A beautiful and novel game suffering from something of an identity crisis, Scanner Sombre [official site] is the latest from Introversion Software, making a play for artfulness after a few years of successfully popularising themselves with Prison Architect. But though Scanner’s central conceit – using a laser scanner to ‘paint’ dot-array colours and shape onto your pitch black, subterranean surroundings – is gloriously atmospheric, it lacks the lightness of touch needed to achieve the emotional clout it so clearly wants to have. … [visit site to read more]

The top-down shanking simulator Prison Architect [official site] has received an update that introduces needs for the prison’s staff, including the desire to go for a whizz, eat food in the canteen and the need to feel safe while working. The game was supposed to be fully cooked, or at least that’s what developers Introversion said in August with their 2.0 “final” update, saying that it wouldn’t be getting any more features. But they’ve gone back on their word, the dogs>, saying that this feature has been “something that has been niggling away in the back of our minds”. … [visit site to read more]

An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made, now brought up to date with the riches of the last two years. From intricate wargames to soothing peacegames, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we’ve gathered the best of the best. The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free to download and play forever. They’re all brilliant.

… [visit site to read more]

In case you’ve not picked up on all the hints: Devil Daggers [official site] is my favourite new game of 2016, and I’d say the best-looking game in yonks too. Devil Daggers is Geometry Wars thrown against a satanic altar in a darkened room made of Quake [see me -metaphors ed.]>. I do recognise a leaderboard-climbing first-person shooter in skull-filled satanarena is a hard sell for some so here, look, it’s in the latest pay-what-you-want Humble Bundle along with Prison Architect and more games. Maybe that makes it cheap enough for you to give it a try?

… [visit site to read more]

Cos this stuff comes up in comments most every time I run one of these: these charts depict the top ten best-selling games on Steam as accumulated over the week leading up to Sunday just gone. They are not what are the top ten best-selling games at this moment in time, as seen on the front-page of Steam and which are invariably a little different. They come from this here Valve RSS feed. If there is any massaging of figures or weighing of e.g. revenue earned vs copies sold then I do not know of it, but neither can I say for certain that there is not. This is, however, pretty much all that Steam ever lets slip about what’s going on, though you can look to the guesstimates on Steam Spy if you want to try and drill down further into actual figures.

So: Steam’s ten biggest games last week. Well, nine and a half. Deus Ex has been dethroned already.

… [visit site to read more]

Cell-building sim Prison Architect [official site] has received its last update and the creators are taking a break before they come back to work on their next game, cave explorer Scanner Sombre. They ll still be doing the odd patch and providing bug support, they say, but this is the last batch of content to be added, resulting in version 2.0. And it s a bit of an old-fashioned addition, because it adds the ability to use cheats.

… [visit site to read more]

Prison Architect [official site] technically left early access ten months ago but developers Introversion Software have kept updating their build-o-management game as before. Now they’re finally almost done. After the upcoming release of version 2.0, Introversion plan to call it a day and – aside from fixing bugs which pop up – focus on new things like their pretty cave-scanning game. V2.0 will properly launch next month but you can try a preview version today if you fancy playing with tricky events like food poisoning and mass tunnelling.

… [visit site to read more]

Prison Architect has been adding extra dimensions to its simulation of prisons for years now, but this is a big one: it now has a 3D mode. The option is semi-hidden but can be activated by a small ‘TT’ button in the bottom left of the game’s “Extras” menu. It doesn’t require any mods, but it will convert your existing 2D prison into a three-dimensional representation of same, complete with prisoners, furniture, vehicles and a camera that can swoop and dive among the corridors. You’ll find a video and more details below.

… [visit site to read more]

Prison Architect [official site] emerged from its long stint in Early Access earlier this year and recently clinched the Best Management Game accolade in RPS’s Advent Calendar 2015. Now it has, finally, added female prisons. Luckily, there’s more to it than simple sprite swapping, as Introversion’s Chris Delay and Mark Morris detail in the accompanying video featured below.

… [visit site to read more]

What is the best management game of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today’s door is …

Prison Architect!

… [visit site to read more]