Yesterday, things got a little weird for fans of historical sandbox Crusader Kings II, as a screenshot of the game used in a Bosnian newspaper led to a flurry of interest in the history of forks>, of all things. CKII fans confirmed that the newspaper’s article on the history of the now-ubiquitous cutlery was inaccurate, and it didn’t actually originate with an obscure Venetian Doge’s wife.

Today, Paradox threw down the gauntlet and asked players to engage in a little tine travel. Players have been challenged to take control of Doge Domenico III of Venice and correct the history books by conquering the world in the name of forks, and claim a community achievement named “This fork of mine”.

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Tee hee hee. A newspaper has used the portrait of a character from Crusader Kings II to illustrate a small article about the history of the fork as an eating utensil. The article is in Bosnian newspaper Dnevni Avaz and shows a picture of everyone s favourite 11th century Doge of Venice, Domenico Selvo. Don t you know him? He s a cool guy. He s humble, shy, just, stubborn and a tough soldier. But, uh, he has nothing whatsoever to do with forks. (more…)

The Paradox DLC factory continues to diligently extend the lives of its myriad grand strategy romps, with all but Stellaris getting new DLC announcements at PDXCON last month. We re getting restless pagan warriors, war elephants and even some sharks. If you can match the feature to the game, you get a polite nod of respect.

Rather than tiring you out, making you click on three articles like a thoughtless task master, I ve gathered all the sizzling deets in one place. Rest those fingers and direct your eyes below to find out what s changing in Hearts of Iron 4, Europa Universalis 4 and Crusader Kings 2.

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As part of this avalanche of Paradox Interactive material today, you’ll be excited to hear that the hyper-specific bread and butter of their strategy games, Crusader Kings II, is getting an expansion born of pure hellfire. The Holy Fury add-on will be changing the way crusades are waged, from starting in a randomly generated map to raiding something called “Pagan Warrior Lodges” to using special powers to antagonize or control your neighbors. Exactly as Jesus would have wanted.

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It’s good to be king, and even better when you’re not paying a penny for it. Today, Paradox are giving away the base version of their enormously enduring historical simulation sandbox Crusader Kings II, completely free. Grab it on Steam here, and you get to keep it forever, no strings attached, although the temptation of collecting over a dozen major expansions is now open to you.

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Civilization VI: Rise and Fall wants to solve a problem. That problem is perpetual growth, and it plagues many 4X games. Whether your aim is world conquest or cultural hegemony, victory in Civilization and many of its cohorts depends on domination. However peacefully you try to play, you’re often straight-jacketed into a utilitarian-psychotic view where all resources and people are just raw material to be assimilated, Borg-like, until the whole map is monochrome.

But as the early excitement of exploration and expansion ebbs to late game stagnation, the fun runs out. Historically, stagnating empires tend to fragment and collapse. But in Civilization VI, like many games, you’re the star of the show and there’s nowhere to go but up.

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We’ve already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin’ and a-shakin’ in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol’ Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well – as do a host of other games from 2017’s great and good.

Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you’re so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I’d have gone for in each category. (more…)

Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games.> But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol’ breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.

Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.

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Royal incompetence simulator Crusader Kings 2 is one of the best games ever. Over hundreds of years, sultans and kings create new empires and murder their families. Today a data science man gets in touch to say he recorded a 700-year game in observation mode, pulled out all the data like a big reel of cassette tape, shoved it through some kind of magical process I won t pretend to understand, and came up with statistics on several rulers. This also resulted in detailed networks of kills and marriages. The important thing is: this lets us see who had the most babies. (more…)

There are more wonderful games being released on PC each month than ever before. In such a time of plenty, it’s important that you spend your time as wisely as possible. Thankfully, we’re here to help. What follows are our picks for the best PC games ever made. (more…)