If there’s one thing I want more of in this world it’s Halloween games. No, not horror. Halloween—the heavily consumerist version they sling in department stores with plastic pumpkins, green witches, and ghost lawn ornaments. I’ve had my eye on Pumpkin Jack, to that end, and am happy to hear that the 3D platforming spookfest is launching this month. Beyond that, it’s in the current Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition where you can give its first level a try.

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The year of digital festivals continues with yet another Steam Game Festival. For its autumn edition, Steam is once again offering hundred of free game demos for you to play paired with livestreams and developer Q&A’s throughout the week. The festival is on now and will run through next Tuesday, October 13th.

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We should have been playing Destiny 2: Beyond Light by now, but while the expansion’s delayed to November we can at least gawp at some of its gear and imagine how cool it might be to use. The answer is: quite cool. Bungie today detailed the new Exotic-quality weapons and armour coming in Beyond Light, and some sound powerful, some sound like they’ll open up new tactics, and some just sound great fun. A sniper rifle summoning lightning? Warlock punches spreading contagious poison? My Hunter’s dodge becoming a blink>? I’m game.

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Celebrity cameos in games sure can dip into cringe territory but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, cringe-y about Jonathan Frakes narrating another lore teaser for Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. Regale me with the sordid, unsolved curiosities of Plunkbat, Mr. Frakes. Looks like PUBG Corp’s also planning a whole new website dedicated to lore for the battle royale. What mysteries might it hold?

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Recently I have been blessed with a plethora of sweet, soothing games with a good sense of humour (like Spiritfarer, for example). I Am Dead, from the developers of perennial RPS favourite Wilmot’s Warehouse, is a 3D puzzle adventure game about past and present and place, and is another tonic for these trying times.

In it, you play as Morris Lupton, erstwhile director of the Shelmerston museum, and ghost. Starting out dead does take a lot of the pressure off. Shelmerston is an unbelievably idyllic island community off the coast of England, in Channel Island territory, but it’s also on top of a dormant volcano. Except it turns out the volcano isn’t so dormant anymore, and you – accompanied by Morris’s also dead dog Sparky – must hunt out the ghosts of other Shelmerston residents to try and solve this impending problem.

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Intel have unveiled the first details about their upcoming 11th Gen desktop Core CPUs today, confirming their rough release window and that they’ll have PCIe 4.0 support from the off. Code-named “Rocket Lake”, this new family of desktop processors will be arriving sometime between January and March next year, according to a new Intel blog post, succeeding their current line-up of 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs.

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During the opening segment of Baldur’s Gate 3 you’ll work your way through a terrifying ship, looking to escape. There’s plenty of loot hidden around that will help give you an edge in the early hours of the game, including some valuable items hidden inside an Elaborate Chest. Problem is, you’ll need an Elaborate Key to open it. Luckily, we’ve marked its exact location on a map, so that you can hoover up the contents of the chest and continue on with your escape.

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The opening of Baldur’s Gate 3 takes place aboard a tentacled ship called the Nautiloid. You’ll need to fight your way to the control room to initiate a warp, before the ship crashes into the fiery hellscape below. While exploring the gooey interior of the Nautiloid you’ll come across a number of characters that have been captured by the Mind-Flayers, including a woman trapped inside one of their pods. Let’s take a look at whether or not you can save them.

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Activision Blizzard, the mega publisher behind the likes of Overwatch and Call Of Duty, are reportedly shutting down their office near Versailles, France. According to Bloomberg, employees at the company will learn more about the closure next week, but at the moment it’s unclear when exactly it’ll happen, or how many people might lose their jobs in the process.

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I remember seeing the crowdfunding campaign for the Virtuix Omni years ago (seven, apparently) and thinking to myself, full of awe in my early 20s, “The future has arrived! Or, it will soon!” The Virtuix Omni was a cool concept, sure, but where the heck would I actually get to try the 360° ultra gamer virtual reality treadmill? Well Virtuix are unveiling a new consumer version that’s meant to fit in your home.

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