Author: Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

I recently stumbled on Erostasis, a brilliant and filthy cybernetic microgame in which you are a wiry meatpuppet created to, aha, satisfy the urges of an exceedingly backed-up bionic starship. Over the course of a very busy 20 minutes or so, you visit various self-aware ship systems and play out their kinks. The writing is clattery, theory-drenched and sensual, set to moaning electronica. The visuals are a gunky collage of seeming porno and industrial stock footage. It’s glorious. Probably don’t play it where members of the public can see.
Anyway, if I were to choose a polar opposite of that game it might be new metroidvania Mio: Memories In Orbit, which also takes place on a living ship and is as elegant and videogamey and serenely sexless as Erostasis is subversive and debauched. I really like the looks of Mio, too, for wholly different reasons, and I’m tickled pink that publishers Focus Entertainment have managed to email me about it while I’m still recovering from my Erostasis experience.

Video game voice-actor union SAG-AFTRA are launching a legal case against the presence of generated AI voice-acting for Darth Vader in Epic’s battle royale Fortnite. They’re accusing the company’s subsidiary Llama Productions of using AI to “replace the work of human performers” – or at least, of replacing human performers without first haggling out terms with the union.

After many months of dogged campaigning in the face of zealotry, atrocity and propaganda about fake WMDs, the heroic avatars of the Illuminate have finally invaded Super-Earth. In just a few short days, the humans and their fanatical and clownish “Helldiver” enforcers may be wiped from the face of the galaxy, ushering in a brave new era in which the surviving bots, bugs and squids link clamps, mandibles and tentacles and dance around singing. You ever hear an Illuminate sing? Literally mind-blowing.

All of which is to say that Helldivers 2’s Heart Of Democracy update is upon us, following teasers earlier this month. It lets the game’s sordid playerbase of perfidious human stormtroopers blow the shit out of some ace nano-tech molluscs on the streets of planet Earth. The new Earth maps are also full of NPC human soldiers who can be left to fight for themselves or enlisted as cannon fodder. There are crowds of panicking civilians, too. The PlayStation blog post announcing the update’s release suggests that you’ll be “punished” for accidentally shooting them, but that’s not the impression given by the below orgiastic trailer.

About 30 minutes into the demo for We Harvest Shadows a picture appeared on my wall, just by the farmhouse main entrance. The picture is of a long hallway of nested door frames, with a sealed door at the end. Any mystery it offers is, in theory, cancelled by the tutorials, which briskly informed me that the picture is, essentially, an alarm system. It will change in subtle and less subtle ways when danger is nearby. Still, this blunt advertisement of mechanical purpose does nothing to dispel the artefact’s menace. It’s right opposite the stairs, so that I can’t avoid seeing it every morning unless I walk down the stairs backwards, and if I do that, I’m leaving myself vulnerable to anything else that might be waiting in the front hall or the kitchen to the right.

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a “Slow Life RPG” in which you live out 14 different lives in… hold on, record scratch and/or Gru’s Plan fourth panel – let me run that premise by myself again. I have to live 14 different lives? How is that “slow”? I have a hard enough time keeping up with one life in the amateurishly designed role-playing game we call reality, with its saddening shortage of rideable dragons.
Ah, but of course developers Level-5 are merely being cute with their framing. By “lives” they really mean classes or character jobs. In this blend of open world boglin basher and island town-builder, you will switch lives like you’re, well, exactly like you’re putting on different coats and hats, going by the trailer. Those 14 lives are split between three self-explanatory categories: under Gathering Lives we find farming and fishing, while Crafting Lives include blacksmithing, alchemy and such, and Combat Lives are all about ending them.

Microsoft have finally broken their silence over reports about the use of Azure and Microsoft generative AI tech by the Israeli military during the latter’s on-going invasion and bombardment of Gaza, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In an unsigned statement published 15th May 2025, Microsoft confirm that they have supplied technology to the Israeli armed forces during the assault on Gaza, which began following the killing and abduction of Israeli civilians on October 7th 2023. They contend, however, that their own internal reporting has found “no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.” The news comes a few weeks after the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement called on people to avoid Microsoft games and gaming services in protest at the company’s dealings with the Israel Defense Forces.

“What morbid force is calling you deeper into the heart of the caves?” asks the Steam page for The Cave Diver. It ain’t calling me, developer Ovsko. I read the opening words of your description and immediately started running away from my laptop. I’m still running, in fact. This article is being breathlessly dictated to Oisin over the phone. I’m somewhere in the vicinity of Luton, now, and hope to make it all the way to Scotland by the weekend.
After that, there’ll be the problem of securing naval travel as I continue my headlong flight. Then I’ll have to worry about frostbite as I gallop past the North Pole and begin my long traversal of the Pacific. At some point I will reach New Zealand, which – according to this handy antipodal mapping site – is approximately as far away from The Cave Diver Steam page currently loaded on my laptop as I can get without venturing into outer space. I do not rule out venturing into outer space, which is notable for its complete and categorical deficit of caves.

Despite the best efforts of all concerned, there are once again new PC games this week. See how they frolic among the days ahead, trampling all over our life commitments and need for tranquility like boisterous, fugitive oxen. Please equip yourself with a broom, weighted net and klaxon and help me herd them back into the pens, for proper disassembly. Here are a few I’ve rounded up already.

Champions Tactics Reforged may yet prove a routine turn-based PvP battler, but it does have exceptionally handsome tabletop figurines. The kind of thing I wish I’d been able to paint back when I played Mordheim.

Here be some “Enhanced” editions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chornobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Prypiat.
The Siege and the Sandfox is a sidescrolling stealth metroidvania affair with some moderately bewitching pixelart visuals.
Jumping Jazz Cats is a feline racing game, if such a thing can be credited.
Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer is a private-eyeful of point-and-click, involving a serial killer and a biker detective.

Twoot twoot! Monster Train 2 is pulling up to the station with another confusing payload of tower defence and roguelite deck-building.
FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time is one for the Animal Crossers and Zeldarlings, a “slow life” RPG about doing up a neglected island and/or fighting monsters in the surrounding open world.

Break the traditional construction grid in City Tales – Medieval Era, out this day in early access.
Deliver At All Costs is about barging through a 1950s toy-town in the style of a GTA game. I played about 40 minutes at an event last year and found it a bit shrugworthy, but the scenery is nice.
Sure, go on then – a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tactics RPG from Clickolding and I Am Your Beast outfit Strange Scaffold.

Did you miss the original Onimusha 2? It’s back with new controls and gossamer HD visuals in Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny.
9 Kings is about using cards to build kingdoms, and hurling rocks at armies.
Let’s make it two detective game reccs this week. Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping asks you to “throw bread to the fine beak of lady justice”. Commendable!

What are the denizens of the Treehouse up to this week? Well, James has been making forbidding noises about Computex 2025, the latest appalling rebirth of the Taipei, Taiwan-based tech show. Expect a few headlines with unpronounceable acronyms in them, and probably a lot of unreportable guff about genAI. Speaking of events: I’m attending Summer Games Fest for RPS in a couple of weeks, so I’m trying to clear out a few features before I’m deluged in fresh interview material.
Nic and Brendy are juggling various review commitments, like brilliant hell jesters on unicycles. Graham is forming terrible plans and chewing his way through another stack of freelance edits. Ollie continues his quest to write a complete instruction manual for all of existence, aka our guides section, and Jeremy is still blissfully on holiday. What are you up to this week? Playing anything fun?