Cowboy horror RPG Weird West and visual novel Zero Escape: The Nonary Games are among the new additions arriving on the PC Game Pass subscription service in March.

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Resident deals-dealer Katharine is on holiday this week so we’ve not got a regular deals post. However! I will highlight something I know she’d want noted: the Zero Escape series, those strange and wonderful games of life-and-death puzzle rooms and doomsday experiments and robots, have honking great discounts this weekend. You’d be hard-pushed to get more foolishness for 6. The sale by publishers Spike Chunsoft also includes Danganronpa, Fire Pro Wrestling, Steins;Gate, and more.

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It’s the first day of Golden Week in Japan, and while that may not mean much to those in English-speaking territories, it’s one of the nation’s biggest holidays. As Valve never miss an excuse for a sale, that means that there’s some great deals on games from Japanese developers and publishers. If visual novels, fighting games or JRPGs are your thing, there’s some good stuff at slashed prices today. Here’s the official sale highlights page, you can see all the current week-long deals here, and a handful of personal picks below.

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Why, yes, that is a polar bear about to saw an anime girl in half, because that’s what happens when Zero Escape director Kotaro Uchikoshi is no longer restrained to the waking world. AI: The Somnium Files is his next game, developed by Spike Chunsoft, and now has a July 26th release date on PC. It’s a sci-fi mystery that seems vaguely inspired by oddball Jennifer Lopez psycho-thriller The Cell, putting players in the shoes of a cyber-psychic detective investigating people’s dreams as well as crime scenes. Below, a bizarre new trailer that I wouldn’t try to make sense of yet.

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First person to make a “booby” remark goes straight into the shark pit. We’re only interested in dangerous mechanisms that kill or maim over-confident explorers and other unsuspecting types. Yes, the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, is talking about the deadliest, most disturbing, or otherwise silly death traps in videogames. Be they in temples, tombs or tunnels, traps can be anywhere, so long as it begins with a T . Alliteration is important.

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a visual novel in possession of a good plot must be in want of at least half a dozen grizzly murders, a dollop of deep philosophy lectures, time travel and lots and lots of escape-the-room puzzles. After all, simply clicking your way through a story one text box at a time is BORING and TEDIOUS and not at all fun, especially when there’s nobody getting mysteriously offed behind the scenes whenever you stop looking at them for one goddamn second. Did I mention the thing about the murders?

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Kotaro Uchikoshi, the director of the first and third Zero Escape games, has revealed his next murderous mystery during Spike Chunsoft’s panel at Anime Expo 2018. AI: The Somnium Files is a visual novel adventure doodad about a detective with a roboeye who will travel into people’s memories as he hunts a serial killer. The game is still largely under wraps, but apparently a core theme is “different types and expressions of love”. And a teenaged YouTuber is involved somehow. No word yet on when AI will launch, so for now check out the announcement trailer below. (more…)

The calendar’s doors have been opened and the games inside have been eaten. But fear not, latecomer – we’ve reconstructed the list in this single post for easy re-consumption. Click on to discover the best games of 2017. (more…)

Let us podcast, lest we forget. The squad of the Electronic Wireless Show chat about some of the most overlooked and underappreciated games of this year. Katharine thinks head-in-a-sack trip to the underworld Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice might qualify, while Adam praises the unsettling tales of Stories Untold. Brendan just wants more people to slap in skinny-person biffing game Absolver. But we’ve also been playing some other good ‘uns, including the magical realist family chronicle What Remains of Edith Finch and naval tactical battler Mare Nostrvm. (more…)

As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we’re looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one – in the world of games at least – but, ever the optimists, we’re hoping next year will be even better.

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