Deck-building roguelikelike Monster Train last night officially launched its mod support, after a short beta, opening it up to all sorts of player-made newness. Possibilities include new cards, new monsters, new looks, and so on, and I see some folks have already made a whole new playable faction. After seeing how much Slay The Spire mods shook up that other card-slinging dungeon-crawl, I’m dead keen to see what happens here. I’m already digging that fan-made faction, the floor-shifting Arcadians.

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Old Gods Rising

came out relatively recently, but I’m asking if you have played it because I think more people should.

It’s a first person exploration game with a few puzzles, where you play as a disgraced TV historian (as in, historian who had a TV show not a historian specialising in TV) who has been called to serve as the expert on a film set. The filming is taking place at a small and obscure UK university. Except when you turn up, the place is deserted. The director calls you on a long range walkie talkie and directs you around to look at a few locations, while claiming to be stuck at a farm location nearby. And needles to say, some strange things are afoot.

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Is there anything scarier than buying products at below the recommended retail price? Almost certainly, which is why I’d hesitate to call the Epic Games Store Halloween Sale particularly spooky. It is, however, taking a massive knife to game prices across the platform, with some pretty hefty discounts of up to 80% going on a number of range of fantastic games until the sale wraps on November 3rd.

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Alright, listen. The 2018 Mortal Engines adaptation might’ve been largely forgettable, but it did a damn fine job of bringing the book series’ ridiculous towns-turned-monster-trucks to life. Now, one Planet Coaster architect has crafted their own version of London-Upon-Wheels, wrapping their fantasy amusement park around a multi-tiered truck of a city. It’s just a shame there’s no way it’ll ever move. Unfortunately, Planet Coaster just wasn’t built for that.

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Have I mentioned I used to work with sled dogs? While it’s only the most interesting thing I’ve done in the last ten years, I reckon I’ve bored the ears off everyone I know gabbing about it ever since. The Red Lantern, then, is a game for the part of me that’s desperate to pack on fifteen layers and get back into the snow with a band of huskies, riding off into the Alaskan sunset of an Epic Games Store release today.

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Like most jolfing pitches, playing a round of What The Golf? on PC has, until now, the domain of those snooty folks up at the Epic Games Store country club. But no more! The king’s game has been democratised, and you can now thwack in a few holes with Triband’s wonderful ball-smacker over on Steam, arriving with the tools to hand-craft your own golfing nightmares.

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The Old Gods bloody love the circus, apparently. For the final Hearthstone expansion of 2020, Blizzard are taking us way back to 2016, the last Worst Year Ever (in real life), when C’Thun, Yogg-Saron, and the eldritch squad first came to Hearthstone. Today they announced Madness At The Darkmoon Faire, arriving in November. Thankfully, Hearthstone was one of those constants I always went back to in 2016, with the tentacle-infested expansion playing a big part of my first year at uni when I should’ve been revising for exams.

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As I have now stepped through the dread portal to my 30s, I have noticed with horror that I sometimes start sentences with, “When I was young”, which is basically the same as, “In my day”. Might as well fall into my own grave now. But I do think – no, honestly, listen – that children’s entertainment isn’t as fun and grim as it used to be. Every parent I know complains mightily about a small pig at the moment, but if you go back in time then you have to pass through the terrifying talking phone on Wizadora and the unrelenting misery of The Animals Of Farthing Wood before you even get to old women being eaten by wolves.

Point is>, I am firmly of the opinion that kiddies are made of sterner stuff than we often give them credit for – and if we’re going to teach them that monsters are real we should then take the next logical step of teaching them that you can kick seven shades out of the monsters, cut them open and get your granny back. All of which is to say that I have played the first four or so hours of Immortals Fenyx Rising, and I think Ubi’s Ancient Greek-themed action adventure (no not that one) might have managed the titanic feat of being something that children and adults can genuinely both enjoy.

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Spook-o-ween is almost upon us, dear readers. And while there’s not a single fun-sized Snickers in sight, trotting up to old Mr Epic Games Store’s front door this week has treated to two new freebies – Double Fine’s charming Costume Quest 2 and the decisively less whimsical Layers Of Fear 2. Same as before, they’re yours to keep until this time next week, when they’ll be replaced by two new frightful freebies.

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I have watched the trailer for Tenderfoot Tactics three times now. It looks: weird. It’s a turned-based tactics RPG with lots of roaming in a minimalistic yet super pretty open world. You play as a goblin escaping some spooky fog that has doomed your homeland, and along your adventure you collect other goblins to help you figure out what it’s all about. Have a gander at the launch trailer for yourself below.

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