Iä! Iä! The great wurm turns again, the cosmos lurch uncomfortably, and we awake anew with new faces and only fleeting memories of who we once were. Why, here comes news of Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace, a video game inspired by a popular Lovecraftian board game, Arkham Horror. Yes, yes, it was based on a different Lovecraftian board game when it was initially announced in 2018, Mansions Of Madness, but what does that mean now? The past is swallowed and we can never recover ourselves.

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Gather ’round and take a seat, Steam have now kicked off their first Digital Tabletop Fest, an event of panels, announcements, and demos for games that “run across the lines between digital and physical games”. From now until next Monday you can catch panels from the likes of developers adapting tabletop RPGs, building digital deck-builders, and other such table to screen fare.

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When I first joined RPS two(!) years(!!) ago, one of the very first things I wrote about was RB: Axolotl, a visual novel about a bunch of axolotls living in different corners of a tank and having very intense, obsessive relationships with each other. At the time it was just a demo, but now it’s a full game. I’m still playing my way through it, but indications after several hours so far are that the completed RB: Axolotl is weirder and darker than I could ever have imagined from the demo. This isn’t a bad thing, to be clear.

I came to RB: Axolotl because I love and fear axolotls in equal measure. They are extremely cute and interesting but also unholy horrors of evolution that should not be>. I stayed because the game had a similar thematic tension: initially it is a cutesy VN about a pink axolotl named Axy, who is trying to show off for the girl axolotl he likes. But then you meet the other axolotls in the tank. You encounter a mysterious external entity, RB (which stands for Rock Bottom). RB: Axolotl is, essentially, a perfect example of what I find so fascinating and worthwhile about visual novels.

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32GB of RAM is more than what most gaming PCs really need these days, but if you’re determined to future-proof your PC or have your eye on playing hardcore simulation games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator on max settings (and fancy some added RGB lighting to spice things up a bit), then you can currently get a 32GB kit of Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro RAM for £120 over at Aria PC. That’s £5 cheaper than what you’ll find over on Amazon UK at the moment, too.

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Bethesda and ZeniMax intentionally sabotaged Rune 2 by secretly snapping up its developers days before launch, the game’s publishers have claimed in a lawsuit. The Viking fantasy action-RPG launched in November 2019 then, the very next day, developers Human Head announced they were shutting down but their employees had been hired for a new Bethesda studio. This was quite a surprise, even to the publishers who had been relying on Human Head to support the game after launch. They sued to regain control of the game’s code and continue updating it, and now are going after Bethesda and Zenimax too.

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Amplitude Studios’ strategy game Humankind is offering a playable peek at their vision for the next era of civilisation ’em ups. The strategy romp has a new trailer out along with a free demo that you can play in your browser so you can decide for yourself if it’ll take the strategy crown. Sega announced today that they’re planning Humankind’s launch for sometime in April 2021.

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So, as you might already know, there is another big Minecraft update on the way – version 1.17, a.k.a “Caves & Cliffs”. As the name suggests, it’s going to be focusing on the underground (with a lesser focus on mountains and such), and that’s welcome news for long-time players. Especially since the Nether, Minecraft’s weirdo hell dimension, got a makeover in version 1.16, it’s become painfully obvious how little the regular underground has changed for very many years.

And as ever, the new feature brush is not being applied lightly – there are going to be 4 new mobs added piecemeal in the months leading up to the presumed full release of the update in mid-2021, as well as somewhere in the region of 30-odd new blocks and their derivatives. And that’s all grand. There’s even an axolotl being added – one of my favourite beasts, and the first amphibian in the game. But thinking about it has made me realise that these big updates are a bit of a double-edged sword, at least for me.

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The last month or so has been a delightful time for roguelite fans (hello). We recently had the excellent Noita and Hades leave early access, and now the fast-paced action platformer ScourgeBringer has joined them.

Today saw the dashing and blasting and slashing roguelite reach its 1.0 release. As with most games escaping their early access shackles, ScourgeBringer got a big update today, too, adding in a new realm with new bosses and enemies to take on.

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When I first saw Asus’ ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop back in January this year, I was struck by just how ‘normal’ it looked. Sure, it had a mad LED matrix display on the back of its lid, but at a glance, I’d have pegged it as a regular everyday laptop that was only fit to play the smallest of 2D indie games. Instead, it had an RTX 2060 graphics chip and one of AMD’s new Ryzen 7 4800HS processors inside it, giving it some serious gaming chops underneath its (relatively) plain-looking chassis.

The ROG Zephyrus M15 on test today is the larger, Intel equivalent. Apart from the slight increase in size from a 14.1in display to a 15.6in one, the M15 has the same unassuming design as the G14 (minus the LED matrix display), making it one of the least gamery-looking laptops I’ve tested all year. It’s something I wouldn’t be embarrassed to get out in public, which is always a plus point in my books, and at 1.9kg and just under 20mm thick, it’s not an absolute brick, either.

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Genshin Impact ain’t a small game. It’s actually pretty darn chunky, and your device might struggle with it if it’s an older one. We’ve put together a quick rundown of the recommended and required specs for the game. Can your PC or Mobile run Genshin Impact?

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