Multiplayer has arrived in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind thanks to a project based on the fan-made replacement engine OpenMW [official site]. Earlier versions of the TES3MP side-project previously only supported PvP, as NPCs wouldn’t synchronise between players, but now you and your pals can roam the land, messing with NPCs and questing and murdering and whatever else you might fancy. This is a huge step. TES3MP also supports scripting so people can fiddle with the game and even make custom modes; one alpha tester already made a Battle Royale mode. (more…)

Well even if the Sun won’t shine, the Steam Charts can still spread brightness into our lives. By some manner of wondrous majjicks, this week’s chart doesn’t even include H1Z1, Fallout 4, nor The Witcher 3! I barely even know what to do with myself. I’m dizzy! Come, join the celebration. (more…)

What happens to forgotten games? I’d like to think some of them just turn into after-hours parties, like a lock-in at proper old boozer. When nobody new comes to play, the characters just grab a pint or do a line of shots and hit the dance floor.

Village Monsters [official site] sees things differently. Here, the baddies inhabiting an abandoned RPG have moved on and are now living the good life. You can join them in this Harvest Moon inspired indie game.

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Notorious FMV game Night Trap is back, against all odds. Having survived the cancellation of the console it was originally made for, US congressional hearings about violence in video games, and a failed Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, the interactive horror movie will come to PC as Night Trap – 25th Anniversary Edition [official site] on August 15th. Developers Screaming Villains had muttered before that they were considering a PC version, but now it’s official.

Upon hearing of Night Trap’s return, RPS’s John Walker asked “lord, why would anyone want it back?” (more…)

The dinosaur island sandbox Ark: Survival Evolved [official site] was due to leave early access and launch in full next week, but it won’t. Developers Studio Wildcard announced over the weekend that they’ve delayed the launch from August 8th to the 29th, because things took longer than expected. That’s game-making all right. Over the next few weeks, in the run-up to the actual proper launch for real, Wildcard and chums will be working on performance improvements, fixes for bugs and exploits, and more. (more…)

Welcome to the third communal Combat Mission skirmish a comment-driven confrontation between RPS readers and CM s decidedly dangerous AI. Turns span 60 seconds and rarely go according to plan. Late-war and Eastern Front, this summer s scrap takes place in a German-held Baltic port. Sixteen turns in, the commenter-controlled Soviets have secured three of the map’s seven victory locations (West Bridge, East Bridge, Square) but are encountering pockets of determined enemy resistance as they push west and north. Two German self-propelled guns loiter menacingly near the station.> (more…)

At first I thought Law Mower [official site] was going to be a nice little game about keeping your garden tidy (the Steam description talks about you mowing “every blade of grass in the world”). Nope. I’ve just played the demo, and I got turned to a pulp when I ran over an exploding gopher.

If I’d watch the new trailer first then I would’ve had a better idea: you’re a man with a mower, and you have to run over dogs, avoid missiles (mowing is serious business) and run over other people trying to peek over the garden fence. There’s a single player campaign that frames the madness, and online multiplayer too it’s all out on 8th August.

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This is my first look at pretty puzzler The Gardens Between [official site], and it’s giving me vibes that are somewhere between Rime and mobile game Monument Valley. It’s a “surreal puzzle adventure” that’s arriving in early 2018, by the end of March, and three new long videos show off just how good it will look and sound.

The music has come out of a collaboration between some impressive sounding people that I’ve never heard of (but you might have), including Grammy award winner Wally de Backer, aka Gotye, and Aussie pianist Luke Howard. The upshot is: it’s very relaxing, and it’s probably going to be my work soundtrack for the day.

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Not long now until you get to sit in the cockpit of your own floating Cold War submarine-inspired spaceship, because Objects in Space [official site] is coming out early next year. Before now it didn’t have a publisher, but 505 Games have decided to bite.

If you haven’t heard about it before, it’s an open-world “stealth-action” space game that thinks the ships in other space trading games are too fast and nippy. They should instead be big, bulky, and look like they’ve come straight out of the ’70s. So, you sit behind a retro cockpit, try and stay off other ships’ radars by hiding in asteroid belts and, if combat can’t be avoided, take them out from long distance.

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Here’s a thing that looks relaxing: Secret Spaces [official site]. In it, you descend through an infinite block-y tower, growing vines to climb on and seeds to ride on to help you explore. Fall damage is the only threat (and you can pick up Salvefruits to block that too), so you can concentrate on poking around the procedurally-generated spaces to try and find artefacts and gardens of “strange glowing flora”. So like urban exploration, but with more plants and a synthy soundtrack. (more…)