Slay the Spire meets Dorfromantik in cozy city-building strategy game

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When you think of city builders over the last decade, there’s only one name that still comes to mind: Cities: Skylines. The breakout success for Colossal Order and (at the time) the biggest game launch Paradox Interactive had ever seen, it’s effectively came to represent the entire genre, as other city builder franchises faded away. Having gone hands on with the game, Cities: Skylines 2 looks set to repeat the feat and cement itself at the top of the genre.

Netflix is back at it again at Google Play with a new title. Unlike some previous releases, Vikings: Valhalla is a game that is very much intertwined with the streaming platform, it’s based on one of their hit shows.

It's Monopoly, but with monsters, bounties, and the Law of Surprise.

A Starfield fan known for creating miniature stop-motion-style animations has done exactly that and is giving fans a glimpse into the RPG's everyday world.

In 2016, Paradox released Stellaris, its first space-based 4X grand strategy game. It allowed players to take on the role of an upstart interstellar empire, establish colonies, manage their government, forge alliances, and crush their enemies. The game’s galaxy was vast and robust, but, as Polygon’s own Charlie Hall pointed out in his initial review, it was also fairly generic, a weakness that the modding community has sought to rectify by applying the aesthetics and history of their own favorite space operas overtop of it, such as Star Wars, Mass Effect, and of course, Star Trek. Not to be outdone, Paradox and developer Nimble Giant have been creating an officially licensed Star Trek 4X game, Star Trek: Infinite. Paradox offered me the opportunity to preview the game over Labor Day weekend, and those four days melted away.

Meta-horror visual novel Slay the Princess is locking in a date, just in time for the spookiest season. Black Tabby Games will unleash Slay the Princess on October 20, 2023 for PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam.

Way down in the underground rests the small golem Otto, almost but not quite fully shut down with only the smallest hint of energy left in its core.  Whatever used to power it returns one day and with a shudder Otto comes back to life, albeit abandoned and alone in a deep, dark cavern.  It revived near giant old machinery that, like Otto, was cold and unused but still functional, if only someone was still around to use it.  With nothing better to do Otto sets out to discover what happened to its world, slowly transforming the empty caves into a bustling factory capable of supplying the crystal machine Apotheos with the needed components to expand the boundaries of its world towards some answers.

Throne of Bone has a name that just rolls off the tongue and, from the look of it, this roguelike-cum-deckbuilder-cum-autobattler will roll off the ol’ mouse-clicking finger plenty nicely when it releases into Early Access next month, too.

Mimimi Games of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Desperados 3 and the recently released Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is winding down. The studio announced that Shadow Gambit was its last game and will begin “slowly ramping down” over the next few months.

Cities: Skylines 2 aims to improve on the previous city-building game with a massive simulation upgrade that gives life to every single citizen in your city and lets you go full surveillance state on their major life events.

Three years after launch - and seven years after it hit Steam in Early Access - hit strategy game Factorio is getting its first expansion, and the designer of a notably similar mod is working on it.