Nate Crowley

The Crusader Kings franchise has always had a massive Game of Thrones vibe. Indeed, the first two games in the series got their own Westeros mods, and our own Adam Smith called CK2’s “such a blindingly obvious combination of worlds and mechanics that it simply had to exist”. Now, however, looking into the new dynasty mechanics for Crusader Kings 3, it’s clear what Paradox are…

Tagged with feature, paradox development studios, Paradox Interactive, preview, Crusader Kings II, Crusader Kings III.

Planet Zoo is a game where you can build your own zoo. It’s buggy, intermittently opaque, frequently saccharine, and - barring an eleventh hour miracle - it’s my undisputed game of the year. Because here’s the thing: it’s a game where you can build your own zoo. And by thunder, it delivers on that promise. Usually, by the time I review a game - especially…

Tagged with #ChiefBeefIsComing, feature, Frontier Developments, review, wot i think, Planet Zoo.

When Imperator: Rome was released in April this year, I really enjoyed it. My colleague Ghoastus absolutely loved it. To be honest, both of us were happy with it as it was. Nevertheless, in response to a good deal of player roaring on launch, Paradox have been working hell for leather to rebuild whole sections of the game, and after two big free patches, we're…

Tagged with feature, Ghoastus, paradox development studios, Paradox Interactive, preview, Imperator: Rome.

One of my favourite tropes in Science Fiction is aliens whose cultures are built around some hangover from the time before they made it to the stars. Take the Kelpiens from Star Trek: Discovery, whose existence is dominated by the inbuilt anxiety that comes from having once been prey species. Or Iain M Banks’s Idirans, the “top monster on a whole planetful of monsters'”, who…

Tagged with feature, Paradox Development Studio, Paradox Interactive, preview, Stellaris.

Crusader Kings 2 isn’t the easiest game to define. It mixes Paradox’s grand strategy formula with a big bucket of RPG flavour, creating something that’s just as playable as an emergent storytelling toy as it is as a wargame. Crusader Kings 3, its freshly-announced sequel, has this same mix of ingredients. But from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like it might just have…

Tagged with feature, Paradox Development Studio, Paradox Interactive, preview, Crusader Kings II, Crusader Kings III.

A few minutes ago, Crusader Kings 3 was announced at PDXCon in Berlin, with an actual choir of hooded figures, and this splendidly grim trailer. Predecessor Crusader Kings 2 is still going strong after nearly eight years, with its last expansion launched last November, but now it's time for that old warhorse to be put to pasture. Or perhaps become pope. Either way, it's free…

Tagged with feature, Paradox Development Studio, Paradox Interactive, Crusader Kings II, Crusader Kings III.

Since colony sim RimWorld left early access at the start of the year, it hasn’t changed. And that’s fine. It can be hard to remember, when so many sandbox-type games are constantly having new content shovelled into them like coal into a furnace, that games sometimes just… get finished. Still, when you’re used to coming back to a game and falling in love with it…

Tagged with feature, king beef, Ludeon Studios, space dracula, Tynan Sylvester, RimWorld.

It’s only when night falls, the sun like a pool of something molten yet cold on the grey horizon, that I realise just how alone I am on the boat. It’s just me, attended by a silent retinue of winches, hooks, scratched plastic tubs and battered steel tables. And then, beyond the chipped paint of the gunwales, the infinite ocean. It’s a perfect arena for…

Tagged with ADHD, commercial fisheries, convoluted metaphors, crabs, deadliest catch, drugs, feature, moonlit, Simulation, Ultimate games, Deadliest Catch: The Game.

You might not be surprised to learn that Wilmot’s Warehouse, the charming object-categorisation game we’ve been banging on about this month, was inspired by (wait for it) working in a warehouse. Co-creator Richard Hogg worked in warehouses for Asda and Boots in his teens, before moving on to work for a film stills library after graduating. “I loved that job,” he recalls, wistfully. “In fact,…

Tagged with Can't Stop Playing, Can't Stop Playing September 2019, feature, Finji, Humble, Richard Hogg, Ricky Haggett, Wilmot's Warehouse.

I had a bunch of other things to write about today, but I’ve shoved it all aside because my PC just reinvented the concept of fish, and you need to know about it. This isn’t just an “ooh, this looks interesting” post; I’ve got proper weird street evangelist excitement about what I’ve just been playing, and I simply have to share it. It’s not a…

Tagged with Bollock-chinned snake, evolution simulator, feature, God game, natural selection, Slug Disco Studios, Tom Johnson, Ecosystem.

Twenty hours into Borderlands 3, in the jungle-drowned innards of a crashed starship, Moze finally opened up. Until that point, we only knew she was a war lass with a big mech. During a bit of scripted mission patter about awkward names, however, she revealed she was born Moserah Hayussinian Yan-Lun al-Amir Andreyevna, and we thought we were going to learn another precious fact about…

Tagged with 2K Games, Big Soc, call me a bumhead, feature, Gearbox Software, review, wot i think, Borderlands 3.

For the first three and a half billion years of its history, life on earth was fairly dull. It was, essentially, a load of little blobs mucking around in a great big sea. But then, five hundred million years ago, the Cambrian Explosion happened. Despite its name, it was not a sick wrestling move, but a sudden evolutionary riot, in which life diversified into a…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, Can't Stop Playing, Can't Stop Playing September 2019, feature, Finji, Hollow Ponds, review, Richard Hogg, wot i think, Wilmot's Warehouse.

It’s taken me years to realise the first videogame I ever played was a rip-off; a lacklustre, store-brand facsimile of someone else’s idea. The game was called Barrels, and it was a janky clone of 1981’s Donkey Kong, made by a company called Spa (apocryphally Software Production Associates) for the RM Nimbus. The Nimbus was the digital workhorse for UK schools in the late 80s,…

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, RM Nimbus, spa, Barrels.

One of the most maddening things in mainstream science reporting (and my goodness, there’s a panoply to choose from), is how every year, without fail, there’s a rash of articles making wild claims about how scientists are “on the brink” of cloning a woolly mammoth. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but they seem to have been on the brink for at least 25 years now,…

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Maxis, Will Wright, SimEarth.

During the opening of Gamescom in Cologne, we found out we’ll be getting a remake (or ‘spiritual successor’) to 2001’s management landmark Startopia. Named Spacebase Startopia, to underline the fact that the game is about bases in space, it looks… well, it’s got potential? No, it’s not made by the people who made the original, but that’s not necessarily an obstacle. And sure, the trailer…

Tagged with feature, Gamescom, Gamescom 2019, Kalypso Media, Realmforge Studios, Startopia, Spacebase Startopia, Startopia.

Dwarf Fortress might be the most interesting game ever made. It might even be the best. But it’s certainly not the most accessible. It looks weird, its control scheme appears to be lifted from some sort of alien church organ, and a good proportion of its features are in fact collisions between the many, many bugs that have sprung up in its thirteen-year development history.…

Tagged with Bay 12 Games, Diary, Dwarf Fortress diary, feature, Kitfox Games, PAX West, Tarn Adams, The Basement Of Curiosity, Zach Adams, Dwarf Fortress.