Rugir – Video game writer at DLCompare

Subway has entered ARC Raiders, and yes, there is exclusive gear

Aug 21, 2026, 10:13 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

ARC Raiders adds new Phantom Targets content, gameplay fixes and a surprising Subway collab ahead of Frozen Trail.

ARC Raiders has been keeping its Rust Belt busy lately. Embark Studios rolled out Update 1.42.0 on August 18, continued the mysterious Phantom Targets storyline, made some welcome gameplay improvements, and then followed it up two days later with something nobody had on their extraction-shooter bingo card: a collaboration with Subway. The biggest piece of Update 1.42.0 is the second part of the Phantom Targets event. Shani’s investigation has now traced the strange signals to Wasps acting very differently from normal....

Cozy Marbles turns marble runs into a chill sandbox

Aug 21, 2026, 09:46 AlexP Gaming News

Cozy Marbles turns childhood marble runs into a relaxing physics sandbox full of creative builds, races and cozy fun.

Few things are as satisfying as watching a marble survive a track you spent far too long building. Cozy Marbles takes that simple childhood pleasure and turns it into a surprisingly flexible physics sandbox, created by solo developer Pixel Pea Games over roughly two and a half years. Now available on Steam, the game starts with a familiar idea: connect a few track pieces, drop in a marble and see what happens. From there, things can become much more complicated than...

Low-Budget Repairs turns terrible DIY into a full-time job

Aug 20, 2026, 09:49 AlexP Gaming News

Low-Budget Repairs turns terrible DIY into comedy, with messy jobs, clever mechanics and a few technical issues at launch.

Most simulator games want you to become incredibly good at your chosen profession. Low-Budget Repairs has a much funnier idea: what if being a questionable handyman was the entire point? Low-Budget Repairs arrived with plenty of attention behind it. The game had already passed an impressive 1.2 million Steam wishlists before launch, suggesting that a huge number of players were ready to embrace its deliberately messy approach to home renovation. Cutting corners is basically the job Set in a fictional version of 1990s...

15 minutes of Black Myth: Zhong Kui gameplay

Aug 20, 2026, 09:18 AlexP Gaming News Gameplay

Black Myth: Zhong Kui goes from an empty folder to 15 minutes of stunning gameplay, showing a huge leap beyond Wukong.

A year ago, Black Myth: Zhong Kui barely existed in public. When Game Science revealed the second entry in the Black Myth series at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025, the studio said the project was still in early development and there was no in-game footage ready to show. Fast-forward exactly one year, and things look very different. Game Science released a full 15-minute gameplay video, giving players their first real look at combat and parts of the story. The footage...

Subnautica 2’s Buddy System makes co-op feel like co-op

Aug 19, 2026, 09:55 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

Subnautica 2 Update 1.2 adds voice chat, revives, easier item sharing and new tools that make co-op feel truly connected.

Subnautica 2 launched into Early Access on May 14 with one massive change from the original game: proper four-player co-op. Swimming into an alien ocean with three friends sounded fantastic, but in practice, multiplayer could still feel like four separate survivors who happened to share the same map. Update 1.2, which is coming out on the 19th of August, appropriately called Buddy System, is designed to change that. The biggest addition is proximity voice chat. Instead of relying entirely on an external...

Bodycam is taking FPS realism to another level

Aug 19, 2026, 09:35 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

Bodycam’s Locked & Loaded dev diary shows how Reissad Studio is pushing FPS realism, immersion and weapon handling even further.

Bodycam has always sold itself on one simple idea: what if a multiplayer shooter looked and felt uncomfortably close to real footage? With its new “Road to Locked and Loaded” Dev Diary, Reissad Studio is showing that it wants to push that idea much further than impressive graphics alone. The first dev diary focuses heavily on the systems being rebuilt for the upcoming Locked & Loaded update, especially animations, weapon handling and loadouts. Instead of simply adding another map or a...

Sandustry is the tiny factory game blowing up on Steam

Aug 18, 2026, 10:01 AlexP Gaming News

Sandustry is a solo-developed automation game winning players over with deep factory systems and impressive pixel physics.

At first glance, Sandustry looks like the kind of small automation indie you might scroll past without thinking twice. Then you notice that it was built by a solo developer, recently launched into Early Access, peaked at around 12,500 concurrent players on Steam, and is sitting at roughly 97% positive reviews. Suddenly, this little pixel factory game looks a lot more interesting. Developed by Erik Lantto, Sandustry takes the familiar joy of building increasingly complicated production lines and mixes it...

State of Play just made Phantom Blade Zero even more exciting

Aug 18, 2026, 09:37 AlexP Gaming News

Phantom Blade Zero’s State of Play reveals RPG depth, 55+ weapons, side quests, build options and a brutal 66 Days mode.

Phantom Blade Zero has spent years turning heads with some of the slickest combat footage we have seen from an upcoming action game. Fast sword clashes, dramatic parries and over-the-top kung fu choreography have always been the main attraction. But during its latest State of Play Gameplay Deep Dive, S-GAME finally showed that there is a proper RPG hiding underneath all that stylish action. Previous trailers mostly focused on spectacle. Boss fights, cinematic duels and flashy weapon moves made the...

Update 2.0 makes S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 feel like a different game

Aug 17, 2026, 09:27 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Update 2.0 revamps the Zone with smarter AI, new weapons, better visuals, fog, and custom rules.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has come a long way since its rough launch, but GSC Game World clearly isn't finished rebuilding the Zone. Update 2.0 feels less like another patch and more like the developers asking players to come back and see how much has changed. Arriving as a free update on August 20, it brings major visual, gameplay, AI and technical improvements that could make returning to the Zone very tempting. One of the biggest changes comes under the...

PEAK’s Final Ascent sends player numbers soaring again

Aug 17, 2026, 09:02 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

PEAK’s Final Ascent update brings new biomes, fresh gear and a huge Steam player spike more than a year after release.

PEAK has already enjoyed one of the most surprising multiplayer success stories of the last year, and its latest update proves that players still aren't ready to stop climbing. The Final Ascent, the game's last major content update, arrived on August 11 and quickly brought a huge wave of players back to the mountain. The update introduces two new biome variants, GLOOM and THE CITADEL, giving groups even more dangerous places to explore. GLOOM takes PEAK into darker and creepier...

Warhounds might be the tactical surprise of the summer

Aug 14, 2026, 10:46 AlexP Gaming News

Warhounds blends tactical combat, mercenary management and destructible battlefields into a promising new strategy game.

If you enjoy tactical games where every move matters and one bad position can ruin an entire turn, Warhounds is worth keeping an eye on. The recently released turn-based tactical RPG throws players into a near-future conflict filled with mercenaries, dangerous contracts and plenty of bullets flying across destructible battlefields. Set in East Africa in 2035, Warhounds puts you in charge of a private military company operating in a region caught in a growing conflict. Your job is to build a...

Agefield High wants to be Bully 2, but it still needs more time

Aug 14, 2026, 10:20 AlexP Gaming News

Agefield High gives Bully vibes and 2000s nostalgia but bugs and rough edges keep it from being the successor fans want.

Agefield High: Rock the School wears its inspiration proudly. From the school setting and class schedule to fist fights, bikes, troublemaking and an explorable town, it is almost impossible to look at the game without thinking about Rockstar's Bully. And honestly, that is a big part of why so many players were interested in it before launch. There is still a clear appetite for a modern game built around the same idea as Bully. Rockstar's schoolyard classic released nearly 20 years...

Crimson Desert shows how much it has grown since launch

Aug 13, 2026, 10:31 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

Crimson Desert has grown massively in five months, adding new mounts, trading, cross-save, bosses, pets and much more.

When Crimson Desert launched in March 2026, it was already a ridiculously ambitious open-world adventure packed with combat, exploration, strange activities and plenty of ways to get distracted. Somehow, Pearl Abyss has spent the following five months making it even bigger. Its new Update Highlights overview shows just how much has changed since release, with 17 patches, more than 20 new features and content additions, over 120 new pets and mounts, and more than 70 outfits, equipment pieces and other...

Palworld update 1.0.3 makes the endgame less of a grind

Aug 13, 2026, 09:59 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

Palworld update 1.0.3 makes the late game easier and more enjoyable with less grinding, faster progression and useful fixes.

Palworld’s massive 1.0 release gave players plenty of new things to chase, but it also brought some serious late-game grinding along for the ride. With update v1.0.3, Pocketpair isn’t trying to win players over with another giant content drop. Instead, the studio is going back through the endgame and making some of its most frustrating systems much easier to deal with. One of the biggest improvements targets World Tree Holy Water, an important late-game resource that quickly became a pain...

Pax Autocratica is finally finding its audience

Aug 12, 2026, 11:46 AlexP Gaming News

Pax Autocratica mixes colony building, roguelite FPS chaos and dark sci-fi satire, earning strong praise from players.

After years of development and a complete identity crisis, Earth From Another Sun reinvented itself as Pax Autocratica—and players suddenly love it. The project has been around in one form or another for years, changing direction several times before finally settling on something much more focused. Now available in Early Access, Pax Autocratica mixes colony management, base building and first-person roguelite combat into one very unusual package. Instead of simply watching your army fight from above, you can actually grab a...

Don’t buy WARDOGS? That’s exactly what its developers are saying

Aug 12, 2026, 11:22 AlexP Gaming News Early access

WARDOGS turns brutal honesty into a clever trailer, giving players 10 reasons not to buy the game before its Early Access launch.

Most developers spend the weeks before launch telling you why their game deserves your money. WARDOGS has decided to do almost the exact opposite. Developer BULKHEAD recently released a video called “10 Reasons NOT to Buy WARDOGS,” openly laying out the reasons some players might want to stay away from its upcoming tactical shooter. And somehow, that honesty makes the game even more interesting. Rather than pretending Early Access will be perfect, BULKHEAD talks directly about the rough edges players should...

No Man’s Sky turns 10 after one of gaming’s greatest comebacks

Aug 11, 2026, 13:14 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

No Man’s Sky turns ten, celebrating an incredible comeback, major free updates, and an exciting future across the stars.

It is hard to believe that No Man’s Sky is already ten years old. Hello Games’ enormous space adventure originally launched on August 9, 2016, and its first days were certainly not easy. The game arrived with massive expectations, and many players felt the experience did not quite match what they had imagined before release. What happened afterward, though, turned No Man’s Sky into one of gaming’s greatest comeback stories. Instead of moving on, Hello Games kept building. Ten years later,...

IRON NEST came out of nowhere and sold 250,000 copies in days

Aug 11, 2026, 12:14 AlexP Gaming News

IRON NEST turns a giant turret into a chill simulator hit, selling more than 250,000 copies in just a few days on Steam.

Simulator games have been having a great run lately, especially the ones built around jobs and machines that sound almost too specific to become games. From running businesses to operating heavy equipment, players clearly enjoy learning complicated systems at their own pace. Games like PowerWash Simulator proved that even repetitive work can become strangely relaxing, and now IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator has arrived with an even more unusual idea. Released in August 2026, IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator seemingly...

Kill The Shadow feels like Disco Elysium with a darker twist

Aug 10, 2026, 12:45 AlexP Gaming News

Kill The Shadow blends detective RPG choices, supernatural crime-solving and a clever Rewind system in one dark mystery.

If you like detective games where solving a case involves more than simply clicking on highlighted clues, Kill The Shadow is worth keeping an eye on. The new indie RPG from Shadowlight takes some of the ideas that made Disco Elysium so memorable and mixes them with a much stranger supernatural investigation system. The result is a detective game where talking your way through a problem is only one of several possible solutions. Players step into the shoes of Lucas,...

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game gets a major August update

Aug 10, 2026, 12:27 AlexP Gaming News Updates & Patches

Avatar Legends gets a major August update with Replay Takeover, balance changes, fixes and performance improvements.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game has only been out for a few weeks, but the developers are already moving quickly to improve the experience. Its latest August 2026 update brings a mix of new features, gameplay fixes and technical improvements, with one addition in particular standing out for players who want to get better at the game. The highlight of the update is Replay Takeover, a new training feature that lets players jump directly into a saved replay and take...

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