At its most basic, Roadwarden is a text-based RPG. You play as the titular roadwarden, who sets out from the city to investigate an unmapped peninsula with little more than their horse for company. Your goal as set by the people who sent you is to investigate the region and report your findings in preparation for the expansion of trade guilds in the area. But you can also set your own goal, shaping your character’s approach from the start in a way that helps with roleplaying a particular kind of adventurer throughout....

The game is a worthy successor to the original Rogue Legacy, and one that builds on it with a wealth of incentives to make your runs more rewarding. Upgrades up the wazoo, gold bursting from your breeches, double-jumps and air-dashes. Progression is a pleasure, basically, and it’s something that never becomes a bore, no matter how good you are at staying alive. I mean, the game is built with death in mind, after all....

In Rogue Lords you play as the Devil who’s trying to take revenge on the demon hunters that kicked him out of the mortal world. He does this by sending out fiendish minions like Bloody Mary and Dracula to do his dirty work (which, as you’ll see in the trailer below, mostly revolves around beating up said demon hunters). Throughout your runs you have a little meter full of “Diabolic Essence”, which you can use to perform special actions to help your henchmen in battle....

Rover Mechanic Simulator imagines a reality in which humanity has colonised the farthest edges of solar system, our species’ reach extending to the very worlds our ancestors once gazed up at and dreamt of driving a little solar powered car around on. In this brave new frontier of boundless opportunity, you are the guy whose job it is to stay inside the Martian base and tighten up the loose bolts on the machines that come to you for repairs....

Proper in-person day badges are still available from the PAX East website if you’re in and around Boston this week (only Saturday is sold out at time of writing), but they will set you back $62. However, if you’re not able to make it, or just aren’t quite ready to come back to in-person events right now, we’ll be there bringing you the best that PAX has to offer in digital form, all from the comfort of your own home....

As is tradition, our Vidbuds are today hosting a day-long livestream playing all sorts of wee indie games that are in PAX X EGX. Matthew and Colm are on the Indies Uncovered sofa until 5pm, with 15 games coming before then. They’re starting out exploring a weird WW2 bunker in Paradise Lost, then later will be solving crimes inside video games with Gamedec, levelling up their lovers in dungeon-crawling dating sim Boyfriend Dungeon, admiring birds in the card game Wingspan, and more....

If you’ve not heard of Friends VS Friends, check out the game’s trailer first (its incredibly slick animation is super cool, highly reccomended for your peepers) then watch our interview with Brainwash Gang developer Edu Verz who talked all about the game’s development. Watch it below: With vibrant visuals and fast-paced action, Friends VS Friends is definitely a game to watch. Liam and I had such a great time running around its urban environment, activating cards to mess with each other as we tried to shoot up the other....

‘Course, I also liked the Warcraft movie, so what the hell do I know? The rumour stems from the LinkedIn page of Activision Blizzard film and television division president Nick van Dyk (via Gamespot). Importantly, van Dyk’s listing may hold water. His job description cites his work on the Skylanders Academy Netflix series (which definitely exists) alongside mentions of Diablo and Overwatch adaptations (which are as-yet unconfirmed). Van Dyke notes that he acted as executive producer on a Diablo series, one noted to be “rendered in anime style” and allegedly in pre-production stages for global distribution via Netflix....

The day after Rune 2’s November 12th, 2019 launch, the developers at Human Head Studios announced they were shutting down. The development team had accepted positions at the new Roundhouse Studios owned by Bethesda. According to Ragnarok, who Human Head had an agreement with dating back to 2017, the developers then refused to hand over Rune 2’s code. Last month, Ragnarok Game filed a legal complaint in California naming the (now closed) Human Head and three individual members of the former studio as parties to the suit....

“A major part of Rust has always been its hardcore, ruthless PvP and will continue to be,” Facepunch’s Maurino Berry said in Thursday’s blog post. “But we’re aware that some players want a less brutal experience (sometimes, anyway).” So! Starting on 10 servers, Softcore offers a friendlier version of Rust. When you die, you can reclaim half of your inventory either from the spot where you die or a terminal in Bandit Town or the outpost....

You steer your wee boat around a grounded anime age-of-sail Earth, looking for shipwrecks and treasures, fighting pirates (and possibly being one, although fairly peripherally),exploring, trading, and doing the usual Elite-style open world thing. I’ll be honest: I don’t exactly love this one, and it’s spread a little thin. But I’ve played it for hours longer than I expected and enjoyed it more as it went on. It’s doing a lot, in its own slightly roundabout way....

It also now has a release date: May 10th, according to a new trailer below. As well as being able to summon pals to help, S&S also has PvP in which you can invade other player’s games and hunt them down. It really is Dark Soulsy, I’m not making this up. It hopefully gets away with its similarities by executing well on all those ideas. Our Ed has already had a go on a build of Salt And Sacrifice, calling it a worthy successor to its predecessor in his preview....

Felisha and Paolo are part of our parent company RELX’s marketing department that’s based in Manila, and they’ve been moderating comments on RPS as well as our sister sites Eurogamer, VG247 and Dicebreaker for several months now. Until recently, they’ve been working away silently behind the scenes, but now they’ll be taking a more active role in the wider RPS community, replying to your excellent comments and chatting with you to help generate discussion....

Last year, the makers of the Darwin Project, Scavengers Studio, announced Season, a lovely-looking bicycle adventure about a traveller “recording the last moments of different cultures before they’re washed away.” It looks like a beautiful and relaxing experience, but a new report paints a dark picture about what’s allegedly been going on during its development. Multiple employees have accused the studio’s creative director of sexual and verbal harassment, and described the studio as a hostile and toxic work environment....

“As Sea of Thieves has grown, we’ve been supporting some of these initiatives in the background, helping people get together on the same server to save on that initial setup time for our community events, but we’ve always harboured a desire to do more,” Rare say in their announcement. “We will be working with these creators and community groups to test Custom Servers in a live environment.” For the first iteration of custom server use, Rare are planning to let Xbox Insider testers customise types and number of ships on the server and generate a private code to share with invited friends....

I quite liked Shelter back in its day and although I’ve not kept up as closely with all of Might and Delight’s subsequent games, I’ve kept a closer eye on this tiny online game. As with their previous games, Book Of Travels appears to be quite a minimalist experience while still encouraging interaction between players. Might and Delight tested out player interactions based on symbols in Meadow, a system with more than a passing resemblance to Thatgamecompany’s Journey, which just arrived on PC last year....

“We’ve been clear we’ve offered Sony a 10-year deal to give them parity,” said Shaw in a follow-up tweet. “We’ve also said we’re happy to make this enforceable through a contract, regulatory agreements, or other means.” The 10-year deal was likely an attempt to appease regulators who cite CoD exclusivity as a potential problem with Microsoft’s deal. Nintendo have signed a different 10-year deal, though I doubt that one’s about parity since, y’know, CoD doesn’t exist on Nintendo systems yet....

Skul is a game in which you technically play the baddies, hence the “Hero Slayer” title. But really the heroes are human jerks and the skeletons mostly just want to be left alone. Plus Skul, your character, is cute as a button. He’s cute in every one of his forms. You’ll switch out his head for a wolf skull that let’s you move quicker and cause damage while dashing, or a minotaur skull that let’s you damage crowds of enemies with a ground-pound (just as the minotaur did to Theseus), or a jester skull that let’s you chuck knives....

This video is 4k, should your eyes have the pixel capacity to handle it. And, gosh, they properly whacked the snow slider up. It’s so blindingly white that I needed to put on some goggles. I was a tiny but underwhelmed with the initial cityscapes, but from the moment a snowed-in Paris gently swooped into view I once again felt like a first-class passenger. I’m currently stowing my scepticism about what they’re showing off, and just enjoying the feeling and excitement that a big, hugely impressive flight sim is stirring in me....

I do very much like the idea that the Xbox is the surprise sequel to Peter Molyneux’s cube-tapping Curiosity. What’s Inside The Box? I’ve not had a console since my old flatmate took her PlayStation 4 with her, but if I get one now I don’t think it’ll be an Xbox. All of Microsoft’s own games that previously would have been exclusive to Xbox are on PC nowadays so not having one doesn’t really mean I’ll miss out on any games....