Featured as part of the Game Devs of Color Expo and its Gradient Convergence showcase on Steam, Onsen Master’s Ghibli aesthetics caught my eye immediately. It’s a “hot spring customer management” game where you ditch the whole ‘service with a smile’ schtick and drag your customers with speed and aggression into hot spring baths you’ve prepared especially for them.

Other duties include making sure they’re cleaned between uses, that you’ve mixed the right ingredients, and you’re keeping spillages to a minimum. It’s a tough gig! And the more I ran my onsen in the demo build, the more I felt a seldom used part of my brain expanding. Is this – am I multitasking?

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Solid Snake, Revolver Ocelot, and all their wacky mates return to PC today with re-releases of the first two Metal Gear Solid games popping up on GOG, after years hiding in boxes. The stealth series was clunky but ahead of its time in a lot of ways (and I’m as alarmed as anyone by how prescient their politics now seem) so I’m quite curious to see how the vintage tactical espionage action actually holds up. It’s not going to be super-great, is it, but I’m game. GOG have dug up the original Metal Gear too.

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This was to be the week Bungie launched Destiny 2: Beyond Light but, like everything else this year, the expansion ended up delayed. This week has at least brought news about installing Beyond Light come November, both good and bad. Good news: thanks to some revamped technoguts, the game should take up less drive space and Bungie should be able to patch any urgent problems faster. Bad news: you’ll need to download the whole game again when Beyond Light arrives. We’ll get a few hours’ head-start to preload, at least.

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Titan Blood is one of the rarest resources you can encounter in Hades, Supergiant Games’s fantastic godlike roguelite. You can gain these droplets of Titan Blood by vanquishing the toughest adversaries in the Underworld, and then you can spend it to upgrade your Titan-slaying weapons. Our Hades Titan Blood guide will walk you through every method of obtaining and using this powerful resource.

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To fully defox the following enlargeable geofoxer, identify all twelve locations plus the theme that links them. (more…)

The world’s first commercial digital wargame turned forty earlier this year. As I’ve written about Computer Bismarck previously on RPS, I won’t do so again. What I will do is mark the anniversary somewhat belatedly by borrowing the pioneer’s theme for the trial run of what I hope will become an annual or biennial event in the Flare Path calendar.

Readers of a creative bent, sharpen your HBs, blow the dust/crumbs/dandruff off your GameMaker installs, and don your brainstorming berets – this column’s inaugural game design contest starts right here, right now. (more…)

For eighteen years, I’ve been unable to escape a stubborn earworm: the smooth jazz of Django Reinhardt’s Cavalerie, from the car radio in Mafia. I had thought that I might be able to shake it loose by returning to the city of Lost Heaven in Mafia: Definitive Edition, the remake which launched this morning, but I’ve now read that song didn’t make it in. If I play Def Ed without first exorcising Cavalerie, will I shut the door and have it stuck in my head forever? A serious concern for the remake of a pretty decent game.

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If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your CPU recently to pave the way for one of those shiny new graphics cards coming out soon, then you’re in luck. There have been several price drops on both Intel and AMD CPUs this week, making it a good time to pick up a good bargain. Below, you’ll find all of the cheapest CPU deals from around the web in both the UK and the US, covering all of our top gaming CPU picks. Whatever type of PC you’re looking to build, here are the best 9th and 10th Gen Intel CPU prices and best AMD Ryzen CPU deals going on this week.

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Counties are the smallest kind of domain you can hold in Crusader Kings 3, and as such you’ll need to manage them carefully. In particular, your county control and development are vital for the output of both gold and levies, so it’s well worth improving them where you can. Here’s how to increase county control and development in Crusader Kings 3.

The six weapons of Hades are your primary means of battle through the ever-changing, ever-punishing halls of the Underworld. And there’s an awful lot to learn about each one, with different movesets, upgrades, and aspects to unlock for each Infernal Arm throughout your journeys.

Our Hades weapons guide looks to furnish you with all the knowledge you need to wield these titan-slaying weapons, with in-depth tips and details on every facet of each one – and my personal opinion on the very best weapons in Hades.

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