The Final Fantasy 9 remake looks ever so slightly more likely as Square Enix add anniversary page to website Eiko’nt believe it Image credit:Square Enix Rumours of a Final Fantasy IX remake have been remaking themselves part of the discourse for several years now, sparked by the announcement of an animated series and a Nvidia leak back in 2021 , and stoked by manifestations of several other Squeenix games from the leaked Geforce list....

The Maw - 19th-24th February 2024 This week’s new PC game releases and our weekly newsblog Image credit:Pierre Denys de Montfort/Wikimedia Commons Another week of PC game releases is upon us and oh heck, slow down. There are an alarming number of games out this week that I want to play, from large-scale 3D productions to itty-bitty time-killers, each sinisterly appropriate to my Steam stats and wider research interests. Are videogame publishers and The Maw in cahoots to overwhelm me with impulse-buys and sabotage my attempts to Report the News?...

The Maw: what’s new in PC games this week? Once Human, Anger Foot and a helping of cosy alchemy Image credit:Francisco Goya / Rock Paper Shotgun Happy this week, everybody? Following last week’s slight (and perhaps slightly editorialised) dry spell , there is a non-zero quantity of promising new PC games in the offing, and they cover a nice spread of genres. On Tuesday 9th July, we’ve got Once Human , a free-to-play multiplayer open world survival shooter set in a world polluted by sanity-eroding Stardust....

The original Stalker trilogy is getting a free upgrade that brings in reworked lighting, full controller support, and more And it’s coming next week! Image credit:GSC Game World Fancy a jaunt back into The Zone? GSC Game World released the long awaited Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl last November, steadling improving it after an (understandably) rocky launch. There’s been several hefty updates for the sequel released along the way, and it turns out the developer has been even busier than expected....

The Palworld devs are making their very own Pal-filled Stardew Valley Paldo what Nintendalso do Image credit:Pocketpair Palworld developers Pocketpair have revealed Palfarm, a new farming spin-off whose cheeky compound title implies the possibility of countless other Palspin-offs, from Pal train Simulator to Pal netenverteidigungskanonenkommandant . It appears to be a Palworld version of Stardew Valley , with players alternating between tending crops, mining the caves, battling wildlife, and bonding with the local NPCs....

The Raid homage Acts Of Blood is Sifu’s jankier, snackier cousin It plays like a PS2 game! (complimentary) Image credit:Eksil Team/Rock Paper Shotgun Calling a game ‘no frills’ or ‘no nonsense’ is always a back-handed compliment, because it sounds like you’re saying it’s a bit straightforward and simple. And yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying here. Acts Of Blood feels like a spiffy PS2 action brawler; a slightly tighter old Yakuza game, or a stripped-back Sifu ....

The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 1st Open the first door and get ready to work Image credit:RPS The RPS Advent Calender 2024 is underway! Each day reveals one of our favourite games from this year, leading up to our Game Of The Year on the 24th. Check the main calendar post to see the full list. This year’s RPS Advent Calendar has arrived, and it’s time for us to fill the nook behind each door with 24 delightful game-shaped chocolates....

The RPS Selection Box: Jeremy’s bonus games of the year 2025 Ninjas and detectives, unite Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun In the grand spirit of Christmas, I want everyone to know that for this year’s RPS Advent Calendar , I nominated a bunch of games about Japanese assassins and at least one point and click thriller featuring a netherworld of torture devices. Some of those assassins appeared on the final calendar, but not all, and the point and click didn’t make the cut....

The Thaumaturge review: a knotty detective RPG brewed in a rich, historical melting pot Monsters in my pocket Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/11 Bit Studios Developer: Fool’s Theory Publisher: 11 Bit Studios Release: March 4th 2024 On: Windows From: Steam , GOG , Epic Games Store Price: £30/€35/$35 Reviewed on: Intel Core i9-11900K, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080, Windows 10 When we first meet The Thaumaturge ’s hero Wiktor Szulski, we’re told he’s a man cursed by the vice of pride....

The Witcher 4 won’t come out before 2027, so chill out would you Sit down Image credit:CD Projekt Red The Witcher 4 may have entered its “most intensive” production phase but it won’t be gracing your whirring machinery any time in the next year or two. During a financial call for people in suits with lots of money, the developer said they were hoping to give shareholders value for money, “even though we do not plan to release The Witcher 4 by the end of 2026....

The wonderful Dune Imperium’s digital version is getting its first expansion in July Rise Of Ix adds dreadnoughts and new leaders Image credit:Dire Wolf Dune Imperium is a fabulous strategy game about becoming the biggest spice boy on a sandy planet I presume is called Dune. I love it despite never having read the Dune books or watched the Dune movies, because the digital version taught me everything I needed to know about Barry Harkonnen, Oscar Isaac, the tall guy from Guardians Of The Galaxy, and their insatiable pursuit of space nutmeg....

This papercraft ghost story game is beautiful to just walk around in Third Eye Open is a Malaysian coming-of-age story with a twist Image credit:Chorus Worldwide Games A story about a girl who has a ghost best friend nobody else can see, and has to juggle that relationship with her interactions with living people? Sounds fake . Haha, but seriously folks. There’s a demo for Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open in the Steam Next Fest , and boy howdy did I like just looking at this game in motion....

This week in PC games: not just Silksong, we also have catgirl tearooms, Returnal-esque shooters and vintage toon horror What we’re feeding the Maw Image credit:Nacon And I looked, and behold a pale hornet: and the game that came with her was Silksong , and release delays followed after. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of Steam, to kill with needle, and with thread, and with parrying, and with the bugs of the earth....

Time Flies is about a bug finding god or learning guitar in something like 76.4 seconds, and it’s got a release date “Make the best of the time you have left, because we’re all going to die” Image credit:Playables Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Time Flies , the latest wonderfully weird game from Swiss devs Playables, will turn you into a fly. I mean, the clue was in the name. You live for a matter of seconds every playthrough, and in that time, you’ve got a bug bucket list of stuff you can do....

UFO 50 review: a pixellated portrait of the 1980s that offers a strange sort of time travel A retroactive reimagining Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Mossmouth Developer: Derek Yu, Jon Perry, Eirik Suhrke, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto, Tyriq Plummer Publisher: Mossmouth Release: Sept 18th 2024 On: Windows From: Epic Games , Steam Price: £TBA/$TBA/€TBA Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7-11700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, Windows 10 You can’t travel back to the 1980s....

Ukrainian government call out new Russian-made Steam release as Kremlin propaganda Devs talk up their military connections Image credit:Zarobana Entertainment The Ukrainian government-run Center for Countering Disinformation have released a warning about a new free-to-play shooter, Squad 22: ZOV, which they say is a blaring propaganda instrument for the Russian military that “mythologises” the country’s invasion and bombardment of Ukraine since 2022. The accusation actually dates back to February this year, but it has resurfaced and picked up pace online now that Squad 22 is on sale via Steam....

Uncharted director’s Black Panther and Captain America game revealed as Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, out 2025 T’Challa’s granddad and a fresh-faced Cap will be joined by a US soldier and Wakandan spy in WW2 Paris Image credit:Marvel/Skydance New Media We’ve known that a Marvel game from former Uncharted writer-director Amy Hennig has been in the works for years , learning in 2022 that it will focus on Captain America and Black Panther during World War 2....

Update: Card Bard is a suspicious deckbuildy shooter with some familiar assets Oh dear Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Terry Brash Update: Card Bard appears to be a copy of a game by another developer, Dire Decks by kindanice . Dire Decks was released in 2023 on itch.io and was well received there. Kindanice has pointed out the direct likeness between their game and the one released on Steam under another name....

Use an inclined railway to purge demons in this Dreamcast-ish Meiji-set action oddity No weapons, just a very slow elevator Image credit:Gudouan “Who will rid me of these tiresome overfamiliar combat systems!” I bellow from my balcony over the castle square. From far away across the sea comes the response: “in our game, your primary ‘weapon’ is a sloping railway”. The game in question is Incline ～Railway of devil’s valley～ and yes, it has an incredibly irritating English-language title, but how about that red-hot funicular action in the trailer?...

Vendrán Las Aves is a short free game about burnout from Red String Club developers Deconstructeam Guitar hero Image credit:Deconstructeam, Francisco Riolobos, Chuso Montero Vendrán Las Aves - “The Birds Will Come” - is a brief, quiet, hopeful game about burnout recovery. Summarised as a “slice of life tamagotchi” and available in Spanish and English, it’s a gamejam production from Francisco Riolobos, Chuso Montero and Deconstructeam, the Valencia-based developers behind The Red String Club and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood ....