Tales from the Borderlands Episode 4 out today

Today, Telltale releases the penultimate episode of Tales from the Borderlands.

Today, Telltale releases the penultimate episode of Tales from the Borderlands. As the trailer above points out, that means second-to-last.

I haven't been following the series, so, for a rundown of what's happening, we'll turn to the trailer's description.

"In this penultimate episode of the season, captured by Vallory and her goons, Rhys and Fiona are forced to continue the search for the Vault beacon - at gunpoint. The beacon is on the Hyperion moon base - Helios - while our heroes are on Pandora... so there's the pesky cold void of death known as 'space' to overcome. Even with assistance from a familiar face, and with a worryingly helpful Handsome Jack hitching a ride in Rhys' head, getting on board the ominous 'H' is going to take every drop of guile, and quite possibly all the spunk you've got. Sacrifices will be made - can you make the tough choices needed to succeed?"

It looks pretty good, and I was pleased to note the trailer's complete absence of Claptrap. In his Episode Three review, Tyler announced that the Gearbox-themed romp was his favourite Telltale adventure to date. He also reviewed Episodes Oneand Two, should you require some further reading.

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Steam Summer Sale to start June 11

It's a Steam sail, okay?

If you were to look outside my window right now, you might scoff at the idea that anything containing the word "Summer" could be just a month away. And yet, according to the Steam pageon Russian social network VK, the Steam Summer Sale will begin on June 11.

That's less than two weeks away. Are you ready?

This is one of Steam's two big-ticket sale events of the year—to which all other Steam sales are mere trinkets on the receipt of history. There'll probably be some trading cards to collect and everything.

The sale will run until June 20, at which point there'll be an encore sale. To prepare, I'll venturing into the countryside to track down our old friend the Sale Stoat.

What are you hoping to see discounted, dear reader?

Thanks, IGN.

Tales from the Borderlands: Episode 4 out next week

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Steam winter sale begins December 22

I'm fifty-fifty on whether PayPal counts as an official Valve representative at this point.

I'm fifty-fifty on whether PayPal counts as an official Valve representative at this point. It has a record of spilling the beanson Steam sales before Gabe and co. have a chance to do so themselves. Here, in a list of holiday deals, we see the Steam winter sale pegged to start December 22, allowing us to cut it very fine with our Christmas shopping indeed.

Some of the capitalistic magic wore off in the autumn sale, when Valve announcedthat it would no longer be running flash sales and daily deals but instead adhering to a game's lowest price throughout, but there is a lot I haven't played this year and, worryingly, I have my card number memorised.

Thanks, Shacknews.

Tales from the Borderlands: Episode Three - Catch a Ride review

episodic reviews
You can’t buy Telltale’s episodic adventures one episode at a time on PC—you’re buying all five in the season for $25/£20—so it doesn’t make much sense for us to score each one individually.

for $25/£20—so it doesn’t make much sense for us to score each one individually. We’ll review and score the whole package when all the episodes have been released, while individual episode reviews like this one will be unscored criticism and recaps.

Spoiler warning: I've tried to keep spoilers to a minimum, but there are a few plot details here, especially from previous episodes. If you'd rather experience it totally fresh, back out now.

Most games are really just about going for a nice walk, except there's stuff in the way. Like Doom. It's just a pleasant stroll with a bunch of stupid demons and locked doors ruining everything. In adventure games, the barrier to progress has typically been puzzles, but Telltale has almost entirely ditched those in favor of dialogue and plot, and for the most part, that's been working great. Tales from the Borderlandsis my favorite game from them so far. (Here's my review of episode oneif you're not caught up.)

When Telltale uses barriers outside of dialogue, though, I don't find them very fun. Mashing Q isn't a meaningful way to interact, just an annoying one (to me, and to whoever's sharing a room with me and my mechanical keyboard). Clicking on red targets during action scenes isn't much better, and was obviously made with controllers in mind. Transitions between scenes sometimes stutter, and some of the camera angles are a pain to deal with. Movement is still awkward as hell, and when I walk around looking for a solution, only to find that the solution is 'look at everything,' I'm disappointed that I didn't get a chance to figure anything out on my own. I can sense how little it wants to challenge me—so little that it seems pointless to include anything but dialogue and plot.

In Tales from the Borderlands' third episode, Telltale does something I like in regard to action. During a couple of scenes, Fiona visualizes two possible courses of action, and we pick one. The slight, ultimately meaningless, addition at least acknowledges that decision-making is what's fun about Tales from the Borderlands, not the chore of clicking red targets (which there's still lots of), but I want to see more, bolder experiments. The action scenes are exciting, but the choices aren't hard and rarely do much to the outcome.

I appreciate what a big challenge it must be to design action, though, and that animating some huge array of outcomes is probably unrealistic (I haven't posed it as a problem because I know how to solve it). And as I said, I love Tales from the Borderlands so far. The writing has been great, and the third episode is my favorite. It's dense, covering a lot of ground while still giving us slow moments for some good character development. It's also the funniest episode, and it introduces a bunch of new characters (including an adorable, non-annoying, non-Claptrap robot).

Gortys is wonderfully naive.

The only story aspect I'm not fond of is the Handsome Jack subplot. Having his maniacal laughter and 1950s-era sexism secretly living in Rhys' head is one of those old tropes I've never been fond of: good character is possessed by a cad, misunderstandings with friends ensue. I don't really understand why people like Jack so much, but he's popular (I told someone I didn't like him and she thinks less of me now, like, as a person) so I can't blame Telltale for resurrecting him.

At least his involvement depends a little bit on what happens at the end of episode two. Telltale told me that I'd have "a significantly different experience" depending on who I trusted in that episode, so I played episode three both ways. The first bit does play out entirely differently depending on your choice, but after that's over you get the same basic outcome. The only major difference is that a character in the 'trusted Fiona' timeline has to sit out of some growth, and Jack has a bit less power unless you give in to him, so you'll skip a scene I didn't like much anyway. Oh, and the 'trusted Jack' timeline gets you a small extra something I did like, but isn't major. As usual, it seems both timelines are leading to the same place, and I don't actually recommend replaying episodes—it ruins some of the illusion.

If you do replay it, it might be to spend a little more time in one of this episode's destinations, somewhere unusually pretty for the wasteland. It looks great, even though the engine is a little clunky: there's the stuttering I mentioned, a few blurry textures, and some long, weird pauses in dialogue. It also likes to cut to a loading screen right after major events. That's all forgivable, as is the rote action, when the humor and characters are as good as they are. At this point, the only caveat I have when recommending TFTB is that I have no idea how long it'll be before the final two episodes are out (three to four months between episodes seems to be the pace).

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Train Simulator 2014 developer flagging negative Steam user reviews as "off-topic"

Train Simulator 2014 has had a rocky start.

has had a rocky start. Though we enjoyedour look at the alpha build, when the game properly launched in Septembermany users complained about bugs and a hamhanded transition for Train Simulator 2013 players, who saw their achievements deleted and other technical hiccups. As Train Simulator's players, known to be a devoted and niche audience, began to complain on the community Steam forums, those forums were unceremoniously wiped clean. It also appears that the developer began flagging negative Steam user reviews as “off-topic.”

In a postdescribing the issues, a redditor (who has since deleted their account) pointed to Train Simulator's review tab, where the user reviews marked “most helpful” have been flagged as off-topic by the developer. Once flagged, a review is still visible but appears collapsed, and must be expanded to be read. In the content of many of these reviews, there is no mention of the dispute over forum moderation. Instead, flagged reviews are from veteran players with hundreds of hoursin the game warning others about patchy AI or expensive DLC.

According to Steam's announcement of the user review system, developers can't delete reviews of their products, but flagged reviews will remain partially hidden until a Steam moderator deletes the review. While a moderator might simply remove the flag if they find no cause, the moderation process and its timeline is not transparent. After news of this situation hit the front page of r/Games, a moderator has since removed the off-topic flags from the affected reviews. Without this level of publicity, though, there's no way to know how long or what result these flags would have had.

It should be noted that Steam user reviews are still very much in beta—the system launched barely two weeks ago—so this situation could be worked out with time. Neither Valve nor RailSimulator, the developer of Train Simulator 2014, responded to requests for comment on this story.

Tales From The Borderlands: Episode Three out later this month

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Steam prices look set to increase in Australia as 10% tax hike is confirmed

The inevitable has happened: Steam prices look set to rise in Australia.

The inevitable has happened: Steam prices look set to rise in Australia. A new tax on 'intangible' digitally imported goods will be introduced in the 2015 budget, Australian federal treasurer Joe Hockey confirmed today.

That means the 10% increase on Steam prices we reported last weekis almost certainly going to happen, though details on specific companies to be targeted have yet to be released. Dubbed the 'Netflix tax', the tax applies to companies selling digital goods or services into Australia from abroad.

"It is plainly unfair that a supplier of digital products into Australia is not charging the GST whilst someone locally has to charge the GST," the treasurer said today, via ABC.

"When the GST legislation was originally drafted, it did not anticipate the massive growth in the supply of digital goods like movie downloads, games and e-books from overseas."

That's reasonable enough, but in the case of PC gaming there's no locally operated competition that can hold a torch to Steam. Meanwhile, it's unlikely the tax will affect all online outlets: the proliferation of lesser retailers selling Steam keys is something the Australian Tax Office is unlikely to get a handle on.

The tax is expected to make $350 million over the next four years, according to Hockey. It's unlikely to meet with much resistance from the opposition Labor party either: Labor's treasury spokesperson Chris Bowen criticised the government for its failure to introduce similar measures to protect local retailers.

Tales from the Borderlands: Episode Two - Atlas Mugged review

episodic reviews
You can’t buy Telltale’s episodic adventures one episode at a time on PC—you’re buying all five in the season for $25/£20—so it doesn’t make much sense for us to score each one individually.

for $25/£20—so it doesn’t make much sense for us to score each one individually. We’ll review and score the whole package when all the episodes have been released, while individual episode reviews like this one will be unscored criticism and recaps.

Spoiler warning: We discuss the content of these episodes pretty freely so that those already playing can discuss—if you’re not already playing, you may want to wait until we review the whole season at the end, or read our comparable less spoiler-ey review of episode one .

The pilot episode is usually one of the worst episodes of any given sitcom (Cheers excluded), but Tales from the Borderlands started really, really well. Telltale’s good at those first impressions. It also seems to falter in the second episode—The Wolf Among Us did, and Tales from the Borderlands does too.

Telltale has a baseline level of ‘good’ that it rarely dips below, and that’s true here. There are some very good things in this episode: being chased by moon shots; Vaughn talking while peeing; Fiona and Rhys continuing to be unreliable narrators. And there’s a good decision at the end that I want to go back and try again, though I don’t think I’ll find out what it means until the next episode. Cliffhangers, eh?

Episode two is not bad, but I was expecting better after the excellent first episodes. A lot of the lines fall flat for me as the humor regresses into jokes about sporks (“it’s a spoon and a fork!”) and bros—the stuff of primetime TV. The umpteenth aggressively absurd character description doesn’t have the effect it did last time, and a bit involving an eyeball is more gross than funny.

There are some good quips, and some good character interaction, especially when the plot isn't moving. I like seeing these characters chat about life and poke fun at each other. But that good stuff, such as Fiona and Sasha struggling with Felix’s betrayal, is sandwiched between seemingly trivial events. There’s a decision in the middle I just didn’t get, for instance. As Rhys breaks the fourth wall to ramble about important choices, I can decide to meet up with Fiona and Sasha at their present location, or meet up with them at the destination we were all headed for before splitting up. Even the characters don’t seem to know why this is an important decision, with Rhys limply justifying it to his captor. Meanwhile, Fiona and Sasha are negotiating repairs for their caravan—oh boy?

Another weird thing: August comes back, and has this whole scene with Fiona where we’re led to believe he still has stupid feelings for Sasha, who had just been using him to sell the fake vault key to Vasquez in episode one. I'd thought he was far less important than he apparently is, and I suppose we’re now meant to consider his motivations and whether or not he can still be manipulated. Nothing comes of it, but maybe it’ll be important in a later episode.

Episode two is also technically inferior. Long, weird pauses in dialogue make it feel like an old JRPG that's pulling audio from a disc. Sometimes the characters do a good job of chattering while waiting for your input, but other times Vasquez especially seems to trail off like he's forgotten who he's talking to.

The walking segments are still awkward as ever, and this one includes an especially bad one. As Rhys, you have to scan the ground from a first-person perspective to find power conduits, then reconnect wires to power up some old Atlas tech. Getting the camera to point at the place you want to look is a struggle. You can nudge it around, but if you can’t see what you’re trying to find, you have to back out to third-person and clumsily steer Rhys somewhere else. And finding the circuits is busywork I thought Telltale was expunging from the adventure genre. It’s the most puzzle-like thing it has done in a while, but not a puzzle—just annoying.

And, of course, mashing ‘Q’ is still a vital part of the game. Maybe it wouldn’t bother me on a controller, but I don’t like jamming my keys to death so that a character can hold onto something.

The good news is that I fully expect Tales from the Borderlands to get better, and there’s lots of interesting stuff to resolve: Rhys is dealing with a hallucinatory Handsome Jack, who is the funniest part of this episode, and Fiona and Sasha still have to deal with Felix’s betrayal. Vaughn, meanwhile, is still just sort of... there. I feel like I'm supposed to distrust him, but I'm just not worried about him. He seems like he'd be a pretty ineffectual traitor, and as a friend, he's largely just Rhys' punchline. As I said, I enjoy the banter, but he's still the least interesting character.

Mostly, I hope we don't have to wait another four months to see what happens. It's too long! I am impatient. And forgetful.

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Valve loses Australian legal battle over Steam refunds

Back in the summer of 2014, Valve was dragged into court by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for refusing to offer refunds on Steam.

by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for refusing to offer refunds on Steam. The complaint said Valve made “false or misleading representations” to Steam users in Australia, including that they were not entitled to a refund under any circumstances, and that Valve itself was not obligated to refund games in cases where “the consumer had not contacted and attempted to resolve the problem with the computer game developer.” The case has now came to an end, and not in Valve's favor.

As reported by the Brisbane Times, an Australian federal court has declared that, despite being a US-based company that doesn't offer physical goods in Australia, Valve's refusal to offer refunds on goods it sells is in violation of Australian consumer law. It's the first time an Australian court has defined digital products as "goods," according to the ACCC, and Chairman Rod Sims warned that the decision could have major repercussions for other companies operating digitally in the country.

“There's going to be a lot of companies we can now turn to and say look, be careful what you say about consumer guarantees because you are liable under Australian consumer law,” he said.

What's interesting in all this is that since the complaint was filed, Valve has drastically changed its policy and now offers refunds “for nearly any purchase on Steam— for any reason.” There are some restrictions, obviously, but on the whole it's a pretty generous policy, and one that I would think would bring Valve into line with Australian law. Whether or not that will have any mitigating impact on the fines imposed on Valve, which could run as high as $AU 1.1 million ($839,000) per breach, remains to be seen; penalties will be determined at a future hearing.

Tales From the Borderlands episode 2 trailer features Handsome Jack

Things seem to be getting worse for lead characters Rhys and Fiona in part two of Tales From the Borderlands.

Telltale Games has released a trailer for Atlas Mugged, the second episode in the Tales From the Borderlandsadventure series that's expected to come out next week.

Things seem to be getting worse for lead characters Rhys and Fiona in part two of Tales From the Borderlands. While they try to figure out what the Atlas Corporation was doing prior to Hyperion's takeover of Pandora—a quest crowded by Vault Hunters, Bounty Hunters, Vasquez, and worse—Rhys finds himself coming face-to-face with visions of Handsome Jack, who's supposed to be dead. That's a little strange, isn't it?

It's worth noting that the launch date isn't carved in stone as of yet. Telltale said in the announcement that Atlas Mugged is "expected to be available," as opposed to "will be available," the week of March 17. It'll likely happen on time—it's getting awfully close to the wire for a delay—but until it's nailed down, anything is possible.

Prison Architect: how Introversion avoided jail by embracing their hardest project yet

Prison Architect has sold 124,691 copies and made a gross revenue of £2,679,730 ($4,031,925).

This article originally appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 256.

has sold 124,691 copies and made a gross revenue of £2,679,730 ($4,031,925). If you're one of the remaining major videogame publishers, that's pocket change, but if you're Introversion it's more money in ten months of alpha sales than your previous four games made in over 12 years. If you're Chris Delay, the game's lead designer and programmer, it's the opportunity to start a family. And if you're the three founders - Chris, plus college friends Mark Morris and Tom Arundel - it's the difference between being comfortably wealthy and living in fear of spending time in a real prison.

“Tom was convinced that we were going to go to jail,” says Chris. “He was convinced that we were going to go to jail because he thought that for most of 2010 we'd been trading insolvently, which means trading knowing that there's no chance you're going to survive.”

Prison Architect is the game that saved Introversion, one of gaming's most interesting and longest-serving indie developers, but if you're a gamer then it also represents a bunch of other, similarly excellent things.

It's intensely British, like all of Introversion's games. This time, it's a continuation of what Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog were doing in the '90s, crafting darkly funny management games like Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital.

It's proof that alpha funding can work, benefitting everyone involved by giving Introversion the money they need to make the game, and letting players be a part of that process from an early stage.

And it's another example of how videogames are at their most exciting when they put control in the player's hands. Prison Architect will have a story-driven campaign mode, but at its heart is a rich, Dwarf Fortressinspired simulation of tiny digital men, their needs, their grisly crimes, and even their families.

In its alpha state, that campaign mode hasn't been added yet. Play the game today and you'll begin instead with an open field and a ticking clock counting down to the arrival of your first batch of prisoners. Before they arrive, it would be prudent if you had built them a holding cell, using the few starting materials and handful of workers provided.

Once they arrive, your next steps present themselves naturally. People need go to the toilet and shower, forexample, so you'd better place those things. You'd better place a water pump too and lay the pipes for that. Also, people need to eat, don't they? So you'd better build a cafeteria and stock it with benches and tables, and create a kitchen stocked with ovens and chefs.

And since some of the people in your prison are murderers, you should hurry to place some locked doors on that kitchen, and hire guards to patrol the cafeteria to stop your captives from fashioning shivs out of sporks (shorks). And also, wait, they need to sleep, so some beds are needed, and probably cells for privacy, and solitary confinement for punishment.

And suddenly it's four hours later, and the 150 prisoners now trapped within the walls of your failing prison are rioting, and escaping, and you're broke, and you can't quite remember how it all went so wrong. So you start again, and vow this time to do it all better.

Or instead, maybe you open Steam Workshop and download one of the hundreds of prisons built by other resourceful players, to see how it's done. You install huge, sprawling mega-prisons, and prisons in the shape of the FTL spaceship, a space invader, and the Tower of London. There's a vast amount of content here, and even with the game incomplete, a tremendously dedicated community.

“When people buy into an alpha now, it's questionable as to whether they're even buying the game itself or whether they're buying into a process: to see a game be developed and be a part of that,” says Chris.

“For me, with DayZ, I was there in the beginning. Back in those days, it was updating every week, and it was extremely exciting because there was all this new stuff going in all the time, really big game-changing stuff. I wanted it to be like that for Prison Architect: that every update would add something big and meaty that would make you reconsider the game again, like 'I'm going to build a whole new prison as a result of this because the whole game has changed again.'”

Steam Workshop support came in alpha version 8, released March 20, alongside a new planning mode. Alpha 9, released April 24, brought the ability to put your prisoners to work in your laundry, kitchen or workshop. May 30's Alpha 10 added riots and riot guards, and June 28's Alpha 11 added hearses, allowed prisoners' sentences to end - which I'm sure they appreciate - and introduced native support for generating timelapse videos.

Looking at these monthly updates stretched out behind and in front of the game, you quickly get a sense of how big a project Prison Architect is. As Chris and I talk about the issues that surround the game - from its simulation and its politics - I also quickly get a sense of how difficult the project is. It's an example of an indie developer tackling a huge, unexplored mountain, of the sort mainstream development might find too risky to scale.

The monthly update schedule means that by the time you read this, Alpha 12 will have been released. Chris isn't shy about talking about Prison Architect's future.

“I'm working on contraband and stealing contraband from around the prison,” he starts. “Gary's working on dogs and dog handlers. The idea is, because there's going to be a lot more contraband floating around the prison, dogs are going to be there, primarily detecting narcotics and booze and poisons and anything that can't be detected by a metal detector.”

A lot of the game's development works this way: every system is interdependent, so long-requested features sometimes take a backseat until the groundwork has been set.

“We actually have escape tunnels working right now,” says Chris. “A few prisoners can dig escape tunnels. They intelligently dig around buildings, and if two prisoners are digging, they join up and form one master tunnel digging out, Great Escape-style. But we've never put it in the game because there was no way for the player to deal with it.”

Dogs are the way to deal with escape tunnels, too. “Dogs on patrol around the edge of the prison will bark and scratch at the floor when they walk over an escape tunnel.”

Steam security loophole exposed by Watch Paint Dry

Watch Paint Dry is “a sports-puzzle game that evolves around one mysterious cutscene.

Watch Paint Dry is “a sports-puzzle game that evolves around one mysterious cutscene. Bringing in innovative gameplay and requiring high attention to detail, Watch Paint Dry is a must play for anyone who enjoys mystery ARG type games.” Or perhaps I should say, it was: It appeared on Steam over the weekend, but only briefly—because it wasn't supposed to be there at all.

If you think it sounds like a gag, there's good reason: That's precisely what it was. The whole thing was cooked up by UK-based security researcher Ruby Nealon, who was inspired to pull the prank after efforts to report a loophole that allowed games to be put on Steam without Valve approving them went ignored.

The process for getting the “game” on Steam, which he, is fairly complicated, but also obviously not nearly as complicated as it should be. The big dependency is having access to Steamworks, Valve's internal publishing platform.

“The Steamworks website is majorly AJAX. All the code for the Javascript functions that powers the source is not obfuscated and readable by anyone (authenticated into Steamworks at least),” he explained. “There’s some interesting code, but as this game was a proof-of-concept, I stuck to what was relevant and found an interesting javascript function called 'ReleaseGame(appid, data)'. This seemed to make a typical AJAX request (though there wasn’t any authentication in it) to Steam and seems to, as it says, release the app.”

Using the ID number assigned to his app didn't work, but tying it into “sessionid” he dug up while getting the Steam trading cards approved (a process he explains earlier in the post) made the magic happen.

“I will admit that it appearing straight away in the new releases section was an oversight on my part. I initially wanted it to have 'Coming April 1 st' and not show up until Friday (though I wouldn’t have expected it to last that long),” he wrote. “I will also admit I was very tempted to try and see how far along releasing it I could get, but I think it’s for the best that the app is not listed for sale.”

Nealon has since been in contact with Valve, and the loophole has been closed, which is presumably why he felt safe making the process public. He said his escapade has taught him a few things about working with user-generated content (foremost among them presumably being, “don't allow users to set the item to 'Released'”), and he apparently suffered no consequences for it. That's a happier outcome than the one that met Euro Truck Simulator 2 developer Tomas Duda when he exposed a different Steam vulnerability with an amusing prank of his own a couple of years ago: He ended up with a one-year ban from Steamfor his troubles, although it was fairly quickly overturned once the word got out.

Watch Paint Dry is no longer available on Steam, but you can still play around with it thanks to the magic of Google cache.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Tales From the Borderlands trailer takes us back to Pandora

Gearbox's Borderlands isn't the kind of series I'd envision as the foundation for a smart, funny adventure game.

isn't the kind of series I'd envision as the foundation for a smart, funny adventure game. And maybe it won't be, but going by this 'world premiere' trailer, I'd say that Tales From the Borderlands looks set to be a a very interesting twist on the hit shooter franchise.

Tales From the Borderlands is an adventure based on the shooter series being developed by Telltale, the studio behind popular episodic adventures like The Walking Deadand the upcoming Game of Thrones. Instead of playing as a vault hunter, players will alternate between Rhys, a Hyperion "suit" who aspires to be the next Handsome Jack, and Fiona, a Pandoran con artist looking to hit her biggest score ever.

As is the way with Telltale, Tales From the Borderlands will unfold over five episodes released on Steam, the Telltale Online Store, and other digital distribution platforms. No launch date has been set but the first chapter, "Zero Sum," is expected to be out before the end of the year, and the whole package will go for $25 (and presumably £19 in the UK, as The Wolf Among Us is priced).

Prison Architect: how Introversion avoided jail by embracing their hardest project yet

Prison Architect has sold 124,691 copies and made a gross revenue of £2,679,730 ($4,031,925).

This article originally appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 256.

has sold 124,691 copies and made a gross revenue of £2,679,730 ($4,031,925). If you're one of the remaining major videogame publishers, that's pocket change, but if you're Introversion it's more money in ten months of alpha sales than your previous four games made in over 12 years. If you're Chris Delay, the game's lead designer and programmer, it's the opportunity to start a family. And if you're the three founders - Chris, plus college friends Mark Morris and Tom Arundel - it's the difference between being comfortably wealthy and living in fear of spending time in a real prison.

“Tom was convinced that we were going to go to jail,” says Chris. “He was convinced that we were going to go to jail because he thought that for most of 2010 we'd been trading insolvently, which means trading knowing that there's no chance you're going to survive.”

Prison Architect is the game that saved Introversion, one of gaming's most interesting and longest-serving indie developers, but if you're a gamer then it also represents a bunch of other, similarly excellent things.

It's intensely British, like all of Introversion's games. This time, it's a continuation of what Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog were doing in the '90s, crafting darkly funny management games like Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital.

It's proof that alpha funding can work, benefitting everyone involved by giving Introversion the money they need to make the game, and letting players be a part of that process from an early stage.

And it's another example of how videogames are at their most exciting when they put control in the player's hands. Prison Architect will have a story-driven campaign mode, but at its heart is a rich, Dwarf Fortressinspired simulation of tiny digital men, their needs, their grisly crimes, and even their families.

In its alpha state, that campaign mode hasn't been added yet. Play the game today and you'll begin instead with an open field and a ticking clock counting down to the arrival of your first batch of prisoners. Before they arrive, it would be prudent if you had built them a holding cell, using the few starting materials and handful of workers provided.

Once they arrive, your next steps present themselves naturally. People need go to the toilet and shower, forexample, so you'd better place those things. You'd better place a water pump too and lay the pipes for that. Also, people need to eat, don't they? So you'd better build a cafeteria and stock it with benches and tables, and create a kitchen stocked with ovens and chefs.

And since some of the people in your prison are murderers, you should hurry to place some locked doors on that kitchen, and hire guards to patrol the cafeteria to stop your captives from fashioning shivs out of sporks (shorks). And also, wait, they need to sleep, so some beds are needed, and probably cells for privacy, and solitary confinement for punishment.

And suddenly it's four hours later, and the 150 prisoners now trapped within the walls of your failing prison are rioting, and escaping, and you're broke, and you can't quite remember how it all went so wrong. So you start again, and vow this time to do it all better.

Or instead, maybe you open Steam Workshop and download one of the hundreds of prisons built by other resourceful players, to see how it's done. You install huge, sprawling mega-prisons, and prisons in the shape of the FTL spaceship, a space invader, and the Tower of London. There's a vast amount of content here, and even with the game incomplete, a tremendously dedicated community.

“When people buy into an alpha now, it's questionable as to whether they're even buying the game itself or whether they're buying into a process: to see a game be developed and be a part of that,” says Chris.

“For me, with DayZ, I was there in the beginning. Back in those days, it was updating every week, and it was extremely exciting because there was all this new stuff going in all the time, really big game-changing stuff. I wanted it to be like that for Prison Architect: that every update would add something big and meaty that would make you reconsider the game again, like 'I'm going to build a whole new prison as a result of this because the whole game has changed again.'”

Steam Workshop support came in alpha version 8, released March 20, alongside a new planning mode. Alpha 9, released April 24, brought the ability to put your prisoners to work in your laundry, kitchen or workshop. May 30's Alpha 10 added riots and riot guards, and June 28's Alpha 11 added hearses, allowed prisoners' sentences to end - which I'm sure they appreciate - and introduced native support for generating timelapse videos.

Looking at these monthly updates stretched out behind and in front of the game, you quickly get a sense of how big a project Prison Architect is. As Chris and I talk about the issues that surround the game - from its simulation and its politics - I also quickly get a sense of how difficult the project is. It's an example of an indie developer tackling a huge, unexplored mountain, of the sort mainstream development might find too risky to scale.

The monthly update schedule means that by the time you read this, Alpha 12 will have been released. Chris isn't shy about talking about Prison Architect's future.

“I'm working on contraband and stealing contraband from around the prison,” he starts. “Gary's working on dogs and dog handlers. The idea is, because there's going to be a lot more contraband floating around the prison, dogs are going to be there, primarily detecting narcotics and booze and poisons and anything that can't be detected by a metal detector.”

A lot of the game's development works this way: every system is interdependent, so long-requested features sometimes take a backseat until the groundwork has been set.

“We actually have escape tunnels working right now,” says Chris. “A few prisoners can dig escape tunnels. They intelligently dig around buildings, and if two prisoners are digging, they join up and form one master tunnel digging out, Great Escape-style. But we've never put it in the game because there was no way for the player to deal with it.”

Dogs are the way to deal with escape tunnels, too. “Dogs on patrol around the edge of the prison will bark and scratch at the floor when they walk over an escape tunnel.”

Brace your funny bones for the April Fools' Day 2016 round-up

April 1 is once again upon us, and you know what that means: It's time for the videogame industry to tell you lies, sweet little lies.

April 1 is once again upon us, and you know what that means: It's time for the videogame industry to tell you lies, sweet little lies. Ideally not malicious untruths, but funny ones: the pranks, gags, spoofs, amusing juxtapositions, and shenanigans that make this day such a joy for people like us who are still expected to faultlessly sift the wheat from the chafe. The wheat in this instance being likable, playful, stuff, and the chafe being loveless marketing bullshit.

As is tradition around here, we've collected up some of our favorite April Fools to keep you entertained and help ensure that you don't fall for any ridiculous guffola. (Hopefully we won't either.)

Let the 2016 roundup begin!

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt—Talking With Roach DLC

This one is my favorite so far, because it's so utterly silly, and also because I would actually pay for that sticker. The look on the face of Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who seemingly can't believe that he's been drafted into this nonsense, is pretty good too.

A Blizzardly Trio

Blizzard puts real effort into its April Fool gags every year, and 2016 is no exception.

StarCraft 2 Balance Manager 2016—Experience an epic and fulfilling career as a Balance Manager, where every minor change you make is endlessly criticized and loved at the same time!

World of Warcraft: Frostdoge Clan—A community of peaceful descendants of the Frostwolf clan, the Frostdoge clan secretly inhabits the snowy expanses of Frostfire Ridge. Its members have transcended their ferocious nature to achieve true enlightenment, aided by the powerful influence of the mysterious—and seemingly worthless—Chunks of Dogestone.

Hearthstone: The MMO—You'd play this. You know you would.

Such WoW.

ARMA: Eau de Combat

Another product I would buy if it was actually available, Eau de Combatis “an unapologetic blend of florals, with a touch of soft gunpowder aroma, topped off with fresh notes of wood, mosses, and dirt.” Probably hints of acrid smoke and screaming hot death in there, too. What woman could resist?

League of Legends: Draven Day 2016

Riot's gone all-out with the newly (and temporarily) rechristened League of Draven, with Draven champ heads for everyone, Draven minions, Draven skins, Draven icons, Draven bundles, and even a Dravenator for your face. Unfortunately, Riot's gag this year includes neither URF nor NURF, and going by the response in the comments, LoL'ers don't think that's very funny at all.

The Humble Indie Font Bundle

Pay what you wantfor Halfvetica, Sans Sans, and Unicharacter! Or beat the average and get Bike Courier, After Impact, and Times Old Roman, too! Sure, it's not the funniest gag ever, but it's also a real thing that's so far raised over $4100 for charity. That's worth a mention in my book.

Rocket League Ragequit Bot

You know how it goes: You're playing Rocket League, you're down by two goals, and this is total bullshit so screw this you're going to go find a match where everybody isn't so obviously CHEATING ALL THE TIME COME ON NOBODY MAKES THAT SHOT WHAT THE F

The Ragequit botautomates that process in three easy steps, so you can dedicate your full attention to screaming obscenities into your headset. (And yes, you can actually download this, although I can't guarantee that it works.)

World of Warships: Scrub-a-Dub-Dub

“ Jacuzzi Mode,” as it's called, actually looks like a lot of fun: It's World of Warships in the bathtub. Each of the four nations on the tech tree has a unique ship, and while XP and credits won't be awarded in this mode, rewards can be earned by completing special missions. Jacuzzi Mode runs until 4:20 PT (no fooling) on April 11.

Evan's desk

I don't know who's responsible for this, but I will never be able to look at our EIC in the same way again.

Courtesy of April Fool's Day, all of today's @pcgamer #content will be brought to you by this beige imposter. pic.twitter.com/k9PHkrO1yZ April 1, 2016

But hey, he seems to like it.

Logitech revives the C7

From boomerang mode to the satisfying the nostalgia of picking dust and crap out of your mouse, the Logitech's C7 makes a comeback in this Facebook video.

NZXT SHUE+

Besides reminding us of the LA Gear fad from the 90's, this fake item is clearly poking fun at how every gaming peripherals now comes standard with RGB LEDs. The SHUE+extends this rainbow-colored madness to a wearable for your feet.

One mobo to rule them all

Upgrading parts in your computer can be a real pain in the rear, especially if you're not up to snuff on all the latest requirements, technologies, etc. MSI's solution is The One, a modular motherboard that will support all CPUs, sockets, memory, storage, and whatever else you might want to throw in there. So if you're running an old Core 2 Quad system from the late aughts and you want to upgrade to a modern Skylake processor, you'd just swap the CPU socket module and you're all set! Or what if you have four GPUs occupying all of your PCIe x16 slots? No worries: The One supports "any number of slots!" If only it were that easy….

Warhammer: End Times—Vermintide "Death Wish" difficulty

I honestly can't tell if this is actually an April Fools' gag, or if it's something Fatshark is going to do despite how patently silly it is. It looks like it could be real, and the studio said it will be made free for everyone "soon." But on April 1, nothing can be taken at face value—especially not that smile at the end of the video.

Outlast 2 will be rated E (Everyone)

Due to the backlash received from parental groups following the release of Outlast and Outlast: Whistleblower, developer Red Barrels has announcedthat the sequel, Outlast 2, will be rated E for Everyone by the ESRB, with cartoon violence, mild language, and comic mischief. It's set to come out this fall.

Razer: Project Breadwinner

Razer. A name synonymous with quality gaming accessories. From mice and keyboards to headsets, controllers, and powerful notebook gaming rigs, Razer dominates. And now the company is once again breaking new ground, as it pushes boldly into an all-new frontier: the kitchen.

Razer Toast. You can taste the technology.

Strafe goes free-to-play with Strafe Royale

Pixel Titans announced last month that Strafe won't be out until next year, and that didn't go over well with fans. "We've received thousands of death threats after announcing our release date of "early 2017" and our email inboxes are full of messages from fans demanding it now," the studio wrote. So it buckled down, got to work, quit screwing around with sideline nonsense, and was able to get the game ready for release today— with a few minor changes.

"We know that "Free to Play" may be a turn off to some people, but we call those people idiots who don't like free stuff," the devs wrote. "We guarantee that STRAFE® Royale is great or we'll give your money back.*"

Tales from the Borderlands interview with Telltale's Kevin Bruner

Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands is on display at E3 2014, and features editor Wes Fenlon got a first look at the Walking Dead developer's newest game.

developer's newest game. Here, Wes talks to Telltale president Kevin Bruner about how the studio started collaborating with Borderlands creator Gearbox Software, and how the team switches up the mood from zombie survival to sci-fi comedy.

Be sure to read more from E3 2014all this week.

Prison Architect sells over 250,000 copies, is Introversion's best selling game

Over 250,000 inmates are now being held by Prison Architect , according to the latest sales figures for Introversion's still-in-alpha management sim.

, according to the latest sales figures for Introversion's still-in-alpha management sim. That's an impressive amount of people, and an even more impressive amount of revenue: $8,001,530 as of writing. SATIRE MODE ACTIVATED: It turns out the news wasn't lying when it said the prison system was one of the world's fastest growing industries.

"We never would have believed that one of our games would be so popular," says Introversion's Mark Morris, "and we want to thank everyone that is supporting Prison Architect and helping us turn it into a concrete reality."

It must be a happy situation for the inveterate underdogs to find themselves in. Before Prison Architect's alpha release, after the less-than-successful Multiwinia, and the eventually cancelled Subversion, Introversion faced the very real possibility of closure, and - as one of them believed - a prison sentence of their own. You can read the story about the game's inception and development in our recent Prison Architect feature.

Prison Architect is currently available - as an early access alpha - from the Introversion website.

XCOM Second Wave options officially released by Firaxis, patching in on Tuesday

The Second Wave, a menu of toggleable XCOM campaign mutators, is being integrated into Enemy Unknown tomorrow in a free update.

tomorrow in a free update. An unfinished version of the code was originally noticed by moddersin October, who produced a tweak that switched on many of the settings less than two weeks after the game released.

The free update includes (but isn't limited to) the following options. Many of these are unlocked after you beat the game—if you've already completed XCOM, you should see the full list.

Damage Roulette: Weapons have a wider range of damage.* New Economy: Randomized council member funding.* Not Created Equally: Rookies will have random starting stats.* Hidden Potential: As a soldier is promoted, stats increase randomly.* Red Fog: Combat wounds will degrade the soldier's mission stats. Absolutely Critical: A flanking shot guarantees a critical hit. The Greater Good: Psionics can only be learned from interrogating a psionic alien. Marathon: The game takes considerably longer to complete. Results Driven: A country offers less funding as its panic level increases. High Stakes: Random rewards for stopping alien abductions. Diminishing Returns: Increased cost of satellite construction. More Than Human: The psionic gift is extremely rare.

*Unlocked prior to completing a campaign.

Below, more details about the update from XCOM's lead designer, Jake Solomon.

PCG: Modders originally discoveredan unfinished version of Second Wave and released a mod that enabled much of it. Did the work of these modders help troubleshoot Second Wave?

Solomon: Oh, yeah. In fact, I ended up changing it a little bit because of stuff they found when they turned it on. There's Marathon mode, which makes the game much longer. Somebody I was reading said, "It sucks that the soldiers don't heal right. They should heal slower as well." I thought, "That's a really good idea," so because of that, I monitored that and I read the comments on it. I adjusted some of the balance because some people felt like the starting random stats weren't balanced well. I adjusted those. Then I added the soldiers healing slower in Marathon mode. They were maybe an unwitting partner in it, but they definitely helped by having that out there. Their ability to test that already was very helpful for me.

Can you give an explanation for why Second Wave wasn't included at launch?

Solomon: I'm a pretty hardcore fan of the original game, and when I look back on the original game… I don't want to give myself too much credit here, but this is sort of hindsight. The original game was much more of a simulation. Modern XCOM is much more of a strategy game. I've heard it described as board-gamey, which i think is fair. I think that the simulation aspects of the original game had… It had some really high highs that are difficult to replicate. But it also had some unevenness. I trimmed some of the unevenness of the game by making things a little more discrete, making the choices more discrete. But by doing that, it also trims some of those high highs. Some of those high highs come from the unexpected nature of the simulation in the original game. This was kind of a way for me to experiment with that and bring that back in the framework of the modern game.

When Second Wave goes live, there are four options that will just be automatically unlocked for everybody. But then there are 16 total options that are hidden behind beating the game. It's retroactive, so if you already beat the game, it will recognize that. You don't have to beat the game after Second Wave comes out. Some of the options are taken directly from the original game. The damage that your weapons do, the range of it, is increased drastically. Really powerful plas weapons may only do one hit point sometimes when you fire. It's rare, it's very rare, but it can happen. Weapons can also do up to twice the amount of damage they do in the current game. It sort of takes what XCOM is and makes it even more XCOM-ey, in the sense that you have these moments of elation where every weapon almost has a chance… Almost every weapon can deal serious damage. But on the flip side of that is that you have some powerful weapons that, every once in a while, may do what looks to be a glancing blow when you really needed a powerful shot. It's the sort of thing that, I think, really adds some additional unexpected elements to the gameplay. But I think that design philosophy is probably more at home in the original game than it is in the game that we made.

Because I love the original so much, and because I think there's still value in it, I wanted people to be able to have that experience. But I didn't want it to be the core game. I wanted to have that kind of unpredictability… I think it could create an uneven experience if you didn't know explicitly what you were getting into. Now it makes sense, because people have played the game a lot and put a lot of time into it. We want to continue to do whatever we can to help people find replayability in the game. This certainly will help with that. But it's not something that I would want to release with the core game, just because of how unpredictable some of these elements make the game. And some of them make it really hard. Some of these gameplay options can make the game really difficult. That's the sort of thing that may make sense now, but doesn't make a lot of sense to release with the core game.

So it was more of a design decision than a production decision.

Solomon: Yeah. I actually wrote the code for the Second Wave very late in the process. It was never intended that this would come out with the core game. It was always intended to be add-on content. But I was also submitting this very, very late in the process, when we were well past the time to add features. Poor Garth [DeAngelis], my producer… The way it works at Firaxis is is that the lead designer, the creative lead, is in charge of the project for the majority of its lifecycle. But towards the end, the lead producer takes control of the project, which is as it should be. I admit that, even as a creative guy, it's best that I'm not calling any shots toward the end of a project, because I'd just never stop. I was submitting this stuff kind of under the radar, and poor Garth was like, "Jesus, you're killing me here. Please stop with all these changes."

What do you consider the most challenging variant or combination of Second Wave settings?

Solomon: [laughs] Well, there are some pretty… There are some that are unlocked after you beat the game on Normal or Classic, and then there are the ones that are unlocked after you beat the game on Impossible. You probably already need help if you're beating the game on Impossible. We've got some where… There's one called E-115. When you turn on that option, the Elerium—which is obviously your big alien resource that you need to build more advanced hardware and research—has a very short half-life. It adds a half-life to Elerium where it will begin to degrade every day. It will degrade in your storage. You lose Elerium the minute you get your hands on it, and you continue to lose it.

"We want to be the cheapest entertainment that you can get out of any medium, not just compared to other games.”

There's something called War-Weariness where the overall funding levels around the world drop inexorably with every month. As the war continues, the funding levels drop. There's another one, Total Loss, where when soldiers die you lose everything they're carrying on them. They're just these things that make the game really challenging. If you were to combine those with Marathon mode, which makes the game much longer and makes everything more expensive, you would have what I think would be a much more Dwarf Fortress experience, where it's not about winning the game so much as it's about, "Oh, I made it to August," or "I survived until June 15." It will be interesting to see, because there really is no way to account for how these things can be combined. I think you really can get into a situation where the game is not beatable with some of these options all turned on.

I'm almost thinking of XCOM with some of these settings turned on as a challenge mode. "Okay, Jake, you and I are going to play the game with these settings. Let's see who can get farther."

Solomon: Right, exactly. Really, the goal is just to allow people to wring more value from their dollar. At Firaxis we pride ourselves on… We want to be the cheapest entertainment that you can get out of any medium, not just compared to other games. Certainly Civ does an awesome job of this, and we want XCOM to approach that, where your value in terms of the time you've spent on games is a really good value. I saw that you posted on Twitter about the hours you've spent on games. That's something that really matters to us. We want our games to be the kind that have lots of hours for people.

A lot of people would say that if you did more to officially support XCOM modding, that would be an the surest way of increasing the lifespan of the game.

Solomon: That's fair. That's something we're still open to. Already we're kind of amazed at what people have been able to do. I think the next step is to reach out to them and say, "What are the roadblocks? What can we do to help you?" We're very inspired by the stuff that they're doing on Nexus Mods. Even if it's just rebalancing. People have found ways to start the game with a lot of soldiers and things like that. I think that's fair. For us, this is the first step as far as the official effort to give players more replayability, but that's something we have not forgotten about.

I'm curious about Marathon in particular. How long is a typical Marathon game? Twice as long?

Solomon: It should be anywhere from one and a half to two and a half times as long as a normal game. It could be anywhere from maybe 30 to 50-60 hours. I was trying to shoot for a game that approached the original game's length.

I feel like I want to play with Absolutely Critical enabled, just to see how it feels. I'm curious what to expect. It seems like it would make the game easier, but again, aliens are going to flank me too, right?

Solomon: Yes. I think that over time, that probably does play into the player's favor. They'll be able to take advantage of that tactically. The AI is going to know about it, but the player is going to be able to use it to their advantage, I think. Critical shots are what really mow down your soldiers. You can't predict, sometimes, where you're going to get flanked.

There are some like that where… Hidden Potential and Not Created Equally, the ones where the rookies have random stats and the stats go up randomly. Eventually, mathematically it all evens out. Some of your rookies are going to have lower stats. But what really happens is that you're going to get some rock star soldiers who will probably tilt the game in the player's favor if they know how to use them well. I think you can offset that, perhaps, with something like Red Fog. That's the sort of thing where it just makes the game harder. Any wounds you take are going to degrade your aim. They're going to degrade your mobility. You're not going to be able to move as far. You're not going to be able to shoot as well. Your will is going to go down. That's a setting where there's just no question. It makes the game harder. But with some of them, like Absolutely Critical, the player may be able to use that in their favor if they play really tactically.

MORE: Interview with Jake Solomon about difficulty, death, and XCOM's poorly-received Slingshot DLC.

New Tales from the Borderlands details spill out of SXSW

New details have emerged about Telltale's episodic adventure game set in the gunny, gunny world of Borderlands.

New details have emerged about Telltale's episodic adventure game set in the gunny, gunny world of Borderlands. We already knewa few scant things about the upcoming series, plucked from its reveal late last year, and now we know a little more, thanks to a recent Tales from the Borderlands panel at the SXSW gaming expo. Things like: it will have a lighter, more comedic tone to it than Telltale's other recent series, it will feature two central characters each with their own special abilities, and its story has something in common with the (surprisingly Deppless) Tim Burton film Big Fish.

You won't be too surprised to hear that Tales from the Borderlands will take place on Pandora - that's Pandora from the Borderlands series, and not the Ferngully Smurfs one from Avatar. Unlike the main shooty series, you won't be playing as a do-goody hero but rather a couple of greedy, self-serving types by the name of Fiona and Rhys. Fiona is a con artist, while Rhys is a Hyperion employee with a robotic arm. You'll be able to use their respective smooth talking and robot hacking arm skills at various points in the game.

More interesting is the little wrinkle that the story is going to contain, well, a lot of bullshit. By that I mean that it's being narrated from the future by Rhys and Fiona themselves, who seem like the sort of people to talk up their accomplishments, to paint themselves in a particularly glorious light.

"You never really play what actually happened, you're playing this Big Fishversion of what happened," Kevin Bruner of Telltale explained at the panel, as witnessed by the fine folks at Polygon.

Head over to that linkfor more details about the upcoming series, including some interesting discussion about its more lighthearted tone. Well, things can't really get much darker than The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and Game of Thrones. At least, I hope not.

Thanks, Polygon.

Best of iOS news: From Lumi to LostWinds

Watch the PC Gamer PAX panel featuring Minecraft, DayZ, The Walking Dead, Bastion, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown

It took us a while to figure out what sort of panel we wanted to put on at PAX.

It took us a while to figure out what sort of panel we wanted to put on at PAX. We knew we wanted to do more than a live version of our podcast (we do that every week)! We settled on storytelling as a topic because it's a particularly interesting moment in gaming for stories and storytellers. BioWare released the first fully-voiced MMO, and it responded to fan feedback about Mass Effect 3. "Choice" as a concept is leaking into every genre it can. Story generatorslike DayZ are innovating with systems rather than scriptwriting. But wait—conventional storytellers like Telltale are finding novel ways of humanizing characters.

To solve all of these creative quagmires in a mere hour, we called in some developers:

Sean Vanaman- Creative Lead, The Walking Dead

Jake Solomon- Lead Designer, XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Greg Kasavin- Creative Director, Supergiant Games

Markus "Notch" Persson- Creator, Minecraft, Founder of Mojang

Dean "Rocket" Hall- Creator, DayZ

http://youtu.be/Qkr_xYRG6bo

Watch the full hour conversation above. Thanks to everyone who came, and to our gallery of sages. Here are more photos from the panel, too.

Upcoming Homeworld Remastered patch to rework ship formations and behaviour

Fists of Heaven has the scoop (and that lovely screenshot above) about an upcoming Homeworld Remastered patch, six months in the making.

patch, six months in the making. By the sounds of it, it's a pretty huge patch that overhauls ship formations and behaviour, implements a proper ballistics system, and that adds new features to Remastered's modding tools.

You should read the whole article to get the full picture, but I'll add a couple of choice quotes below.

"Rather than simply fixing the formations that we’re familiar with from the original games, the Homeworld team have taken things several steps further. First, ships are all being treated by the game engine as one unit, so, for instance, Hiigaran strike craft won’t always be locked into the squadrons they’re produced in and instead and can enter larger formations with the same class of ship (but will reform into their original squadrons if removed from the formation)."

"Targeting behavior has been completely reworked, and ships now prioritize targets much more intelligently than before.  Stationary ships will be more appealing targets, and ships that dramatically affect the battle (such as gravwell generators) will become high priority targets when activated, causing ships in the vicinity to break off of previous targets to face the new threat."

Developed with the help of Remastered's modding community, the new patch is the result of six months of full-time work by a group of developers at Gearbox. We can expect graphical updates, balance changes, and bug fixes in addition to the aforementioned stuff.

There's no date for the patch given, but the article mentions that it's in its "final stages", so hopefully it won't be too far off. (Cheers, Fists of Heaven!)

Behind The Scenes With Certain Affinity's Crimson Alliance

Watch the PC Gamer PAX Megapanel livestream here at 2:30 pm PDT!

Join us live at PAX Prime in Seattle today for the PC Gamer Megapanel , featuring a discussion on "The Incredible, Uncertain Future of Storytelling" with the super-creative minds of Jake Solomon (XCOM: Enemy Unknown), Dean "Rocket" Hall (DayZ), Greg Kasavin (Bastion), Sean Vanaman (The Walking Dead), and Markus "Notch" Persson (Minecraft).

The panel starts at 2:30 pm PDT (4:30 CDT, 5:30 EDT, 9:30 GMT) - if you're at PAX, come see it at the Kraken Theater, but if not: don't worry! You can watch it all live on the official PAX livestream above.

Homeworld Remastered launch trailer is surprisingly danceable

I'll give you a hint: Watch this , or, more precisely, listen to it.

Homeworld Remasteredcomes out tomorrow, but the Homeworld Remastered launch trailer is here today. It's a bit different than the trailers that have come before it. Can you figure out why?

, or, more precisely, listen to it. That's the original Homeworld music playing in the background, simultaneously understated and epic, and it's a huge part of what made the game so iconic. So I can't help wondering why someone decided to change it for this trailer. Several YouTube commenters have asked the same question, while others have pointed out that this is a 15-year-old game, and there's a potentially huge new audience out there that isn't quite so hung up on Adagio for Strings.

In any event, the 4K visual upgrade certainly looks fantastic, the score has been remastered—thankfully, this trailer notwithstanding, the original soundtrack remains in place—and there are "new, high-fidelity voice recordings by the original actors" as well. Hard to go wrong with that.

And since we're talking about Homeworld trailers anyway, here's the story trailer for Homeworld 2, which is also included in the Homeworld Remastered collection. I've always thought that Homeworld 2 suffered in comparison to the original—after all, how do you top a galaxy-spanning quest to reclaim your ancient homeworld from the clutches of an evil interstellar empire?—but inherent narrative weaknesses aside, it's still a pretty good way to bang mighty battle fleets together in three-dimensional space. Homeworld Remastered hits Steamon February 25.

Saling The World: Just Dance 3, Skyward Sword Head Domestic Sales Charts

Civilization: Beyond Earth designers talk about the science behind the game

In an op-ed written for Space.com, Civilization: Beyond Earth Lead Designers Will Miller and David McDonough talk about the game's scientific underpinnings, how the tech tree will differ from previous Civilization games and why "the inflection point" means that humanity's first interstellar colonists will be completely on their own.

In prior Civilization games, players build their civilizations from virtually nothing, progressing from the most basic sorts of technology to futuristic wonders. Civilization: Beyond Earth is different, because it begins with space travel and branches out from there. But that doesn't mean that humanity has come together in peace and harmony as it boldly ventures out among the stars.

"In Beyond Earth, we start with the premise that humanity has emerged from a period of great difficulty with a renewed interest and drive in exploring space. In our game fiction, this is galvanized by a few key events, such as the first image of a habitable world, another pale blue dotaround a distant star," Miller and McDonough wrote. "But it is also driven by need. Settling an extrasolar planet would be a massively resource-intensive process, and as resources become scarce, eventually, there won't be enough to support mass colonization, which is an idea we're referring to as the Inflection Point."

As a one-off journey, help won't be forthcoming from the homeworld, which is obviously a central element of gameplay; after all, it's not much fun if you can just phone home for more stuff. The need to be self-reliant, as well as the open-ended possibilities of the future, means that while early-game technologies will "draw inspiration" from real-world research currently underway, the Beyond Earth tech tree is actually a web, "showing that humanity might pursue any number of technological directions in the future, and leaving those discrete choices in the player's hands."

"Buried through the game are bits of what we've learned about thorium reactors or transgenic medicine or climate engineering," they wrote. "As designers, our main goal is for people to enjoy playing Beyond Earth, but if our players run across something in the game, and they're curious enough to look into it a bit more, then we'll be ecstatic to have done our part to raise a little more love for space and science."

Civilization: Beyond Earth comes out on October 24.

Homeworld Remastered story trailer sets up an epic journey home

Among my many failings as a PC gamer is the fact that I really don't care for the RTS genre.

Among my many failings as a PC gamer is the fact that I really don't care for the RTS genre. But hoo boy, did I love Homeworld. The gameplay was arguably mediocre and it all got kind of silly once you had a handle on capturing and converting enemy ships, but the presentation—visually, aurally, and narratively—was utterly epic and powerful.

Of course, a lot has changed over the past 15 years (and yes, it's been 15 years) and in spite of my intense feelings for the original, what I've seen so far of Gearbox's Homeworld Remastered hasn't really knocked my socks off. I'm not sure exactly why, but for one reason or another it's left me a bit flat . But now we've got this story trailer, and things have changed: The voice, the music, and that map to Hiigara—"our home"—has brought it all back.

Some elements of the game will obviously be rejigged, but it's clear that Homeworld Remastered is just Homeworld (and Homeworld 2), gussied up to with 2015 finery. I think I'm okay with that.

Homeworld Remastered comes out on February 25.

Civilization 4 designer joins Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes team

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, in development by Stardock, seeks to continue the territory tussles and sword-and-spell battles of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, in development by Stardock, seeks to continue the territory tussles and sword-and-spell battles of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress. Its predecessor, Elemental: War of Magic, was repackaged into Enchantress after poor reviewsin 2010. The latest talent brought onto the team may help keep the quality high: in a, CEO Brad Wardell announced the addition of former Civilization 4 lead designer Soren Johnson to Stardock.

Wardell elaborates that Johnson's help centers on assisting with Heroes' development, but he also states Johnson's influence "will be pretty obvious" in the next few years. Johnson's most notable contribution to the Civilization franchise was the programming of the entire AI for both the third and fourth entries in the series—so he's the one most responsible for a hawkish Gandhi setting my village on fire just because I nixed a trade deal.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes releases in April. You can check out some of its included features in our previous post.

Watch 2K play XCOM: Enemy Unknown live

Members of XCOM: Enemy Unknown's development team, specifically lead designer Jake Solomon and producer Garth DeAngelis, along with community manager Greg Laabs properly kicks off the week leading into PAX with a livestream of the upcoming strategy/action/alien-sniping title's competitive multiplayer. Take a look at 2K's official stream channel, and for more info on XCOM: Enemy Unknown, check out our multiplayer preview.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel launch trailer promises 500 ice puns

I seem to remember a lot of the trailers for Borderlands 2 featuring the squelchiest variety of dubstep.

featuring the squelchiest variety of dubstep. Two years later and how things change, because in this launch trailer for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequelwe get the hairiest of hair metal, namely Europe's ode to final countdowns, The Final Countdown. The zeitgeist is ever shifting, and yes: sometimes it goes backwards.

Launching today in North America and Friday in Europe and Australia, The Pre-Sequel is promising a lot: you get zero gravity (but not really) and apparently there will be 500 ice puns (the internet is full of pedants so this will definitely be verified within 24 hours of launch). I've not played it yet but Evan has, and he did us the service of reviewing it. He called it "a well-executed but thoroughly unambitious extension of Borderlands 2," which is great news if you couldn't get enough of Borderlands 2.

To get you in the mood, here's some gameplay footage at 1440p.

Humble Bundle now lets you gift extra Steam keys to friends and family

The Humble Bundle has added a new feature to its already-popular package of game sales and charity outreach: the ability to gift games to family or friends.

has added a new feature to its already-popular package of game sales and charity outreach: the ability to gift games to family or friends. Humble is calling the new option "experimental," according to an announcementon its blog, but it's likely going to be a hit due to the enormous variety of games we often see in Humble's various digital download offers.

We still see the familiar "Steam will not provide extra giftable copies of games you already own" warning when deciding to take part in the current Humble WB Bundleor the new Daedalic Weekly Sale, but now the site's interface includes a separate button to launch any extra copies off to a different destination. The instructions for making the new gifting process work appear refreshingly straightforward and are available here.

"We and the developers we work with trust that our awesome customers will keep spreading the Humble way by sharing extra games with those who will appreciate it," reports the Humble Bundle about the change. "With your kindness, we hope to be able to continue this feature in the future."

Active players often find they already own one or more of the games that come included in these benevolent bundles. Now (for the time being at least), they can be put to good use elsewhere, perhaps in the collection of a friend who just got into PC gaming. It looks like a win-win, for charity, as well as empty game collections everywhere.

Get a free Steam key for XCOM: Enemy Unknown

The dramatic tactical action of XCOM: Enemy Unknown earned it a PC Gamer score of 87 when it launched back in 2012.

when it launched back in 2012. You command a secretive band of supersoldiers as they face off against an alien invasion. Kill the enemy, autopsy their remains and then use them to build bigger weapons with which to kill bigger aliens.

It's still great, which is why you should consider claiming a free Steam key for Enemy Unknown. Green Man Gaming have teamed up with the Golden Joystick Awards to give away thousands of keys. All you have to do to get one is...

1. Vote for your favourite games on the Golden Joystick site.

2. Before voting finishes, a special Playfire site will launch dedicated to the giveaway. Once you've signed up there and linked your playfire account to Steam, you'll be able to receive the email with your key.

3. Important: wait until voting finishes on October 23 . Keys won't be sent out until after that point.

3. Sit back and plot the demise of the invading alien species.

The offer is available while stocks last, and you have to be 18 to enter. This is the 32nd annual Golden Joystick Awards, and they still hold the status as the biggest public-voted gaming award in the world. The GJ winners will be announced on October 24.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel gameplay trailer explores Claptrap's strange skills

If Claptrap's behavior has ever seemed a bit erratic, this 11-minute Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel gameplay trailer recorded at PAX Prime might explain why.

gameplay trailer recorded at PAX Prime might explain why. It turns out that his internal threat response software is actually still in beta, and doesn't always work quite as it should.

Claptrap's action skill, as narrators James Lopez of Gearbox and Joel Eschler of 2K Australia explain, is called VaultHunter.exe. Its purpose is to analyze a situation and then load an "action package" that will enable Claptrap to most effectively deal with it. Unfortunately for the unicyclic bot and those around him, there are still a few bugs in the system.

That means Claptrap will sometimes respond to situations in unexpected ways. He might lay out a little Claptrap turret that fires rockets all over the place, for instance, or he might suddenly whip out a "Clap in a Box," a huge, powerful bomb that's going to explode, one way or the other, in just a few seconds. All his abilities are useful, the developers say, but not always in the most obvious ways.

"We really designed it with his personality in mind," Eschler explains. "It's still beta software, and it doesn't run that well on his hardware."

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel comes out on October 14. To find out more about what's in store, check out our recent interview with Eschler and writer Anthony Burch right here.

Humble Weekly Bundle serves up Halloween treats

The Humble Halloweekly Bundle doesn't have quite the selection that the Steam Halloween Sale offers, but it's also a whole lot cheaper.

offers, but it's also a whole lot cheaper. As usual, it's a pay-what-you-want deal for three indie titles, or a little more money for a few more games.

For whatever price you care to pay (a minimum of $1 for Steam codes), the latest Humble Weekly Bundle offers Home, Vertical Drop Heroes HD with new Halloween content, and Knock-Knock, a wonderfully bizarre game from the studio that made Pathologic. For beating the average purchase price, which is currently at a little more than $4, you'll also get Betrayer, Our Darker Purpose, and Five Nights at Freddy's. Finally, for $15 more or, you can top it all off with Among the Sleep, the indie horror game about life as two-year-old insomniac.

Unlike conventional Humble Bundles, the weekly bundles don't add bonus games at the midway point, but purchases of the Halloweekly Bundle will include a pair of Payday 2 masks, Lycanwulf and The One Below, as a bonus. Payments can be divided as you see fit between the developers, the Humble guys, and the charities Save the Children and Unicef: United States Fund.

The Humble Halloweekly Bundleis live now and runs until November 6.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown preview

Jake Solomon really loves X-COM.

Jake Solomon really loves X-COM. This isn't as notable as how badly Firaxis and publishers 2K Games want you to know that he really loves X-COM. It's not just the lead designer, either. Everyone at Firaxis loves X-COM, I'm told. If someone joins the team and hasn't played X-COM, playing X-COM is their first assignment. I'm reminded repeatedly that the original game was published by MicroProse Software, and that Firaxis were born from the ruins of that company.

You can forgive their anxiety. When 2K Marin announced their own XCOM back in 2010, the internet shook with frustration. Sixteen years after the Gollop brothers' turn-based masterpiece was released, the series was returning – as a first-person shooter. It wasn't what fans wanted.

This is what we wanted. Later this year, Earth's Extraterrestrial Combat Unit will return. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is part remake of the 1994 original, and part sequel. It is developed by the company that created Civilization, under the stewardship of creative director Sid Meier. It is turnbased. It has destructible environments. It has the Geoscape. It has the Skyranger. And I'm just about to see it for the first time. The screen goes black. When it fills again I'm looking at the XCOM organisation's new headquarters.

“We call this the ant farm,” Jake says.

It's a side-on view of a vast underground base, colourful and bustling. It looks nothing like the original game. It looks beautiful. I can see the Skyranger in the hangar bay near the top. I can see soldiers wandering the halls, exercising, playing games in the rec room and visiting injured friends in the infirmary.

“This is where the player returns after every mission.”

Your lavish headquarters are also the game's menu. As Jake selects Science Lab at the top of the screen, the camera swoops in close to show the inside of the laboratory. Here you can set your science team's research goals, unlocking new weapons and equipment to help you in your fight against the aliens.

Switch to the Barracks and the camera shoots across the base. From here you can customise your soldiers' appearance, give them names and nicknames, and manage their equipment and abilities.

Inside the Situation Room, you're faced with a shadowy figure against a glitching, TV static background. XCOM is an international organisation, funded by countries around the world. If those countries are to continue giving you valuable resources, you'll need to keep them happy by occasionally bending your plans to their selfish desires. Selfish desires such as “Please launch some satellites over our country, to keep an eye out for aliens here,” and “Please stop the aliens from killing us all.” They give you scientists and other rewards for helping them, but concentrate too much on servicing those countries and your overall strategy will suffer.

It's the Mission Control room that looks most familiar. Flick to it and the camera switches to a satellite view of Earth, spinning in space. This is the original game's fondly remembered Geoscape. From here you can scan for UFOs in regions covered by your satellites. If you find them, you can go fight them. That might mean scrambling an Interceptor to tackle the UFO in the air, assuming you've built one nearby. Or it might mean picking up to six of your best soldiers and going to fight them on the ground.

Jake does the latter. As the mission loads, the screen shows the Skyranger blasting across the sky. Like everything I've seen so far, it looks updated, but still feels a lot like the original. It's X-COM turned XCOM-nom-nom.

With the original X-COM, British game designer Julian Gollop and his brother Nick set out to create a follow-up to their game Laser Squad. Then called Laser Strike 2, they signed the game with MicroProse, who had just had enormous success with Sid Meier's Civilization. Their new publisher suggested the Gollops bring a similar scale to their next game.

Eventually released as UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe in 1994, and in America later that same year as X-COM: UFO Defense, the game they created married the squad tactics of Laser Squad to a global strategy layer and a modern day setting. The result was an instant hit.

“If you get ten fans and you say, 'Give me the number one thing that makes it great,' you'd get 15 answers,” says Jake. “It's tough, but I would say high stakes is what XCOM is about.”

When soldiers die in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, as in its predecessors, they die for good. That doesn't sound like a big deal at first – units die in strategy games all the time. But you invest so much more in an XCOM soldier.

Let's imagine. A new recruit joins XCOM, and you name him Jimmy Doyle. He starts off as a rookie, with low stats and a lot of nerves. You customise his appearance, giving him a big nose and a scruffy face. On his first mission, he comes face to face with a Muton. A large, gorilla-like alien, the Muton uses a special ability to pound its chest and panic the inexperienced rookie. Doyle fires wildly without you telling him to, but you get him behind cover before the Muton kills him, and he survives the rest of the mission.

Doyle then levels up to Squaddie and earns himself a nickname. He's now Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle. At this point in the original X-COM, you'd be putting points into an enormous wall of stats, but that system has completely changed. Recruits now have a small number of stats that level automatically, and when they reach Squaddie, reveal a predilection for one of four classes: Heavy, Sniper, Support or Assault.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel lunar setting will change the way we play

In the second of a series of behind the scenes developer diaries, 2K Australia demonstrates how the lunar setting for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel will tweak the game's well-established template.

will tweak the game's well-established template. The ability to jump really high is enough for me, but there are other more subtle mechanics at play, as you will see in the video below.

Apparently the arc of grenades will be affected, while there's potential for enemy corpses to fly spacewards forever (ever, ever). Best of all there appears to be a greater sense of verticality in the level design, which is something Gearbox pulled off really well in Borderlands 2.

Cryo and laser weapons are also touched on. You can freeze an enemy and then butt slam them from on high, which sounds just charming. For more on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, check out our hands on preview, or read what Gearbox head Randy Pitchford has to sayabout the dubiously titled installment.

Humble Weekly Sale focuses on Focus Home Interactive

Six games are available from the outset for any price consumers want to pay, but Wargame: European Escalation and The Testament of Sherlock Holmes are only available if you drop at least $6.

Terrible and obvious puns aside, the Humble Weekly Salehas various joints from Focus Home Interactive, covering RPGs, city sims, and detective stories set in Victorian London.

Six games are available from the outset for any price consumers want to pay, but Wargame: European Escalation and The Testament of Sherlock Holmes are only available if you drop at least $6. The soundtrack for Sherlock is also included in that upper tier, while the soundtracks for Divinity II: Dragon Commander and Confrontation will be available at the regular tier. The games available for any price are:

Cities XL Platinum Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition Divinity II: Developer's Cut Game of Thrones Confrontation R.A.W. Realms of Ancient War

Just like with other bundles, you can decide how much of your payment goes to the publisher, to Humble Bundle Inc., or to help Child's Play, the American Red Cross, or both.

PC Gamer US Podcast #326 - Adventure Time!

Viking Overlord T.J. takes the helm of the podcasting longship this week, and Logan and Tyler hang on for their dear lives.

Viking Overlord T.J. takes the helm of the podcasting longship this week, and Logan and Tyler hang on for their dear lives. We talk THROWING MOONS AT PLANETSin Planetary Annihilation, TF2's new Co--op vs Killer Robots"Mann vs Machine" mode, and how Dan Stapleton was outed as an alien sympathizerin X-Com: Enemy Unknown. All this, plus listener questions, and the first ever PC Gamer Podcast Tabletop Adventure! Can Logan and Tyler defeat the evil wizards Daywan Dee El-Cee and Al'wayzan Dee Ar'Im to save their favorite PC franchises from Internet scorn through a series of arbitrary dice rolls?

There's only one way to find out... PC Gamer US Podcast 326: Adventure Time!

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.

@logandecker(Logan Decker)

@tyler_wilde(Tyler Wilde)

@AsaTJ(T.J. Hafer, hit me up for a link to the PC Gamer Tabletop Adventure #1 Google doc)

@belsaas(Erik Belsaas, podcast producer)