I’m sure everyone’s feeling a bit of Black Friday fatigue by now (trust me, I want this all to be over just as much as you do), but in the interests of those after that one, last, final deal to end all deals, I present to you our newly refreshed Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals hub. I’ve cleared away all the deals that have been swept into oblivion by the almighty wave of discount-grabbers, leaving you with the best of the best PC gaming deals that are still available. Whether you’re after a new graphics card, monitor, SSD, gaming headset or even a new CPU, mouse and keyboard, your deals herald will provide. Here are all the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals you can grab right now.

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Delightful deck-building dungeon-crawler Slay The Spire has added a semi-secret fourth and final act in this week’s early access update. At long last, we’ll get to give that dastardly dungeon heart a proper kicking. You’ll need to make an extra effort to face the final boss, let alone defeat it, but I believe in you.

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Delightful deck-building dungeoncrawler Slay The Spire‘s daily challenge has become part of my gaming routine, always an interesting climb up the roguelikelike tower with different modifiers, and I’m happy to see today’s early access patch revamps it a little. Along with removing the vexatious ‘Brewmaster’ mod, which stacked our decks with potion-conjuring cards, it adds eight new mods to the daily pool while changing how mods are selected. On paper, it sounds like developer Mega Crit Games got together and decided to make 45 minutes of my day better every day? Ta!

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We’re just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we’ve shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you’re reading right now this second.

And what games they are! 2018 has been a great year so far, and our top picks run the whole range, from hand drawn oddities made by one person, to big mega-studio blockbusters that took the work of hundreds. And each of them is special to us in some way. Just like you are too. Click through the arrows to see the full spread of our faves so far. Better luck next year to the games that didn’t make the cut this time.

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We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.

2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)

Nearly every night, I do the ‘should I play more Slay The Spire‘ dance. The cons: I wind up feeling guilty about not spending my free time trying something new, such as any of the half-dozen games I bought in the Steam Sale. The pros: it’s always satisfying, and there’s nearly always something that makes each run uniquely interesting.

That’s largely thanks to the devs adding something new to their roguelike deckbuilder nearly every Friday. Today’s early access update is a little beefier than usual, chucking in ten new relics and a special event where a six-armed entity offers you a new face. (more…)

What Works And Why is a monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game or mechanic and analyses what makes it good.>

When games offer you abilities and perks that boost your stats, they often do it in a meager, fiddly way:

5% chance to deal 10% extra damage for 5 seconds. Does not stack.>

This is dry, fussy and boring to me. A 5% chance is so low I can never bank on it happening, 10% extra damage is so small I won’t notice it, and lasting 5 seconds means there’s this extra state I now need to know about and track. And ‘does not stack’ might be the saddest phrase in game design.

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Delightful deck-building dungeon-crawler Slay The Spire has officially launched its third character, a robot wizard named The Defect, and they’re a wild one. The Defect can conjure and consume a series of Orbs with passive and active effects, can pull off wild tricks with huge numbers of Power cards, and can also go full-on murderbot and tear enemies apart with their bare hands. I had thought The Defect was underpowered when they first arrived in the public beta build last month but, after more time with ’em, they might be my favourite spire-slayer. (more…)

Deck-building dungeon-crawler Slay The Spire has become even more delightful with today’s early access update, which added loads more potions. Before, potions were bland, not requiring much thought or planning, and largely skippable. Now you’ll find potions giving ghostly intangibility, fleeting bursts of strength, discard decisions, free cards, and other effects worth considering.

To see so very, very many of the new potions and try ’em up, do check out today’s daily run; its starting deck includes 15 copies of the potion-brewing Alchemize. (more…)

Welcome to Spawn Point, where we take something wonderful from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it s worth your time and how to get involved. This time: collectible card games (or at least, the videogame kind).>

Hello, I would like to collect some cards please. Of course, friend. We have a wide variety of fantasy themed cards, ranging from hostile dragon to raving ghoul to

Hang on, what are these numbers? Oh, ignore those, they re nothing to worry about. Look at this wizard! (more…)