An ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ idle game about plastic ducks floating in a pool has a collectible card-game successor, and there’s a demo you can play now

I am often in a state of delighted befuddlement at the games which prove popular on Steam, but few have simultaneously thrilled and baffled me as much as the success of Placid Plastic Duck Simulator. The game, which is really more of an interactive screensaver, involves guiding a rubber duck around a pool filled with…

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Crytek says the most important difference between Far Cry and Crysis had nothing to do with technology: ‘In Crysis, we mimicked nature as closely as possible’

Sorry (not sorry) for rolling out this withered, ancient chestnut, but it truly is mind-blowing how good Crysis still looks today. What’s even more amazing is just how advanced it looked compared to Crytek’s previous game Far Cry, even though the two only released three years apart. I always figured the difference was due to…

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Stormgate is leaving early access before it’s technically finished: ‘We believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience’

Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios recently announced that its Warcraft-inspired RTS will receive its first proper single-player campaign in August, and that this juncture would mark the game’s official departure from Steam early access. However, this reveal led to some confusion, as Frost Giant numbered its launch version “0.6” instead, causing players to speculate that…

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These fanmade reload animations for Abiotic Factor are so good the game’s own art director praises them: ‘You absolutely nailed the vibe I was going for’

Half-Life-inspired survival game Abiotic Factor cascaded into a 1.0 launch earlier this week, earning itself an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating on Steam, and a whopping score of 92 in our Abiotic Factor review. Our intrepid brainiac Morgan Park called it “one of the greatest survival crafting games ever made, and by far my favourite,” praising its…

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Fans are celebrating Magic: The Gathering’s latest return to its own setting, but numbers don’t lie—the Final Fantasy crossover boosted revenue 23%

The planes of the Magic: The Gathering multiverse are separated by the Blind Eternities, a mysterious between-space that’s never been fully explored. The latest set, Edge of Eternities, visits the boundary of the Blind Eternities for the first time, using it as the locale for a science-fantasy space opera that pushes at the limit of…

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Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, July 27

Use our clue for today’s Wordle whenever you feel you need some extra help. Keep it to one side, ready for those tricky moments later on when either the right letters aren’t showing up, or they are but make no sense. Unleash it straight away, ensuring your first line is the best it can possibly…

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I played a visual novel about the terror of having a ‘casual’ boss and a job that wants you to conform to society’s expectations—but not the ones involving economic stability

Truer than You is a visual novel about the gig economy. You’re hired by a start-up run by a techbro who wears “fun” t-shirts—always a warning sign—to complete vague tasks delivered via phone app. It’s sort of like Fiverr only the jobs range from helping someone who might be an artist or might be a…

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