Project Nova, the Eve Online spinoff FPS, isn’t quite ready for public alpha testing – invite-only or otherwise. Developers CCP and Sumo Digital have opted to put the game back in the oven for a while longer, after the game met lukewarm response at fan-convention Eve Vegas. In a rather grim-looking announcement on its official page today, CCP state that “the gameplay experience in its current form does not live up to our original vision”. The spiritual successor to Dust 514 once more returns to the shadows for retooling, with no set date as to when we’ll next hear of it.

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X4: Foundations, the latest in Egosoft’s long-running series of enormous sandbox space sims, is out now. Claiming to be a return to form after the notoriously wonky and limiting X: Rebirth, X4 aims to be more of a systems-driven sandbox, rather than a story-driven space adventure. Players can walk around inside vessels and seamlessly onto stations, pilot almost any ship type, build up fleets and their own corporate empires, trade on a massive scale or just putter around in a fighter doing odd jobs. An info-dense overview trailer is in the ready room below, captain.

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There are normally two kinds of trading card game players: Those that like to construct decks and then challenge other players, and those that like to draft packs and build viable decks from their limited pool. With the variety of drafting modes on offer in Artifact, including a no-risk, free variant that is good for those who like to practice. This guide has some tips to get you started, such as some things to think about when drafting, as well as the best cards that you can draft.

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Today we become as gods again in Thea 2: The Shattering, guiding our wee tribe of believers through a fantasy post-apocalypse rooted in Slavic mythology. It’s the sequel to 2015’s Thea: The Awakening, a game described by Rob Zacny as “a survival 4X RPG roguelike with crafting and card combat” in our lukewarm Thea: The Awakening review. That’s a lot going on and it didn’t all work the first time, but Thea was still different and interesting enough that a sequel coming along to tidy it up sounds grand. If you’d rather not do early access, hey, it should be finished in six months or so.

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Is Thief: The Dark Project the best game ever? If Thief II isn’t, then it definitely is. With its twentieth birthday arriving today, I’ve been replaying the original sneak ’em up to see if it still holds up (of course it does>), and whether my memory of it stands up to reality (it’s way> better than I remembered).

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After a launch described as “disappointing” by owners Starbreeze, Overkill’s The Walking Dead has a launched a cheaper ‘Started Edition’. Costing 25 instead of 47, it contains all the content the cooperative zombie-busting FPS had at launch, but won’t receive the “second season” of maps and things which started yesterday for Standard Edition owners. Instead, interested Starters will need to buy that piecemeal as DLC. The game sounds notgreat in general but four-player face-shooting can be a lark, so?

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Roman and Joyce always have a jigsaw puzzle on the go. Their current undertaking is a montage of book covers sliced into 10k pieces by one of Rooksburger’s razor-sharp punching machines. Below are thirty pieces from that puzzle. Identify all thirty novels to complete the defox.

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As I’ve never played the evocatively titled #410616_03v_Battleaxe_Fort_Capuzzo.scn before and Panzer Battles: Battles of North Africa 1941 screenshots tend to be a bit beige/boring, the following image-festooned combat yarn is something of a gamble. I’m hoping whatever happens during the next few hours will prove that this suntanned grandson of the Campaign Series can deliver believable battlefield thrills almost as efficiently as the likes of Combat Mission and Graviteam Tactics but won’t be held wholly responsible if it doesn’t. (more…)

Following the pre-pre announcement of news on something new in Dragon Age, BioWare have pre-announced that they’ll open up in December. My fingers are crossed for a new game continuing the adventures of the merry gang in Kirkwall from Dragon Age II, though I suppose events Dragon Age: Inquisition would cut that off. And the mysterious project still could just be a dang comic book or something rather than another RPG.

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While PC is very much not the focus of pocket telephone game The Elder Scrolls: Blades, it is due round our way too. Bethesda had said the stripped-back action-RPG would come to PC following its autumn debut on mobile, but now that’s been delayed into next year so surely it’ll have a knock-on delay for us as well. Blades removes the whole reason I’m interested in Elder Scrolls games, rambling around a big open world while avoiding the bad combat as much as possible, so I’m not fussed but maybe you?

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