According to Steam, I've spent about 2000 hours playing factory games. Terms like throughput, modularity, and automation are like dog-whistles to me, so when I heard that Shapez 2 was getting a demo for Steam Next Fest this month, I knew my weekend plans were instantly sorted. Well, here we are in the new week. I've finished the Shapez 2 demo twice and logged 10 hours into the game. I see conveyor belts of circles and squares behind my eyelids and the reward system of my brain has been well and truly hijacked. The only way I can continue to do my job effectively is by making my job be about Shapez 2. So here I am.

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In 2021 I went through a bit of a rally phase with WRC 9, as I discovered the joys of watching people play rally games beautifully. And as much as I enjoyed my brief stints with those semi-realistic rally games, I've since longed for more of a blend between a rally-er and a colourful arcade jaunt. For those seeking a similar swinging-the-back-out experience, I'd recommend giving #Drive Rally's demo a go. It might not be as colourful as I'd like, but it's got lovely, errr, dirt feel?

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Action-RPG colossus Elden Ring is reportedly getting a free-to-play mobile adaptation with in-app purchases, which takes inspiration from miHoYo's Genshin Impact. It's being published by Tencent, who apparently acquired the licensing rights to Elden Ring back in 2022 and put a few dozen people to work on a prototype, even as the company acquired a 16% stake in Elden Ring developer From Software.

All that's according to Reuters, who cite three sources "familiar with the matter". I realise that "free-to-play mobile version of Elden Ring with in-app purchases" is a phrase tailormade to give certain players hives and/or cause the speaker to be struck by lightning, but much as I can't help looking over cliff edges, I do find the idea fascinating.

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If you've been dreaming of a hyper-agile FPS set on the sky islands from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Echo Point Nova could be your jam. It casts you as a space pilot who crashlands on a floating archipelago planet during a research expedition. I'm not sure what you're researching, exactly, but going by your character's loadout, it's the Science of Sick Moves.

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The latest haul of Steam Next Fest demos is so vast that I initially missed Tribes 3: Rivals, a game I’ve been cautiously coveting, among them. While this high-speed FPS has been playable in a number of semi-open alpha tests already, trying it out is now as easy as sliding into its Steam page and hitting the big green demo download button.

The demo launch is accompanied by a shiny new trailer, showing more of Rivals’ skiing shenanigans, aurally satisfying airshots, and flag-throwing tricks that I will never, ever be able to successfully pull off in a real match. Also, a confirmation that it’s launching into early access, though there’s no date beyond “soon.”

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I don't expect anyone to buy this monitor - but I'm absolutely entranced by a $700 discount on a gaming monitor that brings it down to "just" $1800. To be fair, this is essentially two 32-inch 4K 240Hz monitors without the gap in the middle, with a Mini LED backlight that delivers 1000-nit HDR highlights, an absolute beast of a monitor... but I'm guessing that most people that can drop nearly $2000 on a monitor aren't waiting for a deals post on Rock Paper Shotgun to do so.

Still, I can dream, and this monitor is pretty cool, so let's take a closer look at this absolute bargain.

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One of Intel's best value CPUs for gaming is even better value than usual this week, as the Core i5 12400F is down to just £125 at Amazon. That's more than £75 cheaper than the 13th and 14th-gen equivalents, which add on only meagre levels of performance, and a great price for a CPU that can use the same DDR4 or DDR5 motherboards with PCIe 5.0 support. If you're building an Intel-based gaming PC, I'd argue that this is the best budget option going!

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Mix the side-on colony management of Fallout Shelter with the trap-laying tower defence of Orcs Must Die, stir both together in a wizard’s cauldron, and you’ll end up with something not far from Artificer's Tower.

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Moonbreaker, the unexpected collaboration between Subnautica developers Unknown Worlds and seemingly tireless human book machine Brandon Sanderson, has hit 1.0 after spending the last year in early access.

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Apologies if I'm starting to sound like a broken record these days, but here I am, back with another edition of "Have you heard about this cool new roguelike deckbuilder?"> I swear I'll find a new/another niche one of these days, but listen, Pyrene is very cool indeed, and I lost a good hour to its free demo last week on Steam. On the surface, this might look like your typical fantasy dungeon crawler, but Pyrene has some neat tricks of its own, combining its own blend of resource gathering and roguelike citybuilding with Inscryption's number-crunching battles and a dash of Foretales' card-based exploration. And it has a lovely piano soundtrack to boot, too.

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