The city-building genre is grossly overpopulated. Competing Simvilles predicated on wholly opposed theories about plumbing and traffic wardens stretch as far as the eye can see. As such, the genre must imitate real-life urban centres of the 20th century, and begin expanding vertically. Enter Stario: Haven Tower, the new strategy management sim from Chinese developers Stargate Games, in which you build upward through the realms of Sand, Mist, Rain, Frost, and Clear Skies until finally, your city stands among the Stars.

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I've yet to fully consume Consume Me, so please take that headline with a pinch of salt (not too much, because apparently salt can cause short-term weight gain). Still, I thought I'd rush out a quick "on sale now" piece before the weekend because this game is extremely good, and I worry based on the Steam stats that it's being overlooked.

It's a fast-talking, mildly anguished pocket RPG about a high schoolgirl, Jenny, who is trying to lose weight while balancing schoolwork, domestic duties, an emerging social life, and her domineering mom. It broadly consists of household tasks and Coming Of Age Milestones couched as a bunch of Wario Ware-style timed minigame puzzles. Among other antics, you'll fold laundry by clicking on cue, manage a (dis)interest bar during a terrible date, apply your make-up as though doodling yourself in Kid Pix, and surgically arrange food on your plate while passing carbier morsels to your absurdly squishy dog.

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In May this year, despite being deep in development on The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, CD Projekt revealed that they'd be whipping out one more patch for The Witcher 3 in honour of its tenth birthday. Said update was originally set to drop in 2025, but has now been pushed back into 2026.

It's a little bit of an extra wait for cross-platform mod support, and given what the studio have been like witch Cyberpunk 2077's seemingly never-ending string of last updates, I'm not ruling out them having secretly decided to add more new stuff to the RPG masterpiece while they're at it.

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After weeks of discovering new layers and playstyles, I have no idea how to summarise Rise of the White Sun, except perhaps "It's 1920s China! Good luck!" Playable factions include major political blocs, conventional military behemoths, petty warlords, peasant uprisings, foreign stooges, and multiple communist cells (particularly in the recent DLC). There's even a police chief, and my inevitable favourite, the angry mountain lady who cares for none of that, and only wants to raid everyone's cattle.

This is an absurdly rich and complex grand strategy wargame. But where that usually means an unmanageable deposit, White Sun's greatest design strength is fitting its possibilities into a framework where they feel comprehensible, and remain manageable at any scale.

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Amid a consumer boycott of their Xbox business, Microsoft are apparently ending the Israeli military's access to certain Azure cloud and generative AI technologies used to surveil Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. As reported by the Guardian, one of the publications who originally exposed the surveillance project, the company told Israeli officials last week that spy agency Unit 8200 had violated Microsoft's terms of service by storing records of civilian phone calls and other data on Azure servers.

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