#Drive Rally blends WRC seriousness with arcade cheer

A delightful blend As the name suggests, #Drive Rally keeps things nice and simple: you have a blocky cartoon rally car and you’ve got to blast around a course in as quick a time as possible. The demo’s home to three courses set in the woods of Holzberg, and while I’m no expert, they presented a nice balance of tricky corners offset by gentle curves that let you unleash some throttle....

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 227 words · Mark Wood

Assembling furniture is anything but "wholesome" in this fantastic Steam Next Fest demo

I’m really excited for Miniatures after playing this You know those wee indie games about opening boxes and organising items and assembling furniture and they’re all very cute and colourful and fun and “wholesome”?Miniaturesis not one of those games. Oh certainly you will open boxes and organise items and assemble furniture in its Steam Next Fest demo, but it’s not cute or colourful or wholesome. Miniatures is more of a psychological horror game, laden with tension and uncertainty....

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 338 words · Mrs. Sharon Parker

Bore Blasters and its mix of Vampire Survivors meets Dome Keeper is, dare I say it, a blast

It’s coming out March 8th, but you can play its Next Fest demo now Many a Survivors-like has come and gone over the last couple of years, butBore Blastersmight be the first one that’s really struck a chord with me. Or maybe that should be struck gold, as this mining roguelike is all about collecting little gem-like nuggets while boring deep underground for treasure and fending off all manner of flying eyeballs, bats and other unmentionable horrors with wings....

February 6, 2024 · 3 min · 558 words · Brett Nicholson

Crusader Kings 3 is getting two new expansions in 2024, starting March

Black Death and Byzantines A Paradox game? Getting DLC? You are pure joshing, you are simply having me on. But no! It’s true!Crusader Kings 3is getting another year of updates, including two full expansions. The first of them, Legends Of The Dead, introduces the Black Death and will release on March 4th. As if there weren’t plentiful ways of dying inCrusader Kingsalready. Legends Of The Dead will balance its new plague by allowing you to cement the legacy of your ruler even after death via “great feats and effective propaganda”....

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 244 words · Ryan Buckley

Cyberpunk 2077 sequel taps Fable, Control and Dishonored expansion writer

Alongside other new hires ACyberpunk 2077sequel, currently called “Project Orion”, is currently in the early stages of development at CD Projekt Red’s new Boston studio. Today, CDPR announced several new high profile hires were joining the project, most notably Anna Megill. Megill, who will serve as lead writer on the project, has previously worked on games such as Control,Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider, and the upcoming Fable reboot. Megill has also worked onGuild Wars 2and Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora....

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 358 words · Carlos Richards

Dusky Depths is an oddly relaxing name for a roguelite bullet hell about escaping a dead planet

Coming soon, has a demo Dusky Depths- what a pleasant name for a game. It makes me think of sleepy suburban soap operas, slightly worrying brands of shampoo or chocolate, and easy listening radio shows on long-haul train journeys. It doesn’t make me think of getting vapourised by laser beams in an exoplanetary cave system, which is what happened when I gave the demo a try. Brought to you by tiny German indie Bow Echo Games, Dusky Depths is a roguelite twin-stick shmup in which you explore a planet infested with rickety robot defence systems and noxious wildlife....

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 310 words · Rebecca Morse

Echo Point Nova is an open world FPS with hoverboards, floating islands and sledgehammers

Latest demo includes a boss, new weapons and Steam Deck support If you’ve been dreaming of a hyper-agileFPSset on the sky islands from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,Echo Point Novacould be your jam. It casts you as a space pilot who crashlands on a floating archipelago planet during a research expedition. I’m not sure what you’re researching, exactly, but going by your character’s loadout, it’s the Science of Sick Moves....

February 6, 2024 · 3 min · 508 words · Diana Jefferson

Elden Ring is getting a free-to-play mobile version with in-app purchases, according to reports

Meanwhile, sneaky Steam updates point to impending Shadow of Erdtree release All that’s according toReuters, who cite three sources “familiar with the matter”. I realise that “free-to-play mobile version of Elden Ring with in-app purchases” is a phrase tailormade to give certain players hives and/or cause the speaker to be struck by lightning, but much as I can’t help looking over cliff edges, I do find the idea fascinating. Perhaps they can add some newbosses- a giant, ironclad gacha machine on corpse-legs that showers you in rotting gacha balls, perhaps?...

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 279 words · Emily Hughes

Helldivers 2 has human game masters who tweak your co-op fights in real-time

For better and worse Helldivers 2pits co-op players against swarms of computer-controlled aliens and robots in the context of a vast, ongoing galactic war. There might be someone else in battles with the power to tip the scales, however: an omniscient game master, employed by developers Arrowhead, who can monitor the fight and drop in buffs and debuffs to change the flow of the fight. In arecent interview with PlayStation Access, deputy game director Sagar Beroshi talked about the influence they have taken from tabletop games, and how that influence extends beyond Warhammer 40K-style cape-wearing super soldiers....

February 6, 2024 · 3 min · 466 words · Nicholas Watson

How to get Gunpowder in Palworld

Here’s how to get Gunpowder in Palworld Want to know how to get Gunpowder in Palworld?Palworldbecame somewhat infamous upon its initial reveal for featuring guns, and while the thought of equipping your cuddly Pals with firearms might still seem excessive (or amusing, depending on your perspective), there’s no doubt that Gunpowder is one of the most important crafting materials in the entire game. You’ll need it if you want all those weapons glimpsed in the earlyPalworldtrailers, from Assault Rifles to Rocket Launchers....

February 6, 2024 · 3 min · 582 words · Gregory White

Infinite Craft is a browser game in which you can craft anything, from God to Minecraft

Productivity destroyed I created God pretty early on, though not until I’d first created the Big Bang and, even earlier, Batman. This is the kind of thing you can do inInfinite Craft, a browser game in which you can seemingly craft anything, and in which it is glorious, time-stealing fun to try. You start with four elements - Earth, Water, Fire and Wind - and you can combine these in pairs to make something new....

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 404 words · Alisha Edwards

My secret favourite game of 2023 is now on Game Pass

I had to uninstall Brotato for my own good Brotato is a wave-survival shoot ‘em up where aiming and attacking are handled for you. As waves of alien invaders spawn in and the round timer ticks down, all you have to do is run and dodge and grab healing fruit pickups and not die while your potato auto-performs violence. Defeated enemies drop green blobs which are both XP and money. As you’d expect from a shmup-ish game, a lot of skill is in dodging and prioritising targets....

February 6, 2024 · 6 min · 1144 words · Tina Bird

Nightingale's early access launch is coming two days earlier than planned

Now arriving on February 20th Surprise,Nightingaleheads. Developers Inflexion Games have just announced their upcoming crafting survival ‘em up is arriving into early access two days ahead of schedule.Nightingalewas originally set to launch on February 22nd, but will now release on February 20th on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. This is mostly to help the team nip any launch day bugs in the bud a lot sooner during the week, rather than have them lingering in the game over the weekend....

February 6, 2024 · 2 min · 359 words · Brian Ibarra