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Baldur's Gate 3 has many characters and NPCs to woo and romance, but an alarmingly large section of the internet is obsessed with one that does not, in fact, exist. Meet Evelyn—a modded character who has taken BG3 TikTok by storm. In the span of two short years, Evelyn's had cosplays and fan edits praising her in droves—here's one from last month with over 1.5 million likes and 250,000 bookmarks.

@sh1nxnz♬ New Jeans Jersey Club - Dxrkaii

My favourite thing about this job, dear reader, is how I'm sometimes thrown down a well of curiosity so deep it becomes an SCP-level cognitohazard, and Evelyn seems like one of those invasive thoughtforms. Pretty fitting for a game with actual brain worms, mind.

Still, in case you've wandered here by means of search engine, let me clear things up before I get into her lore: Evelyn is not an NPC in Baldur's Gate 3—she's not even a companion mod. Evelyn is a custom character created by TikTok user v.@fromacrypt back in late 2023.

Her roots go back to a separate character called Danni, created by ari_@ilikedaisy0 around two months prior. Both characters are doe-eyed, lightly-freckled ladies with fashionably messy hair—though Evelyn is specifically more goth, being a Cleric of Shar that's multiclassing into a Necromancer Wizard.

Evelyn's even had cosplayers (the one I just linked by @1dlerosie also happens to have over a million likes) dressing up as her, too. With this amount of fan dedication—and the fact you can easily miss some NPCs in Baldur's Gate 3 by, say, accidentally leaving them in a portal—it's not exactly surprising that newer adventurers could be duped into thinking Evelyn is Evel-in the actual game.

It doesn't help that some inevitable shitposting's sprung up around her—with fake video tutorials leading would-be Evelyn lovers astray. She's even breached TikTok containment once or twice. Here's a post from a year back on the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit crying out for sweet succor. And another one. And a third.

As for why this whole thing's taken off? Well, Evelyn might've been given a touch of an algorithmic boost by Morgana Evelyn, a completely unrelated but still very good challenge runner who I highly recommend. Otherwise, I'd simply say you can never underestimate the power of a banger OC.

It might just be that I'm from a different time; an era of Deviantart and Homestuck, but people do just sometimes select a fanmade character to be elevated to deific status with little rhyme or reason.

Besides, with the analysis paralysis that any RPG can induce, I'm not shocked some folks like the idea of running with a modded preset, so much so that they clamour (and receive) a tutorial on how to make said character from their creator. And why not? Is recreating Evelyn that much different from the dozens of players who run with the default Dark Urge? I rest my case.

Baldur's Gate 3 romance: Who to pursueBaldur's Gate 3 multiplayer: How co-op worksBaldur's Gate 3 endings: For better or worseBaldur's Gate 3 multiclass builds: Coolest combosBest RPGs: The greatest you can play now

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According to a detailed post on X, Intel's next-gen Nova Lake desktop CPU will be getting over double the cores of its existing Arrow Lake chips. The top Core Ultra 9 model allegedly packs a staggering 52 cores. But it's arguably the mid-range Ultra 5 that's most interesting given it boasts more cores in every category than Intel's incumbent top desktop processor.

The current Intel Core Ultra 9 285K has eight Performance and 16 Efficient cores. However, according to the X post, there will be a Nova Lake Core Ultra 5 model with eight Performance, 16 Efficient and another four Low Power Efficient cores.

New Intel Desktop CPUs coming..🧐🧐🧐150W for Core Ultra 9/7. Core Ultra 5 125W. pic.twitter.com/mW0MS2lKM9June 16, 2025

Meanwhile, the top Core Ultra 9 model crams in 16 Performance, 32 Efficient and four Low Power Efficient cores for that grand total of 52 cores. Even the very lowest end Nova Lake gets 12 cores, with a 4P, 4E and 4 LP-E split.

If true, Nova Lake will be the biggest jump in raw CPU performance from Intel in some time. Intel's desktop chips have topped out at eight Performance cores since the Alder Lake generation launched back in late 2021.

That generation also offered eight Efficient cores. But while the Raptor Lake follow-up boosted the E-Core count to 16 a year later, Intel hasn't increased core counts since. Indeed, Intel actually deprecated the total thread count when Arrow Lake arrived in October last year on account of removing support for HyperThreading, which enables Performance cores to support two software threads in parallel when present.

AMD currently tops out at 16 cores on the desktop. (Image credit: Future)

Anyway, if these core counts are correct, the multi-threading performance of Nova Lake will be pretty epic. If Nova Lake also brings improved IPC from its Performance cores, thought to be codenamed Coyote Cove, and Efficient cores, codenamed Arctic Wolf, then the overall performance uptick could be spectacular.

As for how this compares with AMD's future plans, it isn't totally clear. Various rumours point to anywhere from 12-core to 32-core chiplets in AMD's next-gen CPU plans using the upcoming Zen 6 architecture. The former would probably mean a 24-core top desktop CPU, the latter as many as 64 cores given AMD's top desktop CPU conventionally has two CPU core chiplets.

However, the 32-core chiplet is probably based on the Zen 6c architecture with compact cores with the full Zen 6 chiplet topping out at either 12 or 16 cores. That would give total core counts of 24 and 32 respectively. With multithreading, you'd be looking at 48 or 64 threads.

If you take a pessimistic view, that's 48 threads from 24 full fat Zen 6 cores versus 52 mixed cores from Intel. Game on. However you slice it, it certainly looks like desktop PCs will benefit from a very meaty upgrade when Nova Lake and Zen 6 arrive.

Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

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As for exactly when that will happen, we'd bank on late 2026 for Nova Lake in terms of a launch date with early 2027 a more realistic target for widespread availability. It's not yet clear what production node Intel will use for Nova Lake, with Intel's own 18A and 14A nodes, along with TSMC N2 all mooted as possibilities by various rumours.

AMD's Zen 6, meanwhile, may be based on TSMC's N2 node when it arrives, likely in the second half of 2026. AMD has confirmed that the server variant of Zen 6 will definitely use TSMC's next-gen N2 node, which heavily implies, though doesn't absolutely guarantee, that Zen 6 for PCs will use the same technology.

Anywho, the latter half of 2026 is certainly shaping up to be pretty exciting for the PC in terms of new CPUs.

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I am very much an over-ear headphones girlie—living in a historic tourist town will do that to you. But besides that, my weird little cartilage has just never found in-ear buds agreeable. If they're not making my ears ache, earbuds are straight up popping out and threatening to get lost somewhere in the unknowable corners of my messy desk. But can heavy-hitting headgear honcho Sony change my mind?

Once upon a time, I was a weirdo with a Sony Xperia Z3, a phone that lasted me almost half a decade. Even wilder, I'm genuinely still using the wired earbuds that came out of that box. As great as those still are for Discord calls with my Final Fantasy XIV Online Free Company, I'm not a fan of the wire rattling across my jacket zip or getting caught on goodness knows what else when I'm out IRL. So with all of that in mind, it would be fair to say I was optimistic about the Sony WF-C510.

The first test—would the smallest of the three included tips actually play nice with my narrow cartilage?—yielded a comfortable result. Truthfully, I can easily wear these for a full day of work without my ears aching.

Sony WF-C510 specs

(Image credit: Future)

Drivers: 6 mm Frequency response: 20 - 20,000 Hz (44.1 kHz sampling)Connection: Bluetooth 5.3Battery life: Up to 22 hours (11 from earphones, additional 11 from case)Extras: Charging case, 3x different-sized tips, Waterproof IPX4Price: $59.99 / £55

As for taking them out into the real world, these Sony earbuds haven't attempted to make a popping break for it out of my ear yet. A compact, sleek design (available in white, black, blue, or yellow) means these hardly scream 'gamer earbuds' either. My only complaint is that, despite a fairly good seal, I do still get some wind noise as I power walk to work. Otherwise, these earbuds are great for listening to tunes or a podcast at your desk—but leave much to be desired if your day-to-day is full of video calls.

As is typical for earbuds, the mic's noise cancelling is abysmal. That's not the end of the world if you're just trying to quietly coordinate the Free Company, but anyone situated in, say, a noisy, open-plan space will end up sharing all nearby conversations over every video call. Because of this, these earbuds are especially ill-suited to taking calls while out and about or otherwise on the go.

This is genuinely a shame, as the earbuds otherwise do a surprisingly great job of filtering out ambient noise as you listen to tunes, despite not having Active Noise Cancellation. Instead, you can choose to filter out or listen in on ambient noise with a press of the left earbud.

(Image credit: Future)

Alright, so party chat aside, how does the Sony WF-C510 fare for music and gaming? In a word: serviceably. I found the sound quality comparable to my trusty, over-ear JBL TUNE 720BT headphones—which is just as well, as both float around a similar price point on Amazon. Sure, there's an attempt at bassiness here and there, though nothing truly roof-raising due to those absolutely tiny 6 mm drivers.

Overall, it's a pretty balanced, clear sound profile, with maybe just a touch of splashiness on the percussion—sure, it could be better, but it could also be a lot worse. There's limited room to futz around with audio equalisation in Sony's Sound Connect app, but you can only download this to Android smartphones and iPhones, with no PC compatible app currently available.

So, while I wasn't wringing any fresh depth out of Une vie à t'aimer from the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack (which may well be down to Spotify's compression more than anything else), the Sony WF-C510 earbuds are still good enough to prompt me to consider diving back in to collect all of the RPG's Steam achievements.

But while these buds are fine for turn-based parrying and dodging, I doubt they'll offer an edge in gameplay that's any twitchier, as these lack anything like a 'low-latency game mode' or any gamer-geared options at all. These are definitely aimed at a more everyday consumer crowd.

TINY! (Image credit: Future)

The main sticking point is the earbud buttons, which encourage you to almost think in code for more complex functions. Due to the compact size of the buds, it's one button for multiple functions, with different actions predominantly differentiated by the number of presses. Pressing the right bud's button pauses and plays the current track, while tapping the left bud button once toggles the Ambient Sound Mode. For slightly less frequently used functions, you need to either paw at the buds multiple times or fiddle with the UI on your paired device.

This is fairly standard for the small form factor of earbuds, and thankfully, you can customise the buttons' functions in the Sony Sound Connect app. However, this is only on a very limited profile basis. In other words, you can choose either your left or right bud to handle playback control functions—but that means you're looking at rapidly pressing your earbud four times just to adjust the volume by default.

Thankfully, the earbud buttons are the least friendly part of the user experience. Great, multi-point connectivity means that as soon as I open the sleek little case, the Sony WF-C510 earbuds easily find my phone and desktop again with no nudging required from me. Comparatively, I tend to find my pricier Philips TAH8506 wireless headphones need a lot more cajoling to reconnect.

(Image credit: Future)

As for initial pairing, you just need to flip open the Sony WF-C510 earbud cradle case and hold down the button on the back for five seconds—it couldn't be easier. The case itself also handles charging, storing another 11 hours of power on top of the earbud's 11 battery. A light on the open case will turn orange when it's running low, and a notification even tells me how much power is left in each bud and the case whenever I connect them to my phone.

Buy if...

✅ You want affordable, wireless earbuds with great connectivity: I can't fault the multi-point bluetooth connection on offer here.

Don't buy if...

❌ You want earbuds with a beefy battery: 11 hours of charge in the earbuds on top of 11 hours of charge held in the case really isn't that much.❌ You want to chat without giving the Discord server an earful: Perhaps par for the course, the mic on these earbuds struggles to filter out ambient sound.❌ You long for deep equalisation options or bass that rattles your skull: You're just not going to get a lot out of those 6 mm drivers. Sony's Sound Connect offers some customisation, the app is far from an audiophile's delight—especially as it's not yet available on PC.

Still, it's hardly the beefiest battery life, especially as hours of heavy use will definitely give you less than 11 hours of playback. For instance, the Creative Outlier Pro buds boast a comparatively much larger reserve, packing in 60 hours of charge into the case alone. Furthermore, Creative's earbuds also offer ANC, running for about 10 hours with this switched on, while only costing about 20 bucks more than the Sony WF-C510 buds.

Wanting battery life aside, the Sony earbuds magnetically snap into place within the case, automatically charging on contact. The case is compact, though it doesn't feel overly flimsy, featuring a wide back hinge that could withstand at least some force—not that I'd advise testing that out.

But even with swish magnetic attachment, I can't quite escape the anxiety that these earbuds will be far easier to lose than full-sized headphones. So, while I appreciate that earbuds don't leave me feeling like I'm walking around with claustrophobic horse blinders all day, I'm still reluctant to declare myself a complete convert.It's also hard not to feel the absence of any gaming-specific features. If you're looking for a pair of earbuds that will change the mind of someone who swears by hefty gaming headsets, you're better off checking our best wireless gaming earbuds guide.

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In a move I'm gonna say none of us predicted, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is getting shown at a film festival. That's not a film version of the game's story—it's the game itself, cut down into some sort of "cinematic cut" that Warhorse is hailing as "a proud moment for games as a serious storytelling medium."

Per a post on Warhorse's X, "The world premiere of the KCD2 Cinematic Cut will take place on 9 July," and will feature as part of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival's Special Screenings section.

We're honoured to announce that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II will be featured at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.The world premiere of the #KCD2 Cinematic Cut will take place on 9 July - a proud moment for games as a serious storytelling medium.@KVIFF pic.twitter.com/bJGm3JuyXgJune 17, 2025

I am desperate to know what the heck this thing is going to look like. Is it just going to be one of those YouTube supercuts that splice all a game's cutscenes together? Will there be gameplay snippets for all the parts where story info is conveyed while the player is still in control of Henry? Is a hapless audience unwittingly signing themselves up for an unbroken 80-hour Let's Play? I hope it's that one.

Alas, neither the festival nor Warhorse are keen to provide details until the big day, though they are saying all the usual rosy words: "I have wished to see Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 on the big screen for a long time," says Warhorse CEO Martin Frývadlský. "I believe that the civil story of a blacksmith's son will also appeal to film audiences and stand up to the competition of international movie productions."

(Image credit: Deep Silver)

Is that true? I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong, I loved KCD2 (enough to score it 90% in our Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review) and think its story is pretty great, but I also think the best way to imbibe that story is through the game's strange, rambling, imsim-flavoured interactivity. I don't know that you're really getting the KCD2 experience if you're not getting diverted to rob every store in Kuttenberg, or taking on roadside fights you quickly learn you can't win, or picking dialogue options that reveal Henry can get trashed enough to speak fluent Hungarian.

But maybe I'm wrong. Someone should probably send me to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to find out.

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Dear reader, it might not surprise you to hear this, given my professional, actual job is to write for a site about PC Gaming—but I'm not really into sports. This isn't universal among our staff, mind. I was duly ribbed for the way I described the following feeling in our morning meet.

However, the recent move of Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins to Critical Role's Darrington Press, after a combined 46 years at D&D, is the closest I will ever get to witnessing the transfer of a high-profile athlete between sports teams. Now, when someone talks to me about how John Sports was bought by a rival team, I can say "I know exactly how you feel about John Sports".

Some context, first: Darrington Press is the publishing arm of Critical Role, a long-standing D&D actual play stream that's accrued enough fans to nigh-instantly fund an Amazon Prime animated series. Critical Role has grown into its own media empire and TTRPG company, releasing sourcebooks for homebrew systems Candela Obscura and Daggerheart.

Perkins and Crawford, meanwhile, are some major industry talents. Formerly the senior story designer and principle rules designer of Dungeons & Dragons, Perkins left WoTC in April of this year after 28 years at the company, with Crawford departing soon after.

Both were large losses for Wizards of the Coast, which had just finished releasing its 2024 ruleset overhaul. And now they're working for Critical Role, a company that got its start livestreaming D&D, to design systems that are direct competitors. In a post to the Darrington Press website, Critical Role writes:

"Exciting news—our Darrington Press team has grown, adding Chris Perkins as our Creative Director and Jeremy Crawford as Game Director! We’re thrilled to welcome both Chris and Jeremy’s expertise in game design and storytelling, honed through decades of experience working together on tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars Roleplaying, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Blue Rose. We’re enormous fans of their work and are honored to welcome them into our team."

The words "enormous fans of their work" feels like an understatement, when your company got its start playing one of their games—I don't think Critical Role owes Wizards of the Coast fealty or anything, there's just a certain kind of poetry in action here. The student has snapped up two of the masters.

Perkins says: "Storytelling has always been at the heart of everything I do, and joining Darrington Press feels a bit like coming home ... I’ve loved being a part of the extended Critical Role family as a regular guest over the years and I’m beyond excited to help create new worlds full of adventure."

Crawford, meanwhile, seems buzzing with excitement. "This team is passionate, wildly creative, and committed to building welcoming, connected, amazing story-driven experiences—I can’t wait to expand on what Critical Role has already created to develop some really fun and unique games."

Wizards of the Coast has been fumbling the bag these past 10 years when it comes to D&D—mostly. I might have my issues and grumbles and gripes with D&D's 2024 rules remaster, but it's a fine ruleset, and I'm certain plenty of people will enjoy it. When it comes to secondary projects like capitalising on Baldur's Gate 3's success, developing its own VTT, and so on? It's stumble after stumble.

(Image credit: Darrington Press / Art by Nikki Dawes.)

I have to wonder out loud—and this is pure conjecture and speculation—whether Perkins and Crawford moving over to Darrington Press has something to do with wanting to escape a stifling, Hasbro-driven environment. Critical Role isn't a small pennies company, mind, but it certainly doesn't have a CEO who keeps talking about how cool AI is.

If there is any lingering disquietude, Perkins, Crawford, and Critical Role are all likely to keep it quiet—and with good reason. It's bad professional manners to speak poorly of a former employer, for one thing, but Critical Role also isn't entirely disconnected from the D&D brand just yet.

It's just as likely that Perkins and Crawford want to do something new. You make the same game for a couple of decades, and you'll want to go do something else. Especially given D&D 2024 is a rules revamp, not an overhaul—staying would mean committing to another decade or so of tinkering with the same skeleton. Whatever their reasons, I'm genuinely excited to see what Perkins and Crawford bring to the table.

Still, this has to sting a little for ol' Wizards of the Coast. D&D 2024 went fine, but as a wider company, it can't seem to stop losing talented business partners and employees. First Larian sets sail for greener pastures, and now this. This might be another sign that the TTRPG industry's overdue another OGL-style shakeup.

Baldur's Gate 3 romance: Who to pursueBaldur's Gate 3 multiplayer: How co-op worksBaldur's Gate 3 endings: For better or worseBaldur's Gate 3 multiclass builds: Coolest combosBest RPGs: The greatest you can play now

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Elden Ring Nightreign doesn't just have brutal bosses with the aim of a sniper and the fury of Zeus, it also has, at times, a map that tries to kill you. And I'm not just talking about the storm.

Occasionally there'll be Shifting Earth events. These start popping up after you defeat the first Nightlord Gladius, Beast of Night (Tricephalos). When they occur, parts of the map will transform in different ways, which can affect your chance of success in a run, depending on how you face this new challenge.

Elden Ring Nightreign tips - Start your run rightNightreign tier list - The best nightfarersBest Nightreign rune farm route - Level up fastBest Nightreign team comps - Squad goalsNightreign best relics - The rite stuffNightreign bosses list - Every NightlordNightreign Remembrances - All character quests

The best Shifting Earth, the one that trumps all else in my humble opinion, is the Crater Event. This sees a massive crack in the centre of the map open up, with lava bubbling at the bottom and massive explosions shaking the fabric of Limgrave.

The reward waiting for players who manage to reach the bottom is a special smithing table, which lets players turn any one of their weapons into a legendary weapon. But with only limited time, numerous bosses waiting for you on the way down, and a massive Magma Wyrm ready to cut you in half, it can be a pretty tricky event to complete.

The solution to this? Yeeting yourself off a nearby cliff and praying you land on a rock and don't just drown in the rivers of lava.

For those playing as Ironyeye, this is made slightly easier by his skill which lets him lunge forward. YouTuber eldencafor shared a shortcut which sees Ironeye jump off the cliff on the side of the Church near two Thorn Sorcerers. You need to have a quick cooldown on your skill, or have a relic that grants +1 skill use, as you need to lunge twice to make it to solid ground. But for those of us without a lunge and a bow, there's another, more deadly, way of getting to the bottom.

If you go to the flight tree located at the north of the crater (near where the second-day boss usually spawns) catch an eagle over the lava pit, and then jump off just before it crosses over land, you can make it to the Magma Wyrm boss if you keep falling forward.

Now let me warn anyone who attempts this, my friends and I did this in a moment of panic and weakness when we realised there wouldn't be enough time to reach the bottom of the Crater by going the usual route. There's also a lot that can go wrong.

(Image credit: FromSoftware)

If you mistime the drop, you either land on the cliff near the Black Blade Kindred or fall straight into the lava. Also, if you accidentally hit R3, the eagle will just drop you into the abyss. The first time we attempted this, one of my friends had an eagle drop him dead in the middle of the Crater despite him apparently not touching anything, this then freaked my other teammate out—who tried to bail and also fell into the lava, which then confused me, and believe it or not? Straight into the lava I went.

Since then I've managed to pull this little trick off, but I did so with randoms, which ended up causing the same amount of chaos as my teammates couldn't figure out how I went from the cliff edge down to the bottom of the other side of the Crater.

So for now, I think the only Crater skip I'll be sticking to is this relatively easy and safe one shared by That-Communication48 which takes you to the fog wall by the Fire Monks and Fire Prelate. It'll shave off a few minutes and you'll still get some levels and a weapon after defeating these guys, so it's not a total waste of precious seconds. I could also just learn how to manage my time better, but this is a good backup.

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After all the is-it-isn't-it $80 dollars drama (turns out it's $70 base price, which still isn't exactly cheap), the next Borderlands 4-related financial crisis has hoved into view. Just how much cash will you need invested in your rig to play the thing in all its cell-shaded glory? Well, now we know thanks to the official minimum specifications being posted on Borderlands 4's Steam page.

Up front and centre, several minimum requirements stand out. You're going to need at least eight CPU cores, 8 GB of VRAM, and Nvidia RTX 2070 or AMD 5700 XT, 16 GB of RAM and finally an SDD rather than an HDD.

Before you panic, despite these being listed as "minimum" requirements it's unlikely they are all actually required to run the game. By way of example, if these specs are to be believed, a brand new AMD Ryzen 5 9600X CPU isn't good enough. That's a very good budget gaming chip and it's highly implausible that it's incapable of running Borderlands 4.

Whether the specs really mean support for eight software threads, which a four-core CPU with multi-threading support would cover, or whether developer Gearbox is engaging in some bottom covering in order to make user support a bit simpler isn't entirely clear.

Borderlands 4 system requirements Minimum Recommended OS Windows 10 (64-bit) Windows 10 (64-bit) CPU Intel Core i7 9700 / AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Intel Core i7 12700 / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X GPU Nvidia RTX 2070 / AMD RX 5700 XT Nvidia RTX 3080 / AMD RX 6800 XT VRAM 8 GB 12 GB Memory 16 GB 32 GB Storage 100 GB SSD 100 GB SSD

Whatever, there may be some flexibility in the other "minimum" specs, too. The Nvidia RTX 2070 supports ray tracing, for instance, but the AMD 5700 XT does not. So, clearly a GPU with hardware ray tracing isn't required, which implies that older Nvidia GPUs, like a GTX 1070, may still work.

That said, the 8 GB of VRAM and 16 GB of RAM may be more rigid requirements. Where the SSD storage requirement fits into all this is harder to call, but with any luck y'all have SSDs at this stage, anyway.

As for Borderlands 4's recommended specs, those are a teensy bit scary. Now you're looking at 32 GB of RAM, a Core i7 12700 or Ryzen 7 5800X, an RTX 3080 or RX 6800 XT, and 12 GB of VRAM.

The specs don't go into any detail as to what you can expect with a "minimum" or "recommended" rig in terms of resolutions, refresh rates or graphics settings. But we'll hazard a guess that minimum means 1080p, medium setting and circa 60 fps. Well, hopefully anyway.

Borderlands 4 is out on September 12, so it's still quite a ways off, giving you a little time to scrape some pennies together if you're not hitting those minimum specs. In the meantime, you can also catch up with all our Borderlands 4 coverage here.

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Puzzling out the best weapons in FBC: Firebreak might take you a little time when you first drop into the Federal Bureau of Control. Not too long, mind you, considering the game only has six weapons on launch and some are quite clearly a lot stronger than others. To quickly aid you in gunning down Hiss, I've put together a tier list of the best, along with my personal verdict on each and whether it's a yay or nay.

It's worth noting that while it looks like starting weapons are linked to which Crisis Kit you choose, they aren't. You can select any of the three starting weapons—Revolver, Submachine Gun, Double-Barrel Shotgun—in the loadout menu regardless of your kit. To unlock more weapons, you'll need to collect samples by completing jobs and grabbing documents, and then unlock them in the requisition menu.

You can also upgrade weapons this way by unlocking their higher tier versions in the subsequent requisition pages, though frankly, even the un-upgraded versions of some weapons perform extremely well.

FBC: Firebreak weapon tier list

Tier Weapon S Machine Gun, Pump-Action Shotgun A Revolver, Submachine Gun B Double-Barrel Shotgun C Bolt-Action Rifle

S-tier

(Image credit: Remedy)

Machine Gun

Unlock: Page 4

Simple and straightforward, in a game that massively favours headshots, especially when mowing down hordes of charging Hiss enemies, the Machine Gun's massive ammo capacity and decent damage will deal with just about anything in short order. Though it won't do big precision damage like the Revolver or the Bolt-Action Rifle, it's incredibly consistent and can keep firing for days, meaning even powerful enemies won't take too long to kill if you focus their heads.

(Image credit: Remedy)

Pump-Action Shotgun

Unlock: Page 5

The Pump-Action Shotgun is a jack-of-all-trades, perfect from blasting into crowds of Hiss since the projectile spread will often knock multiple off their feet, but also when aiming down sites to score headshots on tougher foes due to its high damage. Since it reloads a shell at a time, it's very easy to keep firing with little to no downtime, unlike the Double-Barrel Shotgun.

A-tier

(Image credit: Remedy)

Revolver

Unlock: Straightaway

Definitely my favorite starter weapon; the Revolver has a lot of stopping power, especially if you're gunning for headshots, which are easy to land in Firebreak. It only takes a few to take down a heavy enemy and simply hipfiring will kill most smaller Hiss in a single shot. The only disadvantage is its relatively low ammo reserve, so you'll want to keep an eye on the count and stock up whenever possible.

(Image credit: Remedy)

Submachine Gun

Unlock: Straightaway

The second best starter weapon in my book is the Submachine Gun, especially if you feel less confident in landing those headshots with the Revolver. Like the Machine Gun above, it makes up for lower damage with higher ammo capacity, letting you easily headshot lots of basic Hiss enemies and get a lot of bang for your buck. Though less good against heavy enemies, like the Machine Gun, its consistent damage can still chip them to death if you focus their heads.

B-tier

(Image credit: Remedy)

Double-Barrel Shotgun

Unlock: Straightaway

Though nothing to sniff at damage wise, only being able to fire two shots before a reload is a big drawback in a game where you're frequently swarmed by Hiss even on the lowest levels. If you're clever with positioning, you could use the projectile spread to take down multiple enemies per blast, and mix in melee attacks, but it's better to just take something more consistent.

C-tier

(Image credit: Remedy)

Bolt-Action Rifle

Unlock: Page 1

In a close-quarters game with no secondary weapons or sidearms, taking a slow-loading precision rifle is just a bad idea. Unless you're coordinating with your team to have them protect you while sniping tougher targets with headshots at range, you'll quickly get swarmed by basic Hiss enemies, and the slow shot-by-shot reload makes them a pain to deal with. Since the Revolver provides big headshot damage without compromising your ability to fight enemies at close range, I'm not sure why anyone would ever take this gun.

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I can't say I ever thought I'd write a guide about how to destroy sticky notes, but FBC: Firebreak isn't your average game. If you've already played Control, you'll know that things get a little funky in this federal bureau and paranormal hotbed, including a plague of sentient sticky notes that need to be periodically destroyed before they take over.

Destroying 15,000 sticky notes is a bit of a strange objective to receive upon entering a mission, especially with little to no instruction, so I'm here to provide you with some sticky note nuking advice. I've also included some tips for how to defeat Sticky Ricky, the final boss of the Paper Chase job, in case you're struggling.

How to destroy sticky notes in FBC: Firebreak

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You can let sticky notes attach to you and then wash them off in the shower (Image credit: Remedy)Image 2 of 3

You can shoot ceiling sprinklers to wet nearby notes (Image credit: Remedy)Image 3 of 3

You can soak notes with the Splash Kit and then use the Jump Kit to destroy them (Image credit: Remedy)

The best way to destroy sticky notes in Firebreak is to get them wet and then damage them. There are a few different ways you can do this, so here are your main options:

Let them stick to you and wash them off in the shower. Honestly, this is the riskiest approach. As you run through sticky notes, they'll attach to you and begin to cover your screen. If you take on too many, you'll turn into a sticky note monster and attack your teammates.Shoot sprinklers and melee bash the notes. If you look around the office area, you'll see that there are little sprinkler nozzles on the ceiling you can shoot to let loose a torrent of water. Once the sticky notes are drenched, you can melee bash or shoot to destroy them.Bring a Splash Kit and a Jump Kit. This is the best option, though it requires a little team coordination. The person with the Splash Kit will run around soaking all the notes, while the Jump Kit person follows behind, zapping the notes with electricity to destroy them. Be careful not to fully charge your zap and this can electrocute you, since you're standing in water. Remember, you can change your Crisis Kit in the elevator at the start of the mission, or when you redeploy, to achieve this team comp.

From the second level of Paper Chase onwards, you'll start getting attacked by sticky note monsters, too. The easiest way to deal with these is to get them wet, which makes them more susceptible to damage and destroys the notes when they die vs creating a new pile.

How to defeat Sticky Ricky in FBC: Firebreak

(Image credit: Remedy)

When you reach level three of the Paper Chase job, you'll have to defeat the Sticky Ricky boss to destroy enough sticky notes and achieve the final goal. He's quite resistant to damage and hits very hard. To defeat him you need to:

Repair the devices at the icons on either side of the arenaPull the lever on the right side of the arena first to get Sticky Ricky wetPull the lever on the left side of the arena to shock Sticky RickyDeal damage while he's stunned and then rinse and repeat

It's important to pull the levers in this order, applying water and then electricity so you can deal the most damage.

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Learning how to neutralize corrupted items in FBC: Firebreak is straightforward in principle. After all, the game tells you exactly what you'll need to do it: a Black Rock Neutralizer. This info only appears very briefly as a tutorial popup, though, so you wouldn't be blamed for missing it and then getting confused as to why you can't destroy a random floating rubber duck.

Corrupted items are a special modifier you can add to your jobs in Firebreak, each contributing a creepy floating item that imbues enemies or the environment with a special effect, making it harder to complete your mission, but increasing the sample rewards. The only way to deal with them is to find a limited ammo special weapon that only appears to spawn once. Here I'll explain where to find it.

FBC: Firebreak Black Rock Cycler location

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You can usually find a Black Rock Neutralizer in the ammo collection point (Image credit: Remedy)Image 2 of 2

Shoot the corrupted item with the neutralizer to destroy it (Image credit: Remedy)

You need to use a Black Rock Neutralizer to neutralise corrupted items. You might have come across one of these special weapons while exploring during the game's jobs: they're made of a blue-ish metal, with two grinders at the front, and when you fire them a continuous hail of stone flies out. Point it at the corrupted item in question, let loose, and after a short duration, it'll disappear, dropping some samples.

You can usually find a Black Rock Neutralizer resting inside the ammo collection point, though depending on the difficulty you might have to track this down. You can also occasionally find them in safe rooms—the respawn points you have to unlock by opening their sealed door. Since jobs with the corrupted modifier can feature a corrupted item in each new area you enter, you'll want to carry the Black Rock Neutralizer with you to destroy those as well.

Make sure you don't use its ammo on regular enemies, since as far as I can tell, there's no way to replenish it, and you aren't guaranteed to find another. If the cycler runs dry, you'll just have to put up with the modifiers as not even ultimate augments will destroy them—trust me, I tried.

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Picking a Crisis Kit when you first load into FBC: Firebreak isn't as important as you might initially think. Since you can swap between kits whenever you want in the loadout menu, you won't be stuck with the first one you choose—in fact I'm not even sure why the game offers you this choice when you start with all three classes unlocked anyway…

Besides gunning down Hiss, you spend most of your time in Firebreak completing odd jobs in the Federal Bureau of Control, stamping out often literal fires, and using your Crisis Kit's unique ability to complete tasks. It might be hammering an array back into shape with the Fix Kit's wrench, charging up strange devices with the Jump Kit's electricity, or soaking murderous sticky notes with the Splash Kit's water.

This is why it's important to try out different Crisis Kits as you progress through the job list. Still, if you just want to know which one to take initially for general usefulness, it's not too hard to identify the best, even when some of Firebreak's abilities feel very hit and miss.

What's the best Crisis Kit in FBC: Firebreak?

(Image credit: Remedy)

The best Crisis Kit in Firebreak is the Fix Kit. Each kit provides an advantage in certain jobs, like how the Splash Kit lets you destroy sticky notes easily in Paper Chase, or how the Jump Kit lets you quickly turn on heaters in Freezer Duty. That said, for my money, the Fix Kit is the most generally useful, and will be most useful initially as you take on the wrench-heavy Hot Fix job.

Here's a rundown of its abilities and why they're good:

Wrench: Whether it's fixing a broken shower or turning the power back on, the wrench is a handy tool for streamlining otherwise time-consuming jobs. If it's marked with a little wrench symbol, give it a couple of whacks and you'll skip a button bashing minigame. Though there isn't much point whacking enemies with it—since the wrench doesn't deal damage and only stuns—once you purchase its first upgrade, you can dash through enemies, knocking them down; perfect when you're being swarmed.Swivel Cannon: Though it only gets a few shots and is quite easy to destroy, if you place this turret in advance, it can do decent damage to enemies. It can still hurt you as well, though, so be careful where you put it.Al16 "Piggy Bank" Altered Augment: The final upgrade for the Fix Kit is an ultimate ability that lets you create an AoE whirlwind when you smack the ground or an enemy with your wrench. Provided you face towards the whirlwind, so your piggy bank can zoom back to your wrench, you'll get a few hits. Though this doesn't deal loads of damage, it's really good against annoying Hiss breaker enemies, who you can only damage usually by shooting the corpse sticking out of their back. Unlike the Jump Kit's Garden Gnome augment, it also won't randomly kill you based on its path, though it will still damage you a bit when you smash the piggybank to use it.

I'd say the second best Crisis Kit is the Splash Kit, since it gives you healing with its Humidifer upgrade, a way to wash off annoying status effects like the pink goo or the sticky notes, as well as put out fires in tricky spots. Its ultimate Teapot augment is also decent, giving you a few AoE shots that'll scorch foes. The only real disadvantage is that, besides Paper Chase, you won't really use it for actual jobs very often.

The worst Crisis Kit in my opinion is the Jump Kit. It's definitely useful for certain jobs, but most of its abilities aren't that great. The Boombox is supposed to attract enemies, for example, who'll attack it and deal enough damage so that it explodes. The problem? They often just straight up ignore it instead. And while it has the most powerful ultimate augment in the Garden Gnome, its unpredictable path and massive AoE mean you'll almost always get caught in its storm and often be downed by it.

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Over the course of the 20th century, more people were called a great—or the greatest—theoretician of Marxism than I can count. Lenin, Che Guevara, Deng Xiaoping, Tony Cliff: all these names and more bore the mantle of Karl Marx's true inheritor—the standard-bearer who had synthesised historical materialism for a new era and was prepared to lead the working class into a bright, red dawn.

Need to Know

What is it? The doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat, now with cheevos.Release date 27 May, 2025Expect to pay FreeDeveloper Non Fiction GamesPublisher Non Fiction GamesReviewed on Nvidia GeForce RTX4080, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB RAMSteam Deck Untested by Valve, but works fine on my Deck.Link Official site

Which was absurd, of course, because none of those people got the platinum trophy in The Communist Manifesto.

I don't think they unlocked a single cheevo. Unlike me, who has exhaustively pored over every inch of The Communist Manifesto – A Visual Novel, unlocking glossary entry after glossary entry and bonus music track after bonus track, before walking away absolutely aflame with the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

Material boys

The meat of The Communist Manifesto – A Visual Novel consists of a jpeg of Karl Marx delivering the entire text of The Communist Manifesto at you more-or-less line-by-line, unvoiced. There are occasionally interjections by Friedrich Engels—speeding in from the right to ram Marx off centre-stage like a Smash Bros character—who pops up if you ask for clarifications on certain terms.

(Image credit: Non Fiction Games)

For instance, if you're perplexed by Marx's reference to guild-masters, you can ask for an explanation, and Engels will pop in to deliver his own footnote from the Manifesto's 1888 edition verbatim: "Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild." Thanks, Freddy.

(Image credit: Non Fiction Games)

There's a glossary for some of the more complex terms, too, which all seem to be taken from the Marxists.org glossary. Handy when you run across a word you don't know in Marx's speechifying—things like "bourgeoisie" can be clicked on in-text to take you directly to the relevant glossary entry—but not original.

I must admit, this is a tad underwhelming. When you write the words 'The Communist Manifesto – A Visual Novel,' you give my imagination licence to run wild. I start imagining something akin to that Chinese anime about Marx's life: a narrativisation of the classic text that turns its rather dry political-economic theorising into something livelier—the class struggle dramatised as a doomed romance about a tsundere noble scion, a bildungsroman about a tsundere factory labourer, a picaresque about a folk hero (who is tsundere) bringing Marx's method to the masses.

(Image credit: Non Fiction Games)

To get the text—and just the text, with no voice acting save a Microsoft Sam-style voiceover function—I've read a hundred times before but with a picture of Marx (and sometimes Engels, who is not tsundere; quite the opposite) above it is, well, disappointing.

Less disappointing is the soundtrack: a collection of red bangers from across the formerly socialist sixth of the Earth. Einheitsfrontlied, The Internationale, Varshavianka: all the classics are here, playing without cessation as Marx tells you about the centralisation of credit.

(Image credit: Non Fiction Games)

These are great songs, but not all of them make sense as a soundtrack to an internationalist text from 1848. The Sacred War, for instance, might be a classic of the Soviet Union's struggle against Nazi Germany, but that's the totality of what it is. Its time and place is the eastern front of World War 2, not the Europe of the early 19th century.

At its heart, The Communist Manifesto – A Visual Novel isn't so much a visual novel as it is a repackaging of the text itself. There's little here to recommend it either to people who have read the Manifesto before—there's nothing new—or to people who are completely new to it: the visual novel format makes engaging with the text awkward, divided by line as it is.

At its heart, The Communist Manifesto – A Visual Novel isn't so much a visual novel as it is a repackaging of the text itself

Plus, you're almost certain to accidentally click with a bit too much enthusiasm and accidentally skip a line at some point; sure, you can check the conversation log to see the bit you missed, but it's an added layer of complexity that wouldn't be there if you were just reading the original text on a screen or a page.

(Image credit: Non Fiction Games)

In fact, if anything were to make me recommend The Communist Manifesto – A Visual Novel to potential readers, it'd be those daft cheevos. Take it from someone who has been a member of multiple doomed Capital reading groups in the course of his life: sometimes you can get real bogged down trying to read Marx, even the comparatively light and breezy stuff like the Manifesto. If you're someone who wants to have read The Communist Manifesto but can't quite stomach the process of reading it, well, maybe the siren lure of achievements is just what you need to drag you to the ending.

But I can't ding the game, such as it is, too hard for its limitations. It's free, for one thing, and while I don't think it has many advantages over just reading the actual text in print or ebook form, it's not dramatically worse, either. If nothing else, you get to listen to Dem Morgonret Entgegen while you do it.

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FBC: Firebreak is one of the messiest games I've ever played, but this is in large part because it is a game about mess. Creating it, cleaning it up, getting caked up to your neck in it—your character is constantly covered in water or sticky notes or quivering pink goo that could've sluiced straight out of a British gameshow in the nineties. If Noel Edmonds ever made a first-person shooter, it would probably look like Firebreak.

Need to know

What is it? A daft cooperative shooter where you fix the world's weirdest maintenance issues against hordes of possessed enemies.Release date June 17, 2025Expect to pay $40/£33Developer Remedy EntertainmentPublisher Remedy EntertainmentReviewed on AMD Ryzen 5 3600, Nvidia 2080 Super, 32 GB RAM, Windows 10Steam Deck VerifiedLink Official site

But Firebreak is also deliberately messy on a mechanical level. It's all about figuring out how things work through trial and (often fatal) error, a game of bungling your way through crowds of enemies hoping you don't accidentally fry or torch or explode your friends in the process. At its best, this leads to fun eureka moments and silly, chaotic firefights. But the fuzzy edges can also be a source of frustration, a problem exacerbated by some serious balancing issues.

For those unaware, FBC: Firebreak is a cooperative spinoff of Remedy's excellent 2019 action game Control. It's still set in The Oldest House, a foreboding, brutalist interdimensional nexus that serves as the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control—essentially the FBI for weird shit. The Oldest House is a a bit like if Twin Peaks' Red Room had an administration wing, a place where thick concrete pillars and atomically aligned office cubicles collide with nameless, shapeless anomalies that would give Euclid a migraine and willgive you a vivisection without ever noticing your existence.

Instead of playing as the director of the FBC, empowered with anomalous magic in slick third-person combat, you play as the FBC's 'Firebreakers', disposable janitors clad in rubber suits and acoustic foam panel armour tasked with fixing The Oldest House's reality-defying maintenance issues. Between you and your objective stands an army of the FBC's own employees, possessed and contorted by a hostile force known as the Hiss.

(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

Firebreak, it should be noted, doesn't really explain any of this. It assumes you're familiar with Control and doesn't have much in the way of a tutorial, cramming a hasty explanation into a loading-screen letter which in the age of SSDs you won't have time to read. If you're coming to Firebreak without having played Control (like my poor, long-suffering partner) prepare to be tremendously confused.

Structurally, Firebreak takes the form of five specific "jobs", linear-ish levels where you must fight through the Hiss to complete a sequence of specific objectives. These range from the merely strange, like fixing the Oldest House's air conditioning to stop its incandescently angry furnace from burning the place down; to the downright ridiculous, like clearing a vast infestation of pink goo off the building's electricity turbines, blasting them with your guns in great showers of cosmic blancmange. The result sits halfway between the frantic FPS gauntlets of Left4Dead, and a more open-ended, exploration-based experience like REPO.

More than anything else, it's the ideas that drive each of these jobs that make Firebreak stand out. For starters, they're endearingly bizarre, but many of them also come bundled with mission-specific mechanics. Paper Chase, arguably the most distinctive of the bunch, sees you sweeping up an enormous carpet of sticky notes. But if you run across the carpet, or get attacked by sticky-note creatures called shufflers who flutter around later in the level, you'll begin to get covered in sticky notes yourself. These slowly amass on the screen, obscuring your vision until you disintegrate into a pile of yellow paper.

(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

I will say not every job is a winner, though. The fifth job involves tossing flame-spewing heaters into juddering ice anomalies. The theme of the job is neat, taking you beyond The Oldest House's brutalist architecture into a cardboard cutout skiing resort complete with a functioning (and hungry) ski-lift. But the anomalies aren't all that interesting, the heaters are fiddly to move and activate, and the whole thing's a bit of an anticlimax.

Still, for the most part, I like the jobs conceptually. Firebreak folds these mission-specific mechanics into a more general emphasis on systemic interaction. Elements like fire, water, and electricity all play a role in Firebreak's combat, and you can outfit your team with various equipment known as "kits" to exploit them. The splash kit furnishes the player with a crank-powered super-soaker that splashes the environment and enemies in water. The Hiss take more damage from bullets when wet, but this also makes them vulnerable to electrical attacks. So if another player wields the jump kit, they can zap entire groups of soggy enemies, stunning them for a short while.

Since discovery is a big part of Firebreak, I don't want to delve too deeply into how all the different ideas interplay. But I will say there is a decent amount to discover relative to the game's scope. From objects in the environment that can be used to your advantage, to unlockable deployables that affect enemies in different ways, almost every run brought some minor revelation that altered our approach to combat.

(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

I am less convinced by Firebreak as a straight shooter, however. Combat has a slower, softer feel than Control's clinical, highly kinetic firefights. This is partly by design—you're a goofball wielding a gun rather than an accidental superhero. But the net result is that the Hiss are less fun to fight overall. Fighting those floating chair lads was a blast when you could lob a massive lump of concrete at them. But they're more annoying when trying to pick them out of the air with guns.

The quality of the combat also depends heavily on which weapon you use. The grease gun-looking SMG, which is kinda the default weapon, is absolutely awful. But the sawed-off shotgun is pretty tasty, and the revolver isn't bad either. The best weapon, though, is the hunting rifle which compensates for an agonisingly slow reload time with a wicked lethality when you land a headshot. Still, if it's raw cooperative combat you're after, I would much sooner recommend Helldivers 2 or Darktide, both of which boast a level of refinement that Firebreak doesn't quite match.

Nonetheless, the surrounding ideas compensate for the weaker combat, and when all its elements are in equilibrium, Firebreak's a pretty good time. But there were extended periods playing Firebreak where I didn't enjoy it at all, mainly because it has some of the wildest balance swings I've encountered for a long time.

(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

The reason for this is a little tricky to explain. Firebreak has multiple difficulty levels, with the baseline for this review being 'normal'. But levels are also partitioned into three different areas in a system known as 'clearance', which you unlock by playing through rounds in the previous areas first, essentially playing a smaller chunk of the level before running back to the exit elevator.

These areas also increase sequentially in challenge, regardless of what difficulty you play on. But these difficulty hikes are highly inconsistent. Generally speaking, the first area of every level is almost laughably easy on standard difficulty. The second area, by comparison, ranges from "reasonably challenging" to "virtually impossible" depending on which area you're playing.

The most dramatic spike occurs in Paper Chase, which goes from a leisurely cleanup operation to backing you into a corner against an unceasing torrent of Hiss the moment you open the door to the second area. The shufflers are part of the problem, because they can kill you far too quickly, and also drop more sticky notes when they die (unless you wet them first) But the real issue is that enemies simply don't stop coming, resulting in a grinding, attritional stalemate.

(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

As for Clearence level 3, again, the difficulty is all over the place. The climactic encounter against the furnace in Hot Fix is perfectly judged. But the finale of Frequency Shift (the pink goo level) is not just hard, it's downright broken. See, the pink goo regrows at a faster rate as you progress through each area, obscuring more of the level as it goes on. This is a cool idea, and I love how the mood of the goo shifts from absurd to surprisingly menacing. Yet once we reached the finale, it began regrowing almost instantaneously, completely blocking passages in a way that made it incredibly difficult to bypass.

In short, Firebreak needs a considerable tune-up to make that escalation more organic and gradual, and ensure the game better knows when to take the foot off the gas. But the clearance system also creates another issue, ironically one it seems designed to solve. See, Firebreak's jobs are small, even compared to adjacent games like Left4Dead and Darktide. Played right through, they might take half an hour to see end to end. Since Clearance requires you to play through chunks of the level multiple times, though, overall it takes longer to reach that climactic encounter.

(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

The intent, at least as far as I can see, is to give the jobs greater replay value. But it ultimately ends up giving them less. See, while Darktide also had a slender mission roster on launch, I played each of those missions three, maybe four times in full before I began to grow weary of them. By the time you reach the end of a Firebreak mission, however, you've already seen the bulk of it at least twice. So once I'd finished a job, I was kind of done with it, even though I'd spent less time in it than if it was a straight run to the finish line.

The good news is, many of Firebreak's problems are fixable. A thorough balance revision would immediately improve the experience. The clearance problem is harder to solve, but the addition of new levels (which are coming later in the year) will certainly help. In time, I see Firebreak becoming a perfectly decent cooperative shooter. For now though, it isn't quite a job well done.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a major hit on Steam: An "overwhelmingly positive" rating across more than 83,000 user reviews on Steam, and concurrent player numbers that keep it high on Steam's top 100 most-played list—not bad at all for a relatively brief narrative-based singleplayer RPG. And if you've played through it all and wish there was more, the good news is that there might be.

"We're currently exploring a wide range of future improvements—from accessibility features to new content and all sorts of bits and bobs we're actively assessing," developer Sandfall Interactive posted on Bluesky. "Naturally, this also includes expanded localization options!

(Image credit: Sandfall Interactive (Bluesky))

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has received a number of post-launch updates, but this sounds like something bigger. Naturally, the promise of "new content" is what drew immediate attention. It could mean just about anything, from the French equivalent of Wither's Big Naturals—Gustave's Grande Naturels—to a full-blown expansion. At this point fans are just excited about the prospect of more, whatever it ultimately proves to be, and also for expanded localization options: Ukrainian language support seems to be in particular demand.

There's no indication as to when any of this will happen: Sandfall said in another post that there are no "specific timelines" to share at this point, nor confirmed plans for new language support, it simply "wanted to let you know what it's very much on our radar."

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HBO's first Game of Thrones series didn't feature nearly enough dragon scenes, if you ask me. My favorite mythical beasties mostly showed up for a passing greeting or to die within seconds, but it sounds like that's a problem PlaySide's upcoming RTS, Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, could remedy.

"The dragons have been a big focus for us," game director Ryan McMahon told me during a Summer Game Fest interview. "We've actually got a bit of an R&D team specifically for dragons. People, as well as projects, that are dedicated to just making the dragons."

(Image credit: PlaySide Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive)

Even as someone who read and watched it all, I'm still impressed by how thorough and intense fans get in Game of Thrones lore debates. McMahon said the PlaySide team finds themselves in many of those same debates, which are complicated by unreliable character sources and differences between the books and shows.

There's one question in particular they've spent ages debating: What happens when a dragon dies?

McMahon didn't seem fully committed to any one theory just yet, but clearly wants War for Westeros to investigate those details and how it affects the environment. PlaySide's global head of marketing and communications, Michael McAlister, even chimed in, explaining the questions that came up as they investigated the precedents set by the books and show.

"The dragons are like bombs," said McAlister. "The implication is that when a dragon crashes into the ground, it explodes like a nuclear bomb. The back and forth about what actually happens when a dragon isn't alive is absolutely fascinating."

(Image credit: PlaySide Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive)

"You know, in House of the Dragon, you're going to see them die a lot, and there's usually some sort of explosion. There are things about why they would explode in death," said McMahon, referencing their fire breath and different deaths throughout the series. "That's a really interesting debate. Does it [the explosion] happen all the time? Or does it happen at all?"

I can see how that matters when we're talking strategy on the battlefield. Should I strategically take my own dragon out over an enemy unit so the explosion catches them all? Or do they just sort of crash and roll into the ground? Does it depend on what they hit, like a barrel of explosives? If I get to determine how some iconic Game of Thrones battles play out, then the flying Targaryen beasts will star in them all.

The original HBO series had its fair share of impressive dragon talent, too, but CGI ain't free, so they were often relegated to offscreen adventures and distant roaring. Naturally, House of the Dragon has given them a little more airtime, but don't count on War for Westeros including anything from the prequel, at least not yet.

When I asked if we'd see more characters from the books or HBO's House of the Dragon, McMahon clarified War for Westeros "is just for the Game of Thrones IP" since the newer series is a separate license. Though he added, "That doesn't mean that's what we're going to do forever."

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Chinese game company Cognosphere is known for four things: Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, and its aggressive pursuit of anyone who doesn't toe the line on its announcement and release schedules. In the latest example of how much it really, really does not like leakers, the company is now suing a guy who streamed Honkai: Star Rail gameplay on Discord that included a look at a new character who hadn't been released to the public.

The lawsuit, first reported by Game File, takes pains to note the importance of Cognosphere's update and release schedules.

"Preserving a single release date and the timing for Plaintiff's marketing campaign is extremely important, because many consumers have waited months to access and play the updated game, and are excited to be among the first to play the game in the latest official version," the complaint states. "If the content in the update is made available to some consumers before the commencement of Plaintiff’s marketing campaign and/or the release date, then consumers who have waited may have the game 'spoiled' for them.

"Additionally, when people who have unfairly or unlawfully obtained a game update before its release date post videos, images, or engage in online chatter about their experience with the game, this dampens the excitement and anticipation that many players feel when they obtain the update legitimately upon its official release, which further harms the user experience that the Plaintiff strives to protect."

That may be a little overwrought, but the actual legal complaint here isn't "spoilers!" but the more prosaic, courtroom-friendly copyright infringement: That defendant Alfredo Lopez, using the handle !Exciter98, violated Cognosphere's "exclusive rights of reproduction, public display, adaptation, and/or public performance under the Copyright Act" by blasting the unreleased material—specifically the character Castorice, who had already been revealed at the 2024 Game Awards—all over Discord without permission or authorization.

The lawsuit doesn't say anything about how Lopez got hold of the leaked material in the first place—whether he was a tester, a hacker, someone supplied it to him, or something else—but that doesn't seem especially relevant anyway: By going after individual streamers with copyright infringement suits, Cognosphere is effectively saying that it may not be able to stop leaks, but it can make life miserable for anyone who shares them.

And it's seemingly not shy about doing so: Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, director of research and insights at Niko Partners, said on X that Cognosphere (referred to by its better-known name MiHoYo) "has initiated over 500 legal cases," including some in China "that have led to certain game content leaks being labelled as a violation of trade secrets."

(Image credit: Daniel Ahmad (Twitter))

Cognosphere is seeking "actual damages and Defendant's profits for copyright infringement," but perhaps because Lopez presumably didn't make any money with his Discord stream, is also asking for an alternative, at its discretion, of maximum statutory damages of $150,000.

Best cozy games: Relaxed gamingBest anime games: Animation-inspiredBest JRPGs: Classics and beyondBest cyberpunk games: Techno futuresBest gacha games: Freemium fanatics

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In what seems like an entirely out-of-nowhere reminder, a surprise message on the Prince of Persia X account has popped up to promise everyone that yes, Ubisoft is still working on The Sands of Time "behind the scenes," and no, it has nothing more to say about it. It's all a bit odd, and almost entirely random, but scrolling back through the social media feed reveals that there is actually a good reason for the unprompted message—and by "good" I mean pretty silly.

First things first, a quick timeline on The Sands of Time Remake. It was originally supposed to be out in January 2021 but was delayed a couple months because "2020 has been a year like no other," and boy, we really had no idea, did we?

Fair enough, then—and also a reminder of how long this whole thing has been dragging on—but another delay followed without a new release date—never a good sign—and then another, and eventually it got to the point where Ubisoft was reduced to promising the whole thing hadn't been cancelled (but had been delayed (again)). There was a new studio, and more studios, a whole-ass reboot in mid-2023, a delay into 2026 with an unexplained title change, and honestly: Why is it so hard to make a game you already made 20 years ago?

Anyway, I re-litigate all of this because it amuses me to do so, but also because the events leading up to today's seemingly random missive on social media also have a timeline explaining why Ubisoft would just put this out for no apparent reason, which we will now dive into.

It begins on June 9, with the appearance of an ominous message: "Something is lurking in these waters," words made even more noteworthy because of their appearance one year, almost to the day, after Ubisoft's most recent Sands of Time update, the one where the "Remake" part of the title was dropped. Exciting stuff for those who noticed, but not many noticed because the message was quickly deleted.

This guy noticed, though.

(Image credit: RickGrimes989 (Twitter))

It turned out the message that got Sands of Time hopefuls all worked up was in fact intended for the For Honor account, to tease the reveal of the next season:

Something is lurking in these waters.. pic.twitter.com/7jFZw72c2hJune 9, 2025

Ubisoft copped to the whiff in short order.

(Image credit: Ubisoft (Twitter))

Unfortunately, it didn't help calm things down: Some fans were convinced Ubisoft really did have something to show, others begged for anything, and a few seemed to have simply reached their limit with the whole thing:

(Image credit: Twitter)

Which brings us to today's update, posted just shy of a week after everything went sideways with a For Honor tease.

"Yep, we’re still deep in the game—exploring, building, and ensuring the sands move with purpose," Ubisoft wrote. "This game is being crafted by a team that truly cares, and they're pouring their hearts (and a lot of coffee) into every step. Thank you for sticking with us.

"While development continues behind the scenes, there’s another adventure waiting for you right now: The Rogue Prince of Persia—fast, stylish, and built with the same dedication."

(Image credit: Ubisoft (Twitter))

So there you have it: Yes, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is still in development, and no, there's nothing to see here but a social media guy who probably didn't have the best weekend ever. Sorry.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time does not have a release date yet, but for now it remains on target for sometime in 2026. We'll see.

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Rainbow Six Siege is having a moment. The tactical FPS is one week into a major update that introduced a new name (Siege X), a wild 6v6 mode, modernized maps, and most consequential of all, a new price point: After holding out for 10 years, Siege is finally free-to-play.

Siege X is now more popular than ever, sustaining the kind of top-five Steam numbers that it used to only reach during free weekends. That boggles my mind, because to me, Siege has always felt like a game that's just a handful of disasters away from collapse.

When I burnt out in 2020, those disasters were around every corner: forgettable operators, terrible battle passes, unpopular balance choices, and disruptive bugs introduced faster than Ubi could fix them. I can think of no other game that, even in its darkest moments, was forced to repeatedly disable entire characters because of game-breaking exploits. I remember players wondering at the time if Valorant, with its Siege-inspired abilities, would deal a fatal blow.

But Siege persisted. It's a testament to its uniqueness that folks stuck around—Siege's secret sauce is that there is no "other" Siege to match its combination of competitive lethality, operator counterplay, and granular destruction. I believe that uniqueness can also explain some of its big missteps over the years.

When I think about how different Siege was back in 2016, and how differently we played it, it's clear to me that Ubisoft and the community were figuring out what this game was together. Ubisoft's funky premise of asymmetrical teams of attackers with grapple hooks and defenders who aren't supposed to go outside spawned a dictionary's worth of techniques that only exist in Siege: runouts, vertical play, murder holes, rotation holes, bandit tricking, hard breaching, soft breaching, intel denial, droning.

Above: In Dual Front, defenders aren't spotted for going outside, a fact some players are still getting used to.

It took time, experience, multiple leadership regimes, and a lot of mistakes for Siege to become the best (so far) version of itself. The big vibe shift came a few years ago, when Ubi officially slowed down on new maps and operators and instead focused on reworking existing systems, an initiative that has resulted in my favorite changes to Siege since launch, like attacker repick, attachments 2.0, operator reworks, a shooting range, match replay, and the secondary hard breach gadget.

Siege X is the culmination of Ubisoft slowly learning how to care for Siege. It's a mature update, targeting fundamental features and improvements that have been a long time coming:

Rebuilt audio: Sound now travels realistically down hallways and through walls with believable reverb. It sounds better, but it's also more accurate and consistent.Modernized maps: Five popular maps got a graphical pass with new 4K assets, moody new lighting, and "destructible ingredients" that change how they're played. Gas pipes can explode to kill players or deny areas. Fire extinguishers create smoke clouds.Communication wheel: Better late than never, Siege finally has Apex-style contextual pings, so I can now point at a wall and ask teammates to reinforce it, or ping a hallway and declare it "all clear."Clash rework: The latest of a series of reworks that are so substantial that this is basically a new operator. Clash can now place her shield on the ground, creating a piece of cover for herself that also slows enemies with a shock.Advanced rappel: Now you "sprint" on a wall and steer around corners while rappelling, a small movement change that saves so much time.Pick & Ban 2.0: Instead of banning four operators at the start of the match, teams now ban one each round, speeding things along and encouraging teams to ban reactively based on the previous round. So, so much better.Enemy outlines: Long ago, Siege made all its maps bright and flat-looking so players couldn't hide in dark corners. Now that the good lighting is back, enemies now have the slightest red outline so they stand out in darkness. Sounds blasphemous for Siege, but it's inoffensive so far.First-person shadows: See your shadow? So can the enemy team!

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

There was a time when I would read a list of changes like that and think, "OK, but where are the two new operators and one new map that we used to get every three months?" But now I'm a bit older, busier, and aware that Siege has more than enough stuff. Maybe 73 operators' worth of gadget interactions is as much as my brain can hold, and 27 multi-story complexes is more map than I'll ever hope to master.

I like to think we're entering Siege's best years—seasoned gunplay, strong maps, impactful operators, less obtrusive (but still present) bugs, and a confidence in its identity so strong that it can take major swings like a 6v6 mode.

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On an Internet of Shit, a cool website feels newsworthy, and graphic designer Josh Worth has made a very cool website. If The Moon Were Only One Pixel is a "tediously accurate" recreation of our stellar neighborhood you can explore in your browser, and it's a meditative, thoughtful way to break up the monotony of being advertised to on the web.

Like it says in the title, the page scales down our solar system so each pixel onscreen represents 3,474.8 kilometers⁠—the diameter of the moon, and about the distance between New York and Las Vegas. Below, Worth included a ruler marking out every 100,000 and 1,000,000 km, as well as a button to auto scroll at the scale speed of light⁠—a leisurely, Star Wars opening crawl pace.

The model helpfully scrolls through one scale light-minute of distance in about a minute's worth of time, and at that pace, it would take nearly five hours to reach the end of the page⁠⁠. That's how long it takes light from our sun to reach Pluto, and Worth helpfully points out that it would take 665 screens (presumably at 1080p) laid end-to-end to present the whole thing at once. I guess you could get away with one ultra-wide monitor instead.

Familiarity and the galactic scale of so much sci-fi can condition us to see the solar system as safe and familiar, but really, it's an utterly massive, fathomless thing. That's something I always appreciated about the fiction behind Destiny, which is limited to the solar system and treats the "Jovian" space beyond the asteroid belt as its Wild West-come-sci-fi Mordor.

Interspersed throughout the mostly black field of Worth's solar system, he's included thoughtful musings about how most of space is just, well, space, and how you can view that with shock and terror, or wonder at the miracle that there's anything out there at all⁠—it sort of reminded me of the end of True Detective (spoilers for a really good 11-year-old show, I guess).

For more projects from Josh Worth, you can check out his website or follow him on X, "The Everything App."

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I had the chance to talk to veteran RPG designer Josh Sawyer (Pentiment, Pillars of Eternity, Fallout: New Vegas) at this year's Game Developer's Conference, and alongside other big ticket RPG topics, I had romance on my mind.

I don't want to pigeonhole Sawyer as "the anti-RPG romance guy," but he's been a consistent critic of how love and sex have been implemented in the genre for years⁠. "I don't hate love in game stories; I just hate reducing love to shallow, masturbatory fantasy indulgence," he said in a 2006 Obsidian forum post about the topic, preserved on Reddit. Regarding Baldur's Gate 3's explosively popular companion dating, Sawyer said that he doesn't entirely get the appeal, and where he does get it, he doesn't like it.

He most often criticizes the checklist structure of many RPG romances, but has said that he's not opposed to them from a storytelling perspective⁠—he seems to see it as more of a design and pacing issue. I asked Sawyer if there were any RPGs he thinks did romance right, and he answered immediately and without hesitation: Cyberpunk 2077.

"The reason is because those relationships, whether you like the characters or not⁠—which I feel is kind of beside the point, from a design perspective⁠—it's not in a party context," Sawyer said. He argued that the typical RPG party camp/wandering around in a squad presentation makes intimate conversations and moments a bit incongruous: "There are six of us together, and we're engaging in these romantic talks right next to everyone, and it feels kind of odd."

Cue Wynn or Sten standing stock still in the background of a romantic cutscene in Dragon Age: Origins. It has a bit of the energy of a Weird Anime Club Couple getting too handsy in the school cafeteria. Is this allowed?!

Time to simmer

The other big issue 2077's romances avoided, according to Sawyer, is one of pacing: In open-ended, nonlinear RPGs, "The crit path can proceed at a different rate than the side content," said Sawyer, and that's a challenge when it comes to making multipart side stories, particularly romantic ones, proceed at a clip that makes sense.

That's an issue I've definitely run into: Expending all of a companion's romance dialogue and being stuck at a stasis point until the next progress gate lowers. Cyberpunk's romantic partners like Kerry or Judy have plotlines that are staggered, but they aren't trailing behind you or hanging out at your house waiting for things to progress.

"You do something with Judy, let's say, and then, you wrap it up, you have a convo, and then she's like, 'I gotta go do some things, bye,'" said Sawyer. "She is gone and you're not going to hear from her until time has elapsed, and probably until you've progressed a critical path.

"There's a built-in pacing, so the development of the human component of that relationship is developed over content that is specifically made for the two of you, like it's content for you and Judy alone. River doesn't come into it at all."

Sawyer also praised Cyberpunk's gorgeous, expensive presentation for helping the romances land. "Some of it is production value, which, of course, Obsidian is not necessarily the big cutscene company," he said. "Larian does that extremely well. Of course CDPR does that exceptionally well. BioWare also does it well."

Best of the best

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

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In addition to those production values, Sawyer also feels that Cyberpunk's exclusively first person perspective transformed scenes that might not have been as memorable with a cinematic camera. He pointed to a scene in the character Panam's arc, one that potentially plays out romantically for male Vs, and platonically for female ones: "There's the part where you come out of the storm, and you sit on the couch and she puts her legs up on you. In a first person perspective, that has such a different feeling of intimacy than if it's a third person camera."

But even with the great art, animation, and writing, it's still the pacing and implementation that most won Sawyer over. "They do feel like they have their own lives, but you keep coming back together to continue that storyline," he said. "It's not to say that's flawless, but I really do enjoy that way of doing them.

"If I were gonna base romances on anything, I'd probably do something like that."

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When Larian Studios' CEO Swen Vincke took the stage at The Game Awards to present Game of the Year he also relayed a bit of advice to other studios: Make a game that you want to play yourself, and your game will do well. Something that Daniel Knight, CEO of Kinetic Games and lead developer, did years ago with Phasmophobia.

"I don't think there's any main inspiration [for Phasmophobia]," Knight says in an interview with Andrea Shearon at Summer Game Fest. "The whole reason why I made [Phasmophobia] was because it didn't exist and I wanted to play it.

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"I got impatient waiting for a game to come out. I was constantly looking at the Steam store and waiting for something to come out; there was never anything. So I was like, I'll just make it myself."

Knight also theorises that Phasmophobia's uniqueness was one of the reasons why it performed so well. I had certainly never played anything like it before, and I've played a lot of co-op horror games.

The other reason why I think Phasmo did so well, other than that fact it came out at the end of 2020 when people were still locked inside their homes trying to find new ways to entertain themselves and hang out with friends, was thanks to its odd take on horror games.

(Image credit: Kinetic Games)

Knight also told Andrea during this interview that he doesn't even really like horror games, nor does he play a lot of them. Phasmophobia was actually made with the intention of creating a VR puzzle game which you could try and solve together with a bunch of your friends. The ghosts and scares all came second to that.

But just having the vision of something you want to create isn't always enough. "[Phasmophobia] originally was a VR-only game, and I'd worked at a VR company so we did VR things before," Knight says. "I took that knowledge to make a VR puzzle horror game. At the time there weren't very many co-op horror VR games, and I was a huge fan of VR, so I just wanted to make something like that.

"But it's very hard to make a co-op VR game on your own. So I ended up forcing it to be able to play without VR, and then I could get friends who didn't have VR to help play test it."

Phasmo does offer a VR mode now, but as someone who doesn't own an Oculus or any VR kit, I'm very happy that this switch was made. It has meant that I had the chance to experience all the hilarity and horror which comes with hunting ghosts with friends.

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Dune: Awakening is off to a great start: excellent Steam reviews, a growing playerbase, and few of the launch problems that regularly plague popular new multiplayer games.

There is some trouble brewing, however, as players begin exploring Dune: Awakening's endgame, much of which revolves around PvP in the deep desert—a massive, uninhabitable zone only traversable by air where players can compete for precious resources like spice and titanium.

But there's one more resource that can be found in great supply in the deep desert: player complaints about the deep desert. The good news is that Funcom seems to be listening and is working on making some adjustments to PvP.

One issue with Dune: Awakening's endgame is that so much of the PvP in the deep desert is ornithopter-based, so those 60 or so hours you spent building your character's abilities are sort of useless. In most fights it's just pilots trading missiles with each other in the air instead of engaging on the surface with swords, shields, and skills.

And speaking of 'thopters, there's also a "goomba stomping" meta in Dune: Awakening where airborne players can just crash their birds into players on the ground in PvP zones, crushing them to death while not worrying about collision damage. That's not exactly what I'd call a fair fight.

As far as the occasions where players do mix it up on land face-to-face, there's yet another problem: respawn timers. Specifically, they're barely timers at all. If you kill an enemy, they're going to respawn so quickly and so close by it's hard to get a leg up on them.

As spotted by Anna Koselke at GamesRadar, a post on Reddit outlined the problem. "The biggest issue I see and hope they fix ASAP is the respawn times. Even when you win a long winded battle the losing team will just re-spawn instantly in the local area," wrote rustypipe7889 on Reddit.

The issue was apparent in "a large 3 way battle at one of the PVP ships in the deep desert," they said, noting that "even when you pick off members they are back in the fray before you can blink, which just feels bad." It's hard to win a battle and loot your enemy when they keep popping up for more a few seconds later.

They compared it to Last Oasis, another desert-based PvP-heavy multiplayer game that's had its own share of troubles, noting that Dune: Awakening's respawn timer seems to be only about 12 seconds long. "As it currently stands even if you have the better team and beat the odds the larger group will always win as they can just keep chucking bodies at it till the other team gives up or their gear breaks," rustypipe7889 said.

On the plus side, Funcom is listening. Creative director Joel Bylos responded to the post, stating "We are working on a bunch of changes/fixes to these things. Please bear with us."

I haven't engaged in PvP yet myself in Dune: Awakening, partially because, as in the beta, I just don't run into other players that often even when hanging around in PvP zones looking for trouble. And while I have been to the deep desert, I didn't see anyone around—though my 'thopter doesn't have weapons yet so I didn't stay there for more than about 30 minutes. Until some PvP patches roll out from Funcom, I might just hold off on trying to fight other players for the moment.

Dune: Awakening guide: All our tips and tricksDune: Awakening Trial of Aql locations: SpicyDune: Awakening trainer locations: Basic and advanced mentorsDune: Awakening sandbike: Get your first rideDune: Awakening fast travel: Arrakis taxis

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Stray, a rather neat little puzzle-platformer about a cat in a post-apocalyptic robo-world, was fairly well received back in 2022. We gave it a solid 82 in our review, which made publisher Annapura's collapse late last year all the more concerning for studio BlueTwelve. At the very least, however, Stray's former writer is going places.

You see, after writing a science-fiction game about a cat in a gritty neon-coated world, Steve Lerner is branching out by making a science fiction about a cat in a gritty neon world. Except this time, the cat has a gun. Also, there are more cats in it.

Per the game's website, Cat Assassin is being developed by Titan1Studios in cooperation with Dogbone, the production company of none other than Dave Bautista. As in, the wrestler and actor: If you're not caught up on your storylines, you might otherwise recognise him as Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy, or Glossu Rabban from Dune. Now he's making games! Good for him.

Cat Assassin's destined to be a multimedia rollout, complete with an animation series and, of course, videogames.

"Set in a gritty neo-noir world inhabited by anthropomorphized cats of all types, Cat Assassin centers on Hugh, a highly skilled assassin caught between various cartels and power brokers in a dark and twisted city. The franchise promises a unique blend of humor, action, and stealth."

Titan1Studios is mostly unproven, having only made The Events at Unity Farm—a game that appears to have had an early access release in 2023 with almost no fanfare. They're also developing something called Love Is a Roguelite, a deckbuilder thing where you have an AI-driven companion that looks… fine, I guess.

It's a shame my expectations are currently tempered, because otherwise the pitch sounds sick as hell: "Titan1Studios is already well underway with a stealth action video game inspired by the immersive gameplay of Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft), the tactical espionage of Splinter Cell (Ubisoft), the immersive feline agility of Stray (Annapurna), and the fluid combat of Sifu (Kepler)."

As a Sloclap appreciator, any time Sifu or Absolver are mentioned, I get my neurons all activated. I also like a roguelike, which Cat Assassin also seems to be, based on the site's main page: "Every death sends you back to early adulthood, but the fight's not over. You and your targets reincarnate in a dynamic roguelite system, forcing constant strategic adaptation."

Here's hoping Titan1Studios, much like a cat, inevitably lands on its feet. The press release concludes: "Further details regarding the animated series, feature film, publishing partners, and additional video game titles will be announced in the coming months."

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Angelos Mako was seven years old when he started playing Dungeon Rampage with his older brother, saving the good guys and slaying hordes of evil minions. A decade later, he also saved the game itself.

Dungeon Rampage was a simple Facebook game, a cartoony hack-n-slash that was procedurally generated, so the dungeons were always a little different. But for Mako, it was also an escape.

"My parents were going through a very nasty divorce. Dungeon Rampage was there for me. Every time they would fight, I would go into another room and I would play," says Mako, now 18, from his home in Greece. "It took care of me when I didn't have any other toys."

The end of the dungeon

Mako played DR daily, mostly on a computer he shared with his brother at home. It was a popular game in its time: More than two million people hopped in each month, and Mako was one of them for five years straight. Then the unthinkable happened.

"I came from school one day and saw a message Dungeon Rampage had shut down, and I was like, 'What?! Why?'" he says. "I couldn't fathom it. I couldn't understand why it happened. But even from that moment, I said that I'm going to find a way to get this back again. I had no clue how, but I had a dream."

Dungeon Rampage was played by millions back when Facebook games were thriving. (Image credit: Gamebreaking Studios)

Still, Mako was only 10, had school to attend, and the dream had to wait. He got into mods in Minecraft, played some Roblox, and years later met a creator in a Roblox game. They bonded, and he did some apprenticeships on that team's game, in Unity. While he was doing that, four years later, he ran across a Discord server that was trying to remake Dungeon Rampage and decided to join.

I said, 'Okay, I'm starting from scratch. I'm taking initiative.' And I went directly to try and get the copyright of Dungeon Rampage.

Angelos Mako

"I really liked the vision," he says. But practical problems and volunteer developers meant the group didn't make a ton of progress, and they were trying to reinvent the game, rather than restore the original. Mako took over the project in 2024.

"I didn't know that making a game is pretty hard," he says, laughing. At the same time, people were joining the server and asking a key question: What happened if the original developers chose to copyright strike the remake?

"We were like, 'Oh yes, that's a very big problem.' I was fed up. I wanted this to come to life," Mako says. "I said, 'Okay, I'm starting from scratch. I'm taking initiative.' And I went directly to try and get the copyright of Dungeon Rampage."

The sleuthing starts

Mako had the credits screen from the game, and decided that he'd make a LinkedIn account and message everyone he could find. "People replied, actually. That's the weird part."

He spoke with Jason Young, the original creative director, who said that the attempt to remake Dungeon Rampage was a cool project, but that he needed to speak with Mike Goslin, Rebel Games' original general manager. One thing led to another: He spoke to Goslin on the phone, who then introduced him to the CEO of the parent company—and he got his license agreement.

Mako was ecstatic. Only one thing brought him back to earth: "Because I started from scratch again, we didn't really have a game," he says. So he talked with all the developers of the original game that he could find. The original lead artist got him some art source files. But no one seemed to have the code.

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(Image credit: Gamebreaking Studios)

About the same time, he had read the book Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, written by Scott Rogers. Buoyed by his recent success contacting people on LinkedIn, he attempted to connect with Rogers—who accepted. A short time later, Rogers posted a message on the platform saying Gamebreaking Studios was looking for clients for co-development.

Mako messaged him to ask exactly what that was, and before he knew it, they were discussing a deal to remake Dungeon Rampage as a Steam game using Unity. But the money just wasn't working out.

Gamebreaking Studios CEO Taylor Hellam (Image credit: Gamebreaking Studios)

"My first engagement was getting added to a LinkedIn message," Gamebreaking CEO Taylor Hellam said. "'Hey, Angelos is making this game. He wants our help. He wants to know how much it would cost to remake Dungeon Rampage.' The first thing I did was click on the Steam page and I'm like, this is a preexisting game. Does he actually have the IP license to this thing? My first reaction was suspicion. Pretend he does have the IP license, what would it cost us to make this from scratch?"

They couldn't come to an agreement that worked, and the project seemed destined to stall again. Mako had no budget, the studio had no capital for the project, and discussions with publishers were promising but not particularly fruitful.

A careful girl saves the day

Finally, Mako tracked down the last engineer on the project, and they started to chat.

It turned out he might have the files of the last build on a laptop—only he had given it to his seven-year-old daughter to play with.

...When we got the source code off of a laptop and were told that this hasn't been running in years, we were like, 'We could solve this thing.'

Gamebreaking CEO Taylor Hellam

Miraculously, the laptop—and the files—were still intact. "We were very happy that she didn't accidentally delete the files," Mako says with a laugh. Now Gamebreaking was intrigued, Hellam said.

"We're obviously really moved by Mako's story and his passion," he says, "but also we're a sucker for a good technical challenge. So when we got the source code off of a laptop and were told that this hasn't been running in years, we were like, 'We could solve this thing.' "

Gamebreaking agreed to partner with Mako to update the files and release the game, and got to work. It turned out to be a tougher challenge than they expected; it wasn't just a Flash game, it was Flash and C++ and a PHP backend, and when one part got fixed, it seemed one of the other pieces would break.

The first boot

Finally there came a day when it seemed like all three might be working, and Hellam urged Mako to jump on a video call to give it a test. They had been talking for three months at that point.

At first, the game just threw another error. "I thought I was trolling," Hellam says. But then a magical thing happened: It ran. Hellam recorded the call—you can watch that moment live below.

Once they were into the game's lobby, it was only a matter of minutes before the two were playing the game. Buggy, misbehaving, occasionally perplexing—but it was alive again. Mako was a little teary-eyed. Hellam was ecstatic.

"I was like, finally we were holding up our end of the bargain!" Hellam says. "It was a really incredible moment watching him play for the first time. And then I didn't hear from him for two days because he was just playing nonstop." Mako says he "missed some dinners" that week. "It was a very emotional time."

The Gamebreaking Studios team. (Image credit: Gamebreaking Studios)

Getting it ready for prime time

They set up a Kickstarter campaign that blew through its $25,000 goal. (It's at $61,000 now; that page includes free demos). The team got access to the original game's Facebook page and gave it a tweak, then watched the excited fans jump on the change.

He was the first person to play this game in over a decade.

Taylor Hellam

"All we did was change the cover photo there and everyone reacted like crazy," Hellam says. "Everyone was like, 'Oh my god, is the game coming back? What's going on?' Over the next week, our wishlists doubled. It was insane."

The game was freemium when it was originally released, but will now be a complete, one-time purchase. It's headed to early access on Steam thanks to Mako and his Gamebreaking partnership. It's on more than 100,000 wishlists, Hellam says.

"He was the first person to play this game in over a decade, which is really cool," Hellam says. "He definitely deserved to be the one to play. He was the one who got it to come back."

"It's a very fun game and it's been a very fun game forever," Mako says. Those first days of playing again "were the first days of discovering fire as a caveman. That's my best analogy of this."

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To anyone who's really into PCs and is happy to use beta software all the time, news that the latest version of Windows 11 Insider build has a wee bug in it will barely raise an eyebrow. I'm one such person, but my forehead went into all kinds of funny shapes after learning that the bug in question causes the Windows Vista start-up music to be played, instead of the correct Windows 11 one.

Yes, that's right: Windows Vista. An operating system that launched 18 years ago, and one that is generally regarded as being the worst version of Windows ever (and just a generally poor OS all round). Let's ignore the nature of the bug itself, which is a bizarre one for sure, and just focus on the fact that Windows 11 has the Vista start-up music in it.

I mean, it's a pleasant enough snippet of music, but despite my best efforts to try and find it on my main PC, I couldn't find any trace of the plinky-plonky sound file. Did Microsoft accidentally add it back into Windows 11, or has it always been there, hidden away from prying eyes? Windows Vista got its last update many years ago, so surely it can't have been an accident.

So I'm left to assume that the Vista start-up music really is buried somewhere in the bowels of my PC. Which makes me wonder what other old stuff is tucked away. My favourites are those for Windows 95 and Windows XP—the former is courtesy of musician maestro Brian Eno and sparks lots of nostalgia. Mostly because of how often I heard it due to endless reboots caused by wonky drivers and hardware.

My real favourite is XP's, though, as it's just a solid, almost triumphant, blast of music to let you know that Windows is up and running. Moderns PC with speedy SSDs boot up so quickly that there's little time to have any decent length of sound running, so Windows 11's start-up sound is as basic as they come.

While I'm still pondering over 'Why Vista?', let me just make a small request of Microsoft. Fix the bug, by all means, but give us the whole gamut of start-up sounds in the Settings app. If Sony's happy to do with the PlayStation 5, you can surely do it with Windows.

Windows 11 review: What we think of the latest OS. How to install Windows 11: Guide to a secure install.Windows 11 TPM requirement: Strict OS security.

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