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An ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ idle game about plastic ducks floating in a pool has a collectible card-game successor, and there’s a demo you can play now

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I am often in a state of delighted befuddlement at the games which prove popular on Steam, but few have simultaneously thrilled and baffled me as much as the success of Placid Plastic Duck Simulator. The game, which is really more of an interactive screensaver, involves guiding a rubber duck around a pool filled with … Read more

Crytek says the most important difference between Far Cry and Crysis had nothing to do with technology: ‘In Crysis, we mimicked nature as closely as possible’

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Sorry (not sorry) for rolling out this withered, ancient chestnut, but it truly is mind-blowing how good Crysis still looks today. What’s even more amazing is just how advanced it looked compared to Crytek’s previous game Far Cry, even though the two only released three years apart. I always figured the difference was due to … Read more

Stormgate is leaving early access before it’s technically finished: ‘We believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience’

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Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios recently announced that its Warcraft-inspired RTS will receive its first proper single-player campaign in August, and that this juncture would mark the game’s official departure from Steam early access. However, this reveal led to some confusion, as Frost Giant numbered its launch version “0.6” instead, causing players to speculate that … Read more

Microsoft CEO consoles employees by saying recent layoffs are down to ‘the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value’

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This month began with some stark news for Microsoft employees: The business was doing better than ever before, and that somehow means layoffs. Around 9,000 employees were laid-off globally, studios were closed, games were cancelled, and then to rub salt in the wound some Microsoft exec with terminal LinkedIn brain suggested that those affected use … Read more

Assassin’s Creed Shadows has its summer roadmap and, with all due respect, how did it take this long to get a fast-forward time option?

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Summer Roadmap Update – YouTube Watch On I enjoyed my time with Assassin’s Creed Shadows but, much like I did with Valhalla, I had my fill long before I ever reached credits. These games are too big, and their content becomes familiar too quickly, for me to get all the way through … Read more

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers devs promise performance fixes are on the way, as it fights a flock of negative Steam reviews: ‘These problems should never have occurred’

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Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is currently crumpling under a flood of negative Steam reviews—at the time of writing, only 30% being positive—due to, primarily, performance issues and bugs. Having given it a try myself and had similar issues, I’d simply written it off as having a meek 3060, not exactly the Ritz of graphics cards. But … Read more

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check has been wishlisted on Steam 1 million times, and will be published in November by Devolver Digital

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It’s not even out yet, but zombie base management sim Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is already a certified hit. Its demo, released in May, attracted hundreds of thousands of players (myself included), received great reviews and lots of attention on social media—and has now infected over a million Steam wishlists. It’s not surprising, then, … Read more

Rematch devs call it a ‘samurai game’ and give a timeline for player reports, new ranked queues

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Small-squad soccer game Rematch has blown up—no, really, it’s huge—over the last month since it released. Fascinatingly, developer Sloclap was also responsible for Sifu, the time-bending 2022 kung fu game. In a recent Reddit post updating Rematch’s now quite large community on its development, Sloclap addressed its opinion about the relationship between the two as … Read more

Fans are celebrating Magic: The Gathering’s latest return to its own setting, but numbers don’t lie—the Final Fantasy crossover boosted revenue 23%

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The planes of the Magic: The Gathering multiverse are separated by the Blind Eternities, a mysterious between-space that’s never been fully explored. The latest set, Edge of Eternities, visits the boundary of the Blind Eternities for the first time, using it as the locale for a science-fantasy space opera that pushes at the limit of … Read more