Management News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Songs Of Conquest is a strategy-RPG with some of the most handsome pixel art around. Steam tells me I've played its Early Access release for 0.7 hours, which was long enough to know that I wanted to play more and would wait for version 1.0. I won't have to wait much longer. It's now got a May 20th release date.

"Nosophobia" is the fear of disease, "bathophobia" is the fear of depths, and "devlogphobia" is a mixture of nosophobia and bathophobia produced by reading Steam posts about Norland, a systems-rich and plague-ridden medieval colony sim from developers Long Jaunt and Hooded Horse, publisher of Manor Lords. Norland is sort of The Sims meets Dwarf Fortress meets RimWorld. It gives you charge of several new kingdoms that have sprouted from the corpse of a fallen Empire and are now feuding for supremacy.

The high-fidelity rustic hurly-burly of Manor Lords is all very well, but some of us yearn for a simpler and perhaps, more elegant age, when city builders looked like a bunch of copulating squares, and could run on PCs with approximately the computing power of a slice of bread (toasted, but not buttered). Step forward Mini Settlers, which has a free prologue version you might try if you're weary of Manor Lording, or you've already exhausted the play possibilities of early access Franconia.

Every day, I wake up, and write about videogames, so it’s a strange feeling to realise I won’t be able to do that anymore, because videogames have been completed. Won. Done. Wonso. Doneso. Promise Mascot Agency is "the world's first (and best) open world mascot management crime drama." It's from Paradise Killer studio Kaizen Game Works Limited. You recruit Yokai-lookin' mascots. Yakuza are in it. You can upgrade your battered truck. You can play a tactical card game to help your mascots. Ikumi Nakamura, of Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo art-fame worked on it. Quick! Someone arrest these reprobates for voter fraud, because no one game should tick this many boxes.

Manor Lords is obviously this week's big survival-citybuilder game release, but I suspect Diluvian Winds is more my pace. It's a "relaxing management game" about building a town for anthropomorphic animals around the foot of a lighthouse, although exactly how relaxing will depend on your ability to prepare for tsunamis and other weather emergencies which can strike and destroy your buildings. It's out now.

I'm the kind of awful person who looks at the background actors in TV shows and wonders what life is like for e.g. the old woman who sells birdfeed in Trafalgar Square in Mary Poppins when said upper-middle class domestic isn't singing about her. What fate the Warcraft grunt when he is too old to work work? It's probably pretty bad, right? Now let me slop Innkeep down in front of you like a big bowl of rat stew. Developer Daniel Burke furnished me with a little playable slice, and boy, Innkeep is a grim old time. I mean that as a compliment.

Afternoon, conveyor belt fans! Good news, I think I may have discovered the first genuinely cosy automation game. Attempts have been made at cosy automation and automated cosiness in the past – Satisfactory is on the sunnier side, providing you enable the right settings, and Shapez 2 has lots of rounded edges. But IDK, there’s something about the ravages of mass industry that doesn’t quite gel with zoomorphic raccoon baristas and other such wholesome trappings. Have you ever encountered a cuddly smokestack? How about a cuddly just-in-time network?

It seems that Prison Architect 2 is going method in its approach to launching the 3D sequel to the jailhouse management game, as - like its inmates - it just can’t seem to secure a solid release. Originally due to arrive in March, before being pushed into May, developers Double Eleven have now shunted it all the way back to September.

Prison Architect 2 has been delayed once again. The upcoming jail sim sequel will now arrive this autumn, following the discovery of «unexpected issues occurring too often».

While Cities: Skylines 2 has made progress on the performance front, not everything about the troubled citybuilder is on the up. In fact, player reception to the recently released Beach Properties DLC has proven so un-sunny that both developers Colossal Order and publishers Paradox Interactive have issued a joint statement apologising for the state it launched in.

Cities Skylines 2 publisher Paradox Interactive and developer Colossal Order have issued a stark apology for the state of the game and the release of its recent DLC, admitting to fans: «We let you down».

Laysara: Summit Kingdom, the promising mountain-themed city builder from developer Quite OK Games and publisher Future Friends Games, has surprise launched on Steam, where it's expected to remain in early access for between six and 12 months.

Laysara: Summit Kingdom, a breathtakingly gorgeous city builder set in a fantasy world inspired by the Himalayan region, is out now in Steam early access. The meditative mountain environments are the sort of tranquil backdrop I’d happily stare out for hours, possibly with a Bonobo album and some incense, which is helpful, because the actual game is aiming to be quite a challenge.

I like close combat tactics, directing troop actions on a timeline, and breaching and clearing, but a recent revisit to Door Kickers revealed I no longer had the patience for its fiddly UI and grim scenarios.

Goblin Stone released almost a month ago, but we haven't written about it yet, and it feels like you should know about it. It's a turn-based RPG, it's a roguelike with permadeath, it's got XCOM-style base-building, its got card-based combat; it is extremely your sort of thing, if you're the exact statistical average of Rock Paper Shotgun readers.

Troubled city building game Cities: Skylines 2 is getting a little less troubled, as new patch 1.1.0f1 adds various performance and bug fixes alongside the main event: much requested mod support and tools in the form a nifty editor. We got a first look at the new editor tools last October, which looks to simplify the process by combining what was previously several different separate editors into a single application. It was later available only to some closed beta testers, but is now released for everyone. Emphasis on everyone, actually, since the tool looks refreshingly approachable, even for those with basically no modding experience.

Official mod support for Cities Skylines 2 is finally ready to begin its roll out, developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox have now said.

Final Factory has already impressed via a couple of demos. It's effectively 'Factorio in space': you construct space bases by chaining together machinery, protect by commanding ships and turrets to fight off alien invaders, then explore the galaxy to secure more resources.

I like a city builder, me, and newly revealed Beware Of Light, from tiny indie studio Bajka Games, has a interesting hook (and a Ronseal-type name, which you know I appreciate). Your advanced colony ship has veered off course, and you've crashed on a dead, desert planet with no water or fossil resources like oil. It's sort of a hot Frostpunk, because you have to manage manpower, there are limited resources to distribute, and nobody is going to help. You must live. What do now?

Back in 2014, KeeperRL had a handful of alpha releases and a successful IndieGogo funding campaign, and was due to be finished that year. Then the ambitious Dwarf Fortress-lite or Dungeon Keeper-heavy made its way through the player-voted Steam Greenlgiht process, at which point its developer decided, hey, why not work on this game for longer.

The Brew Barons unfolds in a horrifying world where most agricultural tasks and outdoor mechanical activities are carried out using the medium of heavily armed seaplanes. Need apples for cider? Fly through the trees, cannons ablazing. Need to gather wheat? Fly the plane through the field using its propeller as a scythe, with hardier types of wheat requiring tougher propeller blades. Need to haul up scavenge from the ocean floor? Use the plane's sea anchor as a rudimentary fishing claw. Need to open a box you found on the beach? The plane's the thing, etcetera.

The «biggest regret» of the developer behind Cities: Skylines 2 is the game's ongoing lack of modding support, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen has said.

SteamWorld Build publisher Thunderful said the game «fell slightly short of expectations», as its company restructure is «off to a good start».

The 3D sequel to Prison Architect has failed to impress the parole board it seems, as it’ll need to spend a little more time behind bars. After being revealed with a March 26th release date earlier this year, developers Double Eleven and publishers Paradox Interactive have announced that Prison Architect 2 will now launch in early May after being delayed by over a month.

Kingmakers has too much going on to easily summarise, but I'll try. Really, though, you should just click below and watch the trailer, which will surprise and delight you with its twists and scope in a way my words will not.

As far as bread goes, I'd say those unlimited top-ups you get with fancy meals can sometimes supersede the actual meal itself. A little swirl in olive oil and balsamic? Mwah, delicious. For a more regular transaction, I do love a multi-seeded loaf for the added texture. Now, would I say I like bread more than… anime? That's tough. But thankfully I don't need to decide, as there's a demo of a game out right now that combines both interests. In Aeruta you play as an anime girl who defeats monsters and uses their innards to fuel her bakery business. Perfect.

We've known about Moonlighter devs' upcoming RTS tower defence hybrid Cataclismo for a little while now. But now we know a couple more things. It's set to release in Q2 of this year, and there's a demo on Steam right now if you'd like to give it a try. Expect to make nice fortresses out of Lego-style bricks, then defend them from hordes of horrors. I'd say that's a recipe for a good time.

Prison Architect 2 was announced earlier this evening and will switch the carceral management sim to 3D when it releases on March 26th.

Publisher Alliance Arts and developer Unknown X have released the second official trailer roguelike dungeon builder Touhou Dungeon Maker: The Labyrinth of Heart.

I think I might just like games in which lots of particles fly around the screen. That's was a big part of the appeal of To The Core, an incremental game with the spectacle of Vampire Survivors. I think it's now the reason I want to play the oddly named (the) Gnorp Apologue. It's an incremental town builder about... gnorps.

Publisher Armor Games Studios and developer Gummy Cat will release cozy management adventure game Bear & Breakfast for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on December 12, the companies announced.

Cities: Skylines 2 came out last month, and while a sequel to a mega-poplar citybuilder should have been cause for concrete celebration, the reviews were sadly mixed. Most of the criticism was directed at the game’s performance woes (not teeth-related, apparently) and bugs (which are always a problem in cities, no?) In an effort to iron out the game’s technical problems and implement the mod editor, Paradox and developers Colossal Order have now delayed post-launch content included in the Expansion Pass.

Cities: Skylines 2 developer Colossal Order has delayed the release of scheduled content within the game's expansion pass, while it continues to improve the main game's performance.

At the time of Star Fleet II: Krellan Commander's release, I was still learning to spell and wrestling with the whole "going to the toilet independently" business, but if I'd had access to an MS-DOS PC between potty-training sessions, I dare say I'd have tried my hand at being an intergalactic warlord. Originally published in 1989 by Interstel Corporation and distributed by a little-known company called Electronic Arts, it's an absurdly in-depth and fiddly-looking space sim in which you fly around a randomly generated cosmos in your horrible Klingon-adjacent battlecruiser, blowing up or commandeering other ships, bombarding or invading planets, and generally speaking being a nuisance.

Many grand strategy games let you hop from a map down to a battle layer where you can control a real-time scrap. Kaiserpunk is the first time I've seen a grand strategy game that lets you hop down instead to a citybuilding layer, where the construction of alternate history early-20th century industrial towns will determine whether you have the economic power to win the war.

A huge part of Cities: Skylines appeal lay in its modding community, which expanded on the citybuilder's robust foundations with new maps, assets and more for years post-release. Cities: Skylines 2 is still waiting on its own official mod support, but Paradox have offered a new update on progress, saying that the editor is "a couple of months" from being in a releasable state, with no concrete timeline as yet.

Roguelike management game Backpack Hero has left Early Access and is now available for Switch and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, and Itch.io at a launch discount price of $16.99, publisher and developer Jaspel, and publishers IndieArk and Different Tales announced. The price will change to $19.99 on November 22.

Official modding tools for Cities: Skylines 2 will take at least a couple of months to be ready for an initial release, developer Colossal Order has said.

Dungeon Keeper is a stone cold, never-bettered classic of the management genre, no matter how many other games try to mimic its devilish setting and moreish progression. The only issue is that the 1997 original is a little ugly and constrained by modern standards.

I enjoy games where enemies are a resource as much as a hazard. It's not enough that you can farm them for XP by killing them while they respawn, though. I also want to make the monsters appear myself.

Cities: Skylines 2 studio Colossal Order has pledged not to release paid DLC for its city building sequel until its heavily criticised performance issues have been «fixed to our standards».

Cities: Skylines 2 devs Colossal Order have said that the game known as the Builder of Cities and Destroyer of Framerates (at least, known as of me typing this) won’t get any paid expansions while they’re still getting its performance up to scratch.

“Blasphemous” management simulation game The Kindeman Remedy will launch for PC via Steam on November 16, publisher 3D Realms and developer Troglobytes Games announced.

Publisher Alliance Arts, and publisher and developer Unknown X have announced roguelike dungeon builder Touhou Dungeon Maker: The Labyrinth of Heart for PC (Steam). A release date was not announced.