Since 1873, the team at Rock Paper Shotgun have gathered once a year to select what they believe to be the best PC games of all time. Admittedly, they only started writing the list down in 2021, but try not to hold their spotty recordkeeping against them.
I’m still a little burned-out on Carrollian adaptations after Nightingale, but I will not let that tarnish my enjoyment of Wonder of Blue, a fey 2D labyrinth roguelite based on fiction’s most famous Alice after Alice Bee (RPS in peace). It features a lovely selection of pixelart colour palettes, and some pleasingly tricksy enemies. You play Liddell – yes, I too had forgotten Alice’s second name isn’t “in Wonderland” – and you are trying to navigate a series of procedurally generated dungeons made up of single-screen rooms. At the end of the journey waits the Red Queen.
Over the weekend, Grand Theft Auto 6’s legions of fan weather-watchers spotted an animation portfolio reel that includes what appears to be some WIP stuff from GTA 6. Assuming the leak is legitimate, this isn’t nearly an eruption on the scale of the 2022 GTA 6 leaks: it contains a couple of extremely non-final animations from Rockstar’s forthcoming open world game.
One is of deuteragonist Lucia Caminos jumping out of a pick-up truck, which seems like a thing she’d do, though official GTA 6 trailers suggest she’d do it with a lot more bum jiggle than this. Another is of a placeholder baldy man – let’s christen him as something appropriately generic, like Jean-Luc Picard – undocking a bike from a public bicycle hire station. Yes, GTA 6 has Boris Bikes.
So, an ambitious Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer mod called CyberMP has been in development for a little while now, and the folks behind it have just concluded its “most stable and successful” closed beta test yet. Tweaks to key elements like vehicle and player synchronisation, as well as a new interface and custom lobbies went down well with testers, while technical gremlins were minimal.
If this is your first time hearing about CyberMP, it’s a project that’s currently being worked on by a team of 10, having first come to prominence last summer. Its goal is to offer multi-person deathmatches and races to Cyberpunkers, rather than full GTA Online-style co-op missioning or gigging.
Dastardly December has done it again. Here I was having a nice time with November, joking about the time February tried to explain leap years to August, and the wintry month snuck up in my blindspot. Now December’s in the house, kicking back on the sofa with its feet up on the table. At least it’s brought a gift: the RPS Advent Calendar 2025, the list of our favourite games of the year.
With manufacturers looking to raise prices to fuel the AI age we’re sleepwalking blindly towards, Black Friday weekend might offer the last chance to save on PC hardware for a while.
I understand why walking sims aren’t really a thing any more. Some of the earliest big names like Gone Home, Dear Esther, and arguably The Stanley Parable all came at a time where indie games were growing in popularity, but were still predominantly 2D. Something simple like a walking sim is obviously quite resourceful compared to contemporary AAA games, but now the indie scene has blown up to the point where mechanics-first genres like roguelikes are dominating. Except I like walking sims! So when a game like nophenia, a walking sim where you’re a wolfgirl with a flip phone exploring different dream worlds, shows up, I’m going to pay attention.
Crikey, it’s been a long time coming, but it looks like The Long Dark is finally coming to a close… next year. Up until earlier this week, the fifth and final episode of The Long Dark’s Wintermute DLC was due to be released by the end of the year. As you’ve probably gathered, the end of the year is very close now, so as a result, episode five has been delayed, but it is a delay that at least comes with a concrete release date.