The doors have been opened, the games inside have been devoured, and now it’s time to recycle the cardboard. Below you’ll find all of our picks for the best PC games of 2018, gathered together in a single post for easy reading.

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In case you live under a mossy rock, or aren’t subscribed to Rock Paper Shotgun on YouTube (if not, why not?), I’ve got you covered. It’s the weekly round-up of everything that happened last week on our channel. We do have our very own video corner on the site, so be sure to check back to that throughout the week to see what we’re up to. Last week we gave you a whopping seven videos to watch, so here they are.

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[Update: The first day’s streaming is done! But you can still watch us kissing the ground hard in Human Fall Flat in the video below.]>

That rumbling sound you hear is half of Brighton packing its bags as Gamer Network decamps to Birmingham for EGX 2018. And the Rock, Paper, Shotgun Video Department will be at the show, too. We ve decided to try our hand at livestreaming , which is basically video without safety nets. I ve heard it s quite popular these days and that someone called Ninja makes a billion pounds a minute from it. So even if we make fools of ourselves, we ll at least be able to retire on all that delicious green. I can t believe we didn t get on this sooner. Anyway, read on for information on what we re doing and when.

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Have you been checking in on the Rock Paper Shotgun Video Department? It has its very own video corner on the site where everything is collected. But in case you missed it, I’m going to round up our moving picture delights from the last week. From life-consuming RPGs to fish prisons, we covered a lot of bases.

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This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, SpyParty [official site].

If Chris Hecker was going to make a mistake with SpyParty, he wanted it to be the opposite mistake to the one Spore made. The way Hecker sees it, Spore s problem was that it was all accessibility and no depth. And he d know because he was a lead engineer and designer on Spore. So when he began to make his own game, SpyParty, which after eight years of development has finally hit Steam Early Access, he said to himself, I m going to go really hard on the depth.

And so Hecker did, putting enough depth in this asymmetric two-player competitive game to satisfy 1000 hours of matches from its most dedicated players. But it s not enough. He wants to push SpyParty to becoming 5000-hour game, and the way he plans to do it is by building his characters. (more…)

Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser’s pretending to be an NPC, badly, in the asymmetric game of spies and snipers, SpyParty. How do you get blood out of a tux?>

Nerves already shot, I extract myself from the conversation I m using as cover and head towards the golden statue, my prize. This plush apartment houses more than a few pieces of art I can pinch, but this one is out of the way, somewhere I m pretty sure nobody will be looking. I empty my brain and follow the path I ve settled on in my head. I m following a script with the single-mindedness of a machine. Or, more accurately, a SpyParty NPC.

I m almost at my destination when a spanner is flung into the works in the form of a booze-swigging ambassador, sauntering over to the shiny eagle I intend to make away with. For a split second my brain fires up again. I m not a machine; I m a startled person who has to briefly recalculate, and that s all it takes for the laser sight to swing over to me. Pop! My spy career is over.

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Good things come to those who wait, and everyone I’ve talked to who has been lucky enough to try Chris Hecker’s SpyParty has plenty of complimentary things to say about the 1v1 multiplayer game of social infiltrator vs observant sniper. Think you can spot a single human player in the middle of a crowd of AI entities? Hold your breath, because you’ve only got one guess.

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Chris Hecker has been working on SpyParty for almost a decade now and I get the impression he’d be happy perfecting it for the rest of his career. Some developers want to move from one project to the next, an internal clock ticking down and reminding them how few ideas can be realised in a lifetime, while others are better suited to exploring one design from as many angles as possible, pushing every aspect to its limits.

I love Go, Hecker told me at GDC. I wanted to make Go, but then I realised I was making a different kind of game. I realised part of the way through that SpyParty is more like Poker. Embracing what the game is rather than what he originally wanted it to be has been key to the whole process.

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The fascinating 1v1 sniper vs. spy game SpyParty will enter Steam Early Access on April 12th, creator Chris Hecker has announced, bringing it to a a wider audience after years of coveted betas and its own early access scheme. SpyParty players have developed devious tricks of deception and detection over these years, so I’ll be fascinated to see what happens as fumbling newbies arrive, myself included. I’m Maxwell Smart and everyone else is Agent 99. You’re Vasily Zaytsev and I’m one of those goons who can’t even hit the A Team van driving straight towards them. (more…)

When you go to San Fraaaanciscooo, be sure to wear a lanyard with Media inscribed on it round youuur nnnneck That s what Adam, John and Brendan sang to each other as they gleefully skipped through the streets of California s tram-infested hill city. The crew were in town for the yearly Game Developer’s Conference where they spoke to developers, played games, and gambled on the results of the annual awards show. Now they re back and ready to tell you all about their Stateside adventures on the latest RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. (more…)