Month: September 2024

The big feature list for Minecraft 1.20 has been known for a while, and test builds have been available for a few months, with the only remaining mystery being its release date. The next Minecraft update is happening sooner than I’d expected: Trails & Tales is coming on June 7.

The big ticket bits of Minecraft 1.20 are the archeology feature which is bringing suspicious sand and suspicious gravel which players can sweep away to uncover tools, bones, and the eggs to hatch the new giant Sniffer creatures which in turn will dig up ancient plants in the overworld. They’re not the only new mobs either, being joined by the giant Minecraft camel mob, a new type of mount that can dash across large gaps and seat two players together on its back.

There’s also …

It’s a Palworld, we’re just living in it. Pocketpair’s AK-equipped Poké-like has dominated both the charts and the discourse since it came out last Friday, and the debates and discoveries about it are coming out faster than I can keep track of.

But the latest development is both debate and discovery, and I can’t decide if that makes it easier to cover or harder. Here’s what’s happening: Enterprising and morally pliable Palworld players have stumbled upon the fact (via IGN) that you can use the game’s Palspheres (they’re Pokéballs, let’s not beat around the bush) not only to capture the game’s animal inhabitants, but to kidnap human NPCs too. 

You can see Coney, a streamer, figure this out in real time in the tweet above—complete with a chirp…

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is scheduled to swoop down onto Steam in just over a month, wreaking fiery havoc upon fantasy fans’ free time. But you may be able to get a taste of Capcom’s RPG sequel sooner than that, as recent changes to the game on Steam, as registered by SteamDB, hint that a demo might be approaching over the horizon.

These changes were spotted by Reddit user CannedBeansofDeath, who posted a screenshot of SteamDB’s changelist for Dragon’s Dogma 2 on the r/DragonsDogma board. Alongside various statistics, SteamDB tracks updates to all applications registered on Steam, regardless of whether they’re released or not. In this instance, the site registered an update to the Dragon’s Dogma 2 app on February 16th, which added a new ‘package’ (i.e. game files) to the app listed under …

Bethesda’s mega RPG Starfield looms on the horizon, arriving planetside in September—and the excitement for some fans has reached a fever pitch. One such fan by the name of SWDennis on Youtube decided to try and contain this excitement by recreating the game’s starter ship—the Frontier—in Kerbal Space Program (KSP) and, in typical KSP fashion, the poor thing cannot land to save its life.

The problems with this ill-fated vessel unfortunately go a little further than a poor helmsman, however. “It’s an aerodynamic mess and would never fly in real life,” SWDennis, who goes by the name of Space_Scumbag on Reddit, wrote in a thread where they shared their cursed creation.

In another comment, they delve into the logistical issues which make the Fr…

It’s rare that two Jacobs find their way into the same office, rarer yet that both have a passion for the same brand of headphones, and rarer than the rarest of rares that both of their favorite respective headphones should have hefty discounts for Prime Day 2024. What incredible times we live in when just such an occurrence has, well, occurred.

• We’re curating the best Prime Day PC gaming deals right here.

Both of us (Jacob and Jacob) love our Sennheiser headsets. Senior boss-man Jacob Ridley has the senior boss-man headphones, the Sennheiser HD 650—Jacob R’s note: the HD 800 S are the boss-man headphones, let’s be honest—which we reckon is the best pair of mid-range audiophile headphones for …

Just a month before it was set to go live, Endless Dungeon developer Amplitude Studios has decided that “there’s still more work for us to do,” and so it’s delayed the release to October 19.

“This will give us more time to incorporate community feedback and make the game as great as it can be,” the studio said. “During this extra time, we’ll be working on meta-progression, balancing, in-game economy, as well as loads of general polishing and bug-fixing.

“The feedback we’ve gotten over the past OpenDevs has proved to us that we truly have something special on our hands, and we want to make sure that the game reaches its full potential,” the studio said. “Your implication throughout the development has been invaluable and your support is a huge motivator for the whole team.”

Just six months after laying off more than half its staff and pausing work on its current project, Armello and Solium Infernum developer League of Geeks has announced that the studio is going into “hibernation” for the foreseeable future, and may not return.

League of Geeks said in December 2023 that a confluence of factors including “rapidly rising operation costs, a weakening [Australian dollar], poor early access sales, and the unprecedented withdrawal of funding opportunities across the industry” had forced it to lay off more than 50% of its employees. The launch of the turn-based grand strategy game Solium Infernum, which came out in February 2024, was not impacted, but plans for a full release of League of Geeks’ next game, Jumplight Odyssey, were put on hold “indefinitely.”…

Few things seemed like more of a closed book to me than Vlambeer, the developer of Luftrausers, Nuclear Throne, and Ridiculous Fishing. A studio made up of Jan Nijman and Rami Ismail, Vlambeer shut its doors in September 2020 after 10 years in business, and announced “the end of Vlambeer” in a short, straightforward Twitter post. It was time for both its members to move onto new things.

Or not. Because in another post on Twitter yesterday, Nijman put out a “videogame company acquisition announcement” revealing that he now owns “100% of Vlambeer.” In a tweet around the same time, Ismail announced that he had “sold my 50% of my old games studio Vlambeer to co-founder [Nijman].” Vlambeer, it seems, is back from the dead, albeit without Ismail’s involvement.

Per a blog …

Ah, the wait is finally over. The Elder Scrolls 6 is here at last, and a full six months before Starfield to boot. All my favorites are here: The Master Chief John 117, An immortal destruction golem powered by The Duke, the Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Magnum, English post-punk legend and Sisters of Mercy frontman Andrew Eldritch for some reason. I may have gotten the wrong Elder Scrolls 6.

Coming courtesy of Nexus modder stupidcatgirl, “The Elder Scrolls 6” presents a bold vision of the long-awaited open world RPG that’s basically just Morrowind but like, really messed up and stuff. Stupidcatgirl’s previous Morrowwind mods include Morrowind 2, the beloved sequel to Morrowind, as well as Morrowind 666, which seems to be Morrowind in hell, and you can see elements of those…

The Sims doesn’t have a plot, or any kind of story really, beyond what the player makes up for it. It’s a “life simulation” sandbox game in which “sims” live out their day-to-day lives, furnishing houses, establishing relationships, pursuing careers, maybe dying in swimming pools, all under the control of the player and with no particular narrative direction. And somehow, it’s being made into a movie.

Word of The Sims flick comes by way of The Hollywood Reporter, and it’s got some big names attached. It’s being produced by LuckyChap, the production company co-founded by Margot Robbie, along with Vertigo Entertainment, and the script is being co-written by Kate Herron, who directed the first season of the Disney+ series Loki.

And yes, Electronic Arts is involved in the projec…

Pokémon Card Game—not to be confused with the Pokémon Trading Card Game—isn’t a real game. It’s malware disguised as a Pokémon NFT game that’s designed to fool unsuspecting Pocket Monster fans into clicking on a compromising link. This malicious Fakémon installs remote control software on infected computers, which hackers can then use to access private user data and make your PC susceptible to more malicious attacks.

According to cybersecurity analysts at ASEC, via bleepingcomputer, hackers went as far as creating a pretty convincing fake website for their fake game and even a fake marketplace where you can claim and mint Pokémon Card NFTs. The fake site offers no real Pokémon NFTs, however, just headaches. 

Clicking…

Check out our helpful Wordle tips below, or scroll on down for a link to our guide, if you’d like to learn how to polish up your daily guesses. Need a little more help? You’ve got it. There’s a clue for today’s Wordle on this very page, and the answer for the November 1 (865) puzzle is only a click away.

I was certain my next guess was going to be a winner three times today, although the first two of those turned out to be wrong in different ways. That was a fun game, though it felt like I was following a trail of letter-shaped breadcrumbs to the answer, even if it did end up longer than I would have liked it to be.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, November 1

Technically, today’s answer can refer to any sort of sound, altho…