NOW PLAYING In Now Playing articles PC Gamer writers talk about the game currently dominating their spare time. If you have been on the internet at all, you’ll know that it is not acceptable to be bad at difficult videogames. Naturally, as the editor of PC Gamer magazine, it is vital that people think I am good at videogames. No doubt our parent company would launch an official inquiry if they ever discovered that I’m playing through Divinity: Original Sin II on its easiest mode. It would, of co

Swaps and Traps is a neat puzzle game that really means it. Due later today on Steam, Swaps and Traps is a run-and-jump platformer, whereby collecting keys spins each level on its head—in turn creating new, dizzying puzzles to overcome. But he is no pushover when it comes to capturing the enchanted hat from his nemesis, Divider. Mike’s only hope is to collect the cursed keys, and catch Divider through different locations and traps. Swaps and Traps is due on Steam today, at 12pm PT/8pm GMT.

Breaking blocks is just about the only thing you can’t do in Wynncraft, a total conversion Minecraft mod that turns the sandbox building game into a fantasy MMORPG. Nevertheless, I’m continually floored by all you can do, from striking out on dialogue-rich quests to forming parties and exploring dungeons. I choose one of the ten servers, enter a silly character name and load into the tutorial quest. My first quest, ‘Cook Assistant’, is a reference to RuneScape, which, interestingly, Wynncraft’s

Nemz38’s Any% Dark Souls 3 speedrun world record comes in at just over 35 minutes. Having now claimed the ‘Souls Level 1 All Bosses’ speedrun world record—at just 1:36:46—Nemz now holds all eight accolades recognised by the game’s speedrunning community. This run is particularly impressive, because it involves the player beating all of the game’s bosses, including those found in both portions of DLC, without leveling up whatsoever. Nevertheless, new record-breaking runs never fail to impress me—

This weekend, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was forced to close down its website after hackers gained control of its visitors’ computers in order to mine cryptocurrency. The company who makes the plug-in, Texthelp, thereafter confirmed the plug-in was hit for four hours by code designed to generate cryptocurrency. According to the BBC, the cryptocurrency involved was Monero—a Bitcoin rival designed to be untraceable. They could have extracted personal data, stolen information

Cables to power our PCs and networking devices, cables to deliver audio signals to our headphones and cables to ensure that our mice and keyboards are as responsive as possible for those long gaming sessions. But, unless you are Macgyver, you’re not always going to be crafting your own cables and you’ll have to work with what you’ve got. Removing kinksTo remove kins from thin cables, like ear phone cables for your phone, drop its entire length and grip the cable at one end with your thing and in

I’ve kept an eager eye on production sim Rise of Industry ever since Leif tried, and failed, to build a whisky business in it last year. According to developer Dapper Penguin Studios, it was the top selling game on Itch.io in 2017, and now it’s broadened its horizons by entering Early Access on Steam and GOG. You can choose to specialise in trading, production, gathering, or any combination of the three, and as you advance you research more efficient ways to do business. When Leif launched his w

Asymmetric multiplayer slasher game Friday the 13th got its first slice of single-player in December when developer Illfonic added an offline mode with bots, and this week it showed off its next single-player mode: Challenges. The mode will place Jason in a variety of scenarios and ask him to murder everything in sight. In the video, which walks you through one of the tutorial challenges, Jason is tasked with killing two teens whose car has broken down on a quiet road. Don’t forget, this is a tu

Bungie plans to remove the timer from Destiny 2’s high-level weekly Nightfall Strikes and rework the scoring system to encourage players to kill more enemies, it has announced. In the new system, your fireteam’s score will gradually decay over time, and cut off after certain time thresholds. To encourage you to raise the difficulty, Bungie also plans to add Challenge Cards to the Prestige version of Nightfall strikes later this month. These cards will make Nightfall strikes more difficult in exc

There’s something in the air, PC gamers! But there’s also love! Love is in the air, because Valentine’s Day is almost here, and that means it’s time to open your heart and show your love for that special PC Gamer in your life. In the spirit of Sergeant Major Valentine himself, we’ve resurrected our favorite romantic gift recommendations and freshened them up with some lovely new ideas for your PC gaming love. And if that love happens to be you, well, treat yo’self.

Multiplayer survival game Rust has finally left Early Access, increasing its price from $20 to $35 and tweaking its update schedule from weekly to monthly to ensure changes are properly thought through. There’s now a testing branch, too, for those that want to trial new features before they make it into the game. And you can still expect a lot of new additions: creator Garry Newman said last month that the transition from Early Access to full release “was more like leaving Prototyping and enteri

Mount Your Friends was something of a triumph. You wrestled with fiddly controls to try and and make muscular men stack on top of each other, competing against a friend to see who could get higher while watching lots of physics-enabled dongs wiggle about. The sequel, Mount Your Friends 3D: A Hard Man is Good to Climb, has just got a release date of February 23. Still, it looks fun, and the customisation system shown off in the trailer looks suitably silly. You can even put pictures of yourself o

“Physicsvania” is the not-so-catchy term that developer Data Realms has slapped onto Planetoid Pioneers, which has just left Early Access, and while I’m not entirely sure it’ll catch on it does at least describe the game fairly accurately. You’re an astronaut exploring and trying to survive on various mini planets while using a ridiculous physics system to solve puzzles and obliterate enemies. Each planet offers unique vehicles, enemies and items, and you’ll be able to explore solo or with a fri

ASUS/Republic of Gamers has teamed up with Youtube star Tom Logan to bring a bunch of workshop sessions to this year’s PC Gamer Weekender. In the practical build session Tom will guide you through assembling a gaming PC from scratch. If you have any questions about PC hardware or PC building then you can ask our experts anything in the PC Clinic. If you’re completely new to gaming PCs then our PC Basics session will get you up to speed. These workshop sessions will be joined by many more speaker

Fortnite Battle Royale’s stream of temporary game modes looks set to continue flowing—Epic will add five to the game within the next month and at least five more soon after, it said yesterday. One of the first five will be a reworked version of the 50v50 game mode it first introduced in December, but the other four will be new, and they include a mode that reduces the size of the map by limiting the drop zone to within the first circle. Presumably, you won’t be able to touch the ground, so build

In Her Story you decided which video clips to watch, and in what order, piecing together the murder mystery story at your own pace. You can try to watch them all on screen at once or focus your attention on a particular feed. He says the main purpose of the approach is to make the viewer feel like they’re “hanging out online” with the characters. Really I wanted to feel like you were just one other person hanging out online with these kids.” He’s creating WarGames in collaboration with Eko, an i

Promising neon futuresport Laser League, in which you try to murder enemies with walls of light, has just hit Early Access, and if you’re quick you can grab if for a 30% discount. As Jody described after trying it in December, it’s a 2v2 or 3v3 multiplayer game in which you touch nodes to activate laser walls that bounce around the tight arenas. Those abilities can damage the other team, steal nodes from your opponent, or turn you invincible. The game has 12 maps, but Roll7 plans to add more dur

Nvidia is at the heart of the storm, and this week CEO Jensen Huang moved to reassure PC gamers that the company is doing “everything we can” to increase supply. “We’re working really hard to get GPUs out into the marketplace for the gamers. We’re doing everything we can, but I think the most important thing is, we just got to catch up with supply,” he said on an earnings call. Earlier this week, analysts predicted that most cryptocurrencies would plummet to zero, and Nvidia reckons that the mar

Update: Ubisoft creative director Julian Gerighty has tweeted that he will “look into” the permabanning of Matti Hietanen, who made a photo mode for The Division’s PvE areas (see original story below). That’s why photo modes exist, and it’s why Matti Hietanen has been making Cinematic Tools for games like Battlefield 1, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and The Division . Hietanen first made the programme in 2016 but was doing some major updates last week to ensure the tools worked in The Division. Lovely

Remnants of Naezith caught my eye last month with a flashy trailer showing off its grappling hook platforming, neon lights and limitless speed, and now it’s swung onto Steam properly. The grappling hook is its main draw, and you use it to hurl and pull yourself through its 80 levels across four chapters. The idea is to stay one step ahead of the game, planning your next hook in advance so you can keep your speed ramping up. You can find ‘remnants’ to unlock hidden levels or try out community-mad