The Maw: what’s new in PC games this week?

Festive wind-down edition

Live

Image credit: Library of Congress / S. Merinsky / Rock Paper Shotgun

Seasons greetings, reader! It’s almost time to hang your stocking by the crackling fireplace and post your handwritten letters to Santa up the chimney. If you don’t have stockings, a fireplace, or a pen, rest easy. I’ve had a word with Santa’s elves, and they say it’s permissible to hang a trash bag by your George Foreman grill or local equivalent, and leave a comment on an RPS article instead. Wot you want for Wintermas, then? Extra trash bags? New George Foreman grill? Whatever it is, Santa will provide. If he doesn’t, I’ll feed him to the Maw.

There’s not Much Ado this week, the final RPS working week of 2024, but I have a few last yuletide PC game bonbons for the banqueting table. On Monday 16th December, it’s time to march up and down the streets of Neko Odyssey, photographing cats. Alternatively, get your teeth into Idle Colony, a powerfully sinister fruit-picking simulator. As for Thursday 19th December, let’s recommend a VR game for a change. It’s Alien: Rogue Incursion! I don’t own a headset capable of rendering those xenomorphs, but it seems promising. And on Friday 20th December, settle down for the weekend with The Midnight Crimes, a hard-boiled point-and-clicker that whiffs of The Wolf Among Us.

It should be a quiet few days as we ready the Treehouse for hibernation. Nic’s already vanished into the forests till new year aboard an Orc-drawn sleigh. I’m away Monday, as per the traditional pre-Xmas rite of using up leftover holiday allowance like I’m scraping carbonised potato out of a roasting tray. We’ll be focusing on scheduling things to go live over the break, but I do have at least one feature I’d like to publish before Horace puts us into cryostasis. Find our last news liveblog of 2024 below – Merry This Week, all!

Key points

09:13 am
December 16 2024

DING DONG MERRILY ON MONDAY

13:05 pm
UTC

The Balatro developer is annoyed that PEGI (the European organisation that decides age ratings) has rated the card game for players of 18+ years. They’ve done this because it teaches “skills and knowledge that are used in poker”.

“Since PEGI gave us an 18+ rating for having evil playing cards maybe I should add microtransactions/loot boxes/real gambling to lower that rating to 3+ like EA sports FC,” joked the game’s creator.

– Brendan Caldwell

12:57 pm
UTC

Capcom is “focusing on re-activating dormant IPs” according to a press release intended for investors. Basically this is Capcom hyping the recently announced Okami 2 and Onimusha: Way Of The Sword, but it also gives further hope to anyone praying for a Dino Crisis reboot or remake.

– Brendan Caldwell

09:13 am
UTC

DING DONG MERRILY ON MONDAY

One last fattening of the Maw before the snows claim us. FEED IT- but in a laidback way. There’s unlikely to be much New this week. As for me, I’ll talk to you properly tomorrow.

– Edwin Evans-Thirlwell