“With more planned.” For months, that’s all we’ve had to go on, when it comes to the nagging question of whether or not the wonderful Slay The Spire will ever stretch beyond its three playable characters. Third character The Defect’s relatively new, and the focus is currently on spit’n’polish for this week’s escape from early access, so I’m not holding my breath for an official newbie any time soon.

I don’t have to, because the community’s taken advantage of Spire’s newly officially-enabled mod support to add a weird and wonderful assortment of new card-clobberers to the game. Given the almighty balancing act inherent to a numbers game like this, what I’m truly surprised by is how good> some of these are. Inventive concepts, not too much of a power-trip or too much of a kick in the squishies, and only a little bit of brazenly stolen art. So, here are five of the Slay The Spire character mods I dig the most (so far).

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If you’ve survived dark forces and fancy a greater challenge than wrangling a cult to uncover and master the terrible secrets at the heart of the world (easy peasy tbh), Cultist Simulator has your back. The eldritch… survival RPG (?) today adds a New Game+ mode in a free update, letting us continue our tale in a difficult and terrible new way. It’s a right big’un too, bunging in 20,000-odd new words. Some might even be brand new words.

Beyond this, head cultist Alexis Kennedy is kicking around the idea of making a standalone expansion sorta thing about playing a librarian organising an esoteric collection.

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If Max Payne and Hotline Miami got into a horrible teleporter accident, the result would probably look a lot like The Hong Kong Massacre. Released today, five years after RPS first covered it, it looks like a blend of Miami’s frantic twitch shooting with Payne’s slow-motion evasion plus a dash of John Woo’s penchant for over-the-top impact effects. Developers Vreski are clearly proud of their clouds of sparks, paper, chunks of wall and puffs of blood as bodies hit the floor. Take a look at just how many particle effects can be crammed on-screen in the trailer below.

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A new (and relatively lengthy) Metro Exodus trailer showcases the many weapons and customisations that will be available when the game launches, next month.

The trailer (which you can watch below) details the many gun classes that will be available as well as some of the customisation options that will tailor each weapon to your specific needs. (more…)

Fortnite has been a masterclass in exceeding expectations in many ways, not least because of its deceptively high skill ceiling. This beast of a Battle Royale not only has a great deal of weapons and locations with which to familiarise yourself, but also a whole host of systems such as building and editing, the Storm, healing and shield items, piloting land and air vehicles, and much more besides.

So to that end, we’ve put together the below Fortnite guide, where you’ll find pretty much everything we can possibly think of on the behemoth that is Fortnite: Battle Royale. Seriously, we’ve got it all: how to get set up, how to build properly, weapon stats, best locations to drop, in-depth explanations of items and weekly challenges… All with the ultimate goal of equipping you with the knowledge to improve your game ten times over.

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As we slide> further into the new year, Fortnite’s Season 8 is sailing> ever closer, set to arrive in the next few weeks. So it’s about time we take a proper look at the deluge> of theories and info on what to expect in this new season.

Our Fortnite Season 8 guide is simply saturated> with everything we know about the upcoming Season 8 release, detailing its start date as well as the most likely theories regarding map changes, skins, themes, and much more. So without further ado, let’s dive> in!

Aside: RPS may not be held responsible for any distress or bodily harm brought about as a result of our blatant overuse of water- and ice-related puns in the above paragraphs.>

Fortnite Season 8 release date

Season 8 of Fortnite looks set to release on Thursday 28 February. According to Epic Games, the end of Season 7 was delayed by two weeks beyond the customary ten weeks, so that the team could take a two-week break over Christmas.

Epic’s usual approach is to bring their servers offline at around 8 AM GMT to start off the new season, and the downtime usually lasts three-to-four hours. But after that, we’ll all be free to explore the new map and Battle Pass together for (presumably) the next ten weeks, meaning Season 8 will be with us until Thursday 9 May, whereupon Season 9 will begin.

Season 8 skins, theme, Battle Pass

One recent discovery hidden in Fortnite’s map, which may indicate the theme of Season 8’s skins and Battle Pass, was a cluster of what appear to be giant dragon eggs in the castle atop Polar Peak. What’s more, you can clearly hear heartbeats emanating from the eggs if you are near enough to them – so whatever is inside is definitely alive, and waiting for the right moment to hatch.

This prompted reddit user LethalSnowmeme to post a lengthy theory explaining how we might soon see a resurgence of medieval and Arthurian-themed skins and phenomena for Season 8, much like we saw in Season 2, which brought with it numerous knight skins and accompanying cosmetic items. Backing up this claim is a recent update to Fortnite’s Save The World mode, which introduces a new medieval weapons set; and the previous release of the (hilariously game-breaking) Infinity Blade, which also resided atop Polar Peak, and alluded to Epic Games’s mobile game of the same name, which features a great deal of knightly and medieval imagery and themes.

Oh, and guess what? The Infinity Blade game also features dragons.

Whether we’ll see dragons taking the form of cosmetics such as dragon-bone pickaxes, or just as part of the spectacle which brings about the change in seasons remains unclear… But now that Epic have dipped their toes in the waters of aerial combat with the Stormwings, many players are asking whether it’s too far out of the realms of possibility that we might get rideable dragons. Or might we somehow be able to harness the power of the dragons in order to create new elemental weapons? Only time will tell; fortunately we won’t have too long to wait.

(Above footage source)>

Fortnite Season 8 map changes

Rumours of what the overarching theme of Season 8 might be were also kickstarted by the appearance of a mysterious giant sphere of ice, poised in the sky just above Polar Peak, within which the Ice King resided for a short time. Just this past weekend, an in-game event witnessed by many thousands of players simultaneously saw the Ice King emerge from his icy bubble and cast an ice storm which blanketed the entire map in snow, and unleashed icy versions of the zombies we last saw around Halloween of 2018 across the island. If you missed it, take a look at these cinematic shots caught by Reddit user “savage_star_gaming” below.

Cinematic shots, if you missed it. from r/FortNiteBR

All this points to one thing: fire and ice both have major roles to play in the coming weeks. The Ice Storm was predicted by a great many people after the sphere first appeared, and we believe this only consolidates our theory that Season 8 will bring a great deal of water to the map as the ice and snow thaws away in the transition from Winter to Spring. It may even be that the eggs hatch in the next in-game event, and fire-breathing dragons cause the island to thaw into its Season 8 form in a matter of seconds.

But, I hear you ask, if we’re to see a multitude of springs and lakes crop up across the map in Season 8, won’t this be treading on Loot Lake’s toes a little? And water isn’t exactly the most fun terrain to navigate through, anyway, right?

That’s why some players are theorising that we’ll see some changes made to how players interact with water for Season 8. Perhaps instead of treading water we’ll be able to submerge ourselves completely? And with the recent expansion of Fortnite’s arsenal of vehicles, might we expect boat and submarines to make their first appearances? If this is indeed the case, it’s fun just imagining how the introduced verticality of underwater play might affect build battles and final circle fights.

Season 8 new locations

The other question to ask is how existing locations might change, and whether new ones will be added and old favourites taken away. The advent of Season 7 disposed of Risky Reels, Greasy Grove, and Flush Factory. The first few weeks of Season 6 was dominated by a floating island that moved across the map from match to match. Travel back even further, and old favourites such as Moisty Mire were discarded in favour of new hotspots such as Paradise Palms and Westworld.

So how can we expect our favourite spots to fare against the onset of Season 8? A sudden thaw might well turn Polar Peak into an enormous 360-degree waterfall surrounded by lakes, or some similar striking landmark. We’ll presumably also see a new Loot Lake rival in the form of the frozen lake just north of Polar Peak.

But now that the snow has covered the entire map, we may well see major changes not just in the south-west corner but to other areas of the map which have remained untouched for a long time, such as Junk Junction, Pleasant Park, Lucky Landing, or Salty Springs. It feels like the north-east section of the island is overdue some major changes. They added The Block, admittedly; but compared to the major towns in the other areas of the map, there’s still comparatively little to lure players to the top-left corner.

Whatever the changes may be, it’s safe to expect they will be elemental> in nature, the result of either fire or ice – or perhaps both forces together.

That’s just about everything we know so far on the upcoming arrival of Season 8 of Fortnite Battle Royale; but do check back here for all the latest information, as we track the activities of the map, the sphere, and everything else we deem to be of interest. In the meantime, do check out our [cms-block] series, which contains all sorts of useful explanations, tips and strategies on how to become a seasoned Fortnite killer, including detailed explanations of all the [cms-block], guides on the various [cms-block], a full rundown of all the best [cms-block] for loot and safety, and much more.

Last week brought news that beleaguered swashbuckling MMO Atlas had been hacked by a bunch of salty ne’er do wells. The keys to an admin account were stolen, allowing hackers to go on what amounted to a trans-dimensional naval joyride. Invincible armadas armed with inexhaustible supplies of cannonballs briefly ruled the waves, which was to be expected. But then planes fell from the sky. The oceans boiled with giant whales. I think there was a World War Two tank at one stage, scooting across the sea like an angry speedboat.

The developers, Grapeshot, pulled everything offline, hosed all the weirdness> off their servers and pressed the big reset button they keep hidden in the basement. Now everything is back to normal again. Except, get this, Atlas was far from normal to begin with.

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Pinball’s pretty simple, right? Left flipper, right flipper, ritual magic and demons crawling all over the table. Playing Demon’s Tilt is a mesmerising exercise in filtering order out of chaos and trying to parse what exactly is going on across its single (but large) three-tiered table. Entering early access today and developed by Adam “Wiznwar” Ferrando, it’s a loving, maximalist tribute to Naxat’s mostly forgotten Crush series of pinball games which started back in the 80s. There’s swarms of bullets, huge combo multipliers and demons all over the place, and a trailer lurking below.

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Fortnite‘s v7.20 content update is now live and adds a frosty-themed item to the battle royale, allowing you to sneak up on unsuspecting players by donning a rather innocuous looking snowman outfit. And what an ace way to blend in following the explosion of the ice orb that was hovering above the Polar Peaks, this weekend, blanketing the entire map in snow.

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Anthem’s free demo is literally days away now, and EA have recently put up the system requirements for the full game, so we thought we’d update this roundup of everything we have so that you can prepare your PC in advance. Below you will find all the information about the schedule for both the VIP demo and the regular free demo, as well as details on the game’s release date, the trailers that have been released so far, and everything about the special edition for the game. (more…)