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Rapture and Columbia go out with a stealthy, quiet bang.

Once upon a time Monolith made the candy/1970s-colored No One Lives Forever, but then the years passed and the colors drained away. The result? F.E.A.R., which traded NOLF’s yuck-yuck-yucks for some spooky, splattery “oh… yucks.” Flash forward to today: all of the color is gone, with six Monolith vets producing the gloomily black-and-white Betrayer. It’s got scares in spades and thick cobwebs of dread lingering in every corner of its 1604 Roanoke colony setting, but is it any good? Now you can find out. Launch trailer below.

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Reworking Diablo 3 to meet the needs of the franchise’s most devoted fans has been a long, arduous process, but Diablo 3 is finally much closer to what long-time fans of the series want.

“We're not trying to build a game that replicates the storyline of any particular film,” says EA boss.

When Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 makes its PC debut, the game will be a far cry from its mobile incarnation, according to Atari. "We can't share that much, but [PC] will definitely be a completely different game," said Anthony Chien, Atari senior director of marketing, in a Digital Spy interview.

Chien's statement follows last week's debut of the above trailer which serves as the first look at Roller Coaster Tycoon 4 Mobile. This footage immediately drew criticism from fans due to the game's apparent reliance on free-to-play gimmicks. Despite this negative backlash, Atari is moving forward with plans to release the mobile game prior to its PC counterpart.

"There's a lot of diehard [Rollercoaster Tycoon] fans that want a PC experience, they want all different sorts of things," Chien stated. "[We're] trying to deliver as much as we can. First is the mobile version, then it's the PC experience. I think a lot of people are vocal about wanting to see the PC version first before the mobile, but our strategy is mobile first."

The mobile version of Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 is slated to debut at some point this spring. Atari has yet to reveal a release date for the PC game. [Image: Atari]

Each Monday, Chris Livingston visits an early access game and reports back with stories about whatever he finds inside. This week, exploring a planet in the appropriately named Planet Explorers.

The title of the game is direct, to be sure. In Planet Explorers, a planet exploration game by Pathea Games, there is a planet, and you explore it. If that doesn’t sound like enough, there’s also resource gathering, crafting, building, and tons of alien creatures to discover, by which I mean “slaughter and turn into money.” Get ready, innocent alien planet! Humans have arrived, and we’ve brought hunting, real estate development, and capitalism.

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We didn't ask for this. Deus Ex: The Fall on PC is an awful repackaging of a respectable mobile game.

I first heard about Boon Hill from a friend while we read epitaphs in a graveyard. That’s only fitting, given that Boon Hill is a game about exploring a graveyard and reading epitaphs. It’s been successfully funded on Kickstarter, and its creator recently climbed in bed with Nathan. It seems only reasonable that we now give it its own post. Trailer below.

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Echo Of The Wilds is a mysterious game that initially appears to be both a retro-pixel arthouse tenant and a crafting/survival sim. If that were the sum total of its being, Anthony Case could lay claim to have created an accurate container for indie gaming’s most popular current trends. Heck, the difficulty level is high and there’s enough randomisation to claim roguelike tendencies are in play so we could go for a full house. There are even elements of the mighty Going For A Walk genre but what is it really and wot do I think of it all?

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This is a sci-fi horror game with a premise close to our hearts: Caffeine.

In Caffeine, a young boy wakes up on a caffeine-mining space vessel, alone, and he must explore dark, silent hallways to discover what went wrong - because something clearly did. Caffeine comes from a sole developer, Dylan Browne of Incandescent Imaging, and it's inspired by Condemned, FEAR and Doom 3. The full game is heading to Unreal Engine 4.

The Caffeine demo (built in Unreal Engine 3) is due out for PC tomorrow, March 25, and Browne is setting up an Indiegogo campaign to begin on March 31. It's all on Steam Greenlight Concepts now, plus a page on IndieDB. See a second teaser trailer below.

In space, no one can hear your coffee-maker gurgle. [Images: Incandescent Imaging]

Arma 3‘s campaign has been deploying from exploding helicopters for a while now; first Survive, then Adapt, and now the third and final act, Win, is available. It’s available to all those who have bought Arma 3 so far, and while we ready a WIT of the whole campaign, there’s a launch trailer below.

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Diablo 3 may still get deeper PvP functionality, though Blizzard is wary of the rest of the game suffering as a result.

Therapeutic living burial. Adorable cat simulator. The ancient sport of gun-hopping.

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Fans of the metaverse might briefly remember that period, 2003-2006, when all the world’s companies leapt upon Second Life as a new digital avenue for brand expansion, synergy, and other ultimately pointless ways to invest their marketing money. Well, good news! Because now the Oculus Rift is available, there’s a whole new way to “communicate your brands message.” Supermarket chain Tesco are getting in first, with a virtual recreation of a supermarket.

I would play this. I will “play” this. A trailer of your consumerist future awaits below.

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The 2014 IGF Awards have finished and the winners have been announced, but we still have insights to share. Before reading on, you should relive John’s liveblogging of the IGF Awards ceremony so that you can see if Klei’s Jamie Cheng left the event happy. Don’t Starve received a nomination for the Grand Prize but Cheng was backing a different game – a game that he describes as ‘a masterpiece.

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Gnah! is a puzzle game about the inside of heads. If it were set inside my head, currently all you’d find would be a picture of a dog dressed as a unicorn, and fresh memories of the Seven Of Nine episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. Alas, it actually takes place inside heads rendered by crisp, graphic illustrations, and is about unlocking progress by alternately poking at each head’s eyeballs and flicking its internal light switches.

Yeah, I don’t really understand it fully, but a short teaser trailer and more screenshots await inside.

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GIFs aren’t only the internet’s favourite medium for sharing slapstick animals. They’re also a tool for democratising promotion and marketing. Can’t afford the time or money necessary to edit together a slick trailer? Don’t worry, a three-second GIF may better convey what’s smart, cool and interesting about your game.

Or if your game doesn’t have animation just write really long posts detailing the making of it anyway. Whatever. DEVLOG WATCH GO.

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Lethe is currently seeking votes on Greenlight and two teaser trailers have been released in an attempt to win over the public. I’m entirely comfortable describing the contents as ‘Psi-Ops meets Amnesia’. The player character can levitate objects using a magical scab on his hand, throwing them across the room in a fit of rage or using them to activate distant pressure plates and the like. Story-wise, it’s a creepy island investigation sort of vibe, starring handsomely-named journalist Robert Dawn. He is “searching for clues about a disaster on an isolated island. After coming in contact with an unknown substance, Robert mysteriously develops psychokinetic abilities, but not without a cost.” It won’t surprise you to learn that he is not alone.

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Last week’s announcement of Roller Coaster Tycoon 4 for mobile devices caused a great deal of despair in my private headspace. I have fond memories of the first two entries in the series (none at all of the third for some reason) and the trailer for the fourth, which you can see below, didn’t inspire confidence. Speaking to Digital Spy, Atari’s Anthony Chien confirmed that a new PC Roller Coaster Tycoon is also due by the end of the year: “We can’t share that much, but [PC] will definitely be a completely different game…There’s a lot of diehard RC fans that want a PC experience, they want all different sorts of things.” That’s the good news. The (potentially) bad news comes later. The PC version will be an “online multiplayer experience”.

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Echo of the Wilds is a “puzzly narrativy adventure”, in which your shirtless protagonist stumbles around in the woods, eating berries, fishing for food, maybe talking with ghosts, and experiencing some sort of spiritual journey. If this is what desperate survival is really like, then I think it’s time I left civilization behind, because this all looks lovely. There’s a trailer below and even a demo you can play right now

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I am unfrightenable in games. I blame growing up in a place where there was once a riot between primary schools (that’s 5-12 year-olds, and I honestly wish I were joking), and that time a dude chased me through the overgrown wreck of an abandoned power plant and I had a small panic attack afterwards. I’m fine now, but growing up in that sort of environment means the idea of the Slenderman or Doom monster is too ridiculous for me to accept as a threat. I could see the silly dread of Spectre at least making me jump, because rather than having the game toss prescribed scares at you, it’s mainly multiplayer. Trailer and information below.

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And Valve is throwing in some bonuses, too.

On the eve of Reaper of Souls' release, the Pubcast crew chat all things Diablo with a very special guest from Blizzard.

A new trailer for Diablo 3 expansion Reaper of Souls is here to prepare would-be adventurers for their journey to defeat Death himself. As the old saying goes, "Nothing in the world is certain, save for Death and some badass adventurers kicking his high angel butt." [Image: Blizzard]

Does your aptitude for tower defense games leave you yawning as you wipe out pitiful waves of enemies? Well, maybe you need a bigger target to protect - something like a group of towering mechanical Colossi, for instance. Burden follows a group of engineers trying to save Mhoroa, a civilization that's harvested enough of an ancient resource for its land to start tearing itself apart. Hoping to curb their extinction, the engineers heed dreams that lead them to the Colossi, machines built by their ancestors. The Colossi simply need to be brought to specific locations and Mhoroa's land will be saved. Simple, right?

Well, maybe not. How do you tell the towns you're passing by that the monstrous, looming machines you're guiding are vehicles of salvation rather than death? With the absence of an email tips line for Mhoroa, the remaining options aren't feasible. Villagers are going to react negatively to a group of mechanical titans stomping into their field of vision, and they're going to rally together to ascend the beasts and kill them.

That's where you come in - as an ally of the engineers, you'll fend off the attacks of Mhoroa's inhabitants across multiple attack lanes on the bodies of Colossi. Burden's chapters will follow the journeys of different Colossi as they travel across Mhoroa, taking on waves of their country's people and, as a post from publisher Surprise Attack Games notes, "major foes" preventing a Colossi's progress.

A fact sheet developer PixelPickle's Burden lists a "April / May 2014" PC launch date for Steam Early Access, with Mac and Linux versions also planned. While the fact sheet doesn't list a price, Surprise Attack's post from December lists a $15 Early Access price, with the final build going for $20 when it launches later on in 2014. [Image: Surprise Attack Games]

When he isn’t hanging around in hotel beds with Nathan, John and assorted other folks, Hayden Dingman plays games and then writes about them. As GDC creaks to a halt for another year, he filed this report, detailing the fears and frustrations that arose during a hands-on experience with Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation. Is it the Alien game we want? Is it the Alien game we deserve? Is it gonna be a terrifying survival horror game, a standup fight or just another bughunt?

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Endless Legend, the "civilization fantasy game" by Endless Space and Dungeon of the Endless developer Amplitude Studios, will enter Steam's Early Access program next month. The team told us at GDC that the plan is for the game to have its official launch by year's end.

The fantasy 4X strategy game features Civilization series-style empire-building gameplay, mixed with zoomed-in tactical turn-based battlefield combat. There will be orcs. Like, all the orcs. [Image: Amplitude]

Dungeon of the Endless, the drunkenly conceived roguelike by Endless Space's Amplitude Studios, still has some features to add before its final release. The game has been available through Steam's Early Access program since December, but the studio still plans to add four-player co-op before the game's final release.

The team also told us at GDC they expect to add a "visual log" of game events and characters that derives its inspiration from card collections. Think of a binder full of baseball, Marvel or football cards, but it's of the game.

The Amplitude team had nothing to announce about the game coming to tablets, but it's painfully clear from the coy looks when we asked the question and the game's design that such a transition is highly plausible. The team has "honestly no idea" when the game will have its official launch. [Image: Amplitude]

Sundays are for watching roller derby and wondering why someone designed a sport that was like NASCAR but with people instead of cars. Sundays are for reviewing the best (mostly) games related writing from (mostly) the past week.

• Critical Proximity was a conference about games criticism which took place the Sunday before GDC. Alan Williamson from Five Out Of Ten Magazine produced a video for the event on an important subject: why magazines are better than these newfangled webpages. It’s a romantic, cheerful call to arms for maintaining, and more importantly pushing, the old format further. I tend to agree, and continue to idly consider doing something about it. But probably I’ll just eat another packet of crisps and order some of Alan’s work online.

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Alpha players beware - your stuff is getting wiped.