Key Note Gaming

A curious little indie launched last week, a game where you sail customizable ships across a vibrantly-colored fantasy archipelago in search of ancient secrets, battling monsters and pirates while exploring new islands. Players and developers call it something between the vibes of Wind Waker and the third-person sailing combat of games like Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, both much loved in their time.  As you explore the islands you grow your crew, u nlocking new ships, equipment, and places to go. You can build up a small collection of ships, over time, specializing them for different jobs. There are also lots of weird NPCs to meet, like frog people, and fishing to do. What you probably don't expect to hear next is that Sail Forth has a shockingly realistic simulation of sailing for its genre and appearance. While it's very much accessible to the casual player, it has details like separately simulated wind and sails that'll get anyone who loves a tall ship excit...

Each year, we pull together picks for the best in the tabletop gaming scene, so we can share some of the coolest projects you might bring home to your table. 2022 brought an array of wonderful games, showing the ever-expanding scope and creativity unfolding in the scene. Here are ten of the most enjoyable, including cooperative and competitive experiences, running the gamut in scope from massive sprawling adventures to simple joyous party games and everything in between. Each game this year turned out to be remarkably different from most of the others on the list, but each captures the fun and excitement of board gaming in a unique way. Check out the complete alphabetized list below, and check back soon for selections of the Best Tabletop Role-Playing Releases of 2022. Ahoy Publisher: Leder Games Leder has developed a well-deserved reputation for asymmetrical competition and a unique artistic aesthetic that manages a rare feat in gaming – you know this studio’s games ins...

A new trailer for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has dropped, highlighting some details of the story and characters behind the long-awaited new entry in the Stalker series. The trailer, titled Come to Me, popped up on developer GSC Game World's Youtube channel today. This article will, understandably, include spoilers from the original games and the trailier. The trailer opens with a scene that may well take place during the event that caused The Zone to occur, establishing the mind-controlled Monolith faction. Other scenes show Zone exploration, including throwing bolts into anomalies and using anomaly detectors, overlaid with narration by various characters. It closes on a speech by a blind man who appears to be some kind of religious fanatic. "You cannot kill God, just like you cannot get rid of the sky above," a narrator says. The first real lines we get, however, drive right into the mysterious experiments that took place in The Zone where the original Stalke...

Three years after the release of Disco Elysium, and "Disco-like" isn't officially its own subgenre, but the comparisons to other games keep piling up. ZA/UMs sad RPG murder mystery—that's actually about much more than that—shaped our expectations for how deep videogame writing and player choice can go, and now there's a slew of games that want to try it too. Disco Elysium is a game about writing in a way that few RPGs try to be. The conversations you have with the people of Revachol are the primary ways you interact with and learn about the game. You accrue skill points that change how you approach the central plot and what sort of side activities you get up to. All of Disco Elysium's systems want you to engage with its world and think critically about the people in it. The same goes for Norco, Citizen Sleeper , and Pentiment —three games that came out this year that indirectly echo Disco Elysium's narrative ethos. They each care a lot about how you nav...

Personal Picks (Image credit: Future) In addition to our main  Game of the Year Awards 2022 , each member of the PC Gamer team is shining a spotlight on a game they loved this year. We'll post new personal picks, alongside our main awards, throughout the rest of the month. There was a magical time in 2018 where, for a few months after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate came out, my life was like that original Nintendo Switch ad with a bunch of 20-somethings huddling around a single 7-inch screen on a rooftop to play games together. I hauled my Switch just about everywhere (parties, restaurants, jury duty), always with two extra joycons stashed nearby in case passersby wanted to get schooled by my mediocre Incineroar. Even into 2019, Smash Ultimate was the party game we'd never put down. Then, of course, the parties stopped in 2020. All of my friends migrated to Discord and new jobs and schedules mean we gather online more often than in-person. Our Smash Bros era ended, ...

Workers at Activision Blizzard owned developer Proletariat have formed a union. Notably, the union includes a wider variety of studio departments, from QA testers to animation, design, engineering, and production employees. We are excited to announce that the workers of Proletariat have asked management to voluntarily recognize our union, the Proletariat Workers Alliance. 1/14 pic.twitter.com/JtYTCvJT5X December 27, 2022 See more As reported by Game Developer , the Proletariat Workers Alliance (PWA) has asked Activision Blizzard management to recognize their union voluntarily. They've formed their union with another nationwide union, the Communication Workers of America, or CWA, and have filed to form a union with the National Labor Relations Board, the body that governs union elections in the United States. Proletariat is the developer behind multiplayer game Spellbreak , which will shut down early next year following the company's acquisition by Activision Blizzard...

Dead Island 2 will feature six playable survivors right from the jump. You might already be familiar with one, and that's Jacob, the Lenny Kravitz-inspired character featured in the re-reveal trailer for Dead Island 2 . During my cover story trip, I played roughly seven hours of Dead Island 2, but I didn't go hands-on with Jacob. I did, however, play a few hours with both Dani and Ryan, two very different survivors that add their own flair to the story of this zomb-pocalypse.  I came out of this cover story trip convinced Dani is the survivor for me, but Ryan is great, too. And there are still the other four survivors I didn't get to play. Nonetheless, I want to tell you about Ryan, and Dambuster Studios does, too ( read about Dani here ) What's Gone Wrong In Los Angeles As you might already know, Los Angeles has gone to hell, and both Dani and Ryan in-game and the team at Dambuster Studios lovingly refer to the once beautiful and thriving city as Hell-A. Mind you,...