The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
Wanderstop, Midnight Murder Club, new Inkle game and a spooky warehouse
New week, new PC games, new Maw liveblog, hungering for our headlines! But first, the obligatory paragraph of twaddle: lately I've been wondering whether we should put the Maw on a diet. The creature may be indiscriminate, but we news sentinels have noticed that stuffing the Gorging Chutes with certain story flavours can produce... eruptions. Our pataphysical nutritionists have accordingly devised a new regimen of no more than two Bethesda headlines a week, plus at least one game marketed as a "deconstruction", and double helpings of ray-tracing on Fridays. Will we stick to it? Probably not, but I'm interested to hear what you all consider a healthy weekly diet of news. While you ponder, here's what's hitting the digi-shelves in the next five days.
On Monday 10th March, a choice of two cat games: Order 13, in which you fulfil delivery orders in a haunted warehouse while trying to protect your tabby, and Cheaters Cheetah, in which you are a dirty no-good aimbotting wallhacker and so is everybody else. On Tuesday 11th March, it's time to wipe out and run a teashop in Wanderstop. Too picturesque for you? Then share a cuppa with the rat goblins in highbrow point-and-clicker Centum instead. Wednesday 12th March sees the release of another Inkle mystery in Expelled!, while Thursday 13th March gives us Midnight Murder Club, a multiplayer FPS in which darkness is both enemy and friend. And closing the week on Friday 14th March, we have Travel On, Pigeon - possibly the anti-Untitled Goose Game.
Our latest news liveblog lies below, festering for attention like an oversunned compost heap. Near it lurks our comments thread, like a rake in the grass. By all means spring up and surprise us with new game recommendations. Have a great week.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
MONDAY WITH GARLIC MAYO
This week the days are being served with delicious condiments of all kinds. What's your favourite? Do you swear by good, honest tomato ketchup or do you favour something fancier, like *runs word scrambler* caramelised butterfly wings? Whatever it is, FEED IT TO THE MAW.A Frontier video about forthcoming updates for Planet Coaster 2.
TUESDAY WITH SRIRACHA BUT ALSO SOME OF YESTERDAY'S MAYO JUST TO COOL IT DOWN A BIT
The Maw detests spice being used as a replacement for flavourHere's a new trailer for HBO's The Last Of Us Season 2, out April 13th.
Fetching reto-futurist RPG Song Of Rats released yesterday, and there's still a demo available on Steam.
Splitgate 2 is holding an open beta in May. Here's a shouty announcement video.
"Horror adventure about training up an AI, also featuring a demon catphone" Centum is out now on Steam, with a demo still available.
WEDNESDAY WITH VINEGAR
I once got vinegar confused with vegetable oil and the result was very much not an amazing discovery in the field of curry-making. FEED THE MAW.Ori And The Blind Forest developers Moon Studios are now "fully independent", having wrested back publishing rights for their action-RPG No Rest For The Wicked following Take-Two's closure of Private Division. Hear about that in the below video about a forthcoming Breach update.
SeekerX says: Voids Vigil left Early Access today. This is a sci-fi Brotato-like from the developer of Stephanie Sterling's GOTY for 2023. EA reviews look pretty solid. I'm a bit confused to see this developer not obviously committing to an incredibly puerile bit, though (a la boneraiser)? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2738940/Voids_Vigil/
Lovely diamond-shaped aesthetics in this one.
CHUTNEY THURSDAY
My dad used to make chutney all the time. There is still a fat deposit of tomato and raisin-flavoured salmonella at the back of his kitchen cupboard. FEED THE MAW.You've got slightly over 19 hours left to grab the California Fire Relief Bundle on itch. That's 422 games for $10, including Tunic, Cook Serve Delicious, and a print-and-play Bugsnax card game I'm just learning about but now require immediately. "All proceeds, minus processing fees, go to CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), a Los Angeles-based organization which offers direct monetary support to survivors of the fires, and supports projects for fire resilience in affected areas (and potential disaster zones)".
FRIDAY WITH SOYA SAUCE
I have a terrible habit of putting this on everything. FEED THE MAW.New deets have surfaced about Silent Hill f, the 1960s Japan-set incarnation of Konami's horror series. The full reveal video is below, but we'll have a summary on the site shortly.
SeekerX says: Lunacid was a recent creepy, immersive dungeon-crawler in the vein of From Software's old King's Field games. As a follow-up, done with making his own faux-retro aesthetic, the developer is making a spinoff *actually using From Software's year 2000 free gamemaker / map editor, Sword of Moonlight* (Wait, From Software even names their dev tools "Moonlight Greatsword"?). Lunacid - Tears of the Moon comes out next month, and looks pretty cool: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3506110/Lunacid__Tears_of_the_Moon/
Now that's what I call a throwback project.
Wadjet Eye's time-travelling adventure Old Skies will launch on 23rd April.
Tactical RPG Aether & Iron is a decopunk Fifth Element where you'll fight vehicular turn-based battles with flying cars.
