Nerial’s Reigns is a simple (if strange-sounding) concept stretched to its absolute limits. Take the UI of dating-for-impatient-people app Tinder, and use it to steer the life of a monarch one meeting at a time, juggling political threats and multiple story-threads all through the simple, binary act of swiping left or right.

Today, you can get a second helping of this strange but compelling formula. The queenly sequel Reigns: Her Majesty is out now, promising an all-new story built around the now-familiar mechanics, plus a few new twists to the tale. Read on for details and the positively charming> launch trailer.

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Sundays are for trying to get out of the house and experience some fresh air around your kid’s extraordinarily long naps. And for staying in and reading (and watching) about videogames for their duration.

Game-related Thing Of The Week is obviously Cool Ghosts: Episode 1, a 25 minute video from Quinns and Matt Lees that wraps game crit in a narrative framing device like Consolevania of yore. It is funny, strange and has the raise the bar. The bar is up there now. (more…)

Based on the Ludum Dare concept of “the more you have, the worse it is” Goblins 2 Go (on Itch.io) is a clever little browser-game from SFB Games the creators of recent Switch success Snipperclips. It’s free and absolutely worth ten minutes of your time, putting you in the shoes of a hard-working witch producing made-to-order goblins through some carefully eyeballed potion-blending.

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There’s been an awful lot of surprise announcements these past few days, but this one really caught me off guard. We’ve known for a while that Square Enix are aiming at a broader market than ever before, but the last thing I expected was a fully localised remake of Square’s oddly capitalised Romancing SaGa 2 coming to PC, 24 years after its original Japanese-only launch on the Super Nintendo. Even more surprisingly, it’s just on the horizon, due out next Friday, December 15th.

Baffled? Step inside for a nice cup of tea, a trailer for the PC version and a little more explanation as to what the Romancing SaGa 2 brings to the table.

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Adding a second screen to your PC can bring several benefits, whether it’s giving you more space to work or, for the YouTube and Twitch crowd, the ability to read web pages while you game. Finding room in your budget for one, however, is often much harder, especially if you’ve already spent a lot on your first monitor. Enter the AOC E2470SWH.

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One of the more interesting facets of Grand Theft Auto Online‘s evolution has been a gradual loss of restraint. While the non-story updates have been pretty wacky all round (the most recent patch added the genre-blending Transform races to the in-game track editor), the past few major world-building modules have brought all manner of military-spec hardware to the table in character-led missions, along with a few sci-fi weapons systems for flavour.

It feels like all of that is coming to a head soon with the release of the upcoming Doomsday Heist update for GTA V’s multiplayer module. Read on to see just how your crew might just be saving the world in the bombastic announcement trailer.

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No obstacles can stand in your way as you seek the glories of door number nine.

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Times are changing and old boundaries are coming down. It’s easy to see, thanks to the likes of the Touhou series – once nearly unobtainable outside of Japanese import services – seeing massive worldwide success on Steam.

One of the biggest spinoffs of the Japanese indie mega-franchise (which we explained the appeal of a bit here) is the fighting games, co-developed by Twilight Frontier. The very latest, Antinomy of Common Flowers (officially the 15.5th game in the mainline series), is set for its physical debut at massive indie expo Comiket in just two weeks, with a global Steam launch two weeks later.

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Alice, your usual host, is away this week. The last I saw of her she was bricking up her chimney and muttering something about defensive perimeters. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.

My Christmas preparations mostly involve a slight injection of colour into my wardrobe and a desire for all things cinnamon and ginger. I also spend quite a bit of time making sure the RPS Advent Calendar is fully stocked with lovely treats. But is there still time for games, I hear you ask? Of course there is.

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what’s occupying our screens.

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Fighting game fans looking for something a little stranger than usual to fill out their library are in for a treat today. Based on the popular Umineko: When They Cry visual novels (which are also available on Steam), Golden Fantasia transplants the cast from their regular, dreary lives as metatextual murder-mystery characters into a no-holds-barred 2v2 tag-team brawl.

While the very first edition of this game came out all the way back in December 2010, this is the officially localised, polished and finalised version of the Cross release, a major expansion which bumped up the size of the playable cast to a respectable 19.

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