Developer Fatshark's excellent four-player co-operative rat-smasher Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is currently free to play on Steam, and will remain so until Monday, September 3rd.

Vermintide 2, for the uninitiated, plays out a little like Valve's classic Left 4 Dead series, albeit with particularly brutal combat, and a bunch of horrifyingly malevolent rat people to maim instead of zombies.

In Vermintide, teams of four players - choosing from one of five distinct heroes, each offering three possible "career" classes - battle it out in a relentless assault of sword swings, axe plunges, whistling arrows, magic, and bullets. However, careful coordination is required to fend off the Skaven hordes, scour stages for reward-boosting items, and live to see another day.

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Because Fortnite wouldn't be Fortnite if it didn't find a way to to be enticingly enigmatic at least once every couple of days, Epic has teased a mysterious new High Stakes event, due to begin some time next week.

All we know about High Stakes so far comes from a tweet that Epic posted earlier today. "Suit up", it said, before revealing that the event would consist of several different components: a new limited-time mode titled Getaway, special High Stakes challenges, and the new Wild Card outfit - which, let's be honest, looks pretty damn swish.

So what can we glean from all that, the Scarface allusions, and the proliferation of playing card iconography? Well the obvious assumption would be some kind of casino/gambling theme - although that does seem a rather odd, given Fortnite's legion of young fans. The name Getaway, meanwhile, suggests that we could be nudging closer toward heist caper territory - although goodness knows how that might fit into Fortnite's usual Battle Royale shenanigans.

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Developer A Brave Plan has unveiled its new first-person narrative mystery The Bradwell Conspiracy, which is being published by Surgeon Simulator's Bossa Studios.

Set during Summer Solstice in the not-too-distant future of 2026, The Bradwell Conspiracy casts you as an employee of the outwardly benign (but almost certainly sinister) Bradwell Electronics. As the game begins, you awake to find yourself trapped amid the rubble of the prestigious Stonehenge Museum, having lost consciousness when disaster strikes during a presentation of an amazing technological breakthrough.

Luckily, there's at least one other survivor, Amber; less luckily, Amber is trapped on the other side of a locked door, meaning that you're forced to delve deeper into Bradwell Electronics' base of operations alone. The good news is that you're able to communicate with Amber via a pair of Bradwell AR Smart Glasses which, handily enough, can be used take and share photos of your surroundings in order to figure out a plan of escape. Unfortunately, can you believe it, something terrible seems to be afoot within Bradwell Electronics' walls.

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Ubisoft's melee-focussed multiplayer brawler, For Honor, is hosting a special free "open test" weekend for its upcoming content expansion, Marching Fire - starting next week on September 6th.

More specifically, the open test will run from September 6th to September 10th, and will be available to everyone on PC, regardless of whether they currently own For Honor or not. Players can download the client ahead of time, from September 4th via Uplay.

Those that participate in the open test will have access to all 22 of For Honor's heroes, including the four new Wu Lin fighters (that's the Tiandi, Jiang Jun, Nuxia, and Shaolin) introduced as part of the Marching Fire update. Duel mode and the brand-new 4v4 PvP Breach mode - which sets opposing teams the task of either defending or storming a fortress - will be available, and all three Breach maps will be playable in PvP, PvAI, PvP, and Custom Matches.

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Donut County has a colourful cast of characters - and it doesn't let you play as any of them.

Ostensibly you're BK, a trash-loving raccoon who's found himself in a little hot water with his neighbours. But beyond a handful of vignettes in which you hit a button to send text messages and vigorously defend yourself from the angry retorts of the townsfolk, you'll spend most of the playing as a hole.

I suspect that may be the first - and last - time I'll ever write that sentence.

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Rocket League's first Fortnite-style Rocket Pass will go live next week, on Wednesday 5th September at 6pm UK time on all of the game's platforms - PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.

Rocket Pass 1, as the first pass is called, will last from 5th September until 26th November and include 29 free rewards. You can then pay to unlock the pass' premium tier, which holds 70 snazzy prizes. Simply play matches online to progress up the ranks.

You can take a look at all the premium tier rewards via the Rocket Pass site - the selection includes new cosmetics like car skins, wheels, explosions, and sounds, plus XP boosts and crate keys. Here's a look at them in action:

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It's PAX West this weekend, and some of the earliest news to emerge is the announcement La-Mulana 2 will be coming to Switch, PlayStation and Xbox in spring 2019.

According to Gematsu, Developer Nigoro revealed the console editions at the ID@Xbox Pre-PAX west 2018 Open House. There's also an announcement on the game's Steam page which explains the console versions are currently in production. So if you're (Indiana) jonesing for a portable version of the game, you're in luck.

La-Mulana 2 is a metroidvania which sees players explore the ancient ruins of La-Mulana, the purported birthplace of human civilization. Described by our own Christian Donlan as "a game that wants you to be alert to the fact that you are exploring a world that is tricksy and unfair," La-Mulana 2 is "willing to spring cruelties upon you that are not obviously signposted". No good for escapism from Brexit politics, then.

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Following on from the reveal of Shovel Knight's fourth and final content expansion, the four-player brawler Showdown, earlier this week, developer Yacht Club Games has announced a release date of April 9th next year.

That, it turns out, is a big day for Yacht Club's glorious, 8-bit inspired platformer; April 9th also sees the release of Shovel Knight's third content expansion - the story-focussed King of Cards. Previously, the developer revealed that this long-awaited update, which follows the adventures of "gilded goon" King Knight, will feature four new worlds and over 30 all-new courses.

King of Cards' April 9th arrival marks the end of a long journey for Shovel Knight and Yacht Club. With Showdown and King of Cards (both of which are free updates for owners of Shovel Knight's Treasure Trove edition) finally out, all four post-launch stretch goals promised as part of the game's 2013 Kickstarter campaign will be complete.

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Developer Unknown Worlds has revealed first details of Below Zero, its long-teased arctic expansion for superb underwater survival adventure Subnautica.

Below Zero is described as a "new chapter" in the Subnautica universe, and unfolds across a previously unseen ice-bound region of planet 4546B - the ocean world that players explored during the base game.

Unknown Worlds says that it's still developing the concept of Below Zero, but that the expansion will retain the core mechanics of the original Subnautica, including base building and open-ended exploration. These will be joined by new elements, with the developer currently considering the likes of thermal management, and more voiced dialogue for the central story.

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Prior to the launch of No Man's Sky's massive NEXT update last month, developer Hello Games revealed that its psychedelic space sim would soon recieve an ongoing schedule of special live in-game community events - and the first of these is now underway on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

According to Hello Games' latest blog post, No Man's Sky's first season of weekly content and community events has now been planned, and today's debut adventure is available to all players that have completed the first Space Anomaly mission.

"Specialist Polo and Priest Entity Nada, blinking around the edge of reality in their anomalous spacecraft, are broadcasting a request for assistance", says Hello Games, "Polo's advanced boundary monitoring equipment has located a previously undetected iteration of the universe and they urgently need explorers to examine and explore this glitch in reality".

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