Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert’s next game is ‘classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park’-
Ron Gilbert, famed for his work on classic adventures including Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and more recently Thimbleweed Park, is getting up to something new and that looks to be quite different from his past work. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s described on Gilbert’s Terrible Toybox website as “classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park.”
Gilbert’s been posting about his new game on Mastodon (via Time Extension) since early 2024, but it’s gone largely unnoticed until just recently. In February, he shared an image of a whiteboard rough-out of the opening area and quests, and a little bit of stats work; from there, he’s posted a few more in-progress images, along with some brief thoughts about his process.
“I have been working on it for a year …
Animated Tomb Raider series gets a teaser trailer, release date-
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It looks like Netflix animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft will release on October 10, 2024. The series will follow up on the most modern Tomb Raider Trilogy (Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider) and serve as a kind of bridge between that trilogy and the original games.
The trailer shows Lara in a variety of environments, from jungles to deserts, fighting with a signature bow and also some kind of… sword… whip… thing. She’s also got a scene on that vintage Harley-Davidson every action hero finds themself on at some point or another. I’m surprised there are any of those left, really, at the rate that these heroes seem to wreck them.
Lara Croft will be voiced by Hayley Atwell, most famous for portraying Peggy Carter i…
Romania’s got a new government AI advisor- ‘My role is to represent you, like a mirror.’-
The Romanian cabinet was introduced to its newest member on Wednesday: what prime minister Nicolae Ciucă described as an “honorary adviser” called Ion (via Politico). It’s an AI tool developed by Romanian scientists which is designed to sift through data and “quickly and automatically capture the opinions and desires” of citizens, says Ciucă. “We are talking about the first government adviser to use artificial intelligence.”
Ion takes input via speech and text, and outputs through an on-screen face and computerised vocalisations. It’s connected to this website on which Romanian citizens can submit their complaints and ideas about government services, and can also take input through being tagged on social media and will have terminals at some locations such …
Pokémon Worlds competitor gets disqualified straight after winning the quarter-finals, thanks to a rude hand gesture-
The Pokémon World Championships (or Worlds) kicked off in Hawaii last week, and since then, we’ve seen the best TCG players in the world duke it out for the top spot. The competition’s winners have already been announced, but I think we’ve found the prize for the most controversial decision.
One competitor, Ian Robb, sat down opposite Fernando Cifuentes in the masters quarter-finals. After a hard-fought battle, Robb came out on top, so it looked like he would progress to the next stage of the tournament. However, when the next battle began, fans in the audience were confused to see Cifuentes, not Robb, sitting in the challenger’s seat.
It turns out that The Pokémon Company’s international global esports and events director, Chris Brown, had to step …
Steam’s second-most-anticipated game is finally going to show some footage just a month before it launches-
You may have forgotten about The Day Before by now. It was first announced in January 2021 as “an open-world MMO survival” game, and then in April of that year we got a 10-minute gameplay video. And that’s really been it—nothing of substance has been heard about the game since.
That situation will soon change, though, as developer Fntastic says that it will reveal “raw gameplay footage” from The Day Before later this month.
“We are pleased to inform you that the wait for news regarding our game release is coming to an end,” Fntastic wrote in a Discord announcement. “After careful consideration and discussions with our leadership team, we have received approval to share the information you have been eagerly anticipating.
“This month, we will be releasing raw gamep…
The mathematical constant of Pi is playing Pokémon on Twitch—after 25,000 hours it’s curbstomped two children and power-levelled its starter, but is yet to escape the first town
It’s all gotten out of hand. They’ve got concepts playing games now. Specifically, the venerable genre of Twitch Plays—those times when a swarming Twitch chat competes for control over games like Pokémon, and Dark Souls—has evolved to the point that Pi is currently playing Pokémon Sapphire. Actually, it’s been playing it for three years (via GamesRadar).
That’s Pi as in the mathematical constant. The one you probably know as (at least) 3.14 but which goes on, well, forever if you let it. The way it works is this: Every digit between 0 and 9 has been assigned to a button on the Game Boy Advance (some buttons have two digits assigned). The computer then simply proceeds through digits of Pi sequentially and makes the corresponding input. For examp…
The best Minecraft texture packs
Searching for the best Minecraft texture packs to spruce (or birch) up all your new worlds and builds? Consider this your very own double chest spilling over with the finest texture treasures, all precious pixelated gold. We’ve made a digital odyssey to catalogue and acquire all of the very best Minecraft texture packs, all so that no matter what build you’ve got on the brain you’ll have the very finest textures to work with.
Minecraft update: What’s new?
Minecraft skins: New looks
Minecraft mods: Beyond vanilla
Minecraft shaders
This 34-inch MSI ultrawide gaming monitor is just $280 and comes with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla-
Time to expand your mind. Or, more accurately, your gaming monitor. Though by extension, your mind. I’ve said it before: a more expansive screen can improve your gaming power, and when you can go all the way up to 1440p ultrawide for just $280 thanks to Newegg’s sale, that gaming potential is well within reach.
The MSI MAG342CQPV has a lot going for it, too, especially when you consider the price of some ultrawide gaming monitors, and with this deal you also get a $60 game with it for free. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is one of our best rated games and it comes for free along with this monitor, no need to swear on your arm band or anything.
The MAG342CQPV hits a deep 1500R curve, for more immersion than your average 1800R curve, so you can really get your Viking apocalypse on.…
This year’s Warhammer Skulls event, presented by actor Rahul Kohli, will have new reveals for Space Marine 2, Boltgun, and more—plus an up to 90% off sale on Warhammer games-
Fans of giant shoulder pads and yelling rejoice: Games Workshop’s Skulls event is back for another year on May 23, with the promise of plenty of new reveals for Warhammer videogames. A showing for the upcoming Space Marine 2 and something new for Boltgun seem to be the focus, but we’re also promised news on Rogue Trader, Total War: Warhammer, Blood Bowl 3, Tacticus, Battlesector, Warpforge, and Darktide. I’m sure there’ll be at least one or two surprises we’ve not been let in on yet too.
Actor Rahul Kohli (known for TV shows Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Bly Manor) will be hosting the announcements. He did the same last year, as well as voice acting for the game Boltgun—all part of his endearing ongoing campaign to replace Henry Cavill as the internet’s favourite h…
Diablo 4’s season 1 cosmetics will let you slap whatever on whoever-
Diablo 4 has been out for nearly a month now, so it’s time to turn the whole thing on its head. Season 1 of Blizzard’s loot-lusty ARPG is just around the corner—set to launch in a vaguely defined “mid to late July”—and it’s meant to bring all sorts of stuff with it.
That means new quests, legendary items, balance changes to get mad at, and, crucially, a battle pass. And while I’m ambivalent at best about Diablo 4 adding yet another way to monetise itself, we can at least take heart that—per Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson (via Wowhead)—the cosmetics tied to Diablo 4’s season 1 battle pass will be “class agnostic”.
Personally, I was actually more excited the first time I saw that tweet and misread it as ‘class agonistic,’ but that’s neither …
Well that didn’t take long- Diablo 4 is coming to Steam-
Boy, that sure didn’t take long. Blizzard announced today that Diablo 4, the latest iteration of its demon-clobbering action-RPG, will be coming to Steam on October 17, and is available for wishlisting now.
Diablo 4 on Steam will support cross-platform play with other versions of the game—Battle.net, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5—and will offer unique Steam-specific features including Steam achievements and integration with the Steam friends list. It will also be playable on the Steam Deck.
The launch of Diablo 4 on Steam will coincide with the start of the Season of Blood, the game’s second season and Blizzard’s hoped-for bounceback from the mess of season one. The Season of the Malignant, as it’s known, did not go over well with fa…
Windows 10 users are soon to be hit with nagging prompts asking them to create an online account-
Despite Microsoft’s best efforts, Windows 10 remains popular across the world. Even though Windows 11 has been around for years and received swathes of updates, many users stubbornly hold onto the older OS. The reasons are varied. Apart from the old ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ adage, reasons not to upgrade include Windows 11’s steep system requirements, a lack of truly compelling new features, or the much criticized requirement to create a Microsoft account. I find myself agreeing with Elon Musk on that last point.
Now, Microsoft is going to more aggressively push Windows 10 users to use an online account too. Our sister site Windows Central reports that Microsoft is going to start pushing notifications to get users to ditch local accounts on Windows 10 in favo…
Wordle today- Hint and answer #891 for Monday, November 27-
The answer to today’s Wordle is just a quick click away, ready to help if you need it. Don’t need it (not yet, anyway)? Then keep on scrolling and you’ll soon find our fantastic selection of Wordle tips and advice, as well as a handy clue for the November 27 (891) puzzle.
Wow, that was close. I gave my Wordle a classic “skyscraper” look for much of today’s game, tall green towers surrounded by increasingly panicked grey guesses. A little pause to break my losing train of thought was a big help today, just the change I needed to look at the puzzle with fresh eyes—and find the answer.
Wordle today: A hint
Wordle today: A hint for Monday, November 27
This word is a colour and an owl. The colour is a sort of warm, sandy brown. The owl is found …
With Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Black Myth- Wukong, and Star Wars Outlaws, ray tracing in games is slowly becoming an Nvidia-exclusive-
At this year’s Gamescom event, two forthcoming games heavily feature ray tracing as the means for producing the best possible graphics. Star Wars Outlaws and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle both have graphics features, either exclusively developed by Nvidia or are so demanding that only high-end GeForce RTX cards can really handle it.
Nvidia was the first GPU vendor to bring real-time ray tracing hardware to the gaming masses at another Gamescom in 2018, with its GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards. But since then, AMD and Intel have both followed suit, and all new gaming PCs and consoles are more or less capable of ray tracing. Most PC gamers are well aware that Nvidia’s GPUs can do ray tracing faster than the competition but three games show that Nvidia is doing its best to …
With a month to go until Elden Ring- Shadow of the Erdtree, FromSoftware has broken its silence once more to show us a messed up new guy we’ll fight in the expansion-
Truly, there are few games that could work me into a lather with a single, context-free image of a new enemy, but Elden Ring is certainly one of them. The official Elden Ring Twitter account casually dropped the new nasty boy—who was not featured in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion’s first trailer—this morning.
“Fearsome foes of unfathomable power await you in the Realm of Shadow,” the tweet reads. Alright, yeah, I think I could have guessed that. The real meat here is in the image: a gold mask-wearing, grey skinned thing with Omen horns, twin round blades (think the Daedric Crescent from Morrowind, I’m not cultured enough to know what the real life counterpart might be), and stark white hair draping down over the mask and through one of its e…
Wordle hint and answer #646- Monday, March 27-
However you’d like to play today’s Wordle, you’ll find hints and tips below designed to help. We’ve got general advice for newcomers looking to improve their daily game, today’s answer in big, bold letters if you’re struggling, and a helpful clue written just for the March 27 (646) game.
For a few guesses, today’s Wordle looked like it might be unsalvageable, just a messy scramble of yellows and one green that made no sense—until it all did. It was something of a relief to see the Wordle answer pop up immediately after that classic “lightbulb” moment.
Wordle hint
A Wordle hint for Monday, March 27
You might not want to think about animal excrement while solving your Wordle, but I’m afraid you’ll have to today. This particular…