So many clauses of an RPS employment contract are written in blood that, honestly, you start skipping past them once you realised they’re mostly harmless blood curses compelling one to e.g. substitute in “foot-to-ball” any time I try to write “foot-to-ball”.

Those reams of sticky vellum must surely also contain something about Games Workshop games, as here I am writing about Warhammer Quest coming to PC in January, even though it’s a port of a mobile game from 2013. Well, the blood curses are making me, and the fact that a quick look finds folks saying good things about the mobile version, aside from its microtransaction-o-rama.

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Failbetter have been writing the bestest best words in gaming for a while now and in Sunless Sea they have created a worthy vessel to carry those words to new audiences. There is horror, humour and haunting in the cavernous depths, and through it all, your ship cuts through the waters seeking new mysteries and fresh hells.>

Adam: Worse things happen on the Sunless Sea.

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In Lordran, the flow of time may be distorted, but eventually a hero always triumphs/staves off the darkness briefly/plunges us into a different dark age. The Steamworks version of Dark Souls is now out, a little later than planned, and lets folks transfer their saves and achievements away from Games for Windows Live. Splendid. Do switch on over now, as it’s not much hassle and profile transfers won’t be available forever; they’re only guaranteed until February 16th, 2015.

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The Dream Machine‘s episodic structure has been… sporadic. Chapters one and two came out in January 2011, with the rest promised soon after. Chapter 3 appeared in November 2011, taking longer than expected. Which was nothing compared to chapter 4, which finally appeared in August 2013. It was quite a wait, and rather a short entry. It’s been slightly over a year since, and now we have Chapter 5 – the biggest part of the game yet. Here’s wot I think.>

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As a decent human being, I’ll warn you in advance if I intend to give you a clip round the ear (though I’m not decent enough to not whack you). If I were making you a cake, though, I’d wait until it was baked and cooled to tell you. What this clever intro I feel too ill today to pull off would lead towards is: I’ve mentioned before that RPG sequel-sequel Final Fantasy XIII-2 was due a PC release on December 11th, but now it’s actually out so you can actually play it. That would’ve been so slick and clever. I was working on a mnemonic I’m sure you’d all use daily and everything.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

It’s a mark of how much I enjoyed ridiculously named reboot DmC: Devil May Cry that I’m absolutely gutted because there’s no sign of a sequel. It was the daftest game I played in 2013 and one of the deftest as well. Having alienated many fans of the series before release, by featuring a different brand of posturing pretty man than they were used to, Ninja Theory’s gloriously over the top romp seemed doomed to fail, but it’s a beautifully barmy concoction.

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Total War: Arena reminds me of Magicka: Wizard Wars, a game that I’m extremely fond of. Wizard Wars took the chaotic elemental combos of Magicka and directed them into a team-based multiplayer showdown. If it had simply been a team deathmatch iteration of Arrowhead’s original concept though, it wouldn’t have captured my attention for quite as long as it did. Arena strikes a similar chord because it presents one aspect of Total War intelligently re-imagined as a short-form multiplayer game that hasn’t forgotten its strategic roots. After an hour of play, I’m eager for more.>

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Something about the concept of “airship crews try to blow each other out of the sky” made AirBuccaneers popular in the RPS treehouse since its beginnings as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, when we organised irregular matches with you motley crew. If you too wish to man guns, take the wheel, lead boarding parties, bomb from gliders, or generally murder lots of men in silly ways, good news! Developers Ludocraft have now made their commercial follow-up AirBuccaneers HD free to everyone, so you can grab it on Steam and begin plundering today.

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Unity of Command is the wargame that non-wargamers should play. At least in my eyes – Tim Stone has his doubts, and he knows more than I. It’s a difficult game, but not because of an overabundance of numbers or an obtuse interface like many of its kin. It’s unforgiving AI and the need for clever battlefield tactics that will see your men falter and die in its campaign, and which will keep you coming back for more. Like wot Kieron thought.

Gadzooks! Now it seems there’s to be a sequel.

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Dwarf Fortress‘s development is a joy to follow along with, but its age means that each new update, however large, is designed to add greater complexity and nuance to its simulation, and much of the heavy lifting for its procedural world generation was done long ago.

Ultima Ratio Regum aims to be a roguelike crossed with a 4X, and at this stage it’s not as far advanced as Dwarf Fortress nor even really a game. But that means you get to follow along as the fundamental code underpinning its world is formed. Version 0.6.0 was just released and it takes the overworld map added long ago and drills deeper, so that each city that appears upon it can now be walked around at street level. Or as the patch notes put it, you can now “Explore massive and varied feudal cities (each able to support a population of ~300,000+), each with its own range of districts, architectural styles, and buildings influenced by the political and religious choices of its civilization.”

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