It's well and truly not summer now. I'm writing this with the lights on because the screen's backlight is suddenly too bright for these eyes grown weak and lazy by the abundance of natural illumination.
Brendy (RPS in peace) liked Keep Driving. Nic (RPS in peace) liked Keep Driving. I (RPS still alive) liked Keep Driving. Julian (RPS currently boss) liked Keep Driving. You, reader, should play road trip RPG Keep Driving if you haven't already. A good excuse to do so is the fact that it's getting official mod support via the Steam Workshop on September 28th.
I completed Roman Sands RE:Build late last night, and haven't had nearly enough time to digest it, but I'm keen to help get the word out and energise whatever algorithmic chicanery might contribute to this gorgeous, ugly thing making money. So! Roman Sands RE:Build is two exquisitely grim games locked in a collapsing binary orbit. You should play it, preferably before reading the rest of this review, which is only going to spoil and dilute its squalid magic.
Control Resonant, much like the inside-out, interdimensional cryptids it has you bashing with a shapeshifting stick, probably shouldn’t exist. At least not in the risk-averse, pennypinching reality that sometimes seems to have enveloped the art of gamesmaking, and that may have installed some scepticism into my own head. The sequel to a liked yet slow-selling shooter, which replaces both the original’s player character and its instantly recognisable, bureauca-brutalist setting, while violently pirouetting into open-world RPG melee brawling. Five words that Remedy, in all their thirty years of existence, have never previously let pass their lips.
An ambitious Baldur's Gate 3 custom campaign mod which adds a whole new region to explore between the RPG's second and third acts is finally out in beta. This extra adventure midway through BG3's main quest is the result of nearly two years of work from modder SquallyDaBeanz, who's put together a trip to The Chionthar Wilds full of new missions and dungeons.
Heart Machine, the US-based makers of Hyper Light Drifter, its multiplayer spinoff Hyper Light Breaker, and last year’s Possessor(s), have laid off "nearly everyone" on staff after an unnamed publisher pulled funding for their next, unannounced game.
As many reservations as I had going into ZA/UM's Zero Parades: For Dead Spies earlier this year, what with all of the drama and upset that's surrounded the studio since Disco Elysium's release, it pleasantly surprised me. I don't think I rate it more highly than its brilliant predecessor, but it offered a throughly fun time that felt like it was riding the coattails of Disco, but not in a way that left it any way unable to create its own magic.
Now, it's getting a free Director's Cut update to coincide with its console release, with a bunch of new additions and tweaks coming to the PC version.
Despite Rockstar Games' silence on the matter, the cat rather seems to be out of the bag about GTA 6 getting its own online component that'll doubtless serve as GTA Online has for GTA 5. Court docs the studio themselves filed as part of the ongoing final hearing in a legal battle over the firings of 34 developers last year are partly to thank, but now so is the boss of streaming platform Twitch just blurting out when he expects GTA 6 to get a big multiplayer bump.
When it comes to RPGs, I am an irredeemable savescummer. I admit it. I'll slam F9 at the drop of a hat (perhaps the hat was dropped as a result of a failed dexterity roll. Unacceptable. Reload).
So when I recently found myself reloading a Divinity 2 save for the umpteenth time in a single session, I started to wonder - in a genre that's supposedly about storytelling first and foremost, why am I viewing botched persuasion checks as something to be studiously avoided? And why is it that I feel totally different about making a horrible mess of things in tabletop roleplaying games?
After all, some of my fondest memories of real-life roleplaying are moments of extravagant failure: sometimes of the bathetic stepping-on-a-rake-instead-of-slaying-the-necromancer variety, and sometimes of the much more grounded, human, and affecting type.
It all got me thinking: how do RPG developers think about player failure? Would they recognise the distinction between digital and tabletop that I'm describing? And can they convince a savescummer like me to renounce my ways?
If you've given The Blood of Dawnwalker a go, odds are you've got thoughts about the 30-day and 3-night timer it applies to Coen's quest to save his family from fate most vampy. Devs Rebel Wolves are very much aware of how divisive the feature's proven, and now the game's director's made clear that it's not guaranteed to return in future entries unless it can be made to mesh with the story being told.
Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West have disappeared from the Steam store in the UK, something that's happened rather out of nowhere and looks like it might've even taken publishers PlayStation by surprise. Said publishers have issued a statement noting that they've already reached out to Valve to get the games back up.
Update: The IWGB Games Worker Union have issued the following statement to RPS from vice-chair Ben Newbon:
We cannot add any further insight into the heartbreaking job losses at BARB, a company that we think has been slowly spiralling for a long time.
We came together to fight tooth and nail to prevent the hardworking people working there from such a fate after pouring their heart and soul into Minds Eye. We are proud of what we built there but still hearing of redundancies is always an injustice.
We offer nothing but solidarity and support to everyone impacted by any job losses and remain committed to getting justice for BARB management’s treatment of workers and organising to root these practices out of the video games industry. Only by joining and becoming active in a trade union can we achieve these goals.
Original story follows:
Build a Rocket Boy (BARB), makers of panned futuristic action game/massive minigame platform MindsEye, appear to be making more staff redundant or able to seek other work. As part of a LinkedIn post indicating he's seeking opportunities elsewhere, a principal talent acquisition partner at the studio has written that he "will be seeing BARB through till the very end, helping wrap things up here in the HR department", which doesn't exactly paint a rosy picture of the company's future.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty sequel Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember will release in March next year, devs Koei Tecmo have revealed as they've whipped out an alpha demo that you can give a go right away. Expect plenty of samurai sword slashing and rolling around the mythological or historical Chinese big man, plus some open battlefields to roam.
Skyblivion, that massive Oblivion remake mod which was originally set to release last year, finally seems to be on the verge of arrival. While they've still yet to put a full release date on it, the mod's creators have announced that they're looking for voluteers to join their comms team and contribute to a final push to get the word out about their creation.
Earlier this week, trademarks were spotted over at the European Union Intellectual Property Office for a videogame or videogame-related Something called 'Wonders of O'. The trademarks were registered by South Korean company Neowiz, who also happen to be the publishers of excellent puppet-powered soulslike Lies of P.
Given the shared title format, online sleuthyfolks have wasted no time identifying the project as the Lies of P sequel developers Round 8 teased back in 2024, alongside an untitled horror game.
Valve have sometimes – if perhaps not often enough to call it a grand old tradition – massaged interest in their hardware by pairing the kit with a new game. For the Steam Deck it was Aperture Desk Job, and for 2019’s jammy sod of a VR headset, the Valve Index, it was Half-Life: Alyx, a full-length City 17 adventure that reviewer Graham (RPS in peace) called “a masterclass of first-person shooter design.”
Still, people rarely want to take the same class twice, hence why padding-compacted eyebrows have been raised by Alyx again being a tentpole of the new Steam Frame headset – this time, to showcase the game running in PC-less, standalone VR. Why not make something new, even a smaller tech demo like ADJ or the Index’s own The Lab collection of Portal-themed minigames?
According to Valve staff, several of whom I spoke to prior to the Frame’s Monday night launch, there were several reasons why a return to Alyx was considered more valuable – even though a brand new VR game was, at least briefly, on the table.
No siree. We are not trying to fight those big bosses. It's arguably a bit of a weird thing for a publisher with Diablo and World of Warcraft in their arsenal to say, but that's the stance Blizzard are sticking to with their storefront Battle.net, even though it now boasts two big CD Projekt Red RPGs. Instead of an unknowably girthy hoard of games, the publishers say Battle.net's still designed to feel like a handpicked basket of things to play.
Update: Wadjet Eye's Dave Gilbert has confirmed on Bluesky that Nighthawks' "Adults Only" Steam label has been removed, meaning it's no longer locked in horny jail. "Everything is set for launch on the 22nd," he added. "Phew. What a roller coaster. Thank you everyone for your amazing support while we got this sorted."
Original story follows:
Disclosure: Nighthawks writer Richard Cobbett has contributed articles to RPS, with his most recent as of writing being a Fable-themed feature from 2018.
Vampire RPG Nighthawks has been slapped with a mature content label just as its release beckons, in the latest high-profile instance of Valve's determination of what constitutes an adult game proving controversial. Developers Richard Cobbett and Wadjet Eye Games say they're working on convincing Valve to reverse the decision, which would allow the game to once again show up in Steam searches and no longer be banished to horny jail in some countries.
A multiplayer mod for The Last of Us Part 2 which was originally set to release this month no longer will, with its creator citing a letter from publishers Sony as the reason it won't see the light of day.
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