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Do one of those kick-the-flips. Okay, now do it again but spinny. Wow, fellow teen, that was radical, well done. Here is some video game news for you as a reward: physics-funny skateboarding sim Skate (aka Skate 4) will release in a couple of months. That’s what publishers Electronic Arts say, anyway. You must be very excited to do more dinner tray flips and three-hundred-and-sixty popular shovel-its. Why yes, I am something of a skate boarder myself. How keen-eyed of you to notice.
I actually can’t remember the last time I played a shmup. Maybe a Gradius? I don’t know anything about ZPF’s genremates or even what its name stands for, but I do know a good colourful big bastard turtle when I see one, and that was enough for me to try the Steam demo.
“Great score!” Zam Pankman-Fried told me after I died 45 seconds in. From this, I learned that ZPF is a massive liar, but also that I actually quite like shmups still. Pretty compelling as far as avoid the bad thing ’em ups go.
When the tragically half-empty hooch barrel of potential that was Capone ’em up strategy Empire Of Sin launched back in late 2020, it also sold a pass pledging two story expansions down the line. The first of these arrived in 2021. Time and more time passed, prompting a union of shaking fists to wave grubby promissory notes scrawled on diner hamburger wrappers and brace themselves for a trampling by the proverbial Pinkerton agents on horseback of continued disappointment. Despite this, that second DLC never materialised.
Do not fear the sound you hear. The Pinkerton’s have not found you – it is simply the heavy clopping of legal obligations being grudgingly fulfilled. Hunt For Aurora is now available, assuming there’s anyone left with the energy to avail it.
Well, you can’t say Remedy don’t have range. After the screeching survival horror of Alan Wake 2 comes FBC: Firebreak, a three-person multiplayer FPS spun off from Wakeverse stablemate (and excellent action game in its own right) Control. Perspective isn’t the only thing that shifts, either, as Firebreak reframes Control’s eerie, New Weird-influenced setting as a backdrop for comedy co-op shenanigans. There will be gnomes creating lightning storms.
Back in the Oldest House, the illogically vast and currently invaded headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, Firebreakers – volunteer office drones turned underqualified field agents – gear up to do battle with whatever outdated guns and jerry-rigged tools they can find. The Firebreak initiative is as haphazard and cobbled-together a task force as you’re likely to see, and ultimately, a reflection of the game it stars in: one that’s plucky and capable of impressing, yet never quite comes together as a cohesive prospect.
TallBoys and Critical Reflex have announced an open public playtest for Militsioner, the immersive sim in which you try to escape a town that swelters in the shadow of an extremely large, temperamental policeman. It would be nice to think the premise has gotten less relevant since we first covered the game in 2021, but I suspect that if you are currently living in, say, Los Angeles, you will find much to relate to. Here’s a trailer.
Elden Ring Nightreign. It’s gotten another patch, and while not as beefy as you might like, it’s a box of bug fixes that you should know about. Especially if you’ve ever been fighting a Nightlord, gone down, been revived, and then immediately flopped back down dead.
Also, there’s a single balancing tweak which goes one step beyond to encourage the use of madness-infused weapons that I’m sure would look good with your baggy trousers.
Warner Bros. Games have enacted some corporate-mandated chair-rejigging after shuttering three studios earlier this year. The company are now divided into four divisions that’ll be focusing on the four game series they want to do stuff with.
As reported by Variety, these four bits will focus on making games about Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, the DC Universe, and the wizard that I’m not going to bother naming.
If, like me, you ended up keeping a bit of an eye on MindsEye once its release popped into view like a weird mind portal, you might remember one of the execs behind it causing a fuss with some Discord comments alleging bots were being used to bad mouth the game.
Well, in a twist that’d be strange for other games, but feels pretty par the course for this one, developer Build A Rocket Boy’s now denied that it’s been using bots to say nice things about MindsEye. This wasn’t totally out of the blue. Some folks had spotted some posts about the game with suspiciously similar wording.
You are a thirteen year old stuck in the shape of a T, arms aloft forever – what do you do? Well, in To A T, you simply go on living your everyday life. This kid-friendly town explorer is both a low-stakes comic adventure and a commentary on living contentedly with a disability despite daily struggles. As the only T-posing kid in school, you are also the target of three bullies, whose mockery and mimickry give your teen pause before heading out the door to school. This is mainly a story of how those bullies come to understand your troubles and appreciate some of your more far-fetched abilities (turns out spinning very fast allows you to fly, like a helicopter – who knew!) But it also takes a dip into truly silly territory, becoming more of an outlandish movie and less of an actual “game” as things go on.
The best thing about Steam’s Next Fests nowadays is that there are so many games. The most terrifying thing about Steam’s Next Fests nowadays is that there are so damn many games. It’s no surprise then, that according to calculations by developer Chris Hanney and the GameDiscoverCo newsletter, the latest summer Next Fest continued a trend of substantial year-on-year demo number growth.
Hanney, a dev on Space Pirate Trainer and Shredders among others, has had a go at pulling the numbers on the numbers of demos uploaded to Steam during each next fest running back to 2019’s Game Awards-adjacent first edition.
