Qlinlin

Cult of the Lamb is all about making friends, albeit that may be through forming a cult full of woodland critters, but that doesn’t make it any less wholesome. I’ve got a great little team with members who would all die for me in a heartbeat, but it can still get lonely at the top. So I’m pretty excited at the prospect of sharing power in Unholy Alliance. 

Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance is another free update that’s scheduled for release on August 12—its main attraction is the new playable character for local co-op, the Goat. This fleecy little fella can join you for the entire main campaign, meaning that you and a friend can “enjoy new 2-player twists on existing minigames like fishing and knucklebones,” according to a press release. 

You’ll also be able …

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios opened a new operation in Warsaw earlier this month to help support the development of “two very ambitious RPGs.” There’s just one problem: Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is already home to one of the world’s most ambitious RPG studios, CD Projekt. Is there room in that town for both of them?

It might seem like kind of an odd question at first blush: Warsaw has a greater population than the Canadian city of Montreal, home to multiple game studios from companies including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Warner, and others. (Larian also has a studio in nearby Quebec City.) But in case there was any doubt, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said it’s all good in the ‘hood.

“When it comes to Larian opening up a new studio, the more the…

The “hyper-detailed recreation of another fictional world in Minecraft” thing is pretty well-established at this point—we were reporting on this big Game of Thrones build all the way back in 2013—but it still never ceases to amaze me what dedicated fans will get up to in Mojang’s venerable voxel sandbox. It really never gets old, and I was particularly impressed by Minecraft New Vegas, a 1:1 replica of the Obsidian classic’s world map for a Minecraft roleplay server.

I think the thing that really gets me is their texture work—a lot of art seems to have been borrowed from New Vegas itself and filtered through Minecraft’s signature chunky voxel look. Coupled with faithful recreations of classic locales, and some of the project’s stills almost look like screenshots …

When Shadows of Doubt hit early access last April, we quickly became believers in the potential of its procedurally generated cities and crime solving simulation sandbox. After 17 months of improvements, additions, and tune-ups, we’ll see how well that potential’s been realized when the cyberpunk detective sim gets its 1.0 release on September 26, 2024.

Since its early access launch, I’ve spent a couple dozen hours navigating the intricate web of simulated lives that Shadows of Doubt weaves for the citizens walking the rain-slick streets of its sprawling voxel cities. Every NPC has their own home, occupation, relationships, and routine that intersects with those of their roommates, coworkers, and acquaintances. When one of those NPCs inevitably commits a murder—it’s a…