Hot (weeks) off the back of Sons Of The Forest and the Resident Evil 4 remake coming out, we're celebrating your bestest best, most favourite survival games this month. Your votes have been counted and tallied, and your accompanying words of praise and affection matched accordingly. But which game has survived to make it to the top of the pile? Come and find out as we count down your 25 favourite survival games of all time.
]]>There's never been a better time to get into survival games on PC, as the recent revival of the genre means Steam is now awash in some truly great games, both in early access and in full release. There are more arriving every year, too, which is why we've done the hard work for you and ranked the very best survival games to dive into today. Fair warning - there are some early access games on this list, which mean they might be a little janky early on. Give them the time they deserve, though, and you'll find they often blossom into some truly great games over subsequent updates. We've only included the very best and most complete-feeling survival games on this list, though, so you can rest assured that every game here will leave you hungry for more. It's by no means exhaustive, but it should give you a nice selection of wolf-taming, base-building, carrot-picking action to choose from.
]]>Whether you prefer wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>I hadn't actually considered Kenshi would be getting a sequel. After six years in Steam Early Access, I imagined developers Lo-Fi Games would look at doing anything but reliving that process all over again. But working on the strange sandbox RPG must be quite fun, because they've got themselves in something of a jam. Lo-Fi Games want Kenshi to be the best it can be, porting it over to Unreal Engine 4. At the same time, they're prepping a sequel.
Worried that the update will significantly stall work on Kenshi 2, the devs are asking: do you want a brand new game, or a better version of what you've got?
]]>We ask the tough questions here at RPS. We’re like Jeremy Paxman but in a very long bear costume. We once asked 15 developers what they’d do if they were stuck in a room with a clone of themselves. This is important stuff.
Today, we ask another question: What would you gift the games industry for the holidays? We put this query to a bunch of game artists, writers and designers to see how charitable they were feeling. Today, you get to open these presents. Happy holidays!
]]>You’re not the hero in Kenshi. You’re not the chosen one. There’s nothing out there for you to save - other than your own skin. You’re just another inhabitant of a huge open world that doesn’t care about you. That’s its magic, and it takes design to create a world so exquisitely uncaring.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
]]>I could, I suspect, dash myself against Kenshi's wind-bleached rocks for a full year and still feel ill-qualified to pass judgement upon it. You might as well ask me to review atmospheric pressure, or continental drift.
Kenshi is everything. Kenshi is nothing. Kenshi just is.
]]>Lo-Fi Games have been hammering away at sci-fi samurai sandbox RPG Kenshi for over a decade now, and the end is nearly in sight. The game of life and (much more frequent) death in a low-tech alien world is leaving early access on December 6th. Last year, Brendy braved its bleak work-in-progress wastelands as the ill-fated Gurpson clan. A lot has changed in the game since. The latest early access release includes the new finalised world map, with extra deadly and "less civilised" new area to explore. Check out the latest patch notes here and a new trailer below.
]]>Not only does Humble currently have its second 'Very Positive' bundle going on right now, the site is now listing a separate sale, appropriately titled the 'Very Positive Sale'. As with the bundle, the sale features a bunch of games all with 'Very Positive' or higher ratings on Steam right now, with discounts of up to 80%.
Before you ask, yes, that means you can get Dream Daddy for £9.89 / $13.49. Also featured are things like lovely retro Metroid-like Axiom Verge, perpetual Early Access feudal RPG Kenshi, the Homeworld Remastered Collection, Sniper Elite 4 and more.
We covered the strange adventure possible in Kenshi quite recently. In a year that gave us Divinity: Original Sin 2's hungry elves and face-stealing undead, it's astonishing to realise that Kenshi has weirder cannibalistic possibilities than Larian's latest masterpiece.
]]>It's warm! Luckily the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, have come together to talk cold games, like chilly survivalist city-builder Frostpunk. That's because Adam is back from E3 and can tell us (Brendan and Pip) all about it. He's also played Destiny 2 and Middle Earth: Shadow of War, the lucky sod. Spill the beans, Adam! No wait, don't. We need those.
This week's back-to-normal-length episode also sees us talking about Darkest Dungeon's latest expansion, The Crimson Court, esoteric desert survival RPG Kenshi, and some news about GTA V and the sad fate of its modders. Also: the return of our patch notes quiz, Patch Adam, this time featuring Dwarf Fortress.
]]>Every week we cast Brendan into the early access badlands in nothing but rags. This time, the hot mess of genre that is survival-strategy-city-builder-RPG Kenshi [official site]
You could call Kenshi an RPG, you could call it a survival game. Or you could call it a chaotic jumble of good ideas stitched together via a user interface that would make a Wurm player eat their keyboard in a blind rage. I mention Wurm Online only because this feels like the closest comparison. Except this isn’t online. It’s set in a single-player fantasy Japanese world of skeletal robots and bony animals of burden and it’s got a reputation for toughness. My favourite line in the trailer is: “nobody will help you when the fog-men are eating your legs”. A line both frank and representative. How would I fare in this hostile landscape? Let me tell you the saga of the Gurpson clan.
]]>"The Fabulous Bakery Boys look up to their diminutive leader in more ways than one. Not only is Chaplin fierce, cunning, and scrupulously fair, since 14.30 this afternoon he's been suspended in mid-air 100ft above his base.
]]>Emergency! Emergency! The world is running out of words to put after 'indie' when coming up with new pay-what-you-want bundle titles. Gamersgate have opted for 'fort' as theirs, with that perhaps unintended sideeffect that when I think IndieFort I picture a castle wearing a checked shirt and some black-framed plastic spectacles. Oh well! The roster of included games is fairly impressive in this one, and has a bit of a roleplaying skew rather than the usual barrange of faux-vintage platformers and shmups. We get 2D space sim Black Market, hardy roguelike Cardinal Quest, free-roaming samurai roleplaying Kenshi, hovertank shooter Steel Storm: Burning Retribution, hardcore dungeon-crawler dungeon-crawling Devil Whiskey, and high-speed co-op RPG Wanderlust: Rebirth.
]]>Kenshi's alpha version launches today, which is excellent news because when I first wrote about it I'm sure lots of people thought, "This open-world, unscripted RPG sounds brilliant but I'd wager it'll never exist in any playable form, so thanks for getting my hopes up, you swine." Turns out I'm not a swine. The alpha is far from complete, as explained with detailed honesty here, but payment of $10 will give you immediate access to this and every future version of the game. If you are leery about paying without trying, fear not, there is a free trial from which the paid version unlocks. It'll be at the main website and on Desura. Trailer buried in the sands below.
]]>It’s becoming increasingly common for ambitious indie projects to invite people into their unfinished worlds, for a price, so that developers can gather feedback and funding. The latest title I’ve spotted that’s hoping to take this approach is Kenshi, a single player "free-roaming squad based RPG” that plonks the player into the sandals of an everyman samurai. It’s at a very early stage but Lo-Fi Games are hoping to release a playable version next month so that people can have immediate access while helping with development. Reading the planned feature list was actually more enjoyable than playing some games and I’d strongly recommend taking a peek at the trailer below. It’s probably not the most cinematic video you’ll see today but it makes its point well.
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