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Yesterday, we learned that Sims-like Life By You had been canceled, and its developers Paradox Tectonic had been shut down by parent company Paradox Interactive. Later the same day, game designer Willem Delventhal shared more a detailed account of his experience working on the game through to its cancellation, via LinkedIn.
Tales Of The Shire unfolds in a world without shadow. There are shadows, technically, but they’re so mellow and fuzzy they might as well be stray pools of sunlight that have forgotten to glow. In this latest chunk of Lord Of The Rings memorabilia from developers Wētā Workshop and publisher Private Division, you are a custom-created hobbit who has just taken up residence in the charming Tellytubby town of Bywater, there to spend your days foraging, fishing, feasting and fraternizing with your fellow halfings, all of whom wear expressions of rosy-cheeked humour so intense in their winsome affability that your own face soon forms a merry rictus in response – like that terrible smile from Disco Elysium, but cosy. Oh god, no. Oh god, get it off me.
When I wrote our Still Wakes The Deep review I mentioned the true-to-life Scottish slang used by the oil rig workers of this North Sea horror. It was wonderful, but all these slang terms were being translated in the subtitles for some reason. “Gobshite” became “bastard”. The “polis” were localised as the “police”. And every “yersel” sneering out of the machismo-ridden workers became “yourself”. Well, turns out that’s the result of the game defaulting to “International English” for its captions. But if you want to immerse yourself in Scottish vernacular as deeply as protagonist Caz McCleary immerses himself in hazardous chemical spills, good news. There’s another option, says one of the game’s developers.
Japanese role-playing game enthusiasts are eating good this week, as Square Enix announce a 3D remake for 1993’s Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge Of The Seven. It’s a high fantasy RPG in which you must shore up an empire and defend it from generation to generation against a group of legendary adventurers, who were trapped in another dimension many moons ago and are positively livid that people don’t talk about their sacrifices enough. It’s out 24th October 2024, and springs from the turbulent brains of the team behind 2020’s Trials of Mana remake, which was well-received. I’ve got a trailer’s worth of rabble-rousing orchestral music and sparkly tag-team finishers below.
American Truck Simulator already has in-development DLCs which will see its 18-wheelers head to Arkansas and Missouri, but SCS Software have also commenced building a third: Iowa.
Classic RPG Dragon Quest 3 is getting a remake in Square Enix’s now familiar HD-2D style, which blends high-resolution 2D sprites together with 3D worlds. It’ll land on November 14th. “Waitaminute,” you might be saying, “Shouldn’t they remake the first two games beforehand?” No, you numpty, you nyaff, you roaster; within the internal chronology of Dragon Quest, 3 comes first.
Plus, they are remaking 1 and 2 as well, for release sometime in 2025.
The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is heading to PC later this year on September 6th. “Waitaminute,” you might be saying, “Didn’t this already come out?” No, you choob, you eejit, you dafty, you’re thinking of one of several other collections of Ace Attorney games.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection comprises two games: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and its sequel, Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. Neither game has been on PC before, and the latter has never been released outside of Japan.
Battle Aces is billed as “a vision of the future for real-time strategy” but if you glance at a screen, you might think you’re staring into the past: another toonified science fiction world of scuffed, shiny nodules, lanes and arenas, an overly functional colour scheme, and hotkeyed hordes of little and large units that appear devoid of personality, even by top-down generalissimo standards. Let’s start by addressing that last complaint: the units of Battle Aces have immense personality. It just doesn’t come across well in screens.
Each is a mix of bug and robot, with a clutch of finely observed, quirky-but-never-gratuitous animations that immediately had me choosing favourites when I played the game at Summer Game Fest. “Our main unit design concept artist, his father was also an illustrator and nature illustrator at that, so he’s already accomplished with animal designs, but he also loves mechs and robots too,” notes Uncapped Games art director Ted Park. “So he’s kind of melded both worlds as much as he can.”
If nothing else, Workers & Resources Colon Soviet Republic will give anyone an appreciation of the incredible complexity and difficulty of building and maintaining a city. On another day I might call it the first ever city building game.
Even a Settlers or Factorio cannot match its extreme focus on logistical simulation. It isn’t realism for its own sake (look no further than the automated vehicles and the ludicrous citizen behaviour to refute that), but a fundamentally different interpretation of what city building means. It’s about co-ordinating all your pieces so they’ll be in the right place to support each other, and how the whole is all that matters, but that whole will fail if you don’t organise its parts. It is… a lot. It’s too much at times. But if you have those times, it will occupy them like nothing else.
Minecraft is, very often, just a nice place to potter about in. But its call to adventure rings loudly in my square ears, and now that the Tricky Trials update has dotted the underground with action-heavy, loot-filled Trial Chambers, I’m simply powerless to resist.
