I had some regrets. I d sabotaged my friend s chances of dating a stoner ghost, relentlessly mocked another friend until they gave up on love entirely, and trashed the school. As Monster Prom built up to its titular, hormone-soaked event, I turned into a high school asshole. With a gentle touch, the not-really-a-dating-sim nudges you into these familiar roles, and by framing it as a multiplayer competition, it conjures up all sorts of teen drama. But with gorgons and vampires.

When prom was over, I realised that my group had gone through all the collaborative storytelling and character building normally reserved for tabletop RPGs. We developed our lovelorn trio over the course of our horny quest, roleplaying both heated discussions and accusations. And it was a complete surprise. Monster Prom isn t billed as any kind of RPG.

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As Rainbow Six Siege continues smashing through its third year of contents updates, Ubisoft have shown off the two new characters coming in its next big patch, Operation Grim Sky. The fella known as Maverick has a blowtorch to cut wee holes in walls, while Clash is a London rozzer armed with an electrozapping bulletproof shield. Arriving alongside them is a new version of Rainy day in Hereford at an SAS training facility. And you can see all of that in a new video below.

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The grim effects of the Steam Summer Sale are finally wearing off, and we’ve got a bunch of new entries this week! Along with, of course, the usual hoary old guard of dreary regulars. So hold my hand as I guide you through the most exciting article of your life.

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Nvidia’s new Turing GPUs are finally things that exist, but so far the only details we know pertain to their professional Quadro RTX models: the Quadro RTX 5000, Quadro RTX 6000 and Quadro RTX 8000. What will Nvidia’s GeForce equivalents be like, and what will they even be called?

All will (hopefully) be revealed this evening at Nvidia’s big Gamescom extravaganza, but judging by Nvidia’s latest teaser video for the event, we might already have some answers. Whatever happens, though, the alleged GTX 1180, GTX 2080 or even RTX 2080 will almost certainly blow today’s best graphics cards clean out of the water, so to help prepare you for what’s to come, here’s everything we know so far.

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Take twelve people who are good at jumping, drop them into a zombie-infested city, and turn them loose to loot, level up, and murder each other until one emerges triumphant. That’s Dying Light: Bad Blood, an upcoming multiplayer standalone spin-off from Techland’s parkour-o-zombsmashing shooter series. Y’know, it’s a Battle Royale/Hunger Games-ish doodad, as is the style of the time. But on a smaller scale, and with lots of NPC zombies to murder too. Techland today announced that Bad Blood will enter paid early access in September then properly launch as a free-to-play game after a few months.

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Sundays are for attending music festivals. I’m in a field in Devon, you’re reading the best writing about video games from the past week (or so). [Mondays are for putting missed articles online. –Ed>]

On Waypoint, Cameron Kunzelman dedicated his Postscript column to his late college professor, Anya Silver. He makes a poignant case for dealing with sadness by embracing it, for working through melancholy rather than pushing it away.

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It is perhaps a little silly to get excited about a game based on screenshots. For all manner of reasons. But I can’t help myself whenever I pics of Children Of Morta. It just looked so astonishingly beautiful, especially in the last year. So I nagged at the PR team behind it, and they let me get my hands on an in-development build that doing the rounds at this summer’s shows. Oh my, it’s already looking splendid. (more…)

Shattered is a little exploratory platformer in which you play as a bird who must climb up a mountain to rescue his brother from strange, threatening glitch-creatures using the power of his magical bell. It s also easily one of the prettiest games I ve seen lately.

Making your way through this colourful, construction paper style world requires surprising amounts of concentration. As well as the standard WASD for movement, ringing your magic bell requires well timed use of the arrow keys, so you have to keep both hands independent but coordinated. Pulling it off feels great though, as showers of purple and pink magic notes burst out in a pastel chime and stave off these nightmare enemies.

I won t spoil anything, but the game’s got a neat little story, too, though perhaps one to avoid if you re only looking for happy endings. On the other hand, they do give it away in their gameplay video, so you can see for yourself below:

It ll only take about fifteen minutes to ascend the mountain, and uncover all the secrets hidden there, but there are some cute extras to find. It’s sweet to hear your bird friend reminisce about trips to the shrine that he and his brother used to take, and there are lots of NPCs to chat with as well. Perfect for if you really want to spend some more time just soaking in the beauty of the world that developer Curlscurly have created, which I certainly did.

Shattered is available for pay what you want with no minimum on itch.io.

The growing genre of games like Cibele that evoke the style of old internet chat rooms to explore interpersonal relationships and teen feels is a good one. Dear Sophie picks up the tradition, describing itself as the mid-2000s version of leafing through a stack of dusty love letters between you and your high school sweetheart. What makes it interesting, though, is that it mostly highlights how much teenagers can suck.

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Based on the theme of running out of space, the latest Ludum Dare game jam was always going to produce some anxiety-inducing results. These three are some of the best examples of that, exploring the fears of drowning, being an overworked dog shelter employee, and being trapped on a crowded tube, while somehow still managing to be enjoyable. Video game magic.

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