Simulation News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

I respect a game with wild ambition. Declaring your game "the spiritual successor to Freelancer" is bold and ambitious, considering how the spaceship sim is still so beloved after 20 years that our readers voted it your 16th favourite space game of all time. This ambition is wild when the tiny development team is led by someone best known for replacing Skyrim's dragons with Thomas The Tank Engine. So while I'm not much of a spaceship sort, I had to check out the demo for Underspace, which aims to combine Freelancer shoot-o-trading space action with a dash of Lovecraftian horror.

The studio behind Homeworld 3, Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker have cut a number of jobs, explaining this is "part of a realignment plan that's necessary because of new projects that were shelved by some of our partners". Blackbird Interactive haven't confirmed the number of people who lost their jobs, nor have they said what the mystery projects were. It's been a grim year for people working in the video games industry, with thousands losing their jobs, and we're only halfway through February.

Microsoft Flight Simulator's free Dune expansion is available now. It features the Royal Atreides Ornithopter from Denis Villeneuve's movies - with this entire DLC being a marketing tie-in with Dune: Part Two, which releases next month. It includes tutorials, time trials, and a "daring rescue mission".

Sons Of The Forest's 1.0 release date draws nearer. Players who prefer their cannibal islands as polished as possible can begin their visit on February 22nd, and there's now a release date trailer that shows exactly what kind of human monstrosities you can expect.

Xbox has teamed up with Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Entertainment to launch a free Dune expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

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.

Good news, star admirals with decent CPM! Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive's strategy escapade Homeworld 3 has a demo on Steam. It's been live for a few days, actually, but whether due to the bombardment of other Steam Fest goodies or my being led astray by the similar-but-nerdier Nebulous: Fleet Command, I didn't try it till last night. The demo includes a tutorial mission, four maps and the War Games mode, a one-to-three player affair which essentially turns Homeworld into a roguelike - pitching you up against unpredictable opposition while unlocking new fleets and doling out Artifacts that augment your vessels.

After years without a new The Sims game, it seems like three are likely to land in fairly close proximity - sort of, anyway. We know that Paradox’s ambitious competitor Life By You will arrive this June (assuming no more delays), while EA’s own free-to-play evolution of the OG life-sim series - currently codenamed Project Rene rather than The Sims 5 - is probably still a while off yet. Dropping somewhere in the middle will be Paralives, the promising Patreon-funded up-and-comer led by indie dev Alex Massé, which has been given a fresh look and confirmation of a release date sometime next year.

A Paradox game? Getting DLC? You are pure joshing, you are simply having me on. But no! It's true! Crusader Kings 3 is getting another year of updates, including two full expansions. The first of them, Legends Of The Dead, introduces the Black Death and will release on March 4th.

If you're a fan of The Sims and Sims-like experiences, it's quite an exciting time; work on The Sims 5, or whatever it'll be called, is officially underway. Then there's the imminent release of Paradox's Life By You following a number of delays, and even the charmingly lo-fi Tiny Life for old-school Sims fans. The game that's generated perhaps the most excitement since its unveiling in 2019, however, is Paralives, and after a long old wait — and five years of crowdfunding support — its developer has announced it'll be entering early access next year.

UPDATE 11.46pm: With a launch tantalisingly close for developer Blackbird Interactive's oft-delayed Homeworld 3, it's happened again: the studio has announced it'll be pushing back the real-time sci-fi strategy's release once more, this time until 13th May, to «ensure that we're making the final tweaks needed to deliver at the level of quality that we strive for».

I've long been enamoured with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, from the Douglas firs and waterfalls of Twin Peaks to the redwoods I once swam beneath on a road trip. Thanks to Pacific Drive's Steam Next Fest demo, I have now also barrelled through the woods and backroads of a spooky alt-history PNW in a banged-up car which is itself a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque artifact. I've had my eye on Pacific Drive for a few years and after playing the demo, I am delighted by parts of it but not entirely sold on its roguelikelike survival scavenge-o-rama structure. Hmm! Give it a go and tell me what you think.

Against The Storm is a peach; a fantasy citybuilder that was excellent in Early Access, a Bestest Best when it hit 1.0, and which has been tweaked and improved through post-release patches.

Homeworld 3's release date has been pushed back from March 8th to May 13th 2024, in order to build on player feedback to this week's Steam Next Fest War Games demo, which will be available till February 12th, 10am PT or 6pm GMT. The associated joint statement from developers Blackbird Interactive and publishers Gearbox arrived within hours of me posting about said Homeworld 3 demo and saying that while I am fully onboard with many aspects of the new space strategy game, I do have reservations about its controls.

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

Graham has been bandying Abiotic Factor around the Treehouse as "Half-Life designed for co-op survival japes", which is obviously a noteworthy combination of words, so let's have a look at the Steam page, trailer, and gosh, there's a demo here too. That's Friday night sorted.

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.

Arthur “Mr. Podunkian” Lee, who previously worked on Stardew Valley at ConcernedApe, has announced Sunkissed City, a new life simulation game set in the city. It will launch for PC via Steam in Q4 2024, followed by consoles at a later date.

Adventure mode was one of my favourite things about Dwarf Fortress, mainly because it made the infamously complex management game more approachable by letting you play it like a more traditional roguelike. I'm excited, therefore, that Adventure mode is coming soon to the Steam version of the game, and excited even more so that it's aiming to make it even more accessible.

A new Five Nights at Freddy's game leaked online, but rather than getting upset about it, series creator Scott Cawthon has said we can all chat about it.

Planet Coaster studio Frontier Developments will host a new monthly showcase beginning next week, on 31st January at 6pm UK time, with updates on the what's next from the company.

FuRyu subsidiary Studio Lalala has announced Kemono Teatime, a game that combines Kemomimi, cafe management, and ASMR. It will launch for PC via Steam in 2024 with English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese language support.

The developers of House Flipper have promised that support and new content for the hit renovation sim will continue to land throughout 2024 alongside plans for its newly-released sequel. On the list are two ‘major’ bits of content, along with bug fixes and what looks to be the tease of a restaurant-themed DLC.

Alternate history strategy title Ara: History Untold will launch for PC in autumn 2024, developer Oxide Games announced tonight during the Xbox Developer Direct presentation.

Your favourite beaver-based colony sim Timberborn's latest big update has arrived, and honestly, I'd say your poor beavers won't appreciate it one bit. The main reason being, it adds a new ecological hazard called Badwater, that doesn't only make your water bad, but your crops and beavers at risk of being bad. Still, there are plenty of new buildings to help you harness the power of the stanky water and errr, exercise halls for beavers to get their sweat on. I wouldn't recommend they rehydrate with the bad water, though.

Bethesda has at last officially announced The Elder Scrolls: Castles, its Fallout Shelter-style mobile game which popped up last year, ahead of a full launch.

Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive is reportedly the latest studio to be hit by layoffs this year.

Life simulation game Immortal Life has left Early Access and is now available for PC via Steam in version 1.0, publisher 2P Games and developer YiFang Studio announced. Console versions are planned for release at a later date.

Minecraft's long-in-the-works movie adaptation continues to pick up steam, with the news White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge has now joined its cast.

Publishers Marvelous, XSEED Games, and Marvelous Europe and developer syn Sophia have released the “New Year’s Update” for Fashion Dreamer.

The meme that willed itself into existence, Cult of the Lamb’s ‘sex update’, is upon us. The roguelite cultist sim’s Sins of the Flesh update is live now, bringing a whole bunch of new items, systems and other additions, as well as its promised woo-hooing.

Yes, Paradox Interactive has increased the price of its expansion subscription to Europa Universalis 4 in multiple regions, but not to the extent some players were worried about.

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, the next game from The Falconeer developer Tomas Sala, will be released in March.

Crafting RPG Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story will launch for Switch and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG on February 21 for $24.99, publisher Riot Forge and developer Lazy Bear Games announced. Pre-orders are now available and include an Bandle Scout Hat, Bandle Scout Poro, Evergreen Cottage, Yordle recipe, and more.

Take the little boy with lancing white eyes from Playdead's Limbo, ruthlessly clone him a few dozen times (an extremely Playdead thing to do) and herd all the clones into a world redolent of Klei's Don't Starve, and you have something like The Tribe Must Survive. Developed by apparent Macbeth fans Walking Tree Games GmbH, and published by Starbreeze, it's a heavily horror-themed tribe management sim with a roguelike campaign loop, set in what the developers are calling the "Lovecraftian Stone Age", with flagrant disregard for my nerves. Does the Lovecraftian Stone Age feature any actual walking trees? We'll find out on February 22nd, when the game launches into early access.

Publisher astragon Entertainment and developer Randwerk will release physics-based destruction building game ABRISS: build to destroy for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series on March 7 for $19.99, the companies announced. Digital pre-orders are available now.

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

Sea of Thieves' 11th season is right around the corner, and it looks like its arrival next Tuesday, 23rd January, could very well bring the most radical overhaul for the multiplayer pirate adventure since its launch back in 2018. Behold the advent of fast-travel.

Against The Storm left early access late last year, but has just now received its first major post-release patch. Update 1.1 "isn’t as spectacular" as its developers had first hoped, but it does buff the roguelite citybuilder with som new art, UI improvements and quality-of-life tweaks, as well as new orders to make early stage settlement building "a little more interesting."

Publisher Paradox Interactive and developer Double Eleven have announced Prison Architect 2, the 3D successor to the prison management simulator Prison Architect. It will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam on March 26 for $39.99 / £34.99 / €39.99. PC pre-orders are available now.

The denizens of Frostpunk are, understandably, quite grumpy so-and-sos a lot of the time, but through their cries of "More heat!" and "Please can we not with the human waste hothouse jobs!", I reckon even they'd be quite pleased to hear that Frostpunk 2 will be heading to PC Game Pass on its day of release (with Xbox Game Pass following when it arrives on consoles). Alas, we still don't know exactly when it's coming out yet, but in the mean time, why not gather round the burning barrel of 11 Bit's very first gameplay trailer for it while we wait?

Frostpunk 2 developer 11 bit studios has announced the chilly city-builder sequel will be available on PC Game Pass from day one alongside its PC release.

Studio Wildcard has announced revised release dates for Ark: Survival Ascended's The Center and Scorched Earth expansion map remasters following a delay for the latter last year, confirming they'll arrival in February and April respectively.

The developers of renovation sim House Flipper 2 have outlined their own ongoing renovation plans for the chill clean-and-decorate game, including notable bug fixes and incoming features missing from its predecessor.

War Hospital, out now on Steam, is about subsisting on the periphery of a war and keeping it firmly off-screen by means of adept time management. Set in 1918, it puts you in charge of a field hospital in northern France, a few minutes drive from the frontline. Here’s how all that works: casualties arrive from the trenches by ambulance or stretcher, and are carried by your medics to a clearing station, where nurses look after them before they’re seen by a doctor. Patients may be lightly or severely injured, but they will all eventually die if they’re left unattended.

Combine the turn-based mech battles of Into The Breach with the rule-changing puzzling of Baba Is You and you have Mobile Suit Baba, whose launch I entirely missed right before Christmas. Pick a squad of mechs to field in different scenarios where you must push, pull, and slam your way to victory. All of which will be so much easier if you rewrite the rules by shunting around syntax blocks. And yes, Baba is piloting a giant Baba-shaped mech.

American Truck Simulator's list of confirmed future stops is beginning to pile up; not only has developer SCS revealed trips to Nebraska and Arkansas are on the horizon, it's announced it'll be pulling into Missouri when those two expansions are done.

Core Engage and Daedalic Entertainment have released a new overview trailer for New Cycle, their post-apocalyptic "dieselpunk" city management game. "New Cycle" is obviously a bit of a self-contradiction, and I suspect that's deliberate - one of the questions the video leaves you with is whether there is "a future beyond survival", or whether we are doomed to just repeat the processes of extraction and gradual building-up, resource overexploitation and encroaching disaster suggested by these 12 jam-packed minutes of in-game footage.

The Independent Games Festival awards - aka: the only awards that are actually worth paying attention to - have announced the finalists for their 2024 cohort, and wouldn't you know it, there are lots of RPS-endorsed games in there, lemme tell ya. Cooking adventure Venba leads the pack with a total of four nominations, but it's closely followed by Cocoon, A Highland Song, Mediterranea Inferno and 1000xResist, all of which have scooped three noms apiece.

Developer Core Engage and publisher Daedalic Entertainment have shared a gameplay overview of upcoming city builder New Cycle ahead of its release into early access next week.

Cult Of The Lamb's Sins Of The Flesh update promised to allow your followers to breed, in a way, by finding an egg that would hatch and produce new potential cult members. Players of the action-RPG/management hybrid on social media quickly did what people on social media do: demanded that they add sex.

Sam Barlow's Immortality — an epic mystery of self-reference and cinema — is coming to PlayStation 5 later this motnh

Cult of the Lamb players asked, and the developer listened. The evil sheep-fronted management game is getting a 'sex' update.

Following speculation Microsoft may be considering bringing its acclaimed Hi-Fi Rush to Switch, new reports have claimed the company has also been looking into a PlayStation and Switch release for developer Rare's acclaimed multiplayer pirate adventure Sea of Thieves.

Surgeon Simulator developer Bossa Studios has laid off a third of its staff.

Seemingly not content with having raised over $650 million for a game in development for over a decade without a full release date in sight, Star Citizen is now offering a new way for those with too much money to spend it: a bundle of digital ships costing £46,000.

Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is shutting down in April, after nearly 10 years of A-list fabulousness.

Amazon Prime Gaming is offering four free titles throughout the month of January, including Atari Mania and Endling — Extinction is Forever.

Rockfish have announced that they're updating arcade dogfighter Everspace 2 to run on Unreal Engine 5. The engine rollover will arrive as part of or alongside the game's Incursions update in spring 2024, which includes tweaks and bugfixes as well as extra legendary items and a new game feature of some description. The idea is less to take advantage of UE5's various whizbangs and bellwhistles, like the new Nanite geometry system, than to grease the launch chutes for future Everspace 2 updates and expansions.

Definitely-not-an-indie-game Dave the Diver has reeled in an impressive sales milestone, just six months after the mix of fishing sim, restaurant management game and slice-of-life RPG exited Early Access.

Escape From Tarkov's major new 0.14.0.0 update is live now. It brings with it all of the many features announced last month, including a new map, Ground Zero, designed specifically for newcomers, as well as a vaulting system, new armor and hitbox modelling, and much more.

American Truck Simulator is heading to Missouri for its next expansion. It'll be the first appearance of the Mississippi river in the beloved simulation game.

While other god games might have been recently consigned to the scrapheap, the cute, toy-like WorldBox continues to improve. The early access god sim is going to start simulating family trees in its next update.

I'm going to toss out two more of my RPS Christmas traditions together because frankly it's the last workday of the year and I'm in a tizzy. I trust you will pace yourself and enjoy these traditions responsibily, like a Cadbury selection box. Or slam right through them, that's fine too. After playing Skeal got your toe tapping to the beat and your heart pounding with power and pleasure, you're ready to trash Christmas with a catchy tune in Dracula Cha Cha. And after Skeal also prepped you for pain, oh, here we go: it's Christmas Pain In Christmas Town.

Publisher Devolver Digital and developer Free Lives will release physics-based simulation game Cricket Through the Ages for Switch and PC in early 2024, the companies announced.

War Thunder players are back at it, posting more restricted military documents on the game's forums when discussing the game's vehicles.

I haven't checked in on Microsoft Flight Simulator for a while, but the aviation 'em up hasn't missed a beat. Last month it received World Update 15, continuing increase the detail of its global landscape with a visit to Greenland and the Nordics. Now Asobo have released City Update 5: European Cities 1, which brings a similar pass of polish to five "exemplary urban regions".

It's nearly the holidays, which means some of you might be looking for something to play on your Steam Deck while you're away visiting family. The choice just got a little harder: beautiful early access tactics game Songs Of Conquest and clever fantasy citybuilder Against The Storm are both now Steam Deck verified.

Stealth tactics 'em up Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is an "all-time treasure", according to Katharine's review, and it has to be given that developers Mimimi announced their closure almost immediately after its release.

Infamous crowdfunded disaster Godus and its spin-off Godus Wars have both been removed from sale on Steam. A statement from studio 22cans says that "an upcoming technical change to Amazon Web Services" is to blame. Both games had been in Steam Early Access since first launching in 2013 and 2016 respectively, receiving few updates since and mostly or overwhelmingly negative reviews.

22cans has confirmed it is withdrawing Godus and Godus Wars from sale on Steam.

The Switch version of Touhou Project restaurant simulator Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya will launch on May 2, 2024 for $24.99, publisher Phoenixx and developer Dichroic Purpilion announced. It will support English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese language options.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is one of the year's best releases as far as I'm concerned, but its arrival was bittersweet, given developer Mimimi Games announced it was shutting up shop shortly after. Since then, the team has wrapped up work on two final DLC drops introducing new characters, islands, and more — but it turns out that wasn't quite everything it had in store: in a surprise final update, Mimimi has now launched an expansive «modding tool» for PC.

ACE Entertainment has released a four-minute gameplay trailer for Tales of Seikyu, its upcoming oriental fantasy-style farming simulation adventure game.

FuturLab has announced the next free update for PowerWash Simulator is a new map of Santa's Workshop, and it's out now on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

Publisher Untold Tales and developer Mooneaters will release farming adventure game Everdream Valley for Xbox Series and Xbox One on December 15, the companies announced.