Speaking as a veteran insomniac who routinely has to operate across time zones, let me share a few of my top tips for staying awake when you really want to sleep. Firstly, fill your eyes with as much light as possible - moonlight, fridgelight, phonelight, flamingoilbarrelight - and your lungs with as much bracing outdoors air as they can take. Secondly, enlist a similarly restless friend for some mutual tickling. Thirdly, remember your failures. All of them. Fourthly, consume a carefully calibrated mixture of fresh fruit and coffee, then look up dad jokes on Reddit.

It doesn't feel like any of these proven strategies will work in Sleep Awake, the new first-person "psychedelic" horror game from former Spec Ops: The Line director and designer Cory Davis and his team at Eyes Out. Nobody wants to tickle you here, going by the trailer. Nobody has any dad jokes to share. They just want to beat you to a bloody sludge with pipes.

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Battlefield 6's battle against the bot farmers continues with a series of backend updates from EA. Amongst other things, the developers have reversed some "unintended" changes to XP progression and balance, and removed bots from "verified" modes available through the Portal editor.

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Hades 2's true ending didn't feel totally slam dunk satisfying to me in its 1.0 release form, and developers Supergiant Games seem to have agreed with those sorts of assessments. Hence, in the roguelike's first proper post-launch patch they've just put out as a Steam preview, some "true ending enhancements" being rolled out like a boon from a sassy god.

Shameless plug alert, if you want to read my full thoughts on that 1.0 version, you can read this here review. The short version is that it's good.

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The bit of reporting I'm about to relay to you probably isn't surprising, but it's worth making sure you've got a pillow on standby to scream into once you've digested it. Microsoft, they of more money than a company could ever need or know what to do with, have reportedly spent the last two years pushing Xbox to deliver profit margins which are well above the industry average. Cue all of the layoffs, cancellations, and shutterings.

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Ah Valve, you awful, giggling vultures. You terrible purveyors of mischief and misfortune. Weeks go past without you making any significant game-related announcements, and then you suddenly dropkick the entire Counter-Strike cosmetics economy into the sun.

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