A new video developer diary for Humankind explains more about its single victory condition, the pursuit of Fame points. It’s a system building victories from all facets of your cultural legacy, with points coming in everywhere from military victories to building wonders. Humankind is coming from the makers of Endless Space and Endless Legends, two cracking and fascinating 4X strategy games, so I’m mighty curious about their take on the big daddy of 4X: Civilization. Come watch the video to learn more about Fame and about switching cultures across eras.

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Sound the foghorn, folks, the PC gaming deals tanker has just pulled into port with a veritable bevy of big, fat, tasty discounts to plunder. Whether you’re after the best prices on this week’s big releases, from 22% off Resident Evil 3 to 19% off Mount And Blade 2: Bannerlord, or want to stock up on sack loads of top indie deals, your deals herald has gathered them altogether into one handy location. So fill yer boots, deals hunters, as this week’s bounty is a real good ‘un. (more…)

After two years on Microsoft’s janky Windows 10 Store, Sea Of Thieves is now officially headed to Steam. Rare last night announced that a Steam release for their multiplayer pirate sandbox is “coming soon”, and yes Steamers will be able to play with pirates on the Microsoft Store as well as Xbox One. I know many grumbled about the gaping lack of things to do when Sea Of Thieves debuted in 2018 but Rare certainly have been busy, adding a whole lot of newness since then. It’s a good time to get onboard.

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Below is a list of ‘33 things wot are, or were, white’ (‘things’ is used in its broadest possible sense). Entries have been stripped of vowels and had any inter-word spaces repositioned*. For example, if MOBY DICK was present it might appear as MB YDCK. SNOWDROP would be SNWDRP.

*Hyphens are treated as spaces. Apostrophes are ignored. (more…)

A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Every four weeks or so I hang up a streamer of industrial strength fly paper in The Flare Path water closet and see what wargame and simulation news items stick to it. Below is this month’s bag – 25 stories involving virtual vehicles and surrogate slaughter. If you’ve visited a transport museum or heritage railway in the past twelve months, or can put these battles – Bunker Hill, Bataan, Borodino – in chronological order, you probably won’t regret clicking where it says…

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I heard a lovely story from a primatologist once, about how different apes tend to respond when faced with tricky wooden puzzle boxes. Orangutans, apparently, will sit and think for a while when stumped, and then work carefully at a new angle on the problem. Chimps, meanwhile, will typically lose their tempers, smashing the offending puzzle to splinters with their hellish fists. But gorillas – my dear, sweet gorillas – will just get a little bit sad, before ambling off to find some celery to enjoy instead. It’s not that they’re incapable of finding a solution, or that they’re incurious: they’re just not that desperate to know what’s inside the box.

This is one of the many reasons I respect and admire gorillas. It’s also why I had gigantic mixed feelings about gorgeous platformer Stela. Because although it’s as pretty as anything and dripping with atmosphere, it’s opaque enough to make J.J. Abrams’ Lost seem like a childrens’ story about a pig looking at an egg. It’s a beautiful puzzle box with nothing inside it, and spends its entire, wordless length asking questions whose answers never arrive. If I was of a chimpen nature, this post would be nothing but a bared-fangs screech, delivered from a squatting position atop my wardrobe, with shards of smashed PC in my hands. But luckily, I played Stela with a gorilla’s heart*, and so had no urge to winkle the truth from inside it with my big, leathery fingers. Go in with the same mentality, and you’ll find a lot to love here.

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Capcom’s shiny new remake of Resident Evil 3 launched this morning, inviting us back to Raccoon City to enjoy the outbreak of zombitis again – now with excellent high-fidelity brands. 1999’s game saw the survival horror take on more of an explosion-y action movie vibe and that’s amplified in 2020’s remake, but it’s still pretty trad and relatively rad.

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SSD prices continue to creep ever higher this week, but there are still some great SSD deals going if you know where to look, such as this here best SSD deals page that has all the best SSD discounts from the last seven days. As per usual, I’ve scoured the internet for all the best SSD deals going on right now, making it easy to find the best SSD at the best price. All of my [cms-block] recommendations are in here, and I’ve also included a range of size capacities and form factors. From all the best deals on SATA SSDs to the biggest savings on today’s super fast NVMe SSDs and portable SSDs, here are the best SSD deals of the week.

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I’m a sucker for wizard schools, especially when they look this pretty. Witchbrook is an upcoming Stardew Valley meets Harry Potter life sim, and developers Chucklefish have released several new screens that show off its new look. They’ve transfigured nice but simple art into the lushness above.

Yes. This looks like a good place to pretend to be a magic teenager.

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At first, I took the map in Call Of Duty: Warzone for granted. The blistering forward march of techno-wizadry had inured me to its impact, and I jumped out of the spawning plane with my eyes glazed over. Of course the latest COD’s playground is bigger and more detailed than any other battle royale’s, I thought. How could it be otherwise.

My eyes are open now, though. Verdansk is vast, and should be appreciated.

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