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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Something magical has happened! And by magical, I mean that I’ve bollocksed it up. Through a web of devious plots and shocking coincidences too labyrinthine to list here, I’ve gone and messed up my schedule. As such, we don’t have a guest this week.

Sundays are, at least in part, for you reading this column. You cannot disprove this. Tremble before my omniscience. That, or just read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

There are a lot of video game awards and most of them are simply popularity contests, and therefore also stinky borefests. The one that isn't, in my eyes, is the yearly Independent Games Festival awards - the IGFs.

The IGF Celebration Days Steam sale provides plenty of examples as to why, with discounts from now until July 20th on winners and finalists from throughout the IGF awards' history.

The Concord beta is now underway for folks who pre-ordered Sony's upcoming hero shooter or who are subscribed to PlayStation Plus. If that's you, you should be able to grab the PC version from Steam and play from now until July 14th.

The Driver TV series you forgot was happening isn't happening. Announced back in 2021 and initially due to arrive alongside a gamer-focused streaming service called Binge in 2022, the live action series has been scrapped along with the production company behind it.

Perhaps of greater significance is that the Driver series itself might not be dead, as a Ubisoft spokesperson said that they are "actively working on other exciting projects related to the franchise".

Ollie has fallen foul of Big Ill once more, so I’ve emerged from my cave, brushed the stalactites from my hair, picked the luminescent beetles from my beard, and put together this week’s column. Would you like a beard beetle, reader? I have many of them. Oh, how they glow! That was a trick question. The beetles are mine and mine alone. You will have to make do with videogames. Here’s what we’re clicking on.

Mithril Interactive have announced that their (deep, rasping breath) first-person player-versus-player-versus-enemy dungeon crawler extraction sim (FPPvPvEDCES) Dungeonborne will launch into early access on Thursday July 18th. Here are some more intuitive, albeit no more elegant, ways of summarising what you do in Dungeonborne than "FPPvPvEDCES": sword go clang, goblin go eek, treasure chest go jingle-jangle, other player go stab-in-the-back.

Gaming hardware makers have often walked the line between enabling a player’s true skills, and simply delivering them an unfair advantage. Sometimes, honest accessibility aids are falsely accused of being cheating tools; other times, a monitor will straight-up play League of Legends for you. This week, developments in gaming keyboards have sparked a new debate on what does and doesn’t fall within the scope of fair play, with mechanical keeb specialists Wooting declaring in no uncertain terms that "Rappy Snappy is not the same as Snap Tap." Cool, glad that’s cleared up.

Speculative biology is something that, on reflection, I’ve been really into for ages in a disparate sort of way, but didn’t have the name to tie it together until the past few years. This has mainly been through reading interviews with - and interviewing - Gareth Damian Martin, who turned me on to Wayne Barlowe’s Expedition, an influence on his own speculative biology game In Other Waters. Also, like pretty much everyone, I find the teeming oddness and spectral beauty of underwater ecosystems both life affirming and a little bit terrifying - awesome, in the traditional sense.

In theory I'm down to review Breachway, a roguelike deck-building space sim which is sort of FTL but 3D and with cards. The second I wrested this privilege from Ed Thorn's resentful fingers, however, developers Edgeflow Studio and publishers Hooded Horse delayed the early access release. Perhaps this reflects Hooded Horse's atypically forgiving, when-it's-ready approach to game publishing. Or perhaps they just hate me and wish to deny me things that might bring me pleasure. It matters not, because the game now has a new early access release date - 30th August 2024 via Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store. Catch a celebratory trailer below.

From Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart through the original Prey to the obvious touchpoint Portal, gaming hath no greater love than that for an unassuming door which stitches together two places that are notionally far apart.

This rampant enthusiasm for teledoors might seem strange, given that video games are make-believe worlds held together by arbitrary squiggles of magic language. There is fundamentally no reason any video game door should obey the customary laws of spacetime. But don’t let that stop you watching the announcement trailer for Motion Blur’s Black State, a third-person stealth shooter which is heavily redolent of Metal Gear Solid but also, awash with doors that work in mysterious ways.

Free-to-play open world survival shooter Once Human has spent its first week in the wilds weathering complaints about its data collection practices, many of them directed at a line from publisher NetEase's privacy policy in which they state that personal information they receive from you may include "government-issued ID, such as passport information, as required by applicable laws for age verification and correction of personal information".

Following a backlash in the user reviews (the game was Mostly Negative on Steam at launch, but has since risen to Mixed) and on social media, the game's developers Starry Studio have published a blog insisting that they harbour no dark intentions for your personal details - or at least, that they harbour intentions no darker than those of the many other developers who collect your personal information.

Gotcha Gotcha Games, creators of the RPG Maker series, have announced Action Game Maker. Much like its predecessors, it aims to allow users to create games in its chosen genre without any programming experience, using a “node-based visual scripting system” (draggable arrows and concepts, basically). Could this finally be the opportunity to create the legally distinct Little Shop Of Horrors management sim of my dreams? No, of course not. The technology does not yet exist powerful enough to manifest it. Also, it's not an action game. Also, I don't know how to make games. Also it's Friday and I'm tired. Also, AGM isn't out yet. Still, I’m intrigued!

Kain is merchandised. The clans sell tales of him. Few know the truth. He was a character in a dead franchise once, as were we all. However, his contempt for anonymity drove him to inspire the creation of an upcoming (crowdfunding allowing) graphic novel. The book stars Raziel, the first-born of his lieutenants, and It’s a canonical prequel story to the original Soul Reaver. I have waited a millennium. Over time, I became less human and more…games blogger. I have had the chance to write about Legacy Of Kain precisely once. You’re goddamn right I’m going to froth at the mouth at even the vague promise of more Shakespearean monologues and time-travelling vampires.

You ever do that thing on a fairground ride or rollercoaster where you sort of pull your neck and face back in preparation for extreme motion? Welcome to kick-exalting FPS Anger Foot. Violence is brutal and cartoonish. Slight mistakes kill you instantly. The soundtrack slaps. There’s an easy Devolver labelmate orientation point here, but if Hotline Miami was a cocktail of chemical euphoria and gut guilt, like realising you’ve accidentally pocketed someone’s lighter at a festival, Anger Foot is doing whippits out of balloon animals then having a great time rhythmically headbutting a portaloo for a few hours. Similarly, it’s also a bit of a masochistic ordeal to put yourself through. But, man. What a buzz.

Spiders and Nacon's new fantasy RPG Greedfall 2: The Dying World will launch into early access for PC via Steam on 24th September. Find beneath these words a trailer's worth of folk in facepaint glowering at burning battlefields, garlanded with preview excerpts along the lines of "ooh, I like what they've done with the curtains".

In hindsight, I feel like I wronged Neva – the upcoming action-platformer from Gris devs Nomada Studio – by allowing my first thoughts on its reveal trailer to be "I bet the dog dies at the end." A new, obviously gorgeous adventure with serious platforming pedigree and that’s your response? Grow up, me.

"It's going to be a good, good, good, good day," sings Frontier's announcement trailer for theme park simulator Planet Coaster 2. Not for me it isn't, because now I have to compare my shabby flat, in which there are exactly zero waterslides at the time of publication, with Planet Coaster 2, in which you can expect such aquatic attractions as "meandering lazy rivers", "adrenaline-pumping wave pools", "looping flumes" and "exhilarating water coasters". Please watch the trailer while I yet again revisit the possibility of sneaking into Stoke-On-Trent's Waterworld and trying to pass myself off as the resident ghost.

If you're a strategy game aficionado who has yet to cast a monocled eye over Hooded Horse's catalogue, 1) which map hexagon have you been skulking under? And 2) you're in for a treat. Founded in 2019 with the signing of Terra Invicta, and led by Dallas, Texas-based chief executive officer Tim Bender and chief financial officer Snow Rui, Hooded Horse have spent the past five years grabbing up original strategy games and strategy RPGs like a smaller civ quietly steamrolling bandit fiefdoms, while larger empires like Creative Assembly and Paradox Interactive bleed each other white in the centre.

New indie action JRPG Tako No Himitsu: Ocean of Secrets - customary disclaimer: "JRPG" is a contentious term which some feel fetishises Japan culture, while others define it more neutrally as a specific style of role-playing game - is set in a world shadowed by a long-ago war between Human and Octopus. This in itself would be borderline post-worthy, but it's also heavily inspired by Game Boy Advance RPGs such as Golden Sun, and features music created by Golden Sun composer Motoi Sakuraba alongside Terranigma composer Masanori Hikichi.

I too desire to eat the moon. In Skate Story, you are made of glass and you will burst into a thousand miniscule shards if you bail. You have signed a four-page contract with the Devil, cursing you with this fragile body yet blessing you with a fearsome skateboard with which to fulfill your quest to digest Earth's only natural satellite. I've only now got hands on a demo shared earlier this year at Tribeca games festival, and I'm reverberating with pleased energy at the dreamlike atmosphere of this demonic kickflip simulator.

As a quick glance at my Papa John's account will tell you, I’ve enough of an addictive personality that I’ve consciously avoided Vampire Survivors and its -likes, in the fear that the carefully balanced professionalisation of my dedicated goblin lifestyle will tip over the edge. As such, I don’t have enough experience to tell you whether the currently free Pizza Hero is an especially interesting or innovative riff on the formula. However, I am simple-minded enough to enjoy the epic bacon 1.5 humour of a sentient pizza slice with a dog for a companion upgrading itself one topping at a time. This action roguelike reeks of concentrated internet like a week old-slice nestled amidst a stack of free AOL disks. But! It’s cute and fun and free, and that’s enough for me.

An Unreal Engine developer has got classic Doom running in Fortnite, in a manner of speaking broad enough to justify a series of headlines about it, including my own. Jackson Clayton honoured the proud tradition of getting the 1993 FPS to run on things where no Doom should be by porting classic opening stage E1M1, via level editor Ultimate Doom Builder, into Fortnite’s Unreal editor as a 3D model. Welcome, newcomer Fortnite, to the vaunted halls currently occupied by gut bacteria, jar-grown rat neurons, lawnmowers, teletext, electric toothbrushes, Windows notepad (sort of), and a pregnancy test.

Greetings once again from the RPS Anti-Prime Day deals guide, where you’ll find all the sharpest price-slashings on PC gaming hardware strictly from outside the Amazon shopping empire. Prime Day itself isn’t until July 16th-17th, but there are already a bunch of good early deals on deserving gear, with more to come.

We haven't written nearly enough about Fallout London, a gargantuan Fallout 4 total conversion that takes place in a whole new map based on England's capital city - the Big Smoke and/or Great Wen, whose real-life incarnation probably harbours at least one nuke at any given moment, though I haven't asked the King about that lately. Best not speculate.

Anyway, Fallout London is a huge effort from modders Team Folon that was recently sabotaged when Bethesda treated Fallout 4 to a next gen update to capitalise on the Amazon TV show's popularity, rendering several mods incompatible and breaking a lot of stuff. Team Folon have now fiddled with the workings and sent a Fallout London build to GOG for QA testing, which suggests that release is imminent. The catch, however, is that you will need to downgrade your copy of Fallout 4 to play the mod, because even with Team Folon's last-minute adjustments, Fallout 4 next gen and Fallout London simply don't get on.

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka wants to know why the hell Sonic Team haven’t made their own Sonic The Hedgehog RPG yet. He sounds positively hysterical about it, hopping mad, which you know, mate, you’ve been running the show since 2008. You’ve been working on Sonic games since 1994. I too yearn to bound through the Star Post portal and into a world where Sonic has to min-max his trainers and do companion quests for Big The Cat. The spinning ball of spines is in your court, Iizuka-san. The people of Mobius are ready. Mario has had that genre all to himself for long enough.

Amazon Prime Day 2024 is, according to the scratched-in calendar on the wall of my ecommerce cell, soon – so let’s check in on the latest and best early Prime Day deals on PC gaming hardware.

The open world action game Star Wars Outlaws is coming out next month and developer Massive Entertainment have already shown off some of the speeder biking and laser-trading in various trailers. But recently they've spoken a little more about the player's scummy travels across the galaxy, including how big some of the explorable planets will be, and what happens when you piss off the Hutts. In short, you're going to have a price on your head. Makes sense.

Many years ago game designers advised their peers to make their prototypes "juicy". They were talking about the nebulous collection of sensations a player is exposed to when heads explode, coins jangle, and balls bounce. Zenless Zone Zero is a game deeply informed by the philosophy of juice. Like the lootbox hawkers of yesteryear, gacha designers understand the appeal and power of a pleasingly animated gizmo, ker-chunking open and fizzing with potential. This poppy visual and sonic language stretches across Hoyo's latest game, from its cinematic moments, to each character's attacks, to the cute bunny mascots that erupt into gatling guns, to the barista's coffee-making ritual and the recipes of the robo-limbed noodle server. The menu screens, the maps, the free-to-play storefront, everything. It is all very juicy. It is pumped with juice, but only in the same way supermarket chicken is pumped with water.

Microsoft have announced global price increases for their Game Pass subscription business across all existing packages on console and PC. They’re also doing away with Xbox Game Pass For Console, while introducing a new Standard tier for console users which includes the Xbox back catalogue but doesn’t offer day-one access to new games.