Ubisoft’s open world winter sports sandbox (snowbox?) Steep is the publisher’s latest giveaway. Available to snag and keep forever between now and Tuesday, May 21st, it features skiing, snowboarding, wingsuit diving and paragliding – four fun ways to hurl yourself down a mountain without dying. While sadly not coming with its copious collection of DLC, it is, per Ubisoft standard, still more than enough to get your teeth into, and there’s the options to expand it further if you want to stick around on the slopes. Grab it here, free, and keep it forever.

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I’d imagine that being cold and dead makes a hot cup of coffee sound like a fantastic idea, which is probably the force driving spirits to Necrobarista‘s magical Melbourne coffee-shop. Developed by Route 59 Games and out on August 9th, it’s a modern-day visual novel tale of magic and myth set in a necromancer-run cafe frequented by the recently deceased and living alike. It’s all rather Neil Gaiman, give or take a little Aussie devil-may-care attitude, and wrapped up in some lovely anime-styled 3D art. Below, a new trailer that I’m not ashamed to admit has me excited to play it.

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Spark The Electric Jester 2 is unquestionably a Sonic The Hedgehog fan-game with the branding filed off, specifically in the vein of the 3D Sonic Adventure series. Imagine those poorly-aged (but much-loved) Dreamcast classics with better controls, fewer (but not zero) cutscenes, and where every level was about going super-fast, except for boss fights which play a bit like Metal Gear Rising Lite. It’s the work of solo dev Feperd Games, and out today. While it undoubtedly has some rough edges, I’ve had a fun few hours rushing through its main story on normal mode. Below, some thoughts.

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Another day, another Games Workshop board game adapted to PC, but Dark Future: Blood Red States is a bit different from the Warhammer norm. Based on the 1988 (and obviously Mad Max-inspired) Dark Future for tabletop, it’s a tactical real-time car combat RPG. Rather than driving your vehicle directly, you’re effectively juggling its weapons systems, picking lanes and speeds and prioritising targets in slow-motion while the car itself handles navigation. It’s developed by Auroch Digital (OGRE, Chainsaw Warrior, Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics) and out now. See a trailer below.

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Alt-Frequencies, the strange time-looping audio adventure from Accidental Queens (the folks behind A Normal Lost Phone), is out today. It’s an oddball puzzle, set entirely in the comfort of your own home, listening to the radio. Problem is, the world (minus you) is repeating the same three minutes over and over again, and you’ve got to somehow break out by recording messages from the airwaves, and sending them in as a caller. A coffee-break Groundhog Day scenario, then. Have a listen at the audio-heavy trailer below, although the game itself is fully and helpfully subtitled.

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Last month, I put Nvidia’s GTX ray tracing driver to the test, seeing what kind of speeds were possible on the GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 in Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The results, it’s fair to say, were pretty mixed. Metro was completely unplayable on both cards, but Tomb Raider did, in fact, show promising signs of life as long as you kept its ray tracing setting on Medium – which ended being such a minuscule kind of effect that it was barely worth bothering with.

Now, I’ve got the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti back in to see what they’re capable of as well. Can our new best graphics card champs’ new Turing GPUs make a better go of ray tracing than the GTX 10-series’ old Pascal architecture? Let’s find out.

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I m trapped on Mars, and it s getting cold. Despite the reflective sheeting I ve hung up to insulate my workspace, night has long since fallen, and the heat is leaching from the glass walls. I m eating boiled potatoes yet again, and I miss my family like crazy. But there s no way I can see them again, until I ve solved a lot> of problems

So I put another layer on, rub my hands to warm them, and press on with the mission. Leaning forward to inspect my screen again, my face is lit with the dull red glow of the monitor – the same sombre ochre as the Martian surface. My face looks haggard in that light, as I review the colony s dwindling water stocks. I ll have to set a new vaporator, and that ll mean making new parts, which I ll need metals and yeah, it s going to be a long night yet.

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It’s a busy day over on the Epic Games Store. On top of the expected fortnightly giveaway – this time the excellent horror-adventure Stories Untold – they’ve launched their first big sale. You can snag Stories Untold here for free, and I highly recommend it even if point & click (or even parser-based) adventures aren’t usually your thing. Developers No Code’s upcoming followup, the space-disaster AI thriller Observation, isn’t out until May 21st but pre-orders are down from 20 to a surprising 7.99/ 8.89/$12.49 in this sale. Many games are similarly discounted until June 13th.

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Nightwave challenges were recently introduced to Warframe and the first series of them end in the next few days. Since you only have a short amount of time, you’ll likely not have time to obtain every single rank if you’re just starting now, but we will be going over the principles of completing challenges in order to obtain standing for those ranking upgrades.

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My eldest son died horribly at the Battle of Yangzhou in 198 CE. Cao Ang led a small retinue in General Xiahou Yuan s army. Xiahou s army was the best I had: disciplined troops, carefully selected and commanded by heroes. At Yangzhou they were mauled by a massive army of peasant rebels led by the Yellow Turban He Yi. My defeated army escaped, but He Yi challenged Cao Ang to a duel and personally killed my son. Though my son was not a great commander or, obviously, duelist, his death is a tragedy for my whole faction. Cao Ang commanded a third of the defeated army, and without a substitute general his retinue will disband. The only candidate has no military experience and has never left court: Lady Bian, the boy’s mother. She assumes command in tragic, desperate circumstances; in 201 CE she will march back to Yangzhou to duel the rebel who killed her son and become my greatest general.

Total War: Three Kingdoms is a historical strategy game set during China’s Three Kingdoms period. The campaign is divided into two layers: players build towns, recruit soldiers, declare war and move armies across a map of China each turn. When two opposing armies fight, players command units in real time. You’re a warlord in a shattered kingdom, and every campaign begins with the same instruction: China must be united.

Three Kingdoms is the best historical strategy game in a very long series, and certainly the most dramatic and personal.

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