A Comically On-The-Nose New Title Has Me Even More Excited For This Upcoming Tactics Game

You can smell it in the air can't you? The chill in your nostrils and the earthy scent as leaves fall and the sun departs for another year. Yes, autumn is here, meaning we're teetering on the cavernous hole of near-nothingness as the entire games industry gives GTA 6 the widest berth imaginable. But that doesn't mean there isn't stuff to be excited about, of course. And the latest edition of the Galaxies Showcase has chucked a few more things onto the 'ooooh intriguing!' pile. Actually, quite a lot of things given its nearly two-hour runtime; but while you can watch the full thing in its entirety if you've got the time, we've also picked out a few of the announcements that especially caught our eyes and highlighted them below. Was all this really just an excuse for Connor to enthuse about penguins? Perhaps! Very promising musical adventure There are no Ghosts at the Grand has a demo

Rebecca is a scientist-turned-storyteller and professional ghostwriter who enjoys forgetting common English words and making up her own in their stead. She's probably stuck between two basically-the-same dialogue options in a Larian game as you read this (there's so much at stake, obviously!!!). Rebecca currently lives with two gigantic puppies, a toddler consistently LARPing as Lara Croft, and her Halo-playing husband in Detroit, MI. You can find her past work at Zelda Universe and Verily Magazine. How much do you need your teeth, really?

There are simulators where you drive buses, farm corn, buy a zoo and manage fictional Twitch streamers. With the vibe coding epidemic, there’ll likely be even more in years to come. As expansive and particular as the genre has become, few really step up to the plate to exhaust themselves on the larger, societal consequences of your in-game side hustle. Car Park Capital, a new satirical parking lot simulator, asks how far you’re willing to go to build the world’s most successful parking space. And whether you’re willing to dismantle society to do it. I’ve joked that the lockdown-era overexposure to social media seemingly split people into camps of new age medicine nationalists and folks who could describe differences between the Haunted Mansion rides. I imagine the reason behind Robert Moses memes existing at all boils down to Defunctland, a popular YouTube channel that positioned the mid-century car-loving urban planner as the arch-enemy to amusement parks across America. This dynamic is at the forefront of Car Park Capital, a game that resembles RollerCoaster Tycoon and was picked up by the tycoon tycoons themselves, MicroProse.

With the devs behind RimWorld gearing up for their next game with a recent engine switch, it'd be entirely fair if you were hankering for something new (if still familiar enough) yourself. Trailblazers: Into The March is one such game, having introduced itself to us earlier this year, a mishmash of the aforementioned colony sim, Nausicaa, Moebius, Andrei Tarkovski, Jeff Vandermeer, and FTL: Faster Than Light by Edwin's measure. And now you don't just have to look at its trailers, because there's a demo for you to have a go at. "In today’s demo, we have packed in so much for you to explore. From overcoming dangerous excursions to battling threatening foes," explain developer Strangers of the demo. "Take on contracts from the fixer and build out your perfect Trailblazing crew! " If you've not actually clocked roguelite colony-sim Trailblazer before today, you are said titular Trailblazer, a captain of a landship which are essentially big, honking, vaguely animal-shaped, Shadow of the Colossus sized crafts you pilot across the ground, taking on similar such opposing vessels.

Burton took a backseat for one of his best films Forget Wildwood, Laika's first stop-motion movie is streaming now on HBO Max

In the mainline The Apothecary Diaries series, the focus is on Maomao and Jinshi. There are a lot of important characters around them. They’re doing things too. But we don’t always see their sides of the stories or influence unless it’s directly tied to what the leads are going through. The Apothecary Diaries: Xiaolan’s Story spin-off manga prioritizes tales tied to the maidservant who showed up around the same time Maomao came to the Rear Palace. While she’s not as brilliant as her friend in some ways, this supplemental series highlights how influential she’s been on major events too. Recommended Videos Editor’s Note: There will be mild spoilers for some situations in volume 1 of The Apothecary Diaries: Xiaolan’s Story manga below. The events of The Apothecary Diaries: Xiaolan’s Story manga essentially run simultaneously alongside that of the main story, with on exception. Things start a few months before with her origin story. We know from Maomao’s kidnapping and the situation of other young women working in the Rear Palace that there are contracts formed where people receive pay and earned wages could be sent back from the girls working there.