The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
Elf cities, sniper killers, forsaken kings and minigolf
Merry mid-October all! It's chucking it down here. This week I'm mostly playing a game of my own devising called There's A Hole In My Raincoat And I Can't Find It. The Maw is unlikely to be sated by such flotsam, so it's just as well there are also a bunch of new PC games on the cards. Please run your eyes over them while I experiment with putting my coat over a lightbulb again.
On Monday 14th October, embrace the permadeath potential of bonzai windmills in minigolf roguelite Up To Par. On Tuesday 15th October, grow yourself a colony of faeriefolk in Elven City Simulator, butcher Celtic myths in action-RPG Drova: Forsaken King, and befriend a wolf in wistful platformer Neva. On Wednesday 16th October, nothing will happen. Nothing whatsoever - not even the mocking motion of the eternal wind across the bones of our once-noble civilisations as they crumble to filaments and the sun falls hopelessly beneath the scoured horizon and reemerges on Thursday 17th October, when there is a new Mechwarrior game, and also Sniper Killer, in which you play both the titular shooter murderer and a detective trying to catch them. And finally, on Friday 18th October, there's Limb. It's a horror game where you speak to see.
These are just my highlights, as ever. Your highlights may differ. Come, let us pit our highlights against each other in gruelling deckbuildery turn-based combat. Beware, though, that I may play a "Steal" card and pinch any games you suggest for our news liveblog, below. Have a fine week.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
MONDAY ATTEMPTS A FLANKING MANOEUVRE
I'm not sure I even have any flanks to flank, this early in the week. FEED THE MAW.The Suicide Of Rachel Foster - "a decent enough first person explorey mystery along the lines of Firewatch or Gone Home, but, you know, not as good as either of those", according to Alice B (RPS in peace) - is getting a sequel, The Fading Of Nicole Wilson.
Open world feudal Japanese village manager Sengoku Dynasty hits 1.0 on 7th November.
Evidence mounts that an Until Dawn sequel is in the offing.
Lessing says: Steam Next Fest is this week too, yeah?
It is indeed - brace for the return of Wishlisted.
In gamejam oddity Creature Packets, you grow critters in the microwave. Ta Warpdoor.
The Spirit Of The Samurai is a gloomy dark fantasy samurai action-platformer with graphics inspired by stop-motion film. It's coming to PC on 12th December.
Bithell Games have annouced Tron: Catalyst, a roguelikey top-down action game based on the 80s sci-fi film. You will: bounce a cyber frisbee off people, ride a lightcycle, and make changes to the world that persist from loop to loop. Eurogamer hath the skinny.
TUESDAY RETREATS TO THE HIGH GROUND
The Maw is tessellating! All news writers take 10 points of psychic damage and gain +4 Unearthly Symmetry. FEED IT.Highly enticing roadtrip RPG Keep Driving has only just been revealed and it already has a demo.
If you enjoy John Woo movies and/or prodigiously smoky gun muzzles, you might like Cop Bastard, which has a recently updated demo.
Space Engineers, an early access interplanetary sandboxer which a youthful Adam Smith was greatly enthusiastic about over 10 years ago, has received a chunky free update. I haven't played this, but people seem to like it, though it doesn't have the wide-eyed dreaminess of the obvious comparison, No Man's Sky.
Grid-based tactics game Knights In Tight Spaces has joined the throng of Steam Next Fest demos, deploying its mastery of close-quarter combo effects to bludgeon out some breathing room. I owe this one a write-up from GDC 2024 - it's head-cracking good fun.
Crescent Scythe is a just-announced 3D platformer "with major neo-Y2K inspirations, set inside a virtual cyberscape." It looks nicely fluid and spaced-out, though there are bullet hell elements.
WEDNESDAY ROLLS A SMOKE GRENADE VERY SLOWLY TOWARD YOU
You are powerless to do anything except watch its oddly hypnotic approach, for some reason. Feed it!Space Marine 2's new operations map is adding a massive Hierophant Biotitan boss. Swear I had one of these guys in a massive load of Epic 40K, which was what they used to call Legions Imperalis.
Can't remember if we've blogged this before, but: look, a site made up of rotatable 3D renders of ancient PC game boxes!!! I couldn't find Homeworld: Cataclysm, sadly, but I wept copiously over the Fallout 2 boxset. I'd forgotten what the back of it looked like.
"A bad year to be a bug" is a tweet I saw t'other day, with pictures of Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2, and the new Starship Troopers game. Indeed it is. Helldivers 2 got another patch yesterday. Here's one of those very long videos they like to do.
Rogue Flight has a demo on Steam. Graham wrote this up a couple of weeks back - it's a gorgeous 3D space shooter in the Star Fox tradition, "inspired by prestige anime."
THURSDAY KICKS THE SMOKE GRENADE INTO FRIDAY'S FOXHOLE
Whoever wins, we lose. FEED THE MAW.Mechwarrior 5: Clans is out today, although some folk are having performance issues according to Steam reviews.
Hades 2 has received a major update, adding a new region and weapon plus some new familiars. The patch notes are titanic. Where is Brendy. SAVE US BRENDY.
Harvest Hunt - a first-person survival horror directed by former Rockstar Games developer Valentina Chrysostomou - is getting a big Halloween update on 23rd October. Find a trailer below. I haven't played this but it looks like a graphic novel and seems to involve a lot of lurking in cornfields.
Fresh from the release of the Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober have announced a new horror game, Cronos: The New Dawn. Going by the trailer, it's similar to chess-boxing, except that it's actually chess-survival-horror-shooting.
Blindfire has surprise launched into early access. It's an eight-player PvP shooter from Double Eleven, formerly developers of Prison Architect 2. The twist is that it takes place in the dark, with maps lighting up gradually and players tracking each other by means of muzzle flash and sonar tech.
FRIDAY RAGE-QUITS
But we cannot rage-quit the Maw. FEED IT.renner says: I'm curious about this Unknown 9 game that came out today but every Steam review seems to be from anti-woke culture warrior dorks. I should probably just give up on the usefulness of that particular Steam feature.
I was trying to preview this at GDC, but they didn't have space for me. I like the looks of the "Jedi fisticuffs" combat but the game as a whole doesn't seem spellbinding. Perhaps we'll manage a write-up at some point.
Fullbright have surprise-released Toilet Spiders, the first in a series of lo-fi shortform horror games. It's about horrible spiders hiding in toilets. Why would you do this to me, Fullbright.