Simulation News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

RPS was on holiday yesterday, which is fortuitous timing because it was April 1st and it meant we missed all the "jokes" (lies) the games industry likes to spread on that day each year.

This is just a quick reminder that Nintendo 3DS and Wii U online services will be discontinued next Monday, 8th April.

Publisher Spiral Up Games and developer AniYa Games Studio have released the Early Access launch trailer for Pathless Woods, a cozy open-world survival game inspired by ancient China culture and Byron’s poetry, which is due out for PC via Steam on April 3. A demo is available now.

I was scrolling on TikTok the other night when I discovered a new thing to worry about. Is Wordle about to run out words? Well, it's complicated. And also: no. But it's also interesting!

Publisher Kakehashi Games and developer ooze will release open-world sailing simulation RPG Sagres for Switch, the companies announced. A release date was not announced.

You can now explore one of Ukraine’s most iconic natural landmarks - and the largest salt mine in Europe - in Minecraft. The virtual replica of the Soledar salt mines and their surrounding town, occupied by Russia troops for the past year in real life, has been led by the wartorn country’s government in an effort to help rebuild a school destroyed during the conflict.

After delaying the launch of Homeworld 3 by two months to address criticism of the spacefleet shoot-o-strategy game's demo, developers Blackbird Interactive have now laid out what they're changing. Improved controls, tougher ships, more useful formations, better Attack Move command, more HUD options, and more types of War Games mode objectives are among the tweaks and improvements detailed by game director Lance Mueller in a 3000-word blogblast. "This past month, everyone was heads down discussing every post we saw from Steam, social, Reddit, Discord and beyond," he explained. They have plans.

Tomas Sala's Falconeer series will be a trilogy, the developer has announced.

I approve of the recent trend towards making building games as relaxing as possible (e.g. Summerhouse). Today sees the release of a new one on Steam, this one a teeny medieval city builder called Le Château that gives you strict limitations for building a castle. You can have a go of the demo for free - I like it a bunch.

Xbox head Phil Spencer wants to see more digital storefronts such as Epic and Itch.io on Microsoft's consoles.

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.

Palia, a cute-looking life sim MMO inspired by e.g. Stardew Valley, has been in beta since last year, but now it's officially out on Steam, where many more people can download and play it. With this launch comes a pretty substantial update - Patch 0.178, full notes here - which adds a new questline and Temple to explore, new furniture, and a bunch of new spring flowers and trees to grow in your garden. There is also a giant plushi frog, listed under 'Adjustments'. The patch notes say simply "What does he want? Does he come in peace?" which makes him sound way more sinister than I think he is, but as you can see from the screenshot, he isn't not sinister.

Here’s one for all you connoisseurs of the horrific consequences of your own actions. Regicide-em-up visual novel Slay the Princess’ new update brings with it new dialogue and music, fleshing out the game with additional choices, expanded scenes, and orchestral renditions of some choice tracks. The new content takes the form of new animations and “more than 3,000 words of additional and restructured dialogue choices and conversations.” That is easily enough words to tell the Stanley Parable-esque narrator that you’re on to him and whatever mind games he’s playing, with enough left over for the other voices in your head to make you doubt your own morality with alarming frequency.

Grab a pencil and start respooling, as tape-based Pokémon 'em up Cassette Beasts today revealed that the previously announced free update adding multiplayer will arrive on the 20th of May. Up to eight players will be able to explore together, as well as take part in two-player cooperative "raids" and duel each other. Also launching alongside this will be a collaboration with another Poké 'em up, Moonstone Island. Have a peek at all this in the video below.

Pathless Woods, a cozy open-world survival game inspired by ancient China culture and Byron’s poetry, will launch in Early Access for PC via Steam on April 3, publisher Spiral Up Games and developer AniYa Games Studio announced. A demo is currently available, and will be updated on March 23 to remove the online multiplayer feature that currently exists.

Dating simulation adventure game Bunny Garden will launch for Switch on April 18 and PC via Steam this spring for $22.99 / 2,980 yen, qureate announced.

Despite months in Steam Early Access and hundreds of positive player reviews, Stellaris Nexus is no more. Instead, the spin-off is taking the rare step of rebranding itself — dropping its Stellaris branding entirely — to launch with a new name.

Crazy Goat Games has announced Cthulhu-themed city builder Worshippers of Cthulhu for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC. It will launch in Early Access for PC via Steam in Q2 / Q3 2024, followed by a full release across all platforms in Q1 2025.

The developers behind the wonderful tile puzzler Dorfromantik have revealed the first teaser trailer for their next game. Currently known as Project Mango, the game will be made in collaboration with the German animation and edutainment YouTube channel Kurzgesagt - In A Nutshell, releasing in 2025. Not much is known about it right now, but come and have a watch of its teaser reveal below.

Mention Lionhead's '05 management sim about running a film studio and someone will crash through the wall, Kool-Aid Man style, to say they really liked it and there should be a remake or a sequel. In recent years there have been a few attempts to make a game like The Movies, with games like Moviehouse and Filmmaker Tycoon sitting pretty at 'mostly negative' status on Steam because they are not, in fact, like The Movies beyond the basic premise. But Blockbuster Inc. has shouldered its way into the conversation, wearing big puffy trousers, shouting through an old-timey megaphone, and openly billing itself as a "spiritual successor" to The Movies. It's launching on June 6th this year, but you can play the prologue on Steam for free right now.

Before a month of my life vanished into customising cards and rigging decks in Balatro, my desire to conquer dungeons by fixing gambling tools came from playing Slice & Dice. First released in 2020, it's a gauntlet of fantasy turn-based battles where most attacks, abilities, buffs, debuffs, and items are very cleverly handled by mapping them onto the faces of dice. Oh, you're going to make your dice so much better! Now Slice & Dice has finally arrived on Steam in search of a wider audience, accompanied by an update adding oodles of new heroes, enemies, items, and more. For newcomers, hey, it has a demo.

Arkane Studios co-founder Raphaël Colantonio has teased his next game at Wolfeye Studios.

The winners of the 2024 Independant Games Festival were announced at GDC last night, and it was Visai Games' Venba that came home with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. The cooking adventure was up for four IGF awards in total, including nominations for Excellence in Audio, Narrative and Visual Art. But there was no runaway winner at this year's IGF Awards, with all prizes going to completely different indie games. Come and celebrate the full list of winners below.

Sea of Thieves is celebrating its sixth anniversary today, 20th March, and to celebrate, Rare has given an unprecedented look at the year ahead for its multiplayer pirate game, with 2024 bringing the likes of windy horns, roaming warships, and portable grappling guns that let you whizz around the place with giddy abandon.

Publisher Playtonic Friends and developer Canteen will release corporate management simulation game CorpoNation: The Sorting Process will for Xbox Series, Xbox One, and Switch on May 9, the companies announced.

Procedurally-generated voxel factory-building and automation sandbox game FOUNDRY will launch in Early Access for PC via Steam on May 2, publisher Paradox Interactive and developer Channel 3 announced.

Digital pet RPG adventure game Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago will launch for PC via Steam and itch.io, iOS, and Android on April 30, publisher Astrolabe Games and developer 14 Hours Productions announced. It will support English, Japanese, and Chinese language options.

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

Mojang have announced a new Minecraft subscription service, the Marketplace Pass, which grants access to a catalogue of "150+" community-created Minecraft thingy-ma-bobs. Skins, adventure worlds, survival spawns, mashups, bizarre textures - with a Marketplace Pass, the wider monetisable universe of Minecraft is your (rented) oyster, except that this being Minecraft, the oyster looks like a weird underwater trapdoor. Here's a trailer.

Mojang has announced a monthly subscription for Minecraft called Marketplace Pass, which gives payers access to «150+ different content packs» from the in-game Marketplace.

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.

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.

As if colony sim RimWorld doesn't already have enough ways for your sci-fi frontier adventurers to die, a new expansion titled Anomaly is goiong to add "all manner of monstrous, mysterious, and maddening threats". It's out in around a month, and will be paired with a free 1.5 update for the base game.

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.

Gameloft has announced that it’s developing a Dungeons & Dragons game for PC and consoles.

The team behind Disney Dreamlight Valley is working on a new game based on Dungeons and Dragons.

RimWorld, the acclaimed sci-fi colony sim from Ludeon Studios, will soon be besieged by «monstrous creatures, mind-bending mysteries, infiltrating parasites, and sanity-shredding phenomena» when its new horror-themed expansion, Anomaly, arrives on Steam next month.

CCP Games have shared a few more details about Project Awakening, a new game or at least, "survival experience" set in the Eve Online universe, which is getting a closed playtest from 21st May 2024. Project Awakening is a single-shard affair - that is, one in which all players inhabit the same world, rather than being split up across servers or instances. It's "built upon the principles of freedom, consequence, and mastery within a living universe", and "represents the next step in CCP Games' journey to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life", which, you know, wind your neck in.

Following the launch of Sea of Thieves' radical structural overhaul last month, Rare is readying to release a new mid-season update next week that'll add anti-cheat and subscription-free solo play to its swashbuckling pirate adventure. Plus, a big 2024 content preview is on the way as part of Sea of Thieves' sixth anniversary celebrations.

TOHO animation has announced a P.A. Works-produced anime adaptation of the Edelweiss-developed farming action game Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. It will air in 2024.

The New York Times has issued a takedown notice to Reactle, a Wordle clone, which has meant around 1900 other versions of the game have now been taken down.

It’s been coming up on three years since Frostpunk 2 was revealed as a full-blown sequel to the frosty survival city-management game, which itself turns six years old (!!) next month. After we finally got a proper look at 11 bit Studios' beautifully brutal follow-up last year, we now know when we’ll be able to brave the unforgiving tundra and the nightmarish climate of, uh, July?

This War of Mine developer 11 bit studios has at last unthawed a launch date for Frostpunk 2. The chilly society survival sequel will launch for PC on 25th July.

Publisher PlayWay and developer Frozen District have released the Spring update for House Flipper 2, as well as announced that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series versions have been delayed by three weeks from their previously planned March 21 release date to April 10. This delay will allow the development team extra time to optimize the gameplay for console certification, as well as include both the Spring and April Fools’ Day updates.

It's a new month, which means a new set of games arriving on Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service. The arrivals begin today with stompy, old school shooter Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, and will continue before the advent of spring with the mechs-and-plants craft 'em up Lightyear Frontier and telekinetic adventure Control Ultimate Edition, among others.

Xbox has announced the new games coming to Game Pass this March, including Control and day one games Lightyear Frontier and MLB The Show 24.

The studio behind last year's supernatural, neo-noir shooter El Paso, Elsewhere has announced its next game Life Eater.

Bandai Namco has announced Gakuen The Idolmaster for iOS and Android. It will launch this spring in Japan. Pre-registration is available now via App Store, Google Play, and the official website.

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?

Eco is a very ambitious, wildly reactive multiplayer survival game in which you try to save the world without accidentally destroying it. There's a meteor scheduled to slamdunk the planet in 30 days, and in that time, you and your fellow players must progress from raising log cabins in the woods to building the means to develop technologies that might somehow avert the apocalypse. The trouble is, pioneering said apocalypse-averting technologies might itself bring about disaster in a gameworld that simulates things like habitat death, species extinction, air pollution and catastrophic flooding.

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.

Space Crew is superficially similar to FTL: you manage a crew in space as you deal with peril, put out fires and fight off aliens. It's set apart by between-mission management, during which you get the steady dopamine drip of ship, crew and equipment upgrades and customisation.

If you, like me, fell rather in love with Visai Games' narrative cooking game Venba last year, I have good news. Its Cookbook DLC is on the way, with a release date set just two weeks away.

Netherlands-based studio Feel Free Games has announced farming adventure RPG Luma Island for PC (Steam). It will launch in 2024.

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.

Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has suffered layoffs amid unrest due to relocation and accusations of a «highly toxic company», reports suggest.

If you were to buy every Stellaris expansion and content pack separately at full price, it would run you £227.62. To make that perhaps a little less daunting, Paradox have launched an optional monthly subscription service that gives you access to all the expansions. They've done this for several of their other grand strategy games before. It starts at £8.50 for one month then offers discounts for longer terms. While I can see niche uses for the option, I certainly wouldn't want to pay for this regularly. Would you?

By this headline, I really don't mean that Warhammer 40k is rubbish. But if you have no idea what it is apart from "thing Henry Cavill got made fun of for enjoying on the Graham Norton Show" or "reason I walk past a bunch of beardy lads taking a vape break outside a small shop with steamed up windows every time I go down Lower Glanmire Road", PowerWash Simulator's latest officially licensed IP tie-in DLC could act like a sort of gateway drug. A first step on the path to buying a bunch of miniatures. It's out now, for £6.50/$8/€8 on Steam, and it's very fun.

Against The Storm is a roguelite city builder that features lizards and beavers, as they attempt to survive in a universe where it doesn't stop raining. We gave it a Bestest Best badge when it launched into 1.0, and since then the developers promised more major updates. Patch 1.2 is the latest of the bunch, and when it arrives next week it's bringing with it a "consumption/production" window, upgrades to the Blight Post, and lots of balance changes.

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.

Publisher Kasedo Games and developer SomaSim have announced business tycoon game sequel Rise of Industry 2 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store). A release date was not announced.

Disney Dreamlight Valley's first major content update of 2024 arrives this Wednesday, 28th February, introducing Monsters, Inc.'s Sully and Mike Wazowski to the village — and ahead of its arrival, developer Gameloft has detailed everything this week's free patch will bring.

Honkai: Star Rail predecessor Honkai Impact 3rd will drop its massive Part 2 update later this week, shifting the hack-and-slash action RPG’s story to the new planet of Mars, introducing a new main character and revamping its aerial combat.

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.

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

What happens when you combine two great puzzle games? You get one puzzle game which makes me, an accredited professional fool, feel dizzy with noncomprehension. That game is Sokobond Express, which launched yesterday and combines the atom-shoving chemistry of Sokobond with the route-planning puzzling of Cosmic Express. So you have to draw paths around a grid to gather atoms to correctly build a desired molecule. That's all. Just molecular chemistry and pathing, at the same time. Oh, my poor foolish head.

Yesterday I was off sick with a fever and, as I often do when I'm laid up ill, immediately set out to consume the most nihilistic and depressing entertainment media I could find. On the film front, I watched Session 9, in which some men hired to remove asbestos from a collapsing 19th century asylum do not have a very nice time. On the game front, I played The Tribe Must Survive, a colony management sim from Walking Tree Games GmbH and Starbreeze Publishing, which is now available in early access.

Sons Of The Forest launches out of early access and into 1.0 today, bringing with it a whole host of tweaks and improvements. Most notably, there's a new ending, new mutants, new points of interest, proximity chat, a creative mode, and new uses for the game's mysterious artifacts. The rest of the changelog is an exhausting list of bullet points with the occasional hidden gem, like the introduction of raccoons and golf cart radio stations to give your drives some added pizazz.

Behaviour Interactive has announced its latest Dead by Daylight collaboration, and it's none other than heavy metal band Iron Maiden.

nDreams has announced virtual reality city creator Little Cities: Bigger! for PlayStation VR2. It is an enhanced version of Little Cities. It will launch on March 12.

As expected, Microsoft yesterday confirmed that four of their games are headed to rival consoles: Pentiment to PlayStations 4 & 5 and Nintendo Switch; Hi-Fi Rush to PS5; Grounded to PS4, PS5, and Switch; and Sea Of Thieves to PS5. It's nice to see barriers between systems coming down and all, and it'll likely have consequences of note to serious businessheads, but what relevance does this have for us as a PC gaming website? Well! Grounded and Sea Of Thieves will support cross-platform multiplayer, so we'll be able to play them with our consolatory chums. That's nice.

Publisher Paradox Interactive and developer Double Eleven have delayed prison management simulator Prison Architect 2 from its perviously planned March 26 release date to May 7. It will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam for $39.99 / £34.99 / €39.99.

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.

Alawar has announced Beholder: Conductor, a spin-off of the Beholder series in which players take on the role of a conductor on the Determination Bringer train. It will be available for PC via Steam. A release date was not announced.

The clever beings at PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab know just how to keep us coming back for more. Not content with tasking us all with scrubbing Tomb Raider's Croft Manor or the Seventh Heaven bar from Final Fantasy 7, it is now setting us the challenge of cleaning up the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40K.

Xenonauts 2 received its biggest update yet last night, adding a bunch of new things to the early access X-COM-like that will be sure to please your rude Chief Science Officer Gaius Baltar James Callis whatever his name is SMUG FACE. Alongside a brand-new Cruiser UFO to pilfer for new technology to help fight back against your alien invaders, the Milestone 3 update also brings new story missions, weapons and vehicles, extending the campaign's play time from 180 in-game days all the way up to 260.

My experience with Warhams isn't flat zero - I had some minifigs when I was a teenager and played a few of the Dawn Of War video games - but I haven't actively checked in on it for a while. I know enough to make "[x] for the [x] throne!" jokes, basically. My experience with cleaning-stuff-sim PowerWash Simulator is extensive, though, and I was excited when the crossover with Warhammer 40K was teased a while back. Last night we got a full trailer and release date of Frebruary 27th - next week! - and I'm now earnestly very excited. The trailer is both very funny and shows off massive things to clean. Win win, innit.

Physics-based simulation game Cricket Through the Ages will launch for Switch and PC via Steam on March 1, publisher Devolver Digital and developer Free Lives announced.