Team17 and Piraknights Games have announced Sintopia, a god game where you play as the devil. Wait�It’s a management game where you manage Hell. T??hat’s better. It’s set to release in Early Access sometime in 2025.

The trailer and press materials don’t really do a great job of explaining what goes on in Sintopia,? but I’ll do my best here. It has two sides to its gameplay. There’s Hell, where ?you gain profit by punishing people for their sins. They’re eventually resurrected back to Earth, where you then influence them to sin more, then when they die, you can punish them all over again to make more money. I hope I’m describing this right.

The trailer depicts something that looks like a game Bullfrog or Lionhead would do back in the �0s. The overworld reminds me of Dungeon Keeper (though the game itself looks nothing like it). The Hell segment of the game have a bit of a Startopia or Theme Hospital look to them, but also the souls you’re punishing look to be on a?? conveyor belt, perhaps. I’m intrigued.

I’m also curious about the overworld. The trailer shows off a succubus seducing ??an army and a building catching fire. It seems like there’s a balance you need to keep regarding influx and sins. As in, you can’t just get greedy, push everyone to sin, then kill everyone for massive gains. In one o?f the press release’s more lucid statements, they say:

“Make sure your souls go through an effective "re-education" to avoid a buildup of their Sins across many lives... no one wants to face the demonic invasion that will inevitably result from having too much corruption in the world.�/p>

I’m interested. As I said, it looks like a Bullfrog game, and while a lot of those games would?? deliver on ambition but often fum??ble parts of the execution, the fact that there was nothing really like them makes them memorable. And that could be the case here, but I wouldn’t know, there’s a weird dearth of information.

We’ll no doubt learn more as Sintopia approaches its early access launch in 2025.

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Clever Trickster Productions has announced that their vampire bar simulator, Blood Bar Tycoon, will release on October ?28th. That is a busy day. It??’s coming to PC.

From the looks of things, you’re not merely running a bar that serves vampires. You’re also running one that serves humans, which you then use as food for your vampiric patrons. I’m going to point out (and did in the headline) that this is part of a growing number of games about running a restaurant where you murder the customers. It joins Godlike Burger and Ravenous Devils at a cursory glance. Delicious.

What I haven’t seen is a great cannibal business sim. Do vampires count as cannibals? They’re not, like, another species, right? Anyway, Blood Bar Tycoon looks pretty great. You have to lure and capture humans, and then you can squeeze out their juices and turn them into a variety of beverages. You have to keep up the appearance of a legitim??ate business, or hunters will arrive to burn your bar down. You also have to deal with Elder Vampires who seem to have their own demands based on their personality.

For that matter, I haven’t really seen a good restaurant simulator in yonks. The last one I remember really trying was Recipe for Disaster, which didn’t turn out well, supposedly because of developer-publisher dysfunction and difficulties in early access. I’ve thought about playing Pizza Connection 3, because it’s based on a great se??ries, but people have told me it isn’t very good. I know I should form my own opinions on these things, as I have liked games that weren’t very popular, but I have so much to play these days that taking risks isn’t always desirable.

It might even be a while before I get to Blood Bar Tycoon. I absolu??te??ly understand why a horror-themed game would want to come out near Hallowe’en, but that’s when most of these types of games come out. I’d play everything if I could, but I’ll have to see where my priorities are when that time comes.

Blood Bar Tycoon releases on PC o?n October 28, 202?4. There is a beta/demo available to try out right now.

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Longterm Games has announced their upcoming game, StarKeeper, which has you manage a tavern on a wayward meteor. Alongside it, they have released a trailer that showcases gameplay that looks oddly adjacent to 2001’s Startopia.

Management sims based around building a tavern have been growing in popularity over the past while. It’s one of those concepts that creators have grasped onto and are trying to put their own spin on it. As a hobbyist, it can be a bit vexing, as I don’t really even know where to begin when it seems like the announcement of three of them hit my inbox each day, and I can’t tell their names apart. But while StarKeeper bills itself as a sci-fi tavern builder, it look??s like it has a different take on the? concept.

The tavern in question is built on an asteroid that is hurtling through the depths of space. While this seems like an inconvenient location, it means that you’ll see different events and visitors depending on what star system you’re ??going through at that time. So, like a space food truck.

What gives me Startopia vibes is partially the art styl?e but also its inclusion of friction between alien races. You need to provide specific services for the different species that visit, and they will sometimes butt heads against rival factions. According to the press release, you have a hand in the wider political sphere where you can befriend or eliminate factions in “a political game.�Seems like a lot of influence for a small business owner.

However, there are more intimate features more befitting of a business sim. You build trading agreements, arrange the furniture, and can also experiment with dishes. There’s just more to it than making sure your business?? has comfort??able seating and good service.

The last time we really saw a take on the Startopia formula that I know of was Spacebase Startopia back in 2021. It was a decent game but it didn’t really feel like it improved on the original. At the time, I felt like an expansion or DLC could round things out, but that didn’t happen, unfortunately. So, I’m looking forward to what StarKeeper brings.

StarKeeper is coming to PC followed by a c??onsole release sometime after. There’s no indicated release window at this time.

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Indie studio Universal Happymaker announced their management adventure Astronaut: The Best will release for PC via Steam on August 15. In Astronaut, players ha?ve the task of managing an occult space academy in an uncanny world.

"Our team spent over eight years working to make a bizarre moral laboratory of a game, that feels truly unlike anything you've played before," said Mike Sennott, Lead Developer on Astronaut: The Best. "We hope you'll be deeply and delightedly surprised by w??????????????????????????hat you find inside, and that makes all those ??years worth it."

Sennott was the Narrative Designer on the popular indie tactical RPG Wintermoor Tactics Club. The team also released a new launch date announcement trailer showing off Astronaut's weirdness.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbkPomZBxyE

Running a culty space academy doesn't look easy

In Astronaut: The Best, it's literally your job to guide procedurally generated misfit recruits through a roguelite hodgepodge of scandals an??d challenges. You can guide ?your Astronaut team via a variety of methods including lies, witchcraft, and of course some good ole classic hard work. New recruits can be former serial killers, part-time pirates, or even members of the royal family. The team at Universal Happymaker notes that choices will actually have an impact on each recruit as well as their likelihood to succeed.

This game is definitely very weird looking, which has really piqued my interest. It's weird looking in an intriguing way. The visuals are uncanny for sure and in some aspects eerily creepy. It's sort of giving me Cultist Simulator vibes with a bit of Homestar Runner bet??ween the graphic and comedic style. I'm interested to see just how strange the?? game can get.

Astronaut: The Best releases on PC via Steam on August 15. It is also Steam Deck compatible.

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Names become Numbers

As part of yesterday's Nacon Connect live stream, the French publisher released a new trailer for its affecting and intense-looking release, War Hospital, which is curr??ently?? in development for PC and consoles.

Developed by indie outfit Brave Lamb Studios, War Hospital is a harsh management simulator that will afford the player the unenviable task of attempting to build, run, and maintain makeshift medical facilities in the throes of World ??War One. As a British combat medic on the French frontline, with an almost hopeless situation at hand, it is the player's task to ensure? that wounded soldiers are able to receive the care needed to keep them alive, standing, and ultimately, returning to the fight.

//www.youtube.??com/watch?v=unLUFJFvOt0&ab_channel=Naco??n

Understaffed and undersupplied, massively difficult matters of efficiency and pragmatism will need to be tackled in order to ensure maximum surv?ivability rate for a constant influx of patients. Researc??h and develop new fields of medicine and healing, build extended wards and theaters within earshot of battle, and, when the war gets a little too close for comfort, be prepared to venture into the field in a desperate search for resources, and face the consequences of desperate, necessary actions.

While War Hospital certainly doesn't look to have the jolly, low-stakes nature of similar titles such as Theme Hospital and Two Point Hospital, the trailer above showcases a meticulously designed and stylishly presented example of the hospital sim genre. While certainly not a title for the weak of heart and nerve, War Hospital looks very promising, a?nd worth watching for those willing to tip the ultimate scales of life and death.

War Hospital launches later th?is year on PS5, P??C, and Xbox Series X.

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20th Century Boy

It's F-F-F-Friday, so it's time to take a look at the next title that Epic Games Store will be offering up to its customer base free of charge �Next week, you'll be looking to get your entrepreneurial hat on, with the arrival of tycoon simulation Rise of Industry, available to download from March 2.

Released in 2019 and developed by the delightfully named Dapper Penguin Studios, Rise of Industry tasks the player with building and main??taining a thriving industrial economy, set against the backdrop of the money-busting 1930s. The player will be required to micro-manage a number of key factors of industry, from sourcing the raw materials, to building factories and warehouses, to implementing shipping routes and securing trade agreements with other towns, cities, and countries.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUBk00oyVpU&ab_channel=Dapper??PenguinStudios

Of course, you are not the only ambitious entrepreneur on the block, and you must ensure that your rivals don't pull the rug out from underneath you, as you adapt to changing climates, offer competitive rates and deals, and ensure the speedy manufacture and delivery of over 150 different products. Rise of Industry features several scenarios with which to test your mandate mettle, or an endless sandbox mode with which the player can build, expand, and?? modernize their empire at will. With easy-to-learn mechanics and myriad management fe??atures, this looks to be a title to keep the ol' noodle occupied well into the wee small hours.

Rise of Industry will be able to download from Epic Games Store from March 2 until March 9. Until then, players still have the opportunity to bag current freebie Duskers, before its removal on Wednesday.

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An idiot sandwich...

It's the end of another week, and that means Epic Games Store is ready to reveal the next game it will be offering up to all of its users free of charge �And its a matter of fires, fights, and fricassees, with the arrival of kitchen and restaurant management sim Recipe for Disaster, available from February 9.

Developed by the fantastically monikered Spanish outfit Dapper Penguin, and launched on PC in the summer of 2022, Recipe for Disaster tasks players with the smooth operation of a professional kitchen and its attached dining room, ensuring the quick, efficient, and accurate work of its chefs and waiting staff, delivering high-quality meals to customers while keeping everybody happy and safe �the former being something of an ?im??possibility in the catering industry.

Yes, Chef.

//www.you??tube.com/watch?v=tokpkrCYvus&ab_chan??nel=KasedoGames

Recipe for Disaster offers up customization and management goals on a huge variety of kitchen elements, from ensuring stock of quality ingredients, to purchasing top-tier equipment, and managing the distinct personalities of your staff to encourage team synergy and discourage inter-culinary brawling. You can also design the restaurant itself, and even conjure up your own recipes to really put your eatery on the map. Dapper Penguin's release was well-rec??eived by critics on release, and is well worth a look for management sim fans or anyone who believes they?'re cut out for the non-stop, high-pressure world of foods and feuds.

Recipe For Disaster will be available to download, free of charge, from Epic Games Store from February 9-16. Until then, users still have the opportunity to bag themselves this week's freebies, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and City of Gangsters.

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A harrowing journey to the end of the world

I never get tired of a good narrative game, so when I see a trailer that looks good enough to grab my attention, I can't help but get excited about a potential new story-driven gem. That's absolutely the case when it comes to The Pale Beyond, a narrative polar exploration game that's set to release on February 24, 2023.?? The title was originally announced back in November of 2021, and its story will follow the crew of a vessel named The Temperance, who have set out on an expedition? toward the South Pole in an attempt to discover the mystery of their lost sister ship, the Viscount, which set out on a journey to find the absolute magnetic South five years prior.

//youtu.be/PvvkUPPJc_E

The Pale Beyond's launch trailer shows off some of the game's foremost mechanics, like resource and morale management and survival simulation �one can imagine how those elements will tie into tough narrative choices the player must make for the survival of the crew. What really grabbed me about this game is its?? art style, from the painterly backdrops to the hand-drawn character p?ortraits. Here's hoping that the gameplay experience will hold up against the gorgeous visuals.

I'm a big fan of these harrowing, tension-filled "journey" narratives, and it's certainly not a story I've played in a game for a good while now, so I'm looking forward to checking out The Pale Beyond once it drops. If the game looks interesting to you as well and you want to get a taste before the release date, there's also a demo you can download on The Pale Beyond's Steam page right now.

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Finding Nemo�Delicious

Sushi’s delicious, it’s just too bad we love it so much that it’s driving the depletion of ocean habitats. However, that’s largely because the industry relies on non-selective fishing. Spearfishing might not get us the quantity we crave, but it’s much more sustainable. So good on Dave the Diver for being environmentally conscious.

The marriage of spearfishing and restaurant ma?nagement is a tantalizing mix I?? didn’t know I wanted. Now I just have to deal with the constant cravings.

Dave the Diver (Steam Early Access)
Developer: MINTROCKET
Publisher: MINTROCKET
Released: October 27, 2022
MSRP:

Dave the Diver stars the titular Dave, who is literally peer-pressured into managing a sushi restaurant. A friend of his found a lake that mysteriously contains fish fro??m all over the world and has decided that people want to eat everything. So forget tuna and salmon; we’re talking about cuttlefish and anglers. Who knows what lies even deeper? Blobfish? We migh?t have some blobfish nigiri.

Along the way, other people become interested in Dave’s excursions into the Giant Blue Hole and ask him to do them favors. Most of these are optional object?ives that can get you gear and extra spending cash. There are also some non-optional quests that advance the story, which involves finding out about an ancient civilization that lived in the h??ole.

The day is broken up into three parts. You have time for two journeys into the depths during the day, but at night, you help run the restaurant. While all the managerial tasks are up to you, Dave also is pressured into assisting with the service. This involves delivering dishes and pouring tea. You can eventually hire people to help out �which is necessary because you’ll quickly find yourself swamped �but you’ll always want to lend a hand. No one pours tea like you do. I assume. It’s actually a cute minigame, and I suppose you could just ?kee??p screwing it up, but I have faith.

[embed]//youtu.be/UrNTzqJ1lpw[/embed]

Source of endless cravings

Fishing is a dangerous business, as you have to monitor the weight you carry, your oxygen supply, and your depth. Going too deep with the wrong suit will deplete your oxygen. While some fish you can hook without any effort, some require you to wear them down first or actually do battle. Beyon??d your spear, there are also guns that you get your hands on. Killing a fish is less efficient than speering them, but sometimes that’s just not an option.

If you d??ie, you’re returned to the surface, ?and you can only choose one prize to take back. It’s very easy to get overconfident and return to the surface belly-up. To prevent this, you can spend your hard-earned tips on better gear that help you dive further, longer, and safer. You also find blueprints for additional weapons to power yourself up.

Giant Blue Hole

I’ve played quite a few of these open-and-upgrade business sims this year, and I’ve found many of them to be quite shaky. Even though Dave the Diver is starting its life in Early Access, ??I didn’t have that problem, whatsoever. It actually struck me as an incredibly solid title. I came across a few bugs, and the balance needs to be tweaked, but the only real giveaway that it’s not finished is that it cuts short.

It also nails a great gameplay loop. The obvious draw to the game is the fishing, and it gives due attention there. A night at the sushi restaurant is rather brief; it’s almost just the payoff for a hard day fishing. The goal may be to build up the business, but Dave the Diver seems to recognize that work is work. You get to see growth rather quickly. You get a sense of what you need to build towards without having to see ??everything play out in? slow motion. I’m honestly impressed by how much thought went into creating an entertaining balance.

Bring the soy sauce

Beyond that, I’m just excited to see where the game goes. ??It frequently hints at some spooky stuff below, and I can’t wait to see what horrors get thrown across some rice. The narrative doesn’t sho?w much sign of getting very suspenseful, but a lot of surprises could still be in store.

The developer’s goal is to launch Dave the Diver fully sometime in early 2023. Judging by what’s currently on offer, that seems l?ike a realistic possibility. Rarely have I seen an Early Access title that has everything so neatly in place already. The planning for the game must be ridiculously solid because, even at this time, there’s a bright, glossy polish on everything. I think only catastrophe could really derail this project, so for now, I can’t wait to dive in deeper.

_{[This scoreless review is based on an Early Access build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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School's In Forever

Two Point Studios has proudly revealed that its recently released college management title Two Point Campus has welcomed over one million players to its hallowed halls of education in just the first two weeks of release. The developer's follow-up to the acclaimed Two Point Hospital launched on PC and consoles back on August 9.

"Two Point Campus was such a thrill to create so we’re ecstatic to see so many people enjoying the game as much as they do!" said Two Point's co-director Mark Webley. "We had high hopes that we had created something that fans would love, but the response has exceeded all expectations! We’d like to send a massive thank you to all of the players out there who are showing support by building the?ir wild and wonderful campuses �we can’t wait to see what more you’ll create."

The cartoonish but extremely deep release tasks players with running a center of education for a huge student body �from designing the layout and aesthetic of the building to managing the school's budget, keeping courses staffed and affordable, and providing a wide variety of facilities, resources, and site-based activities for both the students and faculty. As is the case with many management games, Two Point Campus presents a lighthearted visual design ?and a very healthy sense of humor.

"We had big shoes to fill following the success of Two Point Hospital, so it feels particularly sweet to hit one million players even faster than before," adds co-director Gary Carr. "And this is just the beginning, just as we did with [Two Point Hospital], we’ll be continuously supporting Campus with lots of quality of life updates and other features, plus we have lots of exc?iting new ideas and plans for the future of Two Point Campus, which we can’t wait to share with all of the players out there soon!"

Two Point Campus is available now on PlayStation, PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch platforms. You can check out our own Zoey Handley's review right here.

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I'm here for all of these sinister simulation games

In a new horror-themed management sim from Unfold Games, you'll play as a vampire fresh out of hibernation with a dusty estate to renovate and deck out. One of my favorite parts of games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the early stages �the clean-up process before you settle into your daily business-as-usual routine. And from our first playfully animated look at Bloody Hell Hotel, there's much to do.

The announcement trailer debuted on IGN today, and it moves fast.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT2u84ZEUl4

The vampire protagonist practically wields force powers in the footage, which I kind of love. How the minute-to-minute experience of Bloody Hell Hotel ho?lds u??p remains to be seen, but as a foot-in-the-door pitch, I'm intrigued. It's such a specific concept.

Above ground, you'll need to clean up and furnish the?? hotel, then serve guests (while meeting your own blood-suckin??g needs). The game also has a farming component �including an undead cow and zombie chickens �and there's blacksmithing.

Below the estate "lies a crypt and a system of caves. By foraging, farming, crafting, and fighting your way through the monster-infested dungeons, you'll find the resources you need to restore greatnes?s to your mansion and turn it into a thriving hotel business."

As for the management side of Bloody Hell Hotel, Unfold says that "once your hotel grows in size, you will be able to hire employees, your fellow vampires. You might need a cook, a housekeeper, a porter, a receptionist... Whatever task you want to delegate, you can find someone to do it for you. All it takes is good cash flow and a bit o?f blood to entice them."

[caption id="attachment_339908" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _{I love kicking in first-person games.}[/caption]

Mystery meat

The developers also note that "when it comes to meat, nobody has to know where it comes from" �so go ahead and make the most of your victims ??after sucking their blood to regenera??te your vampiric powers. Using a first-person perspective was a good call.

Unfold's last game was DARQ, a horror puzzle-adventure ga?me with a similar aesthetic??.

Bloody Hell Hotel is coming to Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store. While the team is focusing on the PC version, "conso?le releases will ??be announced separately, but soon."

From the sound of it, this won't rel?ease as an Early? Access game. I'll be keeping tabs on it.

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Education gives you a bright future, then clouds it with debt

The Two Point County Cinematic Universe (TPCCU) excites me. Two Point Studios launched Two Point Hospital with the intent of building a landscape where all their future games would happen. Two Point Campus is the next step. It’s not a sequel, but the aesthetics, the characters, and even the UI call back to their first title. It reminds me of Maxis in the �0s before and directly after EA got their evil all over them. A lot of the games sprung up around SimCity, and whi??le not all of them were as directly related as the ones from Two Point Studios, some were tied together, even if it was just in a reference.

I’ve been eagerly waiting for the next step in the Two Point experience. Actually, I’ve ??been waiting for the next few steps. Forget that, I want to just tumble down the Two Point stairs. I want to be hit in the face with one every second until I?’m completely exhausted, a shattered image of the enthusiastic fan I once was. What are we doing here?

Two Point Campus (PC [Reviewed], PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Two Point Studios
Publisher: Sega
Released: August 9, 2022
MSRP: $39.99

As the name implies, Two Point Campus has you building your own post-secondary education dispensary. And building it again. Then again. Twelve times in all. Your job is ?to meet a series of goals that may or may not relate to the well-being of your students and their futures. Once you accomplish all the goals on a given map, you’re off to the next one.

Even if the goals are different and the games play in considerably unique ways, the framework of Two Point Campus mirrors Two Point Hospital. Each of its levels gives you a new challenge to overcome. Sometimes you’re simply trying to win the national sportsball ?championship. Other times you’re digg??ing in the earth for the priceless and irreplaceable artifacts of humanity’s past and selling them. Each stage has a similar flow, but things are shaken up enough to keep things from growing moss.

[embed]//youtu.be/_14i0Zxsfos[/embed]

The most toilet-y city in the county

Generally, you start your school with a small handful of cash to get it off the ground. You need to focus on simply ??getting a course started; amenities like somewhere to pee can come once you’re established and making money.

The first year doesn’t require much: a lecture theatre, a practical testing spot, and a teacher. A library if you don’t want everyone to fail. Each additional year ramps up what you need, so keep money put away or prepare to take a loan. You’re walked thro??ugh the process a few times before you need to figure it out on your own, but it’s still easy to be a little over-ambitious with your spending.

After you start making money, you need to decide whether to add additional courses or simply expand the ones you have. You don’t necessarily need to offer a multitude of courses, but you can. Some of them use the same facilities, so if you pick them right, you don’t need to bloat up your campus. You can also play with individual aspects of courses. Don’t want a lot of students but still want to charge them an arm and a leg. That’s the dream, friend, and you can do it in Two Point Campus.

Not playing Two Point Architect

Most stages offer new courses to try out. There’s a Hogwarts-inspired magic school, a chivalrous castle campus, and even a clandestine spy factory. Once you’ve unlocked a course on another campus, you can use them on any campus. My favorite was archeology since students dig huge pits and uncover treasure. I liked putting pits where they don’t belong, like beside a pool or in a park. Two Point Campus gave no judgm??ent. At least someone appreciates my chaos.

Some of the same problems that were in Two Point Hospital are carried over here. One of the biggest issues I had was rebuilding each time is somewhat repetitive. The trickle of additional courses adds a bit more variety to the experience than the new diseases did in Two Point Hospital, but eventually, it becomes abrasive. To their credit, additions made to Two Point Hospital after release to alleviate the issue �such as being able to copy rooms or save them as templates �have made their way over to Two Point Campus. Howeve??r, for some people, this will be the breaking point. For others, it won’t b?e an issue at all.

One big change in Two Point Campus�features is the ability to construct the outer shells of buildings. In Two Point Hospital, you bought a lot, and it would plop down a pre-constructed building for you to organize your rooms in. For Two Point Campus, you can build them however you like. For me, it’s rectangles. All of them; rectangles. It’s the most efficient shape, and you don’t have to think much about how you organize your rooms. I’m not playing Two Point Architect here, so bite me.

Foldable pizza

It helps that I love the humor featured in the Two Point series. It depicts a world where absolutely everyone is as daft as sponge cake. It’s likely that you’ll most commonly view the game f??rom up high in the seat of God, but when you zoom in, there’s usually someone making themselves look ridiculous. Considering the number of interactions in the game, the amount of animation has to be dizzying, and it makes everything feel full of life.

The radio DJs are back. I hope I’m not the only one who found them hilarious. They’re small breaks between music tracks where a fictional radio personality goes through a short skit or anecdote. All the ones present in Two Point Hospital return, as well as a couple of college radio hosts. Harrison Wolff is still my favorite, though I didn’t hear a skit with him that equals the one from the previous game where he gets locked in the recording? studio. Still, there were quite a few instances where I laughed to myself, al??one, in my "office." Honestly, I could probably just have fun listening to the hosts.

Moving to the county, gonna eat a lotta pizzas

Here’s the deal: if you didn’t like Two Point Hospital, chances are low that Two Point Campus will click wi??th you. While the subject matter is completely different, the flow of the game has changed, and some improvements have been made, it’s similar enough that it carries all the same possible points of friction.

On the other hand, if you did dig Two Point Hospital, then you’ll find ev?erything you loved about it here on campus. I’d say I even prefer it to the previous title, if only because I enjoy the subject matter a bit mor??e.

If you haven’t visited Two Point County before, then Two Point Campus is a perfect starting point. There’s ab??solutely no requirement that you played the previous game in the series to?? enjoy this one. However, if you’re already accustomed to the interface and overall mechanics, this will be a comfortable temperature to slide into.

For me, I couldn’t be happier. Well, I could. A university may be a different ballgame than a hospital, but it’s not a very shocking twist. I’d love to see Two Point County zoomed into something small like a restaurant or sports team, or zoomed out to a city or, well, county. But Two Point Campus is a wonderful return to the universe, and I’ll happily �perhaps im??pat?iently �be waiting for the next chance to visit.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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It's raw

I hate reality TV, but I love Gordon Ramsey. Perhaps it’s better to say I like the character that Gordon Ramsey plays, as I understand that he’s not actually that caustic in person. He talks to people like I talk to Ninja Gaiden on the NES; nothing but derision.

Recipe for Disaster is definitely feeding off Kitchen Nightmares. During its early access period, it seemed to highlight that you were hiring a bunch of unique personalities and throwing them into a stew. You’re thrust into a series of struggling restaurants with the intent of rescuing them from their terrible owners. The question is: does Recipe for Disaster deliver on this tantalizing concept? The biggest question is: can Recipe for Disaster convince me not to just reinstall Pizza Connection 2?

Recipe for Disaster (PC)
Developer: Dapper Penguin Studios
Publisher: Kasedo Games
Released: August 5, 2022
MSRP: $14.99

I’m a bit of a sucker for management games, and Recipe for Disaster is instantly familiar. Hire your staff, slap down your appl??iances, build a menu, and decorate the place; it’s all there. Employees ?have a variety of stats, mostly relating to individual parts of the kitchen. They can be a virtuoso with the deep fryer but be completely lost when it comes to putting a salad together.

You get a pool of employees to hire each day, but their individuality is pretty lacking. They have traits, as well as likes and dislikes, but the worst you’re going to get is someone that annoys everyone else or shows up to work late. I think the first part of Recipe for Disaster that really disappointed me was how oversold your interactions with employees really is. Sure, some of them?? hate cleaning, but they put that on their resume. If you’re looking for someone to keep the place tidy, don’t hire a person who hates clea?ning.

I keep telling myself that it’s maybe for the best that employees just listen without question. It might not be fun if they actually tell you to screw off when the toilet needs plunging. But it could be fun. Why not? Sims from The Sims complain a lot. Send them to the time-out box.

[embed]//youtu.be/aMPacQNEsIU[/embed]

Deep fry it. Everything.

The one place they won’t listen to you is when they get overly stressed out. If you let them get bummed out enough, they’ll have a breakdown and stomp their way through the dining area screaming incoherently. Or just?? curl up on the floor in the fetal position. If they have a breakdown too often, they’ll quit.

That’s neat and all, but employees quitting on your because they’re unhappy is nothing new to the management genre. Each employee has their happiness bar posted beside their portrait on the cluttered interface. As long as you notice whe?n someone is unhappy and address their problems before they hit crisis mode, then there isn’t an issue. And if unhappy diners cause too many problems, you can throw the breaker and just close the restaurant early. It’s not a very impactful part of game, as long as you pay attention.

On top of that, a lot of problems with employees can be negated by applying new traits th?at they obtain by leveli??ng up. You can even remove their dislikes. Strange.

Get out of my kitchen

The cooking is probably the most robust part of Recipe for Disaster. You can build your own recipes from a bunch of ingredients and cooking methods. However, the novelty wears off kind of fast. Different patrons have different tastes, and they’ll often let you know when something they want isn’t on your menu. You can then t??ake these recipes and customize them however you want. I figured out that you can just throw a bunch of stuff on top of them, maybe incorpo?rate another appliance, and they’ll be perfectly happy.

Maybe the system is deeper than I could figure out, but if it is, it’s not necessary. It’s mostly about suiting the tastes of your patrons, but that’s u??sually easy within a certain restaurant. No one balks wh?en I put my various deep-fried cheeses on the menu in a Japanese restaurant.

It’s maybe more to do with customization, but I feel Recipe for Disaster doesn’t give you much room for specialization. There’s a freeplay mode, sure, but the options you have? for crafting your dream restaurant are sparse. At some point, you have to bend to the cust?omer’s will. Then you’re just like every other eatery on the block but with more cheese.

Fooling the repo guys

The actual flow of gameplay is pretty lacking, as well. You’re usually given a paltry sum of money to build a restaurant with. I’d often go? into debt quickly at the beginning, but the game only has one caveat when it comes to running out of money: don’t be in the negatives when the day ends. You can continue to spend?? to your heart’s desire and pay your employees with negative cash, but you need to get back up above the threshold before the day ends. So, I usually just kept selling the fridges after close and rebuying them in the morning. A loan system probably would have been a better fit.

Sometimes you’re not allowed t?o go into debt for even a second, so that strategy doesn’t always work, but you won’t believe how far it can get you.

None of the objectives are particularly interesting, either. Gain so many five-star reviews, make a certain amount of money in a single day, have a specific number of tables seated at the same time. There will be hints that prob??lems are going to be more common on some maps. There was one stage that suggested a rat infestation was a misstep away, and one never materialized. In fact, I still only know of infestations through hearsay, as I never let my cleanliness slip low enough to see one. Maybe I’m just that good.

I'm not sure this fire is supposed to be here

You sometimes need to deal with things like critics and health inspectors, ??both of which can boost or tank your restaurant pretty quickly. They're typically not difficult if you're running efficiently. However, one time, a fire broke out just as the health inspector arrived, and I got a fine. Listen, yes, fire is a health hazard and doesn't belong in a restaurant. But it's not illegal unless I started it myself, right? On purpose, I mean.

It’s a stunning lack of imagination that hobbles Recipe for Disaster. It offers absolutely nothing that I haven’t seen before in a management game. It doesn’t really succeed at reaching its own vision, and doesn’t offer anything unique in exchange for that. It’s a functional restaurant management game, and that’s it. Did it give me a reason why I shouldn’t just reinstall Pizza Connection 2? No. So I guess I’m doing that now.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Switch is coming later this year

I'm always looking for the next title to scratch my cozy game addiction, and it looks like the management sim Bear and Breakfast is the newest release to make that list. While I first heard about the game during the Summer Game Fest stream this year with the gameplay trailer, it was initially announced back in 2020. Players take on the role of a bear named Hank who builds and runs his own bed and breakfast in the woods, and ?will encounter all kinds of human and ??animal friends along the way.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=USaiP4ACTB4

The developers at Gumycat said that they "grew up on management sims," and that games like Theme Hospital were a huge i?nspiration for them. In addition to the "usual management stuff," they also wanted to create a game that tells a story.

The premise is that humans are coming back for some unknown reason, and they need a place to stay, so Hank and his friends decide to fix up old buildings around town for them. Players will advance through Bear and Breakfast's story by completing quests that entail the aforementioned manage??ment stuff like gathering materials, crafting, building, decorating, and so on. There's even a kind of puzzle element to booking guests, making sure they have food they l?ike, as well as some kind of creepy subplot going on, too.

The game's art style reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons in an adorably nostalgic way, and the game's comedic writing is already being praised in the Steam reviews. With an ever-growing list of games to play these days, Bear and Breakfast has m??anaged (see what I did there?) to find a place at the very top of it. In the past?, I've found some management games to lack the depth to have staying power, but this title promises a rich, worthwhile experience that I can't wait to play.

Bear and Breakfast is out now on Steam and a Nintendo Switch version is slated for release in "2022."

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Some extra time to tune controller support

Gummy Cat is delaying part of its launch for Bear and Breakfast. The upcoming B&B sim needs some extra tuning, so while PC players will still get it on schedule, Switch and controller support for Bear and Breakfast has been pushed back.

In a message from the dev team, the studio says that playing with a controller has not felt as good a??s they wanted. Thus, those versions of the game need a little more time in the oven.

"We are working very hard to finish the extra work, with our goal being to release the game on the Switch as soon as possible, sometime within the next couple of months at most," reads the statement.

The PC version, meanwhile, is still on track for a Steam launch on July 28. Ho??wever, c??ontroller support will not be available for PC players at launch. That will come at a later date, "within the same time frame."

//twitter.com/bearbreakfas??t/status/1547955848516759555

Building a bed and breakfast

While no date's been set, at least PC players can still get hands-on with the game this month. ?At least, so long as you're okay with mouse and keyb??oard, rather than a controller.

Bear and Breakfast is a charming-looking life sim game about a bear, running its own bed and breakfast. Having popped up at a few showcases over the last year or so?, it seems t?o be all about attracting customers and gradually renovating your establishment.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmA6s_fVUHw

It's a fun take on a management sim-style game, and I really love th??e look of it. For a little extra time to make sure the controller support works alright,? waiting's no issue.

PC players will get to open their establishments early on July 28, while Switch and controller users will be waiting just a while longer for Bear and Breakfast.

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Saving Moonbury one potion at a time

The day I'll be tired of life simulators will be the day that I die, which is why I'm so excited to see another great game in the genre finally get a release date. Potion Permit is an adorable little life sim, and if you haven't seen it yet, you're in for a treat (you can also play the PC demo right now, by the way). The game is set in the small town of Moonbury, where an illness has?? spread. As the Medical Association's most skilled potion maker, the player is tasked with helping create the cure for the ailing townsfolk.

Let's be honest, all of these games have a super cute art style, but I have to say Potion Permit has one of my favorite looks from a game like this in a long time. Plus, everything looks super polished, which is a huge plus going in. From the ?traile?r, I can already get the sense too that we won't be in want of activities to pad out our playtimes.

//t??witter.com/PQubeGames/st??atus/1539579544805548032

There's a ton to do in Moonbury �aside from diagnosing patients, finding ingredients for potions, and of course healing them, players can get to know over thirty of the town's inhabitants, fight off fearsome creatures, and upgrade the town and the surrounding areas. There are some RPG elements too, but we haven't gotten a good look at what those migh??t be just yet.

Of everything Potion Permit has to offer, I think I'm probably most excited for all of the NPCs in the game. That's just around the number of NPCs you can give gifts to in Stardew Valley, and I don't want to play the comparison game too much here, but that alwa??ys felt around just the right amount to me. Having a whole new cast of characters to befriend (and romance) in games l??ike these is always a highlight for me, and I already have an NPC or two that I have my eyes on.

Potion Permit will be available on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Steam on September 22, 2022.

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You had me at Stardew meets Spirited Away

Simulators are a huge part o??f the gaming industry, and they've especially been seeing some love for the past few years after the success of games ?like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley. Thi?s year it seems like there are more sims than ever??????????????????????????, and simulators are one of my all-time favorite gaming genres, so I'm over the moon about it. Out of all the trailers for simulators we've seen this year, one that caught my eye was Spirittea, which is?? being developed by Cheesemaster Games and published by No More Robots. The logline is that it's Stardew meets Spirited Away, which was automatically enough to get me on board. I play?ed ??the demo, and so far, things look pretty promising.

What's Spirittea's premise?

It's the classic moving-from-a-big-city-t??o-a-small-town story that community sims tend to have, only when you get there, you drink some special tea that allows you to see into the spirit world. Spooky! After drinking the tea, an adorable floating cat friend named Radish (how adorable!) comes to greet you, and tells you that you have been tasked with running the bathhouse on the mountain that has stood abandoned for years.

From there, most of the demo is your first day of working at the bathhouse, which leans heavily into management simulator territory. You are tasked with keeping the boiler full of fresh fi??rewood to warm the bath water, washing and drying towels for the guests, showing guests to the bath, pu?tting salts into the bath water�you get the idea. I used to play a lot of those Diner Dash beauty salon spinoffs on my iPod Touc??h back in the day, so it was pretty familiar terri??tory there. 

A relaxing management sim

There's a mechanic in there too where each of the spirits that visits you corresponds with a season, and the spirits have a preference of where they sit in the bath (and who sits next to them) based on that season. It's up to the player to figure out which season goes with which spirit and keep them happy according to their category. I didn't have en?ough time to figure all of that out while playing the demo, but I know it's an extra level of management sim challenge that I'll be looking forward to contending with in the full game.

Spirittea also alludes to being able to purchase upgrades to make your bath-tending life easier, and I imagine those become pretty handy when there's a lot of game left to explore. Outside of the bathhouse, there's a whole, adorable little town to explore that's full of townspeople. Unfortunately, none of them would talk to me during the demo because I had important bathhouse duties to tend to. That leaves yet another feature of Spirittea to look forward to, because making friends in communit??y simulators is one of my favorite things about sims games.

Much more of Spirittea to look forward to!

I also have to mention the ar??t and music �the whole time I was playing, I was bopping along to the soundtrack because it was just delightful. It fit the atmosphere perfectly, and it was catchy enough that I noticed I was enjoying it, but not so much that it was distracting. The pixel art was also gorgeous, and definitely had me looking forward to spending more time exploring the town and the surrounding area.

I still have a lot of questions about Spirittea, and the jury's still ou??t on whether it will full??y scratch my Stardew itch, but from what I've seen so far, I'm excited to give the full game a shot once it's out. All we have by way of a release date right now is a "Coming Soon" on the Steam page, so for now, it'll just be sitting prett?y on my wishlist.

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Get out of my kitchen!

If you weren’t already aware, a cat cafe is a type of theme cafe popular in East Asia wherein the establishment is both operated and infested by? cats. Personally, I used to frequent a board game cafe to do some light reading, as I prefer the company of board games to cat??s.

Cat Cafe Manager is a game that aims to depict the horrors of working in ?the food service industry under the iron paws of a fleet of felines. It depicts it in t??he most lighthearted way possible, but don’t be fooled. This is hell.

I jest. In truth, I don’t hate cats. I much prefer them to humans.

Cat Cafe Manager (PC, Nintendo Switch [Reviewed])
Developer: Roost Games
Publisher: Freedom Games
Released: April 14, 2022
MSRP: $19.99

Cat Cafe Manager puts you in the role of some chump who decided to take over their grandmother’s ??business. However, the business doesn’t exist anymore and I can’t remember if it’s ever explained what happened to your?? grandmother. So, you’re left to build it from scratch, then lure the local strays into it. I am not joking whatsoever.

After putting up four walls and encasing feral cats within them, you soon receive visitors who want a glass of water with hair in it. They pay in leaves or something. No one in the town of Caterwaul actually pays with money. They pay with things like timber, gold, and gems. Each of these currencies has its own usage, from expanding the cafe to furnishing it. The six currencies are exclusive to each demographic of customers, each of whom has their own preferences. It’s up to you to please them all. Except for punks, because after your cafe is big enough, you can just ax them out entirel?y.

The narrative focuses on restoring a shrine to cat-kind on the outskirts of town. You do this by collect??ing “del??ight,�yet another currency that is earned by pleasing your customers. This also unlocks perks, like better food, staff, and toilets.

[embed]//youtu.be/eL97ux2tysY[/embed]

There’s no real way to fail, which is somewhat nice for the management genre and makes Cat Cafe Manager an accessible entry for newcom??ers and horrible children. Cats just get pissy when they aren’t fed, customers just award less if they aren’t happy, and everyone just complains more.

Which is good, because Cat Cafe Manager can be complete bullshit. As you proceed, people will start demanding things that you haven’t even unlocked yet. Who are these people who order things that aren’t on the menu and then get up??set about i??t? I don’t walk into an Indian restaurant and demand a hoagie. Why are you asking for a sundae?

And the staff. Listen, guys. Just serve the food and have asinine conversations with the customers; I’ll make the food. I didn’t allocate an??y points to your cooking, so what makes you think you can make a sandwich? Why can I unlock perks that give you cleaning skills? You never do it! I’m happy that I don’t actually have t??o pay you, now get out of my kitchen.

That’s when Cat Cafe Manager isn’t bugged to all hell. First, you need to get used to the cont??rols. What your character thinks is in their interactive space is completely a mystery to?? me because I could be dry-humping a customer and still not be able to serve them. Even when I could serve them something, a cat would walk by and my adorable character would decide that petting them was more important.

It’s so bad that I actually put down my controller and picked up my Switch in case it was primarily designed f?or a touch-screen interface. There are no touch-screen controls and it controls just as horribly in handheld mode. I eventually just got used to its imprecise interactions, but I never learned to fo??rgive it.

I have a laundry list of complaints that come down to a lack of polish. The cats�brains would often break and they’d whine that they had no food when there were plenty of food dishes for all. Then, mystifyingly, the food dishes would ask me to fill th??em four times, but the cats would still insist they weren’t fed. They didn’t die or anything; they just refused to interact with the customers.

The UI just has bad design across the board. It expects shorter cat names like “Brian�but allowed me to put in “Pete Pickles,�where most of the letters sprawl over the edges of the text boxes. Likewise, you can level up so many times and gain so many perks that they begin obscuring your stats. And that’s when it’s not just bugged out with the rest of the game, allowing me to �$PlaywithCat.�/p>

I have more that I could gripe about, but I want to ease off here. Cat Cafe Manager is at least a friendly design. The worst that can happen is that your customers will complain when you c?an’t afford ingredients because only witches pay with the typ??e of currency that is used to buy food, and you need to service them specifically if you want to afford the jillion damned ingredients it throws at you.

I?? think I need to reassess my priorities if I can get this mad at a game about collecting stray cats and unleashing them on paying customers. Yet the whole time, I was practically screaming at the game in my best Gordon Ramsay impression. I’m doing my best not to drop an F-bomb? every paragraph of this review.

At the very least, the Switch version needed more time in the oven. Bugs. Bugs everywhere. Some of them required me to restart the software, and the opening load screen takes an ungodly amount of time to get all its cats herded. Even without them, Cat Cafe Manager controls like absolute garbage, it’s dangerously unbalanced, and the UI needed another pass. But it lets you pick up a raccoon off the street an??d pass it off as a cat, so at least it allows you to show the appropriate amount of contempt for your customers.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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School won't be in session until later this year

Upcoming university management sim Two Point Campus is pushing back its kickoff date. Developer Two Point Studios confirmed today that Two Point Campus will now be launching on August 9, 2022.

In a statement on the Two Point forums, the team shared why the wacky management sim is pushing back from its May date. The goal, it seems, is for all the versions of Two Point Campus to be up to snuff, across PC and console.

Here's a statement from game ??director Mark Webley:

"Our ambition from the start has been to release Two Point Campus across all PC and console platforms simultaneously to the quality and standard that our community expects from us. This means we will need a little bit more time with Two Point Campus to make sure we deliver the best possible game that can be enjoyed equally on all platforms. We will use these additional three months to optimise Two Point Campus for all platforms."

The team also released a YouTube video, detailing its plans ahead for Two Point Campus.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwYI6E3d_ng

Looks like Two Point Campus is still targeting its previously announced platforms, including PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. It's also set to arrive on Game Pass, for PC and Xbox consoles, on day one.

Hitting the books

Several sites also published some previews of Two Point Campus today. Rather than the wacky hospital antics of Two Point Hospital, the Campus heads to sc?hool, wh??ere your own custom-built university can lay out a wild new curriculum.

Sounds like players will be able to craft exter??ior buildings, to design their own layouts. Students can join societies and clubs, and character interactions seem to be a big driver for school life. Of course, the campus also needs to make cash, and there are tools for that as well.

We'll see whether the extra time studying in the stacks makes for the better when Two Point Campus launches on August 9.

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The biggest party on campus will also be launching on Xbox Game Pass

Two Point Campus has set a date for its first day of class. The campus management sim will kick off activities on PC and consoles on May 17, 2022. Plus, it will be debuting day on?e on Game Pass.

The new sim from Two Point Studios Limited and Sega is coming to both the last and current generation of consoles, as well as Nintendo Switch. Additionally, Two Point Campus will be hitting both the PC and c?onsole versions of Game Pass.

Two Point Studios is well-known for Two Point Hospital, its hospital management sim with a side of zany and extreme events. Two Point Campus instead heads to university, giving you charge of a campus that you can shape however you want; and in the pursuit of hi??gher education, you can make s??ome cash too.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6jzcCDJCFw

There will be books and courses, but Two Point Campus turns towards a bit more of an eccentric curriculum than your average institution of learning. In Gastronomy, they can make massive pizzas, and in Robotics, they can build giant robot hands that throw up the devil horns. Yes, there are even clowns?.

Those who pre-order can secure some goodies, but also unlock some new stuff in Two Point Hospital as well. Adding a Varsity jacket to your hospital garment options seems like a fun way to build up to Campus' launch. And if you pick up the County Pass ahead of?? time, you get a Golden Toilet.

I've yet to try out the Two Point series, but Campus seems like a pretty offbeat management sim compared to the usual fare of theme parks and tycoons. With a Game Pass debut locked in, seems like I might take? the opportunity to go back to school on May 17.

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Send your best monster off to fight the world's finest

Two classic Monster Rancher games are getting their deluxe ports brought over to the West next month. And to mark their arrival, Koei Tecmo has announced a special Monster Rancher tournament, dubbed the Mo??nster Koushien World Battle.

The first Monster Koushien was held in 1997 at the Tokyo Game Sh??ow. Ever since, it's been the representative tournament for the monster-raising series, and it's being he?ld this year in a global fashion.

When Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX launches on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam, you'l??l have the option to participate in the tournament. Simply raise?? a winner and upload their data to a special server, where the top players in the world will be decided.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZhhomNLR8s

More details will arrive in the future. The store pages for the Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX releases have also gone live, on both the eShop and Steam.

Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX are ports of the original Monster Rancher games, brought forward to modern systems. It's not a remaster, so go in expecting that same PlayStation 1 style from the original e??ntries. That said, if you enjoy raising a monster, managing training and health, and then competing in the arena, it's still that Monster Rancher.

It's been ages since I first played these games, and I have to say, I'm looking forward to diving back in. I don't know if I'm quite up to snuff against the greatest raisers and trainers in the Monster Rancher world, but maybe I can teach my Mocchi or Suezo a few tricks by tournament time. And if these ports work out, then I can maybe hope beyond hope for a port of the Monster Rancher Battle Card game?s. There are dozens of us who played them, and they are pretty good!

Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX arrives on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam in the We?st on De??c. 9, 2021.

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Life keeps finding a way

In my original review for Jurassic World Evolution, I described the game as shallow and an overall mediocre park management game. I even ended on the note of "here's hoping Frontier Developments continues to support the game in the coming months be?cause what's here right now is just a skeleton of a game waiting to be fossilized."

Well, they went and did exactly that. From fossil to fully fleshed out, Jurassic World Evolution went on to be a much better game than it was at launch, thanks to a plethora of new content and improvements from Frontier Developments. However, when the sequel announcement popped up earlier this year, admittedly, I was surprised. I thought for sure that's the last Jurassic World game we'd see for a good long while.

So, here we are, and I'm happy to say �for the most part �Jurassic World Evolution 2 is fa?r better than its predecessor was at launch.

Jurassic World Evolution 2 (PS5 [reviewed], PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC)
Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments
Released: November 9, 2021
MSRP: $59.99

The key comparison here is specifically at launch. The original game is now reasonably polished all around. In contrast, Jurassic World Evolution 2 feels like it's all over the place in terms of gameplay complexity, length, and narrative. On that last not??e, let's start with the incredibly brief campaign mode.

Set after the events of the latest film (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), d??inosaurs are pretty much let loose all across the United States, and you're tasked with helping the conservation efforts. Essentially, with the help of the Fish and Wildlife services (yes, really), you'll be capturing and re-homing problematic dinosaurs across several different biomes set in the US. From Washington state to Pennsylvania, you'll be taking pictures, tranquilizing, and moving dinosaurs into fenced-off enclosures of your creation and learning the basics of tak?ing care of them.

//youtu.be/g76Zx7zydXQ

The campaign mode in Jurassic World Evolution 2 is pretty much a brief tutorial on how to handle your dinosaurs with a fun in-universe narrative spin thrown in. Once again, Jeff Goldblum reprises his role as Dr. Ian Malcolm and delivers some of the best commentary and narration in the game. Other characters from Jurassic World make an appearance again, such as Claire (voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen, who some random dude voices because Chris Pratt is too busy being Mario and Garfield.

The overall story has some interesting moments (such as working with the CIA to prevent dinosaurs from entering Canada). Still, my biggest issue is that it ends out of nowhere with no actual resolution. It comes off feeling more like an epilogue from the last game than a natural continuation. In general, this whole mode can be wrapped up in the span of three-to-four hours. I suspect there will be more to the campaign and various modes once the latest movie (Jurassic World: Dominion) is out next year.

Hell, there's even a convenient big blank spot in the Chaos Theory menu when you're selecting which movie what-if scenario you wanna tackle that you just know is where the Dominion take on this is ?going to be.

On that note, though, let's talk about the Chaos Theory mode �because outside of the sandbox mode, I'd argue this is the meat and potatoes of the whole game. To sum it up, you're essentially tasked with fixing or avoiding the disasters that happen throughout the v?arious movies and, instead, turning them into successful dinosaur theme parks.

It's in this mode, though, where I think a lot of the improvements and added detail that Frontier Developments have done for both the dinosaurs and park management aspects make Jurassic Word Evolution 2 shine and make it an obvious step-up from the original game. The dinosaurs, in particular, look stunning. Admittedly, they were reasonably impressive looking in the original. However, these are a step above in all-around attention to detail, animation work. I think the resolution boost from the?? new consoles goes a long way here as well.

There's also a ton of them this time around (79 to be exact, with five more included in the deluxe edition). I couldn't spell or properly pronounce half their names if my life depended on it. I also maybe only recognize like?? a quarter of these at best. Still, honestly, it made researching, sending out scientists to excavate, and ultimately releasing a shiny new dinosaur I've never heard of before into an enclosure fun and addicting?? in a messed-up crime against nature gameplay loop that I appreciate.

Dinosaurs also have different behaviors and needs you need to keep track of and be aware of this time around. This also includes their enclosure and the environment around them. Different dinosaurs need anything from different types of plants and food to even space requirements and cohabitation limits. You can't just throw in a bunch of herbivores into a single enclosure and call it a day. Some may need tons of forest coverage and fruit, while others might p??refer nuts and ground grazing. All of this takes up precious space, so you'll want to plan out these pens in advance before hatching specific dinosaurs.

That goes double for big predators. The moment they're unhappy, your guests behind your low-security fences will go from "Oooh, ahhh" to screaming ?and running.

Genomes and DNA tampering play a big part in the creation of your dinosaurs and how they behave. Depending on how much research you've done and how well train??ed your science staff is, your batch of dino eggs can have ple??nty of both positive and negative traits tied to each dinosaur.

For example, my first batch of velociraptors were all 30% more aggressive (meaning they were more likely to attack staff who occasionally do w?ellness checks from the safety of vehicles). However, on my s??econd batch, by some miracle, I managed to create one that was completely docile towards staff. These perks also vary from the diet (requiring more water or specific food as an example) to even being more susceptible to disease.

There are also both flying and aquatic dinosaurs now that require unique pens (aviary domes and giant pools of water, basically) that I think add a nice visual variety to your parks. However, it'?s in the parks themselves, and the more complex management systems that I believe make Chaos Mode far better than the campaign mode. I could just list off various mechanics and reasons why like I did with the dinosaur stuff, but instead, let me tell you a tale of both a failed and successful park that I think highlights both the management mechanics and the Chaos Theory mode perfectly.

My first attempt at making the original Jurassic Park a success started off pretty normal as I followed the tutorial in placing various buildings in the park, hiring my staff of scientists, researching the basics, and learning the basics. However, after successfully beelining my way to breeding a tyrannosaurus with no expense spare??d (q?uite literally draining most of my income in the process), I had one major task left: Create a five-star park.

I figured now that I had the tyrannosaurus sorted, money and guests would just come flowing in, and I'd be on my way to completing this first part of the Chaos Theory mode. After some story-related sabotage involving all my gates myster?iously opening up, I dealt with the escaped raptors and re-opened my guest shelters. However, the whole ordeal put me into the red in terms of money. So, naturally, I just sped-up time i?n the hopes my tyrannosaurus would draw folks back in, and I'd recoup my money.

After waiting around a bunch, it accomplished exactly that. Not a lot, but enough to breed a batch of new raptors I desperately needed after mine all died from old age (they??'re the first dinosaur you produce in this specific mode). So, after splurging all my money and releasing my new batch of raptors, suddenly, mother nature decided it had enough of my rule-breaking and released a hurricane on me.

Different biomes have different weather, including extreme weather events like tornadoes, blizzards, and so forth. This wasn't the firs?t time I dealt with a hurricane, with the first one only causing minor damage to my park, and again, I j??ust sped up time to recoup enough money to get me out of the red.

This time, however, it was far worse. There were multiple fences broken, multiple dinosaurs escaping (including those raptors I just released), and even that tyrannosaurus I spent hours saving up for. By the time the hurricane was over, I was?? around two million in the red and straight-up couldn't afford even to fix the fences that were broken all over my park. I had no choice but to e?ither reload a save file or restart, but I decided to go with the latter and go in with a plan.

On my second attempt, I already knew that I had to research and release a tyrannosaurus to progress the plot along, so I decided to give this park a thrill-seeking theme and focus. You see, guests a??re broken up into different categories: General guests, luxury guests, nature guests, and adventure guests. The latter of which love high infamy dinosaurs (big predators and dangerous dinosaurs all around, basically).

So, knowing this, outside of the plot-related triceratops you have to include, I went all-in on researching big predators, with the tyrannosaurus placed right in the middle of the park. I built wide pathways all around it, viewing galleries on every side of the enclosure, big ol' steak houses, and other amenities equipped to cater directly towards adventure guests. This place was BIG DINOS EATIN MEAT, and my guests loved it.

The money poured in, I spent it on researching high-security fences and upgrades all-around to my buildings to bring in as much money as possible, and I even survived my first hurricane with money to spare. I went in with a plan and a focus, and it paid off. It was incredibly satisfying to pull off, and a lot of that is due to the added complexity in Jurassic World Evolution 2. They took the criticism of shallow in the original and went, "fine, we'll ma??ke it a swimming pool," and it? rules.

Admittedly, the game is very menu-heavy, though. It can be a task and a half clicking through all the various sub-menus and constantly assigning your scienti??sts to multiple things. Your staff of scientists is used in everything from?? research to digging up bones and hatching the dinos themselves. They can even be overworked and require rest (I bet the developers loved adding that detail). However, as a result, it's a whole lot of extra clicking and steps to get dinosaurs made, and I can easily see some folks being turned off from that.

Outside of the Chaos Theory mode, there's also a challenge mode, but admittedly I barely touched this and only completed the first challenge. It's basically pre-made parks with different problems or in specific states of disaster that need to be fixed within a given timeframe or with a spe??cific amount of money. Each challenge has different difficulty settings, but this wasn't as interesting to me as Chaos Theory or the sandbox mode.

Sandbox is the endgame, and I think it will be the most appealing mode for people. It basically gives you tons of settings to play and toggle with (including unlimited money), letting you go wild in creating whatever type of park you want. However, at the very start of the game, all the? different biomes, dinosaurs, and amenities are locked away until you've unlocked them by completing either the challenge or Chaos Theory mode.

This has been a pretty divisive decision within the community, as a lot of folks just simply wanna dive right into creating their own unique parks or crazy dinosaur battle arenas. Honestly, to bring up another point from my review of the original: I think Frontier Developments should simply add in a cheat code or toggle that unlocks everything i?n sandbox. Maybe have it disable trophies/achievements on that save file or something; wh?o cares! Let people have their fun.

To wrap things up, again, I think Jurassic World Evolution 2 is a much better game than its predecessor was at ?launch. That said, I can't shake the feeling that much like the original, it's only going to get better and more content-rich in the next coming year o??r so. It's a beautiful trend from Frontier Developments that I think will make an already great game all the more excellent.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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I'm sorry, are you trying to order a café noir?

I don’t know how people can drink coffee. It tastes like licking the underside of a storm drain. I can’t imagine anything more depraved being done with a bean. Noir, I can get behind. It, by contrast, is more about lic??king the seamy underside of a crime-ridden city. Delicious.

Coffee Noir is a combination of these two things, but more importantly, it’s the marriage of investigative adventure games and management sims. Honestly, it??'s not really an amalgamation I had considered before, but one I’m definitely interested in seeing.

In Coffee Noir, you play as undercover investigator Arthur Oliver. The coffee industry has been getting rocked by people disappearing, and the only way to rub elbows with the caffeinated elite is to feed them their beans. Arthur starts his own bean-slinging business, which means a sizeable portion of the game is negotiating, managing, buying, and selling. Pull a few favors, get a few mouths fl??apping, and you might learn what’s brewing beneath the coffee industry.

Color me intrigued. Business simulators have a place in my heart, but I never considered tying them to a story like Coffee Noir does. Normally, they have y?o??u play the villain as you force rivals into financial ruin.

Developer Doji promises a realistic economic strategy and an immersive narrative. From the sounds of things, you can focus heavily on your business and approach the story at ?your own pace, if that’s where your interests lie. The dialogue is fully voiced, and the game is steeped in the cla??ssic noir atmosphere.

If you’re interested, there’s a free demo available on Steam and GOG. Coffee Noir launches September 30, so it won’t be long b?efore you can get yo?ur fix. It's currently slated for PC, Mac, and Linux.

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Strictly Business

Gangster simulators are pretty well-worn territory. Titles like Gangsters, Mob Rule, Empire of Sin, and Pizza Connection all give you distinct tastes of a life of crime. City of Gangsters �not to be confused with Omerta: City of Gangsters �is p??erhaps one of the most straightfo??rward attempts at it I’ve seen.

After countless hours of rubbing its seamy underbelly, I’ve learned that there’s a lot more managerial stuff invo??lved in running a crime syndicate.

City of Gangsters (PC)
Developer: SomaSim
Publisher: Kasedo Games
Released: August 9, 2021
MSRP: $29.99

Se??t in the 1920s during prohibition, you forge your empire on the back of bootlegging. You start out simply as s??omeone who knows someone who knows someone, gradually expanding your territory, your wealth, and your workforce.

It’s not enough to just turn on the tap to some illicit liquor, you have to find people willing to buy it from you and not everyone is upfront about it. You have to do favors for people to get favors in return. These can allow you to expand your connections and ask more uncomfortable questions like, “Where can I buy a tommy gun?�/p>

Along the way, you can pressure businesses into becoming fronts and expand your territory. You also get backrooms of ??legitimate businesses that you can turn into stills, speakeasies, and other various illegal industries.

The point is to become a self-sustaining business. You need ingredients to make booze. Then you have to have th??e setup to create the booze. Finally, you need the connec??tions to sell all the liquor you’re soon to find yourself drowning in. It’s a careful balance of social schmoozing and industrialization.

[embed]//www.youtube.c??om/watch?v=5qj1dIUilF0[/embed]

Notice h?ow I didn’t mention any cement shoes or urban warfare?

There’s some of that, but it takes a back seat. Competing outfits and hoodlums are scattered about, and there are some basic ways you can work with them to gain access to more connections. I only ever really got into it with them if they started it or they were getting in my way. At that point, you just send your gorillas into their territory and?? roll the dice to fill th??em with holes. Honestly, doing so hurts business because your goons are more profitable when they’re moving crates.

And they’ll be doing a lot of that. City of Gangsters is stubborn about its management. It’s not enough to have liquid malt in one of your warehouses, it has to be in the same warehouse that you’re producing homemade brew from. If you’re producing or storing it in another warehouse, someone has to go pick it up and run it to the correct warehous??e. Got an outlet that’s selling hooch out of its backroom? You’ll need one of your gangsters to scoot over to your production facility, then move those crocks over to your seller.

It’s a bit more than I expected from a gangster simulator, and it’s?? where the wires start?? getting tangled.

You can automate deliveries and pick-ups using a sometimes-but-not-always intuitive system. This sends your lackeys on circuits throughout the city, visiting fronts, sometimes picking up liquor and driving it o?ut to all the people who purchase directly. It’s pretty important that, as your territory expands, you do so, because your underperforming fronts will start whining that they haven’t collected enough protection money to cover the??ir expenses, so you need to get money to them before three months or they just shut down.

Beyond that, favors are everything, and you need to earn them from ?people by doing missions. Some of these missions have speci??fic triggers, and one of the triggers is to have someone delivering a type of booze. Of course, the game doesn’t tell you this, so this is your warning: use the delivery system.

Speaking of favors, it can get hard to find people who owe you favors outside of your territory. People who buy hooch off you are easy, they’ll give you favors as you deliver their intoxicants. If they’re not buying what you’re selling, you can go to someone who owes you a favor to get an introduction which sometimes?? comes with a favor from the new person. However, that doesn’t always work.

The most consistent way that I’ve found of gaining favors in City of Gangsters is a little unconventional. If you extort someone with whom you don’t have?? a good relationship, it will push their opinion of you into the negatives. This will trigger a mission where you just need to give them some money to make them happy, and one variation of this results in a favor. So you can threaten someone at the edge of your territory, take their money, then give it back to them and ask them to be a new front for you. This has some side-effects like their relatives liking you less, but it’s nothing you can’t recover from.

There are a lot of systems to City of Gangsters that seem to rely on ??luck or arcane knowledge. Getting a new business to operate out of is one such mechanic that stuck in my eye. I’d do as many missions as I could out in the city, and eventually, someone would say I could have their old business, but then those dry up. Finally, later in the game, I found out that they seem to happen when you pass a certain cash-on-hand threshold. Wait. Cash-on-hand? I’m supposed to be hoarding money?

Then there’s learning new skills, which seem to unlock as you put old skills to work. Want to learn to make proper gin? Start with bathtub gin and someone will teach you to make ??the good stuff. But hold up, you still need to find buyers for your wonderful new beverage and not everyone who want?ed your bathtub gin wants the real stuff.

Operations become harder and harder to come by, and it makes little sense to me to give up my extremely profitable bathtub gin still to take a chance on better alcohol. But I don’t have room to have a proper gin still and a bathtub gin still, s??o why should? I even upgrade?

I actually have a lot of compl?aints about the flow of the game and the looseness of the mechanics, but ad?dressing them all would make for an onerous review.

I feel that City of Gangsters probably should have gone through a period of early access to catch these pain points before release, and while there was a demo, it feels like a lot was missed. That’s probably because it’s a very complex ?game with a lot of variables and checking them all is difficult for a small team. I think they can get ironed out over time, but the whole package is a mess as it stands.

But what I really want to get across �aside from the uneven nature of the game �is that this is really a bootlegging simulator. You’re not going to find any action here. Even the cops don’t bust business owners, they’ll just arrest your goons if they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and they immediately get out with their pockets empty. There’s smuggling, but nothing feels high-stakes. There are no offers that a given person can’t refuse, it’s strictly business. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a bootlegging simulator, I just feel I need to set expectations because the name City of Gangsters doesn’t do that.

Even if you’re at peace with managing deliverymen with tommy guns, City of Gangsters is a bit of a difficult sell. At its core, it is a long and unexciting game. A lot of the time I felt like I was trying to de??code the game’s logic and keep plates spinning rather than run a successful bootlegging operation. When everything clicks, it can be somewhat satisfying, but that ??happens so rarely, you’d think the game was sampling its own wares.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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The Spiritfarer documentary is free on YouTube

Spiritfarer is a special game with a heart of gold. As the team at Thunder Lotus sums it up, it's "about dying, but not about killing" �a too-rare sight in this medium. In a new making-of documentary from The Escapist, the developers explore the original ideas behind Spiritfarer, their very personal inspirations, and how everything came toget?her to form a soothing mana?gement game where your main reward is a heartfelt narrative.

"Spiritfarer is mostly like an open-ended question," said art director Jo Gauthier. "What i?f we didn't fear death as much?"

//youtu.be/qxx8sEGjntI

Members of the development team sat down to talk through stories about their "loved ones who touched them deeply," accor??ding to marketing director Rodrigue Duperron. "Eventually, as a team, those stories were sort of modified, but a lot of big pieces of people's stories wo??uld be the main inspiration for some of these characters."

"All the names that appear in the credits are people who influenced us in a way. But not all of them are a spirit, and not all spirits are inspired by entirely true characters," said creative director Nicolas Guérin, whose grandmother helped inform Astrid, one of many characters that players help guide and support in the lengthy afterlife adventure?? game.

Guérin also spoke about the management and farming aspects of Spiritfarer, and how the game isn't for everyone. "To a degree, there are some moments that many players can feel are a bit ??of a drag, a bit long, the loops take time to kick in," he?? said.

"In a way, the fact that the chores are kind of repetitive is the point. Some players are bored, and I get it. But if you take the time to accept this, then you go into a state that's much more in acceptance to the message." [...] "For me what's important in the game is to have a takeaway from it. You play the game and then something ??should resonate with you not just as a player, but as a human being."

The Spiritfarer documentary also shines a light on ?the game's warm look and tone.

"Spiritfarer's style was kind of a huge journey for us because we had done Jotun and then Sundered, but we were ?in a very dark place in terms of theme and mo??od," said Gauthier.

The art style took "a lot of iteration," going from "a comic book style-ish to something more gritty." But the team wanted to "make people feel comforted in talking about death because death is such a scary topic. That was when I remembered Hiroshi Yoshida, a woodblock painter. I remember all of his pieces bringing me serenity and it made me want to visit the place that he painted. The serenity of the landscape and a desire to explore was really something we wanted to communicate through Spiritfarer."

The art director brought up a poin??t about the game's coziness that I innately felt while playing, but hadn't really dwelled on: the "texture of paper" in the art style, which draws from woodblock printing and watercolor to pull off a much-needed "homey" vibe. "It's about balancing the colors and what people feel about those colors."

One other fun tidbit: Spirtfarer could've been set on a train, not a boat,? but the latter gave the level designs more flexibility (and it's more thematic).

I know plenty of yo?u have connected with this game on a deep level sinc?e its 2020 release, and some of you are likely waiting until you're in the right mindset to try it, which I fully understand. Just don't let it fall off your "eventually" list and slip into obscurity.

_{[Destructoid and The Escapist are both a part of the Enthusiast Gaming network.]}

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Those slimes ain't gonna herd themselves

You might be used to fighting slimes, but what about ranching them? You'll get another chance to tend to those unruly slimes with Slime Rancher 2.

During today's Xbox & Bethesda E3 showcase, Monomi Park announced that Slime Rancher 2 is coming in 2022. You can check out so??me gameplay in the t?railer below:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPfm3IClc??0s&list=PL0il2l-B_Wwaj87aLVYWvmJhL-8uftHNX&index=2

No firm date has been set yet, but it will be coming to Xbox Game Pass on launch, so add another rad-look??ing indie to the Game Pass pile. I missed the boat on this slime-caretaking sim the first time around, but ?I think some next-gen goo-ball herding might be my jam next year.

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And if movies taught me anything, there's a crusty, bitter old Dean

Fans of Two Point Studios fun hospital management title were given a new look at the team's next release yesterday with the first trailer for the previously leaked college-builder, Two Point Campus. The new title is in develo??pment for PlayS?tation, Xbox, PC, and Switch platforms, with a tentative launch set for 2022.

As one would expect from the fine folk at Two Point Studios, Two Point Campus �as the trailer below shows �will task?? players will constructing and managing a higher place of learning. From mapping the grounds and building the college itself, to managing the halls of residence, the staff,?? and the entertainment facilities, you will be responsible for putting together a fun, efficient, and economical college, while providing its students with a range of wacky courses from the sensible (Gastronomy and Science), to the sublime, (a literal "Knight school").

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYoGksRCHQs

"We hope that the incredible Two Point community will love all the new creative freedom that Two Point Campus will bring and that new players will be intri?gued by its setting and the quirky world we’re trying to build, packed with our trademark humour and charm," said Two Point Studios co-fou?nder, Gary Carr in a press statement.

The Two Point team is built up of former Bullfrog alumni, including developers who worked on legendary '90s management sims such as Theme Park and Theme Hospital. The team's transition to the Two Point series has been a smooth one, which has resulted in Two Point Hospital being a fun, light-hearted, and deeply engrossing title to while away many an afternoon. Two Point Campus is expected to find a similar audience come launch day. All you need to decide now is whether your college will be a Harvar?d, a Brown, or better still, a Faber.

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Just John Hammond your way to riches

When I first booted up the beta build of Let's Build a Zoo, I had humble ambitions. Safariland, as I had named my establishment,? would be a family-friendly park. Our first enclosure held tiny little rabbits, graciously offered to Safariland ?by another zoo in Australia.

And then I got the opportunity to buy a hippooose on the bla??ck market. Things kind? of spiraled from there.

Let's Build a Zoo is an upcoming zoo management game from Springloaded and No More Robots, and on its face, it's a pretty cute little tycoon game. There is a darker side though, and if you choose to, you can forgo lofty ideals of a pristine animal sanctuary and dive?? deep int??o the seedier side of zoo management.

As Safariland grew, so did my ?costs. Researchers, caretakers, and janitors all cost money—even my sources of cash, like my hot dog and balloon stands, required staff members to operate, and those are all salaries I had to pay. A soda machine was a stopgap; I needed income, and that meant ticket sales.

To draw people in, I needed the rare and exotic, not just rabbits. At one point, an artist made me an offer: he would paint my horses, ??for free, to look like zebras. They wouldn't actually be zebras, an?d it was highly unethical, but it was tempting. I decided no, I could meet my demands with one simple addition: the hippooose.

One of the big draws of Let's Build a Zoo i??s its gene splicing. Once you've built a CRISPR station, you can mix any DNA strands you'd like to create new species of animal. The hippooose is a combination: one part hippo, one part goose. I'm not so sure mixing the mind of a goose with the body and destructive capabilities of a hippo was a good idea, but the people loved it.

Soon, I was expanding, and learning a lesson in the process: tons of zoos had normal animals, but I could have rare animals, the kind no one's ever seen. By demo's end I only managed to forge one more gene-spliced attraction—a half-snake, half-rabbit hybrid—but I was already seeing the appeal. In other tabs there were black market options, and the ability to buy or sell my creations to help fund my ventures. Let's Build a Zoo's trailer implies even darker machinations, but aside from some light gene-splicing that would make Jurassic Park's John?? Hammond bust out his wall??et, I kept things mostly above board.

Even playing a stuffy, ethical zoo manager was really engaging, though. The initial appeal of a darker side to zoo management is exciting, but what kept me fully absorbed was just how easy it was to map out my business. New terrain and pathing is easy to plot out, buildings can freely move, and enclosures can swap animals at a??ny point.

Most of the important work is ensuring animals are happy in their enclosures (at least, if you want them to be happy). Keeping them engaged with toys and trampolines is crucial, as is ensuring there are enough water troughs. Attendees might enjoy seeing a beautiful fountain or a fun stand-up to take pictures with, but t??he animals are why they're r?eally there.

In that way, I would've liked a little more of a guiding hand towards some of the deeper mechanics. Let's Build a Zoo is way, way deeper of a sim than you might think just glancing at screenshots. Enclosures have a variety? of objects that can affect both the animal's well-being and the appeal of the enclosure to park goers; employees have salaries that have to be managed, and recruiting new workers means posting a job and searching for candidates; supplies need to be watched, and corners can be cut if you need a little boost to make payments.

To that end, a little more guidance in navigating menus, or even understanding why certain advancements or options were being gated, would help. It took me longer than ?I'd like to admit to figure out how the water management worked, and even after playing through the beta period, I had some trouble relocating where certain options were or figuring out why I couldn't add a second researcher yet.

Yet the best testament to how much Let's Build a Zoo pulls the player in is how much I want to keep playing. It has that crucial hook of playing just one more day, just expanding a little bit more, always keeping a new goal or some new addition a few steps ahead of you. It took me very little time to start working with the tools Let's Build a Zoo provides, and within minutes I was imagining what I could do once I filled out the research ??grid and developed new tools for sprucing up my park.

And that's not?? even diving into some of the other things that are unavailable in the beta but still visible. It seems like there's going to be a frankly incredible number of avenues to go down in managing a zoo, when all is said and done. How that gets done is really up to you; nice and neat, or shady and extremely profitable?

All I know is, once the full game is out, I'm making more hippoooses. Let's Build a Zoo is slated to launch sometime in the future on PC.

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A slice of cyberpunk life

Today, developer Ion Lands launched DLC for its cyberpunk taxi game Cloudpunk. Dubbed City of Ghosts, it's the size of a sequel, according to Ion Lands. And what's more, it's not all the developer has planned for the world of Cloudpunk.

City of Ghosts sees players return to the city of Nivalis, continuing the story of Rania and ?Camus. There are two viewpoints, swapping between Rania and deadbeat gambler Hayse, as well as new features like street racing and vehicle customization.

Alongside the launch of City of Ghosts, Ion Lands also launched a store page for Nivalis, a slice-of-life sim set in the same world as Cloudpunk. Taking place in the city of Nivalis, you choose how to ??spend your time:? grow your business, hang out with characters, and decorate your home, or blow it all off to go fishing.

There's no release date or window set just yet, only a Steam page. It's nice to see that Ion Lands is finding more ways to explore this world, though. Cloudpunk was a pretty alright little experience that I've heard folks ?talk about for a while, and an experience that's just about running a sho??p and living your life in a cybernetic future? I'm intrigued.

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Keep Watching the Skies

The highly acclaimed exploration title Sunless Skies is almost set to bring its awe-inspiring universe to the console market. As announced by developer Failbetter Games, the 2019 adventure will be docking on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch platforms May 19, in the form of an enhanced "Sovereign Edition".

This new edition of the inspiring-yet-creepy RPG will bring with it a selection of revised and expanded features, including a new UI, level cap progression, reworked starvation mechanics, new trade options, and even a brand spanking new locom?otive engine. On the technical fr??ont, performance has been optimized with a slew of gameplay tweaks and bug fixes, with newly implemented support for multiple game controllers.

And for all of you hardened adventurers who have been enjoying Sunless Skies on PC since its initial launch, never fear, as all of the above features will be retroactively applied to the current build of Sunless Skies gratis, you need do nothing but s??imply wait for the download to arrive. So just get back to plotting your next course with the great infinity and beyond.

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