Even this venerable series' wide horizons have been reduced, from the galactic to the planetary - but in these straitened times, we'll take that.

The noble exception is Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, a sci-fi strategy game that started life as a spiritual sequel before ending up as an actual prequel, after it was snapped up by Homeworld rights-holder Gearbox. Casting about for the week's new releases, I found mostly reissues, remasters and special editions - and even those had a tendency to be a little, shall we say, inward-looking. Where better to escape to than the bright freedom of a video game world? Thing is, the games seem reluctant to come out of their shells, too. Still, it's hard not to feel a little cooped up, a little hemmed in by sore throats and short days. Honest!) It certainly beats going outside into that bracing Brighton air. At Eurogamer, we've had so much time on our hands that we resorted to moving our desks around and finally relaunching our podcast. Maybe it's the cold snap, but it feels like the games industry has been particularly slow to crawl out of its holiday hibernation this year. It's a bit like our old series Game of the Week, if you remember that. In Play is a new column taking a weekly sideways look at new game releases.

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