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Back in late 2024, Palestinian developer Rasheed Abueideh announced Dreams on a Pillow, a "pseudo-stealth adventure game." It's set during the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing that saw Israel violently displacing Palestinians and dispossessing their land and homes, serving as Abueideh's emotional response to the attacks on Gaza that began in 2023. And now, as a second round of funding continues, a first look at gameplay has been offered up. Read more View the full article

The first thought that probably arose for most people upon seeing Mixtape for the first time was probably something along the lines of, "that's a lot of licensed music, wonder how long it takes before it's delisted." Music licensing is notoriously a pain in the 'donkey', and considering how embedded into the story every song that's in the game is, it certainly seemed like Mixtape was doomed. But according to its devs, there's nothing to worry about. Read more View the full article

A concept that quite genuinely keeps me up at night is the idea of waking up one day and every other person on Earth disappearing. Couldn't possibly tell you where this fear of mine stems from, all I can say is that I would imagine such a reality to be a cosmically nightmarish one. Enter Sleepover, a post-apocalyptic cosmic-horror visual novel that sees in that exact fear of mine, the key difference being that its protagonist isn't alone after all. Read more View the full article

There is a horse in the middle of the field. It wants to escape, run free, to graze upon the grass where it thinks it is greener. The horse knows not of the dangers of the outside world, for it is simply a horse. So what must we do? We must put up enclosures to form a pasture for the horse, yet we only have so many walls to use, so we must be choosy. This, more or less, is enclose.horse, a daily puzzle game where you must stop a horse from running away to eat grass. Read more View the full article

Final Fantasy 11 is the MMO that just keeps on ticking. It's the game's 24th anniversary today, which still isn't old enough to make it the longest running MMO, but does make it old enough for those of you that played it when it came out to have grandkids. The game isn't just still running either, but getting new updates too, with a livestream held on the Japanese Square Enix YouTube channel yesterday marking the anniversary with details of what's still to come. Quite notably is the fact that the free trial is getting massively expanded. Read more View the full article

With the early access release of otherworldly diving sim Subnautica 2, developers Unknown Worlds are dealing with some familiar criticisms about the new survival game's absence of weaponry or outright combat elements. Speaking to RPS among other journalists in a roundtable interview, design lead Anthony Gallegos acknowledged that Subnautica 2's emphasis on living with, rather than confronting larger, dangerous organisms will be "a continued point of resistance" for some players, while reiterating that it's the heart of the game. Read more View the full article

The effective onboarding of curious yet noncommitted first-time EVE Online players is a conundrum that developers Fenris Creations, formerly CCP Games, have been trying to solve for decades. Many are enticed by the MMORPG’s purely player-spun tales of espionage and military adventure, only to bounce off its dense hull of complex economic spacemaths and a sandbox occupied by oft-unpunished pirates and con artists. Perhaps the game’s next big expansion, Cradle of War, will have more luck when it launches on June 9th. Read more View the full article

Forza Horizon 6 is out in full next week, so naturally Playground Games have already started to spool up the motors of its live-service events and car rewards. The Festival Playlist gets going on May 21st, and fittingly its first series will offer a chance grab one of the funkiest concept cars Japan have ever produced. Read more View the full article

Lego 2K Drive is set to be delisted from storefronts next week, an update to its various pages by publishers 2K has revealed. The brick-heavy racer's listings are biting the dust three years on from its release in 2023, with its online servers set to follow around this time next year. Read more View the full article

Total War: Redwall is not an actual Total War game, unfortunately, nor even a mod like Mossflower TW. It's an evolving pitch from Reddit user BuildingAirships, one among many thousands circulating on yonder internet, like logboats riding the rapids of Noonvale. The latest update is about a potential cooking and feasting system, with all of the comestibles sourced from the groaning banqueting tables of the Brian Jacques books. Read more View the full article

Sci-fi 4X strategy game Stellaris is getting a Nomads expansion on June 15th that lets you jettison traditional ideas about territory and play as a wholly mobile civilisation - travelling around the galaxy in Arkships that serve as colonies, shipyards, and military or science vessels. You know the old Terran saying: home is where you park your trillion tonne hermetically sealed artificial habitat. Here's another, related Terran saying: a trillion tonne hermetically sealed artificial habitat parks wherever the hell it pleases. The expansion will launch alongside free Stellaris update 4.4, named Pegasus. Developers Paradox have put together a choice of nomadic lifestyles, with inspirations that appear to range from the Mongolian Empire through Eldar Craftworlds to the work of Douglas Adams. Read more View the full article

A Californian bill aimed at game preservation and backed by the Stop Killing Games campaign has been voted through by a state committee focused on the fiscal cost of proposed legislation - thereby taking a key step closer to becoming a proper law. The bill, as we've previously reported would require that studios either take action to keep games running after server shutterings, or provide full refunds if it passes in its current form, and faces opposition from the Entertainment Software Association. Read more View the full article

Subnautica 2 splashed into Steam early access yesterday, sending tidal waves of money into the bank accounts of developers Unknown Worlds and publishers Krafton. You planning on paying that $250 million performance bonus, then, Krafton? Now that the game has been on sale for a whopping 17 hours – roundabouts how long it takes to clean out the current early access build - it's time to start squawking like seagulls for patches, updates and expansions. Fortunately, creative media producer Scott MacDonald told RPS and other journalists a little about Subnautica 2's first patches in a roundtable interview last week. The short version is that the initial update will mostly add stuff to the progression and base-building systems, alongside tweaks to the voice logs, some extra lore, and an on-foot sprint mechanic. After that, there's a co-op-focussed update with proximity voice chat, emotes, and player revives. And after that, we enter the realm of proper expansions with new vehicles, biomes, leviathans, tools, resources, and the continuation of the story. Read more View the full article

Back in December of last year, despite being the head of the studio, James Ohlen left Archetype Entertainment, also leaving his role as producer on Exodus behind. It was a bit of a surprise, given that he co-founded the studio after having retired from BioWare in 2018. Now, in a recent interview, Ohlen explains why he made the call, coming down to potentially the most unifying experience in game dev: burnout. Read more View the full article

There's always a twinge of sadness when a game designed for VR later gets ported to be played on a regular screen, primarily because it's just not technically the realm the game was made for. That's sad to me! On the other hand, I do not own a VR headset, so I do win in those instances as well. Like today, for instance, as the Moss series is getting a VR-less version, with both games combined into one neat package. Read more View the full article