I’m a little sad that No Man’s Sky is being released.

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Prison Architect [official site] technically left early access ten months ago but developers Introversion Software have kept updating their build-o-management game as before. Now they’re finally almost done. After the upcoming release of version 2.0, Introversion plan to call it a day and – aside from fixing bugs which pop up – focus on new things like their pretty cave-scanning game. V2.0 will properly launch next month but you can try a preview version today if you fancy playing with tricky events like food poisoning and mass tunnelling.

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I’ve lined up my suitcase rifle, sawed open my escape route, and written two lines of code to control a small robot when I blink. Blink once and a set of lasers turn off allowing me to enter through a space station maintenance tunnel without triggering any alarms; blink twice and a second set turn off, allowing me to exit cleanly. It’s only a few moments later, as I stand in the vacuum of space, that I realise I left my deck – the computer by which I write scripts to control suitcase rifles, small robots, lasers and more – back in the maintenance corridor.

Quadrilateral Cowboy is a game about breaking into buildings to raid vaults, steal safes and hack coma patients. It’s a stylish, retro-futurist love letter to computing, engineering and ’90s videogame level design. It also feels like the prelude to a better game.

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If special abilities in Quake make some gristly knot deep in your guts writhe and write Internet comments, you might be more interested in Ratz Instagib [official site]. And if your hand is stuck twisted into an MX518-clutching claw, as you’d have me believe, you’ll likely recognise both parts of that name. Ratz, from ye olde Rats maps which have teeny players scurrying around colossal bedrooms and whatnot. Instagib from ye olde railgunning mode where enemies explode in one hit. Combine the two and you’ve got Ratz Instagib, properly launched today after 18 months in early access.

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

Oddly, Tiberian Sun was the first C&C I ever played. I spent at least a year of my life obsessed with Dune 2, but Command and Conquer itself and Red Alert arrived during my dark ages – the period where I didn’t have a PC capable of running contemporary games. By 1999, I was back in the game, having built a new system to find out about this Half-Life thing everyone was talking about. When I clapped eyes on screenshots of Tiberian Sun, I was in love – how far it seemed to have come since Dune 2.

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If you’re going to re-release a decade-old game as new for 32, it had better be one heck of a revamp. For 32, I’m talking new kitchen, new bathroom, swept chimneys, and at least making sure the dang game works properly. Well, Activision last night released new versions of the two Marvel: Ultimate Alliance superhero action-RPGs, and the news is not good.

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The Redwall series by Brian Jacques were some of my favorite novels growing up, so I’m absolutely giddy to try out Ghost of a Tale [official site], an action-RPG where you play a minstrel mouse. It launched into a few days back. With light elements of stealth, Ghost of a Tale lets you explore a medieval keep while you complete quests and interact with its anthropomorphic cast of characters you know what? Just watch the trailer. It’s oozing with charm.

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You know that saying better late than never? It’s an odd one, especially when you’ve kinda forgotten about a thing and then suddenly one day the developers are like, “Oh, remember that port of that game we released six years ago that wasn’t so good? Yeah, we’re fixing that now.” That’s exactly what’s happening with Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee [official site] The farty platformer kinda stank (and not in a fun way) when ported to PC back in 2010 but has now received a new port aimed at fixing most of its problems.

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The klaxon which has been going off since I got up this morning tells me that the Dota 2 [official site] prize pool for The International 2016 has now surpassed its own previous world record for an esports tournament prize pool and is now sitting at over $18.5 million.

$18.5 million. To be shared amongst people who are very very good at digital wizard sports.

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Alice isn’t here to remind me what “news” is so I’m going to tell you about something which I find infinitely entertaining about Jalopy [official site]. It’s nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with the ongoing development Q&A Greg from MinskWorks is running in relation to the game.

It’s the back seat. The back seat has been the focus of so many questions that at this point it would be the first thing I would suggest for a Jalopy Q&A drinking game. There’s been the ongoing drip drip drip of questions asking whether the back seat be used for something. But THEN that transitioned into questions/suggestions about how to use the back seat so that people stop asking whether they can use the back seat for something and now, finally, with the addition of filler objects in the back seat to block it off as of 25 July, my favourite question of all:

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