Hello. This is Spawn Point, a new not-quite-regular feature in which we take a genre, series or other facet of gaming culture, and try to convince you to give it a shot. It might be those hero shooters you ve always wanted to get into, or that terrifying space game played by thousands of jerks. We ll briefly explain the thing, followed by some ways for you to breach it.

First up, it s… the real-time strategy. (more…)

A godlike penguin destroyed 1,000 vikings 45,000 Persian Immortals cut down 600 ogres when our Brendan played Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator earlier this year. It was a janky bit of fun, a silly way to watch silly battles. Mate, you’ve seen nothing yet. The new hotness in simulated silliness is Beast Battle Simulator [Steam page], which does a similar thing of throwing units into big fights, but with animals and dinosaurs. How many bears to defeat a T. rex? And how many if those bears have flamethrowers strapped to their heads? You can find out now, as Beast Battle Simulator launched into early access today. Peep this foolishness: (more…)

Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator [Steam page], that game where you can stage a fight between five Spartan warriors and 10,000 chickens, has bashed its way out of early access.

UEBS is basically a sandbox for you to play out your fantasy battles: pick two ridiculous armies and let them whack each other until one of them is no more. You can tweak the stats of the combatants to make it a fair fight or, as Brendan did, create an immensely powerful penguin that can slay 1,000 Vikings.

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We have a GIFbot in the RPS staff chatroom. GIFbot is a treacherous and unreliable creature, often offering wildly irrelevant or breathtakingly banal results when we type ‘/gif whateverphrase’ and then cope with whatever it randomly pulls from whatever reprobate corner of the internet it’s plugged into it. However, often enough its results are so irrelevant as to be perfection itself>. And so we shall keep it around for an eternity, and reach for it in our darkest hours.

For instance, in the absence of a better conceit for the latest Steam Charts. For these, once again, are the ten games with the most accumulated sales on Steam over the past week. Take it away, GIFbot. … [visit site to read more]

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Every week we pit Brendan against the thousands of half-formed games of early access in a doomed battle for supremacy. This time, the huge and ridiculous fights of Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator.

There s not much in UEBS that isn t possible in any of the Total War series. I mean, if you discount the ability to pit masterly Chickens against a force of Orcs. Apart from that, it s still about arranging vast (or small) armies on large maps and having them go at each other until one force comes out of the meat grinder without losing all their wee men. In fact, it s hundreds of times more limited than a real strategy game. But many would say that s not the point. What you have here is a toy, something that aims for the simplicity of its Deadliest Warrior conceit and just barely hits the mark. But what kind of brawls can you create? Well, here s four epic battles we threw together to find out. … [visit site to read more]