The Escapist

Hump Day just got worse and this has put me in a right bad mood. The NEOGEO AES+ has been delayed until September 16, 2027, with PLAION REPLAI blaming a combination of stronger-than-expected demand and ongoing shortages of memory chips. The retro hardware platform had previously been targeting a November launch, which I excitedly covered here, but PLAION says attempting to stick to that timetable would have resulted in severely restricted availability around the world. Instead, the company

League of Legends: Wild Rift is preparing to close out 2026 with a sizeable new update, as Patch 7.3: Center Stage arrives on September 22 with three new champions, major gameplay changes, another Ranked overhaul and a brand-new 3v3v3 mode. Center Stage has a strong music theme running through it, but the headline additions are likely to be the arrival of Hwei, Sylas and Rek’Sai, alongside the introduction of Rift Rumble. The update will also bring changes to minions, Smite and Epic monste

Okay, so it’s not new news that I am a retro gamer – although that is a tag I don’t really enjoy. I played these games right from the off when they first arrived, rather than picking them up as some kind of later hobby. My time goes back to the Mattel Intellivision, and you can read all about that in my review earlier this year of the Intellivision Sprint. Over the past couple of decades I’ve dabbled with renovating actual arcade machines, to building bartops and playing incessantly wit

War Thunder is getting another sizeable content drop this month, with Gaijin Entertainment confirming that the Sky Odyssey major update will arrive in mid-September, bringing Greek military vehicles to the game alongside a new Falkland Islands map, modern aircraft systems, and another hefty batch of vehicles. The headline addition is Greece, which joins War Thunder through new aviation and ground vehicle sub-trees sitting within the existing Israeli tech tree. On the aviation side, the new

Knights of Frontier Valley is heading back out into the wilderness later this month, with MicroProse and solo developer Martin Menzel confirming that the old-school open-world roguelike RPG will launch its second Steam playtest on September 15. The new test will be completely free to join and represents the biggest version of the game so far, with Version 0.5 adding companions, new locations, additional story content, expanded crafting, more dungeons, and a sizeable collection of quality-of-l

There are sensible reasons for buying a EufyMake E1. You could start an Etsy store, sell personalised mugs and coasters, print signs for local businesses or spend your evenings turning cheap blanks into products carrying significantly healthier profit margins. Nobody has ever accused me of being sensible before so I haven’t really been doing any of those things. Instead, I have been using a UV printer costing the best part of £2,000 to print bits for old computers, decorate cases for

Capcom’s revival of Onimusha has got off to an absolute stonker, with Onimusha: Way of the Sword selling more than one million copies worldwide on its first day. Released on September 4, 2026, Way of the Sword is the first entirely new entry in the series for more than 20 years. Its early success has also pushed lifetime sales of the Onimusha franchise beyond 10 million units. Considering how long the series has been away, shifting a million copies in 24 hours is big business. It’s l

Lillymo Games has announced the Green Series, a new collection of Game Boy-inspired releases that will reimagine both existing ideas from the studio’s catalogue and entirely new IP through a gloriously green-and-black retro lens. The series will kick off with Ravenous Greed, a genre-hopping action game currently scheduled to launch on PC and consoles in early 2027. Best known for games including Habroxia, Super Perils of Baking, and Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege, Lillymo Games is leanin

Whoah, this has caused me some real retro flashbacks this morning. Well I say retro, but Xbox360 at least – are we classing that as retro these days? Either way, manny of you won’t have seen a game before where you set up and control fireworks displays. Not me, I used to be obsessed with a game on the 360 called Boom Boom Rocket on Xbox Live Arcade. It was made by Bizarre Creations who also brought us Geometry Wars. Now, technically, BBR was a rhythm game, and you had to explode t

Pragmatic Play has reworked one of its best-known slot franchises with the launch of Gates of Olympus POP, the first classic title to be transformed for the company’s recently introduced Pragmatic Play POP sub-brand. The new 3×5 release takes the familiar Gates of Olympus formula and shifts it onto a portrait-style grid, complete with tumbling reels and multiplier symbols carrying values of up to 1,000x. Zeus also returns in rather more compact form, with the game featuring a miniatur

Vibecoders, CEOs, and people trying to write an ill-conceived heartfelt love poem to a co-worker are bang in trouble as the whole of Artificial Intelligence seems to be suffering a simultaneous meltdown. What started as ChatGPT constantly in a reconnection loop as I tried to get it to write some code for my Home Assistant now seems to have spread to clankers world-wide according to Down Detector. Ironically, OpenAI’s Status page said everything was fine and dandy, despite an alarming

GSC Game World has teamed up with Ukrainian fundraising platform UNITED24 for a new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 campaign aiming to raise $100,000 to help clear mines and unexploded ordnance from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. The fundraiser sees the fictional dangers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl collide rather uncomfortably with the very real situation in Ukraine, with donations going towards UNITED24’s Humanitarian Demining program. There are also some extraordinary S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando has received its second major free update, adding a brand-new Retrieval Mode alongside new enemies, weapons, movement options, vehicle improvements and more. The Retrieval Update introduces a new challenge built around grabbing relics and getting out alive before the zombie hordes overwhelm you. Retrieval Mode lets players choose a map before setting out to collect relics and make their way towards an extraction point. Hanging around for too long is a bad id

Evoplay has expanded its slots portfolio with the launch of Honey Royale, a 5×3 title built around a central Queen Bee Collector, jackpot prizes and an enhanced Free Spins feature. The Queen Bee appears exclusively in the centre position of the third reel and acts as a wild, substituting for all symbols apart from Cash and Jackpot icons. Landing the Queen Bee alongside either of those prize symbols triggers the Unlock & Win feature, collecting and awarding all displayed prizes acr

There are plenty of hack-and-slash games around of late, but Vaewolf looks like its going to be one of the ones to keep a closer eye on as the weeks and moths towards the end of the year pass us by. Developed by BAFTA and Emmy Award-shortlisted studio Milky Tea and published by Megabit, Vaewolf is a new action game built around the premise of playing as a supernatural hybrid that is part vampire and part werewolf. Vaewolf was revealed during the Find Your Next Game Showcase at Gamescom, wi

Crimson Moon is a new action RPG with souls-like combat and a splash of rogue-like difficulty settings thrown in. Made by Team Metal under ProbablyMonsters, the game amassed 500,000 wish lists fairly quickly and launched with some strong momentum. However, PC reviews dipped into Negative territory before climbing back up to Mixed at around 59%, with a Steam review war still ongoing. The gameplay itself is largely being praised. But the game has made a fatal error of missing accessibility syst

Wild West Pioneers is giving prospective settlers an early taste of frontier life, with the city builder’s final open playtest now underway on Steam. Developed by EmpireCraft Studios and published by Toplitz Productions, Wild West Pioneers is heading into PC Early Access on September 25, 2026. Before then, players can apply to take part in the playtest, which runs until September 14. Access isn’t guaranteed, with interested players required to register through the game’s Steam page. Those

Broken Arrow has expanded its modern warfare sandbox once again, with the new Russian Guard DLC now available on PC. The latest expansion adds an entirely new Russian Guard specialization to the Russian faction, bringing with it eight infantry squads, 31 new ground and air units, two maps, new scenarios, and another AI-controlled army for Skirmish mode. The new force is built around a mixture of infantry, armor, artillery, air defense, and specialist units, giving players another sizeable

The poor young fella that pops round for a bit of pocket money to shear my partner’s lawn has been stuck doing the weeding all summer. With a hosepipe ban and literally no rain, it’s all a bit beige here. So it’s natural that video games save the day and let us go back to our roots. The sequel of Lawn Mowing Simulator (played by over three million) takes garden pruning enthusiasts Stateside. Releasing on September 23rd on PC, PS5, and XBOX Series X|S, you’ll be en

Steam is back with another Steam Festival, grouping the PvE genre together this time around. The festival comes with the usual demos, discounts, and even game release windows to help get eyes on these types of games. I’m also a bit of a nerd when it comes to this genre, so I’m having a dig through for games that look interesting, demos worth trying, or sales on games that have had major updates since launch. Steam PvE Survival Crafting Fest games worth trying Here are some game