Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by retro-inspired stylings everywhere from JRPGs to platformers, and a demonstration slicing a cat Revengeance-style (do not worry, the cat is fine, it's not a real cat, it isn't even meant to be a fake cat, it really is fine). Come admire these interesting and attractive indies!

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The best open world games can mean a lot of things, but here we're going with the strongest selection of games set in a sandbox, where the onus is less on survival and more on exploration or questing. You know, the sort of games where you're let loose on some open turf, perhaps with an objective, perhaps not, but always with an eye to see what's over yonder. There are some exceptions to the rule, but we reckon they're justified because some worlds are too special to discount. So, join us as we've put together our list of the 10 best open world games to play in 2023.

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Sundays are for marvelling at the sun sticking around for longer each day. Before you enjoy the extra light, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

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Samsung's 870 Qvo SSD is one of the best options for high-capacity solid state storage, with a simple 2.5-inch form factor that doesn't take up a valuable M.2 or PCIe slot and a fast-enough SATA connection. While performance is good, at up to 550MB/s for reads and a little less for writes, the real benefit here is having up to 8TB of silent, reliable and low latency storage.

You can currently pick up this RPS-recommended gaming SSD in its ultimate 8TB form for less than £415 from two places in the UK: Tech Next Day, where you can use code TND-10 to get it for £414, and Amazon, where you can get the drive for £412. I've included both options in case you have a preference, and in the event the drive goes out of stock at this reduced price by the time you come to click the links below!

• Tech Next Day - Get the Samsung 870 Qvo 8TB for £414 w/ code TND-10 (RRP £452)

• Amazon - Get the Samsung 870 Qvo 8TB for £412 (RRP £452)

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After back-to-back three-day weekends, I feel a little cheated by this two-day weekend. Is this allowed? It's certainly not right. Can't believe we have to wait a whole fortnight for another three-day weekend. Still, while we're here, we may as well play some video games. What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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AMD's RX 6950 XT has been enjoying a surprising revival as of late, as precipitous price drops have positioned it as a cheaper competitor to Nvidia's new RTX 4070 GPU that offers better performance in rasterised titles - by a significant ~20% margin, too.

Today, the RX 6950 XT has dropped below the £600 mark for the first time we're aware of, with a chunky triple-fan ASRock model costing just £598 at Overclockers in the UK. That's significantly cheaper than the £999 that these cards originally debuted at, bringing it into contention with newer-gen cards.

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Here I am, once again, The Gears Of War-liker>. I'm back, specifically because vidbud Liam and I played some Gears Of War 5 co-op campaign the other night, a rare occasion where we hadn't played a game for work but for just like… fun? Anyway, through all the roadie-running and chainsaw-gun-toting, I kept thinking, "I haven't played a video game that feels so much like a video game in ages, I miss it".

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Yesterday’s price and release date announcement for the Asus ROG Ally puts it in even closer competition with the Steam Deck: far from being a flashy, luxury alternative, the ROG Ally comes surprisingly close to the matching the Steam Deck on affordability. It could even outdo Valve’s portable PC on value, considering how the two devices’ specs compare.

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Mech Punk is taking the piss, and I like it. Deliberately opaque games are one thing. Artsy games making a point (that seldom grab me, I shouldn't admit) are another. But Mech Punk is something else altogether, and an incredibly rare game that actually earns the "punk" in its title.

Does that mean it's good>? Well, umm. Yes, it's good at what I think it sets out to do. Being an irreverent mess is a valid artistic approach, but still means your game is exactly that. It's not a good game in the traditional sense, though. Do I recommend you buy it? If you can spare £20 to pat an artist on the back, maybe. What kind of artist? Put it this way: on release, its developer changed all their Steam page credits to "Alan Smithee". I don’t think they’re disowning it.

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Tunic developer Andrew Shouldice has made no secret about his love of The Legend Of Zelda over the years. He's not only spoken at length about how playing the original pair of Zelda games on the NES provided ample inspiration for his crafty hack and slasher, but you can also see it right there in the game itself, from your fox hero's bright green outfit to the beautifully illustrated in-game manual you piece together to unravel the world's mysteries.

But speaking with Shouldice at GDC this year, I wanted to talk to him another other potential source of inspiration. Before he struck out on his own to make Tunic, Shouldice cut his teeth making hidden object games, ranging from globe-trotting mystery adventures to Atlantean-themed detective stories. On paper, this earlier work would appear to provide the perfect proving ground for Tunic, as we all know by now that it holds plenty of secrets of its own. For Shouldice, though, it was more of a reaction against his earlier work that fuelled his approach to Tunic, as he gradually came to realise his hidden object games "weren't tapping into this very specific type of mystery and discovery and player agency and true exploration that I was interested in," he says.

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