Brandon Sanderson achieves another Kickstarter success

Brandon Sanderson has, once again, achieved a towering success on Kickstarter.

The latest campaign was for a tabletop roleplaying game based on his Cosmere universe, which is the setting for many of his most popular book series, including Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive. The roleplaying game includes core rulebooks and setting guides to the worlds of Scadrial (Mistborn) and Roshar (Stormlight). Later material will focus on other worlds, including those of Elantris and the White Sand graphic novel. The setting guides will also include new canonical material provided by Sanderson. There are also add-ons featuring GM screens, miniatures, dice, maps, tokens and cards. The game system uses a d20-driven system inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and will be published by Dragonsteel Entertainment.

The campaign closed this week having raised an astonishing $14,821,921 (£11,288,890) from 53,787 backers. This makes it the most successful tabletop and game-based Kickstarter campaign in the platform's history, eclipsing the $13 million raised by board game Frosthaven in 2020. In 2022 Sanderson raised $42 million in a campaign for four new novels, which remains the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time, and then an additional $4 million for Stormlight-themed miniatures. Earlier this year he ran a $24 million campaign for leather-bound special editions of his books on Backerkit.

The Stormlight branch of the game, including the Stormlight World Guide, Stormlight Handbook and the Stonewalkers adventure, will launch in 2025. The Mistborn branch will launch in 2026.

Sanderson's next published novel will be the fifth novel in The Stormlight Archive, which will be published on 6 December this year. After that he will be writing a new Mistborn trilogy.

The world's most expensive video game crosses the half billion dollar barrier

The world's most expensive video game has gotten richer. Star Citizen's funding yesterday crossed $500 million.

Star Citizen started development in 2011 and was revealed to the public in the autumn of 2012 with a Kickstarter campaign. The initial Kickstarter campaign was relatively modest, drawing in $2 million. However, Cloud Imperium Games allowed crowdfunding to continue directly between fans and the company, resulting in a continuous revenue stream. By the end of 2014 funding had reached $65 million and $127 million by September 2016.

Star Citizen is the brainchild of veteran video game designer Chris Roberts. Roberts began his career in the 1980s working on games on the BBC Micro like Stryker's Run (one of the very first video games I ever played) before moving onto much more powerful machines. In 1990 he released the game that made his name, Wing Commander, a space combat simulator with a strong storyline attached. Several sequels followed and saw the game branch into full motion video cutscenes, using actors like John Rhys Davis (Indiana Jones, The Lord of the Rings) and Mark Hamill (Star Wars) to tell increasingly elaborate stories about the war between humanity and the alien Kilrathi. After the release of Wing Commander IV and Wing Commander: Privateer 2 in 1997, Roberts moved on to working on a Wing Commander movie. The film, released in 1999 and starring Jurgen Prochnow, Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows and David Suchet, was critically derided.

Roberts returned to gaming, producing with his brother Erin the games Starlancer (2001) and Freelancer (2003), which were set in a shared universe. Starlancer was a story-focused, single-player game with a strong narrative and linear campaign, whilst Freelancer was envisaged as a more freeform, open-world game akin to Elite or Privateer, with a bigger focus on online multiplayer. After multiple delays, budget issues and concerns over "feature creep," not to mention a buy-out by Microsoft, Freelancer was released in 2003 with a reduced focus on the multiplayer approach and a narrative storyline in place. Roberts returned to working in the feature film industry, believing it was not possible to make a game based on his vision with the resources available in the industry at the time.

Star Citizen marks Roberts' unfettered vision for a science fiction video game set in a large, open universe that the player can explore as they choose. They can own multiple spacecraft and take part in trading, mining and mercenary work. The game features a first-person mode, allowing characters to walk around their spaceship, take part in boarding actions and leave the ship to engage in combat, negotiations or discussions in person. The game will have a storyline of sorts, but will rely on online multiplayer for most of its dynamic plot generation.

The game also incorporates a whole second title using the same engine and assets, Squadron 42. Squadron 42 will be a more linear, story-focused and single-player game akin to Starlancer and the Wing Commander series, guiding the player through a lengthy story campaign featuring characters modelled on and voiced by actors including Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson (plus a returning Mark Hamill.

Star Citizen has raised most of its money through direct player donations and contributions, including the sale of more powerful and capable spacecraft they will be able to use in the game itself. Almost 4.1 million individuals have contributed to the funding scheme. It has also raised over $60 million in external, private investment.

The game has attracted criticism for its funding methodology and its extended development time, with frequently missed deadlines and an apparent overload of feature creep, with development reportedly focusing on things like realistic sheet deformation for beds rather than optimised performance (the current build is noted as being very laggy even for top-end graphics cards). Newcomers to the early access version of the game have also criticised it for a very steep learning curve and almost non-existent tutorials. However, its fanbase has also praised the game's commitment to unparalleled levels of detail at both the macro and micro levels and its focus on immersion, as well as the potential for highly varied missions incorporating both spacecraft and ground combat, and the extended development time has been down to the game doing things that no other title has before attempted (not to mention using an engine - derived from the CryEngine mostly used for first-person shooters - that is perhaps best not-suited for these things).

Whilst scepticism over the game's progress and its funding methods is natural, there does appear to be an interesting and ambitious game design at work here, and the fact you can play it right now does show where a lot of the work and money has gone. What is astonishing is that after ten years, people are still funding the game to a very high level (in the time it's taken me to write this article, the game has raised around $4,400; the game raised $75,000 yesterday by itself), showing a remarkable degree of confidence and trust in the project.

It's hard to get precise figures, but the previous most expensive video game development budgets for titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and the in-development Grand Theft Auto VI are thought to be more to the in the region of $200 million, with around the same for marketing. Star Citizen pulling in vastly more money, mostly for development alone, is an impressive achievement.

Star Citizen and Squadron 42 remain in development with no estimated release date at this time.

Brandon Sanderson scores the biggest Kickstarter of all time

A month after launching it, Brandon Sanderson has ended his latest Kickstarter on a stunning wave of success. The Kickstarter ended having raised $41,754,153, making it the most successful campaign of all time, bringing in more than twice the previous record: $20,338,986 for the Pebble smartwatch in 2015. The campaign brought in almost $10 million of that total in its last hour.

Sanderson launched the campaign after revealing that he had written five secret books whilst in lockdown in 2020 and 2021, taking advantage of the cancellation of his normally time-consuming touring schedule. Sanderson decided to put together an ambitious campaign consisting of limited editions of four of the books, loot bags and more bonuses to get the books out to fans (the fifth book is apparently going to be reworked into a graphic novel and will be handled later, separately).

The four books consist of three books in his Cosmere setting and a further book which is a complete stand-alone. The Cosmere books are Tress of the Emerald Sea, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and The Sunlit Man, whilst the standalone is called The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England.

This is in addition to Sanderson's other announced projects, such as the fifth Stormlight Archive novel which is due out in late 2023 or early 2024, and the next Mistborn novel, The Lost Metal, which is due later this year.

Sanderson's enormous Kickstarter success was made possible by a company he set up for the purposes of creating merchandise for fans. Other authors will no doubt be looking at this model to see if they can replicate its success, but I think it'll be a tall order.

Sanderson did "pay it forward" due to the overwhelming success of the Kickstarter, donating money to every currently-active literary Kickstarter to boost their profile as well.

Brandon Sanderson has a serious announcement to make

Brandon Sanderson has some important news. Please view the video below in full before proceeding past the break to the rest of the news. 

TALES FROM THE LOOP boardgame launches on Kickstarter

Tales from the Loop started as an art book in 2014, became a roleplaying game in 2017, recently launched as a television series and has now made the transition to board games.

Free League Publishing, who publish the Tales from the Loop roleplaying game, have launched a board game which is based closely on the same premise. The players play a number of Kids who are drawn into investigating strange mysteries emanating from a massive particle accelerator lab called the Loop. These mysteries involved investigations, avoiding "Trouble" and dealing with some of the odd creations of the Loop, including teleportation, robots and even dinosaurs.

Free League have provided a "Print and Play" system which allows people to try the game before deciding to back the project. Their pedigree is pretty good: the Tales from the Loop RPG is excellent and the same design team designed the superb Crusader Kings board game.

The project has already exceeded its funding target, so additional pledges will secure more content and features. The currently-planned delivery date is May 2021, global pandemic crisis notwithstanding.

BANNER SAGA 3 hits Kickstarter

Stoic Games have returned to Kickstarter to launch The Banner Saga 3, the concluding part of their Viking fantasy trilogy.

The Banner Saga was launched on Kickstarter in early 2012. It raised $723,000, substantially more than the initial funding target of $100,000. Extra money was put into the game, particularly for more sound, animation and music than originally planned, and, most responsibly, Stoic decided to fund the second game from this fund as well, so The Banner Saga 2 did not require a separate Kickstarter campaign and development was able to flow smoothly from one game to the next.

The Banner Saga was released in January 2014 to a strong critical reception. The Banner Saga 2 followed to an even stronger reception in April 2016. There is even a spin-off boardgame, The Banner Saga: Warbands.

The first two games in the trilogy were both excellent, the second particularly solving some of the problems in the first game. The trilogy so far has had an impressively reactive story, smart game design and memorable characters, along with excellent tactical combat and some fiendish survival decisions. I fully expect the third game to live up to this reputation. Based on Stoic's previous timescales, I expect The Banner Saga 3 to launch in 2018.

Kickstarter for an Ursula K. Le Guin Documentary

Producer and film-maker Arwen Curry is in the middle of production on a documentary about revolutionary SFF writer Ursula K. Le Guin. The Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin will tell the story of the author and her fiction, including its impact on later writers. Although production is advanced, she has decided to use Kickstarter to secure additional funding to bring the project to completion.

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the most important living authors of speculative fiction. She is best-known for the Earthsea YA fantasy series, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), and a sequence of important, well-written and fiercely intelligent science fiction novels including The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Lathe of Heaven (1971) and The Dispossessed (1974). Le Guin is famous for her progressive politics (A Wizard of Earthsea has an almost all-black cast of characters, sparking her fury when the TV mini-series adaptation cast everyone as white) and her exploration of the social impact of science fiction ideas, such as interstellar travel and communications, and how sexuality works in a society where gender is biologically fluid.

Le Guin's impact and influence is notable, on SFF authors as well as on more literary authors such as Michael Chabon and Margaret Atwood, whose previous reluctance to be counted as an SF author seems to have been partially eroded through conversations with Le Guin about the nature of genre. Le Guin is certainly one of the most important SF authors of all time, so a documentary about her life seems very fitting.

Just a couple of days into the campaign, it has already raised $15,000 of its $80,000 goal. You can find the campaign here.

TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA delayed until 2016

Surprising no-one, inXile's new computer RPG has been delayed until some time in 2016. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, arguably the greatest CRPG of all time, and is set in the Numenera roleplaying setting created by Monte Cook.

The delay was unsurprising given the crowded late 2015 release schedule and the fact that the game has only recently started seeing more substantive previews and trailers being released (see above, focusing on the game's "Crisis" encounter system).

Torment: Tides of Numenera will also be of interesting to epic fantasy fans, featuring as it does some quests and characters written by Kingkiller Chronicle author Patrick Rothfuss, as well as material from Chris Avellone (of Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Planescape: Torment and Mask of the Betrayer fame).

BATTLETECH smashes Kickstarter targets, will be released in 2017

Harebrained Schemes have succeeded in their latest Kickstarter campaign, this one designed to bring a new video game based on the BattleTech franchise to life. 41,733 backers pledged $2,785,537, far exceeding its original target of $250,000.

Based on the BattleTech miniatures wargame, the new video game sees hulking battlemechs fighting it out for supremacy across a turn-based battlefield. The game will see players controlling multiple mechs and managing heat, ammunition and damage as they try to overcome the enemy. The game will feature a single-player campaign with a reactive, freeform story unfolding over many battles. The game will also feature a comprehensive multiplayer mode.

BattleTech will be released on Windows, Mac and Linux in 2017.

BATTLETECH Kickstarter launched

Harebrained Schemes has launched its Kickstarter campaign for BattleTech, a new, turn-based tactical wargame set in the universe of the miniature game BattleTech and its roleplaying-based spin-off, MechWarrior.

The new game will be helmed by Jordan Weisman, the co-creator of the entire BattleTech/MechWarrior franchise, along with many of the same team who worked on the recent Shadowrun RPGs.

As of this time of writing, less than 24 hours after the launch of the campaign and with 34 days to go, the game has already made $600,000 and seems likely to hit the $1 million target, at which point the game will get a fully-fleshed out singleplayer campaign in addition to a skirmish mode.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong

2056. A youngster from Seattle, raised in tough conditions and left behind when their foster-father, Raymond Black, moved to Hong Kong, is summoned to a meeting with him. Also attending is Duncan Wu, another orphan raised by Black. The meeting turns out to be a trap set by corporate police. Soon both of Black's wards are on the run. Their only hope is a disreputable triad boss, who agrees to help them on the condition they accept a new life as shadowrunners in their employ.

Hong Kong is the third game in the Shadowrun Returns series of games, following on from Dead Man's Switch (2013) and Dragonfall (2014). Like those games, Hong Kong is an isometric roleplaying game where you create and develop your own character, interact with others and carry out missions using tactics of stealth, frontal assault or hacking (or some combination of the three).

If you've played the previous two games things will be familiar, bordering on the identical. The game is bigger than the original game and perhaps matches Dragonfall in size. The story, which is more personal and complex to the player, is actually stronger, as is the writing. The rich background of the pen-and-paper Shadowrun roleplaying game is called upon to provide depth and backstory to the setting, which works pretty well.

Combat is still turn-based, tactical and fun. The other key mechanic, decking or hacking, is much-improved. The original decking mechanic was a bit dull but it's now been replaced by a new version in which you have to stealthily move through the Matrix to find the information you are after. Once you reach your objective you have to use a key-memorisation routine to actually get the info. Failure at any point triggers a response from the automated security systems. It's an entertaining way of handling hacking, certainly a big improvement on the previous two titles, but it also feels a little more cumbersome and time-consuming, especially when most objectives can be achieved through combat or dialogue instead.

The characters are highly memorable this time time around, with your band of adventurers consisting of Duncan Wu, a tough fighter with a chip on his shoulder; a genius dwarf hacker named Is0bel and an orc mage named Gobbet. Optional additions to the party include Racter, a fanatical transhumanist rigger living in the cargo hold of a grounded boat (which serves as your party's HQ). It's the strongest cast assembled so far for a Shadowrun game, with the characters each having fully-fleshed-out backstories and motivations for doing what they do.

The main mission hub is a floating criminal town, which is great. Running across the huge map between your base and the subway does get a little old, however.

For the unimaginative, Hong Kong does pretty much the same stuff as Dragonfall and the original Dead Man's Switch, so if you really liked those games, get this one. It isn't perfect, however.


First up, the game felt a little easier that is predecessors on the equivalent difficulty level. It definitely required less constant updating of equipment or armour than the previous games. I only upgraded my gun to a new one once, and I updated my armour only twice in over 15 hours of gaming. Despite this, enemies remained relatively unchallenging throughout and even the end-of-game boss (who you cheekily have to kill three times to make sure they're actually dead) was a relative pushover. If you want more of a challenge, Hong Kong may not really provide it.

Secondly, the developers went back to Kickstarter to ask for more money to make a bigger and deeper game. They definitely made a bigger game, with some truly huge environments and more NPCs in each area. However, there isn't a lot more actual content. The game takes roughly the same amount of time to complete as Dragonfall, there aren't much more quests and the number of talkable-to NPCs and interactive elements in each location remains fairly low. A struggle of the series has been that it's fairly sparse in terms of things to actually do in the game apart from to follow the main story. There isn't a lot going on in terms of optional missions or little moments of side-flavour. What is there is excellent, well-written and atmospheric, but it's having to support quite a lot of time when you're doing nothing more than running across the huge hub area for the fiftieth time.

If Hong Kong (****) is pushing the limits of the game engine and design to breaking point, at least it remains mostly entertaining when doing so. It's a well-designed, well-written and fun game which is certainly well worth playing and doesn't outstay its welcome. However, I hope it is the last game in the series on this engine and future Shadowrun games will be a little more ambitious and rich in content. It struck me while playing Satellite Reign (which came out a week after Hong Kong) that if the designers of the two games could join forces and combine the gorgeous Satellite Reign engine with the combat and writing of the Shadowrun team, they could produce something really impressive. Hong Kong is available now on PC from Steam.

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN II announced

Belgian developers Larian Studios have announced that they are working on Divinity: Original Sin II and will be commencing a Kickstarter campaign for the game later this month.

Larian Studios began work on the Divinity franchise with the curiously-titled Divine Divinity, released in 2002. It was followed by an action-focused spin-off, Beyond Divinity (2004), a direct sequel called Divinity II (2009) and another spin-off, Divinity: Dragon Commander (2013) in which the player could engage in combat from the back of dragons. However, the company felt too constrained by budgetary limitations by working in the traditional publisher environment. In 2013 they embarked on a Kickstarter campaign to fund Divinity: Original Sin, a prequel to the rest of the series. This campaign was highly successful and the game, released in June 2014, soon attracted rapturous reviews.

Larian are currently working on Divinity: Original Sin - Director's Cut, a thorough reworking of the game which sees the entire game updated with full voice acting, as well as new quests, rewritten dialogue and descriptions and additional controller support. Divinity: Original Sin II is bigger news, however, with Larian claiming that they could have funded the game with the proceeds from the original game but wanted to go further and make something more ambitious.

If successful, Divinity: Original Sin II will likely be released in 2017 (although based on their speed and the fact some early work has already been done, a late 2016 release may be possible).

The VURT RPG is something that exists

A Kickstarter campaign is currently underway for Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game. As the title implies, this is a roleplaying game based on Jeff Noon's seminal 1993 cyberpunk novel Vurt and its sequels.

Vurt (which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel in 1993) takes place in a dystopian future where people can escape into other realities ("vurts") by ingesting feathers. However, these other realities are not virtual (as first though) but alternate universes brought into being by the thoughts and dreams and nightmares of humans. Noon followed up Vurt with a sequel, Pollen (1995), and a prequel, Nympthomation (1997), as well as Automated Alice (1996), a semi-stand-alone novel that both lays the groundwork for the other books and links them to the works of Lewis Caroll. Short stories from the setting also appear in Pixel Juice (1998).

The Vurt RPG will be produced by Ravendesk Games, who have been working with Noon for four years on trying to bring the project to life. The plan is to produce a large core rulebook full of artwork (check out the Kickstarter page for more, most of it is cool) and, with additional stretch goals, a supporting line of adventures and sourcebooks. The game will use the Cypher System developed by Monte Cook for Numenera and The Strange.

As of this time of writing, the Kickstarter has already raised more than half of the initial requested goal, with almost a full month to go, so it looks likely that this will be a success.

New BATTLETECH game announced

Harebrained Schemes have announced the development of a new BattleTech game, which they will be funding through Kickstarter this autumn.

Harebrained founder Jordan Weisman is noted for creating the Shadowrun roleplaying game in 1989 and being behind the recent Shadowrun Returns franchise of Kickstarted RPGs (consisting of Dead Man's Switch, Dragonfall and the imminent Hong Kong, slated for release on 28 August). However, he is arguably even more famous for co-creating the BattleTech miniatures game in 1984 and its spin-off RPG line, MechWarrior. The MechWarrior RPG spawned a successful four-title videogame series in the 1990s and early 2000s, with MechWarrior 2 and 4 being particularly acclaimed.

The new BattleTech game takes things back to the beginning. This will be a strategy game featuring turn-based combat as well as RPG elements and the ability to create new mech designs. The game will also be open-ended and will draw inspiration from Mercenaries, the name of the expansions to both MechWarrior 2 and 4. This sub-series features player choice and a branching storyline with multiple endings, as opposed to the more linear storytelling of other games in the series.

BattleTech still has a large, dedicated fan following and following the impressive success of Shadowrun Returns, I suspect this will be one of those Kickstarters which is funded almost instantly.

GRIM FANDANGO REMASTERED release date, DAY OF THE TENTACLE REMASTERED announced

Double Fine have confirmed that their remastered edition of classic 1998 adventure game Grim Fandango will be released on 27 January, along with a new trailer.

The new version of the game has been optimised for modern PCs and will also include versions for Mac, Linux, PS4 and PS Vita.

Double Fine have also confirmed that they are bringing back Day of the Tentacle, the sequel to the original LucasArts adventure game Maniac Mansion. Originally released in 1993, Day of the Tentacle was hugely critically acclaimed on release and is sometimes described as the best adventure game ever made (an honour it sometimes exchanges with Monkey Island II and Sam and Max Hit the Road). This new version will likely be more akin to the Monkey Island re-masters from a couple of years ago, allowing gamers to play both the original and a graphically updated version of the game. In fact, it sounds like this new version is based on the already-in-progress remastering work that LucasArts was undertaking when it was shut down by new owners Disney back in 2012.

Meanwhile, Ron Gilbert, the original creator of Maniac Mansion (and The Secret of Monkey Island), is crowdfunding a new, classic-style adventure game called Thimbleweed Park. With more than a week to go, the game has raised more than $100,000 over its originally-requested target amount.

PILLARS OF ETERNITY delayed, ELITE: DANGEROUS on track

2014 will go down as the year of the big Kickstarter games starting to be released and turning out to be pretty good: The Banner Saga, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 (amongst others) have all shown that this is a viable route for creating compelling video games on a smaller budget.

There are two more big crowdfunded games due for fairly imminent release: old-school RPG Pillars of Eternity from Obsidian and massive space sim Elite: Dangerous from Frontier Developments.

Pillars of Eternity has, regrettably, been delayed. Obsidian are keen to make sure they have time to integrate all of the suggestions from the beta phase the game is currently in and to work on bug-fixing (something they don't have the best reputation for, sometimes fairly and more often not). Currently 'early 2015' is the target date, although it's unclear if they are thinking a modest delay to January or February or a more substantial one to say April or May.

Elite: Dangerous, on the other hand, is much closer to release. A third stage of the game's beta has just been released, adding yet more star systems and game mechanics (such as mining), and Frontier Developments have announced a launch party for 22 November, at which time the game's release date will be confirmed. They are still saying that the game will launch before the end of 2014, making a December release likely.

Bad news for Pillars of Eternity, although hopefully this does mean that when it comes out I should have enough time to actually play it. I'm currently about halfway through Wasteland 2, which is quite unfeasibly massive (and pretty good) RPG.

First gameplay footage from TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA

inXile have released the first gameplay video for Torment: Tides of Numenera. This is their spiritual sequel to the 1999 CPRG Planescape: Torment, widely regarded as one of the greatest CRPGs ever made.

Tides of Numenera takes place on Earth a billion years in the future, after multiple civilisations have risen and fallen and magic and science have become entwined. Several of the creators of Planescape: Torment are working on the game and inXile are gearing up for full production as soon as they release their Kickstarted post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland 2. Which is tomorrow, which is quite handy. inXile have received the assistance of Obsidian Entertainment in making the game, who loaned both tech and some writers (including Planescape: Torment's head writer, Chris Avellone) to the project. Obsidian are preparing their own old-school CRPG Pillars of Eternity for release in the next few weeks.

It may also be of interest to literature fantasy fans that Patrick Rothfuss is contributing some writing and a character to the game as well.

This video footage is pre-alpha, so a lot can change before Tides of Numenera's final release, which is anticipated in late 2015.

Ten reasons you should be playing DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN

Divinity: Original Sin has been picking up some excellent reviews and I'm about ten hours into my own playthrough. Given time constraints and the sheer mind-boggling size of the game (almost all of those ten hours have been spent on the opening town map alone), it may be some days weeks months before I can do a detailed review. So in the meantime, here's why I think you should be checking the game out.

1. There's a clairvoyant bull called Bull. His best friend is another bull called Bill.

2. A key subplot revolves around the cross-social class romantic struggles of two cats.

3. An interdimensional massive threat to all lifekind as we know it is treated as a middling and not terribly pressing subplot for most of the game.

4. Blood conducts electricity, making for some interesting fights when your blood-splattered heroes start throwing lightning bolts around.

5. Early in the game you meet a talking clam which quotes from Moby Dick.

6. Zombie enemies occasionally sport the names of the person they used to be (like 'Rob'), to make you feel slightly bad when you splatter them.

7. You create two PCs instead of one, and can have them spend the whole game bickering with one another if you want to explore the duality of your own psyche. Or merely accelerate your own inevitable mental breakdown.

8. It has the best combat seen in an RPG since Baldur's Gate II.

9. It's basically the product of an unholy union between Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Ultima VII, XCOM and Myth (the pre-Halo Bungie strategy games). Simultaneously.

10. It'll more than adequately fill the time until Pillars of Eternity and Elite: Dangerous come out.

Divinity: Original Sin is available on PC now.

ELITE: DANGEROUS reaches important milestone

Elite: Dangerous, the ambitious space trading game from Frontier Developments, hits an important milestone on 15 May. The game's fourth and final alpha build will be released, which will add the entire Milky Way galaxy to the game.

Part of the starmap in the original Elite, from 1984. Only go to Riedquat if you fancy dying, a lot.

At the moment the game, which is playable by those who backed the title's Kickstarter campaign, consists of a series of linked missions spanning around a single light-year, allowing fighting and docking but not much more. The new alpha release will add 400 billion star systems and the simulated space will increase to 100,000 light-years, effectively containing our entire galaxy. The game will accurately simulate the position of the stars relative to one another, including some nebulae and dust clouds. The game will remain limited in what can be done within this space - at the moment you can't visit Earth, for example, and the actual flyable space will be limited to a 200 light-year-wide stretch of the Bootes constellation - but it goes some way to showing the full potential of the game.

The starmap from Elite: Dangerous (concept art pictured) is a bit more impressive.

Several weeks after the release the fourth alpha build, the game will enter beta status as the last game systems (likely to involve missions, the economy and more varied AI enemies) are slotted into place. The game appears to be on track for a final release before the end of the year. Releasing the game in September would be appropriate, as that would mark the 30th anniversary of the release of the original Elite.

Meanwhile, on 15 May Gollancz will release three tie-in novels for the game in the UK.

Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall

Forty years ago the great dragon Feuerschwinge went on a rampage across Germany, destroying vast areas of land. It was finally killed by the Luftwaffe, working in concert with a dragon-slaying scientist named Vauclair. This event, the Dragonfall, was soon overshadowed as other, even greater disasters threatened humanity.

A band of shadowrunners in Berlin uncover evidence that Feuerschwinge is not dead, and may soon return to destroy the Flux-State. They also discover that something is wrong in the Matrix, with deckers dying whilst trying to access information related to the dragon. The shadowrunners may soon hold the fate of Berlin, and possibly the wider world, in their hands.

Dragonfall is the first expansion to last year's Shadowrun Returns. Calling it an expansion is to actually do it a disservice: it is a larger, more satisfying and better-written game than its forebear. It clocks in at between 15 and 20 hours in length (compared to the original's 10) and addresses most of the first game's technical issues as well as its creative ones.

Once again you start off creating a new character from scratch (you can't port over your character from Dead Man's Switch, the original base campaign) and receiving a message from an old friend. This time you team up with an established band of runners trying to carry out a heist at a remote mansion. Needless to say, things go wrong and soon your band of heroes or, more accurately, morally ambiguous protagonists are laying low at their safehouse. After initial resistance, you manage to take command of the band and have to find out what happened at the mansion, who wants you dead and what the hell is going on. Unlike the original game, you have a full band of runners who accompanies you through the game (though you can still recruit more skilled - but expensive - runners for hire if you really want). This immediately leads to much richer characterisation and character interplay, with you able to check in with your team between missions, learn more about them and help them to deal with their own problems.

Early in the game you are floundering in the dark, so have to take on side-missions to raise funds to hire a data expert to work out what's happening. This gives early missions a sense of freeform structure, with you both heading off to other parts of the city on missions and helping out in the deprived neighbourhood where your base is located. The neighbourhood is home to all manner of individuals and taking the time to get to know them early on pays off later, when you can ask them for aid or get additional missions from them. The game is still linear, but it hides its linearity much better than the original campaign, with you able to tackle missions in a variety of different orders. Completing runs gives you karma points which you can use to upgrade your main character's skills. Again, success is not dependent on combat and, indeed, resolving situations without resorting to guns can give you more karma points then wading in and shooting everything in sight (though this also works).

Dragonfall is a more confident, assured game than its forebear. The writing is stronger, the dialogue smarter and funnier ("Can you sing?" "I was the frontman for a punk band. No, I cannot sing,") and the characters are much more complex, messier people. The game acknowledges that people who'd rather hang out in grotty bars and risk getting killed for a living are likely to have severe issues, and exploits that to provide some rich (and occasionally disturbing) backgrounds. The game offers up a lot of moral quandaries but these are often even nastier and more difficult to deal with than the previous game's, with plenty of moments when it feels you are trying to make the least-worst choice rather than a 'good' one.

The better writing (and the original was pretty good) accompanies some very wise gameplay improvements from the first game. You can now save anywhere, with both quicksave and regular saving options on top of the autosaves. You can even save mid-combat. This eases frustration in the later, epic-length battle sequences. These improvements are also retrofitted into the original Dead Man's Switch campaign. The game also takes you out of turn-based mode once all the enemies in battle are dead rather than forcing you to laboriously move around locations character-by-character, which gets old quickly. The decking sequences in cyberspace are also more optional than necessary, making tasks easier rather than them being mandatory.

On the weaker side of things, the game is still focused on combat. There's more ways to avoid it than before and more satisfying conversation options, but almost all of your skills are based on their value in combat. Given that the pen-and-paper Shadowrun RPG is based more around small-scale heists, trying to extract information without the enemy ever being aware of your presence and fighting in the shadows, Dragonfall's emphasis on combat and massive explosions over stealth is a bit odd. There's also the fact that, for the second game in a row, you are trying to save the world, which is much higher stakes than normal for the setting. At least this time around the plot ties in with a core part of Shadowrun lore and is set up from the off, rather than Dead Man Switch's abrupt and unconvincing stakes escalation in its closing hour or so.

Dragonfall (****½) is not flawless, but it builds on the impressive foundations of Shadowrun Returns to deliver a well-written, compelling adventure. Much-improved gameplay systems make the game far more rewarding, with some very memorable characters and very satisfying combat. It is available now via Steam.