Stellaris launches expansion subscription offering access to all DLC for £8.50 per month But you need to buy the game first, and keep nothing if you stop paying If you were to buy every Stellaris expansion and content pack separately at full price, it would run you £227.62. To make that perhaps a little less daunting, Paradox have launched an optional monthly subscription service that gives you access to all the expansions....

The best Steam Deck microSD card just got a huge Black Friday discount Maximise your storage capabilities. If you want to bump up the storage for your Switch or Steam Deck, then Black Friday is going to be a fantastic time to do just that. SanDisk Ultra microSD 1.5TB $88.99 (was $149.99), or £79.99 in the UK. Fast transfer speeds for quick loading time with up to 150MB/s read. See at Amazon The SanDisk Ultra cards run surprisingly well and can more than hold their own against a raft of much pricier options....

The best stratagems in Helldivers 2 These are the best stratagems to use in Helldivers 2 Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/PlayStation What are the best stratagems in Helldivers 2? Before every mission in Helldivers 2 you must select your stratagems, which range from airstrikes and orbital lasers to defensive fortifications and heavy weaponry. There are 47 different stratagems to unlock in total, so you have plenty of options, but to begin with, only a few will be available....

The current developers of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 are going “fully” indie again Update: jobs lost during Still Wakes The Deep studio management buyout Image credit:Secret Mode A few of the UK’s fanciest former indie developers are going indie again… with help from venture capital. Still Wakes The Deep and Dear Esther creators The Chinese Room have slipped the surly bonds of Sumo Digital in the course of a management buyout, with “facilitation” from Hiro Capital....

The first trailer for The Binding of Isaac devs’ next game Mewgenics answers none of the many questions I have Hello every-nyan Image credit:Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel I think if you were to show someone the trailer for Mewgenics , complete with cats you-know-whating, a musical number, and a poop joke, they’d probably be taken quite aback. However, if you were to tell them that it’s from the same people that made Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac , I’m sure they’d be able to understand much quicker....

The Long Dark 2 announced with co-op multiplayer, new urban areas and sanity system Survival is a dish best served cold Image credit:Hinterlands The Long Dark creators Hinterlands have announced The Long Dark 2, another helping of open-ended wilderness survival. Actually titled Blackfrost: The Long Dark 2 - a travestying of naming conventions that is surely more harrowing than any post-apocalyptic winter - it’s out in early access in 2026, and introduces urban environments together with a “Will to Live” sanity system and co-op multiplayer....

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria’s first expansion launches next month, even if gameplay is currently MIA I hope they’re not folking around Image credit:Free Range Games It’s been more than a year since The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria first launched, and now it seems like the survival crafting game’s first proper expansion is right around the corner. Developer Free Range Games shared a new trailer yesterday, which was roughly Durin’s Day, a rare Dwarven event in the world of Middle-earth, appropriately revealing the release date for said expansion, Durin’s Folk....

The next League Of Legends spin-off is a deep and crafty blend of Stardew, Spiritfarer and Animal Crossing Bandle Tale and its enormous skill trees arrive on February 21st Image credit:Riot Forge When cute crafting RPG Bandle Tale: A League Of Legends Story was first announced at the end of last year, I don’t think I really appreciated the fact it was going to be the next game from the devs behind mortuary farming-me-do Graveyard Keeper ....

The opening hour of The Alters feels like 11 bit’s first third-person narrative action game Gears Of War Of Mine Image credit:11 bit Studios Calling it now: this is the least intriguing article you will read about 11 bit’s The Alters , a blend of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and Duncan Jones’s Moon in which (deep breath) you are a marooned space engineer who must spawn different versions of himself by means of backstory-branching gadgetry in order to operate an enormous, rolling base and escape the apocalyptic rays of the local sun....

The original System Shock 2 will be delisted from Steam soon, then lumped in with the more expensive remaster Buying OG System Shock on its own is ceasing to be an option on the Steamy platform Image credit:Looking Glass The classic 1999 version of System Shock 2 is set to be pulled from sale on Steam later this week. It’ll still be kicking around, but as a freebie offered to owners of the game’s 25th anniversary remaster , rather than something you can buy separately on Valve’s store....

The remake of Myst sequel Riven is coming later this year, complete with VR support They should call it Riven: The Sequel To The Myst Remake Image credit:Cyan Worlds Cyan Worlds today announced plans to launch their fancy real-time 3D remake of Riven later this year, coming with support for both VR cybergoggles and standard meatspace screens. Riven: The Sequel To Myst was the 1997 sequel to Myst, the 1993 pre-rendered adventure game which sold a million CD-ROM drives and launched a thousand specks of spittle from John Walker’s mouth ....

The Sunday Papers Image credit:RPS The Sunday Papers is our weekly roundup of great writing about (mostly) videogames from across the web. Last week I mentioned that I was reading Tokyo These Days, a manga about the production of a manga magazine. I have paired this, somewhat accidentally, with Shirobako, an anime about the anime production process. I’m four episodes in and there’s almost no drama to it that isn’t drawn directly from the difficulties of that production, to the point where the main tension of episode three hinges upon an FTP server being down....

The Sunday Papers Image credit:RPS The Sunday Papers is our weekly roundup of great writing about (mostly) videogames from across the web. What pressure! As I mentioned last week , this is my last ever Sunday Papers as I’m leaving Rock Paper Shotgun (and Gamer Network) this coming Wednesday. I’m not sure how to meaningfully summarise twelve years on this site or twenty years in the field, but after several aborted essays I rediscovered the columnist’s crutch: bullet points....

The Sunday Papers Image credit:RPS The Sunday Papers is our weekly roundup of great writing about (mostly) videogames from across the web. Sundays are for writing your first ever Sunday Papers. Though your excitement, like mine, may slip a little when you realise you’ve been reading almost anything but gaming articles this week. So, I shall be leaning quite heavily into the “(mostly)” in the column’s mission of rounding up “great writing about (mostly) videogames”....

There is Nothing Beyond This Point except a promisingly odd metroidvania about exploring the void Metvoidvania, I guess Image credit:Dieuwt One of my Foundational Video Games is Mazeworld , an elder Apple Macintosh first-personifier in which you explore a Carollian landscape of blue-walled darkness and rainbow-shelled snails. I was a young slip of a boy when Mazeworld released, and prone to daymares about crocodiles floating through the ceiling. Imagine my reaction to a game in which you are immediately confronted by a slathering, bodiless Cheshire Cat, its face a grinning smear that is only visible when it’s charging right at you....

This fictional CD-ROM about a Knightmare-style game show is secretly this year’s best horror game “Only some parts of the show were aired” Image credit:MinusOnePublishing Frontiers Of The Mind is cursed, by which I mean that 7-Zip turned red while I was extracting the file. What unsightly encounter deep within the bowels of my download file caused this temporary anomaly? No time to think about that. After playing this horror game, I’ve now got too many other questions....

I’ve tested it and like it quite a bit at this price. Image credit:Roccat Get the Roccat Pyro mechanical keyboard for $40 (was $50, MSRP $80) This full-size keyboard uses TTC red (soft linear) mechanical switches, giving it quite a snappy feel for both gaming and typing. It’s also a well-built board, with an aluminium top plate that provides a good measure of rigidity and durability. There’s a volume knob in the upper right corner, while function keys allow for media controls too....

This incredibly cool retro Xbox-inspired keyboard from 8BitDo is almost half price today This looks incredible. Image credit:8BitDo It’d be fair to say 8BitDo knows a fair bit about peripherals, but this one still caught us by surprise. The 8BitDo Retro 87 Xbox Edition is a mechanical gaming keyboard inspired by Microsoft’s original, monolithic black box. While it doesn’t work with a 2001 Xbox, it does work with Windows via a 2....

To A T review T-posing a question Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Annapurna Interactive An episodic, child-friendly TV show in videogame form, with lots of colourful minigames and all the comedic warmth you expect from the designer of Katamari Damacy. Developer: Uvula Publisher: Annapurna Interactive Release: May 28th, 2025 On: Windows From: Steam Price: £15.50/$20/€18.50 Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7-11700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, Windows 10 You are a thirteen year old stuck in the shape of a T, arms aloft forever - what do you do?...

Twitch introduce mandatory “Politics and Sensitive Social Issues” label, just in time for the US election It “could bring new advertisers to our service” Twitch have introduced a new “Politics and Sensitive Social Issues” label for streams that “focus” on topics like “elections, civic integrity, and war or military conflict”. As with the streaming giant’s existing labels for M-rated material, sexual themes or depictions of gambling, the idea is that viewers can filter out such streams in advance by altering their settings....