Kristal777

For fans of chill city builders like Townscaper, Gourdlets, Terra Nil, and the upcoming Tiny Glade, I’ve got another relaxing building game to add to your wishlist. 

Lands of Koastalia sets you up as mayor of a peaceful island community where you oversee a growing population, try to meet their needs, and create cozy buildings, farms, and fields—all by drawing shapes on ground. As you can see in the announcement trailer below, Koastalia is a picturesque world of fluffy trees and happy sheep, which you’ll oversee as you draw shapes and watch cozy-looking farmhouses, vibrant little wheat fields, and fenced-in livestock pens appear.

“You can literally create different buildings by just drawing shapes on the grid. Our special building algorithms will generate a unique building each time, bringing an element of visual charm to your village,” says developer Asaloda Games.

It’s more than just an exercise in relaxation, however: you’ll also need to handle a bit o…

It’s always a bummer when an MMO, or any multiplayer game, gets shut down and goes forever dark. That was the fate of medieval survival sandbox Life is Feudal: MMO, which entered early access in 2018 but closed its doors barely three years later, apparently due to financial issues and disagreements between developer Bitbox and its publisher, Xsolla.

So you’d expect hardcore fans of the realistic medieval MMO to react with joy and excitement upon hearing Life is Feudal has a new publisher that’s bringing the game back. Right?

Not quite. In the official Discord, the May 30 announcement of Life of Feudal’s rebirth was met with 95 cry-laugh emojis, 74 poops, 62 clowns, and a group effort to spell out the word S-C-A-M in emoji letters. To be fair, there were also 35 thumbs-ups, which I attribute to people being genuinely happy (but also maybe a few of them not reading the announcement all that closely).

So, what’s the problem? Why aren’t fans happy the MMO is being give…

Baldur’s Gate 3 has certainly changed the conversation on sex in games, from the breakout viral moment around its bear sex scene to the way it turns intimacy, rather than sex, into the end goal of many of its relationships. Our RPG roundtable from this year’s Game Developers Conference, now available on the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast feed, touches on the topic of sex in games—but it also spawned an incredible anecdote from Obsidian game director Carrie Patel from her time as a narrative designer on The Outer Worlds.

Here is, as far as I know, the never-before-told story of what would have been a wild hidden ending in The Outer Worlds, if it hadn’t been cut before release: 

Carrie Patel: “I worked on a secret ending to The Outer Worlds with Dan McPhee who was another narrative designer on the project. Fairly late in development I was writing the flavor terminal stuff for Chairman Rockwell’s office, which you can encounter midway, maybe ⅔ o…

Whether you need a little or a lot of help with today’s Wordle, everything you’re looking for is waiting below. Enjoy puzzling it out—with a bit of guidance—using today’s hint, or rescue an unlucky game with the answer to the March 27 (1012) Wordle. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s right here.

My Wednesday Wordle actually went pretty well, even though it didn’t feel like it at the time. I started with a great green letter, and soon found some more to go with it. It’s just a shame those gaps around them took a little longer to fill than I’d like, I suppose. Maybe I’ll solve tomorrow’s puzzle in a flash to make up for it.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, March 27

“Ow, I’ve been _____!” is the sort of thing you might say after being attacked by a bee, wasp, or similar angry insect. Think of unpleasant needle-like pricks to the skin, and you’ll soon find today’s answer. 

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Is there a d…

Overwatch 2 will release on Steam on August 10, and Blizzard isn’t going to stop there, promising that “a selection” of its other games will come to Steam in the future.

What chaos! Can immutable PC gaming laws really turn out to be mutable just like that? Are there no divisions, no borders, no distinctions remaining at all?

Blizzard and Valve never had a Sega and Nintendo-style rivalry, but Overwatch 2’s Steam page is still weird in the way Sonic’s first Nintendo console appearance was. Battle.net was introduced in 1996, well before Steam existed, and Blizzard was probably the last remaining company that could disregard Steam without everyone moaning about it. Its legacy put it in a category of its own.

You’ll still need a Battle.net account to play Overwatch 2 on Steam, and Steam and Battle.net players will be able to play together. The Steam version of Overwatch 2 isn’t just a glorified shortcut, though: It will include Steam Achievements and allow you to invite…

The Last of Us Part 1 was in rough shape when it finally made its long-awaited debut on PC earlier this year. It gave us the blessings of Eyebrows Joel, which was pretty great, but not quite great enough to make up for the fact that performance was brutal and crashes were far too common: Nearly 9,700 user reviews on Steam currently have it sitting at a “mostly negative” overall rating, a very unexpected response to such a highly anticipated game.

A hotfix went live on March 29, the day after The Last of Us Part 1 appeared on Steam, which focused primarily on “stability and performance improvements and other smaller improvements.” and Sony and Naughty Dog also said they were “closely watching player reports and actively working on a patch with more bugfixes, to be released soon.”

The patch notes for that hotfix were effectively useless, stating only that it “fixed several performance & hitch related issues impacting some users.” It also added “extra crash diagnostic i…

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 (which I’ll be calling ‘Bloodlines 2’ from here on) has had a troubled history. Its initial developer, Hardsuit Labs, fired both the game’s lead writer Brian Mitsoda and creative director Ka’ai Cluney in 2020. A senior narrative designer, Cara Ellison, left later that year. Then Hardsuit Labs got booted from the project entirely in 2021.

It wasn’t until September 2023 that its new developer stepped from the shadows: The Chinese Room (TCR). To describe Bloodlines 2 as ‘out of their comfort’ zone is an understatement. TCR has previously made narrative-heavy games like Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and Little Orpheus. An encore to a cult-classic action RPG is a bat out of left field.

I had the pleasure of speaking to TCR’s Arone Le Bray, the game’s narrative designer, about the project, and particularly about the game’s newly announced protagonist Phyre (pronounced “Fire”). They’ll be fu…

After final negotiations “hit a wall,” labor unions in France are calling for a one-day strike by Ubisoft employees in the country over what they say are lowball wage increase offers aimed at offsetting management failures. 

Le Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo (Videogame Workers Union) said in a message posted on February 1 that during mandatory annual negotiations, Ubisoft management offered raises that were lower than the rate of inflation for the second year in a row, despite the company reporting “excellent second quarter [results], well above our expectations” in its recent first-half 2023-24 financial report. 

The lower-than-expected wage offer was made, according to STJV, “in order to hit arbitrary cost reduction targets.”

“A company that still makes a profit, even when its execs have failed repeatedly, choosing to have its employees pay to increase its profits is plainly unacceptable,” the union said.

The Solida…

Of the handful of Sims-like life sims on the horizon, Inzoi may be the most hotly anticipated. Not only is it likely coming soonest, but it’s gorgeous too. We’ll all get our hands on its prettiest features next week when Inzoi’s character creator gets a free demo starting on August 20.

“As a special treat for its community,” Krafton announced today that Inzoi is releasing a limited time public demo for Inzoi: Character Studio through Steam. “This feature allows players to craft their dream avatar, the ‘Zoi,’ with over 250 customization options.” Character Studio will be available to play from 9 pm Pacific on Tuesday, August 20 through 9 pm Pacific on Sunday, August 25.

We’ve seen snatches of Inzoi in a couple gameplay trailers since it was announced late last yet with longed-for life sim features like driveable cars, city editing tools, and other wacky things like tarot card readings. The bit that’s been easiest to drool over though has bee…