Edwin’s off for a few days – something to do with the thesis that he’s recently started using to make us call him "Dr Edwin" in meetings, turning his camera off and muting himself if we forget. So, for this week’s rundown of new PC game releases, you’ve got me, fresh from my recent encroachments into WAWAPW and the Sunday Papers. You thought AI would steal everyone’s jobs? Wrong. It was the hardware editors.
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I'm obviously using regular> in the metafictional sense here but my intentions are pure, I promise.
Sundays are for admiring for the nine different houseplants you successfully repotted on Saturday, a moment of quiet appreciation that lasts just long enough to forget that you willingly spent real money on bags of what could accurately be called dirt. You paid>. For dirt>. And now it’s back.
There's a fox in the back garden outside my window right this second, dragging its bum along the grass like Santa's Little Helper. Thankfully I love foxes, and care little for the garden. None of this has anything to do with games, of course. I just thought you'd like to know.
Now then: what are we all playing this weekend? We'll start, then you can follow in the comments!
If I went to hell, I can't imagine the first thing on my mind would be trying to pull off a bank job with a crew of fellow damned souls. However, in freshly announced tactical RPG Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists, that's the sort thing you'll be doing, with plenty of choice and consequence if things go pear-shaped.
Thousand Hells is the latest cool thing from Six Ages and King of Dragon Pass devs A Sharp. While they're working with Kitfox Games as publisher again, there's plenty of different stuff going on, including a move away from world of Glorantha as a setting. That's in favour of fantasy pastures new, inspired by myths of the ancient proto-Indo-European, Norse, and Mesopotamian varieties. Oh, and a dash of Hieronymus Bosch's lovely paintings.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has reaffirmed 2K Games' assertion that the reportedly troubled BioShock 4, currently in the works at Cloud Chamber, will make it to release.
The reassurance follows a report from Bloomberg earlier this week which revealed that the game had failed a recent internal progress check, with the story specifically being tapped as an aspect that needs reworking, and some of the devs working on it have been reassigned to non-BioShock roles.
To speedily summarise a lot of very knotty reporting, last month a bunch of credit card companies and payment processors forced Steam and Itch.io to alter their definitions of acceptable sexual material in PC games. Seemingly faced with the prospect of having all transactions blocked, the two storefronts now require developers to comply with the extremely open-ended adult content policies of their financial partners. This has led to a spate of delistings or outright takedowns across Steam and especially Itch, with projects affected ranging from anime stepdaughter fantasies on Steam to bundles of self-described "games for girlthings with something wrong with them".
1000 Deaths, which released yesterday, primarily pitches itself as a 3D platformer with some tricksy plays on gravity – but the running and jumping only demands half your attention at most. The other half is dedicated to shaping the lives of four variously maladjusted losers (who, like the rest of their surroundings, resemble a child’s crayon drawings made flesh), the platforming challenges being punctuated by destiny-altering decisions to make on their behalf. Hints of VVVVVV, but with stronger notes of a Telltale adventure that’s been left in a microwave.
I’m a bit of a sicko when it comes to keyboards, and have built the kind of collection that makes my wife duck for cover when I bring them up in conversation.