So. BioWare, the legendary RPG studio that created the Mass Effect series, was shut down just yesterday, taking with it an in-development Mass Effect 5. In my coverage of the initial event, I lamented that we'd never see the project again thanks to its unceremonious death. — Read the rest

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Playdate (previously) is a delightful handheld console with a 1-bit display (for an original Mac-like aesthetic) and a peculiar hand-crank control in addition to the regular controls. Unlike other game machines, it comes with "seasons" of curated games, encouraging people to share their experiences, and season three is upon us. — Read the rest

The post Playdate Season 3 launches with an adorable frogs and abominable dungeons appeared first on Boing Boing.

Talk about a game that keeps on giving. Cyberpunk 2077 fans once again have cause to celebrate — or, if your game is heavily modded, cause to curse CD Projekt RED for their apparent refusal to keep their hands off their excellent sci-fi RPG. — Read the rest

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If you need any more proof that private equity ruins everything it touches, look no further than the curious case of EA. Electronic Arts has long had a reputation for being the greediest game publisher around, going to great pains to monetize its games to the fullest extent possible and touting a list of killed studios Ted Bundy would be jealous of. — Read the rest

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If vibe coding is absolutely going to stick around, I'd rather have it used for goofy video game mods rather than, say, critical infrastructure. I categorically do not want Claude anywhere near the government or cybersecurity… but maybe, just maybe, things like ViceBounce are fine. — Read the rest

The post Vice City mod makes an entire GTA game bounce to your favorite song appeared first on Boing Boing.

Minecraft, the world's most successful video game and now a blockbuster movie series, will soon bring its blocky voxelated world into reality. Minecraft World, first revealed in March, will open in 2027 at Chessington World of Adventures, just outside London, and will include a 70-room themed hotel. — Read the rest

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Granted, I'm not the world's biggest Resident Evil fan. The only one I've played in full was Resident Evil 7, a grimy Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired ordeal that's about as close to disconnected from the series' convoluted overarching plot as it gets. — Read the rest

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No, I don't mean the kind of 'sunset' games like Concord or Highguard get. Rather, the big glowy thing in the sky. Who among us hasn't stopped every once in a while to take in the probably-toxic Los Santos sunset?

Fruitless and hubris-fueled as humanity's attempts to digitally recreate the splendor of the natural world around us may be, we have come pretty close. — Read the rest

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Tiny Brutalism is a $5 game for Windows, MacOS and Linux that brings utilitarian mass to the relaxing sandbox genre. Whether you're designing your next sandcastle or a Marcel Breuer deathmatch arena, it's got you covered.

Create strange monuments, impossible structures, concrete towers, or just a really big wall.

— Read the rest

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Hey, remember Pokémon Platinum Version? You know, the best game of Pokémon's best era? Giant fictionalized Hokkaido to explore, evil team that wanted to make the world a nightmare dimension? If you've been hankering to revisit the best of the DS (which I kind of have lately, as it and its rival the PSP re-enter the zeitgeist thanks to hipsters), you no longer have to do it alone. — Read the rest

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After thirteen years of waiting, it feels nothing short of surreal to even think the words 'final GTA 6 trailer'. We've suffered through paywalled advertising, shockingly expensive collectors' editions, and the preceding decade of complete radio silence, but we're finally here. — Read the rest

The post After 13 years: the Final Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nidhogg, Mark Essen's wonderfully-animated 2D fencing game, now has an improved online multiplayer mode—an upgrade added more than 12 years after the indie classic's original release (in 2010, when it was in development, I described it as "Mechner on acid," which it is). — Read the rest

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Hey, did you know season 2 of Cyberpunk Edgerunners comes out in a week? I was one of many who expected Cyberpunk 2077's tie-in anime to be little more than a one-off, especially since the game's sequel is still years off and will probably be launching for the PS6. — Read the rest

The post Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 debuts with suitably action-packed trailer appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you like spacefaring video games in any capacity, you've already heard of Star Citizen, the massive MMO… in SPACE! from Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts that's been crowdfunded to the tune of a billion dollars. To hear Roberts and his adherents talk about the game, it'll do everything from buttering your toast to curing cancer… juuuuuust as soon as it releases. — Read the rest

The post At least part of Star Citizen will finally be out soon, allegedly appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nanolathe is the latest example of a fascinating subgenre of real-time strategy game: Chris Taylor's 1997 hit Total Annihation but with something more. Nanolathe offers an open source MIT-licensed 2.5D RTS engine reimplementing the original plus three decades of the quality-of-life tweaks: a perfect access point for anyone who played it way back when but might now be intimidated by Beyond All Reason's sprawling 150-player Götterdämmerungs. — Read the rest

The post Classic real-time strategy game Total Annihilation is 30 years old—and everyone is remixing it appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm about to say something bold and trailblazing: the triple-A game development industry isn't particularly creative and has stagnated significantly, in large part thanks to overinflated budgets bringing with them astronomical revenue goals that heavily discourage risk-taking or innovation. Cower as this fresh young firebrand says what we're all thinking! — Read the rest

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Last week, a clone of Adobe's Creative Suite appeared, said to be reverse-engineered and recreated using AI. Adobe's bad reputation made it easy for the internet to take perverse joy in its misfortune. Out with Adobe's surveillance technology, in with a fast and efficient replacement! — Read the rest

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Remember when the PS5 Pro launched and we all lost our collective minds about it costing $700, which is, to be fair, still an egregious price for a console? Good times.

If only we knew, right? The enormity of the AI component crunch hadn't quite hit us yet, and a future where people could still afford to play video games still seemed possible. — Read the rest

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Doom running on toothbrushes is old news. The new thing is porting Doom to ancient systems. Few offer a more starkly-different experience to the original's low-res pseudo-3D than the vectorbeam Vectrex, already a vintage curiosity by the time Id software's 1993 FPS came out. — Read the rest

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Only a few days ago, I noted that we're entering another golden age of video game adaptations after the 90s put us off the whole idea for a while. I love when I'm proven right almost immediately.

Unlike The Finals or ARC Raiders, Cyberpunk 2077's biggest strength is arguably its world and story: the game is an adaptation of a tabletop roleplaying universe that's been running since the 80s, and its revised version of that world has spawned spinoffs of its own. — Read the rest

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