There is always a risk with a live service game, or any game with only competitive elements, that it enters the Cool For Some Zone. This is a space that exists within a given game and also around it, a place where you can pull off Sick Tricks as a result of movement tech not purposefully included in the game, but born as an incidental result of mashing buttons in just the right way. And until today, Marathon found itself in said zone, but Bungie have made the call to patch out the offending issue.

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As pretty (and ugly) as the Resident Evil games have become over the years, there is a quality to the original PS1 entries that lingers on in the hearts of many. That'll likely be partially down to the permanently raised heart rates of kids playing them too young everywhere. But I think the thing that endures in the ever popular PS1 aesthetic in the indie horror scene is that nasty griminess that just feels so at home. And Vultures - Scavengers of Death, a turn-based, extractiony take on Resident Evil, looks like it'll stay true to that vibe.

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Well, the time has finally come. After releasing almost a decade ago, The Long Dark finally wraps things up today with today's release of Wintermute's fifth and final episode, The Light at the End of All Things. It's been a long time coming (the free episode update was originally slated for the end of 2025), but it marks the end of a tough, cold journey. Sorry, what's that? It's "not the end, but also an end"? Oh, my mistake!

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There is no such thing as a free lunch. Or, so the saying goes, but I'm pretty sure the ham sandwich I had at my friend's house when I was seven didn't cost me a penny. Still, in Crown of Greed, a fantasy real-time strategy game inspired by the likes of Majesty, the old adage certainly holds true. And with its release today, it can even be put into the test!

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If you're looking to fit in a break from social media discourse in the near future, it's looking like May is going to be a good time for it. That's because ZA/UM's followup to Disco Elysium, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, is launching around then. And what better a game to post about than one which has a studio embroiled in a whole heap of mess.

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Video games, or more so the people who play them, I suppose, have this annoying thing where they assign a genre name as an insult. I don't want to reignite the discourse around JRPG as a term, but it certainly was used in quite a derisive and othering manner in its earlier years. The term walking sim was used more as a point of ironic degradation, even though it was perfectly apt in many ways. Then there's Eurojank, a sort of real but not technically real genre that describes ambitious but imperfect games made by European developers. And Andrii Verpakhovskyi, designer on the original Stalker games, doesn't think such jank should be geologically categorised.

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The mystery of what you should price your game is one that I am sure will continue to remain mostly unsolved. There's just no right answer, and to make matters worse, there's currencies other than your own to consider. On Steam there have been plenty of occasions where regional pricing differences haven't gone down well, primarily due to games costing too much based on local wages. However, a new Steam update should now make it easier for devs to set better regional prices.

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It sounds like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 developer Warhorse Studios' future projects won't be translated entirely by human hands. Earlier today, a Reddit post was shared to the game's subreddit from Max Hejtmánek, a Czech to English translator and editor on the developer's most recent game, where he claimed that yesterday, March 27th, he was laid off "in favour of using AI for all translations going forward."

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The problem with playtesting is that it is impossible to predict every last thing any given person may do once a game is out in the wild. It's an imperfect science where you do the best you can in the moment. I imagine a live service game like Arc Raiders to be extra difficult, given how many playstyles need to be accounted for. And based on a recent interview, it sounds like some of the team at Embark took an approach that involved a randomiser determining their own playstyle from day to day to make sure they weren't just playing one way.

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It's been a little over a year since the release of Wanderstop, the debut game of Ivy Road, itself a studio made up of Stanley Parable, Gone Home, and Minecraft talent. Since then, the developer has been trying to find funding for its next game, Engine Angel, but in January announced that this had been unsuccessful, with layoffs taking place as a result. Now, the studio has announced that it is, unfortunately, shutting down.

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I've already spoken once today about my intrigue around permanency today, so why not keep that train running. Star Wars Zero Company, a strategy game with XCOM in its veins and execution, is continuing on its spiritual predecessors lineage by having the most controversial of all video deaths as a main feature: permadeath.

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The appearance of AI in art is nothing new, hell, Mr. Movies himself Steven Spielberg literally made A.I. Artificial Intelligence near the start of the millenia. But that was the Cool AI, where robots could be people, too, if we let them. Now what we have is the Donkey Bollocks AI that produces garbage facsimiles of things we know and actually like. But that doesn't mean it's not worth considering AI, and I really need you to bear with me here, within our art, as that's exactly what the team behind Pragmata did (without touching the stuff).

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It would be a reasonable assumption to make that there are only so many variations on football games you can make. Ultimately, no matter how many bells, whistles, or rocket powered cars you throw at it, it always comes down to getting a ball in a net and shouting SCOOOOOORE. Except in the case of Nutmeg!, a "nostalgic deckbuilding football manager" which looks like it features more faxing than any sort of kicking, but I mean that in an endearing way, promise.

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I quite like a bit of permanency in games. Well, like might be too positive, I'm more intrigued by it and the friction it provides. It's interesting that if you're silly enough to kill an NPC in Dark Souls, for example, that's it, no take backsies. So despite honestly not caring all that much for zombie games, I'm still a bit interested in Dying Light: The Beast and its new Restored Land update which introduces a mode where if you kill a zombie once, it truly is gone for good.

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A new Life is Strange game doesn't always feel particularly odd given its sort of steady turn into a franchise. The last one was only in 2024 with Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, bringing back the original game's Max Caulfield. This wasn't necessarily a welcome return for all, and ended up being somewhat of a mixed bag. And now we come to now with a potentially odd entry, Life is Strange: Reunion, which is out today. As the subtitle suggests, and where the oddness comes in, Reunion reunites Max with the surprising return of Chloe Price. Big spoilers ahead for Double Exposure, by the way!

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I've heard Cornwall is quite lovely this time of year. Still cool enough for a fresh pastie, warm enough to have fish and chips by the beach. Shame about all the mutant fish people that are hungry for death! Ah, no, sorry, I think I've gotten myself too enveloped within BRINE, a fast and heavy footed boomer shooter where you play as an angry fisherman who must defend the strange country from "crustacean cultists and piscine horrors."

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Let's travel back in time, roughly to the late 2000s and early 2010s. It was a time where indie games were becoming more of a defined Separate Thing from blockbuster games. It certainly wasn't the birth of indie games, but with the release of certain notable games like Fez, it did mark a change in who got to make money from them at the very least. But to me personally, there is no more quintessential indie game from that era than Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP, which against my wishes has turned 15 today.

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It sounds like Sony are continuing to do what they presumably coldly view as cost cutting. According to Jason Schreier, often known for his insider information, and a leak shared in a ResetEra thread, Dark Outlaw Games, a studio set up by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell, is being shut down. It's unclear how many people this includes at this time.

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Fancy forming your own opinion of Peter Molyneux's supposed final ever game, Masters of Albion? Outside of just commenting on a trailer that plays all the hits, that is? Well, you can, maybe, if you're lucky enough, as Mr. Molyneux himself has put out a call for you to sign up to beta test the game ahead of its release next month.

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The year is 2026, and a new-but-not-really EverQuest is on the way. Announced today, EverQuest Legends is the same MMO some of you have been playing for coming up to 30 years, just without all the years of expansions. And the graphics look as they did upon launch. And there's a few modern upgrades. Don't ask me what the word same means.

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