With just over one week to go until Phoenix Point launches, the developers have explained what they’ve been polishing and tweaking since the last build for backers. It sounds good! Some changes reduce frustration, such as making Haven attacks less frequent so commanders have more time to explore, while others sound just plain desirable, like a “complete rework” of faction weapon stats. Phoenix Point has always seemed fascinating, as you might expect from X-Com co-creator Julian Gollop directing a new tactical worldwar about defending Earth from an ever-mutating menace, so I’m glad to look now and nod “Ah yes, almost here, just a bit of polish, that’s just lovely, good.”

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Happy Black Friday week fellow deals hunters, and boy do I have some fresh SSD deals for you this morning. Hot off the back of Amazon’s pre-Black Friday sale at the beginning of last week, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus and the portable Samsung T5 SSD are now even cheaper than they were a couple of days ago. Plus, there are some very nice deals on some Western Digital SSDs, too. Read on below for the full low-down from your trusted deals herald.

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For as long as Mordhau‘s had lutes, its had people willing to play them in the midst of war. Bards are a common site on battlefields, uniting friend and foe through instruments that can play proper notes and everything. It’s taboo to touch them.

With a lute equipped, you can mangle out a tune by waggling your mouse up and down – but you can also use a mod called LuteBot to automatically play actual songs. A new version called LuteMod is in the works, which will let aspiring minstrels whack other aspiring minstrels with their lutes in order to form bands. It’s all appropriately medieval.

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“Played” is a stretch, isn’t it? Tilt Brush is a VR paint ’em up where you enter a blank void and art till your heart’s content. Maybe you’ll do a tree. A campfire. Or, if you’re like, a proper artist, a giant luminescent fire-spewing dragon.

I’ve spent most of my time in Tilt Brush looking at other people’s dragons.

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Ah, the Cybertruck: this week’s unfortunate Twitter main character and giant target of anti-capitalist scorn. It wouldn’t be entirely truthful to say I am above clowning this wheeled monstrosity well past its comedy expiration date, but I have journalistic standards to uphold. That’s why I went on Twitter and found a crop of talented game devs imagining Elon Musk’s Shamemobile in a variety of video game scenarios. Let’s enjoy, shall we?

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The perpetually in-development Star Citizen just held its biggest event of the year, CitizenCon 2949, on Saturday in Manchester. No, that isn’t the tired joke about when developers Cloud Imperium Games will finally finish their enormous sci-fi starship showcase. I have some semblance of standards. Gathered fans sneaked a peek at upcoming features, including news systems, planets, and (of course) giant spacecraft highlighted in a two-part, on-stage demo. They also launched another ‘Free Fly’ trial event starting today through December 5th.

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Howdy, RPS readers! I’m definitely not Jay, but I come with her blessing to deliver another Sunday edition of Screenshot Saturday Sunday, a showcase of developer works-in-progress under Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday. This week: feline farm simulation, bouncy trucks, and two moody survival games with a little more in common than would seem at first blush.

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By the time Lost Ember begins, humans have vanished. Something, or someone, mucked things up so completely that nothing but their sturdiest architecture survived. You play as a wolf exploring the ruins of humanity in a bid to understand the why and wherefore of it all. Accomplishing this means inhabiting the bodies of other creatures to uncover parts of the world beyond where your paws can tread.

The menagerie at hand could have you plummeting over waterfalls as a fish one moment and then hopping into a turtle so you can dig up root vegetables. Neither might help you solve an existential mystery, but it looks mighty interesting.

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Sundays are for starting on your Christmas shopping, if we’re being ambitious. Or more likely just lounging around your living room all day with tea, books, and the best writing about videogames from the past week.

I stopped reading Alastair Hadden’s Medium post about Disco Elysium’s worldview when it got spoilery, but I’ll be sure to go back when I’m done detecting. I’m not convinced rejecting all universal ideas is tenable, as Hadden suggests Elysium is up to. Rejecting all universal ideas seems like a treacherously universal idea itself.

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Snipers hold a particularly romantic place in the hearts of the historically curious. Popular retelling paints them as stoic, dedicated masters of their chosen art, patiently waiting through blistering cold or sweltering heat for the perfect shot. Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts continues the legacy.

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