// Compiling awesome content...
No sponsors, no PR fluff. Members keep it that way: ad-free reading, comments, full-text RSS, and member-only posts.
Campfire Cabal follows Expeditions: Rome with a party-based RPG set during Japan’s civil wars. It hits Steam Early Access on August 7, with the full release planned for Q1 2027.
The 1995 series, Evangelion: Death (True) and The End of Evangelion all arrive on the Criterion Channel on September 1, licensed through GKIDS. Anime landing in that catalogue is a bigger deal than a streaming listing usually is.
Cold Symmetry has a free open beta on Steam three weeks out from the August 20 launch. It is a standalone sequel, the Shell possession system is back, and the studio is finally showing the systems rather than the mood.
Prideful Sloth's hands-on town builder finally left early access, and it is transformed by a second controller. The opening hours drag and it is a tycoon game rather than the Animal Crossing clone some people want, but the co-op and its host permission controls make it a rare management sim you can genuinely play with your kids.
A twin-stick roguelike where you play the infection, tear organelles out of the cells you kill and bolt them onto your own body. The build system is the most inventive thing I have played all year, and I lost a week of evenings to it. The basic movement rules are the weak link.
Melbourne's Gameclaw Studio built a side-scrolling RPG about rebuilding a dwarven home one rescued kinsman at a time, and I lost a string of evenings to it. Gorgeous pixel art, a compulsive settlement loop and honest jank in the combat. Recommended.
I bounced off Palworld hard in early access. Version 1.0 fixed the jank, killed the worst of the grind and bolted a real endgame onto the catch-shoot-build loop. Two and a half years later, the meme game became one of the best survival crafters on PC.
Season 2 kept my Friday-night tea ritual alive for ten weeks, and I loved being back on the road with Frieren, Fern and Stark. But this season is a bridge, not a destination: gentle, lovely, and clearly saving its biggest feelings for what comes next.
Ubisoft's Black Flag remake is a genuinely lovely rebuild of the best pirate game the series ever made, and a case study in souring your own launch with nine day-one DLC packs. The ship is great. The gift shop can walk the plank.
