Kadokawa, the Japanese studio behind the indie-enabling RPG Maker engine and its many iterations, recently announced Pixel Game Maker MV, the latest entry in the Maker software series. Pixel Game Maker MV is said to feature the same “no programming necessary” development tools that made RPG Maker so popular and accessible. As you might expect, the engine comes with pixel art tools, but artists will have the option to import custom sprites. Likewise, for devs not satisfied with the baked-in optio

Ooblets is an irresponsibly cute game about building a farm and collecting critters called ooblets. Greg Rice of publisher Double Fine described it as “all your favorite games mashed into one” when we spoke to him last year, which doesn’t sound too far off. And it’s the work of just two people: artist and programmer Rebecca Cordingley and designer and writer Ben Wasser, the two halves of their studio, Glumberland. At the time, Rice struggled to pick a favorite ooblet. Today, we face that same is

Some 5.1-channel surround sound speaker systems will set you back several hundred dollars; Logitech’s Z506 is not one of them. That’s still a good price for a 5.1-channel speaker set, though obviously not as good as Amazon and Walmart’s asking price. The Z506 is rated to deliver 150 watts of peak power, and 75 watts RMS. It consists of four satellite speakers, and center channel speaker, and a 10-inch ported, down-firing subwoofer to bring the boom. This doesn’t get as loud or boisterous as Logi

The update also takes aim at campers. That will still be a viable strategy, but the update will make it a tougher trick to pull off. Hunters will now be returned to a “pre-match state if certain conditions (maintenance, server crashes, invalid anti-cheat kicks, client crash mid-mission and during loading, etc.) Crytek said the full update notes are literally too big to fit into a single Steam update announcement (it really is a major update), so you can get the full lowdown on the changes here,

Even better is that Nvidia doesn’t anticipate cryptocurrency mining putting on a strain on supply, as was partially the case before. Instead, it expects crypto sales to drop by around two-thirds in the current quarter, Bloomberg reports. However, Nvidia did readily admit that cryptocurrency had a bigger impact last quarter than it expected. Out of that, cryptocurrency miners contributed $289 million, Nvidia said. A two-thirds drop is a big deal, assuming Nvidia’s estimates turn out to be accurat

Frostpunk, developed by 11 Bit Studios in Poland, blends city-building, crisis management, survival, and society simulation in a grim and frozen apocalypse. PC Gamer: So I guess I’d like to start with the original idea for the game, the inception of the game. If we could talk about the book of laws—I found this kind of an interesting system in the game. Exactly what you just described is what we wanted to basically ask, and make the player think for themselves. freezing point Frostpunk is a stre

But just how many people are playing Fortnite, across PC, consoles, and mobile? Fortnite’s PC version is only on Epic’s dedicated launcher, which doesn’t give us the player data we’d find on Steam. Fortnite took in a hefty $126 million in February alone, another one-up over PUBG’s $103 million according to a report from analytics firm SuperData Research . Fortnite hosted over 2 million concurrent players in January, eventually ballooning to an impressive 3.4 million the following month. In March

Gigabyte intends to compete against established players with a pair of SATA drives, at least initially. Gigabyte’s pricing is pretty good, compared to other SATA SSDs on the market. In looking at 256GB SSDs, there are only a few that hover around $70, such as Adata’s Ultimate SU800. At $119.99, it’s one of the least expensive 512GB SSDs available. Pricing will ultimately play a big role in how these are received—there’s no shortage of SATA SSDs on the market, and the capacities and performance s

Now that the long-awaited 4K HDR monitors are arriving soon, it looks like prices of 1440p displays are coming down. The Acer Predator XB271HU is one of the best 1440p gaming monitors on the market—it’s the Acer counterpart to our favorite gaming monitor—with a 4ms response time and a refresh rate of 144Hz, overclockable up to 165Hz. It usually goes for more than $700, but right now you can buy it for just $549.99 from Newegg. It uses NVIDIA G-SYNC, so you’ll only be able to take advantage of th

The problem is, when DDR (or double data rate) RAM came on the scene, it changed how data transfers were registered. There are a ton of them, but the most important one you need to keep in mind is the CAS latency. Well, there’s a handy formula that converts CAS latency and MT/s into a real-world latency: Latency = (2,000/Y) x Z, where Y is your RAM’s speed in MT/s, and Z is your CAS latency. Generally, the higher the frequency, the higher the CAS latency, and as such, real-world performance gain

Wild West Online, which you might remember from the leaked images that got everyone wondering if it was Red Dead Redemption 2, has left early access. Unfortunately, it seems to have left early access only in name, frustrating the nascent playerbase who have been voicing their complaints on Steam. It was advertised (and still is) as being both a PvE and PvP MMO, but at launch the PvE side appears to be barely present at all. “Or perhaps you’d like to stick to the wilderness,” reads the Steam page

The next chapter in Final Fantasy 14’s ongoing story is just a few weeks away, and today Square Enix has released a gorgeous new trailer to tease what’s coming next. Under the Moonlight, which releases on May 22, follows the same template we’ve come to expect from Final Fantasy 14’s updates. There’s a new 24-player raid that expands upon the previous ones set in Ivalice, the world where all the best Final Fantasy games come from. I haven’t been back to play Final Fantasy 14: Stormblood since las

Tom and Sam have been playing the recently released first backer build of Julian Gollop’s crowdsourced X-Com spiritual successor Phoenix Point. This small detail illustrates the way that Phoenix Point is aiming to be a more detailed sandbox take on the X-Com formula. In Phoenix Point individual bullets have varying chances to hit or scatter, and the game rarely shows you percentage chances. The soldiers fit into familiar roles—assault, heavy, sniper—and I’d hope to see some variety here to put s

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, which pits Cylons and humanity against each other during the First Cylon War, is due to get its first expansion soon. Toasters and vulnerable, fleshy humans will continue to duke it out in The Broken Alliance, which weaves eight new missions and whole bunch of extra ships into the single-player campaign. While Deadlock is largely about massive ships and nimble fighters clashing in space, unleashing devastating attacks and protecting the fleet, The Broken Alliance w

Microsoft has made one step in the right direction, allowing PC users to finally gift digital games and DLC. Presumably to stop key resellers taking advantage of the system, you’ll only be able to gift two discounted products every 14 days. “Gift purchasers can only buy two discounted products – and a total of 10 discounted products – every 14 days. I assume it’s two discounted products and a total of 10 products, regardless of whether or not they’re on sale. You also won’t be able to gift Xbox

Worlds Adrift, the airships and grappling hook sandbox, is due to launch on Steam Early Access next week after several testing phases, so of course it’s time for a new trailer. “I’m staring at the gauges, when I see one of the cannons fly past me and knock them clean off,” says Andy in his Worlds Adrift preview. Worlds Adrift is set after a calamity has torn the world apart, leaving people fighting over scant resources across a multitude of floating islands. You’ll be able to soar through the da

Thanos, who’s doing a stint as a Fortnite character, presumably after being defeated by the Avengers and forced to look for new work, has been tweaked again. His health was buffed and damaged reduced previously, but now the opposite is happening. If superheroes had the ability to make these tweaks, they probably wouldn’t need so many movies. A few punches could save the universe. Only rare, epic and legendary items will drop during the special Thanos mode, making it easier to kill the Mad Titan

This week’s Sea of Thieves developer update video was an apologetic one, starting with executive producer Joe Neate breaking the news that the planned update that Rare was hoping to release by the end of the week had to be postponed. The update will be out next week instead. Neate also spent some time going over feedback from the last update, which added a slew of cosmetic items to the game. The Sovereign item set, which was listed in the build notes, was missing, so it will be added in the next

Crucible Fireteam Matchmaking: Due to issues discovered at launch, Crucible Fireteam Matchmaking changes introduced in Update 1.2.0 were temporarily disabled. Strike Pursuits: We are aware of and investigating issues where strikes may not be tracked correctly for some in-game pursuits. We are aware of and investigating issues where strikes may not be tracked correctly for some in-game pursuits. Console Performance: We are currently investigating player reports regarding impacted performance on s

If you require further proof that Fortnite has taken over the world, may I direct you to Boston Red Sox starting pitcher David Price? What could be causing Price’s carpal tunnel? Could it be his career as a pitcher which requires him to slowly destroy his arm with a violent and repetitive pitching motion? Reporters naturally asked Red Sox Manager Alex Cora about it, who didn’t believe there was a link between Price’s injury and Fortnite, but said he’d discuss it with Price. It appears that discu