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The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for playing around with the Nintendo Switch 2, of course. Let's round up some writing from across the week first. Jon Hicks, the former fifth Beatle of RPS and current co-host of Alice Bell's post-RPS podcast Total Playtime, has launched a newsletter. It's called Screen Grab and he's beginning it with a series of missives about the not-E3 showcases. You should subscribe, because Jonty is smart and funny and I want him to write more. Read more

June 8, 2025

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A Roman Sands RE:Build release date and a tease for a new edition of Paratopic is exactly what the doctor ordered

I've been excited about Roman Sands RE:Build since the moment I laid my eyes on it, particularly because it's from the same studio behind the ever-haunting Paratopic. Roman Sands just has a ridiculously strong art direction to it, very much one that could easily be dubbed Y2K, but I think more accurately should be seen as an evolution of the aesthetic/ era. Almost as if this is the direction it could have gone in. Read more

June 7, 2025

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Constance is a beautiful, hand-drawn metroidvania that actually has a release date

Now, I'm not naming any names here, but there's a certain hand-drawn metroidvania that everyone's a bit sick of waiting for by this point, and could really do with a release date. OK, fine, yes it's Hollow Knight: Silksong, and if those recent Steam backend updates mean anything, I expect it'll get some kind of update sometime in the next few days. In the meantime, here's Constance, also a hand-drawn metroidvania, that actually does have a release date. Read more

June 7, 2025

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Neverway continues to make a compelling case for horror farming-sims in a new showcase from its devs

I don't think you can more easily sell me on a game than by saying it was made by one of the artists behind Celeste, and has music from Disasterpeace, i.e. the composer behind Fez, Hyper Light Drifter, and It Follows. But that's exactly what Neverway is, a horror RPG in the vein of Stardew Valley first announced back in April, back with a nice little look-in at yesterday's Day of the Devs presentation. Read more

June 7, 2025

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Rogue Trader devs Owlcat are making an Expanse RPG with Mass Effect-style combat

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and Pathfinder: Kingmaker developers Owlcat Games are venturing into the realm of "hard sci-fi" with The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, a new RPG based on the James S. A. Corey novels and Syfy TV adaptations. It's an original story that casts you as a Pinkwater Security mercenary, who starts out trapped on Eros Station - an asteroid base that undergoes cataclysmic upheaval in the TV show - and later takes charge of an advanced starship, so as to quest around the solar system. The game is inspired by BioWare's Mass Effect series, with "tactical" third-person combat featuring two ally characters and cover mechanics. Also, crew romances. Here's a trailer. Read more

June 7, 2025

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Toem 2 looks just as lovely as the first one, and a bit more 3D, in its first gameplay trailer

Remember Toem? That was a bloody lovely game. I'm always partial to a game where photography is the core mechanic, there's such a specific joy in navigating a space attempting to capture a fracture of its essence. Photo modes just aren't the same, I want someone to textually give me a camera and send me on my way. A sequel was announced last year, quite simply called Toem 2, and during yesterday's Day of the Devs, some gameplay was shown off for the first time. Read more

June 7, 2025

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A courtroom drama deckbuilder about avenging a murdered river? Why not

While the upcoming Slay the Spire 2 hovers threateningly over the deckbuilding landscape, one game in the genre is replacing the usual boney arithmetic with harsh words, legal loopholes, and subtle threats. All Will Rise is a "narrative deckbuilder" set in a tense courtroom where you play a lawyer cross-examining those who may or may not be involved in the brutal murder of a holy river. Read more

June 7, 2025

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GameBoy style digging game about a cat with a big drill gets a release date

GameBoy-styled fantasy adventure Everdeep Aurora has dug deep enough to uncover a release date. If you've missed this pretty retro platformer, it looks sort of like a monochromatic SteamWorld Dig but with friends to meet instead of enemies to smash. You are a cat, and your cat mum has gone missing. The only clue is a note from her telling you to dig down and find her. It's a little bit Spelunky, a little bit Gato Roboto, and it's coming out in a month's time. Read more

June 7, 2025

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Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan musically marches towards an early access release next month

If we're being honest with ourselves, the original PSP was a sort of Proto-Switch too, no? As in it was home to a lot of odd, smaller-scope games that not many other platforms might have featured outside of Nintendo's earlier handhelds. Patapon was one such tiny oddity, one of the most charming games on the platform, if not to ever outright exist. It did go on to get a couple of sequels, but the series (outside of an upcoming remaster of the first two) is sort of dead. Luckily, Ratatan, a spiritual successor from Patapon's creator is here to satisfy your tiny-guy-chanting-to-music needs with a newly revealed release date! Read more

June 7, 2025

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Arc Raiders prepares to stake its claim in making extraction shooters popular with an October release date

Arc Raiders! It's an extraction shooter! A fact that will leave many with the question, "is this the one that'll push the genre to the mainstream?" Personally I haven't the foggiest, and I don't have a horse in that race either. That kind of nonsense matters more to shareholders than it does to little old me. Still, we've not got a huge amount of time to wait to find out if Arc Raiders is the one to make extraction shooters big, as during Geoff's Livestream of Questionable Quality and Orbs, it got a release date. Read more

June 7, 2025

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Pondering Geoff’s orbs

Partly in the absence of real surprises, and partly because the auditorium bass notes were making me feel queasy and dissociative, I spent a lot of this year’s Summer Games Fest showcase transfixed by Geoff Keighley’s balls. I am, of course, referring to the show’s animated backdrops, in which glutinous, gleaming orbs floated like nitrogen bubbles in a cosmic brain - sometimes tossed upon a tide of marbled petro-vomit, sometimes drifting over a scree of lava lamp effluence, sometimes hovering against sherbety silver Bermudas of arches and plinths. Immersive! Read more

June 7, 2025

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The demons are both tragic and hot in Possessor(s), the Hyper Light Drifter studio's new fantasy platformer

Heart Machine’s side-scrolling metroidvania platformer Possessor(s) is Hollow Knight with a splash of Amanita Design’s Creaks. The bulk of your enemies are household objects - vending machines, plant pots, office printers and other fittings that have become vessels for demons. From this premise springs a note of tragedy powerful enough to conquer my outrage at a game title that has brackets in it. The demons are not, in themselves, violent - it’s inhabiting the inanimate that maddens them. “Possessing something cold and dead is agony… so they lash out,” explains Rhem, a mortally wounded devil you meet in the prologue. Read more

June 7, 2025

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Warren Spector's Thick As Thieves shows off sneaking in emergent thunderstorms and grappling hooks

Nothing makes me feel like a sneakers-for-sneaking wearing master thief in video games more than discovering a window on a roof that the developers left in a very obvious spot precisely so I'd feel clever for using it, and in this at least, Otherside's PvP stealth game Thick As Thieves looks to have me covered. Deus Ex creator Warren Spector introduced some pre-alpha footage this evening, and while I won't pretend I'm actually likely to play anything PvP anytime soon that isn't Mechabellum, I enjoyed seeing how they've adapted some of that classic immersive sim DNA Spector is known for into a competitive format. Read more

June 6, 2025

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The multiplayer robot havoc of Mecha Break gets a release date

What's this? A game with big robots smashing each other to tiny little pieces above a large sci-fi cityscape, and we have not yet covered it. For shame. Mecha Break is a free-to-play multiplayer robo-battler in which you fly around and wreck online foes at speeds no mere human should ever be exposed to, and it now has a release date, as announced in a flashy trailer at the Summer Game Fest. I have no idea if playing this will be as intense as the visual heart attack it looks to be. But maybe when it comes out next month I'll try it out. Read more

June 6, 2025

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Please, Watch The Artwork is a "psychological spot the difference" with Edward Hopper's realist paintings

Please, Watch The Artwork is the follow-up to difference 'em up puzzler Please, Touch The Artwork 2. As hinted by creator Thomas Waterzooi, it's likely coming this October. He performed the announcement in ASMR, which almost relaxed me enough to not be annoyed by the press release's use of the word 'liminal', which in game terms usually just means 'bit spooky, innit'. Still, it is quite spooky. The idea here is that you're a museum worker reporting anomalies in paintings. There's also a sad clown spreading melancholy throughout the art. Waterzooi is keen to point out there's no jumpscares, but you might feel "paranoid, melancholic, isolated and nostalgic". I know how much you all love making "and in the game" comments, so I won't take that away from you. Read more

June 6, 2025

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Yakuza studio's historical action brawler is revealed as Stranger Than Heaven

The makers of the Yakuza games have revealed the title of the historical brawler they teased at last year's Game Awards, then known as "Project Century". The full name is Stranger Than Heaven, as unveiled at the Summer Game Fest. It's got a new trailer set in a smokey 1943, in which we meet the game's protagonist, and nod approvingly as he smashes a nose or two. Read more

June 6, 2025

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Resident Evil 9 announced: it's called Requiem and it's coming February 2026

Resident Evil 9 - aka Resident Evil Requiem - is in development, there's a substantial trailer below, and most surprisingly, it already has a specific release date: February 27th, 2026. Read more

June 6, 2025

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Big Walk shows off the communal joys of booting your friend's binoculars into the ocean

That spuriously attributed Henry Ford quote comes for us all, in time. If asked back in 2019 what I'd want House House to follow up Untitled Goose Game with, I would have said "bastardier gooses". I wouldn't have suggested "co-op hangout game where you solve team puzzles and shout at your mates with a megaphone from halfway across an open world when you get lost", but you know what? Now House House have explained Big Walk, I have to admit this a better idea than a terrorising hedgehog or whatever. There's never been a good game about a hedgehog, and there never will be. Read more

June 6, 2025

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Jurassic World Evolution 3 brings baby dinosaurs with it this October

Jurassic World Evolution has always been an 'almost' series for me. On paper, it's such a slam dunk of a concept it feels to hard to imagine it being anything other than brilliant. In practise, the games have always felt a bit thin and tedious, even while boasting some undeniably impressive dinos. Could the third time be the charm? We'll find out later this year, anyway. Jurassic World Evolution 3 releases 21st October. Here's a trailer. Read more

June 6, 2025

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Body horror shooter Ill shows more of its naked monsters getting de-limbed

Cronenburgian body horror shooter Ill shared more sick filth at the Summer Game Fest, with a trailer that shows the freakish pale abominations you'll be dismembering as you travel through some horrifying concrete manifestation of your own unwellness. Ah, no wait, it's a fort where bad experiments happened. My bad, too much Silent Hill going around. Anyway, here's the trailer. There's a bit where a monster gets his arm blown off and I actually whince. Poor freak. Read more

June 6, 2025

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