Darkest Dungeon 2 has made some quite profound changes, and I wasn't sure about them at first. I think they annoyed me. But in going back to the original to refamiliarise myself, it made me see them differently - isn't it funny how our minds can idolise things to the point of infallibility? I thought very highly of Darkest Dungeon. But by seeing it laid bare, I see the sequel better, and now, I'm a fan.

It's all about the carriage - that's the big change. It's a wooden thing pulled by a horse, very much like the carriage in Darkest Dungeon's opening sequence. And this time it's your home. You no longer have a static base. That hamlet on the hill that you rebuilt in DD, that's gone. Now you live life on the road.

Immediately, you'll notice this gives the game a more cinematic look. The carriage sections are 3D - a first for the series - and you steer it through areas that change depending on your mission. There are cursed farm landscapes where bulging flesh grows like parasites on crops, there are cities aflame like hellish infernos, and there are towns turned to graveyards, where flayed corpses hang like dirty washing on lines. It's impressively atmospheric, and as grotesquely horrible as Darkest Dungeon ever was.

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Microsoft has announced a few games hitting Xbox Game Pass in early June.

Out today, 1st June on Xbox Game Pass cloud is puzzle adventure The Wild at Heart.

On 3rd June, Xbox Game Pass on console and cloud gets Ubisoft's melee combat game For Honor.

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Back in April, developer Red Hook Studios announced it was working on a free PvP mode for its deliciously punishing Lovecraftian strategy RPG, Darkest Dungeon. And now, two months on, Butcher's Circus, as the new DLC is known, is available to download on Steam.

Butcher's Circus is, of course, a rather dramatic departure for Darkest Dungeon; since the game's release in 2016, its punishing expeditions to the shadowy antediluvian corners of its ancient hamlet - requiring players to safely shepherd their party of broken heroes through sanity-shattering horrors - have remained staunchly solo endeavours. Now, however, there's a new multiplayer twist to that rock-solid core.

Red Hook's latest slab of DLC adds the new Butcher's Circus location to Darkest Dungeon's gloomy hamlet, and those brave enough to enter its "weathered and bloodstained pavilion tent", can embark on PvP arena battles against friends and strangers.

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Stationary, uniforms, maybe a new laptop - that's what we'd usually expect to see in a Back to School sale. Not for GOG, though. Instead, the cheeky focus is on parents who now have some extra time on their hands to game again.

And there are some serious timesinks available for cheap in the GOG Back to School sale. Massive RPGs, engrossing sims and gripping stories are all well represented, with savings of up to 90 per cent up for grabs.

Of course, as we're dealing with CD Projekt here, you can find the entire Witcher series on sale. If you're still yet to play the latest entry, you can get The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition for 10.49. This complete version of the game comes with all previously released DLC. That's both the Hearts of Stone and the Blood and Wine expansions, as well as over a dozen smaller content packs.

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Developer Red Hook Studios has announced that it's working on a sequel to its brilliant but brutal Lovecraft-inspired RPG, Darkest Dungeon.

The original game released in 2016, and tasked players with exploring numerous trap-infested environs, seeking out riches, and battling - in time-honoured turn-based fashion - a relentless procession of cosmic horrors. Each encounter with the unknown would send adventurers in a party to the brink of madness, eventually lumbering them with (usually) negative quirks and making future excursions that much harder.

As a result, downtime in between missions became a game of party management, hiring fresh faces or making use of local amenities - be they the brothel or local chapel - to hopefully mitigate the adverse effects suffered by more experienced, and thus more powerful, adventurers. The balancing act between deeper exploration and hero preservation was never less than stressful.

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Heroes aren't born, forged, plucked from obscure, charming villages or raised from centuries of slumber in Darkest Dungeon - they are broken in. Or at least, broken. Out on Switch today, Red Hook's festering roguelike sees you battling to reclaim a cliffside manor from the cosmic terrors unleashed by your dead, yet mysteriously talkative Ancestor, sending quartets of procedurally generated adventurers into the estate to slay eldritch creatures and gather the resources and experience you need for an assault on the mansion itself. Besides the usual stats, unlockable abilities and gear slots, each adventurer has a stress bar, which fills up as they weather punishments both tangible and intangible. The mouldering hush of a crypt might fill it up a little. A clash with a screaming pigman the size of a house will probably fill it up a lot.

Max out the gauge, and the adventurer will undergo a "resolve check" that usually results in an Affliction - the effects may include spurning medical attention while at death's door, or berating the rest of the party for missed attacks, raising their stress levels in turn. There's a small chance that the hero will discover hidden reserves of strength and acquire a Virtue instead, the effects of which range from massive stat buffs to random self-healing, but in general, such meltdowns are to be avoided. You won't always be able to avoid them, however. When not wading into the filth, characters can be left to recuperate at the local tavern and chapel, or treated of stress-inducing "Quirks" such as claustrophobia at the sanitarium, but the expense of such therapies, coupled with the unpredictability of the dungeons, make it impossible to keep everybody's blood pressure down for long.

Accordingly, the thrill of Darkest Dungeon lies not, as in other turn-based RPGs, with the delicate arranging and toppling of variables whose effects can largely be relied upon, but in rolling with the punches when somebody's morale gives way. It's a game about bending souls and bodies out of shape, then dealing with - and taking a certain morbid pleasure in - the fallout. This is a gamble your adventurers have no choice but to endure. Oh, they might slip your clutches for a turn or two, going AWOL after an all-night drinking session or departing on some grotty/mystic errand. They might refuse to serve with ungodly character classes like the Abomination, or beg you not to send them on quests above their level. But the one thing they can't do is up and quit. For all their warped predilections and frailties, their resentment and gibbering outbursts, they make perfect employees - and if all else fails, they are easy enough to replace, with new recruits carted to the Hamlet every turn.

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Developer Red Hook has announced The Color of Madness, the latest paid DLC expansion for its superb Lovecraftian stress box, Darkest Dungeon.

The Color of Madness will be the third paid expansion for Red Hook's visually striking, relentlessly punishing turn-based RPG, following on from The Crimson Court and the more recent, smaller-scale Shieldbreaker DLC.

"Some hateful shard of alien origin has streaked through the night sky, crashing into the old Miller's farm on the outskirts of the Hamlet!", says Red Hook, "Those unfortunate enough to witness the Comet's arrival have been blinded by what they can only describe as a shifting, ephemeral hue of damnably abrasive intensity. There has been no word from the farm in a fortnight, save for the unearthly groaning that echoes from the ruin of the mill..."

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