Sarah LeBoeuf

It’s not often that I stare at a game’s menu screen for a few moments just because it looks so good. That’s exactly what I caught myself doing the first time I loaded up Civilization: Beyond Earth with the Rising Tide expansion installed. The way light reflected off the rippling waves of the vast ocean was beautiful and soothing; what I didn’t know from those first few moments was how that body of water would change Beyond Earth for the better.

Double Fine promised a classic point-and-click title when it launched its crowd-funding campaign three long years ago, but the developer didn’t just rely on nostalgia. Instead, it made a game that captures the humor of the games Tim Schafer worked on at LucasArts while creating a modern aesthetic that totally suits the story.

With so much more, well, work to do, the expansion bolsters a core game that was a bit sparse at launch. At the same time, it’s hindered by the limitations of The Sims 4, which make it very hard to balance careers, family, and fun.

Story of Seasons, for all intents and purposes, is Harvest Moon without the title, and continues the series’ tradition of making the mundane into compelling gameplay.

It’s a story anyone who follows the gaming industry has become familiar with: a corporate Twitter account posted something that may have shown poor judgment. Responses were angry, Tweets were deleted, and an apology was issued. Microsoft’s Lionhead Studios, or the social media manager behind the account, certainly isn’t the first to commit this kind of gaffe, and I have no doubt that it was meant to be a harmless joke. Sadly, when you’re constantly bombarded with imagery that conveys the message that you’re not wanted, it’s not hard to read more into it.

Let’s just get it out of the way: the Steam controller looks weird. It’s got a concave design, a circular touchpad on the right, a clicky round touchpad with some semblance of directional buttons on the left, and face buttons that feel just a touch out of reach. But hey, if this controller can establish Valve’s lofty goal of bringing PC gaming to the console-loving masses, who cares how it looks right?

Though impressive in some ways, The Order: 1886 fails miserably in its most important goal of keeping the player entertained for any significant length of time.

In October 2014, a little-known UK indie studio launched a Kickstarter campaign for Impact Winter, a survival RPG described as “Fallout meets Oregon Trail.” It was an ambitious project for the small development team, with the Kickstarter description touting “open-world gameplay with dynamic weather, haunting interiors and fearsome wildlife” on a relatively small budget of £95,000 (around $150,000). One month later, the campaign concluded with Mojo Bones reaching not even a quarter of its fund-raising goal, and that was the last we heard of Impact Winter… until last week, when the project reemerged on Steam Greenlight and was approved in under three days.

Though occasionally marred by technical issues and cumbersome segments, Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is a delightful experience I’m happy to have been surprised by.

After one night entertaining friends with the Jackbox Party Pack, we found our new go-to party game.