Patch 2.0 also throws in some new potions and relics, so it’s worth revisiting even if she isn’t your cup of tea. One of the many excellent things about the Watcher is how she steps up Spire’s complexity, rewarding the knowledge I’ve earned through hundreds of previous clambers. Cards that shift you into a “wrath” stance make you both deal and take double damage, so an ideal turn involves a torrent of angry damage followed by a card that wipes out wrath with “calm”....

The RTX 4090 has only been out for a few weeks, launching on October 12th earlier this month, but owners of the power-hungry GPU have been flocking to Reddit to share their experiences of their overheating power adapters. Industry testers are also now starting to share their own findings online, with HardwareLuxx, Igor’s Lab and TecLab reporting similar issues. Part of the problem seems to stem from users bending the adapter at home - sometimes a necessary evil when you’re trying to fit the darn thing inside your case....

Changes coming with the move from alpha to beta include a new map, three different victory conditions, improved performance and stability, rounds sped up to 10 weeks, an in-game tutorial, and space novelties to find including “alien artefacts, vortexes, and broken planets.” Love a broken planet, me. “I’m so proud of the new map design,” Solid Clouds CEO Stefán Gunnarsson said in today’s announcement. “It really manages to condense all the lessons we’ve learned over the past 5 years....

Spacebase Startopia is not technically a sequel to - or indeed a remaster or remake of - the Startopia of 2001, and I’m not entirely sure what the deal is with the IP or how anyone is getting away with this. Spacebase Startopia might be thought of as three small aliens stacked in a Startopia coat, I suppose? Or, to put it another way: it’s a fun strategy-management game set in space, with jokes and fun scenarios and all that good stuff....

It’s tending to the needs of the characters that is the driving force beind everything you do in Spiritfarer, so let’s focus on those. Or, really, let’s focus on Lily: “As Stella is getting more familiar with the job of Spiritfaring, she starts to uncover some of her memories, which are starting to blossom as wondrous flowers over her cabin,” says the update post. “These flowers house butterflies that roost to form our new spirit friend : Lily, Stella’s younger sister....

If you were so inclined, you could plonk down $160 (£134) for the Cloud Strife action figure, which comes with an NFT to gawp at on your smartphone or computer. That’s the ‘Digital Plus Edition’ of the statue, but it’s $30 (£25) cheaper if you just buy the standard figure with no NFT attached. Not a good look, Square Enix. It gets worse, as Square Enix have even drawn attention to the possibility of not being able to use the NFTs if Enjin’s service was to ever end....

As I noted last week, Squadrons is a bit of a banger for a recent Star Wars game. RPG In A Box, however, is a game-maker from solo dev Justin Arnold. It does exactly what you’d imagine from the name, letting you design your own RPG in a voxel-based editor without needing to have any coding skills or modelling experience (that last one doesn’t sound quite right). Grid-based maps can be rustled up by placing tiles, and you can slot in NPCs and objects where you want with events scripted using the drag-and-drop editor....

EA also zapped out a new blog post getting into the Vanguard Squadron and Titan Squadron, the two teams we’ll play on the opposite sides, and the period in which it’s set: Along with a story campaign, Squadrons will have several 4v4 multiplayer modes. And if you don’t want to see other people’s gaudy ship customisations, you will be able to disable them. Star Wars: Squadrons is due to launch on the 2nd of October, priced at £35/€40/$40 on Steam, Origin, and the Epic Games Store....

The first appears on the Library page of games you own, but haven’t installed yet: a new “Space required” string that lists how much hard drive or SSD space it will need. As it stands on the main Steam client, you can’t normally see this info without clicking the Install button, so that’s a click saved whenever you’re trying to find out if a new game (or nostalgic re-install) will fit onto stuffed storage....

Or you can accept this side quest, and hop into the post for some of my personal picks. Steam considers “open world” a theme rather than a genre, and so the games on sale run the gamut from first-person action, to driving games, to strategy games, to survival games. Is survival management sim Oxygen Not Included really open world? Is Teardown, because although its levels are small, you can smash through the walls in any direction?...

Thankfully, I pick stuff up quickly and I’m learning lots of new things about PC hardware. Did you know that you can get hard disks in the form of little sticks these days? Marvellous! The Samsung 980 Pro is a particularly swift SSD because it uses the newer PCIe 4.0 interface, putting its read/write speeds way beyond the most common, garden variety PCIe 3.0 drives. As you’d probably expect, that speed boost comes at a premium, which is why the deep discount being offered on the 1TB version of the 980 Pro is especially tantalising....

Last Stop follows three stories that are interwoven together. It looks like… I don’t even know what it looks like. There’s an awful lot going on in this trailer. It seems as if the stories involve two guys getting body-swapped, some kids who find an interdimensional portal (plus a dude with ominous glowing green eyes?), and a lady who’s travelling to.. space? Or maybe another dimension. Lots of supernatural goings-on here that I’m sure will be painfully confusing until we actually get to play the game....

Get the AlphaSync Diamond RTX 3060 Ti PC for £1199 (was £1299) What I like about PC builders like Ebuyer is that they use off-the-shelf components throughout, rather than the custom cases, power supplies, motherboards and cooling solutions preferred by the likes of Dell and HP. This means that you can easily upgrade the PC down the line, put the components in other builds, and generally use the PC exactly as you would one that you’d built yourself....

The “Corpse Carrier” is a cosmetic item wearable by Scouts that makes the speedster look as if he’s carrying his own severed torso. It’s a nightmare for snipers for obvious reasons, but it was initially easy to obtain and wearable all year round. Valve have since changed both of those things - and in turn, created a new, highly valuable item within TF2’s trading marketplace. You can read about all of the Halloween update’s additions here....

The games I’ve collected this week for the first TFI Friday of the year are going to ease us gently out of the time loop that we’ve been stuck in the last umpteen months. Accordingly, the first one is a time loop puzzle game. Time Master Who’s it by? MorpheusZ Where can I get it? Steam How much is it? £11/€12/$15 In this, you, a wizard who looks like a cute lil’ cereal mascot, are guided by the disembodied voice of Lloyd Grossman (who seems to be some kind of time god) to save your sister from accidental banishment....

In December 2019, China’s indie scene was out in full force at WePlay in Shanghai, arguably the most significant developer-focused event in the country. Paired with the China Indie Game Alliance (CiGA) conference, the annual convention is a highlight for the mainland’s relatively young game scene. Chinese heavyweights like Next Studios, TapTap, bilibili, and Coconut Island held court on the floor – the latter had a booth styled as a nostalgic classroom with a blackboard and wooden desks....

Aloy’s guest starring role in Genshin Impact was time-limited, and as of November 24th, 2021 she’s sadly no longer available to claim if you don’t already have her. However, if she is in your party already she’s yours to keep, so read on below for our suggestions on how to put together the best Aloy build in Genshin Impact. Best Aloy build: Weapons If you’re familiar with Horizon Zero Dawn, you’ll know Aloy is a skilled archer in that game, so you’ll be unsurprised to learn that she wields a bow in Genshin Impact as well....

Best New World weapons tier list The best weapons in New World are: S-Tier: Hatchet, Life Staff A-Tier: Fire Staff, Great Axe, Sword and Shield, Void Gauntlet B-Tier: Ice Gauntlet, Spear, War Hammer C-Tier: Bow, Musket, Rapier Broadly speaking, weapon types in New World are all equally easy to come by — you’ll be given a Sword and Shield during the Prologue quest, but once the game opens up you should find yourself collecting a varied arsenal in no time....

Adopt Me! Aqualina Water Park Brookhaven RP Easy Obey! Murder Mystery 2 Flee the Facility Royale High Epic Minigames Work at a Pizza Place Hide and Seek Extreme There are going to be some caveats to this list: mainly, that I’m only going to be looking at those games that you can play for free. Those that require the currency “Robux” to download are a great way to give back to the developers, but we’re going to focus on those that require less of a commitment from you — though luckily, most really good games on the platform are free to play anyway....

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “strategy” as “any game that centres puzzle-solving or cerebral thought”. I’ve taken that surprisingly liberal definition, ran off to the Steam Summer Games Festival, and come back with an armful of videogames that vaguely fall under that umbrella. Some of them are definitely skirting the edges and getting their feet wet, but you should play them anyway. Below you’ll find a digital board game, a cute puzzler, surreal turn-based tactics, cowboy-based tactics, and… Genesis Noir....