I’d been wanting to check out Doublebear’s Dead State – which I’m going to loosely label ‘The Walking Dead does X-COM’ – for a while, but Wot I Thinkery fell to someone else upon its initial release. The free ‘Reanimated’ update is a fancy name for a mega-patch designed to address assorted gripes about the doomy turn-based strategy/RPG zombie survival game, and also my opportunity to finally visit the blighted town of Splendid, Texas.

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Well lawks a lummy! I’ve gotten so used to skimming over the seas of TowerFall ‘em ups that I had entirely missed that more TowerFall [official site] – actual TowerFall – came out last week.

The ‘Dark World’ expansion brings a four-player co-op mode to the arrow-flinging local multiplayer murderfest, along with new arrow power-ups, procedurally-generated levels, new characters to be, and plenty more murder.

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Steam skins let you change up how your Steam client looks. Some are pretty much just recolouring options while others want to have their wicked way with your menus, refining or rejigging them. Skins have been around for years now so you might have encountered some of these already – certainly, the community has clustered round a few good skins with a smattering of irregularly updated fan service when it comes to particular games, anime or My Little Pony (well hi there, Fluttershy). But there’s a chance you’ve missed out – or you’re hankering for a change of digital scenery – so here are five of the bestest best Steam skins.

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The Internet is fond of cats, and why wouldn’t it be? Cats are perfectly suited to the medium of the Internet. From the earliest days of the World Wide Web, cats were being cute in short text stories. Then we gained small, heavily compressed images which were bad for many subjects but just dandy for cats. Then animated gifs, YouTube videos… cats have scaled adorably with technology. Soon you can even use the Internet to be a cat yourself.

Catlateral Damage [official site], the crowdfunded first-person smash-o-platformer about a jerk cat knocking everything off shelves, is due to launch downloadable next week.

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My first thought when I heard that Riot had added a “Hide Eye Candy” toggle to the League of Legends [official site] options screen was that a lot of champions would suddenly be sporting frumpy coats. Big wooly jumpers to cover themselves up with, perhaps. But no, instead this new feature is designed to prevent players from being distracted. By butterflies.

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Settle down, littluns: it’s time for more of Alice’s pond stories. I’ve started practising diving – feet hip-width apart, bend knees, bum out, arms pointing to entry point, launch from balls of feet, legs together – and delight in reaching deeper into darker waters, looking around in the murk as I surface. One day I will encounter one of the Moving Things that I know live there, and freak the heck out. Maybe it’ll prepare me for Iron Fish [official site].

Announced today, it’s an undersea journey from the sunny shallows down, down, down eleven kilometres, encountering unknown sealife and lost civilisations. Have a peek:

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Don t Nod s adventure series Life Is Strange [official site] has a lot of things going for it, not least of which is the unironic use of the word “Booyah” in the launch trailer for Episode 3 – which launched this morning. Schoolyard angst, murder mystery and a hint of magic all mean that Life Is Strange is giving Telltale a run for their money in the episodic adventure game department.

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Soon, you’ll be able to add tunnels to your urban creations in Cities: Skylines [official site]. Even before the game had been released, Colossal Order had told me that tunnels were the one big feature they had been hoping to include at launch. I think the eventual outcome was the best possible scenario – the game was lovely at launch, mods instantly started to make it even lovelier, and now the tunnels are arriving in the form of a free update later this week.

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Remember when S.T.A.L.K.E.R. studio GSC Gameworld grandly announced its renewed existence to the world, and how I warned you it was unlikely their next game would be a new entry in the open-world FPS series? I do hope you didn’t get your hopes up regardless.

GSC Game World today announced Cossacks 3 [official site], which is actually a remake of ye olde Cossacks: European Wars from 2001. Their return to their historical epic real-time strategy series is due later this year, and teases battles with up to 10,000 units.

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The Doom 4 trailer-that-wasn’t, like a necromantic summoning ritual, appears to have opened a portal to a hell dimension of leaked artwork and footage. Supposedly leaked video and artwork posted on the Doomworld forums and All Games Beta show what the game once looked like prior to 2013, when development was scrapped and restarted. Now we know why.

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