This week, we got to see Baldur’s Gate 3, the Game Developers Conference was postponed following Covid-19 concerns, the coronavirus caused trouble for a load of other events too, and Platinum announced a kaiju game. Read on for more of the week’s PC gaming goings-on in our News Digest, and do also check out the Weekly Updates Update for the week’s patches.
Seems we slipped up, y’all. Apparently Rock Of Ages 3: Make & Break was announced last August but, looking through our archives, it seems we haven’t actually talked about it yet. Whoops. Clearly, we were just holding out ’til we got some good, heavy footage of ACE Team’s boulder-bothering threequel. This week the cardboard pantheon delivered, with 13 minutes of boulder-smashing Rock Of Ages 3 action coming hot out of PAX East.
This week, RimWorld got a big update with geese, GTA Online added Formula One races, Wolcen kept on patching, and Star Wars Battlefront added a playable Ewok Hunter. Read on for more of the week’s PC gaming patches in The Weekly Updates Update.
Fasten your seatbelts and pull out your sick bags, the fastest loop-de-loops on PC are making a comeback. A remake of Trackmania Nations – simply titled Trackmania – is sitting in Ubisoft Nadeo’s garage, the developers announced this week. This year’s model is going seasonal, adding daily tracks and regular tournaments to keep your tyres firmly on Trackmania’s gravity-defying tarmac when it arrives on May 5th.
A new threat is preparing to take on Warframe‘s interstellar ninjas. Operation Scarlet Spear kicks off next month, pushing the sci-fi stakes higher as The Sentient begin their system-wide invasion. Wait, we’re having visitors? Oh gosh, but the place is a mess. Before the next battle can begin in earnest, developers Digital Extremes have decided to put together a doozy of a housekeeping update, bringing dozens of quality-of-life changes to Warframe early next week.
I love a stylish game. Style, as so many fashion icons like to remind us, is an enduring sense of individuality and seemingly effortless flair. Of course, it is not so easy to discover one’s own style. It requires a clear conviction in one direction or another, and the consistent dedication to maintain it. Honing a specific style across a video game’s entire development cycle can be difficult, especially when there are dozens of people on an art team. For this reason, allow me to hold up a few slices of the independent games scene as an ineffable example of style.
I’ve been pretty vocal about my love for the stylings of devs like Sokpop, Jenny Jiao-Hsia, Blendo Games, Studio Oleomingus, and Kitty Horrorshow, among many others. Here are some fresh styles — old and new — that I found this week on the ol’ internet. Here you’ll find bubblegum pastels, uncanny environment horror, folktales, 1980s VHS tapes and back again. It’s good.
Talk about taking the enemy by surprise. After a 16-year march, Blueside’s action-RTS hybrid Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders stormed Steam’s gates this week. Like long-delayed sequel Kingdom Under Fire 2, the once Xbox-exclusive original’s heavy metal battles straddle the line between strategy and slashing – executing grand tactical manoeuvres with the same direct control you’d use to hack off a goblin’s head.
Happy Leap Day, everyone! It’s February 29th so you can do things today that NOBODY CAN HOLD AGAINST YOU until 2024. I think that’s how it works. Go wild! But maybe it’s best you stay home and wait out this Purge situation.
What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!
This year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco has been postponed, the organisers announced tonight. GDC 2020 was was due to run March 16-20 in San Francisco with hundreds of sessions and tens of thousands attending. The organisers say it is postponed, not cancelled, and they “fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer.” This is not a big surprise. Companies including Blizzard, Microsoft, Epic Games, Sony, Unity, Amazon, and Facebook/Oculus had already pulled out of GDC as a precautionary measure against the new coronavirus going round. The mayor of San Francisco has (unrelated to GDC) declared a local emergency too. GDC pass refunds are on offer, and a grassroots effort is forming to help marginalised developers who’ve blown precious money on attending.
Eve Online‘s big fan event in Iceland is now the latest to be cancelled over public health concerns surrounding spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19). CCP announced today that in order to prioritise the safety of attendees, staff, and the local community, Eve Fanfest 2020 is being cancelled. The event was scheduled for April 2-4 in Reykjavik, Iceland.
This Saturday, hundreds of classic EverQuest players plan on flooding one of the game’s servers in protest of the lack of a vintage PvP server. The 21-year-old MMO still has a pretty thriving community, including several servers running older versions, but the game currently has just one official PvP server and it’s on modern EverQuest. This means anyone who wants a classic PvP experience needs to use private community-run servers. But these players have had enough, they want their old PvP back, and they’re rising up as ogres to get the developers’ attention. I spoke to one of the ringleaders ahead of the protest.
“Where is it?!” I holler, rooting through game tags searching for any mention of Garden Story on RPS. “It must be here somewhere!” Alas, it is not. So I shall break the ice. Garden Story, currently in development, will be one of the current crop of very sweet town-sim type games following in the wake that Stardew Valley has cleared on PC. It’s being shown off at PAX East but you can load up a free demo from home all weekend.
There’s no denying that Luna: The Shadow Dust is exceptionally easy on the eyes. It’s a sumptuous point and click puzzler that sees you move from one lovingly hand-drawn room to the next, as you work your way up a strange and mysterious tower. You’re never explicitly sure why you’re heading skyward, since the game prides itself on its wordless storytelling. Instead of bombarding you with dozens of text boxes, it conveys its narrative through ancient-looking murals adorning the tower walls, and occasionally through the puzzles themselves. It works to an extent, but I’d say that most of the game’s pull comes from simply wanting to know what gorgeous-looking delight awaits through the next door. And without the ability to retrace your steps at any point, the only way, as they say, is up.
