The Maw - 2nd April-6th April | rockpapershotgunz

Our weekly news liveblog, with this week’s gamiest videogame releases

New week, new PC games! It’s another mercifully brief four day week in the UK due to reasons of religion, so let’s roll with an appropriately snappy intro that avoids any extended digressionary preambles about, oh, I don’t know, magpies fighting outside my flat this morning. Did you know that European magpies are great mimics? Second only to the Northern Mockingbird, apparently, though many ornithologists contend that the BrownThrasheris sorely overlooked. You certainly hear their vocal range when they squabble - I reckon somebody should train up a ChatGPT AI on their calls and no, stop it, I’m doing an anecdote!

Those new PC game releases, without any further ado about birds: Minish Cap-esque shmupMinishoot Adventures(2nd April); Cuban fantasy metroidvaniaSaviorless(2nd April); culinary defence gameKitchen Crisis(3rd April); Dorfromantikal world builderPlanetiles(3rd April); rhythmic robo-dystopian roguelikeBeat Slayer(4th April); 90s biker’s delightBMX Streets(5th April).

As ever, this is an incomplete list of new games, and you can - read: should - proceed to the comments to complain loudly about any important releases we’ve left out because we have all the taste and insight of, oh, let’s say an Australian parakeet (10th on the much-citedBirdNature list of the best bird mimics). Also as ever, you can keep track of our efforts to Report The News in the Maw liveblog below - the Maw being an abhorrent, extra-dimensional gobbler of stories and secrets that we strive eternally to satisfy with regular morsels of freshly-baked journalism. Try not to let that prospect worry you too much. Have a good week!

Our live coverage of this event has finished.

IT’S… TUESDAY ALREADY?

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, a time of much wailing and gnashing of teeth for online news writers. Some of the “announcements” and “surprise releases” appear to have been genuine, however. Here’s one Alice0 spotted - a very short game aboutcars.

📢 BEEP BEEP!! Our new game CARS is out!https://t.co/k2LS2lnJf7🚗💨pic.twitter.com/afMJ0jMPAB

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Also from Alice0: new horror gameContent Warningis free on Steam today only. It’s a co-op experience “where you film spooky stuff with your friends to try and go viral”.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Here’s anew Helldivers 2 patch. This one adds blizzards and sandstorms while rebalancing various weapons, missions and enemies.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Grinding Gear launched new Path Of Exile expansion Path Of Exile: Necropolis over the weekend and have alreadyposted a list of thingsthey plan to flesh out or fix.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

ViaEurogamer, Halo and Call of Duty support studio Certain Affinity areletting 25 people godue to “multiple factors” including an “industry-wide slowdown”, in the words of CEO Max Hoberman. Best of luck to everybody affected.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Fans got some juicyHollow Knight: Silksonginfo over the long weekend. The long-awaited metroidvania was given an official listing in the form of an Xbox Store Page. Cheers Ian! (of theIan Games Network)

–Nic Reuben

ASteam pagewent up over the long weekend, alongside anannouncement trailerfor System Shock Remake studio Nightdive’s remaster of brilliantly bizzare 90’s shooter PO’ed. Chicken butt and frying pan enjoyers, rejoice!

–Nic Reuben

The Guardianhas a gaming-adjacent pieceabout research demonstrating that some people effectively perceive more frames per second.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Blizzard say they’reopen to more Warcraft moviesif they can find the right filmmaker to partner with.

–Graham Smith

Game Pass is gettingsix more games for PC in April, including the delightful Lil Gator Game.

–Graham Smith

For April Fools', Arma developers Bohemia announced Tiny Wars, a mode in which you control toy soldiers battling between Duplo blocks and household bric-a-brac. April 1st or not, youcan now actually play it for real.

–Graham Smith

I like the look of Falling Frontier, a space RTS with blocky spaceships and a big zoom:

–Graham Smith

Vampire survival sim V Rising leaves Early Access on May 8th. Ahead of hitting 1.0, its (v) rising its price to $35 from $20 on April 5th. That gives you three more days topick it up at the cheaper price, if you’re interested.

–Graham Smith

Gearboxconfirmed to Eurogamerthat there are layoffs at the company following its sale by Embracer to Take-Two. It’s unknown how many staff are affected.

Is it just because I’m British that all of Gearbox’s recent public statements seem to be dripping with passive-aggressive niceness? “We are grateful that our talent and capability are of interest to you and your audience”?

–Graham Smith

Edwin wrote about recently-released horror game Content Warning and its beingfree to keep for a short whileearlier today. It now has over 200,000 concurrent players on Steam.

–Graham Smith

HELLO WEDNESDAY

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Former GTA dev Obbe Vermeij has been tweeting about the finer points of GTA. Here’s some insight on the mechanics of plane collisions and near collisions in San Andreas.

In GTA San Andreas, small planes are periodically created near the player to perform a fly-by.Sometimes they crash.Before creating the plane, my code looks for obstacles in its path.It scans a number of lines in the forward direction of the plane. These scans are slow so I…pic.twitter.com/8uUQcmU958

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Unless my eyes deceive me this is, in fact, afirst-person tonguer.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

The mad scientists of NASA are going tostream the next solar eclipseon 8th April between 7pm-9pm BST for the benefit of UK people who might otherwise miss it. They’re also partnering with Twitch, Microsoft, Epic and the National Esports Association to commission “eclipse-themed versions” of Fortnite and Minecraft created by students, which will be streamed alongside the eclipse footage. What direful corpo-lunar cash-in wizardry is all this? I’m off to burn some protective incense.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

PSA:You’ve got a couple more days to grab vampire survival game V Rising for $20 before its price nearly doubles, ahead of its incoming 1.0 exit from early access.

–Matt Jarvis

Borderlands makers Gearbox didn’t quite escape the ongoing Embracer layoffs despite their recent sale to Take-Two, as the studio confirm a number of job cuts.

–Matt Jarvis

Knights of the Old Republic remake devs Saber have insisted the game is “alive and well”after their recent split from Embracer.

–Matt Jarvis

Finally,a gamewhich lets me pass on love letters using a vacuum cleaner.

⚡️it’s time to put an end to the A-POCKY-LIPS!!!⚡️officially revealing our newest game: GREAT GOD GROVEsuck up dialogue boxes n’ use them like items to befriend gods & humans alike, and save the whole dang world!!pic.twitter.com/oSwLJWfvtx

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

NOW FOR THURSDAY

The Merlin Matrix has overloaded! Hose it down for a few minutes while I fetch another bucket of pixies. FEED THE MAW.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Here’s agame updatefor this week’s surprise hit Content Warning, which adds a party popper item, a garden projector and a reporter mic, amongst other things.

‼️Breaking news ‼️Content Warning bug patch and new items!pic.twitter.com/vvjrMgXymX

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

As passed on byPCGamer, Arrowhead have nerfed Helldivers 2’s Slugger shotgun because people were treating it like a sniper rifle.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

There’sa new Palworld update, too, which adds the game’s first Raid Boss, Bellanoir, alongside a host of fixes and smaller changes.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

The Last Epoch devs have penneda rather severe blog about two, now-fixed exploitsthat allowed people to duplicate items and generate gold. Excerpt: “We don’t think it’s a very controversial statement to say that abusing an exploit, ruining the game for all players is not acceptable, and that doing so should result in a ban.”

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Sort of! We could use it before but it auto-promoted the liveblog to the top of the site, which seemed a bit excessive. There’s now a magic tickbox that stops this happening. And yes, it hopefully makes the feed more digestible, pun intended.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

According toPolygon, Ninja Theory’s founder and Hellblade writer-director Tameem Antoniades has left the studio, for reasons yet to be shared.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

Momentous news in the indie scene - Rami Ismail has sold his share of Vlambeer to co-founder Jan Willem Nijman.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Saber’s Matthew Karch has been talking toGamesIndustry.bizabout life at Embracer Group, of which Saber are no longer a subsidiary. He mounts an extended defence of Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors, whom Karch says has been “very maligned” because look, Embracer haven’t laid off absolutelyeverybodyand besides, other big publishers have done worse. The article includes Karch’s account of the role of interest rates and skittish/calculating investors in precipitating last year’s mass cost-cutting. It also touches on the infamous failed Savvy Games deal.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Stop Killing Games is a campaign topressure regulators to look at developers who turn off the products they sell, prompted in part by Ubisoft’s closure of The Crew on March 31st.

–Graham Smith

Roblox Studio’s head says, sure, youcouldcall their platform child explotation, but what of the 15-year-old Indonesian slum dweller who is set free by generating value for Roblox shareholders? Makes you think.

–Graham Smith

As Edwin noted earlier, Nuclear Throne makers Vlambeer return, now as a dynamic solo rather than a duo.Here’s more on the whys and hows.

–Graham Smith

Goblin Stone is about building a colony for, well, goblins, thenbiffing other fantasy races (and humans) with turn-based RPG combat and cards.

–Graham Smith

There’s a proper3D camera mod for SimCity 4, which is truly baffling to me because I thought its buildings were 2D sprites generated from 3D models not included in the actual game. Is this magic? It seems like magic. I want to try it out.

–Graham Smith

Speaking of games that exist, No Plan Bcame out this week. It’s a topdown tactics game about plotting synchronous breaches, takedowns, and grenade tosses. It looks like it might be slicker (and less ick?) than Doorkickers.

–Graham Smith

Right, I’m out. To keep you company during these wee hours, here’s By Your Side from the wonderful Omori soundtrack:

–Graham Smith

FRIDAY THEN

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Nightdive have amassive patchin the works for their System Shock remake - topline additions include a female hacker protagonist and a reworked final fight. It’s out 11th April.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Blizzard have been talking toPCGamerabout not doing advance community testing (aka, Public Test Realms) for Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery, which launches today. According to associate production tester Clayton Stone, having more bugs is an OK price to pay for not spoiling much of the season in advance. “Keeping that level of mystery and of discovery for Season of Discovery, with each phase that we roll out, has really created a moment every time for the whole player base to come together and experience something fresh together at the same time.”

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Castawayis a pint-sized The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I saw this go past earlier in the week and forgot about it - thanksGamesradarfor the reminder.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

There are distant rumblings of the Splinter Celery variety over on Ubisoft Toronto’s Facebook page. Seems likely we’ll hear more at the Ubisoft Forward event on June 11th.

Maaaybe some news on Splinter Cell Remake.Ubisoft Toronto changed their Facebook header and profile picture just yesterday.https://t.co/6KUXYmGjjspic.twitter.com/bSwYCjbtkF

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

Eremite are bringing species hubs to Against The Storm in update 1.3, amongstmany other bits and pieces. It’s due some time in May.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

–Nic Reuben

Player Non Playeris out now, and has the smack of something special. Explore a sad island full of brutalist structures, musical sculptures and lost souls, stroking and embracing characters to help them Move On. You can also chuck them around like dolls.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

As Edwin mentioned earlier, Company of Heroes and Dawn of War developers Relic have confirmed a round of layoffs one week after reclaiming their independence from Sega.Here’s the full story.

–Matt Jarvis

IGNhave an inside report on claims of toxicity, hate speech and crunch at Life Is Strange: True Colors developers Deck Nine.

–Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

More details on the allegations of toxic working culture at Life is Strange devs Deck Nine, as Edwin recently shared.

–Matt Jarvis

Helldivers 2 is adding an explosive crossbow, grenade pistol and other ways to blow up your friends by “accident” next week, in next premium warbond Democratic Detonation.

–Matt Jarvis

There’s now a cure for Dragon’s Dogma 2’s dreaded pawn pox Dragonsplague:mods!

–Matt Jarvis

Reports say thatGears 6 will be announced during an Xbox showcase on June 9th, alongside release dates for Avowed and Indiana Jones And The Great Circle.

–Graham Smith

Cosy free-to-play life sim Palia released on Steam just a couple of weeks ago, butits developers have now laid off a third of their staff.

–Graham Smith

Frostpunk 2’sclosed beta kicks off on April 15thand will run for a week, but it’s only available if you’re willing to pre-order the digital deluxe edition, and it ain’t cheap.

–Graham Smith

No Plan B is a close combat tactics ‘em up in the Door Kickers style, in which you command troops to breach and clear on a timeline. It’sout now. I mentioned this in The Maw previously but hey, now it has its own post.

–Graham Smith