Month: September 2024

Nova Roma looks to bring to life the Pax Romana period (the peaceful bit where they did a load of, y’know, city building) of the Roman Empire, complete with the culture, politics, and, importantly, the architecture of the era.

The Nova Roma trailer revealed at the PC Gaming Show touts the colorful forums and colosseums we’ll be building, as well as a few interesting mechanics that should spice up gameplay. For example, water looks to play an integral role in the development of your cities, as we see flood waters from a burst dam devastating a built-up settlement, followed by an aqueduct being built to ferry water into a small district to feed into a fountain. 

The new city builder is from Lion Shield, the team behind the “damn charming” Kingdoms and Castles, and we can see that same delight on show. Watching the city change color with the turn of the seasons is a treat that hopefully ties in with Nova Roma’s intricate weather simulation system. And it looks as though you’ll have to be careful to appease a pantheon of gods as you expand, too, with the trailer showing the god of thunder, Jupiter, casting lightning down upon bu…

Piranha Bytes, the German developer of the Gothic, Risen, and Elex RPGs, has reportedly been closed by parent company Embracer Group. The closure comes less than six months after Piranha Bytes said it was “in a difficult situation” but was still trying to find a way to move ahead with its next game in order to keep the studio open.

The closure was first reported by Polish gaming site CD Action, which quoted a former employee as saying the studio had been shuttered at the end of June after Embracer was unable to find a buyer. 

Shortly after that report came to light, former creative director Bjorn Pankratz, along with his wife and fellow Piranha Bytes veteran Jennifer, announced the launch of a new indie outfit called Pithead Studio. 

“We wanted to keep doing what we love,” Pankratz said in the studio announcement video. “This seemed like the best way to do it.”

The video makes no mention of Piranha Bytes, but a message posted on the Pithead Studio Discord points to an unhappy ending. 

“As you sure noticed, the gaming industry was not doing well last year,” it states. “This was also the case for the Embracer Group, to which THQ Nordic …

It’s officially spoiler season for Magic: the Gathering’s new set, March of the Machine, and we’ve already got some hitters. The set’s story features the last desperate struggle of the planeswalkers to turn back the tide of Elesh Norn and her infinite hordes of Phyrexian death robots. It also features a reprint of a very cheeky monkey.

That’s right, Ragavan is coming to Magic the Gathering: Arena. As this set represents the climactic battle of all planes to push back the Phyrexians, it isn’t set in one particular place but instead across the entire Magic multiverse. And since we know that everyone’s favorite pilferer is the strongest hero in all of Kaladesh, it makes sense that he would make an appearance. His arrival in the Historic format is sure to cause a major commotion, with most folks thinking he’ll be banned on arrival or shortly thereafter, like he is in Legacy.

Ragavan isn’t the only hero answering the call to battle, however. Every booster will include a Multiverse Legend, a reprint that despite not being Standard legal will be a fun addition, especially in the draft format. March of the Machine also features some incredibly cool team-up cards, like Thalia…

In our Cataclismo preview earlier this month, we enthused about the survival RTS’s toolset for meticulous base-building, which lets our inner Lego kids delight in the delicate, piece-by-piece placement of masonry, merlons, and murder holes. In fact, the building is so satisfying that the lack of a sandbox mode was one of our few sticking points. Good news: Cataclismo lacks no longer.

Earlier today Cataclismo got its first patch since its early access release, adding a much-requested sandbox mode. In it, you’ll have unlimited resources to work with, letting you build without restriction whether you’re exploring the strategic space or just honing your sense of castle aesthetics. It’s an important skill: No self-respecting castellan just slaps merlons down wherever they’ll fit. Imagine! A misplaced merlon! I can hear the courtiers chortling already.

While it’s nice to have Cataclismo’s building toolkit to freely play around with, it’s an addition that’ll provide some carry-over utility for the not-sandbox modes. Cataclismo lets you save blueprints, meaning if you make a substructure or defensive feature that’s proved particularly useful, you can save it as a template to…

Generally speaking, when you’re talking about “mechs,” you’re talking about massive machines of war in games like Battletech or Iron Harvest. Lightyear Frontier is an unusual but fun-looking twist on that formula: It’s a farming sim, and your mechs are farm machines—the fusion-powered, bipedal tractors of the future. Autocannons are out, irrigation hoses are in.

The gameplay reveal at the 2022 Future Games Show looked promising, but today developer Frame Break announced that it has decided to delay the early access launch that was planned for this spring. A new release target has not been set.

“With Lightyear Frontier, we want to make sure that you feel powerful and engaged in the mech while starting your own homestead, constructing a variety of structures, farming exotic alien crops, and exploring on a vibrant and unfamiliar world,” the studio said. 

“Not only do we want to design the game to be fun, but also well-balanced with each aspect of the game intertwining with one another, and we remain committed to building a thoughtfully-designed experience and continuing the conversation with your community in the process.”

The Lightyear Frontier S…