The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
All that's fit to play over 1st-5th July, plus our weekly newsblog
Live
Happy this week, everybody! Not going to lie, it's a dry one. Drier than a doldrum dunked in silica gel packets, dustier than Death's doorstep. There are precious few eyebrow-raising new PC games on the cards, but I have swaddled my head in wet blankets, braved the desert and returned with a small handful of dreams.
Monday 1st July is a day of immaculate blackness and creepy lo-fi linework, care of space station spook-a-walker Vorago. Tuesday 2nd July is a time of much free-to-play schlooting, care of The First Descendant - and of much pay-to-play mmorpging, care of Final Fantasy 14's Dawntrail expansion. On Wednesday 3rd July there... is... Connect-4, but inside a computer? On Thursday 4th July therrrrrrrrre isssssss... a game literally just called Multiplayer RPG? That's like naming your dog "Dogs". And on Friday 5th July, a relatively electrifying shmup called Void Reaper.
You may not get to play that last one, because odds are high that the Maw, our resident dark god of video game news, will have blossomed in outrage and swallowed the world by Thursday. Please: if you spy any headline-worthy new PC games anywhere, perhaps sheltering from the summer torpor on Itch.io, sing out in the comments. Please. The Maw's shadows are growing clearer and sharper, lengthening like silences. Our generators agonise, struggling to fill the calm. It may already be too late.
As Edwin mentioned earlier, Tales of Kenzera: Zau developers Surgent Studios, founded by Assassin’s Creed Origins actor Abubakar Salim, have laid off over a dozen staff less than three months after their debut game hit PC.
Someone done a The Bear videogame mock-up and it is incredible.
Paradox have posted a video about the Byzantine Empire, this being the key inspiration for the upcoming Roads To Power DLC. It features actual history professor Anthony Kaldellis. Look at him go!
Powerwash Simulator's Alice In Wonderlands DLC is out now.
Kring is a bizarre collection of festively fleshy minigames - "clicker, bullet hell, top-down platform, side-scroller platform, shoot'em up, beat'em up, and other strange genres that defy categorization" - that together wear the label of a god sim. It's from Italian dev Ivan Venturi, one of the minds behind Hell Galaxy, and has a demo on Steam.
HAVE GENERALLY AMICABLE RELATIONS WITH YOU TILL WEDNESDAY
The beast frolics and fevers! Reload the 18-Inch Patch Noter and set headlines to "Dazzle"! FEED THE MAW.Graceborne is a mod that makes Elden Ring all Bloodborne-y, with new weapons, costumes, and enemy redesigns. *Micolash voice*: Ah, trailer. Or as some say, tray-tray:
Capcom still haven't heard our cries for Dino Crisis (see yesterday's Maw-ing) but they have given us a demo for dreamy yōkai slayer Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess. This was Edwin's favourite game at Summer Games Fest, and the way he described it has made me immediately download the demo on Steam.
Resident Evil 9, a game we all knew would happen, is officially happening. It was confirmed in Capcom's NEXT showcase yesterday, and It'll be lead by Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi.
Hitman's next elusive target is punchy man Conor McGregor playing an MMA fighter called The Disruptor. Lovely coat, to be fair.
LOVE YOU TILL TUESDAY
The Maw's sundering tongue-barbs glisten with organ-melting venom in anticipation.It's Dino Crisis' 25th anniversary! Hey. Hey. Capcom. Hey. Hey Capcom. Hey. Capcom.
Hey
Glass-shattering first-person shooter Selaco has been updated with a big patch that adds new weapons upgrades, difficulty mutators, and the ability to pet the vacuum cleaner robots. Among many other changes, you can also now kick people (hooray!) but only when you have your fists out as a weapon (booo!).
The upcoming Crazy Taxi will include multiplayer, according to a page made to hire fresh developers for the SEGA game. The company also released a recruitment video in which devs talked about working on the game, and series producer Kenji Kanno confirms there will be a multiplayer component (thanks, Automaton).
HAPPY MAWNDAY
I'm off on holiday till Wednesday, but there is yet time for a bit of housekeeping. Perhaps due to the dreadful lassitude, this week's liveblog has frayed away from the timeline and become entangled with last week's. Either that, or Graham accidentally popped Friday's updates in the draft liveblog I'd set up, because I did not tell him I was setting up a draft liveblog. I know which explanation I prefer.Dune Imperium, which I adore, is getting its first digital expansion in July with the arrival of Rise Of Ix.
Deus Ex's Randomizer mod has just released version 3.0 and now you can pet the dogs and cats.
The Sims 4's next expansion is called Lovestruck, and it adds a dating app and outdoor woohoo on July 25th.
Valve might be trying to do something about Team Fortress 2's aimbot problem.