Always Sometimes Monsters is a new experimental game from publisher Devolver Digital that features no aliens, monsters or spaceships. It's a horror game of sorts, but only because the human condition is pretty horrible, if you think about it.

A real-life roleplaying game, Always Sometimes Monsters features a character whose life is in the dumps. Their love life isn't going so hot, they’re out of money, and things are getting a bit desperate. Retro art style and some nice music combine to make this one intriguing, off-beat little game.



“Always Sometimes Monsters aims to explore themes and issues of the modern world where decisions you make affect your life and the lives of those around you,” a release on Devolver Digital’s site reads. “Start and end relationships with a colorful cast of characters, make an honest buck or lie for a few more dollars and deal with friendship and prejudice as you make your way through the modern grind.”



Devolver Digital is showing Always Sometimes Monsters off at PAX, so while you’re waiting for the PC Gamer panels to start, be sure to stop by booth 871 and take a look. Any game that defies genre conventions and pushes gaming in a new direction is worth trying out.

Always Sometimes Monsters is due out on PC sometime in 2014.

Attention PC gaming vanguards! If you're coming to this weekend's PAX Prime in Seattle, join us in our quest to shine the biggest, brightest spotlight on our beloved hobby. We're putting on two panels, starting with The PC Gaming World Congress on Friday (don't miss the chance to see Dean "Rocket" Hall and Chris Roberts talk shop), and chatting with readers all weekend.

Keep an eye out for Evan Lahti and Tyler Wilde at the show, and watch PC Gamer US on Twitter for updates on Saturday meetup plans—the current plan is to get together at 8:00 p.m. on the second floor of the convention center (near room 206) and go from there. We hope to see you!

And if you can't make it to PAX, just drop by the site for all our coverage, and hold tight for panel recaps.
Friday — The PC Gaming World Congress
6:30 p.m. @ Pegasus Theater (Sheraton Hotel, 2nd floor)

We've assembled a dream team of PC gaming personalities to debate the state of our dear hobby: Dean Hall (Creator, DayZ, Bohemia Interactive), Jon Mavor (Co-Founder, Uber Entertainment), Chris Taylor (Founder, Gas Powered Games), and Chris Roberts (Founder, Cloud Imperium Games).

For an hour, we’ll invite our esteemed speakers to reflect on the issues that matter most to PC gamers and developers and paint a picture of what the next few years in PC gaming will look like. Finally, a congress worth listening to!
Saturday — PC Gamer and GamesRadar meetup
8:00 p.m. @ convention center, 2nd floor near room 206

Come hang out with us! Evan and Tyler will join GamesRadar's Greg Henninger, Ryan Taljonick, Hollander Cooper, and Thomas Darnell—as well as any surprise guests we can talk into coming along—for a casual get-together with readers. We'll gather at 8 p.m. Saturday night on the second floor of the convention center and see where the night takes us from there. We waive all liability if you wake up in Canada.
Monday — Catfantastic Live: A Wholly Insane PC Gaming Trivia Show
1:00 p.m. @ Serpent Theater (Sheraton Hotel, 3rd floor)

Did you hear a meow? It must be…Catfantastic! It’s only the greatest PC gaming trivia show on the planet, where the points matter more than life itself. Join chaotic-neutral host Tyler Wilde as he grills PC Gamer’s Evan Lahti, GamesRadar’s Hollander Cooper and Ryan Taljonick, and audience volunteers with obscure, bizarre, and shamelessly unfair trivia from PC gaming past and present.

Randomly selected audience members will be invited to participate for fabulous prizes from Corsair, Razer, and Valve, but you’re free to just watch, too. If you’re not familiar with Catfantastic, PC Gamer US Podcast 350 will introduce you to the madness. Be ready!

A year ago this week, Guild Wars 2 launched in North America and Europe. To celebrate, ArenaNet has released a huge infographic with a ton of stats for your entertainment. Er, your infotainment, I mean.



One big highlight is that Guild Wars 2 has solidified its claim of being the fastest selling MMO in history, with 3.5 million copies sold in its first year. That rush of players caused no shortage of headaches for NCSoft, as noted by the accompanying blog post.

“Those first few months were a time we’ll never forget,” ArenaNet president and Guild Wars 2 executive producer Mike Obrien writes. “The game sold so far beyond our expectations that we decided to stop selling it for a while to avoid overwhelming the servers. Even then, some aspects of the game were bursting at the seams, and we worked around the clock to address everything. Here’s an example: for a while we had a regularly scheduled security meeting every night at midnight. It was all a hell of a lot of work, but it was worth it."



The graphic shows other notable numbers, like one billion trading post transactions made, 23 million caravans destroyed and 471 thousand players revived. Check out the full graphic at the Guild Wars 2 blog. Though it’s a year old, our review from launch is also still worth a read.

Quick! Get to your basement to hit the big red button that starts the machine that releases that marbles that flip a switch on the marble run to light a rocket that frightens the cat into racing your wheel-powered computer into motion, because Contraption Maker is now on Steam Early Access!

We first reported on Rube Goldberg-esque Contraption Maker, the new game from the design team behind the Incredible Machine series, earlier this year—and while it's still technically not finished, it's ready enough to invite some willing (and paying) beta testers into the boxing glove-filled, conveyor belt-laden maze of your own making. This PC- and Mac-ready alpha build costs a fair $10 on Steam, a discounted pre-release price that will include all future builds, right up until the big version 1.0. (No word from developer Spotkin on how much Contraption Maker will officially cost at launch, though.)

The current build will allow us to mainly twiddle around in the sandboxy action. A puzzle-solving "campaign" of sorts is planned, but don't expect it in this early version—think of this more as an opportunity to test the physics and functionality of the 70 various parts available to you, including objects ranging in ridiculousness from trampolines to cats.

Daedalic's got a pretty good pedigree in the mostly barren land of adventure gaming—its last release, Night of the Rabbit, was a wistful journey full of frogs wearing classy little hats (really, how could the softhearted animal lovers making up the PCG team say no?). The developer's new game is the "fantasy-crime" story Memoria, which looks a heck of a lot darker than the rest of their back catalog, but is certainly no less intriguing.

You'll play two characters, 500 years apart—whatever could an ambitious princess and a humble bird-catcher from different eras have in common? I don't know, but I'm happy to just get lost in all those gorgeous fantasy landscapes while digging around for the answer.

Memoria is set in that universe of The Dark Eye. No, not that Dark Eye. And not the Poe-inspired Dark Eye, either. We're talking about the Chains of Satinav, one of Daedalic's previous adventure games, which was home to such locales as the dragon-built temple Draconia (which we'll get to explore once again). A special promotion heralds Memoria's release, granting it a 10% discount to $18 on Steam for the next week. The Longest Journey was the last game whose fantasy beauty awed me this much—hopefully it'll live up to my now-solidified expectations.

Last month, Frontiers successfully capitalised on its promise of open-world exploratory freedom and cleared both its Kickstarter target and all planned stretch goals. All that, despite being named Frontiers, a name which you'd be forgiven for having forgotten before the end of this sentence. Now, its creator Lars Simkins has posted the first video update since the end of the campaign, revealing the game's fancy new terrain textures and lighting, as well as details of the planned alpha tests.



The alpha is now scheduled for mid-late September, and will focus on a single island with completed textures, cities and NPCs. Simkins explains that it will be a barebones representation of the game, but it should nevertheless give backers their first sampling of how the world will work.

I talked to Lars about his plans and philosophies for the game during the Kickstarter campaign. Of course, since then, the scope increased dramatically when all the stretch goals were met and further fan-requested features were approved, including seasons, archaeology, and a giant ruined tower to explore.

The nice thing about the new trailer for Ironclad Tactics is that I can watch it without my brain trying to shut down from the stress of what it's being shown. That wasn't the case with Zachtronics Industries' last game, SpaceChem. But then, rather than a puzzler that revels in its exponential increase in complication, Ironclad Tactics is a card-based civil war battler. With robots.

The game is due out on 18th September, and pre-orders have been made available through the official site's Humble widget. That'll net you a mandatory Steam key, to be redeemed on the day of release. In addition, the "Extra! Extra! Bundle" is also offering a pricier way to support the creator, with a mixture of physical and digital bonuses available, including SpaceChem and its DLC expansion.

Unknown Worlds have released a free expansion for their pus-filled strategy shooter Natural Selection 2. The Reinforced update bolsters the online FPS with, among other things, new weapons, traps, items and tutorials. It also adds DirectX 11, linux support and the long-awaited female marine model. While it will cost you zero pence to play the new content, that wasn't the case for those making it. In fact, the developers estimate that the expansion's creation cost them $550,000. As such, they're currently accepting crowdfunding donations to help them decide if future free content is feasible.



"Six months of game development is not cheap, and we have often discussed how we might continue to pay for keeping the studio focused on Natural Selection 2 full time," explains the announcement post. "Various options were discussed – Including making Reinforced a separate Steam DLC, or introducing in-game micro-transactions. But these monetisation methods do not fit with our culture. Knowing we must pay the bills to keep the lights on, we decided to introduce the Reinforcement Program."

It's refreshing to see a studio discuss the costs involved in creating an update, and admirable that they're attempting to release them for free despite that. For those who do want to help reimburse them for the effort, a variety of rewards are available for backers.

If you haven't played Natural Selection 2, the game can be trialled for free on Steam. The free weekend will run until this Sunday, 1st September, and a 75% discount will be in effect until the day after.

You can see the full patchlist for the Reinforced update here.

Introversion have released a new build of crim sim Prison Architect. Alpha 13 gives inmates the ability to tunnel out of your jail, which - and I'm just guessing here - sounds like something they might want to do. As always, Chris Delay and Mark Morris have created a video update taking you through the cells, buildings and underground holes of the game's latest version.

Using the contraband added in alpha 12, prisoners can slowly Shawshank their way to redemption. Searching their cells will uncover their escape attempts, but the most efficient way to unearth tunnels is with dogs. Unfortunately, dogs aren't in the game yet. That four-legged feature is planned for the next update.

The other significant change is an automatic punishment system, letting you send prisoners to lockdown or solitary, based on their crime. Introversion say this is the first major step to removing politics from the games systems, and letting players build a "right wing hellhole" without the game penalising their penal system.

Finally, because today is The Day of the Deals, the game is 40% off for this weekend. That means you've got until September 2nd to lock it up for the discount price of £11.99/$17.99.