Smile For Me is a phrase that s less cheery and innocuous than it sounds. Whether it s a misguided just be happy! response to mental illness or a rando guy approaching women on the street, there are actually very few situations in which telling someone to smile is appropriate or welcome. Bearing this in mind may be helpful when it comes to thinking about Smile For Me, the game, a point and click puzzler where you must enter something called The Habitat and make its residents happy again by fulfilling their many strange requests. Here, this trailer will show you what I mean.

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World Of Warcraft Classic will be throwing players back to the halcyon days of 2004 come August, reverting the MMO back to its original state. But it seems that some have been looking back through rose-coloured glasses, or at least gotten so used to the 15 years of quality of life improvements that they re confused by some of the game s original details. As such, Blizzard have released a very lovely list of things to please stop telling them are bugs.

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To this day, one of the most powerful things I’ve experienced is printing my own zine. Opening the box shipped to my door and seeing the neatly stacked little booklets with my handwriting inside is the sort of pride I imagine is reserved for published authors or narcissists. “Zine,” for those not in the know, is short for “magazine,” and it’s honestly a lifestyle. Typically a zine is a do-it-yourself booklet made via photocopier, with a small circulation and a counter-culture slant. They’re purposefully messy, a little (or very) provocative, and imbued with the feelings and power of the people who make them.

Zines are not solely relegated to the power of print, however. The ink-stained fingers of zine-makers weaseled their way into the digital years ago. From vignette-games to zine-software to (of course) the rise of those meddling videogame zinesters, this week’s Priceless Play is an ode to the makeshift.

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We have zero Alices in work today, and everything is collapsing. The life force of the RPS treehouse is drifting lazily out of all the windows, like some sort of JRPG miasma. Without the Alices, we’re doomed. Something drastic must be done. Perhaps… yes, here it is. Alice O told me only to use this strange device in an emergency. But if this isn’t a crisis, I don’t know what is. Let me just fiddle with the settings. In the meantime…

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

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As someone who has rolled lawns, built decking, knocked down old conservatories and more, I cannot think of few things I’d rather simulate less than the contents of Garden Flipper. Released today, it’s the first major expansion for House Flipper, Empyrean’s game of cleaning up other people’s messes and ordering shedloads of virtual Ikea furniture to conceal interior design sins. As the title might suggest, this one is about all things outdoors. Mow lawns, install garden furniture, plant flowers and generally act like you’re part of the Gardener’s World B-team. See the trailer below.

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The next big update for space-ninja looty shooter Warframe is just over the horizon. The Jovian Concord, previously known as the Gas City Remaster update, is due out next week, although Digital Extremes are a bit fuzzy on what day exactly. It’ll bring a complete story-driven rework to one of the free-to-play shooter’s earliest environment types (Corpus gas-mining platforms on Jupiter), a new set of enemies, a big honkin’ flying monster boss (above) and a new Warframe. Below, trailers looking at the overhauled industrial zones and a peek at the new Warframe’s powers.

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I’ve seen a lot of dialogue systems in games. Some with dice-rolls, some with obscure glyphs, but none quite like Signs Of The Sojourner, which transforms conversation into a deck-building puzzle. Just announced by Echodog Games and aiming to release later this year, they’ve just released a playable alpha demo, available via their Discord channel to gather feedback. It’s a story about leaving home in the wake of a parent’s death, travelling, discovering delicious foods and trying to come away from every conversation with knowledge of how to talk to others better.

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Unsurprisingly, but no less frustrating for it, Riot Games (League Of Legends) management aren’t backing down from their stance on forced arbitration. This company policy is preventing two current employees from suing over gender discrimination, and the primary reason for the recent staff walkout. They have, at least, said they’d end forced arbitration for new and future staff, but according to a public statement released last night, that’s as far as they’ll budge. They did declare – in cheerfully bland corporate language – that they are setting up a “Diversity & Inclusion Rioters Council”, an internal forum where staff can air their grievances, plus a road-map for diversity improvements, which you can see below.

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Lovely as Metro Exodus was, the extremely Russian post-apocalyptic FPS came (optionally) bundled with a sealed mystery vault of goodies in its season pass. Now, 4A games have finally revealed what’s in the box, and it thankfully doesn’t sound too painful. There are two expansions on the way, the first offering a more classic linear Metro story, and the second adding another open-world sandbox zone to explore, and both put you in the shoes of new characters. The first expansion – The Two Colonels – is out this summer, and the second – Sam’s Story – launches in early 2020. Below, details and possible spoilers if you’ve not finished the main game.

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Mordhau’s colourful array of maps and environments sets the stage for all the brutal bloodshed and loss of limb that has occurred in the two and a half weeks since the game’s release; and it looks like Triternion are looking to expand this list of locales further in the coming updates, with mention of two new maps appearing in their first week recap post. So I thought it might be an idea to create this Mordhau maps and locations guide, which not only goes over every map currently in Mordhau (with little tips and quirks as well as explanations of their available game modes and variants), but also the two upcoming maps – Castello and Feitoria – and everything we know so far about them.

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