Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era will release in PC early access on April 30th, Hooded Horse and Ubisoft have announced. The new strategy RPG from developers Unfrozen is the first freshly baked HOMM game in over a decade, and will launch with a mixture of familiar and new modes, spanning singleplayer and multiplayer.

If you're new to the series – there is the faint but horrifying possibility that you were not yet born, when the last one came out - it's a turn-based affair with procedurally generated maps, where you alternate between tending to your towns and sending heroes, fantasy beasties and armies on quests.

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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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Epic Games' mass layoffs led a programmer with terminal brain cancer to lose his life insurance, leaving him and his family struggling to find new coverage. Following news of the situation breaking, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has said the company have reached out to the programmer - Mike Prinke - and that they "will solve the insurance".

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There is a significant danger that this article will have aged terribly. You see, I asked everyone what they were playing this weekend on Thursday, rather than the usual post-lunch scramble on a Friday. You see, I took Friday off to travel to Wales to spend a long weekend with my family. Who knows what happened between my polling of the team on Thursday and Friday? Perhaps Valve surprise released Half-Life 3 and everyone is playing that instead. Maybe they all went off videogames in the interim.

I can only hope they thought to go into the CMS and update the article accordingly. Otherwise, I'll look like a right plonker.

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Free-to-play tactical shooter PUBG: Blindspot is being shut down by developers Arc Team and publishers Krafton a whole couple of months into its early access career. Launched on February 5th, it will cease service on March 30th.

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Crusader Kings 3's latest "Realm Maintenance" update, all about improving and adding to the base game's established systems, is out now in beta form. It includes a big ledger full of spreadsheets you can use to keep track of the world, a rework of accolades, and makes the lives of older rulers even more miserable.

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Slay the Spire 2 developers Mega Crit have rolled back aspects of last week's big STS2 balancing update, which nerfed a number of cards according to the broad objective of making infinites – that is, cunning combos that let you prolong your turn forever - harder to accomplish.

The patch in question isn't even formally part of the roguelite deckbuilder yet – you have to opt into the Steam beta branch to test it out. But it has sparked a ruckus nonetheless among the Spire Slayers, some of whom attempted to review bomb the game despite Mega Crit's protestations that Slay the Spire 2 is still in early access development.

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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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We've all been there. You and two other morally dubious alien treasure hunters have an expedition go wrong, and find yourselves having to tactically blast through some baddies in order to secure some relics in timely fashion. Well, at least that's situation the three protagonists of Vaunted, a newly announced tactical RPG, find themselves in.

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I have two dreams as mayor of an island town in Nova Roma, the new early access city-building game from Lion Shield and Hooded Horse. One is to erect a fantastic water network for my people - a sturdy yet poetic lattice of aqueducts, following their deft gradations down from the mountain rivers to cisterns gracefully spaced amid the insulae, forums, circuses and temples. In my reborn Rome, no populous bathhouse, tinkling fountain, or humble latrine shall ever run dry. With my other hand, I shall raise mighty dams, diverting the rivers away from my walls to avoid flooding in times of heavy rainfall, while exposing velvety expanses of buildable, tillable soil.

My citizens will learn to treat water frivolously, swilling and pissing it away in their decadence, much as they did in the Rome of old. The fools! For when my empire of hydration is complete, I will ascend the slopes and whimsically commission one final dam. Trusting in my stewardship – for what reason have I given them to disobey? - the citizens shall toil day and night to finish the structure. Then, when the last stone is laid and the sluices slam shut, they shall gaze in horror as a tidal wave engulfs their fair metropolis and sweeps all their precious bloody bathhouses away.

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It takes a lot to get me interested in anything tower-defensive these days, and I'm getting pretty grouchy about paper-based aesthetics, too, but "minimalist strategy game" Painted Kingdoms combines these trends to promising effect. It takes place in a living book, where each chapter is illustrated according to a different cultural heritage, extending from Europe to China.

As a roving general-hero, your job is to build a settlement by filling in the blank pages with your magic brush, giving rise to both fortifications and lovely wild spaces. Then, you must fight off waves of badniks who threaten to set the paper alight, reducing your pop-up terrain to ash.

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Slay the Spire 2's multiplayer component is a lovely, sociable game of tactical chemistry and unity in the face of hideous door-based lifeforms, but inevitably, the modders are trying to ruin the bonhomie by adding PvP.

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Following Epic Games' mass layoffs, a Fortnite producer has said that the devs left behind "cannot even fully understand" the sort of impact the job cuts will have on the game during this year and into the future.

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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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Sintopia, the very Bullfroggy strategy management game from developers Piraknights and publishers Team 17, will release on April 16th. I compared this one to The Screwtape Letters back at announcement, but the more obvious, gamer-brain pitch is that it's Black & White sitting on top of Dungeon Keeper. That is, a god sim parked on top of a management game, albeit with a greater emphasis on automation than you might recall from Bullfrog's heyday.

In Sintopia, you are the middle manager of Hell. Above you, there is a bucolic, self-sufficient realm of weirdly plant-based humans, all going about their lives farming, building and searching for treasure. And sinning. The Humus (Humusians? Humusings?) do love to sin. Which is where you come in. When the Humus die, they are swept away to the underworld by a toothy hellbus, and must be purged of moral stains before they can be safely granted a new body.

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Epic Games have announced that they're laying off over 1000 staff today, March 24th. In the wake of that news, the publishers have announced that three Fortnite modes are being permanently sunsetted. Meanwhile, one of the studios Epic own - Horizon Chase developers Aquiris - have announced plans to pull downloads for the first two games in their arcade racing series offline later this year.

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Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, have announced plans to lay off more than 1000 staff. In a company-wide letter, CEO Tim Sweeney blamed both "industry-wide challenges" and "challenges unique to Epic", including a downturn in Fortnite's popularity.

In addition to the layoffs, the company have made more than $500m in cuts by reducing contracting, marketing, and closing open roles. Sweenet says this puts the company "in a more stable place."

Sweeney, a strong advocate of AI, says the layoffs "aren't related to AI".

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Sordid, flesh-eating medieval tactics RPG Wartales is getting a new Fires in the Capital DLC expansion in April. It adds a wartorn metropolis to the game - Isandrin, crown jewel of Edoran and home of the Legion. As such, it's a departure from the mucky outland gigwork you may be accustomed to, offering what Shiro game director Quentin Lapeyre calls "a dense, reactive capital, where the Chaos system ensures that every decision can impact the entire city".

As the boss murderer of a troupe of thugs, you are under no obligation to save Isandrin from escalating factional tensions. You can work to restore order, or you can hasten the proud burg's demise, with dastardly methods ranging from the shanking of bandits to outbreaks of public singing. How horrible!

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