Last week, I blithely commented that the Maw was “taking a break”, because we had too much else to do besides feeding our resident cosmic newsbeast. We have now paid a grievous price for my negligence. Friends, I am horrified to report that the Maw has broken containment and eaten Geoff Keighley, the face of Summer Games Fest. In the process, it may also have devoured the very concept of the future.
Time has lost its gradient, and the harvest may never come. Without Geoff, there will be no barrage of hundred-thousand-dollar game trailers and announcements on June 5th, to spin us through the shambles of another year. There can be no Highguard 2. There will be no surprise celebrity cameos, for surprise requires change. In vain shall the children of Gamers ask, “what precise ratio of smart-casual is Mads Mikkelsen favouring right now?” I offer the below list of new PC game releases largely in memoriam for a “this week” that may never truly unfold.
Monday 1st June
Tattoo Removal Simulator is a weirdly poignant and somewhat winceworthy addition to the PowerWash clean-up genre.
Starforged Legacy is Vampire Survivors but with 3D spaceships that remind me a little of Strike Suit Zero.
Developed by Istanbul developers Archaic, Lost in Art: A Miniature Realm is a puzzle game set inside Ottoman and Persian paintings from the 16th to 18th century.
Tuesday 2nd June
Hoo, I like the looks of this one. In OddFauna: Secret of the Terrabeast, you collect hand-made clay animals while riding around on the back of a mountain-sized creature that can be terraformed to accommodate the beasties you gather. You can also grow crops and build houses.
In Remorses [sic] you are stuck in a rickety shack with a spectral witch and must open windows to not go insane. Hang on, isn’t this just a game about minimising condensation? My estate agent sent round a guy to teach me about this last week and he didn’t seem very witchy, by their standards.
Fatekeeper is a first-person sword and sorcery jobbie with some very pretty caves.
Wednesday 3rd June
Prohibeast is a 1930s Chicago-set stealth tactics game in which the 18th Amendment banned meat, not booze, for reasons that should be clear from the game’s title. Do you remember Eliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner in the Untouchables? Well, he is a dog now. Do you remember Al Capone, played in the Untouchables by Robert de Niro? Please refer to him as Al Cat-pone from here on out. Adding further layers of iniquity, both Eliot the dog and Al Cat-pone are voiced by generative AI text-to-speech software. Truly, Prohibeast, you are the sum of all evils.
Thursday 4th June
Friday 5th June
We close the week with Alkimia’s remake of celebrated quarry-based RPG Gothic (pictured), in which you’re trapped in a magic snowglobe with quarrelsome factions of penal workers.
Again, I list the above game releases merely out of sentimental duty to the memory of time’s passage. Tomorrow is an empty sound, for there is no Geoff to weave our mortal lives upon the wheel of destiny. I cannot tell you what the rest of RPS are up to this week, because the idea of “completing tasks” has become an absurdity. If it were possible any longer to plan, I’d say that we are all basically thinking about how to cover a week’s worth of game showcases without going stark raving bonkers.
The dreadful appendix is that according to rumour there is still a “Geoff Keighley” in the wilds – a plausible, babyfaced entity with glistening 13-pack abs and bullet-hard nipples. “He” is slouching about Xitter as I write these words, sharing details of Summer Game Fest streaming times. Either the Maw has regurgitated Geoff and taken possession of his flesh, or his backers in the Illuminati have unleashed the most embarrassing of all modern technologies to maintain the illusion of Things Yet To Come. Take up your proton accelerators, colleagues! Against all odds, we must avert history’s petrification and Feed the Maw.