You know why I can’t take the Steam Spring Sale Seriously? It started yesterday, but spring in the northern hemisphere isn’t until March 19th.
Steam Spring Sale 2024
The summer and winter sales are absolutely bound to the solstices, but spring and autumn… close only counts for horseshoes and hand grenades, right? Also, it barely lasts that long and I am kind of salty because my spring allergies are also getting started, boosted by a wet California winter and unable to wait for the equinox either.
Anyway, that silliness aside, I did take a minute to peruse Steam and and a few other things that I thought I might bring up.
- RimWorld Anomaly Expansion
Over on Steam RimWorld announced a new DLC expansion that is coming soon. Called Anomaly, it takes the game into the creeping horror genre.
Coming Soon – Anomaly
From the announcement on Steam:
RimWorld – Anomaly is a horror-themed expansion inspired by classics like Cabin in the Woods, The Thing, The Cthulhu mythos, Hellraiser, and many more.
Your colonists accidentally awaken a dark monolith and provoke an insane machine-mind of unfathomable power. Its terrifying manifestations begin to haunt the world. Survive these strange happenings as you study the new phenomena and learn how to end the madness.
That is taking the game in a whole new direction. I have to admit that the game’s DLC so far has given the game a lot of very different vibes, but I was not expecting this one.
- Stellaris Machine Age Expansion
While I was there I saw that Stellaris, the ever evolving space 4x title also has some new DLC coming up, this one called The Machine Age.
Stellaris: The Machine Age
While we have had machines already in Stellaris, this now brings a new range of possibilities, with ways to combine biological and machine, machines with individualistic personalities, and the usual events and perils that new technologies can bring.
Paradox, the publishers of Stellaris, are having a catalog wide sale for spring, so all the Stellaris DLC is on sale as well as most of their other titles, including the recently launched City Skylines II.
- Project Awakening Awakens or Something
While we’re on the space theme, CCP has announced that their Blockchain scam title, Project Awakening will be having a play test starting on May 21st.
Just wake up already
Personally I wouldn’t let that crypto garbage touch my machine, but I did want to note that my New Year’s prediction that it would just be a retreat EVE Online with blockchain was incorrect.
Instead it will be a survival crafting title set in the time after the collapse of the EVE Gate, when civilization fell into ruin after being cut off from Earth, only to rise again later as the empires we now know in New Eden. That is fine. They are probably lifting code from their first person shooter obsession, EVE Vanguard, rather than EVE Online itself. The POS code probably proved resistant to crypto.
The market has shown we’re always open to a new survival title. But, in case I haven’t said it too many time already, blockchain is a 100% deal breaker for me. It is expensive, inefficient, solves no problems, and attracts a population looking to make money and exploit the system rather than actual gamers… and actual gamers are bad enough.
Over at TNG Noizy has dug into the announcement in more depth than I can manage, so if you need to know more you can head over there.
- Playable Worlds: Now with AI
While I am not exactly down with AI or the metaverse either… though even Raph has decided to dial that back a bit and call his project a multiverse… and I am not sure what that means either, but it hasn’t been beaten to death in headlines over at VentureBeat at least… Playable Worlds is reported to be using AI in there as yet unnamed title… and AI is now another meaningless term given that four out of five VentureBeat headlines are about that or large language models, which is as sure a sign as any that the trend is doomed.
Playable Worlds
That said, they don’t seem to be headed off the edge of credulity like to many AI ventures. Instead, they are reported to have signed a deal with a company called Didimo, based in Portugal, to use its AI powered 3D character generation platform, with an eye towards helping speed up content delivery. Raph assures us that it isn’t one of those rapacious plagiarizing tools so popular with the VC crowd on Sand Hill Road. This one was only fed licensed, organic training material or some such.
Over at Massively OP that have deciphered some of what was said, but if you prefer it in the original Klingon… or whatever it is they speak on Sand Hill Road… there is always the breathless VentureBeat reporting.
I am seriously wondering if VentureBeat isn’t using AI to write all of those AI headlines for the AI press released that they cannot stop taking completely seriously.
Anyway, it is Friday and I need an antihistamine. Also, I see that The Elder Scrolls Online is also on sale for 70%, just two weeks after I bought it. Oh well. On to the weekend!
The Ancient Gaming Noob 