Happy Second Birthday Celeste! I'm late again, I know. But thanks to the Farewell update released last September, Celeste is imprinted on my 2019 as much as it was the year before. Because Farewell is brilliant.

Now, this is a small spoiler, but you have to hold down as Madeline falls, to speed her descent enough to just (just!) catch the falling spring block as it plummets away from you.

Holding down stretches Madeline, squashing and squeezing her as she accelerates - way too quick for comfort - towards a tiny, moving chunk of moon rock. This is right at the beginning of Farewell, Celeste's DLC finale. And it's precise: Panicky and stylish and more genuinely thrilling through the fingers than some whole games manage with their-canned, smoke-and-mirror bluster.

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It's been less than a year since 80 Days developer Inkle released its wonderful archaeological adventure Heaven's Vault to widespread acclaim, but already - following a few teases earlier this month - it's setting things in motion for the proper reveal of its next project, which it's now confirmed will be taking on Arthurian legend in some form.

At the start of January, Inkle tweeted seven words - swords, anguish, Britain, unrequited, forest, hope, and revenge - confirming these were a tease for the announcement of its new game. Skip to the present, and we now have something more substantial to go on.

"Britain, AD 673. Camelot has fallen", the developer proclaimed in tweet posted earlier today, "The jealous Sir Mordred, with lies and hatred, has broken the fellowship of the Round Table. The knights of Arthur have scattered and all hope seems lost..."

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Mike Laidlaw, perhaps best known for his work as creative director on BioWare's Dragon Age series, has announced his departure from Ubisoft, a little over year after joining the company.

Prior to making the move to Ubisoft in 2018 - specifically to Assassin's Creed Odyssey studio Ubisoft Quebec - Laidlaw had spent 15 years at BioWare, working on some of its most beloved games. Laidlaw helped shape the Dragon Age series for nearly a decade - as lead designer on Dragon Age 1 and as creative director on later instalments in the franchise - and served as lead writer on BioWare's Jade Empire before that.

All we know about Laidlaw's time at Ubisoft Quebec is that he was serving as creative director on a new (unspecified) project, one that he described as being "exciting enough to make me move half way across the continent."

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Dota Underlords, Valve's free-to-play auto-battling Dota 2 spin-off, will leave early access and begin its first proper season on Steam, iOS, and Android next month, on 25th February.

Valve initially unveiled Dota Underlords back in May last year, following the enormous success of Chinese developer Drodo Studio's Dota 2 mod, Auto Chess, which had amassed over 8 million players at the time. Although Valve originally approached Drodo to discuss a collaboration, talks proved unfruitful and it was eventually decided that both parties would work on their own standalone auto battler releases.

Drodo launched its standalone Auto Chess game, minus the Dota elements, on mobile and as an Epic Store PC exclusive last summer. Valve's effort, Dota Underlords, entered early access on Steam and mobile soon after, quickly seeing over 1.5 million downloads.

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Lair of the Clockwork God, the next game from BAFTA-winning indie developer Dan Marshall, will arrive for PC on 21st February and is available to wishlist on Steam right now.

Marshall - creator of The Swindle, Gun Monkeys and Behold the Kickmen - revealed the date alongside a new trailer, which you can goggle at below.

"It is VERY difficult to cut a trailer for #ClockworkGod because so much of it is spoilers and I really want you to experience it properly," he wrote on Twitter. "So it's short and sweet."

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After years of canning single-player Star Wars games, it looks like EA finally has a hit on its hands, as Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has sold 8m copies so far - exceeding the publisher's own expectations. Who knew there was demand for single-player Star Wars games?

In a Q3 earnings call, CFO Blake Jorgensen said EA had expected Fallen Order to sell between 6m and 8m copies by the end of the fiscal year on 31st March - but the game has already passed the high end of this target. EA now predicts Fallen Order will likely reach 10m copies sold by April, and says it has "significantly beat[en]" expectations.

"Respawn delivered an expertly crafted high-quality experience with outstanding gameplay that thrilled players, made many of the game of the year lists and sold beyond our projections for the quarter," EA exec Andrew Wilson added.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series about the bits of games we overlook, those poor old things. I'm talking about crowds, potions, mountains, hands - things we barely notice at the time but can recall years later because they're so important to the overall memory of the game.

Now is the time to celebrate them - you and me both! I will share my memories but I'm just as eager to hear yours, so please share them in the comments below. We've had some great discussions in our other Five of the Best pieces.

But this week we're all about...

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I only really noticed this recently, but I am big into Neptune. I'm into a lot of planets, to be honest, because I just think planets are pretty interesting, but there's something about Neptune - above the big, beige, sickly '70s kitchen swirls of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, or the slightly threatening blankness of Uranus, or Mercury (boring), or Mars (old news, too many dead robots) - that makes Neptune stand out.

I think a lot of it is how it's pictured, which itself is obviously a lot to do with just how far away it is. We've only ever sent one spacecraft (Voyager 2, in the '80s) far enough out there into the abyss to actually capture images of Neptune up close. It's the only planet in our solar system so far away that it can't be seen without a telescope. The only one, as a result, the world's ancient civilizations never discovered - and doesn't it look the part? It feels like every image of Neptune is the same: deep, magnetic, hungering blue with the odd streak of white, stark against pure black. Massive, terrifying. I love it because it just seems so completely unknowable. If I think for too long about what it would be like to see Neptune in person I start to feel a little sick, like vertigo, or a sort of inverse claustrophobia. The same sense of cloying panic only from being so totally overexposed and far away, cut off and adrift, not just from Earth and home and people but from everything. From infinity! Eugh.

Anyway, I got to thinking about Neptune because I was, first, thinking about why some recent space-faring games - that I promise I want to love - have been so good at putting me off. Journey to the Savage Planet is the obvious one, but there's also The Outer Worlds which, to someone who has no desire to play any more of either, might as well be the same thing. The trend in these sorts of space games, it seems, is to use that setting's infinite opportunity for invention to make slightly wet, slightly clunky, slightly (but not entirely) self-aware London Underground poster jokes about capitalism and consumer culture - and to ignore all the actual space stuff.

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Our latest look at Square Enix's Final Fantasy 7 Remake offers a peek inside the Honey Bee Inn, an adult club and brothel where dancers dress in skimpy honey bee outfits.

The Honey Bee is an optional location in the original Final Fantasy 7, and one where Cloud can crossdress. Fans had wondered how all this would be handled in the game's modern remake - and now we have at least some of the answers. Honestly, Cloud, you've never looked hotter.

The footage also gives us our best look at furry companion Red XIII, rotund boss Palmer, and the ruthless Scarlet using some bloke as a foot stall.

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The Double-A Team is a feature series honouring the unpretentious, mid-budget, gimmicky commercial action games that no-one seems to make any more.

You can catch up with all of our Double-A Team pieces in our handy, spangly archive.

"You, I reckon, are definitely a roper." I had known Aidan for about twenty minutes by the time he made this judgement. It stung a little. How could he be so certain after such a short period? How - augh! - could he be so right?

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