The month of August keeps delivering when it comes to new game releases and this week's AAA title appears to involve a lot of sand and dust, as well as fallen gods. The rest of the releases to look forward to include everything from wrestling to enjoying the apocalypse, to forest bandits, a musical and being a mechanic in space. Last week we managed to please 58 percent of you, which was a new record, but we don't expect to reach those kinds of numbers this week.

Atlas Fallen / This week's AAA title / Thursday 10 August
Rise from the dust and liberate mankind from the oppression of a corrupted god. Glide the sands of a timeless land, filled with ancient dangers, mysteries and fragments of the past. Hunt legendary monsters, using powerful, shape-shifting weapons and devastating sand-powered abilities in spectacular, super-powered combat. Target and gather the essence of your enemies to shape your own custom playstyle, forging a new era for humanity in a fully cooperative or solo story campaign.

Listen up, Gunsmiths! Get ready for the abundance of emotions! Gunsmith Simulator has got its Early Access premiere on Steam platform! Don't miss the occasion! Buy the game now and dive into the gunsmith world of adventures that await in various tasks. Put your skills into practice, feel the magic of gunsmithing and experience an array of emotions that Gunsmith Simulator can offer.

Please, do remember that your feedback is important to us, so take a moment to share it after you finish the gameplay. Let's create an even better game which will leave nothing more to be desired. Also, join our community on Discord, where you can share your passion for Gunsmith Simulator with other players. Be up-to-date with the latest news, and exchange your opinions and ideas, so we can build a genuinely great gunsmithing community.

Celebrate French Aviation with new Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) cities and the Latécoère 631 The Microsoft Flight Simulator team is delighted to introduce the free City Update II: France, which captures five beautiful cities: Amiens, Angers, Nantes, Nîmes, and Reims; and to celebrate the Paris Air Show, the update also includes the famed Paris-Le Bourget Airport (LFPB) in both standard and festival configurations.

City Update II: France is now available free to all owners of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Ensure that your simulator is updated to version 1.32.7.0, download City Update II, and experience some of the very best sights that France has to offer.

EK had a secret invite-only launch event in Taiwan this week, only letting the press know to expect something the company had never done before. We arrived to be greeted by a big racing simulator rig, currently titled EK Sim Racer, which the company is planning for retail launch in time for PAX West in early September. What distinguishes the EK Sim Racer is an extremely clean design that makes it look more like a finished car and has every feature you can think of. There's the expected seat with full motion, a 32:9 curved display, haptic feedback in various places, timing belts and a responsive wheel with plenty of buttons and sticks alike, and of course RGB lighting. The lighting in the front also acts as a visual indicator of the steering and braking in real time for the audience to look at, as we suspect this will be a product more likely to be seen in an arcade than in someone's home given the physical form factor—it will ship pre-assembled. Powering the EK Sim Racer is a pre-built EK liquid cooled system, although this is optional and you can use your own PC with the launch edition expected to sell for $19,999 by itself or $24,999 with the PC included.

RISMATIKA and Galaxy Grove today announce Station to Station, a brand new minimalist, voxel-art railroad building simulator, which will be pulling into Steam later this year. In Station to Station, players are tasked with transforming a small rural world into a vibrant, lush environment full of life and colour by placing stations and creating connections to foster growth and expansion. Grab your conductor's hat and watch the beautiful, tilt shift-inspired, voxel-art world come to life in the brand new announcement trailer.

Aspiring conductors will hop on board and steam through a variety of colourful biomes, breathing new life into dry desert sands, and transforming untamed mountain terrain. As the tracks are laid down a tranquil world will spring to life with an ever-widening tapestry of flora and fauna! For those seeking to test their management and planning skills, each of the game's levels offer their own optional challenges, stack bonuses, and unique mechanics tied to every biome. Whether seeking relaxation or mental stimulation, Station to Station has something for everyone!

Back in September, we announced that 3 million of you had embraced your power washing destiny and the challenge of cleaning up Muckingham (seriously, how is that place still dirty?!). Well, since then, we've over doubled that figure, with a total of 7 million players to date! Whether you were sucked in by watching your favorite streamer play, reading the great reviews or by one of our collaborative Special Packs - thank you so much for playing! We've got heaps of awesome content coming in the remainder of 2023 for you to enjoy.

Kirsty Rigden, FuturLab's Co-CEO and the mind behind the original idea for PowerWash Simulator states: "With over 7 million players, we are honored that so many people have found their zen with PowerWash Simulator. The strength in our community is palpable. Since we launched into Early Access, the support for our soothing sim has been immense, and we are extremely grateful that this has continued to strengthen past release.

As we enter the middle of May, this week's major release—which is hard to call a AAA title—is all about humans and a dog. The rest of this coming week's releases is a mix of everything from action RPGs and alien bugs to laboratory experiments and Lego. Could there be something here for you? Read on to find out.

Humanity / This week's big release and VR game / Tuesday 16 May
A unique blend of puzzle-solving and action-platforming. Play a lone Shiba Inu charged with commanding massive, marching crowds to the goal in Story Mode, or browse a wide array of user-made levels crafted via the in-game Stage Creator!

Free Update coming April 18th + 2023 Roadmap and Physical Release for PowerWash Simulator - The first few months of this year have been crazy. You've cleaned Croft Manor and de-mucked Midgar… wherever next?! Well, we'll take a look at what else is coming this year in a minute, but not before we've said a huge and heartfelt THANK YOU to you all for the community support so far this year. It has been incredible seeing your reaction to the new content on socials and our Discord.

What's coming this year? 2023 Roadmap - Hop in the van, we're going on a road trip! Throughout 2023, we'll be taking you to places near and far in a range of Special Packs and updates that traverse Muckingham and beyond. Behold, our 2023 roadmap! With each free expansion, we'll be revealing more of Muckingham and its stories, whereas the paid Special Packs will transport you outside of the Muckingham universe to all sorts of new and exciting places.

Paradox Interactive today revealed more details about Life by You, created to be the most moddable and open life simulator from the Berkeley, CA based Paradox Tectonic. In Life by You, players will create humans and live out their lives without loading screens. Paradox Tectonic is led by Rod Humble, a games industry veteran known for his pioneering work on the life simulation genre. Life by You will be available in Early Access on September 12, eager players can pre-order today on the Epic Games Store for a suggested retail price of 39.99USD / 39.99 EUR / 34.99 GBP, wishlisting will also be available on Steam.

Life by You allows players to design and live out the lives of the humans that they create in an open game world where everything is customizable. Players create their households, build their homes and tell life's many stories. With real language conversation and the ability to switch from third-person to direct control gameplay, players will connect with their humans on an emotional level. A wide variety of Creator Tools and Editors will allow players to tweak every aspect of their experience, giving them the ability to live life to the fullest - or break the rules, as they see fit.

According to details fished out of an extensive Digital Bros. 2022-2023 financial report, Assetto Corsa 2 is set for a Spring 2024 launch. Developer Kunos Simulazioni and publisher 505 Games confirmed back in 2021 that the long running Assetto Corsa racing-sim series would be receiving sequel treatment. It seems that the owners of the publishing and development groups are keen to capitalize on Assetto Corsa-series sales figures reaching 28 million copies, as of late December 2022, which generated $112 million in revenue.

Fans of Assetto Corsa will be eagerly anticipating the release window of March to June 2024 - the previous entry in the series, Competizione, was not intended as a full sequel when it launched in 2018, via an early-access program. Content updates have been frequent and appreciated by the fan base, but with the power of PC and console hardware increasing over the past half decade, expectations of graphical fidelity have changed for racing simulators.