In front of me is a single die. It costs me a bit of money to roll it, but I get a four, so I get four dollars, so I'm making a profit all the same. It costs me a bit more to roll this time. I do it anyway, and I get a bit more money, and more importantly experience points. After a while, I'm able to add in another die. You know what that means: more money. And I need the money, because I owe the devil a good few hundo. This is Meaningless Random Numbers, an incremental horror game where god is watching you.

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That there System Shock remake sure seems to have had one of the weirdest developments on any game around. There's the fact it took so long (almost eight whole years) having been delayed numerous times, but also the fact that at one point the FBI was called in on developer Nightdive. And now, it turns out that a group of devs within the studio banded together to form a sort of secret group to actually get it made.

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Following the customary beta tests, Valve have released a new SteamOS update that adds "initial" support for the forthcoming Steam Machine, that unconscionable hybrid of desktop computer and videogame console, feared by man and god alike. It's one, small step along the road to the new hardware's (delayed) release this summer, at which point we will probably discover that it costs eleventy thousand pounds per unit.

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Hurrah! Today is a very fine Thursday, as one of the most tightly written sci-fi RPGs around is available to pick up for free for around a week. That'll be Citizen Sleeper, by the way, a dice-driven RPG that I'm sure all of you must already know and love, but for the selection of you that don't technically exist, I'm sure you'll be happy to be able to pick it up for the cost of a couple of clicks.

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If you heard the sound of a wet fart reverberating throughout the world yesterday, it'll likely be thanks to the most recent State of Unreal, where Epic offered some more concrete details regarding its plans for Unreal Engine 6. Namely, that it wants to infuse it with generative AI, and there's also some bollocks about using your Fortnite skins in other games and vice versa. But speaking of Fortnite, the same showcase announced a Vampire Survivors collab was on the cards, only for developer poncle to learn about the generative AI stuff the same time as the rest of us and express some concern over it.

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As I write these words, Julian has just published a feature about Signet City, the new "fungalpunk" RPG from Citizen Sleeper and In Other Waters developer Gareth Damian Martin, in which you are a soulful parasite moving between the minds and bodies of an entire urban population. Doubtless, it is a splendid account of what is very likely a masterpiece of post-anthropocentric poetics, assuming I'm clocking Gareth's current theoretical preoccupations correctly. Unfortunately, I don't have time to read the article because there is a horrible mushroom in my foot that's trying to eat my brain.

The infestation literally squelches beneath me, as I haul myself between the floors of an apartment block decked with mouldy pizza and rusty chains. The more it spreads, the more… textured the squelching, and the louder the groans of my avatar as I shamble from door to door on a desperate quest for lotion.

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The broil of ideas that make up Signet City have been growing in Gareth Damian Martin's head for years and they're about fit to burst. The creator of In Other Waters and Citizen Sleeper describes their new game as a first-person fungalpunk RPG, a game that draws inspiration from the history and culture of the northern England, the whalepunk tech of Dishonored's world, and lifts systems from cyberpunk tabletop game The Veil. But it's as much a manifestation of projects they're reacting against, as those they're reverently lifting from.

We'll get into all that, but put the highbrow, high concept references to the side for a moment. It's maybe easier to think of Signet City as a bit like Monsters, Inc, but with more mushrooms.

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Thick As Thieves developers OtherSide Entertainment have laid off 17 employees following the cancellation of a multiplayer immersive sim dubbed Argos: Riders on the Storm. The studio's helmed by Looking Glass Studios veterans Warren Spector and Paul Neurath - key figures in shaping the likes of Deus Ex and System Shock 2 - said via a spokesperson that they believe Argos "could have been a huge success in normal times".

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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, overseer of a company which fired over 1000 staff just a few months ago, has laid out his vision for the games industry's future during a "time of both crisis and opportunity". As Epic revealed an Unreal Engine 6 packed with generative AI model support designed to "reduce the tedious work" that goes into making games, Sweeney painted a picture of a future in which the threat of Roblox eating the world is combatted by a bunch of game makers working with Epic to create a massive integrated everythingverse that's somehow totally different to Roblox's massive integrated everythingverse.

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Prolific FromSoft game multiplayer modder Yui is "close" to being ready to open up alpha testing of their latest seamless co-op mod, this time for Dark Souls 2. Despite it following the the footsteps of their seamless co-op mods for the likes of Elden Ring, Nightreign, and the original Dark Souls, Yui said this DS2 mod's turned out to be a very different kettle of fish and one of their "most complicated and ambitious projects to date".

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An employment tribunal in the UK has ruled against striking blacklisting claims levied against Rockstar Games by staff the GTA 6 studio abruptly fired last year from ongoing legal proceedings between the two sides. The staff were let go in autumn last year, with Rockstar subsequently claiming that they were fired due to the leaking of "confidential information" via a public forum. The IWGB Game Workers Union, representing the ousted workers, have accused Rockstar of union busting over the firings.

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Towards the end of goblinAmerica's tutorial level, you mercilessly gun down a huge cherry tree. Like much else in the game's world, the tree is an abomination – beige and rubbery as a stunted hatchling, with hard, tacky fruit hanging from it like dumbbells torturously sewn into the skin. Its death throes are pathetic, and somehow erotic. It sags and sprawls, breasting across the arena boobily with an undefinable cry. I am happy that this creature is slain, and hope never to encounter its like again. I know in my heart that I will.

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It seems appropriate that Control Resonant drags the Remedyverse back away from Alan Wake II’s screeching horror, as it’s spent the past few weeks – and as of yesterday, about three hours of playable preview build – assuaging my fears. Control the First, in my defence, took its kinetically supernatural shooting, put it in the hands of a likeable hero, and wrapped everything in a delightfully weird megastructure of brutalist concrete. Could Resonant get away with changing all three?

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A couple of months on from pushing to make some vital veteran additions to their team in order to get their massive Oblivion remake mod over the line, Skyblivion's developers are once again appealing for volunteers to aid in overcoming some "final roadblocks" standing the way of its release. Meanwhile, it sounds like the chances of another statistical breakdown from the modders running down exactly what's left to be done are low, with Skyblivion's implementation lead asserting that the mod's so close to the finish line such data's no longer "a super relevant way of displaying our remaining work".

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Guild Wars 3 developers ArenaNet have published a Hot Take of sorts about the MMORPG genre, while explaining in broad strokes how their forthcoming "modern evolution" will differ from Guild Wars 1, released in 2005, and Guild Wars 2, released in 2012.

As they note, MMOs and gaming at large have changed enormously over the course of the series. Entire business models, storage formats, and subsets of bikini armour have come and gone. In particular, the developers offer some thoughts about how the MMO genre at large has bled into the concept of live service, making the case that a lot of notionally "optional" live service game monetisation consists of talking around the fact that you're effectively demanding a subscription.

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While Crusader Kings 3 typically deals in the fantasy of sitting on a big chair in one place and shouting at underlings, roaming its world as a the unlanded leader of a band of travelling adventurers is just as fun and arguably the best way to kick off a custom dynasty. Up to now, the freedom to pursue the life of a ruthless mercenary, valiant knight, or stuffy bureaucrat surviving off of favours for rulers while searching for the ideal title or throne to claim as their own once they're ready has been locked behind 2024's Roads to Power expansion. Thankfully, Paradox plan to whisk it out from behind that curtain and make it a free part of the base game later this year.

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The Guild: Europa 1410 is a reboot of 4HEAD's strategy game Europa 1400: The Guild from 2002, created by the studio behind the well-regarded World War sim Last Train Home. My first hurdle in the Steam demo is working out who and where the hell I am. The demo treats you to a slice of Kuttenberg, a Czech city made famous to a lot of non-Czech people by Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2: at a glance, it could be the Warhorse RPG with a top-down mod.

It gives you wheel-churned roads among houses of wattle and daub; vegetable patches and windmills and furnaces roamed by dozens of 'living, breathing' folk in authentically muted period attire. All of it basking beneath a day-night cycle and a spread of weather conditions. All of it pleasantly hard to decipher from bird's eye view, though there's a highlighting function to boil away the set dressing.

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Hellblade developers Ninja Theory are one of the numerous Microsoft-owned studios currently facing a very uncertain future, as the company look to either spin off or shutter a bunch of the developers under the Xbox banner. In Ninja Theory's case, the news that their existence hangs in the balance was made even more jarring by the fact they'd revealed a new game, Senua, earlier this month at Xbox's summer showcase. According to a fresh report, however, Microsoft had already decided they were going to kill or part with the studio prior to Senua's reveal, with that showing aimed - at least in the eyes of Xbox execs - at trying to boost the chances of Ninja Theory attracting some new investors.

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When Final Fantasy 7 Remake part two was officially revealed to be titled Rebirth, an immediate question arose for pretty much everyone: what will part three be called? That question has persisted since Rebirth came out, with way too many people suggesting Reunion despite the fact they did that one for Crisis Core (seriously, what's with that). The answer was finally revealed this month to be Revelation at Summer Geoff Fest, and as it turns out, we all found out at the same time as pretty much everyone that's working on the threequel.

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Last month, publisher Kwalee released their first game made in house as part of their studio Kwalee Labs, Luna Abyss, a first-person bullet-hell platforming adventure game about a prisoner exploring a derelict megastructure. Now, it appears that the entire team that made the game has been laid off.

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Last month the European Commission promised that they would provide a response to the Stop Killing Games campaign that seeks to gain more protections around online game server shutdowns into law. That reply has now come in and, essentially, it's not the result Stop Killing Games were after.

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About a year ago, Saber Interactive offered up the fairly surprising reveal of a Hellraiser game in the form of Hellraiser: Revival. It's a singleplayer joint, one that sort of reminds me of Outlast in vibe, and now a year on from that reveal Saber have locked in a seasonally appropriate (roughly) release date.

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Copa City is a football game in which you do everything but play football. The playing of football is the empty centre of this strategy gaming doughnut - the calm in the eye of a storm of city-building and tycoon management mechanics. You've been hired by some famous real-world clubs to organise their matches, a job that extends from outfitting the stadium itself to plonking down fanzones, drink stalls and mascots in the streets beyond.

Over the course of 14 days, you price tickets for the stands, and divide them up between the three main spectator groups – ultras, core supporters, and families. You plot routes through the city to the stadium, place camera crews, hire security, and oversee your volunteers. Then match day comes, and you sit back and sob with pride as hundreds of boisterous, cherubic soccer enthusiasts process towards the pitch, in a spectral onslaught of party smoke and streamers.

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It's not a good week to be in the games industry (again). As Xbox reportedly prepare to either shutter or spin off Double Fine, Ninja Theory and Compulsion, Don't Nod, original developer of the Life is Strange series, look to be in hot water of their own. As it currently stands, it appears that Don't Nod will run out of cash come November this year.

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Last week saw the release of Meccha Chameleon, a Japanese indie game in which groups of players hide from other players armed with shotguns. The twist over similar prop hunt games (that I've played, anyway) is that you can pose and freely paint your character's body, disguising them within each map's colourful scenery. I had a feeling the idea might catch on – it's the kind of novelty item that makes for good Youtubage. I wasn't expecting it to sell two million copies.

One of the game's loveliest qualities is that, strictly speaking, you don't need to play it to play it. You can just skim through the screenshots of exceptionally skilled or foolish feats of camouflage on Reddit and the Steam forums. Here's a few that made me chuckle.

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We're in the thick of this week's Steam Next Fest now. If demos were big juicy bugs, I can best liken it to driving down a country road in the '70s in high summer: you can barely see through the windscreen for splatmarks. Does that work as an analogy? No time to check, there are demos to be playing.

I've been playing ten minutes here and there whenever there is a free moment, I'd I've installed a lot of the recommendations in the comments, so pleaese keep them coming. The only way to stay above water before the even wraps up on June 22nd is work as a team.

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In the time-old tradition of marketing, EA have announced something ancient as though it's just been thought up by the boffins in the advertising lab. Their big new moneymaking wheeze to squeeze every last penny out of their games: billboards.

In a press release that stretches into essay-length territory, EA sing the praises of their new ad platform, which is "transforming how brands connect with audiences". Companies looking to hock their wares can now pay EA to plaster themselves over any and all in-game advertising slots.

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Mostly decent open-world ninja sim Assassin’s Creed Shadows is getting its last big update today, as Ubisoft begin the process of shooing players away from the year-old RPG and towards the gleaming, nipple-adding newness of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced. The Shadows patch even includes an unlockable outfit based on Edward Kenway’s pirate garb, displaced only 150 or so years out of its appropriate time period for your synergistic brand awareness pleasure.

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Xbox are reportedly closing or spinning off Psychonauts developers Double Fine, Hellblade studio Ninja Theory, and South of Midnight creators Compulsion Games, as Microsoft commence efforts to yet again "reset" their billion dollar gaming business after already laying off thousands of staff, cancelling games, and closing several studios over the past couple of years.

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"There is a hole in the world," writes Ursula K Le Guin in The Farthest Shore, "and the light is running out of it." Alas, The Farthest Shore contains no terrible mechanical instruments of hole-digging. For that, we must turn to MOLE, "a psychological horror experience with tactile simulation elements about madness, faith, and the depths we choose to dig".

Out now on Steam, it makes me think of Mike Klubnika's clicky torture instruments, of Iron Lung's unseen exteriors, and of Mouthwashing's workaday cabin fever. In brief, it seems like an effective delivery system for some extraordinarily bad vibes.

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Xbox Games Studios boss Craig Duncan and chief of staff Louise O'Connor have left Microsoft, according to reports, with all the studios under Duncan's watch now operating under Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty until a replacement is found.

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The UK government have announced a ban on social media platforms for British people under the age of 16, encompassing Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X.com (known hereabouts as MechaHitler.com or Xitter, among other lousy putdowns). The ban is expected to come into force in spring 2027, and will have far-reaching impacts on ye olde videogame discourse, because people do so love to share and talk about games on social media.

The under-16s ban will also directly apply to certain gaming "services", though prime minister Keir Starmer and his minions have yet to specify which. It won't, apparently, "affect the ability for children to participate in multiplayer games online".

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Back when I first tried a G-Sync Pulsar monitor at an Nvidia shindig in February, I clung to the hope that maybe, finally, gaming display tech had made its first real breakthrough in years. Dozens, if not hundreds of samey screens would be revealed as incompetent fools in the searing light of Pulsar’s innovative genius; Nvidia’s own frame generation systems would weep in shame that they once tried to mock up the fluidity and motion clarity that Pulsar could deliver for real.

Now, I have one such Pulsar monitor – an identical 1440p, 360Hz Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV to the one from that demo – to test at length, and can at last say with certainty: yeah, s'alright. Pretty decent. Doesn’t make much of a difference in some games but it can look quite nice. Probably too expensive, mind. Why can’t I hear any weeping?

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"The mid-summer dry spell"? My friend, your naivete is exceeded only by your boorishness. You should be ashamed of yourself! This week is anything but dry. It's the week of another Steam Next Fest – a period of carefully abbreviated, wishlist-baiting bounty, in which we cram the Maw's many jaws with demos and playtests.

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The Witcher 3's multiplayer mod, the world's premier tool for forming big towers of multiple Geralts precariously perched atop each others' shoulders, has added another string to its bow. You can now meet up with some mates at a tavern to play games of Gwent against them, a concept so appealing CD Projekt made a whole game out of it.

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As reports suggesting major changes are brewing at Xbox, likely involving mass layoffs, continue to swirl, the console maker's current boss' plans for the future apparently involve pushing out new Fallout and Elder Scrolls games in speedier fashion. Asha Sharma's desire to whip out new entries in flagship series reportedly comes as Microsoft are considering spinning out or restructuring Xbox as a subsidiary.

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If, like me, you walk through this world forever thinking about Chicken Run, you too may expect at any moment to discover the animal kingdom is actually made up of industrious town-building critters. Though, hopefully they're not looking to attack and tie us up if ever they're rumbled. Especially when the towns they're making look as delightful as those in frog townbuilder Croakwood. I could watch their hustle and bustle all day.

The next game from Parkitect developer Texel Raptor, Croakwood puts you in the role of mayor and town planner for a small community of frogs. Hidden under the canopy of leaves and trees surrounding a small pond, the amphibian settlement would be easy to miss as you stroll through their wood. Especially when you consider the frogs themselves are only a few centimeters tall.

But there's more going on in this townbuilder than meets the eye, as the developers have been exploring ways to capture the challenge of a demanding management game without introducing the stress and pressure that traditionally comes with them.

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Sundays are for testing the limits of the hunger for street furniture in your community.

Since moving into the new flat, we've been taking things left behind by the previous owner down to the street one-by-one. A lamp here, a side table there, a splash of shelving. So far, everything has been taken by neighbours and passersby. But, after a week of rain where we couldn't take anything out without it getting drenched (and losing any chance of being taken), we've a glut of things to put out. With my sister coming to stay on Monday, it all has to go in one. Will my neighbors be left unable to choose between an office chair, a wobbly step ladder, and yet more shelving? Time will tell.

Still, while I sit beside the living room window, watching to see if anyone carries off the loose kitchen cabinet unit, I'll need something to read…

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Vanillaware might not be a household name to some of you, but it's got a library that hangs up there with the best of them. Odin Sphere, Dragon's Crown, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, all games that I have seen their biggest supports plead for you to play them on sites like Dwitter and Bluesky. Only problem for us lot is that none of them are on PC. Well, most of them, as just this week it was announced that one of their earlier titles Muramasa: The Demon Blade will finally be coming to PC. And, as it seemingly turns out, Vanillaware would like more of their games to be made available on PC… it's just not up to them.

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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that when you think of penguins and video games, Club Penguin is probably the one that comes to mind for you (or the Surf's Up adaptation if you're nasty). There aren't really a lot of games about these flightless birds, and they're normally on the sillier side when there are because penguins are funny little critters. Penguin Colony, the next game from the devs behind Umurangi Generation, doesn't completely abandon that silliness, but it does throw in some cosmic horror and the hubris of man in for good measure. And its first demo certainly sets the stage for an old experience.

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City builders, kind of by definition, tend to be quite large in form. You're constructing an entire city here after all, and all the complications that come with that. So how about a citybuilder that's going for something a bit smaller? Meet Zlin City: Arch Moderna, a city builder designed to look like you're making dioramas, made by scanning actual, physical models, inspired by the real Czech city Ziln.

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Generally when a game gets remade, you'll assume that it'll mostly be the same at least narratively, given how not normal can be with works that are considered uncomfortably sacred. That's certainly what many may have guessed about the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, only those pesky Whispers to get in the way offering some changes here and there. Rebirth continued that here and there, staying the course in other ways, and Revelation will be out next year with an ending you can't change. And according to director Naoki Hamaguchi, that ending has been planned right from the beginning, more or less.

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As with most suits of this nature, the one Nintendo filed against Palworld developer Pocketpair has been going on for a while now. Almost two years, in fact, specifically over infringement of patent rights related to specific mechanics, as opposed to anything like copyright. Nintendo suffered a bit of a loss earlier this year, and now it sounds like the whole thing might only net them what is essentially pocket change (for a billion dollar company, anyway).

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Among the worries faced by game developers seeking a publisher is the gamble of a prototype – that is, "a playable build that meaningfully shows what’s good about your game – a proof of concept", in the summary of Suspicious Developments boss Tom Francis. Specifically, Francis says a "prototypable project is one where you can build that in an amount of time you can afford to lose".

Few independent devs have bags of time to lose, and there's no guarantee the labour will be rewarded. And yet, many publishers today won't even come to the table unless they can get their hands on a playable slice of a game. At Digital Dragons in Krakow this year, I spoke to people from 11 Bit, Jagex and Bloober Team, together with a couple of independent teams, about the seeming necessity of prototypes and the associated temptation to knock them together using generative AI.

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The weather has been an unpredictable mess of downpour and blazing sun this week, but Saturday feels like it could be the turn. Another chance for the sun to yank on the starter cord of summer and get that season's engine thrumming.

I simply refuse to have to turn back from another walk around the park because 10 metres from my front door the lovely sunshine is replaced by pelting rain.

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Crimson Desert. It's basically an everything game at this point, so it's not too suprising that the latest update developers Pearl Abyss have put out takes the Red Pudding further down the road of being a Nintendogs competitor. The number of pets you can tame as you wander around Pywel has been growing gradually since launch and you can now have up to 100 of them. That seems dangerously impractical, but hey, video game.

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Following some instances of Forza Horizon 6 players losing saves and ending up having to start over from scratch, developers Playground Games are starting to roll out fixes. For PC folks, they're advising a check that the latest version of Microsoft Gaming Services is running, as the app is the way PC-centric fixes for the issue are being rolled out.

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Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster developers Frontier have a new Planet game in development that involves neither zoos nor rollercoasters, a scandalous turn of events. The project features a "completely new setting", in fact, though it'll still be some kind of strategy management game.

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I really should learn to take this stretch of trail a bit more carefully. The one that runs precariously alongside the edge of a lake, dipping and getting muddier right at the point when it’s easiest to gently stumble into the water if you’re not paying enough attention. The one which seems the only passable route around a mountain to the final cabin I’ve yet to visit in this autumnal stretch of Canadian backwoods. I really should be more careful, I lament as my Land Rover sits uselessly slumped on its side under the waves, its engine having drowned a good five minutes ago.

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In case you missed the opening night of this year's Summer Geoffs, Like A Dragon/Yakuza devs RGG Studio's Japanese history-hopping crime brawler Stranger Than Heaven got a release date. That was rather overshadowed, however, by the reveal that it'll feature a digitally resurrected version of rapper Tupac Shakur. While not the first deceased face to be confirmed as featuring in the game, that honour went to Japanese actor Bunta Sugawara, Shakur's inclusion naturally raised a lot of eyebrows. RGG boss Masayoshi Yokoyama's now spoken in more depth about the decision to include Tupac's likeness in a game about the origins of the Tojo Clan.

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