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Last year brought RPG gems like Disco Elysium. Was there an RPG as good released in 2020? We’ve updated our list of the best RPGs of all time to reflect the best of the past year – and there’s still dozens of older classics, too.

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Everyone loves a good space game, but sometimes it can feel like there are more space games to play than there are stars in the sky. Fortunately, we’re here to help with our list of all the best space games you can play on PC. Whether you’re a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there’s a space game here for you.

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It’s no secret that I adore Star Traders: Frontiers, the space captain RPG. It was my favourite game of 2018 and one of the best of the decade, and still threatens to consume my weekends whenever I carelessly click on its icon.

Its creators, the Trese Brothers (it’s pronounced “Trese”), have just successfully funded their new game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint on Kickstarter. They met their goal in under 12 hours. Like Frontiers, which was also partly crowdfunded, it’s an original RPG set in the same world as one of their earlier mobile games, but ramping up the scope, ambition, and production values. I took the opportunity to corner them with some questions about their studio and their plans for the new game.

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The best RPGs have always found their home on PC, but it’s a big genre and it can be difficult to know what you should play next. That’s why we’ve put together this list.

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It’s been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that’s happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you>, but a day’s work for us. Below you’ll find our picks for the 50 best games released on PC across the past decade.

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The end of the bizarre and troubling year 2018 is close, and with it comes a time of reflection. I hope you’re enjoying the RPS Advent Calendar, but even that cannot hope to contain the bounty this year provided.

When I joined Unknown Pleasures a year ago, I was a little fatigued with games. There were both too many to see and none that were grabbing me. This isn’t the critic speaking – I’d written only one article in a year – but the player. 2016-17 were by no means bad years for the PC, but despite all the industry drama (not to mention wider sociopolitical troubles) I think this is the best year we’ve had for PC games for absolutely ages.

The games are out there. The weird, the funny, the clever, the silly, the exciting, the touching, the unambitious-but-plain-good> games are positively sloshing about the place. But which ones were the best? So here it is: the pick of picks. A selection of the very best, weirdest, most original, and plain fun> Unknown Pleasures of 2018.

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Star Traders: Frontiers is a huge stellar sandbox with an evolving galaxy that moves forward with or without you. It s liberating, not being on the hook for every little problem. As a free-wheeling captain, you can ingratiate yourself with the most important galactic players, becoming embroiled in the highest level of politics, or you can just enjoy the life of a scoundrel, smuggling and stealing your way through space.

It s a chimera, stitched together from bits of RPGs, strategy games, roguelikes and space sims, but it s miraculously cohesive. The multitude of systems and invisible paths can be initially daunting, but the ability to carve out your own little niche means that it s as manageable as you want it to be. That s how it gets you. You re merrily ferrying legal goods between worlds for a small profit, staying within your comfort zone, and then an hour later you re smuggling illegal artefacts, spying on royals and fighting the space cops.

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Don’t let the ‘Traders’ part of the title put you off – while space-adventure sandbox RPG Star Traders: Frontiers offers the opportunity to barter your way to glory, you can just as easily fight, scavenge, explore or even spy your way to fame and financial solvency. Much loved by Sin Vega when she poked around it in early access (especially for its portrayal of piracy), the game is out now, after a particularly active stint in early access.

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Pirates! Can we outrun them? Damn! Well, would they accept a bribe? What? They won’t even consider> it? Okay, well, drop the cargo. No? Give them the ship and they’ll let us live? Oh, they’re not actually pirates, they’re just mindless omnicidal monsters pretending to be pirates? Well… I guess I’ll just reload an old save, then.

That’s how some games treat pirates. It’s stupid, boring and rubbish.

Star Traders: Frontiers is better than that. It’s better than just about everything.

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