Telltale Games' long-running The Walking Dead adventure series is nearly at an end, with its final season due to begin on August 14th. And if you're in anyway invested in the plight of protagonist Clementine, you might like to know that you can play the first 15 minutes on Xbox One and PS4 right now.

According to Telltale, its new 15-minute demo features the full opening sequence of its final Walking Dead season, and is designed to highlight the series latest additions: including a new "unscripted" combat system, over-the-shoulder camera, and revised art style - which is intended to more closely emulate the comic series it's based on.

"Clementine, now a fierce and capable survivor, has reached the final chapter in her journey," explains Telltale, "After years on the road facing threats both living and dead, a secluded school might finally be her chance for a home. But protecting it will mean sacrifice." As usual, there will be choices to make, which will supposedly help "determine how Clementine's story ends."

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Developer Frogwares has unveiled the first gameplay trailer for its promising open-world Lovecraft horror, The Sinking City, which is due to launch next March on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. A word of warning: this probably isn't an ideal watch if straight razors (or tentacles) make you squeamish.

Frogwares, whose previous work includes the extremely solid investigation-based Sherlock Holmes series, announced The Sinking City - described as the developer's most ambitious project to date - in March last year.

Several suitably atmospheric cinematic teasers and trailers have been released since then, but the latest is the first to include a look (albeit briskly) at The Sinking City in action - although a more extensive gameplay sample has already been shown to fans who've been following development closely, through Frogwares' various behind-the-scenes updates.

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Abbey Games, the studio behind Reus and the excellent turn-based globe-trotting adventure Renowned Explorers, has unveiled its new strategy game Godhood.

In Godhood, players take on the guise of a new deity, and start out by defining the religion that they'd like to usher into an unsuspecting world - whether it be one that embraces peace, love, lust, war, honour, cannibalism, witchcraft, or any number of increasingly unconventional ideologies, judging by the game's new teaser trailer.

That's pretty much all the information that the trailer does offer, however, aside from a pleasing introductory glimpse at Godhood's classic isometric perspective and its rather lovely hand-drawn art style. Thankfully, there's a slightly more detailed, and promising, overview of the game's core features to be found on its developer's website.

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Annapurna Interactive, the publisher behind the stellar likes of What Remains of Edith Finch, Florence, and Gorogoa, has announced that gloriously off-beat physics puzzler Donut County will be coming to PS4, PC, and iOS on August 28th.

Developed by Ben Esposito, Donut Country is openly inspired by Keita Takahashi's classic video game oddity Katamari Damacy, evident in its vibrant low-poly art style and quirky ambience. Instead of attempting to engulf the world by rolling it into a ball however, Donut County casts you as a hole and tasks you with swallowing up everything you can.

Starting out as a tiny opening, barely big enough to consume a pebble, objects you swallow increase your size until you're able to engulf the likes of towering skyscrapers, and more.

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The developer of well-received indie strategy game Frozen Synapse has today announced the game's sequel will be launched in August.

Frozen Synapse 2 was originally due for release in 2016, but for reasons unknown, these plans had to be put on ice. Developer Mode 7 recently came under fire from the game's Steam community, who had been demanding an update on the game's release date. In response, Mode 7 has now promised the game will be released sometime in August, but it cannot yet confirm an exact date. According to its press release, "the game is currently undergoing final bug and balance testing, as well as a last beta round for gameplay purposes".

But the game may well be worth the wait, as the developer has claimed Frozen Synapse 2 is the "culmination of everything [they've] done" since they started Mode 7. The developer promised Frozen Synapse 2 has a "proven tactical core with a big, systemic strategic overworld," a glimpse of which may be seen in the new gameplay preview video below.

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In a restaurant somewhere in sunny Los Angeles County, 13 years ago, two old friends were having lunch. Wine and conversation were flowing. They remembered how they'd met at LucasArts in the 90s. They weren't there to talk business but they did because video games were their bread and butter. One of the men, Jack Sorensen, was reeling-off job opportunities he knew of - he being executive vice president of worldwide studios at games publisher THQ. "THQ Australia?" he enquired. But the other man, Dean Sharpe, didn't seem interested. He had closed his own studio Big Ape Productions a couple of years earlier, dropped off the radar and taken a break, and now he was ready for something new. But Sharpe wanted a challenge.

Sorensen dangled the bait. "It was somewhere during the second bottle of wine he mentioned he had this crazy thing in Ukraine," Dean Sharpe tells me over Skype now (he never did get fully back on the radar and he's a hard man to find). "Wow Ukraine," he thought to himself, "that sounds interesting."

Sorensen outlined his problem: THQ had a team making a fascinating game in Ukraine called Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. The game was dark and massive, set around the twisted disaster zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It was part shooter, part role-playing game, part eerie open-world sandbox adventure. But Stalker was overdue, long overdue, and Sorensen needed someone on the ground out there to finish it - someone in Ukraine to be THQ personified, day in day out, doing whatever it took to get the game done.

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It's Indie Mega Week at the Humble Store right now, which - as you may have gleaned from the name - is a big celebration of some of the best indie games around, with the range seeing discounts of up to 90 per cent for the time being.

There are pages of stuff on offer in the Indie Mega Week sale range, ranging from smaller and more obscure titles to some of the biggest indie games released in recent years, and some soundtracks and DLC packs are even thrown in for good measure.

Some of the most notable games on offer include 11-bit Studios' recent suffer-sim Frostpunk, which is down to 21.24 / $25.49, current Twitch favourite House Flipper for 13.16 / $16.99, the unrelentingly addictive Dead Cells for 17.59 / $19.99, and the closet thing we'll get to a Left 4 Dead 3 anytime soon, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 for 15.40 / $20.09.

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No Man's Sky's impressive NEXT update came out last week and the response has been generally positive. Over the weekend, in fact, more than 97,000 concurrent players logged in to Hello Games' revamped space sim on PC - and, even now, it's the fifth most played game on Steam.

That's quite the turnaround, and some fans are showing their enthusiasm for the rejuvenated No Man's Sky in the time-honoured fashion: by sharing kind words or screenshots of their most beautiful discoveries across the internet. However, one fan, going by the name Roland Oberheim, has taken a more unique approach to celebrating NEXT's accomplishments, building a giant monument to creator Sean Murray on the surface of one of the millions of planets within No Man's Sky's universe. It's so big, in fact, that it's visible from the atmosphere.

The massive edifice is fashioned using a precise arrangement of floor panels - elements included in the game's extensive building tools - and measures 37x50 squares. The result, as I'm sure you'll agree, is an entirely convincing replica of Sean Murray and beard.

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It's been a long time since I've played a Formula One game, and in truth I've seldom enjoyed them that much - which, as a fan of both racing games and the sport, seemed a shame. There was something alienating, I found, in the monotonously fast machinery with its nervy handling and in the dry pageantry of the licence. The championship season was the main hook, but it was exhaustingly long and, without the variety and sense of progression offered by broader racing games, its payoff seemed distant.

So it was without much expectation that I covered for our regular F1 correspondent Martin at a recent preview event for this year's F1 game from Codemasters, F1 2018. Yet what I found there was, on the basis of a couple of hours' play, the most immediately involving and cleverly designed career mode in any current racing game.

This may not be news to people who've stayed in touch with the series. Since it made a bare-bones reboot on the current consoles in F1 2015, Codemasters has been progressively beefing up F1's career offering. Actual new features in F1 2018 are relatively few: I've listed them below, but the headline addition is that of media interviews, which present you with multiple choice answers and affect your driver's reputation in the paddock, the morale of your team and your position in the contract market.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Battle Royale mode, Blackout, was introduced to the world back in May. Now, two month's later, Activision has offered the first proper footage (albeit a fleeting, 13 second sample) of Blackout in action.

A Battle Royale mode for this year's iteration of Call of Duty was repeatedly rumoured prior to Black Ops 4's full unveiling, so nobody was particularly surprised when Treyarch made it official during Activision's reveal event in May. Announced as Blackout, the mode was teased in only the broadest of strokes, alongside a lengthy but rather abstract cinematic trailer.

"For us to even consider this kind of [Battle Royale] experience," Treyarch said, "it had to be unique and done in a way that only Black Ops could do". The final product, it continued, would be a "crazy collision of fun", mixing favourite weapons and characters with land, water, and air vehicles, all on a map comprising of numerous iconic locations from previous games.

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