‘Even though I threw out my back from overworking, I’m feeling high in spirits’: Slay the Spire 2 sold 3 million copies in its first week

It can be tricky to pull off a sequel, especially when you’re talking about a sequel to one of the most celebrated deckbuilding roguelikes around. Slay the Spire 2 might be the result of a coin flip, but it sure seems to be resonating—a Steam community blog post from developer Mega Crit has served up…

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My latest obsession is this vampire cathedral PC mod, so I spoke to the creators: ‘We can do Bloodborne on the PC—not on PC, on the PC’

Not everyone wants a black box desktop. Yes, a bit of RGB lighting certainly perks up the samey cuboid silhouette of a gaming rig, but what about those of us who want something with just a bit more personality? Something—dare I say it—a wee bit Extra? How about a 3D printed cathedral kit that magnetically…

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Asset reuse in videogames is essential, and we need to embrace it, says Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry director: ‘We redo too much stuff’

Do you remember Far Cry Primal? Ubisoft’s prehistoric spinoff was pitched as an intriguing departure from the formula, in which players would leave their jeeps and helicopters behind to embrace life at the dawn of the Mesolithic period. They would tread lightly between the Carpathian mountains, taking down saber-toothed cats as a club-wielding tribesman with…

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The creator of Stephen’s Sausage Roll has released a new puzzle-platformer where you play as an egg, in the latest example of a developer fallen to the sunny side

Late last year, I wrote about a bizarre moment when game developers suddenly became obsessed with eggs for some reason. Then everybody pointed out all the games about eggs that I didn’t mention in the article, as if the goal was to create an exhaustive list of egg-based games and not observe a general trend….

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Throwback XCOM successor Xenonauts 2 leaves early access in April, though the developer says the milestone ‘doesn’t mean our work is done’

XCOM 3 may still be nothing more than a glint in Firaxis’ compound eye, but Steam’s digital walk-in freezer is bursting with alternative tactical lifeforms to dissect. These range from Julian Gollop’s own attempt to modernise XCOM in Phoenix Point, to The Long War creators’ absurdly complex Terra Invicta, which blows out X-COM’s alien invasion…

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22 years later, this classic Half-Life zombie survival mod shambles onto Steam with all new features

Before Valve reinvented cooperative gaming with Left 4 Dead, there was Zombie Panic! A mod for the original Half-Life, Zombie Panic! pitted groups of players against a single, player-controlled brain-muncher. Which doesn’t sound all that challenging, except that any survivors killed by the zombie would rise again as zombies themselves, slowly turning the tide against…

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Baby Steps’ designers trolled players by placing stacks of cans at the top of ‘plausible’ climbing challenges they didn’t even bother testing, and players managed to climb them all—except one

There is a style of game design built around rigorous playtesting and polish, aiming to smoothly guide the player from one challenge to the next, ensuring they never get hung up for too long or become too frustrated by an obstacle they can’t overcome. And then there’s Baby Steps. One of the best games of…

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