Right before last week's newsletter went out, a short-selling firm called Hindenburg Research published an extremely critical report on Roblox. In it they accused the publicly traded company of inflating its metrics (and thereby its valuation) and, more worryingly for the parents of the millions of children who use Roblox, also called it a "pedophile hellscape". The report alleges some hair-raising discoveries within the game. The researchers found chatrooms of people purporting to trade images and videos of children, and users claiming to be children and teens offering such material in exchange for Robux, the in-game currency. Roblox strongly rejects the claims that Hindenburg made in its report.

A new developer, Longdue, is being set up to develop a "spiritual successor" to the award-winning 2019 computer role-playing game Disco Elysium. The new studio currently comprises 12 people, including some who worked on the original game and on its cancelled sequel, and former staff from Bungie (Destiny, Halo) and Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption). Its debut game is described in a press release as "a psychogeographic RPG" that "explores the delicate interplay between the conscious and subconscious, the seen and unseen. Set in a world where choices ripple between the character's psyche and environment, players will navigate a constantly shifting landscape, shaped by both internal and external forces." The Bafta-winning Disco Elysium, which has you playing a depressed alcoholic detective in a city whose inhabitants still bear the scars of a war that took place decades previously, is regarded as one of the best computer RPGs ever made, and has spent several years at the top of PC Gamer's list of the 100 best PC games.

At first glance you could be forgiven for seeing The Outer Worlds as another wacky space opera, complete with eccentric characters and off-beat humor. But to leave it there would be to belie a game with over 20 years of history behind it. The team behind The Outer Worlds has worked on some of the most popular RPGs in the world. Producers Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky are credited with the creation of the prestigious Fallout franchise, with Cain working as creator, producer, and lead programmer, and Boyarsky serving as the lead artist responsible for Fallout's signature 1950's style, in addition to helping oversee the game's overall direction. Yet despite being billed by Boyarsky himself as the spiritual successor to Fallout, specifically Obsidian Entertainment's last entry in the series, the much-loved Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds is most definitely its own mad-cap experience.

For four years I've waited for a spiritual successor to Never Alone. Part game, part documentary, E-Line Media and Upper One Games managed to adapt traditional Inupiaq folklore into an accessible platformer while educating players about the culture in question. It was flawed, but beautiful and memorable. Memorable enough, I guess, that the BBC got in touch and asked E-Line to do it again. At Gamescom this week I got to take a look at Beyond Blue, a spiritual successor to Never Alone and a companion piece to the BBC documentary Blue Planet 2. As you might expect from the Blue Planet 2 pairing, Beyond Blue takes you deep under the ocean.

There are no spoilers for Her Story in this article. When Sam Barlow was working at Climax Studios in Portsmouth, helping to design the survival horror sequel, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, he would get home at night and tinker with a couple of screenplay projects. They were just an exercise, a way to write about things that he couldn't in his day job. But then one night, he realised something: both scripts were about a man just ambling along, seemingly quite happy in life, until a cataclysmic event changes everything. "I was like, 'Oh right, this is me sending a message to myself'," he says. "I realised I needed the impetus to leave the company and go indie. I was writing this stuff to tell that to myself."