From today, you’ll be able to join your favourite traders - be they the Gold Hoarders, Order Of Souls, Merchant’s Guild or Athena’s Fortune - and become an Emissary, allowing you to earn more gold and reputation by bringing them loot. Level caps for each faction have been raised up to 75, but don’t worry if you’ve yet to reach Pirate Legend status, you still only have to get to 50 in each to get there....

One thing that struck me while I was watching the video is a moment about 8 minutes in, where the truck pulls into a toll booth and rolls a window down. “Excellent role-playing,” I said to my cat. As it happens, the developers are incredibly proud of their toll technology, and wrote a specific update about it: “The Iberia DLC will feature an array of different toll booth designs and technologies, from the slower traditional tolls with barriers, to the latest in toll road technology; overhead cameras reading every vehicle’s tags without them needing to slow down!...

So first up, this update will give players the ability to challenge bosses they’ve already defeated to a re-match (you know, without having to just go through the entire game again). It’s called Reflections Of Strength, and you’ll be able to find it in the menu when you sit at a Sculptor’s Idol. For the more masochistic Sekiro players out there, after going up against a few of your fave bosses again, you’ll be able to take on a Gauntlet Of Strength challenge - which sounds a lot like you’ll be fighting boss after boss with no breaks in-between....

“Humanity is under siege as the full force of Mental’s hordes spread across the world, ravaging what remains of a broken and beaten civilization,” say Croteam. “The last remaining resistance to the invasion is the Earth Defense Force led by Sam ‘Serious’ Stone and his heavily-armed squad of misfit commandos.” In addition to the new cinematic trailer, Croteam have got several other new videos showing off some of Sam the 4th’s new bits, including their big new Legion System wot seems to be the talking point....

To claim your free ticket to EGX, you’ll need to sign up for a yearly premium subscription to the RPS Supporter program before 23.59pm on Wednesday October 6th, which you can do right here. You’ll then be sent a code to redeem your free ticket, which you’ll need to do before 23.59pm on Friday October 8th in order to get into the show. Alas, this is the bit where I have to put on my serious business hat and say this offer is for “new customers only”....

Due in February 2022, Sir, You Are Being Hunted: Reinvented Edition is a “remastered” version of 2014’s first-person survival sandbox set in procedurally generated English countryside with an ecosystem of terrible robots hunting you. Expect an overhaul of the visuals, an optional perk system, bigger islands, revamped audio and UI and such, along with with modernised controls and quality-of-life options. Details are thin for now but hey, it’s a remaster, you get it....

Creators Together Team say their “focus is to create a co-op like experience for about 2-8 players, not an MMO but we have tested with 30+ players”. Thirty players! I was going to make a pithy comment that it’s the gaming equivalent of a clown car, but apparently they can only fit between 14 and 21 clowns inside. I used to be a clown, then I took a custard pie in the knee....

As a seasoned slime wrangler myself, I was excited to dive head-first into this new, colourful world. Review code didn’t arrive until launch day unfortunately, but all week I’ve been vibrating with anticipation. After spending a handful of hours frolicking with slimes and skipping around Rainbow Island, though, that early dazzle is starting to wear off. Monomi Park’s sequel feels a little too familiar to its predecessor in its early game, and it’s put a major downer on my goo-hoovering adventures....

Along with other suspects arrested earlier this week, the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors’ Office have reason to believe Naka may have had foreknowledge of Aiming’s contract to develop mobile spin-off Dragon Quest Tact when he bought the shares in the company. Naka was arrested under Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, as it’s thought he could have profited from any increase of Aiming’s share price once Dragon Quest Tact was announced....

The fantastic FTL was already a minor point of comparison for Bomber Crew, sharing the broad concept of shuffling crew around positions of a flying machine, but Space Crew is not “FTL but WW2 but in space.” The Crew games are a lot more involved, with much more to micromanage as you try to keep your vehicle together, engage enemies, and stop your crew from muffing it up. But yeah, you can make your crew look like your mates then blame them when things do go wrong....

There we are, Ian Beardman, killing people for money in the bowels of a hive city on the forsaken planet of Necromunda. We’ve got some guns, a grappling hook, and cybernetic upgrades we can upgrade for fancy technopowers. Oh, and we’ve got a dog friend, who we can also upgrade. Streum On are no strangers to grim futurecities filled with gangs and robots and mutants, having started out making the janky-but-fascinating E....

This is because, after twelve years of steady play, Spelunky’s systems feel less like something poked and prodded on a screen than tools I use to make myself feel a particular way. Procedurally generated levels, permadeath, predictable enemies; in combination, they can make me feel tense, excited, elated, but they were also comforting. In its daily challenge mode in particular, which offers a single chance per day to play the same set of generated levels as everyone else, Spelunky is my daily cup of coffee....

“Leave your own unique mark by spinning webs through the interconnected world,” say Sbug Games. “Stick webs to almost anything and use them to create your own paths.” Webbed is an open world of sorts, they say, though it’s separated into different rooms. As you adventure and explore, any webs you’ve placed in the past will remain when you return. You’ll be able to help friendly bugs along the way who may assist you with your rescue mission in return....

Loadout-wise, yesterday’s blog post explains, players will get to customise ships in seven slots: primary weapons, countermeasures, two auxiliary components, hull, shields, and engines. Some weapons will have different stats, while others will work in different ways, like ion cannons that maul shields but only tickle hulls. Aux components are things from repair systems and tractor beams to torpedos and mines. And countermeasures are things like chaff and sensor jammers....

Normally I watch these videos with the sole purpose of sniffing out any little detail about what you actually do in Starfield. Given this is about audio and not art or story or design, it’s a little harder to find those gameplay prizes from the bottom of the video cereal packet. It’s still an interesting video, anyway. Zur and Lampert are both Bethesda veterans - Zur worked on the score for Fallout 3, 4 and 76 - and they talk about their process....

I’ve always been a fan of handhelds. One of my favourite custom boots so far is this “handheld history” montage by KnightMD: Who doesn’t love a bit of ISS 64 and, by extension, its Peruvian bootleg Mundial Ronaldinho Soccer 64? Maple Gloom tweeted their custom boot vid created in honour of the 2020 meme: Dev Enrique Colinet’s Steam Deck been personalised in fetching Gordon Freeman orange, which I guess also makes it look a little like one flavour of Nintendo’s box-shaped sixth-gen console: Other Deck owners have turned to the gogglebox for inspiration, even repurposing Futurama’s intro for their custom boot video....

Oh, and Federations brings some new toys: vast Juggernaut-class spaceships equipped with their own shipyards to keep fleets strong while out on spacebusiness; and Mega Shipyards which can have up to 30 dockslots and give big building bonuses. Sometimes federations need a huge mobile murderfleet, you know? Nate had a wee look at Federations last year. For more on features of the expansion and free update, check out Paradox’s dev diaries....

Stoneshard is a top-down, tile-based dungeon crawler in which time only moves when you do. It’s as if Superhot and chess stole Diablo’s car to go on a road trip to Durham. It’s like NetHack and Dungeons of Dredmor held hands and stared lovingly into one another’s eyes as they walked into the ocean. You are an adventurer in a richly detailed, open ended fantasy world piled high with quests, magic, monsters and loot, whose main superpower is the ability to – between any two footsteps – go make a tofurkey sandwich in the real world while your gracious opponents remain patiently frozen in time....

Storyteller has been through a long development cycle. We first interviewed developer Daniel Benmergui at 2012’s Independent Games Festival. The game was put on hold in 2014 due to Benmergui feeling “creatively numb from always dealing with the same project.” Luckily for us, the game was revived and re-revealed at Annapurna Interactive’s 2021 showcase. Alice0 only had good things to say about its most recent demo, calling it “simple, clever, satisfying, and surprisingly funny,” with a lot of murder in between....

I can do all manner of more mundane things in Strange Horticulture, though. This is, after all, partly a quiet life sim about running a plant shop, where you’ll be greeting customers, exploring the surrounding lands using a big map, and following little clues to find more specimins. The other part is a puzzle game, where the puzzle is “what plant do I need?” Your customers will come in asking for a flower that is a traditional gift for weddings, something that’ll help them sleep, or will clear up a rash....