I joined Rock Paper Shotgun in 2013 with the vague mandate from Jim Rossignol to "do whatever needs doing." For the past eight years, it's been a pleasure to do just that.
Now my time has come. The corporate mother has chosen me and today is devouring day. I'm no longer the editor-in-chief of Rock Paper Shotgun, but I'm excited to introduce who is.
Back in April, Humble Bundle removed the sliders that let buyers determine how much money from their purchase went to a publisher, a charity, and Humble themselves, effectively capping the amount you could give to charity at 15%. It wasn't a great look for a charity-based storefront, and following a lot of backlash, they rolled back the change shortly after. Now, however, they've announced a new tweak to the system, making it so the minimum you can allocate to Humble will be between 15% and 30%.
After six months of silence, we’ve finally received a new update on Hytale’s progress. The ambitious, Minecraft-inspired RPG’s previous release date of 2021 has been obliterated, with developers Hypixel Studios saying: “We no longer expect to be ready to launch Hytale before 2023 at the earliest, and it could very well take longer.”
Sad news my fellow BioWare game-enjoyers: they don't have anything to show at EA Play Live this month. Truly, can EA even do a livestream without showing some rocks from Dragon Age 4? How could they just whack Liara in the trailer for the next Mass Effect and leave us hanging like that? Oh well. I had been holding out hope that they might announce Mass Effect 3's multiplayer for Legendary Edition, but I guess we'll just watch more Battlefield 2042 gameplay again. Sigh.
The last game I played by Ian MacLarty was the shifting magic eye maze Catacombs Of Solaris, so I was surprised to learn that his next game is Mars First Logistics, a physics-based, open world simulation about designing your own vehicles to ship cargo across the red planet.
Not an unwelcome surprise. Find the announcement trailer below.
BeamNG.drive is, in a way, the Dwarf Fortress of car games. It's a six years and counting early access project determined to simulate every element of wheeled vehicles, where the fun of playing with it feels like a side effect more than a deliberate intention.
But it is> fun, and it's just received a massive update that includes new maps, new vehicles, revamped graphics, a traffic light system, and "an improved oil simulation". Heck yeah.
Grisly murder mystery visual novel AI: The Somnium Files is getting a sequel. Called AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative, it features a new set of murders to solve with AI-eyeball Alba and new protagonist Mizuki Okiura. There's a teaser trailer below.
Sony have bought another studio, after acquiring Housemarque earlier this week. This one is of particular interest to us, too. It's Nixxes Software, a "technical video game studio" responsible for, among other things, handling the PC ports for a lot of games.
Dorfromantik is an entrancing early access building game about placing hexagonal tiles to complete challenges and construct beautiful, pastoral landscapes. Run out of available moves and it's game over, however, consigning your crafted world to the scrapheap.
For now. An update coming this summer will add what I've been clamouring for: a creative mode.
Corsair have gone from one of the worst mainstream PC case builders to one of the best with their latest design refresh, which has so far included the mid-size 4000D, bigger 5000D and full tower 7000D. Today, the 4000D is on sale at Scan for nearly £30 off, making it a great time to build a new PC or move your system into a more modern case.