This devlog showcases my Blueprint-based sprint and stamina system and its integration with the player’s health and thirst. Hydration decreases at a normal rate while walking. Sprinting consumes stamina and accelerates hydration loss, giving faster movement an additional resource cost. Once stamina is depleted, the extra hydration drain from sprinting stops, while the normal drain continues. If hydration reaches zero, the player begins losing health. These connected systems make resource management part of traversal. Players need to balance speed with their physical condition, using drinks to restore hydration and medkits to recover health. The UI tracks each stat and highlights critical levels, providing clear feedback as resources run low. https://youtu.be/_LT4jW5UfkU
In a wild coincidence a German player was penalized over the playing habits of their Ryzen 7's previous owner, claiming that nothing short of replacing the entire PC will overcome Riot's infamous anti-cheat detection
Over the past year Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics driver team has made multiple very nice improvements to the AMDGPU kernel driver for enhancing support for old (GCN 1.0/1.1 era from a decade ago) graphics cards so that they can better handle Linux gaming and other tasks. This week in Toronto, Kristóf presented on this AMDGPU work that he initially began as a kernel driver development exercise after initially spending years in user-space focused on the Mesa 3D driver code...
Capcom's Pragmata might be all about the horrors of AI, but in practice the studio doesn't seem so down on the tech. During the Capcom Open Conference RE: 2026 programmer Satoshi Ishida gave a presentation with the mouthful of a title: "The Outlook and Future of the REX Project, Further Evolving the RE Engine for the Next Generation." During the talk he laid out the challenges facing studios producing games at the scale of Resident Evil, which can make even simple tasks extremely time consuming. The solution Ishida said is "successfully integrating AI technology into development workflows." Capcom has said previously that it will not use AI … Read the full story at The Verge.
Government policies continue to echo in the consumer tech space, with Nvidia customers reporting heightened security around purchases, even requiring government ID
Sometimes I Wonder About The Other Me is a 2D platformer created by "small game" developer Luis "Ludipe" Díaz Peralta, whose other works include A Place For The Unwilling. It's broken into a handful of single screen maps. On each screen, there's a Mario-brand exclamation mark block that burps a text fragment, forming an overarching monologue that begins with the title phrase. As you move between screens, you come to a signpost pointing left and right. Heading in either direction leads to a splitscreen area, with the player controlling duplicate characters. As you guide your charges rightward, one half of the screen flakes away to darkness. The remaining character returns to the starting screen, there to wonder anew about the Other Me. Read more
Coming with Sunday's Linux 7.3-rc6 kernel release is support added for the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Race, a high-end $649~700 USD racing wheel and pedal system...
October, we meet again. You slip through my bedroom window as a cold draft on a crisp morning, both making my covers more welcome and the long walk to the kitchen for coffee that much harder. Still, your arrival signals the end of a month stuffed with game releases and, for me, at least, a lot of weekends of travelling. So your arrival is not unwelcome. Read more
Final Fantasy Resonance’s developer put copious amounts of thought into what a modern turn-based game might look like, and that included looking back at key moments of the series’ past
I don’t know if memory shortages have permanently killed off the concept of 'cheap' gaming PCs, but they have at least beat it into a coma. On the desktop side, inflated RAM, SSDs and graphics card prices continue to inflict karmic pain for our years of "It's cheaper to build it yourself" smugness, while formerly affordable handheld PCs are either suffering 40%-plus jackups or launching above £1K from the off. And the Steam Machine! The poor, square Steam Machine. Every few weeks, possibly in denial, I’ll skim through the shops to see what budget games kit actually looks like in this day and age. Across the last five or six rounds, little has changed: the entry point into decent, more-or-less current-spec 1080p play remains stuck in the low quadruple figures, particularly if you’re fully new to PC ownership and need to factor in a monitor and peripherals. There is one exception, assuming you don’t fancy your luck on the secondhand market, but giving it a hands-on appraisal means confronting an ancient hardware foe of mine. And you all know how little I like to have my prejudices challenged. Still, research suggests that yes, this truly is the most gaming PC you can get for under £999. So, um. Here it goes. May...maybe gaming laptops aren’t so bad. Read more
Cheesed off with unauthorised reuploads of their Total War: Warhammer 3 overhaul which make use of AI, the main modder behind SFO: Grimhammer 3 has opted to purposefully corrupt the mod. The aim is to ensure that the modders maintain more control over where and when the latest version of Grimhammer 3 can be grabbed, with creator Venris threatening to make the mod private if the situation doesn't improve. Read more
In perhaps the least surprising Fallout news since Raul from New Vegas confirmed that ghouls with dodgy knees don't enjoy sneaking, the person behind an AI-generated browser game dubbed Fallout: New York has claimed to have recieved a cease and desist message from Bethesda parent company ZeniMax. Their creation, if such a term fits, was generated using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 tech. Read more
PUBG: Black Budget, an extraction shooter spin-off of Krafton's battle royale, has been cancelled after just under a year of closed alpha testing. Krafton cited a lack of faith that Black Budget's "current direction" would lead to "an experience players could enjoy over the long term" as the reasoning behind their call to end development. Though, they insisted PUBG Studios have learned valuable lessons that'll serve future games. Read more
After seeing open-world imm-sim No Law last month, I'm sure the developers would hope I was gripped by memories of missions you can approach stealthily or in all-out action, the sci-fi combat where you wield slow-time grenades and cyberpunk implants, or even the powerful kick you can use to boot open locked doors. But, no, what I keep thinking about is the corner shop where protagonist Grey Harker, an ex-soldier on a murderous rampage to take down Port Desire's four corrupt mayors, stopped to pick up some batteries. Read more
Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results are now in and it's clocking in just above 3%...
Reigns and Card Shark developers Nerial have announced that they're shutting down or at least, "entering hibernation mode", following discussion with their parent company Devolver Digital. By the sound of things, the entire team are now "seeking new opportunities", as is the parlance of studio closures. Read more
In my time as a videogame partaker, I have crawled through approximately three billion airvents. I may well have crawled through more vents than you've had hot dinners. As such, any videogame that can get me excited about loosening a barred hatch and hauling my heavy ass into a square tunnel is doing something right. The Wild Gentlemen's new sci-fi immersive sim RetroSpace gives pretty fair vent. It hides them all over. You'll walk along a dilapidated, meandering corridor and your eye will be caught by a certain combination of shadows, flirtatiously screened by pipes. 'Can I fit behind there?' You ask yourself, and lo, you have revealed a shortcut to the head engineer's office. Elsewhere, switches peek from behind stacks of luggable crates, and bent guard-rails draw your eye to a footwide ledge leading around the next pillar. In general, RetroSpace does a nice job of squirrelling secrets into even the smallest chambers, and if the secret is very often a "rocket doughnut" or other inventory-clogging flotsam, sensing the prize and snuffling after it is a thrill. I hope the thrill will intensify as RetroSpace goes on, perhaps leaving a few of its obvious influences behind. Read more
Trippy hack 'n' slash sequel (and, for the benefit of anyone planning for this year’s Advent Calendar guessing game in the RPS Discord, my current second-favouritest game of 2026) Control Resonant has a big old update out today. As declassified by Remedy, it not only adds the pledged New Game++ mode for plus-deficient game replayers, but makes absolutely bloody loads of smaller bug fixes and quality of life tweaks. Read more
Capcom have done a brisk trade in Resident Evil remakes this past decade. They've gone back to formula with Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil 4, not just bumping up the resolution and revarnishing the cutscenes, but writing new variations on the old survival horror fables. There's a Resident Evil: Code Veronica regurgitation due in 2027, and a Resident Evil 0 resurrection allegedly to follow in 2028. The problems with this strategy are perhaps expressed by my previous sentence's struggle to come up with extra synonyms for "remake": sooner or later, Capcom are going to run out of original games they can credibly overhaul. Including the forthcoming or rumoured projects, they've only got Resident Evils 5 and 6 left now before they hit the "modern era" inaugurated by Resident Evil 7, the game that introduced the fancy RE Engine used by the remakes. Read more
Ever since The Witcher 3's decade-on expansion Songs of the Past was revealed not to be a windup nor a case of empthy rumourmongering, I've been eating up as many details about its story as CD Projekt Red have offered. The truth is that, outside of showing off the setting and a few of the characters Gerry'll chat to, they've kept their lips pretty tight. On one hand, I get wanting to keep narrative surprises intact, but on the other, it'd be nice to see the studio be less vague about this extra chapter of a story folks assumed they'd already seen through to a satisfying end a decade ago. So, in addition to scouring other interviews about the DLC, I flung my own questions at CD Projekt Red story director Marcin Blacha, who worked in that role and as a lead writer on TW3 back in the day. Read more
Port Desire, the hemmed-in city setting of immersive sim No Law, is hard to place. At points, it reminds me of walking around Lisbon. It shares that Portuguese city's verticality, where hill-straddling streets shouldered by colourful houses and corner shops can feel like tiers on a wedding cake. The strong sunlight and bursts of foliage reinforce the mediterranean vibes. Yet, the port city's structure and history is much closer to Kowloon Walled City, the ungoverned Chinese enclave that existed within British-owned Hong Kong. Through the 1900s, with the British government taking a hands-off policy to the tiny district and the Chinese government exercising no control over its citizens, Kowloon became the most densely populated city on earth, with 33,000 citizens living in just 2.6-hectare borders. With virtually no official police presence, the city attracted anyone looking for a less-observed, less-regulated life – gangs, refugees, and a surprising number of unlicensed dentists. As one of No Law's creative directors, Tor Frick, tells it, Port Desire is very similar. Not specifically the dentists bit, more the general, isolated lawlessness. Read more
Despite recently having overseen the laying off of 268 staff in the second of multiple rounds of cuts planned for this financial year, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has denied that their are plans to sell Microsoft's gaming division. The bloodletting at Xbox in recent months has not only seen workers let go, but the place of studios within the company's structure being altered. Rather than lots of studios with their own degree of independence, Xbox have been parting ways with many studios and consolidating what remains under a small number of arms led by the bosses of the likes of Activision and Bethesda. Read more
Tom Clancy's The Division and Star Wars Outlaws studio Massive Entertainment just got, er, massiver. Parent company Ubisoft have announced that they're now "the global label" for several other series, including Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell alongside at least one original game, World War fantasy MOBA March of Giants. Read more
Fantasy RPG Queen's Domain is frequently likened by certain other websites to From Software's King's Field games and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, so I'm going to put my nose in the air and forcibly compare it to something else. Looks like, errrrrr, a first-person Ico with Mayan architectural influences, maybe a touch of Final Fantasy's Ivalice period here and there. It's set on an island with shorelines you could compare to Halo's Silent Cartographer level, if you rubbed your eyes with breakfast cereal. Have I thoroughly confused you? Don't worry, here is a trailer. Read more
No More Heroes and Killer7 developers Grasshopper Manufacture have split from erstwhile parent company NetEase, founder Goichi "Suda51" Suda has announced. NetEase bought them back in 2021, as part of the acquisition of Gungho Online Entertainment. Now, they're going indie. According to Suda, the change reflects "a strong desire to deliver titles in an even wider variety of styles to video game lovers everywhere". Read more
Deadpool’s a weird character. Like fellow mutant Wolverine, Wade Wilson is a trained killer whose primary superpower is a healing factor that lets him recover and reform from any wound, even if bisected or decapitated. Unlike Wolverine, Wade knows he’s in a fictional medium, be it a comic book, movie, or game, and physically can’t stop quipping about that fact and referencing things in and out of his world. It’s up to the writer whether this is sheer coincidence (as in, he’s genuinely just psychotic and his insane ramblings happen to be the truth), or a true meta awareness granting him power over narrative itself. This is a trait that Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls handles smartly, which in a way is surprising, because it usually makes him quite annoying. In most appearances, Deadpool references everything — nothing is safe. Marvel editorial, art of all mediums new and old, assorted real-life celebrity drama, specific stories from comics’ past (not just Marvel, either), and more I can’t think of right now; all of it ripe fruit for Wade to riff on in one of the many jokes-per-minute spouting from his scarred mouth. This became true of the vast majority of his comic runs, once the meta awareness, fourth-wall-breaking became a central part of his character identity, and defined non-comic appearances like High Moon’s 2013 Deadpool game and Ryan Reynolds' (admittedly, kinda perfect) portrayal from the 2016 film onwards. No, X-Men Origins: Wolverine does not count. Read more
A little bit of extra waiting is in order for Crimson Desert's first proper expansion, Charting the Unknown. Originally set to arrive midway through October, it's now been moved back by a couple of weeks to allow for some extra fine-tuning of the thousand or so funky open world activities devs Pearl Abyss have jammed into it. Read more
It has perhaps never been easier to join a witch or wizard school without being a Guy Who Rhymes With Bally Trotter. Academies of the occult abound in videogames. True, there has yet to be an amazing Little Witch Academia adaptation, and I'm still waiting for that Arbitrary Metric take on Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education, to say nothing of Failbetter's take on Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, but in the short term, I've been enjoying the demo for Songs of Glimmerwick, which goes on sale today. Read more
My very soul has been cleft into pieces on this day. January 3rd, 902 AD. First, my Christian faith fractured in twain. I stand in Rome, head of the Roman Rite and now the leader of the Catholic world. My neighbours to the east have chosen to walk a different path, transforming their Greek Rite into a new Orthodoxy followed by the Byzantine Empire. It’s a brave new world in Crusader Kings 3’s By God Alone expansion, made even tougher to face by the three additional wounds I gained right at the moment of the split. All three of my wives have divorced me, serving their papers within seconds of each other. Taken alongside the betrothal that my fourth wife-to-be broke not too long before the schism, it really stings. Sure, I’m the Pope and thus should be celibately devoting myself to God, but a breakup’s a breakup. It’s not all consecrated bread and wine when you’ve managed to end up on Wikipedia’s list of sexually active popes thanks to an utterly hilarious bug. Read more
Arc Raiders developers Embark heavily underestimated the challenges of creating a full-blown live service game, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal has conceded in a new interview. The extraction shooter launched with an ambition for monthly post-release updates that ultimately proved untenable, resulting in an exhausted and unhappy team who were "constantly overshooting our capacity". Read more
In case you missed it, September happened. Technically it’s still happening, and we have one more exclusive post for RPS Premium Supporters coming this week, but this time I fancy doing the monthly rewards roundup within the month being rounded up. Lest armoured date pedants infiltrate my flat with breaching charges, and start hitting my shins with their pernickety sticks. Thanks again to all our Supporters, preem or otherwise, and turbo double-thanks to anyone who filled in our Supporters survey. This has granted us some immensely helpful guidance on how to steer Supp rewards in the future, as well as some important feedback on the site more generally. You’re all, and I don’t say this about a lot of people, da best. Read more
When I first learned about Core Values, the upcoming expansion to factory automation game Satisfactory, I didn't grasp the scale of the challenge developer Coffee Stain had set themselves. 'So, the game is set underground now?' I thought. 'I'll just stick up some more lights and make the same factory I always have.' Yet, as I covered yesterday, that won't be possible. For a start because you'll need to use new logistics tools to connect your factory buildings – conveyor belts aren't gone, but they're nowhere near as useful as they once were. Another major difference, though, is a design problem for the developers: how to make a perfectly-sized cave. Read more
Midway through September, modder SquallyDaBeanz released a solo-developed custom campaign for Baldur's Gate 3 in beta, adding an extra chapter to the RPG's main story. Neatly nestled between the RPG's second and third acts, the mod sends you and your party on a trip through The Chionthar Wilds while the Absolute's Army marches on towards the city the series is named after. SquallyDaBeanz has now offered a bit more explanation as to why they reckon the second section of BG3's established story benefits from having a few more forks in the road before the serious business of the final act begins. Read more
Grand Theft Auto 6 features a re-engineered, "more localized and persistent" weather system that ranges in intensity from physically credible rainbows to full-bore hurricanes, according to Rockstar vice president of art for lighting and rendering Owen Shepherd. As ever with GTA, the question is to what extent this will materially affect your doings in the new open world game, but at the very least, it seems like there's scope to pack in the core Bonnie & Clyde routine and become an amateur weather watcher for hours at a time. Read more
It feels weird that Deadlock is technically a game that isn't out yet, doesn't it? You can't even just play it as someone that's never done so, you have to have someone that's already got access to send you an invite. Valve didn't even really acknowledge its existence publicly, and they still sort of treat it as this little secret that everyone's in on. Two years on, though, it's still getting updates, and the latest one arrived today changing… well, a lot. Read more