Alice0 is on holiday, which means I have once again seized the wheel on this bus and will drive it right into the next fake tunnel painted on a cliff that I see, like goddam Wile E. Coyote. Or at least I would, if we didn't all have quite sensible offerings this week - with one notable exception that I trust you'll be about to spot without me specifically pointing it out. In my case I'm back cleaning things in a sim game once again, something which I show no signs of getting bored with yet. I need someone to stand near me when I do cleaning in real life and go "DING!" when I finish it.

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Hello! Come on in. Please, take a seat. Welcome to the inaugural episode of our brand new (and currently untitled) supporter-first indie video show! Every month*, I'm going to be spending some time highlighting a cool indie game that deserves your attention. Think of this series as a supplement to Sin's Scout Report or our Indiescovery podcast. A brand new method for delivering piping hot recs from my desktop to yours.

My aim is to use this series as a springboard to dive deep into specific elements of a game I find particularly fascinating, sharing my discoveries with you lot behind the paywall first (and don't worry, regular readers, I'll also be making each of these videos public for all to see after a month, which should roughly coincide with the the next one going live for supporters). In it, I'll be discussing some common themes between multiple games, digging into underappreciated gems from years gone by... The remit is broad and nebulous, to the point where it's clearly obvious why I haven't been able to come up with a name for it yet.

(If you end up thinking of something, please do let me know in the comments. More than anything it'll stop me messaging Katharine a list of awful possibilites every other week, which I can only imagine is negatively effecting her feelings about me, the site and the endeavour of games journalism in general. They really have been that bad, folks. Proper rancid stuff).

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I am once again spending a candidate for this year's Summer Strategy Game For When Brain Is Melt. Total Tank Generals is possibly the best introduction to wargames I've ever played, but to call it a light strategy game would feel like a disservice. If you're used to heavier fare this may still scratch the itch.

It's not that it's particularly simple, but it feels so damn clean and effortless to play. You'll know what you're doing in minutes, but still find a decent challenge, with lots of options but minimal analysis paralysis. I'm honestly finding it hard to fault.

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Can you imagine if Dead Island 2 didn’t> arrive with actually-quite-good PC performance? All those years, all those developers, and it turned out rubbish? Perish the thought. But nah, Dambuster Studios have ensured it finally hits shelves in a solid technical state; a welcome return to standards for the big-name gamesmaking biz, which has largely spent 2023 chucking out sub-par PC ports.

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“In a rare display of AI genius, Grimgor has spent the last 4 turns camping outside Zharr-Naggrund killing every caravan I try to send. I'd be furious if it wasn't so funny,” reads the Discord message I sent to a friend - roughly another four turns before the orcish warboss’s occasional smash-and-grab turned into an entire racket that nearly crippled my burgeoning military industrial complex. Last week Total War: Warhammer III's new DLC Forge Of The Chaos Dwarfs arrived, and it highlights the setting’s greatest rivalry to comical effect.

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It's not often that we write about deals that knock £2 off the usual price, but it's also rare to get the chance to pick up two 64GB USB flash drives for just £6. These drives are well worth picking up for transferring files between PCs, installing BIOS updates and backing up small but important files, which enough space to store some - but not all - music collections, game install directories and wallpaper packs.

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We've continued to see prices fall on solid state storage over the past few months, as manufacturers are looking to sell on excess stock caused by falling demand in commercial sectors. That makes it a great time to be a PC gamer, as you can pick up some great tech for bargain basement prices - including this Crucial X6 portable SSD, which offers 1TB of space for £56.50. That's nearly half the price this drive cost at launch a few years ago and a good £15 below what it was going for in February this year, making it an awesome pickup for the money.

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Over the last few weeks we at the RPS Electronic Wireless Show podcast have noticed a slight resurgence in a trend we thought was basically over. That's right: video game tie-ins to films! There used to be loads of them, and now there aren't. Except there are again, culminating in Renfield (of all movies) having a Vampire Survivorslike you can actually buy on actual Steam. What's going on? Is this marking the start of something new? What are some of our favourite game tie ins?

Plus we put the boot in on a couple of Tweets about the Mario movie, because why not, frankly.

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Freshly announced puzzle game Crime O’Clock will be putting you in the shoes of a time-travelling detective when it comes out on June 30th, its release date seemingly perfectly timed (sorry) to coincide with Capcom's object-hopping> time puzzle detective game, Ghost Trick. In all seriousness, though, Crime O'Clock looks to be its own distinctive beast (and not just because you seem to play as a rabbit). It has shades of Where’s Wally? (or Waldo, Wanda, Willy, Valli, and my favourite, Ali for international readers) as you’re given densely illustrated maps to navigate, and pick out key details in order to stitch together clues to solve cases. It could be very cool if all the right cogs click together.

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A lot of RPGs with stats and dialogue options don't actually> give you options. Sometimes you're presented with a skill check and if one of your stats isn't an arbitrary number like, I dunno, seven, then whoever it is you spoke with (a king, a bard, an elf) might shutter their mouths forever.

Betrayal At Club Low is a CRPG that we're playing for our Game Club this month, and which understands the unpredictability of a face-to-face wobble of the lips, and how befriending or swindling or aggravating someone is determined by so much more than a single seven. And when all seems lost, how visiting a puddle can turn your entire evening around.

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