Open world News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Armadillos, the grumpy pistachio nuts of the animal kingdom, have been added to Minecraft in a recent mob update. You can brush them to harvest "scutes", the boney armour plating of the animal's back, which you can then use to craft armour for pet wolves. Speaking of wolves, this update also sees an explosion in canine diversity, with eight varieties of the wolf now appearing across different biomes. Awoooooo!

The announcement trailer for Lost Legions opens with a Roman Emperor bellowing “GIVE ME BACK MY LEGIONS” like a kid who’s just had his pudding taken away. I'd just had a big swig of coffee before watching, and was instantly swept off by visions of an apoplectic Roman bigwig rampaging through the forests of darkest Germania, gluing abducted legionnaires together into a sort of Octavian katamari... and then they revealed that it’s another open world survival game, with no less than two trailer beats dedicated to the act of hacking down a tree.

My experience with actual flight simulators typically amounts to approaching the runway far, far too quickly at far, far too perpendicular an angle, so perhaps I’m better off just flying folded-up bits of A4. Happily, that’s exactly what Paper Sky, a "semi-open world paper plane adventure" from solo indie dev Brute Force, is offering.

Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy may play the villain in Far Cry 7.

Star Wars: Outlaws isn't just an open world retread of existing Star Wars locations, like Tatooine. It contains a whole new moon of developer Massive Entertainment's creation - Toshara, which is home to the Pyke criminal gang and visually defined by huge deposits of crystalline orange material and cities hacked out of mountains. What's it like adding a whole bloody world to Star Wars? Here are some quick thoughts from Massive Entertainment's creative director Julian Gerighty.

If you're a person of exceptional taste, you'll already known developer The Gentlebros' adorable quick-fire action-RPG series Cat Quest is a bit of a winner, so you'll likely be chuffed to hear the next instalment — Pirates of the Purribean — will be arriving for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and Steam on 8th August. Oh, and a demo's out for Switch today.

Get your dealing hands ready, as Star Wars Outlaws will let us all participate in a round of Sabacc or two.

Following a mild-to-moderate outcry, Ubisoft have clarified that queasy worm gangster Jabba The Hutt isn't, in fact, a Star Wars Outlaws special edition or season pass exclusive. The apparently much-beloved star slug will appear in every edition of the game, but if you scrape together the credits for the Gold or Ultimate Editions, you'll get access to a Jabba's Gambit mission as part of the game's season pass.

Ubisoft has responded to the outcry over Star Wars Outlaws' Jabba the Hutt mission, which will be available at the game's launch only to owners of the game's pricey Gold or Ultimate Editions.

Perhaps this should go without saying, but there's no need to drop £115 on Star Wars: Outlaws' expensive Ultimate Edition, which includes an «exclusive» mission with Jabba the Hutt.

A Japanese Pokémon fan faces fines and a potential prison sentence after his arrest for selling hacked versions of the game's creatures.

EA's Black Panther game will be open world.

Just Cause developer Avalanche has confirmed plans to enter a collective bargaining agreement with Swedish unions.

Ubisoft Massive's open world action-adventure Star Wars Outlaws will release on 30th August 2024, according to a new story trailer which introduces us properly to "emerging scoundrel" Kay Vess, aka Hannah Solo. If you haven't had the pleasure, Kay is a budding crook on the run from her underworld boss, a journey that sees her tangling with several other Star Wars crime syndicates on various planets. It really feels like they're keeping a lot of the headline Star Wars stuff at a respectful distance for this one: yes, Jabba the Hutt makes an appearance, but there's nary a whiff of The Force, Jedi or Sith in the trailer and not once does anybody build a Death Star.

Ubisoft has revealed a new Star Wars Outlaws story trailer — and with it, confirmation of the game's release date.

You know me and Soulslikes. We're not particularly best buddies most of the time. We've had a couple of successful outings over the years with the likes of Death's Door and Hollow Knight and company, but anything with pure FromSoft blood running through its veins has always left me cold. Void Sols, however, is an upcoming Soulslike that feels like it might be able to satisfy both sides of the 'git gud' camp, appealing to nervous dodge-rollers like myself while also giving hardened Elden Ringers a run for their money. It's all down to its plentiful supply of approachable customisation options, allowing you to ratchet up the difficulty if you're finding things a bit easy, or knock it down, reapply your stat points, and even create whole new loadouts - each with their own individual stat combinations - to win the day. It's all wonderfully considerate, and having played the free demo that's just launched on Steam, I'd strongly recommend giving it a go if you're feeling in need of a little training ahead of Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree coming out.

Fantasy craft-o-building survival sandbox game Enshrouded today launched its first big content update, two months after entering early access. You can now enter the Hollow Halls, a series of challenging dungeons scattered around the world with new enemies and rewards. Or at the opposite end of the intensity spectrum, you can now decorate your home with loads of lovely potted plants then sit down on a chair to admire them. Come watch this video showing off these changes and many more.

GTA 6 is facing development troubles, leaving leadership “nervous” that the hotly anticipated open world crime-athon could be “falling behind’ expected schedules. That’s according to Kotaku, who were told by an anonymous source that studio heads are “worried” that the game could miss 2025 completely and not see release until 2026. Kotaku were told that the studio is still “aiming” for a Spring 2025 release date, but sources feel Fall of the same year is more plausible. However, the title could be delayed until 2026 as a “fallback plan.”

GTA 6's development has reportedly fallen so far behind, the eagerly-anticipated game may miss its 2025 release window.

Last night, IGN posted a news piece about how Undawn, a free-to-play survival game starring Will Smith as some kind of apocalypse pal called Trey, has been a massive flop. Released in June 2023 for mobile and PC, Undawn had an allegedly huge budget, according to Reuters sources, but which only brought in under $300K last month, as estimated by research firm Appamgic. And on hearing this news everyone went: "Sorry, what are you talking about?"

Ubisoft's open-world RPG Star Wars Outlaws has been rated in South Korea as adults only due to its inclusion of in-game gambling elements.

Assassin's Creed Jade, the upcoming major open-world mobile game set in Ancient China, will now likely arrive in 2025.

Developer Mojang has warned anyone playing Minecraft through the Xbox app on PC not to download its latest update as it could cause their worlds to disappear.

The Pokémon Company's chatty former legal boss has thanked the media for publicising projects the company may then be compelled to shut down.

Epic has revealed the next batch of freebies heading to the Epic Games Store, with Call of the Wild: The Angler and Invincible Presents: Atom Eve both free to download from 21st March.

Pokémon fans have found a small tease for upcoming Legends game Z-A in Scarlet and Violet.

V Rising's two years of early access development are almost at an end; Stunlock Studios has announced its acclaimed vampire survival game will get its 1.0 release for PC on 17th may, with a PlayStation 5 release to follow later this year.

Following Enshrouded's impressive early access launch back in January, developer Keen Games has shared the first iteration of its 2024 roadmap for the co-op survival action-RPG, featuring the likes of animal farming, weather, world events, and more.

In a real "no thanks, I hate it" move that seems to be aimed at making me, specifically, have some kind of coronary event, Walker Labs and Readyverse studios have announced a new battle royale game, designed with Ernest "I Tip My Hat To You, Sir!" Cline. Cline, who you will remember is the writer of Ready Player One, is apparently one of the co-founders of Readyverse, and I'm sad to see he's still in search of a second idea. Open (that's the name of the game, but it's in all caps in their press assets) is an "immersive multiverse filled with nostalgia-infused biomes featuring characters and cultural legends across iconic franchises", coming to early access this year. Also it somehow involves web3.

If you dislike getting stabbed in the back in first-person games, you might not like Voin. If you like ravaged Gothic masonry and dramatic evening skies, you might like Voin. If you dislike fighting fireball-lobbing demons with a sword, you might not like Voin. If you like open-ended, changeable levels full of loot and secrets, you might like Voin. If you are confused about whether you'll like or dislike Voin, you might want to try this dark fantasy action-RPG yourself during the first public Steam playtest on Friday, March 8th.

Terminator: Survivors, the previously untitled open-world Terminator game announced by publisher Nacon back in July 2022, has resurfaced with a new cinematic trailer and a Steam early access launch day of 24th October this year.

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.

This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we discuss the shocking news that the next big Pokémon game is mysteriously set to arrive in 2025. Hey, that sounds a lot like the intro to last week's episode, when we were discussing Switch 2! Say, could Pokémon Legends: Z-A also be set to arrive on Nintendo's next console?

Austrian developers Microbird released a new trailer for their upcoming Alpine dungeon-crawler Dungeons Of Hinterberg over the weekend, giving us a closer look at some of the eponymous dungeon environments we'll be biffing monsters in come its release later this summer. In addition to the previously revealed mountainsides and glacial snow peaks, it looks like Hinterberg will have a big green swamp to travel to as well. Question is: will it be a poison FromSoft variety of swamp? Or something more innocuous? Hard to tell with that searingly green water on display, but one thing is certain: with Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree and its confirmed poison swamp launching on June 21st, this summer won't be short on big bog energy.

Once Human – a multiplayer open-world supernatural survival game coming to PC and mobile devices – is running a fresh beta test from 28th March, 2024.

Palworld developer Pocketpair insists it has no reason to be alarmed about the hit game's dwindling player count.

I love the idea of cosy living, which is why it was that Tiny Living update that dragged me back into The Sims 4 for a few years there. The issue of course, is that in real life, if forced to live in a space the size of the interior of a camper van, I would pile things on every surface within about 12 hours. Chaos would reign. I would hate it. But I don't hate the idea of it, which is why i enjoy things like Outbound, which is a game about living in a camper van.

In a financial report released today, Ubisoft said they intend to release Star Wars Outlaws in 2024. That was already expected. More interesting is that Assassin's Creed Codename Red, the stab 'em up set in feudal Japan, is also due to launch in the "fiscal year 2025". That's also known as "before March 2025", for all you non-CEOs.

Developer Arthur 'Mr. Podunkian' Lee, who worked with ConcernedApe on Stardew Valley, has announced the release window for his own forthcoming life sim.

Shared-world puzzle game Islands of Insight now has a release date: 13th February.

Now see here Ollie Toms, supposed guides editor of this supposed videogames website - if Enshrouded really does have "the best building system in the survival genre" then why does the floor of my hovel look like a petrified sneeze? I was innocently carving myself a nice stone foundation last night when the Devil jogged my elbow and I dug a massive, raggedy trench straight through it. I've spent an hour now trying to fill in the trench and flatten it out, to no avail. There's always a jaggedy bit right in the middle, and I'm getting displaced trypophobia from the awareness that my efforts have seeded the terrain beneath with random cavities.

What do you do after running away from the big city to start a new life in the country? You run away from the country to start a new life in the big city, obviously. Former Stardew Valley developer Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee has announced Sunkissed City, a life simulation game set in a delightful coastal burb that's reportedly "pumping with funky vibes and quirky characters", together with migraines, stretches of dead water and horrible sewer monsters.

US Pokémon fans will now need to wait until 7th March to watch the rebooted Pokémon Horizons: The Series on Netflix.

I'm pretty sure I've written about this somewhere already - I may have expressed it to a therapist - but when I was a lad, I had a recurring nightmare about a place called Snake World. It was a fizzing neon labyrinth that was both home to various evil snakes and sort of made of snakes in probably-Freudian ways.

I have a sneaking affection for slightly jarring genre hybrids - games like the relatively recent Disintegration and the much older Battlezone 2, which smush action mechanics together with real-time strategy, or the rather more elegant Puzzle Quest, in which you roll around a parchment landscape fighting wizards using the power of match-3. New open world RPG Archaelund, which launched in early access this week, and was brought to my attention by RPS supporter cpt_freakout, has something of that curious enchantment to it.

Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread creators Bossa Studios have laid off around a third of their staff, with 19 people departing the London, UK-based independent in December due to what co-founder Henrique Olifiers has called "a perfect storm of events" - heavy competition from blockbuster games at the backend of last year, increased operating costs, and delayed funding decisions across the industry.

Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's upcoming open world Star Wars game, is set to release "late this year", according to Disney. Announced via a Disney Parks blog post of all things, Star Wars Outlaws ranks as the No.22 most "Ooooh-Worthy Thing" out of the 2024 Disney Experiences line-up - which, considering the list only stretches to 24 entries is a bit of an unfair burn on the game, if you ask me, especially when No.21 is... *checks notes* new Disney Eats and Stitch clothes collections.

Ubisoft's upcoming open world Star Wars game Outlaws looks to be set for a «late» 2024 release.

Yesterday, The Pokémon Company announced it will add an epilogue to the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet DLC The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero next month.

Toby Fox has remixed Ed Sheeran's song Celestial in the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet DLC The Indigo Disk.

The latest DLC for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet lets players explore Paldea as their pocketed creatures, to some adorable and hilarious results.

Lawrence «Florida Joker» Sullivan is demanding $2 million from Rockstar Games for allegedly using his likeness in GTA 6 without consent.

Grand Theft Auto 6's first trailer has resulted in an M-class star's worth of reaction videos from YouTubers across the globe, but one that stands out from the army of gurning thumbnails is the response of Mike York. York is a professional animator who worked at Rockstar for 6 years, designing animations for both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Now he runs his own YouTube channel, York Reacts, and naturally he had some things to say about GTA6's trailer.

How do you follow-up a game that attempts to simulate an entire universe for your exploratory enjoyment? Hello Games has just answered that very question with the reveal of its next title, Light No Fire, a co-operative adventure set on a procedurally generated fantasy planet.

Players will be able to play as their captured creatures in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's DLC, The Indigo Disk.

This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we discuss the first ever trailer for GTA 6 which was finally released following a tease from Rockstar, after the trailer leaked online ahead of schedule.

Publisher THQ Nordic has announced Outcast: A New Beginning will release on 15th March, 2024.

Islands Of Insight was described to me by Katharine earlier as "Talos Principle: The MMO", and yep, that seems about right. It's a "shared world" puzzle game with toga-wearing characters and architecture seemingly littered with marble columns. It also now has a release window of February 2024 and a new trailer, below.

I was just pondering writing something about Subnautica, inspired by revelations that there’s a new Subnautica project on the boil, and along comes the decidedly Subnautica-esque Honeycomb: The World Beyond with a trailer. Developed by Polish team Frozen Way, whose other projects include, erm, Hairdresser Simulator, it casts you as Hennessy, a human xenobiologist who is starting afresh on the alien planet of Sota7.

Warner Bros. has denied claims its upcoming Wonder Woman project will be a live-service game.

The open world co-op survival game I liked most was Wurm Online, in which every action was performed via a right-click menu and we needed a town meeting to discuss who would spend the hours necessary to flatten a small patch of land.

James Cameron’s Avatar franchise has always felt like a very natural fit for the realm of video games – honestly, the movies already kind of feel like games – and yet, It’s never really worked out. Ubisoft made a weak attempt at making an Avatar game back in 2009 and, until now, that’s been about it. Well, Ubisoft is taking another crack at it with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a new large-scale open-world adventure from The Division developer Massive Entertainment set to launch in December.

If you love The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker but wish it had more blood, death and inclement weather in it, consider Sands of Aura. Released out of early access today, this is a top-down fantasy action-RPG set in a swirling, post-apocalyptic world in which you build up a town and sail between island dungeons in a sandship.

The zombie apocalypse may be inevitable, but you can get good practice for it by playing these titles!

Superhero games are more popular now than they’ve ever been, and the best ones let you roam around the various cities and worlds they protect in order to have the most fun! Like these ones for example.

Night Stones had me at "inspired by the classics like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Final Fantasy 7." The upcoming open world indie adventure game from the solo developer at Advance Nine has reached half of its funding goal on Kickstarter in just 48 hours, and it's easy to see why.

Square Enix is touring its highly anticipated RPG, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, to let the world sample what was demoed at Tokyo Game Show a few weeks ago. Its most recent stop brought it to New York City during New York Comic Con. Behind closed doors, Square Enix invited select media to give the upcoming action-RPG a spin. Our early impressions are incredibly promising, as Rebirth builds upon Final Fantasy VII Remake's excellent foundation by widening the game's scope and combat options. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is shaping up to be a monstrously large PlayStation 5 game, and one we can’t wait to play when it launches on February 29, 2024.

In a gaming world that often dictates our every move with hand-holding tutorials and predetermined quests, “Project: MIST” emerges as a breath of fresh, terrifying air. This open-world survival horror game, developed by Chicken Launcher and published by Awaken Realms, is set to redefine the genre. Gamers can anticipate an immersive experience like no other, with no forced quests and the utmost freedom to dictate their choices as they navigate through an enigmatic island shrouded in mystery.

The racing genre in video games has been increasing in popularity ever since titles started to grow in scale. Whether it was due to a giant open world to explore, or a racing simulator title that puts you in the seat of a professional driver, gamers all around have become very particular when it comes to the feel of in-game driving mechanics.

Developer Pathea has recently revealed a new gameplay trailer for My Time at Sandrock, the spiritual successor to My Time at Portia which highlights everything from character customization to how things play out in the open-world and much more. Check out the trailer down below.

Life By You wants to be one of the most open-ended, customizable life sims, yet despite its broad simulation it’s already looking like it captures the kind of lived-in vibe that The Sims 4 often falls short on, setting the bar for EA’s next project. In a new gameplay demo, general manager Rod Humble shows off how the upcoming project from Cities Skylines 2 and Crusader Kings 3 publisher Paradox Interactive is shaping up.

Redfall was a disappointment upon release, thanks to its open world which felt - as Ed wrote in his Redfall review - like "playing through an already abandoned live service."

Redfall had me unbelievably excited almost as soon as it was first announced. An Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks game all about vampires? Sign me up, or so I thought. Unfortunately, the game’s launch didn’t go as planned and many of us were underwhelmed with the empty open world, lack of combat, performance, and other issues. Since that initial release, the developer has been hard at work to improve gameplay and more in Redfall with patches. Arkane Studios’ recent major update addresses a lot of these problems, breathing new life into the game.

The Call of Duty franchise is promising some intriguing changes to its formula with the upcoming Modern Warfare 3. Some of those changes will take the form of Open Missions in the single player campaign, but the most radical departure in the game is looking like its Zombies mode, which will be fully open world this time.

Along with Vampiric Powers, 5 new Endgame Bosses, and a host of quality-of-life improvements, the second Season of Diablo 4 will also introduce players to a new open world Event — called Blood Harvest. Season of Blood Livestream Summary Diablo 4 Season 2 Official Blog Post

Blizzard added a source to the previously datamined Crest of the Seething Flamekeeper back transmog, it will be the reward of the Tour of Duty: Emerald Dream open-world PvP achievement.

This isn't quite the way I imagined an early access game about being a shopkeeper would begin, but long before I rang up my first customer threw rocks at cardboard cutouts of cowboys, dodged lasers fired by hippo statues, and survived a shootout with a crowd of evil thugs sent after me by a ruthless corporate overlord.

There are a ton of open-world games and in that barrage of titles that hit the marketplace every year, there are a few open-world RPGs that need to be picked up and enjoyed. If you’re going into 2021 with some extra time to sink hours into a big open-world RPG then we have a few titles worth looking into. In this list, we’re going to break it into some great already released and a bit more modern available open-world RPG titles you can play right now along with a few games we are personally interested in trying out when they launch hopefully before 2021 wraps. So whether you need something new to try out or something that will be coming out shortly, we have a good list of games to keep on your radar.

Project Mugen is an upcoming gacha game developed by Naked Rain. In a new «disclosure of production information» trailer, we looked at the next monstrous timesink gunning for Genshin Impact's crown.