Don’t call it a God of War killer, but Flintlock feels like a classic summer blockbuster

Napoleon Dynamite

Image credit:Kepler Interactive

Swashbuckling third-person action- RPG Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn is, amongst other things, a gentle homage to New Zealand, developer A44 Games’s country of origin. You do have to look for it, mind you. The game’s art direction at large is an elegant hodgepodge of inspirations that deserves to be unpicked carefully after release.

Main character Nor Vanek - who is on a mission to massacre various escaped underworld gods - is kind of a Napoleonic superhero. Rakishly attired in braided frock coats and knee-high boots, she can use sparking “blackpowder” pistols both to inflict damage and to double-jump or dodge while performing snappily choreographed, one-handed sword and axe combos, straight out of God of War. As regards locations, there are pale medieval citadels with stained-glass windows, coffee shops run by eerie, many-armed “Hosts” that glean from the ambience of Turkish bazaars, and certain other fantastical areas and characters - including Nor’s spectral fox sidekick Enki - that are influenced by ancient Mesopotamian mythology.

But there are also more personal flashes of the studio’s own stomping grounds, especially in the vegetation and geology: pōhutukawa “Christmas trees” with rusty red flowers, and a view of a mountain range that, as art director Marie-Charlotte Derne told me during a one-hour hands-off preview showing at GDC, is based on New Zealand’s South Island. “We intentionally strayed away from the more classic and I would say, expected representation of mountains, which is the Nordic influence usually,” she said. “Instead, we decided to pull from the nature of our country. So we extracted the sense of New Zealand’s geology, fauna and flora and sprinkled elements of this throughout the game to create a unique identity.”

Again, this is a mixture of references that deserves a longer analysis from somebody with more insight than I’m able to provide - what exactly happens when you take the military trappings and equipment of Napoleonic France and apply them to a fairytale interpretation of a former European colony, with locations inspired by Turkey and ancient Mesopotamia? More superficially, Flintlock’s assertiveness about its own cultural origins suits a game that reminds me of the more accomplished “double-A” blockbusters of yesteryear. Out in Q3 2024, this is a lavish epic created by a team of just 65, which I reckon could give juggernauts like Sony Santa Monica a run for their money.

You see that above all in the combat, which is aggressive and florid where the developer’s previous, very good Ashen was grim and understated and precarious. It’s all held together by resourcing systems and fighting game mechanics that feed into each other persuasively. Nor’s blackpowder weapons have a fixed number of charges, which you can replenish by doing four hits with your chopper, theoretically ensuring a healthy alternation of melee and musketry. You’ve also got Witherings, aka sorcerous special moves, which again fill up over the course of a brawl.

Image credit:Kepler Interactive

Your foxy friend Enki, meanwhile, can curse enemies by streaking through them to fill an enemy’s “priming” bar. Once this bar is full, you can tear away shields and armour pieces - a toe-curling close-up animation with respectable Kratos energy - in order to deal greater damage with subsequent attacks. This seems handy against regular Joes like living statues, zombielikes and soldiers enslaved by the gods, but it’s extremely handy against the game’s bosses - phase-based creations with a slight minigame element. During the demo, Nor went toe-to-toe with Rammuha, a goddess made up of spinning, flame-filled armour with three swordarms. Placed around a third of the way through the game, she’s something of a concluding masterclass in defence - parry each swordarm in succession and you’ll fill up her priming bar super-quick, allowing you to pare away her defences and seemingly, initiate a “berserk” state change.

The renegade gods - who escape from the Great Below during the prologue - are found across the world map. Creative director Simon Dasan describes Flintlock’s landscape as “wide linear”, opening up when you enter a region to encompass optional side areas, secrets and challenges, then closing back down as you approach the next plot point. It’s structured principally around lodestones, this game’s equivalent for Dark Souls bonfires - fast travel and upgrade points which heal you while respawning your enemies. They’re more generously distributed than those of the Souls games, however: as Dasan explained, A44 don’t want you to spend too much time fighting your way back to the bossroom after respawning.

Image credit:Kepler Interactive

The world is also dotted with NPC settlements. There are caravans run by Nor’s fellow Coalition Sappers, and hamlet hubs where you can flush out sidequests and trade Reputation earned through exploration and combat for cosmetics, after you’ve cleared the vicinity of mucky undead. Much of the game occurs in canyons and arenas, but there are vertiginous sections where you’ll aerial-dash between triangular “rifts”, some of which form paths to secrets and some of which simply allow you to enter a fight from above.

Going by the demo, the world does a good job of resembling a larger and dare I say, “living, breathing” society, while still being essentially a single, branching road towards the finale. Each peaceful location is awash with colourful textiles, little architectural intricacies and slice-of-life touches such as fishermen along the seashore. It’s a chance to settle back and banter a bit with Enki, a surprisingly dour soul who has an undiscovered relationship with the gods, which you can investigate by tracking down special shrines.

Enki is obviously redolent of Atreus in the recent God of Wars. Much like Kratos’s boy, he’ll gradually evolve from a means of softening foes up into a flexible offensive spellcaster - providing you pick those upgrades, anyway. Enki gets his own skilltree, with the others corresponding to your guns and melee implements. A44 gave me a sense of the variety between builds during the demo by switching to a section in which Nor has been outfitted for magic combat, summoning Enki to launch enemies and dollop them in slowmo.

Image credit:Kepler Interactive

There also seem to be options aplenty in terms of gear, though this thankfully isn’t a process of relentless looting in search of marginally higher numbers. “We didn’t want to have armours that were just like +5 Defence,” said Dasan. “What we wanted was interesting mechanics and varied styles of play.” Standout god-bothering goodies include a pauldron that initiates slow mo when you precision dodge, and another that restores your blackpowder charges instead. There are also, ugh, “synergies” to discover by completing armour sets, such as a fancy teleport with wider i-frames than your regular dodge. And there are things like flamethrowers and grenades for those moments when you can’t be arsed theorycrafting and just want to make an absolute mess of the scenery. (I joke - I’m sure these ostensibly fire-and-forget tools have their right and proper place in the combat balancing.)

The intricacies of its cultural collage aside, there is little about Flintlock that feels outright novel: my preview notes are essentially a list of parts borrowed from other games. The same could be said of Ashen , however, a town-building Soulslike that harbours perhaps my favourite lightless dungeon in any Soulslike - and as the saying goes, Flintlock brings everything together with a style and confidence that is all its own. I came away from my demo intrigued by the choice of inspirations but more immediately, eager to book some holiday and settle down for a few evenings with a game that feels like a straightforward good time.

Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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Our 9 favourite demos from the summer Steam Next Fest

Try them

Image credit:Akupara Games

This week, we’re highlighting the best demos you can play during Steam Next Fest , which starts June 10th. We’re calling this Wishlisted , in partnership with Eurogamer and VG247.

Excuse me, sorry, pardon me, can I just, thank you, ah, sorry, thanks… Phew, made it. Steam Next Fest is pretty crowded, eh? As if the unholy swarm of trailers and game announcements from Summer Game Fest was not enough, this week the fearful megalords at Valve decided to drop their regular cavalcade of coming-soons onto their megastore. The beautiful (and terrifying) thing about Next Fest, of course, is the overwhelming number of demos that come out during the event. A small herd of video games are standing on my toes as we speak. But that’s okay, we are expert curators. Here’s a handy list of our nine favourite demos of the lot.

Tactical Breach Wizards

A magical SWAT team bust down doors and blast bad folk in this confined tactics game from Suspicious Developments. At the end of a fight in this funny tacticianesque turn-taker, you are awarded with a score for speed, efficiency, and number of “defenestrations”, which should tell you everything you need to know. The healer on your team is a necromancer, so to heal her squad mates properly, she may first have to kill them. “It’d take a serious hex to stop me diving into the full game when it releases,” said Nic when he tried the demo for the window-breaking Into The Breach-like . He won’t have to wait too long - it’s out August 22nd .

Download the defenestrating demo on Steam .

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

A soulslike that challenges all the other soulslikes to pistols at dawn (I stole this joke from one of our commenters, who may demand satisfaction). Flintlock sees you explore a world where twisted gods have been unleashed and must be taken down. You can triple-jump from the opening chapters and curse lads with a magical fennec fox sidekick. The demo is quite buggy (not reassuring for a game due out next month) but when it works it is stylish, curious, bright, and inventive. The creature design is a particular treat .

Powder your musket via the Steam page .

Disco Samurai

A rhythm-action Sekiro where you stab your way through neon-lit dioramas by tapping in time to the techno beat. It’s hard stuff , says Nic. But it also doesn’t outright punish you for missing a beat, in the way something like Thumper might. Here, you simply won’t attack. It gets more complicated as you 4/4 your way to bloody victory with parries, dodges, stuns, and guns. You can also kick vases around for extra damage, smashing the priceless heirlooms into goon faces. To paraphrase the seminal work of 1990s Italian eurodance group Corona: This is the rhythm of the fight, the fight, oh yeah.

Dance and dice in the demo on Steam .

Spilled!

Well, oil be damned. Spilled (I’m not writing that exclam, it’s quiet time) is one of them there cosy games about relaxing and having a satisfying clean-up. You drift around in a pleasant boat filtering black puddles of gunk out of the water. You’ll also be herding plastic flotsam back to your recycling HQ and rinsing harmful goo off the rocks above the waterline with a big splooshy hose. Yes, you can upgrade your boat to make the job easier but “the pleasure is very much found in the cleaning itself, rather than the rewards,” says James, who enjoyed his boaty break at sea .

De-gunk the demo on Steam .

Sorry We’re Closed

Heard you like Silent Hill games. Heard you like Paradise Killer . Heard you like the hottest pinks on the face of the earth. Heard you like changing to a first-person perspective to shoot. Heard you like Persona games. Heard you like not having enough bullets. Heard you like the London tube, but fucked-up. Heard you like running from room to room while being pursued by a mutilated being of unknown origin which let’s face it is probably a psychological manifestation of your grief or guilt or shame or repressed sexual desires and is also groaning and swinging around a piece of sharp rusty metal to kill you perhaps metaphorically but also quite literally. Heard you like all that .

Scream through the dream on Steam .

Tiny Glade

In Tiny Glade you start with a grassy patch of countryside and end with a cosy castle. Its simple diorama-building lies somewhere between the zen-like rearranging of Quiet As A Stone and the pleasant seaside brickery of Townscaper . A lot of the toughest decisions are made for you as you drag stonework walls and wooden fences around with sigh-inducing ease, the game inserting piles of wood, pitchforks, and even bird’s nests into the nooks and crannies of your bucolic fortress. “Managed to quieten my brain for a few precious hours,” said Kiera when she made the witch’s cottage of her dreams .

Bewitch yourself in the demo on Steam .

Enotria: The Last Song

Two soulslikes on the list? Don’t be absurd. We don’t need TWO soulslikes. Oh, this one’s Italian? And everyone wears a creepy mask that determines their purpose for their entire life? Well, I suppose, why not. Si, per favore. The combat does look beefy, with lots of slow, charged attacks I bet will have to be extremely well-timed. And there’s no block button, I’m told. That alone will get the souls sickos lining up to salivate through the window. I’ll let Edwin take you through the finer details . He’s part Italian, I think. Always talking about Rococo this and Baroque that. Can’t get the guy to stop.

La demo è su Steam .

Faceminer

What is the price of a face? $43. That’s our Ed’s estimate based on the time he spent playing Faceminer , the dystopian idle game about ravenously hoarding human portraits. You sit on an old PC with the grey interface of yesteryear and click on as many faces as you can by rummaging through datasets and directories. You get emails about it. Management requires more faces, it seems. Install more RAM and auto-clicking software to increase your facerate. Buy some solar panels to ease your hunger for the visage of every human ever photographed. Where does it end? When will you be satisfied? I don’t know. This is just a demo. These are all just demos, dude.

This one, too, is on Steam .

Lost and Found Co

You are a duck. Excuse me, you were a duck. Until some dressy goddess turned you into a human because she needs an intern for her “magical startup dedicated to finding lost items”. Let the hidden object hunt commence, as you click and maybe cluck your way through stages of packed teahouses, crowded cabaret clubs, and floral countryside scenes. Graham is the resident Hidden Objectifier at RPS. “I appreciate that there’s a story to pull you through each scene too,” he said when he first spotted it at the Wholesome Direct , his eyes full of a fierce and slightly concerning focus. He must be looking for a lost cat.

Find the demo hiding on Steam .

Disclosure: Suspicious Developments, the makers of Tactical Breach Wizards , is headed by Tom Francis, who has written for RPS in the past and knows all our darkest desires.

Disco Samurai

Video Game

Enotria: The Last Song

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

FACEMINER

Video Game

Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn

Video Game

Sorry We’re Closed

PC

Spilled!

PC

Tactical Breach Wizards

PC

Tiny Glade

PC

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