Whenever possible, I like to sucker-punch everybody's weekend plans by blogging the release of a huge 4X strategy game, factory sim or other managerial timesink last thing on Friday. In this case, I'm ambushing you with the avid rodent carpentry of Whiskerwood, the new city builder from Railgrade developers Minakata Dynamics and Manor Lords publishers Hooded Horse. It's got 40 different commodities, an elaborate weather simulation, and a demo out now on Steam. Haha, yes! You are welcome.

In Whiskerwood, you are a mouse mayor setting up island colonies on behalf of some bastard fat cats. Yes, this one's a straight-shooting allegory, but going by the release date trailer, any transferable learnings about the plight of the mouse proletariat come a distinct second to the joy of plaiting conveyor belts.

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A group of game industry folks including Reigns studio Nerial, Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione and Streets Of Rage 4 outfit Lizardcube have launched Palestinian Voices in Gaming, an international volunteer network to support current and emerging independent Palestinian developers.

First convened in May 2024, the network are currently looking to connect Palestinian game devs with volunteers and funding partners. They'll provide administrative help to any developer trying to get access to funding, and assistance managing resources and volunteer contributions, once secured. They aim to follow and boost each project from "production to announcement to publication", and are already working with a range of smaller independent games, many of which explore recollections of pain and loss through speculative fiction and fantasy.

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I confess, after reading the comments on yesterday's Endless Legend 2 early access impressions, I am mortally afeared that I'm one of those accursed "positive outliers" I keep reading about in the Gamer Witchfinder Almanac. Seemingly, a fair portion of you were turned off by the recent Steam demo. You may be interested, then, to read specifics about how Amplitude have changed the game in response to demo feedback.

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There was really only one way to enhance the prospect of an Antarctic open world game with a choice of playable penguins that's actually a fractious retelling of Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness, created by the developers of Umurangi Generation. And that one way was to hire Lenval Brown, narrator for Disco Elysium's special edition, to voice the first proper trailer. And also, make the trailer look a lot like John Carpenter's The Thing. No further words from me are needed or desired. Find the footage below.

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"The following is a work of fiction," opens Don't Get Your Hopes Up. "Amsterdam does not exist". This was news to me, having a distinct memory of my mum on holiday, grinningly sending me a photo of her first time encountering a SMEG fridge in the wild. I'll put aside my own opinions re: places that are real for now, though, since I wouldn't necessarily put it past the planet to swallow up entire capital cities for the lols right now. Just leave De Poezenboot alone, yeah?

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To invert or not to invert? The question of whether to flip the Y-axis in games is often answered with recollections of childhood habits and/or varyingly smug declarations of which joystick setting is 'better'. Now, though, a cognitive research study posits that our control preferences are less about whether or not we played GoldenEye after school and more about the innate quirks of our brains.

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