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Whether you need the answer to today's Wordle or just want a nudge in the right direction, I've got everything you need to help solve the August 16 (423) online challenge. I made a real rookie error today: I saw a grey and a green box in my first guess and somehow managed to mix the two up in a dozy rush, trying to make a letter that I could see definitely wasn't in today's answer fit and casting aside something that could've really helped. I recovered in the end but… phew. I know I'll end up triple-checking everything tomorrow. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Tuesday, August 16 Today's word is chiefly used to describe a thin mixture of oats and water, although it can also be used to describe anything lacking in substance. There are two vowels to chase today. Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.The solution may contain repeat letters. There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank. Wordle answer (Image credit: Josh Wardle) What is the Wordle 423 answer? Sometimes the answer just doesn't spring to mind. The answer to the August 16 (423) Wordle is GRUEL. Previous answers Wordle archive: Which words have been used The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh. Here are some recent Wordle solutions: August 15: POKERAugust 14: KHAKIAugust 13: HUNKYAugust 12: LABELAugust 11: GLEANAugust 10: CLINGAugust 9: PATTYAugust 8: UNFITAugust 7: SMEARAugust 6: ALIEN Learn more about Wordle Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them. You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot. You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer. After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below. Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. View the full article

On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that's a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we've gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the 2022 games that are launching this year. Escape the Backrooms (Image credit: Fancy Games) Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 12 Developer:‌ Fancy Games Launch price:‌ ‌$9 |‌ ‌£6.47 ‌|‌ ‌AU$13.05 Hey look, it's another game based on the viral horror concept of The Backrooms, borne of an eerie, unheimlich photo of a desolate office. There have been a number of these, and I've covered one before, but this latest four-player cooperative take is gaining a lot of traction. An Early Access affair, Escape the Backrooms looks like a fairly conventional survival horror jaunt—it has baddies—but it has eight discrete levels too, some of which appear to depart quite dramatically from the source material. When played cooperatively you'll use proximity voice chat, which dovetails nicely with the labyrinthine level design: if you lose your friends, you won't be able to speak to them. If you can't get enough of this fascinatingly creepy setting, and have some similarly fascinated friends, it looks like a creepy way to spend an evening. Moondrop Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 12 Developer:‌ Moonroof Studios Launch price:‌ ‌$9 |‌ ‌£6.47 ‌|‌ ‌AU$13.05 Here's a whimsical farming game with glorious pixel art, which may put you in mind of Stardew Valley. This is a roguelite take though, so it may not be as relaxing. The farm you're tasked with plotting and nurturing is situated atop a "shifting mountain" harried by a supernatural mist: when this mist arrives, your farm disappears. The idea is to grow and harvest enough produce between these mist visitations to make some money at the nearby village. As the game progresses, you'll learn some ways to keep the mist at bay. Moondrop is in Early Access, and will stay there until early next year, during which time it'll get new content and the usual optimisations. The Mangotronics Employment Collection Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 14 Developer:‌ Various Launch price:‌ ‌$8 |‌ ‌£5.75 ‌|‌ ‌AU$11.60 Here's a collection of nine games based around the theme of employment. Each game is short and sweet, and range from first-person physics puzzles based around production lines, to visual novels about dreaded job interviews. There's also a game about working behind the counter at a fast food restaurant, and, uh, a game about tossing projectiles at presumably annoying customers. It's not without violence then, but what is work except violence upon our desire for true freedom (and more time to play games about employment)?. Tyrant's Blessing Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ ‌August 9 Developer:‌ Mercury Game Studio Launch price:‌ ‌$20 |‌ ‌£15.49 |‌ ‌AU$28.95 Last week I pointed out that we're living in a golden age for tactics RPGs. And here's another one, with all the elements you'd expect: cute fantasy pixel art, a gaggle of characters to recruit and customise, and difficult decisions with every turn. According to Mercury Game Studio, Tyrants Blessing isn't just about min-maxing: "your ability to plan, adapt, and strategize" is more important, apparently, so expect to have to think on your feet as you explore the colourful world Tyberia in order to obliterate the Tyrant. Pud Pud in Weird World Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ August 10 Developer:‌ Ocean Software Launch price:‌ ‌$1.79 |‌ ‌£1.52 |‌ ‌AU$2.65 Ancient and forgotten retro games are often re-released unceremoniously on Steam, and Pud Pud in Weird World is the latest. You may not have heard of it, but it's an Ocean Software affair originally released for ZX Spectrum in 1984. It's nominally a platformer, but it's a damned weird one. You're a yellow ball with wings who must survive in a bonkers and surreal world. How is this achieved? By discovering hidden bowls, of course! Look, lore and cohesive worldbuilding weren't big videogame concerns back in the early '80s, but if you want to try something bizarre for just over a buck, this could be some fun. View the full article

The developers of Owlboy have revealed their next game, the delightfully titled Vikings on Trampolines. You might guess there's more to it than the name, and there kind of is, but honestly it's clearly about vikings and they are bouncing on trampolines. It's a simple concept, one which creators D-Pad studios say is inherently accessible since the controls really only need one hand, but it'll have a singleplayer and cooperative campaign, multiplayer challenges, and a variety of minigames. The campaign will see you take on "the bad Balloonie," presumably by bouncing on and violently popping his henchmen, who are also balloons. Multiplayer battles range from the simple-sounding—knock other vikings off the trampolines—to various rather complex-looking stages, complete with powerups. There will also be "trampoline sports," a phrase I find both electric and thrilling in this context, though no precise examples are given beyond what looks like soccer, in the trailer. Vikings on Trampolines doesn't yet have a release date, but you can find it on Steam and its official website, for now. We don't expect it'll take them as laboriously long as it took them to make Owlboy, which they said took nine years. The reveal of Vikings on Trampolines makes this a banner week for niche game genre "Games That Are Exactly What Their Title Says" following the reveal of Squirrel with a Gun. Image 1 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio)Image 2 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio)Image 3 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio)Image 4 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio)Image 5 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio)Image 6 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio)Image 7 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio)Image 8 of 8 (Image credit: D-Pad Studio) View the full article

It takes a lot for deckbuilding games to stand out nowadays, but Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder has absolutely caught my eye. A demo released late last week gives you a look into a vision of hell that I'm pretty excited to dive into. Something between a desaturated aesthetic and the heavy-lined pen of Mike Mignola's Hellboy, the art style also draws on the kind of tattoo designs a heavy metal Catholic biker might get. A skeletal statue with a sword fighting faceless horrors from beyond. That sort of thing. Nadir's mechanical innovation beyond rad art is in its resource system. You and your enemy both share three tablets, which are either Sacrum (Blue) or Profanum (Red) on any given turn. Using a card from your hand that costs one of those tablets flips a corresponding number of them over and—at the same time—tells you exactly what the enemy is going to do. In short, it's deterministic combat: You always know what your cards do and you choose what your enemy's exact reaction is. Otherwise it's a full-on duel game, where yourself and the enemy are the only competitors, each with their own life pool and status effects. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Team Nadir)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Team Nadir)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Team Nadir)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Team Nadir)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Team Nadir)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Team Nadir) You can find a demo of Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder on Steam and on GOG, where it will release this year. It's published by Black Eye Games and developed by Team Nadir and Black Eye Games. Meanwhile, our Wes Fenlon is very sick of roguelike deckbuilders, but has found a recent dicebuilding game charming. View the full article

First spotted by PCGamesN, a group of modders is already coalescing to create a Starfield Community Patch to address bugs in the game, even though we're still more than half a year out from the highly-anticipated sci-fi RPG's planned release. There's a rich history of fan fixes for Bethesda games. Alongside flashier mods that add Master Chief to Skyrim or a McDonald's to Morrowind, projects like the Unofficial Oblivion Patch do the thankless, lunch pail work of addressing mesh errors, scripting hiccups, and mismatched item enchantments that withstood official bug fixes. Grabbing the equivalent patch for a given game is usually my first stop after reinstalling an old favorite, especially when it comes to those running on the Gamebryo and Creation engines Bethesda's been building on since Morrowind (and has brought forward to Starfield.) Given the level of hype for Starfield and Bethesda's history of launch day woes, it makes sense that the modders behind the Starfield Community Patch would want to organize early and hit the ground running. Still, I can't help but imagine a situation where too many people are trying to fit through the door at once⁠—Bethesda's labors will hardly be over with Starfield's launch, and the official team and community patchers may find themselves rushing to fix the same bugs. After the launch rush, however, I'm sure the Starfield Community Patch will prove itself similarly essential to previous unofficial patches. It certainly speaks to Bethesda's reputation that such an effort is underway well before Starfield even launches. I'm always of the opinion that non game-breaking or completion-blocking bugs can add a little texture to a game, but I find it interesting how this sort of project is such a forgone conclusion⁠—it should be a shocking vote of no confidence, but I heard the news and thought "yeah, that makes sense." From the rolling hills of Cyrodiil to the farthest reaches of space, you can always count on NPCs clipping through the ground and asking each other about the Fighter's Guild. View the full article

Today's new release trending upward on Steam is Backpack Hero, a whole roguelike about inventory management. You're a literal pack rat, a critter delving into a dungeon with a big backpack and a craving for the ancient and powerful cheeses held within. Your real power? That packpack is magic, and it gets bigger as you defeat enemies, letting you store more items in ever-puzzlier combinations for ever-greater results. Each turn you have three energy, and using items from your pack to attack, defend, or buff yourself costs energy. Meanwhile, some items are free—like potions—or rely on magic stones stored in your bag with them to charge up their magic powers. It's the kind of basic gameplay you're familiar with from roguelike deckbuilding games such as Slay the Spire, but your whole "deck" is on display at all times. That makes building a combo a bit simpler and more intuitive. Image 1 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel)Image 2 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel)Image 3 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel)Image 4 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel)Image 5 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel)Image 6 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel)Image 7 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel)Image 8 of 8 (Image credit: Jaspel) I quite enjoyed the hour I spent with it today, and I especially liked how combos are built. I had a ring of strength that drew from an ever-lengthening line of magic stones. At the same time, I had a magic dragonfly that buffed weapons it moved next to in my bag, which incentivized me to leave open space for it to fly around in. Others seem to enjoy it, as its cracked the top few hundred games on Steam with a few thousand players and is a top new release at about 2,200 players. You can find Backpack Hero in Early Access on Steam. View the full article

As spotted by Massively Overpowered, Ultima creator Richard Garriott's next project, a blockchain MMO formerly code named Effigy, got an official name, Iron and Magic, as well as a website. The site contains fly-throughs of a selection of fantasy locales, as well as an under-construction shop featuring plots of land, buildings, and the opportunity to "buy land in the realm of Lord British." In an interview with PC Gamer back in April, Garriott and developer Todd Porter made the case for their game and its blockchain features. Despite some interesting musing on Ultima Online's digital economy, Garriott and Porter don't seem to offer anything you haven't heard from other NFT developers before: the promise of "owning" your digital assets and "earning" some kind of monetary recompense from the gaming you do in your leisure time, or as Garriott put it, "We're certainly doing more for players than just, when they put their money down, they play the game and all they're getting out of it is 60 hours of fun." For those less familiar with Richard Garriott, he's most famous as the creator of the Ultima series in the '80s, a crucial piece of gaming history and a bit of a "last common ancestor" for Western RPGs and JRPGs, as well as a crucial influence on MMOs and immersive sims through its spinoffs Ultima Online and Ultima Underworld. His Lord British persona was a consistent presence in these classic games. Garriott's Black & White series of god simulators were also highly regarded, but his more recent MMO endeavors, Tabula Rasa and Shroud of the Avatar, ran into trouble. Tabula Rasa shut down about a year and a half after launch, and SotA's initial Kickstarter success gave way to a sequence of delays and development overhauls before quietly dying. Garriott himself has made more headlines in recent years by being ahead of the curve on the "rich guys going to outer space" beat, and he recently traveled to the bottom of the Pacific. It's a rough time to launch a digital world with blockchain-backed real estate, cryptocurrencies more broadly experienced a real humdinger of a Spring, with Bitcoin and Ethereum precipitously dropping in value and so-called stablecoins fluctuating in a decidedly not stable manner. That instability extends to NFT real estate: Cointelegraph reports that six of the largest Ethereum-based metaverse projects featuring digital real estate purchases like those promised by Iron and Magic saw an 85% decline in average price of those assets in recent months. Additionally, unlike a, you know, real life bit of real estate, you can't do cool things like grill out or play frisbee golf on your suddenly worthless plot of digital land. Beyond questions of financial wisdom or tangibility, figures like former Greek Finance Minister and Valve in-house economist Yanis Varoufakis, as well as Brazilian game developer Mark Venturelli have made compelling philosophical arguments against these initiatives' promises of decentralization and the dystopian notion of "play to earn." No matter how you slice it, I'm not inclined to buy land in the realm of Lord British. View the full article

The advent of Multiversus Season 1 has come alongside an in-game advertisement that shows off two more characters likely coming to the platform fighter this year: Black Adam, from DC Comics, and Stripe, from the 1984 movie Gremlins. That's right, kids, a duo of Antihero and malicious alien... thing are your next Multiversus competitors. Black Adam was on the previous list of leaked Multiversus characters, but that list also noted protagonist Gizmo, rather than Stripe, from Gremlins as the character from that franchise. Black Adam, a character nearly 80 years old so I'll have to be a bit simple here, was first a villain antagonist to the Shazam character. Black Adam is a magically-empowered human who wields energies granted by the ancient Egyptian gods. He's the kind of bad dude that can fight Superman to a standstill. In the last few decades, however, the character has been reinvented as a more sympathetic and complex antihero. He's also the subject of a movie starring Dwayne Johnson, due to release later this year on October 21st, so... I'd expect him before or around then. I'll also bet you the character gets a Dwayne Johnson-flavored skin, if the studio can swing it. The other addition is way less predictable, at least as an outsider. It's Stripe, the bizarre and vicious antagonist from 1984 black horror comedy but also movie for children with enough violence that it helped get the PG-13 rating invented in the United States. I'm not sure what else to say, but Stripe will probably have a move where he uses a buzz-saw blade or maybe pulls a gun, which are things he does in the movie—my vote's on assassin for his class. Either way, this probably lends credence to the idea that Gremlins 3, a movie absolutely nobody asked for, is coming in 2023. Multiversus' first proper season launches today, and you can read more about Multiversus Season 1 on the site. The short of it? Batman, Arya Stark, LeBron James, and Steven Universe are your free characters this go-round, and Morty's coming on August 23rd. View the full article

Engine creator Unity has officially rejected a takeover offer by AppLovin. The tech firm, known for its mobile marketing and analytics platforms like AppDiscovery and SparkLabs, had previously offered $17.54 billion to buy the well-known software developer, whose engine has powered games like Kerbal Space Program and Pillars of Eternity. The offer was made on condition that Unity drop its own $4.4 billion bid to purchase ironSource, a Tel Aviv-based company that is a rival to AppLovin. But in a statement, Unity CEO John Riccitiello said. "The board continues to believe that the ironSource transaction is compelling and will deliver an opportunity to generate long-term value." Unity itself further added that AppLovin's offer "would not reasonably be expected to result in a 'Superior Proposal' as defined in Unity's merger agreement with ironSource." That deal, which will now presumably continue as planned, is expected to close in Q4 this year. This isn't the only deal Unity has made recently. Last week, the company signed a "multi-million" dollar contract to work with US Government Defense, despite reports of dissatisfaction with Unity's military affiliations emerging in the middle of last year. ironSource, meanwhile, is known for developing InstallCore, a wrapper for bundling software installations so infamously obnoxious that it's treated as malware by programs like Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. Unity's interest in ironSource stems from its interest in expanding its stake in mobile advertising, with plans to harness "the company's tools, platforms, technology, and talent to form an end-to-end platform that enables creators to more easily create, publish, run, monetize, and grow live games". View the full article

Take Two's publishing label Private Division has announced it is working with Wētā Workshop, the production company that created the special effects in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, on a new game "set in the Middle-earth universe of J.R.R Tolkien." The game, which will be based upon the "literary works of the series", is currently in early development, and is expected to launch during Take Two's fiscal year 2024, although a specific release date has understandably not been announced. Head of Private Division Michael Worosz said "We are thrilled to partner with Wētā Workshop to publish a game set in such an extraordinary and celebrated universe," adding that "No entity is better equipped than the team at Wētā Workshop to create a distinctive, new Middle-earth gaming experience." There's certainly some truth to that. Wētā Workshop has been regularly involved with many things Tolkien over the last two decades. Most notably, Wētā was behind the visual effects of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which, if you've ever watched the Extended Edition's DVD extras, involves some pretty incredible stuff, like the thousands of amazing costumes, and most of the films stunning "Bigatures" like the models for Rivendell and Minas Tirith. Wētā also worked on the less-well regarded (but still amazing-looking) Hobbit Trilogy, and more recently has been involved with Amazon's hotly anticipated prequel series. There's very little information about what kind of game Wētā is making, but Wētā's head of Interactive, Amie Wolken, offered a couple of tantalising titbits, stating "It's a privilege to create a new game set in Middle-earth, especially one that's so different from what fans have played previously." Wolken further added "We're excited for gamers to explore Middle-earth in a way they never had before." Combine that last statement with Wētā's deep experience with Tolkien based world-building, and my guess is that is a LOTR open-world game, one that goes beyond the borders of Mordor as seen in Monolith's "Shadow of" series. But that guess is only educated to primary-school level. It could be absolutely anything, from a Shire management sim to a Nazgûl kart-racer. In any case, I'm extremely up for this. Monolith hasn't been back to Mordor since 2017, instead working on its long in-development Wonder Woman game. There is that Gollum game from Daedalic Entertainment in the works, but our early impressions were mixed, and it has also been delayed. You can read the full announcment of Wētā's new game here. View the full article

In an instant, it all comes back. The immediate sense of danger. The strategy, the weapons, remembering to grab a grenade launcher for the 2-1 bonus round and remembering to avoid opening the gates in 3-2 and 5-2 to keep them safe for the eventual loop. I make it to the Throne at record pace, busting the generators to break into the secret second phase... and then I beef it. Melted. A promising run killed in an instant, doomed by one slip up. I need you all to understand, I used to be hot 'frack' at Nuclear Throne. Back in uni I was obsessed, making sure to get a daily run in every morning before heading to class, ill-advised subwoofer blasting the sounds of Joonas Turner's fat bassy gunshots into my neighbours' ceilings (probably). Even if I never topped the leaderboards, I was a regular sight in the top 25, frequently clawing my way into the top 10. Because while Nuclear Throne was never the deepest or most strategic roguelike, it's raw, loud and incredibly satisfying, a buffet of crunchy pixelated murder where even the most successful runs can easily be crammed into a lunch break. Throne butt Nuclear Throne is a 2015 twin-stick shooter by Vlambeer, the (now- defunct) crafty Dutch rascals behind equally screen-shaking games like Luftrausers and Ridiculous Fishing. It is, generously speaking, a roguelike—maps are procedurally generated on the fly, weapons are scattered across levels, levelling up grants you a choice of upgrade 'mutations' to plug into your body, and death is both quick and permanent. But unlike a Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, or even Enter the Gungeon (its closest relation, mechanically speaking), Nuclear Throne isn't really a game about strategising builds or long-term planning. It's a roguelike played on the edge of your seat, selecting from a scant list of upgrades in a blind panic in the hopes that you're either carrying, or might find, the weapons that make it all click. It works, because the simple act of blasting stuff in Nuclear Throne is joyous. Vlambeer wrote the book on game feel, and when even your piddly little starting revolver kicks up bass and punches the screen, you know you're in for a good time. The world is built up of tiles, and some weapons (explosives, particularly spicy energy weapons) will blow out chunks of these walls, while some bosses might even charge through 'em in a murderous rage. (Image credit: Vlambeer) Gene pool Rather than synergising into weird and wonderful combos, 'mutations' tend to benefit stuff you're already doing. Better health and ammo drops, shotgun shells that bounce further, crossbow bolts with aim assist, halos to grant you a second chance, each framed as another gross little mutation bursting out of your messed up little guy. Nuclear Throne's characters are a wonderfully screwed up band of freaks, mutant fish and living crystals, and rebel bandits who turn their flesh into smaller, friendly bandits. They each have their own quirks, usually in abilities, but often in how the world responds to their presence. YV is a floating triangle from Venus, and you're guaranteed to crash his pad on reaching level 10 to pick from a literal pile of guns, while simple ol' Fish will always get a guitar on reaching Throne 2. Rogue is on the run from her former extradimensional cop buds, and will be accosted by them from the offset—a small price to pay for being able to summon in devastating airstrikes at will. Unlocking these characters at all is also refreshingly old school in its strangeness. There are no levelling thresholds or unlocks—and while early characters are unlocked just for reaching certain stages or beating the game, you need to get creative to find others. Horror will only show up if you avoid those tantalising rad canisters scattered about each stage. And that's really the thing about Nuclear Throne. It's a deceptively simple game on the surface—shoot gun, mutate, don't die, kill god's chair, easy as. But the more you poke and prod, scraping away at those wonderfully destructible walls, the more secrets you find. Hidden stages, hidden bosses, final endings and a world rooted in a more melancholic tragedy than you'd ever have suspected. (Image credit: Vlambeer) Fläshyn Yes, Nuclear Throne is a game about being a funky little guy blasting bandits and monsters in a wasteland. But there is a truly astounding level of effort put into making this cartoon universe feel coherent and considered. There's a whole language called Trashtalk for your mutant's guttural screaming—a selection of sounds representing actions, places, and objects. For example, did you know that at the start of your run your character will often shout "Fläshyn!", constructed of FL (do) Ä (me/we) SH (this) YN (now), loosely translating to "Let's do this!". Rhaäve'sho can be interpreted as "our lives are hard", while the Nuclear Throne itself is a sharp, choked Fläisum. It's a level of care that grounds this goofy world of mutants and monsters enough that, when it wants to, Nuclear Throne can pull off moments of real melancholy. You'll often load into a map playing a more sombre piano variation of the level theme, maps feeling eerie when the dust has settled. The run-up to the Throne itself is a masterclass in scene-setting, a just-too-long walk up a long corridor while pulled strings ring ominously. Once the fight starts, the music is a desperate howl with frontier strumming, one final effort that begs to ask whether your fight was worth the pain. Across the board, Jukio Kallio's soundtrack hits this perfect note of post-apocalyptic western, heavy riffs settling alongside twangy guitars. The game's credits song is an all-time great, a breath of relief sung in campfire melody. (Image credit: Vlambeer) Modular chair Nuclear Throne, on release, was a perfectly formed thing. But that form took years to take shape, and its development was catalogued in entirety through Twitch. Vlambeer would work on the game in front of a live audience, who would then get to mess with the latest version of the game in Early Access. In that way, Nuclear Throne has always belonged to the community. And in the seven years since release, the community has run wild with the game, a small but fascinating modding scene growing up around it. The biggest of these is Nuclear Throne Together, which on the surface expands the game's multiplayer from couch co-op to full online lobbies of up to four players. But Nuclear Throne Together's secret is that it also cracks the game wide open, acting as a foundation for Nuclear Throne's wildest mods. There are mods that add guns, mods that change guns, mods that procedurally generate guns on the fly. Mods that let you play as the Soldier from Enter the Gungeon, mods that replace every enemy with frogs, mods that slam environments into each other in a dimensional nightmare. (Image credit: Vlambeer) Beyond NTT, there's even a massive Community Remix mod that adds three new characters, fifty new weapons, and enough new mutations, crowns and otherwise to turn Nuclear Throne into something madly and wonderfully new—but never unrecognisable. Nuclear Throne is pure, simple, chaos. Mods might turn the game on its side, deep fry it, and cram a thousand tons of explosive into it, but they never pull the game away from the raw thrill of slamming 'play' and dropping into a desert full of bandits armed with only a revolver and heavy guitar riffs. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for today's daily. Let's see if we can't actually make it back into the top 10 this time, eh? View the full article

Team 17 has announced the release date for its upcoming cooperative sailing roguelike Ship of Fools, which will launch into the volatile waters of Steam on November 22. The debut game by Quebec-based studio Fika Games, Ship of Fools sees one or two players managing a rickety vessel named Stormstrider as they navigate a cluster of islands known simply as "The Archipelago", searching for a way to thwart the Everlasting Storm, a monstrous tempest that threatens to submerge the entire island-chain. The game will see players battling marauding pirates and a host of dastardly sea-creatures as they sail the Archipelago's treacherous seas, stopping off at islands to scavenge resources and equipment that'll help them upgrade their ship. Team 17 also released a new trailer to accompany the launch date announcement. I really dig the game's art-style, which has darkly comic vibe similar to Klei's eccentric survival game Don't Starve. Ship of Fools has some survival elements akin to Don't Starve too, although it otherwise seems more action-centric than Klei's game. Indeed, as your ship travels from island to island, you'll have to regularly defend it from attack, manually reloading and aiming your ships cannons, and fending off boarding parties with a good whack of a paddle. More broadly, you explore the Archipelgo with an FTL-style travel system, choosing from different sectors of ocean to explore as you gradually wend your way to your ultimate destination. Also like FTL, if your boat sinks, it's game over, with Ship of Fools reshuffling the Archipelago for an entirely new run. Ship of Fools isn't the first game to take a stab at a seafaring themed rogue-like. In 2018, Fireblade Software released Abandoned Ship, although it was somewhat more serious than Ship of Fools, which adopts a more caperish tone. In any case, you can view the full trailer above. For more information about Ship of Fools, check out the game's Steam page. View the full article

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is an exclusively single-player experience, as is its follow-up Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which is coming to PC soon. But it appears developer Insomniac Games toyed with the idea of multiplayer in its open-world superhero game, as suggested by information uncovered within the PC version's executable file. The initial discovery was made by Twitter user DniweTamp, who posted two images showing lines of text purportedly from the game's executable. One image references a phrase "Superior Spider-Man", which can be applied to either Peter Parker or Miles Morales. Other lines make reference to red and blue teams, which alongside the phrase "Superior Spider-Man", imply that Insomniac was working on some form of competitive multiplayer mode for its game. whatwhat is this pic.twitter.com/NUZ32OO0ulAugust 13, 2022 See more That's not all. Another image includes what appear to be dev notes in the code, stating "If set and in co-op, Character 2 will see this text." This implies Insomniac also had a cooperative mode for Spidey in the works, letting players team up and battle thugs across New York together. As for the validity of the images, gaming news website VGC stated in its own report that it had "verified the contents of these files, confirming these elements". So it appears the files are legitimate. The most likely reason behind these hints toward multiplayer is simply that Insomniac tested out multiplayer functionality for Spider-Man, but decided to ditch it, either to reduce the scope of the project, or simply because the studio couldn't get multiplayer to work the way it wanted. That said, it's possible that this could also represent a test-bed for multiplayer in Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Insomniac has previously referred to the sequel as Peter and Miles' "most epic single-player adventure yet." But the game will feature both Spideys in its campaign, and allowing cooperative play would be a heck of a hook for a second game. Either way, for the moment you'll have to content yourself with single-player Spidey. The good news is, that's by no means a poor alternative. View the full article

When Larian boss Swen Vincke first heard that his debut RPG was going to be called Divine Divinity, he thought it was a joke. But his publisher in Germany, CDV, was all too serious. They'd had a hit with a game called Sudden Strike, and suspected that alliteration might be the key to long-term success. Reader, they were wrong. Today, CDV is long dead. But the name ‘Divinity' remains—attached to almost every Larian project of note since. It's an artefact from a long and gruelling period in which the studio was subject to the whims of whoever held the purse strings. An inescapable reminder of the outside interference which the developer has now triumphantly expunged. Of course, no Larian story begins with godhood. Getting there can be a slow, strategic, and sometimes bruising journey, and so it proved for the studio itself. Along the road to release, Divine Divinity was compromised not just by CDV, but the publisher before it, Atari. Larian should have been following in the wake of Baldur's Gate, its spiritual kin; instead, the studio's paymasters directed it to copy Diablo, the leading light in the adjacent action-RPG genre. The result was an identity crisis viewed from an isometric perspective. On the one hand, Divine Divinity boasted the intricacy and interactivity of Vincke's beloved Ultima VII. In its world, every crate and barrel could be shunted around with the mouse, and every kitchen table relieved of its cutlery. Yet outside the alluring density of civilisation, the game devolved into long and testing dungeons, which leaned heavily on simplistic hack-and-slash combat. The fact that the screens seemed to roll on forever—unfurling a near-continuous tapestry rather than the discrete patchwork of the Infinity Engine games—only contributed to the sense that Divine Divinity was stretched thin. To quote Bilbo Baggins, it was like butter scraped over too much bread. Divine tragedy Nevertheless, it reviewed well. Launched during a CRPG drought in 2002, Divine Divinity won over a dehydrated hardcore, and justified a follow-up in the same style: Beyond Divinity. Yet the landscape was already changing beneath Larian's feet. With Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare had graduated to 3D games for a console audience, and pulled the entire RPG genre along with it. If Larian was to stand any chance of attracting publisher money, it had no choice but to follow. Larian hadn't tempted new RPG converts away from Fallout 3 and Fable. Divinity 2: Ego Draconis was exactly what an RPG was required to be in 2009: a fully voice-acted adventure in a shiny, sun-dappled land that was easily navigable via an Xbox 360 controller. To stand out from the crowd, Larian developed not one but two gimmicks: NPC mind-reading and the ability to dogfight in dragon form. But without BioWare's budget, Ego Draconis belonged firmly in the B-tier, alongside other European efforts like Risen, Two Worlds and a slightly muddled Polish novel adaptation of something called The Witcher. Despite its best efforts, Larian hadn't tempted new RPG converts away from Fallout 3 and Fable. And in the pursuit of 3D fidelity, it had sacrificed much of the granular interactivity that had made Ultima VII so engrossing for a young Vincke. "I lost track a bit," the CEO wrote in a 2012 blog post. "The joys of console development steered Divinity II far away from the original idea, and so many compromises were made in that game that what shipped was but a shadow of what I had envisioned it to be. In truth there are only a few gameplay moments in there that come close to the reason I set up this company." (Image credit: Larian Studios) High kick As an overbloomed sun set on the noughties, Larian seemed doomed to repeat this unfulfilling cycle—chasing genre leaders at the behest of its publishers, and at the expense of its own vision for the future of the Western RPG. But something changed, and that something was Kickstarter: a lightning rod for the revival of the classic CRPG. The same movement Larian had just missed out on a decade earlier. To the public, Larian pitched Divinity: Original Sin—appropriately named, since it was more or less the game Vincke had been attempting to make since the very beginning. Back was the isometric perspective, and the tactile connection to the world of Rivellon—an intricate creation you could pull apart with lockpicks and fireballs to discover its secrets. Returning, too, were those continuous maps—now backed by a sense of purpose. With a little ingenuity, you could engineer solutions to your problems using tools designed for other quests halfway across the level, rather like a Deus Ex or Dishonored player might. Yet the wisest design decision came midway through production. Vincke was in the shower when he realised that, even though Larian was independent, it was still listening to the ghosts of publishers past. "What are we doing? We're making a real-time game because they told us," he thought, and later recounted to Game Informer. "We're gonna be competing with Blizzard making an action RPG? We can't compete with Blizzard, we don't have the resources." (Image credit: Larian Studios) Break free Rather than make its Diablo mistake all over again, Larian turned Original Sin into a turn-based tactics masterclass. It struck a chord, topping Steam's sales chart upon release in 2014—before its sequel repeated the feat in 2017. Over the same period, Larian has become an experienced self-publisher, partnering only with companies who already love what the studio is doing, and aren't seeking to alter it. Now, finally, Larian gets to join BioWare's lineage by developing an official follow-up to Baldur's Gate, the quintessential CRPG. The Forgotten Realms is a perfect home for the studio; like Rivellon, D&D's favourite setting is malleable by design, a blank canvas on which to scrawl scenarios and draw entertaining characters. None of which is to say that Larian couldn't adapt its talents to a more specific fantasy world if required. But a recurring theme in the studio's work is the prisoner who, growing in power, breaks free of their shackles. Perhaps it's had enough restrictions for one lifetime. View the full article

Warner Bros and Player First Games have released the Season 1 full-patch notes for their colourful character brawler MultiVersus, confirming Season 1's free character rotation and a new release date for delayed character Morty Smith, alongside a whole host of balance tweaks and bug-fixes. Launching today, Season 1's new free character rotation will let non-paying players do battle as Batman, Arya Stark, LeBron James, and "Steven". I know that's specifically Steven Universe, but there is something inherently amusing about seeing the name "Steven" sitting alongside Batman in an announcement of playable heroes. The patch notes also confirm a new release date for Morty Smith, whose inclusion in the game was delayed alongside the pushing back of Season 1's launch from the original release date of August 9. Now, Morty will be stammering his way into MultiVersus on August 23rd, armed, of course, with a Plumbus. Alongside these headline changes are a whole host of character balancing tweaks, with seventeen characters getting various buffs, nerfs, and specific fixes. Of these characters, Arya has received the biggest bonuses, with her hits now launching opponents at a better angle for follow-up attacks, and her ground-down attack getting slightly earlier dodge branching. The patch notes explicitly state that "The goal of these changes was to make Arya's combos be more consistent and successful at lower skill levels." Meanwhile, LeBron has also received a fairly substantial buff, with several attacks branching earlier on hit for better combo potential, and a more consistent Ground Side Attack. The Iron Giant, by comparison hand, has received the biggest nerf. His Air Up attack can no longer hit the same target multiple times, while his Air Neutral Attack has been altered to push opponents further away from him, giving them a better chance to recover. These character-specific changes are accompanied by broader alterations to the game's meta. Battle Pass XP match rewards have been substantially increased to 10 for wins and 5 for losses (previously 5 for wins and 3 for losses), while class-based Battle Pass missions have been disabled other than for Tanks. The devs have also added icons to specifically identify characters currently in free rotation, which is a useful quality-of-life feature. You can read the full list of patch notes here. It's worth noting that the patch is split into two parts, one launching today and another "coming shortly afterwards". The notes state that "most" of the changes listed will be available from today, but don't specify which of the changes are to be left out until the second part of the patch. View the full article

The Yakuza series is part Japanese organised crime drama RPG, and part slice-of-life about helping kids win the claw game at an arcade, teaching novice dominatrixes about self confidence, and writing the perfect postcard to a radio show. In Yakuza 0, it's also about side-hustling as a hostess club manager. If it were possible to see the breakdown of my 65-hour playtime, you'd rightfully think that Majima Goro had given up his life of crime for good and become a full time stylist, date coach, and bartender, because I absolutely love Yakuza 0's hostess club management game. (Image credit: Sega) Manager wanted A few hours into the rip-roaring drama and distractions of Kamurocho in the 80s, Yakuza 0's co-protagonist Majima is pulled away from his main daytime gig as the manager of a cabaret venue to manage a newfangled caberet club. It's a smaller joint, but a hostess club nevertheless, where men pay for a cover to chat up and buy drinks for pretty young women. Trouble is, Club Sunshine's nominal top hostess is awful at being chatted up, and the club itself needs a lot of TLC too. I wasn't expecting to spend much time there. I didn't enjoy the Real Estate Royale minigame on Kiryu's side of the plot, and figured that the club management would be equally missable. There is not a single thing about the Cabaret Club Czar game that deserves to be skipped. It's part dress-up game, in which you'll pick clothes, hairstyles, and jewellery for your hostesses, all of which have an impact on their stats: beauty, sexy, cute, and funny. You know, classic RPG stuff. But behind the earrings and pumps is a genuinely fun real-time management game. Raking in food and drink sales is the name of the game, which my roster of hostesses earn over the course of a shift from their customers. It's on me to pair hostesses up with customers they can impress based on their skills—talk, party, love, and ‘skill' (which is apparently their wit and intelligence). Things get no less than hectic on the club floor each night. Customers show up regularly, spending a short or long session at one of my six booths, and need a matching hostess with the skills and looks they prefer. Hostesses lose stamina, take sick days if I overwork them and routinely call me to their table to deliver a menu, glass, or ashtray, each of which I have to remember by their hand signals. Each hostess can only entertain one guest at a time, and I found myself in a panic swapping out a woman from a customer with shallow pockets to go ply one who would shower her with drink orders. Other times I have to risk a woman with a client that won't like her and hope she hangs in there until another woman finishes her current date. (Image credit: Sega) Play dates That's just the minigame itself. Over the course of the story, Majima and his ladies outrank the competition, recruit the top hostesses from rival clubs, and grow as people. As Club Sunshine's manager, Majima also gets to know the women he hires, taking them on dating sim-like practice dates to help them improve their skills for real customers. They're adorable, each and every one, with their own personal stories that unfold across several dates: Hibiki who's become guardian to her kid brother, soft spoken Ai the low-key loner, upbeat sporty girl Saki, Chika, Mana, and Sunshine's zero-to-hero hostess Yuki. All of Sunshine's ladies are more than their archetypes, making conversation practice dates no joke. More than once, I'd learn something about a hostess on one date and be asked to recall it hours later on the next. I always desperately wanted to fill up those pink heart bars but, as in life, I couldn't always correctly understand what they wanted or struggled when my dialogue choices came out of Majima's mouth a bit different than in my head. I tried to do right by each of them, supporting them as friends, and the reward was an adorable found family of young women in the big city. The Yakuza series often dabbles in hostess clubs and dating, but the full management and dating sim of Yakuza 0 is so much more than a minigame. If Ryu Ga Gotoku ever launched it as a standalone, I might just put 65 hours into that too. View the full article

I can offer all the help you could possibly need with today's Wordle. If you'd like to read a clue for the Wordle of the day or quickly find the answer to the August 15 (422) challenge then you'll discover all of that and more just below. It's time for another week of Wordle; another week of stunning victories, oh-so-close defeats, learning rare unused definitions of everyday words, and trying to push that win streak just a little further than last time. Whether you've popped in for a quick hint or check in every day, I hope you have as much fun with this as I do. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Monday, August 15 The answer to today's challenge is the name of a popular card game—so popular some people play it professionally and win large sums of money in the process. It can also refer to a long metal rod used to prod a fire, or a kind of face Lady Gaga sang about. Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.The solution may contain repeat letters. There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank. Wordle answer (Image credit: Josh Wardle) What is the Wordle 422 answer? Let's make sure you start your week with a win. The answer to the August 15 (422) Wordle is POKER. Previous answers Wordle archive: Which words have been used The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh. Here are some recent Wordle solutions: August 14: KHAKIAugust 13: HUNKYAugust 12: LABELAugust 11: GLEANAugust 10: CLINGAugust 9: PATTYAugust 8: UNFITAugust 7: SMEARAugust 6: ALIENAugust 5: BUGGY Learn more about Wordle Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them. You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot. You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer. After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below. Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. View the full article

We've waited long enough. After all that time impatiently modding Spider-Man into other games like GTA San Andreas, GTA 4, and of course, Skyrim, now we can finally mod Spider-Man Remastered. Which means we'll reskin him as someone else. Among the first batch are mods to turn Spider-Man into Black Cat and Stan Lee, though neither has any animations yet. You'll be stuck in an A-pose, which is probably fine for the screenshot memes these are made for. Spider-modding on PC is in its infancy, with a lot of the usual tedious reshades filling NexusMods, though I do like the look of Noir New York. It doesn't just turn everything black and white, but promises "Increased contrast, blacks are darker, whites a little more tame, and some bloom and film grain for the old movie feel." Less memetically, there's a No HUD mod, which drops the UI at the press of the caps-lock key, and some costume replacers. The Symbiote Black Suit mod swaps the Advanced Suit for an outfit we might see an official version of in Insomniac's Spider-Man 2, while the Miles Morales Suit replaces it with what is apparently "a leftover model from when they were developing a multiplayer game mode." Most promising of all is the Modding Tool uploaded by prolific Rockstar modder jedijosh920, who says, "It's the foundation of creating and installing mods, having an easy to use mod file system where users can create and share their mods, and also install them." If you're interested in taking that for a spin, there's a Discord server dedicated to Spider-Man modding you can join. Who knows, maybe you'll make something as masterful as Flying Rats, a mod that turns all of New York's pigeons into, yes, flying rats. What's next? It's a sure bet someone will find a way to restore Peter Parker's original face from the PlayStation 4 version, add some kind of vertigo-inducing first-person camera, maybe a co-op mode, the inevitable nudity and then, I dunno, return the favor and turn Spider-Man into CJ from San Andreas? A look at some of the PlayStation version's mods suggests some possibilities, including playable villains, multiple Spider-Men, and pizza textures. So that's something to look forward to. View the full article

There are lot of free games floating around there right now, from Epic's weekly freebies to publisher promos on Steam, GOG sale giveaways, and more. But staying on top of them all can be a real chore, and you might be missing out on some good stuff. So we here at PC Gamer have decided to help, with this running list of every free game that crosses our screens. The goal is to help you find and claim games that usually cost money, so free-to-keep and temporary promotions will be included and noted as such, but free-to-play games and others that are normally free won't be—for that, be sure to take a look at our categorized breakdown of the best free PC games. So, here's what we've got: Time-limited: Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! - The third in the series of restaurant management typing games shakes things up by giving you a food truck to manage. Oh, and being set in a post-apocalyptic future USA. With your crew of robot assistants you drive across the America of 2042, preparing dishes and competing in the Iron Cook Foodtruck Championship. (Epic, ends August 18) (Image credit: Bethesda) Free to keep: The Elder Scrolls: Arena and The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall - The first two games in the classic RPG series have come to Steam thanks to the end of the Bethesda launcher. Arena has some great dungeons, and Daggerfall is an ambitious mess that's perhaps the buggiest thing Bethesda ever made.Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - This objective-based multiplayer World War II FPS is another survivor of the Bethesda launcher's downfall.Magic: The Gathering Arena booster packs - Want to try Magic expansion Alchemy Horizons: Baldur's Gate? Use the code PlayHBG in the store to get three booster packs for free.Cave Story's Secret Santa - A Christmas-themed Cave Story spin-off "created in cooperation with Studio Pixel" according to Nicalis. Prime Gaming: The games on Prime Gaming aren't technically free, since you need to be a subscriber in order to take advantage. But there's a lot on offer if you are, including in-game loot and starter packs for free-to-play games, so it's worth keeping tabs on. Prime Gaming is included with Amazon Prime at $13 per month, or $120 per year; links to all included freebies are available at amazon.com. StarCraft: Remastered (Battle.net, ends September 1)Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Amazon Games App, ends September 1)Family Mysteries: Poisonous Promises (Legacy Games, ends September 1)Beasts of Maravilla Island (Amazon Games App, ends September 1)Recompile (Amazon Games App, ends September 1)ScourgeBringer (Amazon Games App, ends September 1) We'll keep this list as comprehensive as we can, but if you spot something we haven't, let us know in the comments. View the full article

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast) Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories. Magic: The Gathering Arena (Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Developer: Wizards Digital Games Studio Year: 2019 Magic: The Gathering can be a harsh game to master. I've been playing for longer than some of you have been alive, and I've enjoyed the highs and lows that come with any game that's based on luck as well as skill. You can play perfectly but still come up short, or you can throw your cards down with reckless abandon and somehow pull a win out of it. I'm certainly no master, but I still enjoy it. The best games are those where you're ripping cards at just the right time, playing to your deck's strengths, and trying to fathom what your opponent can draw to beat you. Those are the games you remember. And they don't have to be in-person either, as Magic Arena proved during the lockdown. Just the game, a good expansion, and a decent interface is enough to create these memories. Magic Arena supports plenty of formats, including mini-tournaments that play far quicker than they ever can in real life. Quick Draft is the easiest of these to get into, where you draft against bots instead of real people. There are no time limits on your picks and the next pack is passed to you the moment you pick a card, which is great, although on the downside the bots can make some weird choices, so it's not always the most realistic draft. Still, once you've got your pile of cards and made your deck, you then get to play against real people, and this is where those memories are made. Ridiculous bombs, beautiful deck synergies, last-minute rips, disconnects, and outrageous aggro plays can all make for a fun drafting experience. It's a shame you can't enjoy a scattering of trash talk at the same time, but that's probably best left to face-to-face tournaments anyway. Ideally, at the end of it all, you'll hit seven wins before you amass three losses. That way you cover your entry fee and then some and, importantly, can do another draft. There are seven players between you and this goal though, and they want the same thing. It can be tense and more often than not frustrating too. You're generally matched based on your current season ranking, so at the start of each month it's pretty easy to pull out a win or two, but as you progress it gets tougher and tougher to string those wins together. Winning a draft is never simple, even if you have a brilliant deck. All of which contributes to making that first win feel good, like proof you've got a bit better at Magic—one step closer to mastering it. View the full article

Strange Horticulture sets you up to think it's another cozy game about running a shop—a puzzle game where you flick through your book of plants, examine the fungus and ferns and find the right medicinal herb or decorative flower for each customer. Slowly, as it goes on, Strange Horticulture trowels a layer of creeping dread over this wholesome setup. A narrative grows out of it, a story of mystery and ritual murder that plays out through the customers, no less strange than the horticulture, who keep returning to your shop. Though Strange Horticulture didn't come completely out of nowhere, having a demo at Steam Next Fest in 2021 that made everyone's list of favorites, it was still a surprise just how good the finished game turned out to be. Chris Livingston gave it a score of 90 and called it "the best detective game I've played in years". Development studio Bad Viking is two brothers, Rob and John Donkin, who actually have over a decade of development history behind them. Nobody noticed because almost all of it happened in the world of Flash games. On an ancient internet without social media, with prohibitive download limits and legions of students with nothing better to do, websites like Newgrounds, Miniclip, Armor Games, and Kongregate were the places to go for free games. You didn't need a lightning-fast connection speed to play Line Rider or The Last Stand. And you didn't need to be an expert programmer to make one of your own. Rob Donkin was still a university student when he made Pondskater, a game about eating flies and dodging bees, collecting power-ups like a mounted machine gun to shoot bees with. In the cartoon games that dominated Flash, that kind of thing was pretty common. "I had fun making it," Rob says, "and it was fun to be able to just release it and people would actually play it straight away, which you kind of can't do anymore. But that was the good old Flash days—you just chuck stuff online and people start playing it and tell you how silly it is." His follow-up, Panda Tactical Sniper, was equally silly. "You were a sniper and the panda would tell you stuff to shoot. It was pretty weird, but people loved it. That was quite a successful game, and that got me a sponsorship. I suddenly realized, 'OK, you can earn money from this,' and went straight into doing that full-time out of uni." Sponsorships meant adding a given web portal's branding to your game, usually a pre-loading logo and a "play more games" link that led to their site. For several years Flash sponsorships were a decent way to earn a living as a bedroom coder. When Rob's brother John lost his job in the film industry, Rob invited him to try his hand at game design too. (Image credit: Bad Viking) Their first joint release was The Adventures of Red, an adventure game where you solved puzzles on a quest for a chocolate muffin. It racked up a decent player count and suggested they made a good team. "We just sort of stuck with it and started making more Flash games and then set up our company together," John says. "We're still here 10 years later, which is remarkable really." ...we didn't really know how to put a game on mobile and have it grow organically Rob Donkin "In those days it was so much easier," Rob says. "Now, if you want to make money from games, starting out, I don't know how you do it because there isn't that model of 'make stuff in a couple of months, put something out there'." Pondskater took only weeks to make, and even the more advanced games the two made together were completed and released quickly enough they could pay for themselves in a short amount of time. "There's nothing comparable really to that now," Rob goes on. "I guess you can look at the mobile market and, yes, you can churn stuff out quickly there, but to actually compete with anyone…" Bad Viking's first "big success" was Bad Eggs Online, a multiplayer game about eggs at war, "an artillery game based on Worms, essentially," John says. They followed it with a sequel for mobile, Bad Eggs Online 2, and despite Rob's comment about the difficulty of competing in the mobile market, John notes that people "are still people playing it to this day." They were motivated to look at other platforms when, as Rob puts it, "the Flash game market started drying up." Adobe and Microsoft stopped supporting it at the end of 2020, and Chrome stopped supporting it at the start of 2021. Though the brothers could have continued making mobile games, they attribute the success of Bad Eggs Online 2 on phones to the fact the first game found an audience on Flash. "We brought them over to mobile and then it grew from that," Rob says,"but we didn't really know how to put a game on mobile and have it grow organically, or market it or anything like that." What they knew was PC gaming, which also seemed like a perfect place to attempt something a little more ambitious. "I guess we wanted to do something a bit bigger as well," Rob says. "We wanted to try to handle a PC game for the Steam market, because we hadn't released anything on Steam." Their first attempt was another artillery game, this time with a straightforward military theme, called Broken Ground. "It was basically like Bad Eggs, but a bit more grown up." (Image credit: Bad Viking) It launched in April of 2018, and exactly five months later they announced they were shutting down the servers. Broken Ground was their first real failure. "We took what we'd learned from Bad Eggs and we tried to apply it to a Steam market," John says, "and the backlash there was huge. They don't like microtransactions." A free-to-play game, it featured weapon packs for sale, which made players accuse it of being 'pay-to-win'. "We tried to just make it variety-based, rather than 'you can buy overpowered weapons'. It wasn't like that, but people didn't see it that way." The experience turned them off making another game in the same vein. "After Broken Ground we were very jaded with multiplayer in general," John says. "It's a lot of work. You don't get much positivity in the community. It's very toxic, is multiplayer." "Especially competitive multiplayer," Rob adds. And so they made a singleplayer game instead. While Flash had been forgiving, with its low cost and short development times, now they were facing the dilemma common to indie developers: finding a project that would be creatively satisfying and sell enough to make it worthwhile. "If you look at the Venn diagram," Rob says, "you've got: what you would like to make; what you're capable of making; what your skill set says that you can make; and then what is gonna be commercially viable. The overlap of those is this tiny little dot in the middle." (Image credit: Iceberg Interactive) When I was playing Strange Horticulture, at first I thought it was taking place in a pseudo-Edwardian fantasy world. Some of the plants had magical properties, and the place names on the map, which you use to find new plants, seemed impossibly whimsical. I didn't realize it was a real part of England until an hour or so in. Turns out, Scafell Pike and Bootle are perfectly real locations in the Lake District—though Undermere is called Windermere in the real world. I couldn't name half the flowers, well, 90% of the flowers in my garden John Donkin The area had personal significance for the brothers, being "a place which held a huge nostalgic appeal because that's where we went on holidays as kids," John says. "It's a beautifully romantic, rainy, green, lush, mountainous, strange and uplifting place. But also spooky, dark and mysterious at the same time, with the potential for fairies and goblins and all sorts." "It's quite a magical place," Rob says. "In hindsight, it's obvious that people from other countries aren't gonna know the Lake District." (Image credit: Iceberg Interactive) While they chose a setting they knew intimately, they paired it with a subject they didn't. "I couldn't name half the flowers, well, 90% of the flowers in my garden without looking them up on the internet," John admits. He struggles even to remember to water his houseplants. "They don't like to stay alive do they?" adds Rob, who doesn't have a green thumb either. "I need houseplants that need very minimal attention," his brother replies. They were actually inspired by a book. Breverton's Complete Herbal: A Book of Remarkable Plants and Their Uses, which modernized the work of 17th century botanist Nicholas Culpeper. Both of the brothers have copies near at hand. "We just found this in a library one day and were like, gosh, how good is this?" says John. "It's got all these cool plants and they've all got these amazing weird properties and uses. Some for I guess witchy things, others more as medicinal things. It's just so inspiring. We just thought, well, let's do that, but make them a bit more magical." Strange Horticulture's plants are fictional, though names like Bishop's Parasol, Farmer's Worry, and Gilded Dendra evoke real herbs. "The main reason we didn't do real plants is that we needed more control over exactly what they looked like," Rob explains. Inventing plants meant they could ensure each puzzle only has one solution—even if sometimes plants are deliberately similar enough to make you think twice. (Image credit: Iceberg Interactive) Strange Horticulture's story has a structure anyone who has played a tabletop RPG will probably find familiar. It's oddly common in RPGs for players to fixate on the act of shopping, and if an NPC shopkeeper interests them they'll return to their shop time and again. (Entire episodes of Critical Role have ended up being devoted to shopping trips because the store-owners had personality quirks the players enjoyed.) Strange Horticulture reminded me specifically of Call of Cthulhu, an RPG where paranormal investigators uncover cults and foil rituals. Only while the investigators are off having their adventure, we see it through the eyes of a shopkeeper they keep visiting to ask about a specific poison or the mystical properties of whatever herb they found at a crime scene. "People are coming from this grander story happening all around you and you're just sitting in your cozy shop with your cat," John sums it up. "You're sort of interfering with the story and can nudge it in certain directions, but ultimately, yeah, you're that NPC." (Image credit: Iceberg Interactive) Hellebore, the aforementioned cat in your cozy shop, seems like a vital and obvious element, but was only added late in development. The two were discussing what a particular character could do that would suggest they were a bad person. "We had this idea of them doing something to a cat," John says, before Rob interrupts. "Hang on, I'm staying out of this. You had this idea." "We were just discussing ideas!" his brother replies. "Anyway, that's the first time we mentioned a cat and almost immediately we decided, 'Well, of course this shop has a cat. Yeah, the cat owns the shop almost.' It made absolute sense, and it was like the gel that brought everything together." The kooky shop with a resident animal is definitely a thing. I used to live not far from a bookstore whose cat had a permanent home in the window display, and now I'm near a second-hand clothes shop where customers have to step over two dogs who sleep in the aisles. "It's kind of a witchy game as well," says Rob, "so it seems pretty obvious that it was going to be a black cat." (Image credit: Iceberg Interactive) With Hellebore and other final touches, Strange Horticulture was released in January, 2022. The early feedback was so positive that Rob describes it as "uplifting". His brother points out, "The difference between releasing a multiplayer game, all the emails of people just moaning about stuff, and the almost overwhelming positivity that Strange Horticulture has gotten—for motivation, for mental wellbeing, for everything, it's just so much nicer to be on that side of it." We certainly didn't expect it to have done as well as it has John Donkin "Which is not to say that 'oh, yeah, singleplayer games are all happy and rosy, everyone gets nice feedback,'" Rob says. "Like, we know that's not the case. We're very lucky to be in this position." (Image credit: Iceberg Interactive) Strange Horticulture's varied puzzles and hint system may have benefited from the brothers' background making Flash adventures, but it's such a step up from Bad Viking's previous releases you wouldn't know their history was in Flash if I hadn't told you. With its desk full of books, notes, and informative letters to keep track of, Strange Horticulture feels more like part of the tradition of UI games like Papers, Please, or the kind of brain-bending board game that comes in a box full of booklets and maps like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. It was a territory far away from anything Bad Viking had released before. "We honestly had no idea how strange Horticulture was gonna be received when we launched it," says John. "We certainly didn't expect it to have done as well as it has. When it got to I think 120 reviews on Steam without a negative one, we were just like, 'This doesn't happen to us. Is the game that good? We like it and everything, but can't believe this many other people like the game.'" "Our mum liked it," says Rob. "That was it. My wife liked it, Mum liked it, that's the feedback we'd had." View the full article

In 1994, my mom, a working interior designer, decided to jump on the home computing bandwagon and get 3D Home Architect. The Broderbund program was part of an awkward, curious wave of computer-aided design (CAD) software adapted for the burgeoning home market—the average joe looking to redecorate and remodel in an exciting new digital world. I was already familiar with floor plans and architectural drawings from watching my mom at her drafting table. My mother made a valiant attempt to get used to the program, but as a diehard traditionalist, she eventually returned to working with her trusty pencil and paper. Suddenly 3D Home Architect, which my parents didn't consider a videogame (and therefore not something to worry about), was all mine. It was a cultural appeal, asking users to imagine one's life as available for expansion through computing. Dr. Laine Nooney Decades later, I've sunk oceans of time into arranging furniture in Animal Crossing and laying out my free company room in Final Fantasy 14. In games, especially life sims, interior design can be a dangerous road to a place where time stops. But in the beginning, the world of digital home design was a very different animal: easy-to-use consumer CAD programs that shaped a generation of home computer users. (Image credit: Broderbund) "When these products first came out in the 1990s, people wanted to play with them because they literally allowed you to do things on a computer that were impossible before… it felt like being part of the 'future'," says Dr. Laine Nooney, who specializes in the historical, cultural, and economic analysis of the videogame and home computing industries. Like me, Nooney has strong memories of their mother playing with 3D home design and landscaping programs in the mid-to-late '90s when their family was going through a period of upward mobility. "Even into the mid-90s, only about a third of US households had a computer. Journalists, investors and innovators put tremendous effort into convincing people a home computer was something you should want or not," Nooney explains. "The idea of home computing was not simply about having a computer at home. It was a cultural appeal, asking users to imagine one's life as available for expansion through computing." Even with its blocky, unsophisticated graphics, in my eyes 3D Home Architect was a gateway drug to the pure uncut idea of a fantasy home. Some of its software siblings, like Sierra CompleteHome, had cost estimation tools, which I blithely ignored. After all, I was a kid, and if I could build a vast and physically impossible mansion with the finest materials available, by god, I was going to do it. It was the first time I could experiment with a digital space without limits—a far cry from the physical limitations of my Barbie Dream Cottage, which never seemed to have enough room. In the realm of games, I'd already blasted through 1991's Jones in the Fast Lane, Sierra Entertainment's bitterly funny social life sim where you started off in a crummy, run-down apartment and worked up to a luxury condo. It offered a basic screen showing your home, replete with hard-earned furniture and electronics, but there was no control over where to place items or modification options. While 'playing' 3D Home Architect, I treated it as a freeform game to envision hypothetical homes of the future for myself and fictional characters. Maxis began trotting out more focused Sim games that took a more granular approach to life simulation on a smaller scale, like SimTower—the first Sim game that really prompted me to get psychological about how and where I placed different amenities in the titular skyscraper. Unlike SimCity 2000, it was both a literal and figurative close-up of modern life, exemplified by the glitz and futurism of the high-rise format. There was also a much more visceral, emotional connection between the inhabitants pictured on-screen and the environment—for the first time I had to really think about where I was placing restaurants and entertainment amenities, as well as the elevators in the building (if the residents waited too long or got too impatient, they would simply blip out of existence in a red rage). (Image credit: Maxis) The psycho-spatial, psychogeographical aspect in social/life sim games really came to a head when Maxis released The Sims in 2000. It was, admittedly, a bewildering time for grown-ups struggling to parse this new cultural phenomenon, including the idea that you had to make a comfortable space for computer people to thrive in. For kids like Sophie Mallinson who had grown up with home design programs, it was a no-brainer. It's funny to think I used to play with interior design software, and now I'm using a videogame to plan out my own home Sophie Mallinson One of Mallinson's earliest computer memories were the free CD-ROM demos of home design programs that came with her mother's home decor magazines. "While these products were obviously aimed at adults, with bland aesthetics and built-in cost estimates, at eight years old everything on the computer was a game to me," says Mallinson, who now works as a simulation game designer at Maxis. "I remember being bowled over by the ability to navigate a realistic 3D environment, my imagination running wild as I created rooms for imaginary characters and invented a backstory for each home." (Image credit: EA) In 2000, drawn to the allure of home-making and the imaginative power of home design, Mallinson decided to get The Sims, which quickly became her favorite game. "Not only could I design homes using a wide catalog of furniture, from heart-shaped beds to inflatable chairs, but everything was interactive," she says. "I could see my Sims use each item I'd thoughtfully picked out and live their lives in the space I'd created for them." Mallinson, who recently bought her first home, recreated the floor plan in The Sims 4 to play around with renovation ideas. "It's funny to think I used to play with interior design software, and now I'm using a videogame to plan out my own home," she says, adding that she constantly thinks about better, more accessible ways to integrate The Sims' core components—architecture and home design—into gameplay. (Image credit: Witch Beam) Now, concepts of home, home decor, and customizable habitation have become familiar features in everything from fantasy RPGs and chill puzzlers to dedicated interior design mobile games. The role of 3D home design programs in cultivating this standard, as well as their impact on a generation of game designers and simulation fans who grew up fascinated with things like 3D Home Architect, remains largely unexamined. While there hasn't been much research in this area, Laine Nooney believes there are some "interesting resonances" between the way games approach room or unit composition, and the way 3D home design programs presented us with homes as units of divisible space. "I think we seriously misunderstand videogame and computer history when we draw very firm lines between games and other types of software," says Nooney, who suggests that these programs might be considered one of the first "sandbox" 3D rendering tools available to the average home computer user. Ultimately, in our search to understand human fascination and the cultural appeal of computers, early novelty software like 3D Home Architect hasn't received nearly enough credit for their influence in modern game design. "Interestingly, I do think we are seeing a return of these kinds of tools in the form of augmented reality provided by furniture and home decor retailers," adds Nooney. "In its own way, novelty never seems to get old." View the full article

You know how Kiryu, protagonist of Yakuza 0, is super strong and can throw people at other people and generally deliver an unspeakable beatdown on all those he encounters? You know who else can do that? Superhuman Spartan John-117, the Master Chief, protagonist of the Halo series. Now, one modder whose favorite two video game series are Halo and Yakuza has given us a mod that swaps one for the other and honestly it's not that weird and kind of works. Videos of the work in action on both YouTube and Twitter Modder Kashiiera warns that the models aren't rigged with similar armature, so there's bound to be stretching and warping and misaligned body parts. However, seeing as you're the kind of person who's going to download a mod to put Master Chief from Halo into Yakuza 0 as the protagonist I have a feeling you're comfortable with a bit of jank. Image 1 of 7 (Image credit: Sony and Microsoft respectively via Kashieera)Image 2 of 7 (Image credit: Sony and Microsoft respectively via Kashieera)Image 3 of 7 (Image credit: Sony and Microsoft respectively via Kashieera)Image 4 of 7 (Image credit: Sony and Microsoft respectively via Kashieera)Image 5 of 7 (Image credit: Sony and Microsoft respectively via Kashieera)Image 6 of 7 (Image credit: Sony and Microsoft respectively via Kashieera)Image 7 of 7 (Image credit: Sony and Microsoft respectively via Kashieera) You can download the Yakuza 0 - Masterchief from Halo 3 Mod at Nexusmods. So go out and let the Master Chief get some R&R at Karaoke or pachinko or whatever else. You can also find the modder, Kashiiera, on YouTube, Twitter, and Patreon. Bless you, Liv Ngan, for sharing this mod. View the full article

THE PCG Q&AFind all previous editions of the PCG Q&A here. Some highlights: - What do we want from Fallout 5? - What's your favorite PC Gamer magazine cover? - How many save files do you keep per game? Humble Bundle had a Boomer Shooter Bundle, and games like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun proudly wear the label by choice. Maybe it's time to give in and accept the '90s-style retro FPS subgenre is going to be stuck with a silly label because it sounds funny. (And it does sound funny, no argument here.) Or maybe it's time to get prescriptive. At the risk of resembling the kind of person who argues run-based permadeath games aren't roguelikes unless they're full ASCII, here's a chance to make your case for an alternative. What should boomer shooters be called? Here are our answers, plus some from our forum. Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: Sure, Boomer Shooters, why not? No, it is not a great name, I will grant you that. But do you know what else is not great: basically every genre name that has ever stuck around. We have a subgenre of RPGs, CRPGs, where the C stands for computer. It excludes a whole bunch of RPGs that are also on a computer. And massively multiplayer online game may have made sense back when the internet was new and this was all very exciting, but the implied sense of wonder just feels quaint nowadays. As for MOBAs, where do you even start? Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas? That's just all PvP games. Sorry, Quake is a MOBA now. I don't make the rules. So yeah, whatever, we collectively gave a genre a silly name. But maybe that's better than pretending there's any actual logic to this. (Image credit: id Software) Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: What's next, Gen Z RPGs? Millennial MMOs? I know we all enjoy a good rhyme, but "boomer shooter" misinterprets history and creates confusion about who actually played these games. As someone who spends most of each day thinking about how to describe games with words, you can imagine how this gets under my skin. My dad is an actual baby boomer, someone born between the end of WWII and 1964. If you were 32 or younger when Doom released in 1993, you're not a boomer. It's that simple. I'll gladly call them retro shooters, '90s FPSes, or anything else that isn't mildly ageist. Fraser Brown, Online Editor: In the same way millennial became shorthand for 'young avocado fans', boomer has become a catch-all term for ''frack' that's old'. Conveniently this means we'll be able to keep using it even once the actual boomers are all dead. It's a practical evolution. With that in mind, it seems fair to call these things boomer shooters. It's also fun to say, and a pun to boot, which puts it leagues ahead of nearly every other genre. It's evocative in a way that matches these bombastic relics, and while it might be a bit silly, so are boomer shooters. I say let it live! (Image credit: 1C Entertainment) Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'm honestly really surprised at how much 'boomer shooter' has caught on in recent years—as Evan says, it has very little grounding in the actual age of the audience for them, and the vibes of affectionate nostalgia don't really marry up with how the word 'boomer' is usually deployed (as in, to dub something out-of-touch bullpucky). I don't understand why people don't just call them 'Doom-likes'. People love calling everything a '-like' these days. And it has some nice symmetry with 'Doom clone', which is what a lot of games were dubbed in the original game's wake, before 'first-person shooter' caught on. To be honest though I've long since come to terms with the fact that gaming is always going to be full of absolutely dreadful genre names. 'Metroidvania'? 'Soulsborne'? 'MOBA'? 'eSports'? We shouldn't be allowed to name stuff at all. (Image credit: Nullpointer Games) Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: It's a shame that Twitch is called Twitch, because you used to be able to call old school fast-paced shootybang games twitch shooters and everyone knew what you meant. Now it sounds another name for people who've just done a hatecrime. I've been using Gen X FPS. It'll never catch on. From our forum Zloth: We stopped calling them Doom Clones? Brian Boru: Fogey Fraggers! Geezer Gunners. Assisted Aimers. (Image credit: New Blood Interactive) JarlBSoD: What even is a boomershooter? I kinda doubt that many, even if they existed ofc, started playing shooters in their 30s - 50s back in the '90s. Kinda get the feeling that most people playing games in the '90s were born in the '70s or '80s IE NOT boomers So lets just call them Doomclones as usual. Move along, nothing to see here! If anything it should be called Retro shooters if one does not want to use the term Doom Clone. Alm: I am a millennial and 90s shooters were a golden age for me. I guess I would call them Disk Dynasty Definitives. But Boomer Shooters rolls off the tongue better. WoodenSaucer: The early FPS games were my generation. I'm Gen X, not a boomer. Call them X-Games. (Image credit: Apogee) McStabStab: DOOM clones was always the name for these... even though they're really all Wolfenstein 3D clones. Corridor Shooter is another name I've heard a lot. redmark_: Seriously, boomer shooters just reminds me of a bunch of old geezers wielding boomsticks a'plenty... CParson: Arthritis Inducers. ZedClampet: Crap Graphics Action Shooter. Sarafan: I believe that this genre was called "ego shooter" in the past in some countries. Not that I think that it's a good idea to practice necromancy over this phrase, because it was mediocre to say the least. I'm trying to take the question seriously, so I would prefer the term retro shooter. It's self-explaining. The phrase is better for people who are new to the industry. Everyone can say right away that it's a shooter made in the old style. We can of course discuss that not every boomer shooter is a retro shooter, but I believe we should simplify things not complicate them without a serious reason. Pifanjr: I think DOOM clone works best. Video game genre definition seem to get broader and broader and/or video games combine aspects of several genres, meaning the best description is usually to compare it to specific other games instead of/in addition to slapping a genre label on it. (Image credit: Trigger Happy Interactive/Apogee Entertainment) flashn00b: I think I like the "Doom Clone" nomenclature more, but that will likely have my age showing. Hell, Boomer Shooter more or less seems like a general categorization of FPS, and I think games like Ultrakill, Turbo Overkill, and to a lesser extent, Doom Eternal helped pave the way of an offshoot of the Boomer Shooter known as the movement shooter. I think for more traditional old-school-style FPS games, Doom Clone would probably be more appropriate, whereas the new-school boost-dashing/wallrunning/etc. would probably fit more in the "movement shooter" category. Steyn: Killer boomer. (Image credit: Interplay) Volley: I'd call it 'Golden Era FPS' or 'Golden Era Shooter' which was the 90's and early 00's. However, I am going through some of my 90's PC Gamer magazines and the term "Doom clones" was used by PCG a LOT to describe any FPS that wasn't Doom, yet came out after Doom, even System Shock and Descent, which were nothing like Doom other than having a first person perspective, haha. (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks) Krud: Dang, my perspective on this went on a roller-coaster as I read the posts. First confused as to the existence of "boomer shooter" in general, then thinking it was about explosions, then the notion that it's a reference to Baby Boomers? I mean, my dad was a fairly young Baby Boomer, and he had zero interest in FPS's. Which is anecdotal, I know, but I really think 2.5D/3D gaming was primarily the purview of Gen X. I'm just a handful of years away from being lumped into "Millennial", but I still have very clear memories of the release of Wolfenstein3D, Doom, Quake, Heretic, etc. And most of the programmers were fairly young (though older than me.) Heck, I was programming (mediocre) text adventures when I was 14-18. (By the time I was 19 the genre was seemingly dead and buried, only to resurrect several years later under the name Interactive Fiction. Or maybe it was always there and I just didn't know where to look. But I digress.) If I were going to assign a label to any games as "Boomer," it would be the early arcade games (Galaga, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Asteroids), pinball, and text adventures. And Solitaire. View the full article

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random games back into the light. This week, adventure legends Sierra present a dark vision of one of the strangest alien invasions ever. And you thought your boss was a monster. In 2002, the Orbs invaded. They looked like giant floating eyeballs. Despite that, humanity's attempt to fight back with a big pokey stick didn't work out so well, and two years later, Earth is theirs. Humanity is now crushed under their... uh... lower squishy bits. Now, under the hellish scarlet skies, only one man has a chance of turning the tide. There's only one problem; or two, if you count the entire world having been nuked into a monstrous parody of civilisation. He works for them. And he's pretty good at his job, when he's not being randomly murdered by everything from street punks to dinosaurs. This happens a lot. Manhunter is one of the weirdest SF adventures ever made. Honestly, it's a bit of a surprise that it's taken this long for Manhunter (no relation to the Hannibal movie, incidentally) to show up here, because in the great list of weird and variably wonderful games, it's had a little red cross next to it since it came out back in 1988. It's one of Sierra Online's lesser-known games, with none of the recognisability of, say, Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. It's also not one of its best, honestly. It retains a cult following though, partly because cults appreciate a hero who knows how to rock a spooky-looking cloak, but mostly because there's nothing else quite like it. Here's an example. You're a nameless Manhunter, which means that your job is to do the Orbs' dirty work and investigate human-related incidents around New York. You have a computer, which the Orbs can use to contact you at any time. Being the Orbs though, they don't actually use that to send new missions. No, instead they prefer to burst into your room while you're sleeping and— And to think I jump when I'm woken by my phone. As if there's any doubt whatsoever that they're completely screwing with you, the Orbs can fly. When this guy leaves, after waking you up with nothing more than "THERE WAS AN EXPLOSION AT BELLEVUE HOSPITAL! INVESTIGATE!", you see him flying past the window. Why then did he use the elevator to come into your room? Because Orbs, 'witch'! Orbs! They're basically an entire species that wishes they were sentient flying bottoms rather than eyeballs. Even their kids get in on it. Look. No, look closer. They're also carnivorous, and as well as using humans as convenient baby-incubators, even their babies are capable of eating you alive if you hang around gawping when you should be running screaming and yelling "OH DEATH, FREE ME OF THIS MEMORY!" You can't actually do that, though. In fact, you can't talk at all. Nobody can. The Orbs, having listened to one too many minions responding to their orders with "Eye-eye, sir!" have banned all speech, which means humanity has to communicate with nothing more than facial expressions. They've also banned any clothes that aren't a full-length monk habit thing, which looks very itchy—though on the plus side, at least it's an outfit that will still fit after Christmas dinner, and has forever banished the plumbers' bum crack. So overall, it could be worse, though the itchiness does explain why everyone is so damn cranky. While Manhunter pretends to be a detective game, it's really more Try to Stay Sane: The Adventure. The basic gist is that every day, the Orbs wake you up with a "SURPRISE, HUMAN! EYEBALL RIGHT IN YOUR FACE!" alarm call, and tell you to go sort something out. You track the suspect's movement via your computer, follow them around and try to work out what the hell they were doing in each location. On the first day for instance, we see the suspect going to a bar, a church, a park, and then just... vanishing. When you go to the bar, the only thing to play with is an old arcade machine, but as soon as you touch it, everyone in the room angrily jumps on top of you. How do you prove your worthiness to play on their arcade cabinet? Knife-throwing. Obviously. Somewhat unfairly, if you miss during this minigame, the guy then pops your head like a champagne cork before you can actively not say "Dude! This was your idea!" Win, and everyone just vanishes, on the grounds that clearly nobody who works for the Orbs can have basic motor skills. Why won't they let you touch their arcade machine? Oh, you'll love this. This game is actually a map for later on, showing the location of 12 keycards—yes, twelve—that you need to find in a maze. Every one you collect also knocks down one of the dolls, knocking them all down showing a picture of Coney Island. The Orbs having apparently decided that we're not allowed proper clothes, speech, dignity or freedom of action, but that shutting down our funfairs would be a dick move even for them. After seeing what the resistance thinks is a good idea though, to say nothing of their real security later, I'm starting to warm to the little buggers. But it gets even sillier than this! Having gotten the codes, you need to keep following the suspect, who disappeared at the park. As a trained Manhunter, we can probably assume that there's some kind of secret door. And... well... yeah, there is. Kind of. More or less. Most games wait a while before hitting this level of craziness. Manhunter has you literally flush yourself down a toilet on Day 1, into an endless sewer maze full of grape juice that has to be mapped out by using a map from an arcade game that you're not allowed to play until you've proved yourself a master of knife-throwing. This is a thing that happens, about five minutes into the game. And no, it's not even remotely done being weird yet. At Coney Island, showing a medallion found in the sewer to a truly hideous-looking guy is deemed proof of your loyalty, or perhaps he just wants you to get the poop-smelling thing out of his face and go away, and the first day wraps up with essentially nothing whatsoever solved or resolved. Have you actually joined the resistance? It's difficult to tell, given that literally the only humans in the game with the power of speech are the designers, and they only really use it to take far too much pleasure in your death. It's not that there's no internal logic to the game, just that it's a constant battle to work out how big a bottle of absinthe was used to come up with it. Manhunter is a super linear game where you're not allowed to go anywhere unless you have a confirmed reason to be there, and there's not a lot to do once you arrive except stumble around until a solution presents itself. And die, a lot. One of the worst examples of this comes on Day 2, with a minigame about getting into a nightclub where another resistance member was tracked going to. Outside, you face off with another angry, knife-obsessed human who's so rebellious, he's not even wearing his hood. It's not enough to just very, very, veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly make your way across the screen and punch him though. That would be too easy. You have to very, very, veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly make your way across the screen and punch him, then deal with two more guys in exactly the same way. Manhunter is merciful enough to put you back where you were after death, but skip minigames? Heresy! At times like this, it's almost like it's trying to push you into ending it all for real. Most of the investigation early on is about collecting roughly a billion keycards for no reason, with the resistance being pretty careless about who it hands them off to. "Oh, you've got a picture of an orb with a cross through it?" one might say, if they could talk. "Good enough for me. Here's my card." In the nightclub, a lady resistance member spots you following her and smacks you in the face with her purse, leading to her card falling out for you to collect. My general feeling that the Orbs deserve to win this one and do whatever they want with humanity's festering corpses only keeps getting stronger. At this point though, the game starts getting a little confused about what you're doing and why. The big villain of the game is a guy called Phil, which... I think speaks for himself. It's about this point that you start stumbling across his handiwork, which he politely signs by writing the letter P onto the victims. Like this! Ordinarily, going after a serial killer would seem like a sensible idea, but in Manhunter, Phil pretty much works for the same aliens that you do, so professional courtesy would seem to involve just leaving him to it. While we don't hear the character's thoughts on working for a sadistic army of overlord eyeballs, he sure as hell sleeps soundly at night and it's not as though the people he's helping to oppress are exactly a bunch of charmers. I'm just saying. At least with the Orbs, you know where you are. As do they, of course. All the time. All of the keycards you collect during the first couple of days... all 13 of the damn things... turn out to be for doors in the Museum of Natural History. Manhunter's speciality is blending the mundane with the what-the-hell though, so obviously it's not going to be that simple to track down the day's targets. Remember when I said that you could be killed by dinosaurs in this game? If all of this seems a little chaotic, that's because it absolutely is. As I said, Manhunter is more about being led to stuff than really investigating it, and doing things because they're there. It's what's sometimes known as reverse-design, or more colloquially, 'crap design'. You don't collect 13 keycards because you know you need them for the Museum, for instance; you get to the Museum and find you need 13 keycards. It's obviously OK for things to turn out like that occasionally, especially when you're carrying around something mysterious like a card from a corpse or an artefact like Planescape's bronze sphere. Generally though, it's considered a good idea to let the main character have some kind of plan guiding their actions, rather than just simply stumbling across everything. In the case of Manhunter, at least having nigh-omniscient eyeballs telling you where to go and tracking everyone in the city means that you always have a reason to visit key locations. What you eventually pick up, aside from the resistance being far too fond of bullpucky puzzles, is that they were working on a plan to take out the Orbs once and for all. Unfortunately, Phil—oh, by the way, this is Phil: Phil has managed to murder them all before they could actually pull it off. That means that you're the only one with a chance of striking back, and the game just assumes that you're in the mood for that after discovering the Orbs' greatest secret—that they're mulching up the citizens of New York for their meat. Again, normally I'd be against that kind of of thing... but these citizens specifically? I'm going to have to call reverse-design here again, in that it makes you decide to strike back before giving you a genuinely compelling reason to go all-in with the resistance. Specifically, Orby the Mission Eyeball turns up and essentially orders you to investigate yourself, the mysterious person who broke into their files, and doubles-down by saying that after this assignment, you're going to be "Transferred to Chicago". Now, that might sound OK. I gather it's been at least five days since its last jazz-related fatality. In Manhunter though, it's code for 'about to spend the rest of your life being glad that the rest of your life at least isn't going to be very long', and then becoming an alien hamburger. So, yeah. Probably best to stop these guys, as long as it doesn't involve more insane, out of place minigames. The Orbs, loving their drama, have based their plans out of the Empire State Building. Luckily, despite their armies of robots and meat-mulching machines, they are no match for one guy who psychically decided to sabotage their security systems in advance. The resistance's plan? Steal an Orb bomber ship and consult Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Chapter 3: Nuke All That 'frack'. Sounds like a plan! But first... even more minigames! Great. You know your aliens are intergalactic losers when their plans involve live-action Frak. Stealing an Orb ship, all that remains to be done is to take out their four New York bases—made only slightly trickier by the fact that Phil also has an Orb ship and is coming to get you. There's the Hospital, where they feed on the dead, the Statue of Liberty pumping noxious chemicals into the air, the Empire State Building where they run their schemes, and a small newsagent who once short-changed the Manhunter and he's still bitter about. Or Grand Central Station. One of the two, anyway. Even this isn't enough to conclusively stop the Orbs, who have after all conquered the planet. It buys New York its temporary freedom though, and everyone is quite happy about that. Look how happy everyone is about that. Their happy faces. Then everyone remembers that Phil is still flying an Orb ship around. Then this happens. And this is Phil's face after that happened. So, yeah. That was totally worth it! And so the game ends, with the Manhunter getting back aboard his stolen ship and giving chase to the second game, Manhunter: San Francisco. In that one, he's officially with the rebels from the start, though spends most of the game masquerading as a loyal Manhunter after stealing a new identity. It's also a very strange game, though second time around, the quirkiness wasn't as surprising. There were plans for a third adventure, Manhunter: London, but the series ended there—in true Manhunter style, very strangely, with him literally hanging onto Phil's spaceship as it took off. These were not particularly good adventures, but it's easy to see why people remember them so fondly. They manage to make looking hideous work for them, with a ton of detail. The surreal situations mean you never have the slightest clue what's coming next, whether it's being killed by a dinosaur or trying to make it through a minefield in Central Park. Even when something seems like it's relatively sane, there's usually a twist—a shopkeeper working for the resistance won't simply open a door to a base when given the code, but a trapdoor, with the Manhunter's cloak blowing up to reveal comedy boxer shorts as he falls. It's a weird mix of genuinely gruesome and ludicrously silly that's actually really entertaining, even if the puzzles and minigames are generally a pain in the neck. While there are a couple of LPs out there, the best way to check out the complete investigation—from the start of New York to the end of San Francisco—is over on the LP Archive. It's got animated gifs for some of the more interesting moments, and even comes up with an epilogue to replace London that's probably about what it would have turned out to be given the designers' sense of humour. And now, excuse me. After repeating some of these puzzles, I need to go and apologise to the Towers of Hanoi for ever complaining about them. Don't however expect this mood to last longer than... oooh... Sunday, though. Next time I see them, I'm still bringing the wrecking ball. View the full article