays like a fluid, responsive dream. The only issue at this point is that it’s brick hard and doesn’t give two shits for your tears.

As Crimson, you venture out into themed areas from a central hub, again much like Dead Cells. Stages consist of a multi-branching level connected by fast-travel teleporters, and culminate in a boss fight – and it’s the boss fights that create both a massive skill barrier and Oblivion Override’s only real frustration.

The first one, against a giant metal titan, is insanely hard. And not because of the mechanics necessarily. In fact, anyone used to relying on quick reflexes, hit and run attacks, and pattern recognition will be able to figure out the procedure quickly enough (You see? It’s even wearing Dead Cells’ underwear). The problem is how much health the boss has, how much damage it does, and the fact that its attacks have very little wind up and can be almost impossible to dodge due to their effective range.

But even that you could probably overcome, if it wasn’t for the fact that Oblivion Override demands an almost faultless performance. See, there are no heals. No potions or refill checkpoints. You play the entire stage and the boss fight with one health bar, and you can only top it up with laughably small increments from certain skills that may or may not become available in a given run.

After earning enough nanites you can hold the left trigger to upgrade Crimson, unlocking as many buffs as you can afford from a Hades-style menu. These may increase your damage output, add special effects to attacks, or buff you with the aforementioned “heals” that are so slight you may as well not bother.

What makes it more frustrating is that the level before the boss is so jaw-slackeningly good. The combat is amazing. It’s fast, liquid, brutally responsive. There’s a good selection of weapons that will randomise with each run (as does the level), and you can unlock them using a currency called Script. You buy them from Nico, a vendor who’s entirely robotic except her face and boobs, naturally, and they come in some wonderful shapes. My favorite is the Wok and Roll, an actual repurposed wok and noodle spoon combo that does superfast damage.

After each run, fail or not, you can upgrade Crimson with permanent buffs. Again though, these are tiny. Plus 5 damage, or plus 10 health when your pool is already 500 and enemies hit you for 30 to 60 damage at a time. As with Hades, the story seems to persist even with failure, as vendors you meet in the world will come back to the hub when you next respawn.

Unlike Dead Cells, though, you begin with a host of Metroidvania-style traversal moves already unlocked. You can double-jump, run up walls, and dash in the four primary directions which allow you to reach higher levels and comes with free i-frames for avoiding traps and enemy attacks.

It’s far too early to fully judge Oblivion Override. As it heads into early access there are balancing issues I hope the devs address, but beyond that it’s just a gorgeous hack and smash adventure with fantastic sound design and some incredible combat animation. Of course, maybe the steep difficulty is working as intended, but as with all early access titles, time will tell.

Oblivion Override enters Steam early access on June 14.

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Anyone who plays a lot of games – and I mean a lot of games, not just a few games a lot of the time – will likely tell you that it’s rare to see anything that feels really unique. Developers chase trends for a reason, the upshot of which is that over a given period a lot of new releases will borrow heavily from one another or from existing IP, and it all begins to feel like a rich soup cooked in a really big pot. Satisfying at first, certainly tasty, but there’s so much of it that it will have started to go off by the time you’re halfway through the French stick. Also, the idea that “unique” always means “good” can be a bit of a misconception. A statement which needs clarifying before I fully give the game away about Laika: Aged Through Blood.

I’ve been playing a preview build of this game and it’s left me with a very skewed set of conflicting opinions. For one, I absolutely know that this will appeal to plenty of people out there. It’s a post-apocalyptic, motorcycle-based side scrolling adventure featuring a cast of highly evolved mammals struggling to survive in a harsh, Mad Max-style world lorded over by the Birds, anthropomorphic gulls and crows. From the screenshots I was expecting a plucky protagonist quick with a quip, and a fairly standard story.

This illusion was shattered when, in the first few minutes, you come across one of your friends, a cute dog named Poochie, crucified in his own entrails. You’ll later meet Jakob, Poochie’s companion, who explains in detail exactly what the Birds did to him before they killed him. It was incredibly unsettling, as is the little whimper Laika gives when she’s killed (she’s a coyote, by the way), or the way enemies kind of burst in balloons of blood and feathers when you kill them.

I don’t mind violence in games. In fact, most games I play are built on a core of violence and explosions. I also get that this is a deliberate choice for Laika: Aged Through Blood. But cut with the cartoony Western / cutesy animals aesthetic it just made me feel really uneasy. Unfortunately, the gameplay didn’t do an awful lot to balance it out.

The core concept of Laika is that you have a motorcycle, and can use it as both a vehicle and a shield. Levels are laid out like BMX tracks, with huge ramps to trick off and steep drops to gather speed. Holding the left trigger accelerates the bike, while holding X will perform a drift turn so that you can head back to the left of the screen. The bike is bulletproof, so timing a drift right can deflect bullets, and position yourself during jumps makes you impervious to gunfire. You can also hold down the right trigger to activate Bullet Time and line up your next shot, which is often essential, as you barely have time to think when there’s more than one enemy firing at you and you’re in the middle of a jump.

And this is my original point: there’s no doubt people reading this who are super excited to play it just based on the vehicular combat and gratuitous animal torture, and that’s fine, you weirdos. But I also found Laika to be incredibly frustrating. There are multiple checkpoints, and so you never have to reply much on death, but the slightest mistake will see you shot, and even if Laika brushes her cute foxy nose against the ground, regardless of speed, she’ll explode like a water balloon and you’ll need to replay that section. As so much of it is skin-of-the-teeth hard, this can be an issue.

Again, though, the hardcore aspect will appeal to many – and I’d even say the levels have a speed run quality to them, as so much of it is about timing, positioning and forward-thinking. Until the boss fight that is. A massive machine known as the Hundred Hungry Beaks must be destroyed before you can go home and bury your friend, and it’s both simple and tedious. All you really have to do is ramp off it over and over again, shooting out its heads from above as you do. Unfortunately, your gun only holds two rounds and so even if you land every one you’ll be ramping off it about ten times or more.

Weirdly, upon killing the boss, the screen becomes saturated in a red mist that makes it almost impossible to see what’s going on and – even though the machine is destroyed – you have to do the entire fight again, without being able to see its health bar. I literally have no idea why this is a thing, but it turned a boring fight in to two boring fights and I really can’t understand the thinking behind it.

It may well be story-related, but either way, after that you return to the Village, a hub in the desert where you live with your little doggy community and Puppy, your daughter. And it’s here that my mind really started to boggle. Firstly, you’ll need to hold the trigger down and ride through the entire opening credits, which is just Laika riding to the left while a (admittedly beautiful) song plays over it. It’s a very odd sequence, though, that seems to want to evoke Marston’s ride home from Red Dead Redemption, but which does it at the wrong end of the story and with nothing worth looking at while you do it.

When you get to the hub, Laika walks so incredibly slowly and everything is so far apart that I found myself getting actually angry. It’s as if the developers of Laika: Aged Through Blood are deliberately trying to push the player’s patience. The world is bleak, fine, but the gameplay doesn’t have to be.

This is only a preview build, though, and there’s much more to Laika, for sure. The story is intriguing, hinting at some ancient power Laika possesses which will be revealed later in the story. And the world itself has potential, if you’re a fan of such grimdark universes. But right now it feels like Laika: Aged Through Blood is unique for some of the wrong reasons. The vehicular combat is great, if a little frustratingly hard, but the framework around just doesn’t quite hold up.

Laika: Aged Through Blood is coming to PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2023.

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Station to Station is about as relaxing a railway sim as I’ve ever played. It’s a cute little voxel-art game that tasks you with creating a rail network connecting towns and villages with various production nodes, and it’s about as far from something like Railroad Tycoon as it’s possible to be within the same genre. If anything it’s closer to something like Little Cities, only not VR.

You don’t have to worry about maintaining staff or appeasing commuters; you don’t even have to worry too much about which trains to set on your shiny new rails in the demo I played. Yes, you can choose between light and heavy freight cars, but that’s about it. Station to Station is more concerned with the broad strokes, laying tracks and making sure tiny imaginary people get their bread and milk in the morning.

It’s a world that doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t really need to. Each level begins with a blank map rendered in muted colours. Almost immediately, a selection of little buildings will plonk down onto the landscape and you’ll be given pretty simple instructions: follow the rules of supply and demand, and give the people what they need.

Hitting the space bar will spawn a station which you must place adjacent to a building. The first level teaches you the fundamentals, as you then create track to connect this station to the next. Ideally, if you have a wheat farm, it needs to be connected to a flour mill, and then that to a bakery. When you start to spawn towns, you’ll need to find a way to supply it with everything it needs. Every time you complete a working track, a little bloom of colour brightens the area.

Each level is a kind of logic puzzle, though there’s nothing hugely taxing. You have limited money, but can play special cards to reduce the cost of rails and bridges, or transform a light freight train into a heavy one for free. It’s nothing particularly complex, though the preview only contained 3 levels and it may become more in-depth later.

The fact that there’s no destroy or bulldoze option is frustrating, though. If you make a mistake, you’re stuck with it, meaning repeated errors will eventually lead to a lack of money and a need to restart. More than once, the next set of buildings included on that landed on a stretch of track I’d already built. While the train ghosted right through it, I couldn’t then connect the building to another track or station.

You can only earn more money by creating working supply lines, and those that satisfy two sets of demands at once are more lucrative. Unfortunately you don’t earn money over time, and each payment is a one-off. Again, this encourages you to think of each level as a self-contained puzzle, often with secondary objectives such as finishing with a certain amount of money in the bank.

It’s is a very chill game, though. There are elements of frustration, but they’re minor because you’re not on a time limit or under any pressure, and unlike many management sims there are no constant pop-ups demanding you service this or deal with that. I’ve only seen three levels so far, and while they were pleasant enough and certainly gorgeous, there doesn’t appear to be an awful lot to Station to Station.

Obviously this may change at launch, and even if it doesn’t, it’s kind of the point anyway. Station to Station isn’t intended to be a frantic, stress-filled challenge, but rather a chill, relaxing experience and in that respect it definitely aims to deliver on time.

Station to Station is coming to PC in 2023.

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When I first jumped into Ripout, it felt like a standard FPS that looked like many science fiction-inspired titles, and while there’re elements of DOOM and the Alien franchise littered throughout the preview I played, I appreciated how it was trying to do something different. The concept is simple, and while it’s not without its problems, there’s a strong foundation for the future of it to be built on. You choose to visit different abandoned ships to complete objectives, all while taking out the monsters that lurk in the shadows, gaining upgrades in the process.

My main concern is the repetition of these tasks, and how many of the ships look similar. They’re dark, limited in detail, with objectives that all follow a similar formula. Maybe this is down to the procedural nature of their design. The atmosphere is great, though, and wandering around blood-soaked hallways adds to the tension, yet it’s the difficulty in fighting the aliens where you’ll likely to struggle. The gameplay is responsive enough, and the gunplay is a strong feature, but they take ages to kill.

When you see one of the larger creatures come towards you, you better hope you’ve got enough distance between you. If you get trapped in a corner, no amount of bullets seem to be enough to destroy them, and you’ll end up dead. You can revive yourself once, but after that the fear factor kicks in, and if you die, it’s back to the drawing board without any reward for your efforts. Ripout has plenty of potential, but these issues do factor into your enjoyment.

If Ripout manages to balance the difficulty of enemy encounters, there’ll be a lot more fun to be had. I’ve been playing FPS titles for decades and I’m certainly no stranger to a challenge, but with a lack of impressive weapons from the get go, these fights feel generic and a little dull. Hopefully, there will be some new environments to explore, and even a little lighting here and there will go a long way into making each run feel different.

We’re in the early stages here, and I can see plenty of potential going forward. One of the coolest features is the organic appendage on your weapon that can be launched at enemies. Also, blowing off limbs and other body parts when shooting is something I liked. That’s what makes it frustrating. There are some strong features at the moment, but it’s let down by its repetition at this stage. I have no doubt that these issues are currently being remedied, and I’ll gladly play more when the full game is released.

I didn’t get chance to play with friends in the co-op mode, but I can imagine this will help to alleviate the repetitive nature of Ripout. Exploring derelict ships together will be much more exciting with others as long as some of the problems at this stage are addressed. We’ll be sure to cover when the game’s released, and despite a handful of concerns at this stage, there’s still plenty to like, especially the way the guns feel to shoot.

Ripout is coming to PC in 2023.

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One of the indie games that really got me excited for where gaming was heading back in 2013 was Papers, Please. The idea of a video game where you played as an immigration officer checking paperwork as fast as possible blew my mind, but it also stressed me the hell out. There aren’t a whole lot of games that have attempted to recapture the glory of Arstotzka, and as upsetting as that is, my blood pressure sure appreciates it. Thankfully Lil’ Guardsman is here to put that border patrol action back in our lives, but with a fantasy comedy twist.

Our hero Lil is just a child living her life in The Sprawl, whose father happens to be the head castle guardsman. One morning he asks Lil if she can take over his job for the day so he can go to the pub and bet on sports, and one tutorial later you’ll be sat at his desk and interrogating the fantasy races that want to enter the town. Not everyone is allowed through your gates, and you’ll need to use all your wits and guardsman tools to make sure you keep the riff raff out.

The only way to know who is welcome in The Sprawl is to look at The Writ and follow the rules it contains. In this demo (which featured one shift in the guard booth) I had to keep an eye out for anyone preparing to make a speech at the mages guild, people with funny names and grandma drug smugglers. It wasn’t too hard to spot the suspicious people, especially once I started using everything in my office to help out.

For each person who tries to get into the city you can perform three actions to try and suss them out. The most simple of these is asking them why they need to enter, and then either trusting their answer, doubting it or making fun of them to find out more. You can also call on your three advisors using the telephone, although admittedly the goofy jester is never particularly helpful. Once you’ve got a lead it’s then time to whip out one of your tools and find out more before making your decision.

Thanks to the less grounded setting of Lil’ Guardsman, you have a nice variety of outlandish contraptions to use when you’re in a pickle. If you think someone is lying you can spritz them with truth serum, if you want to check for any hidden items you can whip out the metal detector and if you think someone needs reprimanding immediately you can grab your whip and get to it. My favourite interaction involving the tools though was with a cyclops mother picking up her kids from her ex husband, who had a drawing made of incomprehensible squiggles to show me. With one flash of my decoder ring I was able to find a hidden message in the picture that revealed their opinion of their new stepmother, and then let their mama through the checkpoint to save her kids immediately. The different ways you can probe the charming folks of The Sprawl is just delightful, and I can’t wait to meet more of them.

For each person you interact with at the border you get rated on your performance, and if you want all four stars you’ll really have to read the situation perfectly. There’s some bonus gold on offer based on your score too, and although I don’t know what this money will be used for in the main game it’s probably worth hoarding.

I assumed that after my shift the demo would end, but life in the guard’s booth is only one aspect of Lil’ Guardsman. At closing time I was informed that the princess of The Sprawl had gone missing and that I was needed to help find her. Far be it from me to question why a child was needed to help with this matter of urgency, I arrived at my destination and found myself a contestant on a gameshow called “So you think you can save a Princess”.

This ridiculous section of the game functioned sort of like the TV show Blind Date, but instead of asking vaguely raunchy questions a lineup of hunks you’re asking a lineup of fantasy heroes about how they’d deal with a group of angry mages. It’s as silly as it sounds, and is only made sillier when you start asking about their favourite ice cream flavours. These hard ball questions can lead to some sticky situations though, and I actually ended up angering the warrior so much that I died.

The writing really pulls the game together, but I’d be doing Lil’ Guardsman a disservice if I didn’t mention the wonderful visuals too. The Saturday morning cartoon style is just perfect for this kind of adventure game, and really brings the eclectic characters you’ll meet on the job to life.

Although this demo of Lil’ Guardsman only lasted around forty minutes, it really got me excited for the full game. Thanks to the sections where you aren’t in the guard booth especially, I have no idea what weird and wonderful situations Lil will be thrust into later on in the game and can’t wait to find out. With other elements like money, gemstones that charge your tools and a time rewinding device all teased in the demo too, it looks like there’s going to be plenty to sink your teeth into when it releases later this year.

Lil’ Guardsman blends the border officer setup of Papers, Please with comedy stylings of a LucasArts adventure to create a truly wonderful experience. If the rest of the game is as good as this demo then it’s definitely going to be one to look out for in the next six months, and if you don’t believe that feel free to spray me with any leftover truth serum.

Lil’ Guardsman is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox, and Switch this year.

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It’s been almost three years since the Meta Quest 2 released, yet it’s still a fantastic piece of kit for virtual reality fans. The Meta Quest Gaming Showcase took place last week, and if the wealth of announcements were anything to go by, there’s still plenty of steam left in the VR tank. Until recently, I’d not had the pleasure of testing out the hardware, and with the third iteration of the Quest announced, it seems a great time to see what the Quest 2 is like, given it’ll almost certainly be discounted. My only foray into VR was at the hands of the PSVR, and I can safely say this is hands down a much more user-friendly experience. Not only that, but the games available and how they play have given both me and my family some memorable nights in.

If you’re not familiar with the Meta Quest 2, it requires very little set up. While the battery life for the headset isn’t as good as it could be, all that’s needed is to turn it on, set your spatial boundaries, and grab the controllers. There aren’t countless wires and things to plug in. Simply turn it on and away you go. The clarity in the visuals is excellent, and when you start to explore the store, it’s clear that there’s so much to choose from regardless of the kind of experience you’re after.

Meta Quest TV offers a ton of videos for you to immerse yourself in, whether you want to stand in front of the Rockefeller Center in New York, walk through the cherry blossoms in Japan, or hop on a rollercoaster or two. These bitesize experiences allow you to see the world from the comfort of your own living room, providing countless possibilities for people of all kinds. Take my mother, for example. She’s physically unable to go out much or travel too far due to an illness she’s had for most of her life. It was rather emotional letting her try the headset and see her reaction to standing at the top of the Empire State Building.

These short detours from the games of the Meta Quest 2 are a great way to show off what virtual reality is in 2023. Although the Meta Quest 3 was just announced, there’s still a lot of worth in this platform, and that’s thanks in part to the games available. I’ve been playing some incredible titles on the system, and I’d like to touch on a few here. Pistol Whip makes you feel like John Wick, dodging bullets whilst firing off a few rounds of your own, all done to a pulsing EDM soundtrack.

Red Matter 2 was perhaps the most impressive in terms of what you can do, as it allowed you to play through an interesting science fiction narrative while getting to explore space from the comfort of your own home. You can float across space stations, solve puzzles, pick up crates and other objects, scan the environment, and more. It harnesses the capabilities of the Meta Quest 2 in ways I never felt possible, and it’s definitely one of the games I’d suggest you giving a go if you’re interested in buying one.

I’m a huge fan on Steven Wright’s Peaky Blinders, and I can’t tell you how wide the smile on my face was when I booted up The King’s Ransom and walked through Small Heath to the tune of Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand. As a gangster in early 20th century Birmingham, it was one hell of an experience. Tommy Shelby offered me a cigarette, I dodged a bunch of gunfire from shady characters after meeting up with the headstrong and loveable Aunt Polly, and saw other familiar sites and characters from the hit TV show.

Perhaps the greatest game I’ve played so far was Beat Saber. I know I’m probably not telling you anything new here, but it’s such a simple yet addictive game. Hit colourful blocks on the beat with two lightsabers, duck under and around walls, and make sure you’re doing it all to the rhythm of one of the title’s songs. I was also impressed by the amount of DLC you can get. Lady Gaga, Green Day, and Billie Eilish song packs are all available, and the recently released Queen collection is a must purchase.

I understand games can cost a bit, but the Meta Quest 2 store offers a ton of demos to allow you a chance to try before you buy. Superhot is tons of fun on console, but being in that world is such a cool thing to experience, and you can try out a demo for it if you like. There’re other free pieces of content on the store, such as a Jurassic World app that lets you watch two videos, stepping into the scenes of the park and get up close with Blue the raptor.

Another stunning addition to the catalogue is Mission: ISS. In it, you get to move around the International Space Station in zero gravity, and it’s unlike anything I’ve played. Being thrust into these unfamiliar places is why virtual reality is successful, but the Meta Quest 2 allows you to do so with ease, both in its set-up and the easy-to-navigate store. There’re still tons of games and apps I want to try, but from what I’ve seen so far, it feels like the perfect time to get your hands on the hardware.

Whether you’re after fun gameplay or opportunities to see things you’d never normally see, the Meta Quest 2 is by far one of the coolest bits of kit on the market. The visuals are clear and detailed, the interface is easy-to-use, the set-up is straightforward, and the amount of content in 2023 is staggering. With new games focused on Stranger Things and Ghostbusters soon to come out, there’s no greater time to bite the bullet and give VR a go, specifically through the Meta Quest 2.

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A good puzzler, generally needs to do two things well. One: it needs to have an interesting basis for its puzzles that is simple to understand, but deep enough to offer variety. But secondly it needs to utilise this to create puzzles that tread the right balance of accessibility and challenge. And after spending some time with the early part of Viewfinder by Sad Owl Studios, it’s looking pretty promising on both fronts.

In the case of Viewfinder, its unique mechanic is about images and perspective. You move around a 3D space in a first-person perspective. Around the areas, you will find old Polaroid-style pictures that you can collect. You then use these images to change the world around you. By holding up an image and using it, you replace what was in front of you with the new image. The image is then transformed into a 3D replica, meaning any walkways or walls are now in front of you for you to traverse with real depth to them.

The idea is not cosmetic, but fundamental to the puzzle-solving. The idea for each puzzle is to get to and use the teleporter in the area you’re in. So by using these pictures, and manipulating the landscape, you can make the seemingly unreachable teleporters suddenly much more attainable. The simplest idea could be there is a bridge in the picture, that now appears that you can use to cross a gap to your goal.

But this is just the start of Viewfinder’s ideas. You soon learn you can rotate the images for example, so all of a sudden walls in the picture can be rotated 90 degrees to form that new platform you need. Or maybe think even more out of the box and rotate 45 degrees instead for a handy ramp to a previously unreachable higher ledge. Also given your 3D space, you can also change the perspective of how you enter the picture area. Look at your feet and place the image, and you will fall into the picture from above, which depending on the picture you’ve found, could give you just the right perspective to proceed.

And so Viewfinder goes on with its ideas. Some teleporters need powering with batteries which you must locate in the area, or in some cases, use a clever combination of pictures to recreate new ones. Certain levels also allow you to take new photos or photocopy ones you’ve found, further expanding your options to get to the goal. And all of these ideas are just in the early levels that form the preview.

It’s certainly an interesting puzzler, requiring you to rethink perspective and momentum. Like a quirky blend of Portal and Superliminal. You need to retrain your brain on what’s possible here. But Viewfinder does a good job of tutorialising each new concept both through on-screen prompts but also introductory puzzles that put it into practice before moving on to trickier puzzle areas. As such the learning curve so far feels well-paced and welcoming. Sure, you’ll get stumped whilst you figure out what each level wants you to do. But experimenting is part of the fun, and restarting is quick and forgiving if you do mess up.

It’s also clear from the first few levels, that there’s a level of mystery to Viewfinder’s setting. As you progress through the various puzzles, you’ll uncover prior recordings of conversations from previous residents, and it suggests that there’s an intriguing plot to uncover as you get into the latter part of the game. It’s a notable addition to the standard puzzles, and remains to be seen how far it goes in the full game.

But perhaps the best thing I can say about Viewfinder is that its first few levels really whetted my appetite for more. It sets its stall out early but clearly wants to bring you along for its perspective-morphing ride. I hope that its sheer variety of ideas to mix up the puzzling maintains throughout, as if so, this could be a very accomplished puzzle experience. I look forward to playing the full game and seeing where the puzzling path takes me.

Viewfinder is coming to PC in 2023.

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The beta for Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader is now available for everyone to play, and I’ll hedge my bets that anyone that both plays it and loves Warhammer are going to fall in love with the wealth of detail, lore, and complexities of combat. It’s faithful to the source material, yet also provides a rich CRPG that already encompasses hours upon hours of content, which bodes well for the final release. I got lost in its world in the best possible way, and despite not knowing a lot about this side of Warhammer, it didn’t stop me from being captivated in the epic story.

The beta starts off from the very beginning, unlike the alpha that dropped you in a little later. This allows you to look at the character creation suite, although there’re some omissions from what you can and can’t customise at this point. Still, you get to dip into what your character will look like and what kind of rogue trader they’ll be, before jumping in headfirst into the fascinating story of betrayal and grandeur as you travel the Koronus Expanse and meet plenty of different characters, making choices that can affect everything and have a big impact on the world around you.

As a CRPG, the level of detail is staggering. You’ll spend plenty of time reading dialogue and immersing yourself in the story and characters, and taking the focus away from Space Marines to put it on rogue traders makes perfect sense for Owlcat’s take on the genre. Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader is filled with political intrigue, rich science fiction, and a faithful recreation of the grimdark setting. Every conversation immerses you in the story, providing plenty of twists and turns, and forces you to make decisions while out in the world or upon your own Void Ship, relying on a virtual dice roll for the outcome.

Building your party and managing everyone’s inventory and skills pulls you into the sheer detail of everything, highlighting the developer’s talents already seen in the Pathfinder games. There’s new gear and weaponry to find, items and buffs to aid you in battle, and points of interest littered around to offer background to the world and its story. When it comes to the nitty gritty of combat, you start to appreciate how integral your choices become because of how each choice can alter the flow of battle. Playing out on a grid akin to titles like XCOM and The Banner Saga, you’re given complete control.

Before each battle commences, you can place your party wherever you like, however, it’s always worth utilising the cover provided so as to avoid potential damage at the hands and guns of your enemy. Each character has various methods of attack, whether up close or from afar, and you can see what the chances of dealing damage are, whether enemies have any specific effects on them, and how likely your approach is going to benefit you. With chance playing such a big part in these encounters, you’re always considering your tactics and how they’ll work with each turn.

Bullets can pass through enemies into another standing near, but certain attacks can also damage any nearby members of your party. The Momentum system also gives you some useful attacks and buffs depending on how the battle is going, giving you yet another layer of options. Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader also allows you to battle in space. It’s not as detailed as that on the ground, but it does give you another way to manage your approach in the Koronus Expanse and how you decide to progress through the huge Imperium you’re free to travel across.

The beta for Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader already has so much for players to see, with deep combat and exploration that delves into every corner of the grimdark setting. You’ll find Owlcat has put in plenty of love and attention into making a satisfying CRPG that rarely loses its footing, offering a great story where you have the opportunity to choose your path in a multitude of ways. When more character creation options become available I’ll be happy, but there’s still so much to do in the beta that there’re seldom concerns at this point. A little more polish to the visuals and movement will help for when the full release comes, but for now, fans are going to have a blast.

Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader is coming to PC “soon”.

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This week’s podcast is a two-man show, with Adam and Chris White not taking holiday, and instead talking games.

Adam has been playing Diablo 4 and has a lot to say about it, as he has complicated feelings. Chris White also has complicated feelings about The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, which has gone on to be one of the lowest rated games of the year, and even caused the developer to apologise on social media to fans. However, while the pair have brought games only they have played, they have both together got thoughts on Street Fighter 6. What a game that is, apparently!

You can contact us to get your listener questions on the podcast via our Discord, but if you upgrade to become a Patreon member (for £1/$1) you’ll gain access to loads of other channels and exclusive an exclusive bonus podcast. You can also send us questions via @GodisaGeek on Twitter, or even email podcasts@godisageek.com if you fancy doing things old school.

Download the audio MP3, here.

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Thanks for listening as always, and come say hi in the live chat next time perhaps? We record the podcast live on Thursdays, usually at  6pm UK time, so join us there on Twitch or YouTube, if you can! Why not? It’s free!

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The SteamWorld series has always managed to excite me regardless of the genre it’s tackling. Whether I was digging or heisting, I was having such a great time, and after spending a good chunk of time with SteamWorld Build, I can happily say that this is wonderful. The city-building elements are deep enough to provide a challenge, but they’re also accessible and straightforward enough that you won’t get lost, and then, well, then comes the dungeon-crawling.

Although this was only a preview, I still got to experience the pleasant flow of gameplay, both in the tasks at hand and the sheer number of options at my disposal. You need to welcome workers into the town and satisfy their needs to keep them happy. It’s a simple enough task at first, but as your city grows, providing access to water, a general store, and other essentials won’t be the only things they’ll need. Once you have your workers and have set up their residentials, they’ll need to be put to work.

To build, you need boards, and that’ll require you to set up a foresters to collect trees, then a lumbermill to turn them into boards. You’ll need access to a warehouse as well, so that you can store these materials. The various resources for you to harvest or manufacture grows as you reach certain milestones, and when you begin to mine, a whole new world of management opens up, but you’re given plenty of support through in-game tutorials and advice. Everything you build needs to be connected with paths to the railway station, as this acts as the central hub for all hustle and bustle, but also the ability to trade and buy certain perks like upgrading production by 80%.

You can spend your money, but items like rubies will be needed, and this will require you to dig into the mines of SteamWorld Build. Above ground, you begin to slowly improve the general flow and productivity of all resources like water, coal, and moonshine, and your responsibilities won’t just be to bring in workers but engineers, miners, prospectors, and more, all for various tasks both across the city and deep underground. You’ll end up building factories that can craft pickaxes and producing sheet metal, along with other things needed for your work going on in the mines.

I think it’s about time we got onto the other core part of SteamWorld Build’s gameplay. Once you finally get to dig underground, a whole new layer of responsibilities open up to you. It is here where you set up a miner’s quarter to them send out miners to dig and uncover precious materials, veins and ores, and most importantly, old parts of a rocket that’ll help you get off the planet. Gold nuggets and tools help the flow of production, but you’ll also be able to build factories above ground that mass produce tools. There’s a lot to get your head around, but the more you stick at it, the more satisfying the flow of gameplay becomes.

You’ll be able to craft contraptions that can harvest iron and other metals, build radars that scan underground and show you where all the good stuff is, get mechanics to craft these important structures, and lay down speed traps so that workers can move around faster. Bridges can also be built to allow access to previously unreachable areas, but unless you construct pillars, the entire mining operation can collapse due to the unsecure foundations that excessive digging can create.

With so much to manage, there’s a chance it can get a little confusing, but the admin menu allows you to see what is being produced as well as the demand for it. This way, it’s easy to see where your focus needs to lie and how you can quickly get back on track. SteamWorld Build can also be paused so that you’ll have time to take a step back and work out what your next step will be. It has such a satisfying pace to it, and despite there being a lot to factor in, you’ll have the time to get things right and enjoy the process, too.

One thing I love about SteamWorld Build is how gorgeous it looks. The familiar art style of the series is present in every little detail, and the colour is so bright and eye-catching that everywhere you look there’s something to love. The characters are beautifully designed, as is the city itself, especially when you expand it into a large and efficient industrial framework. It’s accessible to all ages, and thanks to a welcoming challenge, you’re not going to want to stop digging, building, and exploring, and saving your miners from the creatures that lurk below.

SteamWorld Build is coming to PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, and Nintendo Switch in 2023.

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After covering games for as long as I have, it takes quite a bit for a hands-off look to get me excited, but Alone in the Dark has done exactly that. Offering reverence to the oldies like myself, showing it cares about where the series came from, while pushing forward with exciting cast members, a demo to give people a taste, and multiple protagonists to choose from, it seems there’s very little chance of it falling flat as it looks to fill a gap long left behind by the likes of Silent Hill and co.

Let’s get the exciting stuff out of the way first, then. First of all, Alone in the Dark is hitting new consoles and PC on October 25th. Second up, a demo in the form of a prologue is freely available right now. Thirdly, David Harbour. Seriously. What a get! Jodie Comer? Another superb get. THQ Nordic are serious about this game, and one has to assume the budget will reflect that accordingly. Both Harbour (Stranger Things) and Comer (Free Guy) are both lending their voices, but also likenesses to the game, and are the two protagonists you can choose to play as.

“Last night I dreamt that my uncle hung himself in the attic”, explains Miss Hartwood (Comer), and that seems like the tone is set pretty quickly. The developer is wanting to create something “that is more than just jump scares”, and the gameplay I got to see offered foreboding corridors, shadows flickering, and darkness in more ways than one. “A bit of fighting, demanding puzzles, and a lot of atmosphere”, the developer explained further, and that’s the key: Alone in the Dark was always about messing with the player, psychologically.

The plan seems to be to retain “some of that weirdness of the old games”, and enemies that looks horrifying don’t so much creep at you, as they do full on dash, creating panic and ruining your aim. You do have weapons, of course, but if you run out of ammo you’ll have to switch to melee attacks to survive.

In terms of the story and setting, Mikael Hedberg, writer and game director explains: “Jeremy Hartwood is haunted by The Dark Man, and he goes to a countryside hospital called Derceto, in hope to find some help. Jeremy sends a disturbing letter to Emily Hartwood, his niece, and it spooks her enough that she hires Detective Edward Carnby to find out what’s going on”. Hedberg continues, saying “We knew early on that we had a character driven story, so we needed to find some really good actors to make those characters come to life”.

One thing of note is that the story seems to be different, depending on who you play as. Hedberg says on this that “you will get a different take on the same story” and that “the people at Derceto will react differently to you depending on who you play. Even the story will be slightly different. So you should definitely make sure to play the game twice”.

The original 1992 game is, obviously, revered. Creator Frédérick Raynal has given his blessing to the new title, too. Raynal explained that he used to think of the mansion itself as “another character” for the original title, and Hedberg wants this to come across in the 2023 game, it seems, and Raynal even explained that with all the remakes you get these days, you’re never sure what’s going to come out at the end, but that “the team at Pieces did a great job preserving the core feeling of the game”.

And that’s the thing, really. Alone in the Dark has been back before. The 2008 title wasn’t exactly adored, though was good for getting achievements if you were chasing that score. But while that title was somewhat of an attempt at returning to the survival horror roots, there’s no question that what I’ve seen so far of this 2023 title, it has paid attention to the Resident Evil remakes, and looks not only more atmospheric, but importantly, far more playable. Sticking to a setting and making you feel claustrophobic and on edge is key to the genre, and while I didn’t get to go hands on, it does look the part, for sure.

Whether Alone in the Dark sticks the landing is simply down to how it plays, for me. The developer is making all the right noises and saying all the right things, and it looks the business as well. With an all-star cast, a beloved title, and everything going right for it so far, all that remains is to see how it moves, handles, and shoots. The prologue won’t contain combat, so it seems that after today, we’ll at least know most parts of that puzzle. Fingers crossed, because this is a series that started it all, offering a mansion to explore, combat, and so much that other games then followed on from. Right now, though, I’m cautiously optimistic that Pieces Interactive can deliver on a long overdue return to form to Alone in the Dark.

The prologue, Grace in the Dark, is available to download for free, right now. Alone in the Dark is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on October 25th, 2023.

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The Disgaea series has been knocking around for twenty years now, and no other game has managed to combine hardcore stat maximisation and goofy anime nonsense quite like it. I’ve been beating up Prinnies and taking over Netherworlds since the very beginning, and I can’t imagine that’ll ever change.

The last game in the series (Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny) unfortunately didn’t quite hit all the right buttons for me though, thanks to a fairly small selection of classes and some terrible technical limitations on Switch.

Hopefully this October will be different, as Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is releasing on Switch, PS4, PS5 and PC. I was lucky enough to interview Disgaea 7 producer Shunsuke Minowa to find out more about the upcoming game, and his answers got me very excited for some more Netherworld nonsense.

This new entry in the Disgaea series has a theme based on Japanese history, what made you decide on this slightly more grounded setting?

From the beginning of development, we wanted a “back to basics” approach for Disgaea 7 and have the story be set mainly on one Netherworld. The word “Bushido” actually came up during our initial planning, and we thought about what that meant and how it could be the base for an interesting setting.This gave way to the idea a storyline of “reclaiming Bushido” that would eventually become a “historical Japanese-inspired Netherworld without Bushido.”

For the first time ever, Disgaea 7 features two main characters. What makes Fuji and Pirilika different from past characters in the series?

In the beginning of Disgaea 7, for the first time in the series, the female character Prilika takes the lead in the story while the male character Fuji serves as a support role. However, Fuji also has his own purpose, and the story gradually unfolds with two main axes. Therefore, we created the scenario with the awareness that Fuji and Prilika are not the hero and heroine, but rather “partners” who support each other.

There are plenty of new mechanics coming to Disgaea 7, but the one that I’m most excited about is Jumbify. How does this massive transformation ability work in the game?

Jumbification causes a character to grow to gigantic proportions under certain conditions and places them outside the battlefield. This allows that character to attack anywhere on the field, and each character has a specific “Jumbility” that affects the entire field. Aside from increasing your combat power, Jumbification can also let you bypass clear conditions or challenges for certain stages. Keep in mind that enemies can also use Jumbification, so make sure you have your own Jumbification ready to fight back!

I’m also very interested in Item Reincarnation. Items have always been a huge part of Disgaea thanks to the Item Worlds, how does Reincarnation fit into this?

Item Reincarnation builds upon the staple Item World feature and lets players enhance items even further. With Item Reincarnation, players can reincarnate an item that has been strengthened to its limit in the Item World. You can also take an item’s unique characteristics, such as increasing the counterattack rate or increasing movement distance, and combine these characteristics and enhance items even further by inheriting rare and random traits.

I was really glad to see the Demonic Intelligence is returning again. Has it been changed at all for this installment?

In Disgaea 7, we added a cost to using auto-battle and gave players the option to skip auto-battle at any time. This allows players to enjoy the process of leveling and strengthening their characters while giving them the option of choosing auto-battle thoughtfully, rather than making auto-battle an unlimited use feature that diminished the gameplay experience.

Using the AI to battle people online is an interesting way to add online play to the series. What made you go in this direction?

The Demonic Intelligence feature received a lot of criticism for negatively impacting the fun of the original Disgaea gameplay. However, the idea of using AI to control character movements was seen as a potentially interesting element that could be made fun in some way. AI Ranked Battles are one such implementation of this concept, where characters, magic abilities, weapons, and armour are augmented with AI elements to create strategic and entertaining gameplay.

I was delighted to hear that Disgaea 7 will have the most character classes of any game in the series. What are some of your favourite new additions?

The Big Eye is my favourite among the new characters. They are a type of character that has never been seen before in the Disgaea series, and their design as an advanced monster-type character fits in seamlessly. As for existing characters, I like the Magic Swordsman (female). She is a beautiful woman with rune eyes who can wield both a sword and magic at the same time.

Perhaps the biggest change that Disgaea 6 made to the series were the 3d character models. What has it been like working with this new art style?

One of the challenges we faced when transitioning to 3D was that it became more difficult to hide imperfections. In the 2D era, even if a character was in a slightly strange pose or position, it wasn’t a big deal because it was 2D and didn’t look out of place. However, in 3D, even small imperfections can lead to big discrepancies and require a lot of fine-tuning, which can be costly.

On the other hand, the advantages of 3D are many. For example, we found that we could make characters larger without losing detail, and the freedom to move the camera opened up new possibilities for how we presented the game. Overall, I think the benefits of 3D outweigh the challenges, and it has allowed us to create a more immersive and visually stunning game.

I’ve heard that when you were younger you got really into Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days. What was it about Rozalin’s adventure you enjoyed so much?

I liked the battle system, especially the lifting and throwing mechanics and the area-of-effect skills. I’m the type who generally gets bored with slow-paced SRPG battles, but the Disgaea series has a satisfyingly simplistic approach that allows you to power up your main character and use them to charge into battle with lifting and throwing tactics and devastating AOE attacks. It was really enjoyable!

After being a fan of the series for so long, how does it feel having such a prominent role in creating a new instalment?

It’s an unbelievable experience for the version of me who was just a player, and the version of me from the day before I received an offer from the development team would probably not believe it. However, I’m truly grateful that they trusted me based on my love for the Disgaea series, and with the help of the staff who supported me, I’m happy to have been able to create the best Disgaea game possible according to my vision.

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Exoprimal is a cool word. It’s one of those words that evokes certain concepts while simultaneously being, in fairness, gibberish. For a game about strapping on a robotic Exosuit to smash dinosaurs into the concrete, it’s about as apt as humanly possible. It’s also a pretty cool game, in so far as it has more outward swagger than the entire Kardashian family combined. Perhaps fittingly, it’s also both very pretty and not all that deep.

You play as a soldier who everyone calls “Ace” whose job it is to travel through interdimensional portals to battle against an omnipotent AI that’s taken over the world. And you do this primarily by wiping out literal hordes of dinosaurs with extreme prejudice. Even if you spend time analysing the plot, it’s a flimsy concept at best. You and your team of generic mercenaries tick every single box on the video game team checklist.

There’s the grizzled old leader who used to the the best, the tough (read: needlessly rude and perpetually pissed off) female badass, the British-accented tech nerd who will no doubt somehow bond with female badass, a robotic AI maid (yeah, okay, that one is lesser seen), and you: unbeatable superstar who’s amazing at everything and constantly saves the day but who everyone will treat like a moron for no good reason. It’s basic, but it works. There are also additional characters, such as alternate versions of the team and a guy whose accent may possibly be Australian who turns up now and then when you need to be rescued or mansplained at.

Facetious analysis aside, there is a level of intrigue in Exoprimal’s campaign. It’s a mad concept, for sure, but it does throw up a lot of questions and create a compelling enough mystery – particularly concerning the fates of the alternate universe versions of the team. But still, the story is in service to the gameplay here, and really only exists as a shaky framework to rest all these giant dinosaur balls on. Because when you’re summoning a T-Rex through an interdimensional portal to wreak havoc downtown, you won’t care why you’re doing it.

When deployed into the field you’ll be in a huge Exosuit, of which there are currently around a dozen. They fill in team roles like Assault, Support, and Tank, and you can switch between all the ones you have unlocked at a moment’s notice, allowing you to mix and match tactics with the other members of your team. The AI is sufficient to get the job done, but you’ll have a much, much better time playing with friends or even strangers.

Your job in most cases is to smash, blast, and cut your way through hordes of dinosaurs dropped in by the AI overlord. It was originally a training program, now repurposed to wreak havoc and prevent you from completing your objectives. You’ll often face off against another team (imagined as an alternate version of your squad) to complete those objectives faster.

Obviously, this makes absolutely no sense. There is only one “you” on your team, so I don’t know where the other Exosuits are even coming from, but it doesn’t matter. Exoprimal is balls-to-the-wall mayhem and it leans so heavily into it that it simply never feels weird to be launching rockets at a stampeding triceratops. There so much going on during each encounter that tactical thinking is for nerds and the minute you get the option to deploy a motherfucking T-Rex you will do it without question or conscious thought.

There’s a lot of variety between each suit, and they can be customised further with skins, paint jobs and decals in the hangar. How they play makes a massive difference though. The primary Exosuit is probably my favourite, though, as it just presents a solid mix of offensive functions with a decent level of defence and maneuverability. Other exoframes provide various star spreads but wildly differing weapon and ability loadouts. There’s one with a sword, for example, another that can fly.

The whole thing heavily evokes the latter entries in the Earth Defence Force, only instead of giant ants it’s velociraptors. Even playing multiple rounds with multiple different suits, I was always left a little shell-shocked at just how wilfully chaotic Exoprimal is. For some reason, each suit has a different AI personality, with different genders and voices. I don’t know why this is, unless it’s just to help cater to the hero shooter crowd. It’s not a problem, just a weird thing worth pointing out.

Exoprimal is great fun though. And it kind of has to be, because it’s about as deep as a bowl of soup so far. Yes you can swap out suits and change loadouts, but it throws a T-Rex at you in the first mission and from then on does little to try to really wow you beyond that. It’s having the cake before the party and then just kind of hanging around to see if there’s more cake later. And then there is, but it’s the same as the first cake and you’ve got to eat it anyway while pretending to be grateful. Yeah I lost the thread of that one a bit, too.

Ultimately, this is Capcom’s answer to the live service model and as such, it’s probably going to do fine. Capcom will support it with content and season passes, and if you disengage your logic motors there’s a damn fun experience to be had (though of course the build we played is not final, and balance changes could happen between now and launch). The accents are pretty awful all round and there’s no point in trying to make it all make sense. Exoprimal is simply chaotic, cathartic fun, of a kind that we just don’t get much anymore, and I’m excited to see more of it when it launches.

Exoprimal is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X on July 14th, 2023.

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If farming and spellcasting gets you excited, then you could do a lot worse than Homestead Arcana. This magical adventure is set in a world overrun by Miasma, and features a custom hero trying to push back the purple fumes with the power of gardening. Farming games don’t always click with me, so the idea of saving the day with spells and exploring a dark and desolate world definitely appealed to me.

Although it turned out that Homestead Arcana wasn’t entirely my jam, plenty of others have played the game at this point thanks to it being on Game Pass. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to talk to Zhenghua Yang (the founder and executive director of Serenity Forge) about working with Microsoft, getting voice actor Yuri Lowenthal to voice a character and a whole lot more recently, so take a look at his wonderful answers below in our exclusive interview.

There are a lot of farming games on the market currently. How did you aim to make Homestead Arcana different from the rest?

Homestead Arcana sets itself apart from other farming games by introducing a post-apocalyptic world filled with magic and mystery. The game combines the familiar elements of farming and survival with a unique narrative-driven experience. Players take on the role of a Witch who must restore the corrupted land by using spellcraft, tending to plants and homestead, and uncovering the secrets behind the Miasma. By blending farming mechanics with an atmospheric and emotionally impactful narrative, Homestead Arcana offers a distinct and captivating gameplay experience.

Were there any other farming Sims that inspired you to make Homestead Arcana?

We drew inspiration from a variety of games while creating Homestead Arcana. Games like My Time at Portia and Stardew Valley inspired us to create an immersive home-building experience. Shadow of the Colossus influenced the mysterious and isolated atmosphere of our game, while Don’t Starve helped us strike a balance between gameplay mechanics and a sense of danger and exploration. By taking cues from these games, we aimed to create a unique and engaging farming adventure in Homestead Arcana.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when developing the game?

Throughout the development of Homestead Arcana, we faced various challenges that pushed us to innovate and overcome obstacles. One of the biggest challenges was striking the right balance between the farming and survival mechanics, while also weaving a compelling narrative into the gameplay. We wanted to create an immersive world filled with emotional depth, and achieving that required meticulous attention to detail and careful design decisions. Additionally, crafting an atmospheric experience that truly captured the post-apocalyptic setting and integrating it seamlessly with the gameplay was a significant undertaking. Despite these challenges, we remained committed to creating a meaningful and emotionally impactful game, and we’re proud of the final result we’ve achieved in Homestead Arcana.

The visuals of Homestead Arcana are wonderful. What made the team decide on the colourful aesthetic for the game?

The decision to infuse Homestead Arcana with a colorful aesthetic stemmed from our vision of creating a visually captivating and immersive world. We drew inspiration from a diverse range of sources, including WPA posters, woodblock prints, and films such as Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. We aimed to capture the grandeur of landscapes in the classic imagination of Americana while also drawing inspiration from the contrast between lush, beautiful nature and the overgrown, enigmatic aspects found in works like Made in Abyss and Annihilation. By embracing a vibrant and colorful aesthetic, we sought to heighten the atmospheric experience, enveloping players in a visually stunning journey through the enchanting world of Homestead Arcana.

Huckleberry the Cat is a great character who’s always by your side in Homestead Arcana. When did you make the decision to have the main character’s familiar play such a big part in the game?

We made the decision early on in the development of Homestead Arcana to have the main character’s familiar, Huckleberry, play a significant role in the game. Huckleberry, voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, serves as a constant companion, always by the player’s side throughout their journey. We wanted to create a deep connection between the player and their familiar, allowing them to form a bond and experience the adventure together. Huck’s presence not only adds a sense of companionship but also contributes to the game’s narrative and gameplay mechanics. As players delve deeper into the story, they discover that Huck holds secrets and that their bond goes beyond what initially meets the eye. This decision to incorporate a prominent familiar character was driven by our desire to enhance the emotional depth and create a unique dynamic within Homestead Arcana.

The voice acting of Huck by Yuri Lowenthal is fantastic too. What was it like working with such a high profile voice actor?

Working with Yuri Lowenthal was an absolute honour and a dream come true. Yuri’s exceptional voice acting brought the whole character to life, infusing Huckleberry with personality, charm, and depth. It was truly a remarkable experience to collaborate with someone who has such incredible talent and versatility.

Additionally, Yuri Lowenthal holds a special place in my heart, as his portrayal of Simon in the anime Gurren Lagann played a major role in my life. During my teenage years, I faced a near-fatal illness, and Gurren Lagann became a source of inspiration and strength for me during that challenging time. Having the opportunity to work with my hero was a tremendous honour, and Yuri’s presence became a huge inspiration for the entire team.

Yuri’s dedication and ability to breathe life into characters have been invaluable to the development of Homestead Arcana. Through his voice acting, he brought Huckleberry to life, capturing the essence of the character and enriching the emotional depth of the game. We are grateful for Yuri’s immense talent and the positive impact he has had on our project.

Homestead Arcana launched day one on Xbox Game Pass. What was your experience like working with Microsoft to make this happen?

We greatly appreciate the support from the Xbox Game Pass team in launching Homestead Arcana on day one. Microsoft has been an invaluable partner throughout the years to Serenity Forge, consistently demonstrating their commitment to promoting indie games and fostering a diverse gaming community. The collaboration with Xbox Game Pass has allowed us to reach a wider audience and share the unique world of Homestead Arcana. Their unwavering support and belief in our project throughout development have been instrumental, and we are honoured to continue working alongside Microsoft on future endeavours.

Finally, do you have any plans for the future of Homestead Arcana?

Homestead Arcana is a large game made by a small team, meaning that there still will need to be some patches to fix up some issues we didn’t find until the game launched. Looking ahead, we are dedicated to addressing any bugs, releasing updates, and enhancing the gaming experience based on player suggestions. Our goal is to create an even more enchanting and enjoyable world in Homestead Arcana, and we are thrilled to embark on this journey together with our dedicated community.

Homestead Arcana is available now for PC and Xbox consoles (via Game Pass).

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Every now and then a survival game drops in amongst all the plane crashes and boat wrecks and post apocalyptic wastelands with a concept that feels super fresh. See titles like Subnautica and Green Hell for solid examples. But now there’s also Voidtrain, an early access title that’s just hit Steam after a year as an Epic Store exclusive, that takes the basic survival-crafting mechanics we’ve seen a hundred times and marries them with a genuinely interesting and often fascinating world.

You play an engineer working on an experimental trans-dimensional train. Your character is mute, although the narrator will relay their thoughts and feelings to you, while also acting as a guide throughout the adventure. And it truly is an adventure.

It begins with you activating the titular Voidtrain, which as you begin is a single platform with a crank, a brake, and a lever to send you forwards or backwards along the track. The track itself is a marvel; a huge, serpentine, seemingly endless rail that extends through multiple realities, dangers, and impossible worlds.

Your job is to explore, really. Ride the rail wherever it goes, through randomised otherworlds fraught with peril and wonders. The exploration is fantastic. Each stretch of track in the Void feels and looks different, and you’ll be gradually introduced to the bizarre wildlife that exists here, from little schools of what look like flying fish, to huge leeches that slow your train, and massive whale-like beasts that move majestically through the nothingness.

As you travel, you’ll need to collect resources with which to research and build new Modules on your train. You start with a research desk and a smelter to turn ore and metal into bars, but you’ll soon have a kitchen, lab, workbench, armoury, garden, with multiple examples of each to maintain a steady stream of industry.

To gain these resources you have to leap off the train, swimming in the void, to collect lumps of organic matter, chunks of metal, lengths of wood for fuel. Or you can kill the aforementioned wildlife and take their fat, skin, leather, meat. When you’re done, you “swim” back or pull yourself back on your safety line. Research is costly, and can be time-consuming, but it’s worth it to finish each phase of challenges. It’s a little frustrating that you must completely research one phase before moving on, as some of the nodes within them are barely connected, even thematically, and it makes progress feel slow at times.

But once you have a decent set-up things get faster. After a certain distance on each track you’ll reach a gateway into a Station. Alighting in this platform, you can scavenge supplies, solve puzzles, and ultimately upgrade your train by improving its mechanisms or even adding another platform. Eventually you’ll have full cabins, faster engines, and defences against the bizarre worlds you travel through.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Stations aren’t always the safe havens they appear to be. Other people from other dimensions want what you have, and at the point you realise that yours may not be the only Voidtrain – or even the most advanced – in operation, the mystery deepens along with the sense that this isn’t just an ordinary survival game.

So you’ll gather weapons, which you can modify and upgrade; you’ll cast armour and suits, backpacks, a grappling hook to gather distant resources, and various other tools that extend your longevity in the unknown.

At present, the real problem facing Voidtrain is the resource economy. While you can gather a lot of resources on every track, they’re finite, and you’ll need to gather extras at the station, or even wait for the next first into the void. Not only that, but you’ll use them up as quickly as you get them, especially in the early game. For example, in order to research something you’ll need some or all of the same resources that you will later use to craft one. To build a storage shelf, for instance, you need bolts, and to get bolts you need an iron bar, which requires several pieces of metal and wood for smelter fuel. That’s a basic example, but demonstrates the multiple levels of crafting.

Everything you smelt, craft or research takes time, and these times get longer and longer the more complex your projects become. It can be nothing short of frustrating to run out of resources when you’re close to crafting something you need and have to wait until the next station to craft it.

But aside from this gripe, most of what I’ve seen of Voidtrain so far is incredibly intriguing and compelling. The concept of crossing multiple dimensions makes for an ever-surprising adventure that’s only going to get larger and more bizarre as the months roll on.

Voidtrain is available now in PC early access, via Steam.

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