The heart of cosmic horror is knowing that humanity and all its ambitions are meaningless. Gorgeous pixel art action-RPG UnDungeon drives this home by beginning after the sudden and largely unimportant fall of our species. We don’t even get to be the protagonists.

Funded through Kickstarter last year, now to be published by TinyBuild, UnDungeon has players control one of seven alien ‘Heralds’, roaming what remains of Earth after an interdimensional convergence. While some humans survive, they’re as expendable as anything else in your mission to decide the fate of this merged planet. Below, a lengthy and existentially unsettling trailer.

(more…)

John Romero has just congratulated Doom guru Zero Master on discovering the last hidden secret of Doom II, some 24 years after it was released. A secret that had previously been thought impossible to actually find.

(more…)

It’s time to roll up a new character in free-to-play dungeon crawler Path Of Exile, because it’s league changeover day. Grinding Gear Games have just mothballed their excellent (if ethically questionable) Incursion league, and launched the Delve league today. This quarterly update adds a literally endless new side-adventure to get distracted by on your quest to murder and loot an entire continent. Better yet, this new mega-dungeon is accessible from early in the game, so players are free to plumb its depths between their regular adventures. The update is live now.

(more…)

Devolver Digital aren’t going to let Metroidvania Month (seriously, how many have there been?) end without having the last laugh. Announced just before we tick over to September, Gato Roboto is a cute little low-fi metroidvania being developed by mysterious newcomers Doinksoft. It stars a precocious feline that somehow ends up driving a honking great suit of gun-toting power armour, instead of just pissing in it, as a cat normally would.

Below, a reveal trailer featuring a very good cat and some surprisingly catchy wibbly beats.

(more…)

One of the many malicious maladies that can befall your patients in Two Point Hospital is 8-bitten . You ll know when you ve got an epidemic on your hands, because you ll start to notice dozens of low-res, pixel-stricken ill flickering about your corridors. To treat them, you ll need to research and build a Resolution Lab complete with Debugger. As with many of your accomplishments, the local radio will inform the people of Two Point County of the new advancement. Patients are promised drones a pitch-perfect parody of every radio host ever smushed up together in a partridge-esque, play-doh monstrosity they ll feel totally next-gen

There s a subtle, almost sarcastic reluctance in these words. A weary, wry sigh from the Bullfrog and Lionhead vets heading up Two Point Studios. Good natured, but with just a hint of sardonic self-awareness at the oddness of strapping down a twenty year old comatose classic for a thorough defibrillation. If it is reluctance, though, you wouldn t know it from playing Two Point Hospital. It s been given a fresh coat of paint in most of the places that count, but as someone who grew up with Theme Hospital, sitting down with this excellent game (viewed by many as a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital) was just like reuniting with an old friend. Who I then infected with flu, killed during treatment, sucked their ghost up with a Hoover, and charged them a few grand for the privilege. (more…)

While I loved its space-trucker aesthetic and grimy rock soundtrack, Double Damage’s space combat and trading sandbox Rebel Galaxy never really grabbed me. Its prequel – Rebel Galaxy Outlaw – on the other hand, has my full attention.

Announced today, Outlaw puts the player in the cockpits of smaller, more agile craft than the first game (now with fully 3D flight), making it look and sound deliciously similar to DOS classic Wing Commander: Privateer. Below, an announcement PSA featuring snarky alien Sandar D’Truz, some more choice screenshots and some bite-sized gameplay clips.

(more…)

Following numerous reports claiming that Riot Games have long suffered an inappropriate and sexist workplace culture and resisted many attempts to even critique it, let alone change it, the League Of Legends studio have vowed to “rebuild” their culture and “leave no room for sexism or misogyny”.

A Kotaku report earlier in August drew from 28 current and former Riot employees, painting a picture of a workplace where men have sent unsolicited photos of their dicks to coworkers, women have found out their colleagues and seniors sent e-mails discussing their fuckability, one senior male dev would fart in other men’s faces, women were taken less seriously than men, and women felt pressure and rejection for not fitting in with this fine culture. But don’t worry, they’ll fix all this. “… we’ve never backed down from a challenge before and we don’t plan to start now,” say the studio who seem to have spent years pretending the challenge was anathema to their existence.

(more…)

Devotees of the lurid orange ninja wizard (and his rebellious son) may rejoice today, as the messily titled Naruto To Boruto: Shinobi Striker is out now and looks rather good, despite a major shift in genre.

While earlier Naruto games focused on retelling the anime’s story through tag-team fights, Shinobi Striker is an online team brawler by new studio Soleil. While it has solo and co-op modes, the core of the game is four-on-four ninja battles. Below, a launch trailer and a peek at one of its more creative multiplayer modes.

(more…)

Today’s selection marks the 1,000th game I’ve played this year. One sodding thousand. Admittedly it’s a meaningless number but it might give some hope to those of you who are worried that games are going downhill or it’s been a bad year. It really hasn’t.

There are loads and loads of great games out there. Sure, there’s some rubbish too, but this column alone has sifted through a thousand in a mere 8 months, and that’s after> discarding the big names, the stuff Fraser or Dominic have poached, the shovelware, and the inevitable daily idiot-milking dreck about PUTIN JONG BITCOIN HA HA HA. And that’s just on Steam!

Things are good, my brave Unknowanauts. Whatever our complaints about Steam? The games, they are good. We are very lucky to be here, now. Long may it continue. Onwards then, to another round of Unknown Pleasures.

Poking the squinty eye of Gary Naysayer this week: capitalist ambitions, parental responsibilities, and racial tensions. (more…)

We’ve arrived at yet another Friday, and as the eternally influential Rebecca Black once said, you’ve got> to get down on Friday. As far as I remember that was more of a demand than advice, so here we are, attempting to get down with some of the best PC gaming deals of the week from all the way around the web and back again.

As usual, we ve got deals that ll work in the UK, deals that ll work in the US and some deals that will work in both the UK and US, as well as presumably many other places. Let s get started.

(more…)