Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Now see here Ollie Toms, supposed guides editor of this supposed videogames website - if Enshrouded really does have "the best building system in the survival genre" then why does the floor of my hovel look like a petrified sneeze? I was innocently carving myself a nice stone foundation last night when the Devil jogged my elbow and I dug a massive, raggedy trench straight through it. I've spent an hour now trying to fill in the trench and flatten it out, to no avail. There's always a jaggedy bit right in the middle, and I'm getting displaced trypophobia from the awareness that my efforts have seeded the terrain beneath with random cavities.

What's worse, there is no mention of enhancing the floor-levelling functionality in this Keen Games forum post on Enshrouded's various launch issues, which they are even now racing to fix. Instead, it's all talk of frame rates, multiplayer stability and dedicated servers not appearing. Somebody rush me a cement mixer, stat, or I'm moving back to Valheim.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The much delayed, rebooted, and delayed live service pirate 'em up Skull And Bones actually pencilled in a release date not long ago. Just when you thought it couldn't get any more remarkable, Ubisoft have also announced it'll get an open beta before it launches. In only a couple of weeks, you'll be able to sail the seven seas with a purple rarity cannon firing off common rarity cannon balls that you bought off a rank 25 landlubber with your Skullbucks. Cool!

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

What do you do after running away from the big city to start a new life in the country? You run away from the country to start a new life in the big city, obviously. Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee - a former contributor to ConcernedApe's genre-defining farmalot Stardew Valley - has announced Sunkissed City, a life simulation game set in a delightful coastal burb that's reportedly "pumping with funky vibes and quirky characters", together with migraines, stretches of dead water and horrible sewer monsters.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth isn’t exactly spawned from the most hardware-bothering of game series. Most previous LADs, be they Kiryu’s Adventures in Punching or the more turn-based reboot have all been technically gentle affairs, and Infinite Wealth is ultimately another one. At the same time, it shares with Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name a newfound interest in PC-specific tricks. That means a full selection of DLSS, FSR and XeSS upscalers, plus DLSS 3 frame generation. Real yakuza might use a gamepad, but it seems real fuzz-haired RPG fantasists use graphics cards.

Let’s take a closer look, then, at how RGG’s latest crime caper performs on PC. We’ll also work out its best settings, to keep it running smoother than a legally distinct Segway.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Adventure mode was one of my favourite things about Dwarf Fortress, mainly because it made the infamously complex management game more approachable by letting you play it like a more traditional roguelike. I'm excited, therefore, that Adventure mode is coming soon to the Steam version of the game, and excited even more so that it's aiming to make it even more accessible.

A new update on development which outlines exactly how the new premium version of Adventure mode differs from the original, including its plan for tutorials to guide new players.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It's been a good few years for relaxing, puzzle-strategy games about spreading nature's glory. The future looks bright, too, thanks to Preserve, which seems to blend Dorfromantik's lush hexes with Terra Nil's gradual ecological recovery. You'll find the announcement trailer below.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Berserk Boy first appeared on Steam in 2022 and immediately impressed as a fast-paced action platformer inspired by classics such as Mega Man. Then it vanished from Steam - and re-appeared, and vanished again, and so on.

It returned last year for a seemingly final time, and today it has a new demo and a release date: March 6th, 2024.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Back in 2022, Blizzard announced that they were working on a survival game set in an "all-new universe". Not much more was known about the game except that the studio were actively ramping up recruitment, seemingly after having been working on the project since 2017.

This survival game has now been cancelled alongside today's news of sweeping layoffs across Blizzard and other divisions of new owner Microsoft.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

When I sat down at my desk after lunch today, I thought, I'm just going to give this demo for Balatro a tiny go, just to get my head round its poker-based roguelike deckbuilding. Cut to several hours later and I've had to forcibly shut the game down and wrench myself away from it just to write this post, because listen, you need to go and play Balatro's demo right now, because hot damn this is the good stuff if you're into roguelike deckbuilders. I also say this as someone who's never played or understood a game of poker in her life, because let's face it, regular> poker is quite boring. Balatro, on the other hand, is poker that's turbo-charged with magic Joker cards, tarot card multipliers, and blind conditions that make a successful hand increasingly tricky to pull off. And it's coming out in full real soon, too.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Room for another mass layoff post, before we end the day? This one is actually two separate stories but in a bid to conserve resources and make our frontpage slightly less depressing to read, I am going to roll them together. Black Forest Games, the Embracer-owned creators of the Destroy All Humans! Remake, are reportedly cutting 50% of their workforce - around 50-60 people. Outriders developers People Can Fly, meanwhile, have laid off 30 developers who were working on an unannounced Square Enix game.

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