Strategy News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

In Blue Prince you are the heir to Mt. Holly, a beautiful yet mysterious cel-shaded manor, and as you can see from its trailer shown during the Future Games Show Spring Showcase, nothing is quite what it seems.

With lovely strategy RPG Unicorn Overlord being a Vanillaware title, it obviously has a cute little minigame where you scarf down illegally delicious-looking food. It turns out the main artist behind these entreating entrees is also responsible for the way the game upholds another Vanillaware quirk: curiously jiggly women. 

Publisher Raw Fury and Fights in Tight Spaces developer Ground Shatter have announced turn-based strategy deckbuilder Knights in Tight Spaces for PC (Steam). A release date was not announced.

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.

Publisher Lightning Games' latest title, Outpost: Infinity Siege, combines high-octane FPS gameplay with methodical tower defense and base-building strategy, and it launches on March 26 at 9am PDT.

Unrailed 2: Back on Track is a multiplayer local and online co-op game full of track-building mayhem, and it's out later this year in early access.

Miniclip.com, the publisher of Subway Surfers, just dished out a new strategy game called Battle Rivals: Epic Clash. It’s not a global launch though. Battle Rivals: Epic Clash has entered early access in Italy and Portugal on Android for now.

The CEO of Larian Studios and director of its hit game Baldur’s Gate 3 has blamed corporate greed for the high number of mass layoffs in the video games industry.

The director of Baldur's Gate 3, Swen Vincke, was one of many to speak out on the recent mass layoffs within the video games industry at an industry awards show last night, blaming the job losses on corporate «greed» that had been «fucking this whole thing up for so long».

If you're an MMORPG fan who's been waiting patiently for news of Riot Game's swing at the genre, then I'm afraid you'll probably have to wait quite a while longer. Riot co-founder Marc Merrill announced that the project has been "reset" and won't appear for "likely several years", with one of the main reasons being a "need to do something that truly feels like a significant evolution of the genre".

The Clash of Clans Rubble Rumble community event is back. Yep, right after the end of the Super Dragon Spotlight, here comes the Rubble Rumble. The event drops today (March 21st) and it’s all about crushing ‘em damn town halls!

Turn-based roguelite strategy game Anomaly Collapse will launch for PC via Steam on April 12, publisher Spiral Up Games and developer RocketPunch Games announced.

Revolutionary RPG Baldur's Gate 3 was a monstrous surpise last year, seemingly coming out of nowhere to contend with the industry's heavy hitters. If you're anything like us, you might still be playing, testing the boundaries of this intricate game. For those super fans who don't need any more convincing, developer Larian Studios has revealed that the game's gorgeous PS5 Deluxe Edition will begin shipping in late April, provided there are no last-minute hiccups.

Larian Studios has delayed the physical edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 for consoles.

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints against EA, Jagex, and Miniclip for failing to disclose the presence of loot boxes in their adverts.

Empire of the Ants, for those who don’t know, is an old-school real-time strategy game which first launched in 2000 for PC. In this PS5 reboot, publisher Microids is partnering with developer Tower Five to create what might be one of the most photorealistic PS5 titles to date. Seriously, this is pushing Unreal Engine 5 to its absolute limits.

Sony’s emulation strategy has been fairly consistent adding Trophies to classic first-party titles, and upcoming PSP port Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier will not buck the trend. The game – technically the last mainline entry in Naughty Dog’s platforming series – first launched in 2009, and mixes traditional adventuring with aerial combat. It’s not a classic by any stretch, but it’s enjoyable enough.

Helldivers 2 players have served heroically in the ongoing intergalactic war effort, turning out in their millions to patriotically defend Super Earth from the external threats of both Bug and Bot. But reports have begun to trickle in about a new enemy faction moving in the shadows, or perhaps more appropriately, the return of an old nemesis, one known as The Illuminate. Some even suspect they already walk among us, which is obviously defeatist nonsense.

Former PlayStation executive Connie Booth, one of the chief architects of PlayStation's first-party strategy before her unexpected departure in 2023, is joining EA to help lead its studios amid its ongoing restructure.

Later this week, Payload Studios' open world vehicular survival builder TerraTech Worlds launches into early access. As the name implies, it's a bigger, bolder and more ambitious take on their still very popular sandbox game TerraTech, but according to Payload's founder and CEO Russ Clarke, they're viewing this new version as more of a successor to TerraTech than a full-bodied sequel. "The overall quality of experience is really a huge leap forward," Clarke told me during a press presentation last week. "We're not calling it a sequel because we felt that making it a sequel would be a bit too constraining." Rather, it's "more of a reimagining" of the original game, says Clarke, with a change in engine and fresh investment from Tencent allowing them to reach the full potential of their original vision.

Cyan Worlds today announced plans to launch their fancy real-time 3D remake of Riven later this year, coming with support for both VR cybergoggles and standard meatspace screens. Riven: The Sequel To Myst was the 1997 sequel to Myst, the 1993 pre-rendered adventure game which sold a million CD-ROM drives and launched a thousand specks of spittle from John Walker's mouth. The remake previously had a longwinded name of its own, Riven: New Discoveries Of The Lost D'ni Empire, but now is simply named Riven. They should rebrand again and call it Riven: The Sequel To The Myst Remake.

Terra Invicta launches on PC Game Pass and the Microsoft Store on March 26, publisher Hooded Horse has announced.

In the run-up to Total War: Pharaoh at the end of last year, a slightly strange question popped into my head: "What if someone made a Total War game that also had the handsome anime looks of Fire Emblem: Three Houses?" Clearly, it was also a question on the minds on Japanese indie developers ThinkGames Inc, who have just announced their debut game Valiant Tactics EX. The 38-second long reveal trailer paints quite an enticing picture ahead of its Steam launch on March 29th, and that's not even the half of it either. For Valiant Tactics EX isn't just an anime Total War-like. It's also a whopping great deckbuilding game.

Larian discusses how it went big on TikTok, and it turns out that the infamous Halsin romance scene might have hindered more than it helped. Speaking at GDC, the studio explains its social media strategy, and what it's learned from Baldur's Gate 3 going viral.

Super Mario 64 speedrunners trying to figure out how to beat the game without ever pressing the A button to jump have just figured out a major new strategy that cuts the better part of 26 hours out of one particularly time-consuming level.

Songs of Silence, the upcoming strategy game from Chimera Entertainment, will launch in early access on Steam in May.

Warner Bros. Games has been discussing its business strategy over the past several weeks, but it seems to be full of contradictions. Hogwarts Legacy, its AAA single-player Harry Potter game, was one of the top-selling games of 2023, but the company instead intends to focus on live-service and free-to-play games in the future, like its underperforming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. WB Games is reviving a game it took offline last year before unpublishing a suite of games that have been playable for years. That’s not to forget that the game that’s being revived, Super Smash Bros.-like brawler MultiVersus, features characters from several of Warner Bros.’ botched properties, like the Space Jam reboot, Black Adam, and a whole slate of Looney Tunes in the aftermath of Coyote vs. Acme.

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

Oh, look – Steam's gone and broken its own concurrent record. Again.

When McDonald's first opened for business in the 1940s, its workers stood at physical counters, its burgers and fries were listed on paper menus, and its customers paid cash to its human cashiers.

Valve has revealed that of the 100 most-played games on Steam Deck over the last 12 months, Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 tops the chart.

It's been a while since we last heard from Commandos: Origins, developer Claymore Game Studios' revival of the classic WW2 real-time stealth-tactics series, but it's back to show off some of the locations players will be tensely sneaking around in a new trailer.

Paradox Interactive has unveiled The Machine Age, the next major expansion for its space-faring 4X strategy game Stellaris, which will focus on «cybernetic, synthetic, and machine themes» when it launches for PC in the second quarter of 2024.

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.

Grom Social Enterprises has announced the acquisition of studio Arctic7.

Gameloft has announced a partnership with Hasbro to publish a new Dungeons & Dragons game for consoles and PC developed by Gameloft Montreal, which previously developed Disney Dreamlight Valley, LEGO Star Wars Castaways, and several Dungeon Hunter series games.

A high-profile Pokémon Go player and streamer has had his game account hacked and some of his rarest Pokémon deleted, ruining countless hours of play.

Narrative puzzler Paper Trail will release on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and mobile (via Netflix Games) in May.

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

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.

Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren has departed the studio as the company searches for «different leadership».

The first major content update for The Finals is imminent with the forthcoming Season 2. This competitive shooter impressed us in our review with how the destructible environments and tools combined to create jaw-dropping moments, and it looks poised to expand on that with new gadgets, a new level, matchtype, and more. After a few hours playing with all the new toys, one thing is abundantly clear: The Finals are just getting started.

Ravensburger has lifted the lid on its previously announced ‘expandalone’ expansion to Star Wars Villainous, bringing two of the series’ most iconic baddies to the game for the first time.

Developer Starbreeze has booted its CEO Tobias Sjögren, as Payday 3 continues to disappoint. Sjögren will be immediately replaced by interim CEO Juergen Goeldner, with the company's chairman saying that it needs "a different leadership".

A new server group, [NAEU102], has landed in the Night Crows Update. The ‘Kroma’ Chain, one of the six blockchains serviced by the game, will undergo temporary restrictions due to detected issues.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director has hinted at the possibility of expansions for the JRPG's best minigame.

Former Star Wars Jedi series director and God Of War developer Stig Asmussen has founded a new studio, Giant Skull, to work on "gameplay-driven, story immersed action-adventure games set in captivating worlds". Based in Los Angeles, Giant Skull are even now developing a new "AAA single-player-focused action adventure" that runs on Unreal Engine 5.

Payday 3 developer Starbreeze is searching for a new CEO following the removal of Tobias Sjögren.

My Little Pony, the media franchise with fans of all ages, is getting a new game: an open-world mystery game that launches on May 17 for PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox.

The recently launched tactical RPG Unicorn Overlord is so popular in Japan that its publisher, Atlus, has issued an official apology for stock shortages.

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The Episode Aigis expansion for Persona 3 Reload has been developed in response to fan feedback, though there's no chance of a female protagonist in the future.

Proper strategy and tactics go a long way if you're trying to keep your streak alive. The hit browser game challenges players to guess a new five-letter word every day, with only six guesses and a pool of thousands of possible words. Optimal letter placement, great starting word choices, and outside-the-box thinking will take you far.

Three more classic Mario Game Boy games are coming to Switch Online.

Command and Conquer fans recently got a nice surprise from Electronic Arts when the publisher released the Ultimate Collection on Steam alongside other EA Classics. This bundle includes Command & Conquer, The Covert Operations, Red Alert, Red Alert: Counterstrike, Red Alert: The Aftermath, Tiberian Sun, Tiberian Sun Firestorm, Red Alert 2, Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, Renegade, Generals, Generals: Zero Hour, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars: Kane's Wrath, Red Alert 3, Red Alert 3: Uprising, and Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, for a price of $9.88.

PUBG is set to get several new features throughout 2024 that promise to change the game significantly.

Just days after Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection – a bundle of 17 Command & Conquer favourites – dropped on Steam, EA is already hinting that there may be more to come.

Unicorn Overlord, the new strategy RPG from Dragon's Crown and 13 Sentinels developer Vanillaware, is out now on PS5 and PS4. While it certainly isn't the highest profile release of 2024 so far, there's simply no doubting the talents of the Japanese studio behind it.

So far, Sony’s fledgling PC strategy has seen mixed results. The earlier conversions, like Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War, came with a degree of novelty which saw them stand out. Subsequent efforts, like Sackboy: A Big Adventure, didn’t possess the same appeal. But one game PC users have been eagerly anticipating is Ghost of Tsushima, and now it’s on its way, with a 16th May release date attached.

Vanillaware doesn't miss. We've been spouting that line for ages, but with the arrival of Unicorn Overlord, it rings truer than ever before. Following up on the superb 13 Sentinels was never going to be easy, but the Japanese studio has somehow manged to produce an equally excellent game three years later — and it's not even in the same genre.

Helldivers 2 is a pretty difficult game at the best of times, so players are always trying to find different ways to avoid or deal more damage to give them an advantage in the Galactic War. There are plenty of weapons to choose from, defensive options to take on the battlefield, but one of Helldivers 2's best current strategies is to lure a bunch of enemies to your location, drop a 500kg bomb on yourself, and then hug it out with your bro to avoid the resulting explosion.

Unicorn Overlord MSRP $59.99 Score Details DT Recommended Product Pros

If you wanted to buy any of the games in the Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection, Dungeon Keeper, or Sim City 3000 - but didn't want to do it on GOG where they were already on sale - then rejoice! EA has made these classics and more, and for some reason The Saboteur, available on Steam for the first time. You can see the full list of games here. I don't have anything specific against The Saboteur, but I do think it's very funny that the list goes, like, "beloved game from the 90s, beloved game from the 90s, 7/10 action game from 2009, beloved game from the 90s". Also, I can take the opportunity to make fun of Graham and James, the tallest wrongest boys at RPS, who apparently both liked it.

Tactical Breach Wizards is having a beta playtest, with space for around 2500 players over the next month or so. New to Tactical Breach Wizards? It's a grid and turn-based room-clearance puzzler in which you control a gang of door-kickers who happen to be armed with spells and magical artefacts, rather than plain old riot shields. It's the work of Suspicious Developments, the studio founded by former videogames journalist and - *engage mystic rite of disclaiming* - RPS contributor Tom Francis, and lets you do things like chain lightning bolts around cover and knock people into mystic portals or out of windows (a Suspicious Developments staple).

CFK will release a PlayStation 5 version of Fortress S on March 28 worldwide for $29.99, the publisher announced.

Capcom has released a six-minute “Gameplay Deep Dive” trailer and new screenshots for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, showcasing its unique blend of action and strategy.

Co-developers SUNSOFT and angoo have announced Ark of Charon, a colony simulation and tower defense game. It will launch for PC via Steam in 2024.

When we first saw Capcom's upcoming action strategy game Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess at last year's Xbox Games Showcase, there wasn't much to say other than that the game looks gorgeous. Thanks to last night's Xbox Partner showcase, we now know that it's a blend of Japanese mythology, sword-fights, Pikmin and tower defense.

Capcom has released a new trailer for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, their intriguing action strategy game that is coming out later this year for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC – it’ll be day one on Xbox Game Pass, as well.

Developer Larian has issued another hotfix (number 21) for Baldur's Gate 3 across PC, PlayStation 5 and Mac. However, those on Xbox will have to wait a little longer for this and the game's previous hotfix to arrive, as they are still going through testing.

Developer 11 bit studios has dropped a brand new trailer for the post-apocalyptic strategy game, Frostpunk 2, as part of yesterday's (March 6, 2024) Xbox Partner Prevewi event teasing a range of interesting new features before revealing a PC release date. 

Japanese games giant Capcom is going to be raising how much its staff and future graduate hires are paid.

Capcom has released a new trailer for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, their intriguing action strategy game that is coming out later this year for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC – it’ll be day one on Xbox Game Pass, as well.