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It’s been eight months since we checked in to see just how convincingly spiritual Road Rash sequel Road Redemption was smacking people in the face with a chain at 100MPH. Successfully Kickstarted last May, it’s recently stuck a helmeted head above the parapet to show off a current build. It looks somewhat as one might expect/hope – a 16-bit ethos transposed to 21st century tech with something of a Mad Max aesthetic.

‘Redemption’ does seem a somewhat inappropriate word to include in the name of a game that’s basically about causing people grievous bodily harm in order to win a motorbike race, but perhaps these riders were even more terrible people before they adopted that as a hobby.(more…)

Cara caught Rain World on her journalism parasol back before she became gaming’s foremost Adventure Journalist, and she declared herself “deeply in love with” its physics-based art style. Now, all these months later, with the game newly on Kickstarter, I believe that Rain World’s little love bug slugcat ghost creature has bitten me as well. Clearly, Cara and I will have to fight tooth and nail for its affections. I’ve got deceptively strong nails, but Cara’s teeth may well prove their kryptonite. Perhaps if I use my nails as a sort of projectile… hmmm. Alas, I might be doomed. But no matter what, at least my darling Rain World will go on, wriggling and worming stealthily as it does. Check out a gorgeously moody video below.

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Take up your blade, ye merest of mortals. Though in truth, it’s more of a formality than anything, for I shall pierce your heart before it’s even able to flutter in fea- oh, you got me. Aha! But I’m back, and this time I shall deliver a blinding riposte tha- right, my organs. A clever place to strike indeed. But not clever enough, for I shall now throw my sword in the wrong direction and cartwheel intimidatingly away from you. Mind games, you see. Nidhogg is a chess match, friend, and I’m so many moves ahead that you-

Win. You win. Maybe I could stand to become a little better at Nidhogg.

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Valve has launched a new experimental mode for Steam that works with virtual reality headset Oculus Rift.

Despite concerns earlier this year that LOTRO could be prematurely shut down, it appears The One Ring is still destined to reach Mordor.

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that we are drowning in roguelikes, roguelike-likes, like-likes, rougelikes, and Baton-Rouge-Louisiana-likes. My current poison is Risk of Rain (and before that it was Rogue Legacy, and before that it was Spelunky, and before that it was Teleglitch, and before that it was), but I’ll need something else to fill the bags under my eyes before long. It’s been eons in rogue-time (counted entirely in increments of “just five more minutes”) since I played the original Binding of Isaac to a maggot-ridden death, so The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is sounding more tantalizing every day. And while a finish line isn’t in sight just yet, Edmund McMillen and co are getting there. In a new Q&A, McMillen noted that the game is more than halfway done and – in a welcome twist – that it won’t be doing any sort of Early Access program.

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The PC version is the first to receive a big patch that addresses a clutch of the game's biggest issues.

Correcting course to add offline play and saving was a huge effort, but not "impossible."

How does tinyBuild's "Roguelike Stealth Furniture-Eating Simulator" hold up?

Star Wars spinoff screenwriter Simon Kinberg will produce a big screen version of Magic: The Gathering for 20th Century Fox.

A new take on the survival horror genre is making its way exclusively to the PC.

The wealth of new content in Rebirth doubles the game's size.

You can help make the new game from the makers of Fallout: New Vegas.

Finally! A space game whose title doesn’t start with the word “Star”. RymdResa is a “procedurally generated poetic space odyssey” made by two-person Swedish indie team Morgondag. It’s a space exploration game without combat, where “solitude of space” is listed as one of the features. It’s up on Steam Greenlight and there’s an initially-ponderous-but-eventually-interesting trailer below.(more…)

As I established when writing about Secrets Of Raetikon, all games should be about playing a bird. Prescient adopters of this new law are Barbossal with The Last Phoenix. Greenlit back in October, this “aerial combat adventure game” sees you playing as the winged mythical beast. With this emphasis on aerial melee combat, and a desire to provide a Metroid-ish approach to skill gathering and exploration, it could be pretty ace. It’s certainly pretty.

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Namco High is a browsser-based dating game from Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie, starring a cast of officially licensed characters from Namco’s back catalogue. You can play it for free right now with extra characters available to purchase for a small fee. But should you? We sent Cassandra Khaw back to school to find out. Warning: spoilers for the intro and one of the free characters.

Call me weird but I’d totally play a Dark Souls dating sim. Solaire, I imagine, would be an absolute gentleman; the doe-eyed kind that perforates others in your name while spouting eccentrically wistful lines like, “If only I were so grossly romanceable!”

But he’s not in Namco High and neither are other crowd favorites like the bodice-busting babes of Soul Caliber or the iconic Afro Samurai. Instead, we have a cousin of the Prince from Katamari Damacy as the protagonist and a bevy of halfway familiar characters as potential love interests. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The ship from Galaga, for example, takes center stage as Namco High’s beauty … queen?(more…)

The star of Rust isn't necessarily you, but the people forming an unforgettable story unique to your server.

Alum is a posterchild for how not to do post-Kickstarter. Having squeaked past its $10,000 target, suddenly everything went silent. Everything. For three months there were no updates to the Kickstarter page, the game’s Facebook page, the Twitter account… It looked pretty concerning. It turned out developer Micah Orsie was just being a twit, rather than anything malicious. Despite ignoring our enquiry as to what was going on, spookily moments after we sent it he suddenly reappeared to assure backers that the game was still in development. And now there’s proof of that too, with a demo. Oh, and it’s pretty good.

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After months of silence, Maxis has officially confirmed that SimCity will be getting an offline mode very soon.

“Turn-based bar fighting game” is a pretty good elevator pitch. “Turn-based bar fighting with cute isometric animals” is even better. That’s what Stray Robot Games are making with (the working titled) The Cresting Rainbow. It’s Frozen Synapse meets this news story I just found about a drunk pig attacking a cow. It’s also far cuter than any of the bar fights I’ve seen in real life.(more…)

The best thing about Ludum Dare is the regular avalanche of tiny games that people produce during the event. The worst thing is discovering a brilliant concept or idea, and waiting for a larger continuation to be released. Porpentine spotted Taquito Tower during Ludum Dare 27 and described it as follows:

A tower of cube mazes filled with burritos and sassy enemies. Semi-turn based, so actions take place every second…Having at least 5 burritos makes your attacks more powerful, but eating them regains health.

An expanded version, Burrito Galaxy 64, is now seeking votes on Steam Greenlight. The trailer is pleasing.

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I play games very slowly, whether they’re awesome or not. I can perform a speed run of the first level of just about any first-person shooter released between 1993 and 1999 but beyond that fairly limited subset of locations (mostly military bases and pump stations), I’m cautious and methodical. On top of that, I’m also more likely to explore new worlds instead of returning to old haunts in order to improve my mental mapping, making navigation a reflex. Thankfully, the world has plenty of dedicated digital dervishes and many of them gathered for the Awesome Games Done Quick charity event, raising more than $1,000,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The videos are linked below.

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Stephen ‘thecatamites’ Murphy has given us Goblet Grottos, Space Funerals, Murder Dogs, Pleasuredomes and much more besides, and he’s never asked for anything in return. I’m tremendously pleased that, for the first time, it is now possible to exchange coin for the deliriously creative creations of one of fringe gaming’s strongest and strangest voices. For a minimum of four euros (higher prices are at the purchaser’s discretion), you’ll receive the titular FIFTY GAMES, each of which was made in a single day during 2013′s final months. Along with FIFTY GAMES, you’ll find yourself in possession of a loader for the FIFTY GAMES, essays on each of the FIFTY GAMES and illustrated notes about the project. A tremendous piece of history.

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I’m kind of glad that Rambo: The Video Game is looking painfully generic. I mean, who better to carry the torch of ceaseless neckshank killsplosions than the man we all colloquially associate with the tropedemic anyway? (If you’d asked me a week ago, I would’ve said Michael Bay, but now I want a game where he kills people with crazy handshake-legswing combos.) It’s almost poetic, insofar as something I would consider the opposite of poetry can be poetic. But Rambo: The Video Game’s case of terminal generitis is also kind of a shame, given that the tense nature of the original film could’ve made for a pretty interesting videogame. Oh well, though. At least they totally got the mullet right.

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Big Robot, developer of the procedurally-generated survival game Sir, You Are Being Hunted, has released a free prototype of a racing game called Permutation Racer for PC and Mac.

This isn't so much about getting the best times on tracks after spending weeks memorizing them, though - Permutation Racer is about blazing through sections of procedurally-generated track before the timer reaches zero. Clearing each checkpoint grants players a bit of extra time, and collecting the stars strewn across pathways will fill a boost meter that makes reaching the next section a bit more feasible.

You can race across Permutation Racer's endlessly colorful track through the download links in Big Robot's announcement. Big Robot is also welcoming any thoughts, bug reports, screenshots or high score competitions you'd like to share on its forum.

Undead and disabled. Supermarket carnage. Tender star quest.

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Sundays are for plotting your gruesome destruction of the planet Earth. But before you do, take a look at some interesting morsels of games writing we’ve noticed this week.

• One of the most beautifully written and compelling articles I’ve ever read kicks us off this week: Christian Donlan’s extraordinary piece on the role of Monopoly in the Second World War. Weaving in takes of his own grandfather into this peculiar and audacious tale, it’s so good I wanted a whole book of it. And now for someone to option it and make it into a film.

  “That set gave my grandfather his war stories. Spared the dangers of actual combat, he worked at a nearby farm handling the bookkeeping during the week, and he built up a dazzling property portfolio and crushed his competitors in his spare time. Long days in the camp meant that the prisoners quickly adapted the rules of the game so that a single match could take a fortnight to unfold and then they played and played and played. Europe burned, Russia was driven back into the black mud of the Eastern Front, the Blitz rained fire from the sky over St Pauls (and as far north as Glasgow). As for my grandfather? My grandfather learned the value of nabbing all the oranges quickly, so as to capitalise on any unfortunates rolling to get out of jail.”

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Alex, Krupa, Chris, and Stu tackle this week's news and look forward to the year ahead on this week's podcast.

Gaming accessory manufacturer Mad Catz has announced development of the R.A.T. Tournament Edition, a mouse designed for the eSports-minded player. The R.A.T. TE features tracking speeds up to 8200 DPI, decreased weight, dynamic surface detection, lift-off height calibration, programmable button mapping and is designed for Mac as well as PC.

We stress that the R.A.T. TE is not to be confused with a tournament edition rat. Rats do not have configurable buttons. And if your rat does, please do not bring your cyborg rat to a gaming tournament. You may, however, bring your R.A.T. TE after it releases in early 2014.

There’s been some confusion and bad blood over the course of Broken Age‘s emphatically Kickstarted development cycle, but now the end (for the beta version of part one, because this is the year 2014) is nearly in sight. I guess all I can really say at this point is, break an age, Double Fine. You know, because it sounds like… like break a leg? Kinda? And the game is called Broken Age? Sigh, I know that look you’re giving me, entire RPS readership. You’re wordlessly suggesting that I should break my own legs in penance for that abysmal excuse for a joke, and also that you wish fire ants would begin erupting from my eyes, thematically unrelated though that might be. Fine. Fiiiiiiiiiine. But only for you.

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