Mario Kart World

Clippings: Terra Invicta’s first expansion, multiple expansions and wargame spin-off for Suzerain

by

A custom naval battle in War Sails. I love the atmosphere and immersiveness.

This screenshot is from “War Sails”, the naval-themed 2025 expansion for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. I bought the expansion on the recent Steam sale, and after messing around with custom naval and coastal battles, fell in love with the atmosphere all over again. I look forward to making headway in my new campaign.

New releases: Terra Invicta DLC

Pavonis Interactive and Hooded Horse have just released Terra Invicta’s first DLC, “Dark Skies”. This adds two new starts for the campaign: one set in 2003, and a “Broken Earth” scenario set in the early 22nd century, as the remnants of humanity limp back into space 150 years after a nuclear war. It also adds new cosmetic ship sets.

Both new starts look quite distinct based on the pre-release footage I’ve seen:

  • 2003 Earth is still at the apogee of the unipolar moment (making the US more dominant as the opener), but there is much less space launch capability (Boost) than in the base game (2022 and 2026) scenarios and Earth is technologically 20 years behind. Word on the Discord is also that it’s harder than the base game.
  • Broken Earth’s countries are in an abysmal state (poor, politically shattered, militarily backwards, and authoritarian) compared to the base game. The factions receive large and distinct bonuses (such as Earth research and laser weapons for the Academy), and it looks like they will need them…

It will be a while before I can get around to the new scenarios — I’m still playing the base game campaign that I started with the 1.0 release. At least I finally have the aliens on the run!

Upcoming releases: Suzerain DLC

Torpor Games, the developer of Suzerain, has announced two new DLCs and a turn-based strategy spin-off.

The two expansions are “The Neutral Lens” (casting the player as a journalist — Steam link here) and “Socialist Republic of Galmland” (moving to a new country).

The spinoff game is Wars of Suzerain, which fleshes out the military system from the “Kingdom of Rizia” DLC into what sounds like a fully fledged wargame. It shifts to a new perspective by casting the player as a general of Rumburg, who were the heavies in the original game.

“Neutral Lens” is due out first (2026) with Wars of Suzerain and “Socialist Republic of Galmland” to follow in that order.

I loved Suzerain and its first expansion, “Kingdom of Rizia”, and look forward to the new content.

Last but not least: Mario Kart World content

Nintendo recently added two new Knockout Tour rally routes to Mario Kart World, my Switch 2 perennial. More will come!

Enjoying this site? Subscribe to updates here:

Clippings: Pokopia, digital board games, what else I’ve been playing

by

Hi, everyone. It’s been a busy few months in real life, but I will try to write more here!

My newest find is Pokopia, a Pokemon-themed block-building game for Switch 2. Longtime readers will recall my love for Dragon Quest Builders 2, which fused block-building mechanics with the overarching structure of an RPG (go to new zones, complete quests to unlock the next zone) and an endearing cast of sidekicks. Pokopia is a spiritual successor, in which the player builds towns, habitats (and houses!) for Pokemon. I love the combination of exploration and freeform building, and vastly prefer it to the aimlessness of Animal Crossing. It is very well regarded (Metacritic/Opencritic scores of 89) and as I write this, is currently at the top of the Switch 2 charts.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time with digital board games on Steam lately. Special shout-out to Dune: Imperium, which combines strategy with brevity: a game against the computer takes less than an hour. I’ve also been playing zookeeping game Ark Nova (don’t be fooled by the cosy theme; it is deeper, crunchier, and against the computer, a lot harder than the cute animals would make you think) and Tokaido (themed around travel in Edo Japan, it’s not the world’s deepest game, but is possibly the most wholesome).

Other than that, I’ve been playing a mix of:

  •  2025 releases such as Mario Kart World and the — I would argue — underrated Civ VII. The excellent (if evolutionary) Anno 117 is currently on break, pending the release of the season 1 DLC. Hades II is also on break; one of these days I’ll clear that pesky surface route…
  • Older releases. Starting last year I spent a lot of time with Rimworld, a game I had previously bounced off a few years ago. This time the trick was explicitly playing it as a story simulator rather than a survival experience: beginning with a much more generous custom start and using a character editor to customise every single starting and newly recruited character. Following Terra Invicta’s 1.0 launch I also began a third playthrough… although an alien offensive has put me on the back foot.

A final note is that I’ve been spending a lot of my writing time on fiction. I expect to release a novella in the next couple of months, so watch this space…