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Oct 8Thu
  6. PC Gamer52

    Nivalis Nights review: a cast of fascinating characters carries a decent shop sim

    PC Gamer reviewed Nivalis Nights, an Ion Lands-developed, 505 Games-published cyberpunk shop sim released September 29, 2026 for $25 that blends life sim decorating, shop management, open-world exploration and farm production into a story-heavy quest structure. The reviewer found the management, decorating and romance systems each lacking, but praised the characters, with at least 121 portraits in the known characters menu and many fully voiced NPCs whose stories range from corporate satire to people crushed by debt. The reviewer expected shop management and decorating to be the main draw, but instead the city and its cast kept them exploring for the next thread.

  9. IGN62

    TOEM 2 Review: Camera Puzzles Return, With Less Friction

    IGN reviews TOEM 2 from developer Something We Made, saying it keeps the photo-puzzle framework of 2021's TOEM as players travel three monochrome isometric towns and earn bus tickets by helping townsfolk. The roughly four-to-five-hour game adds camera features like target lock that make shooting easier, but the review finds its puzzles less engaging than the original's and its 3D-modeled world no real step up.

  11. Kotaku21

    Virtual Pet Sim/RPG Dog Online Is Bringing Back 2000s Internet Culture

    Browser game Dog Online has surpassed 10,000 users in a sudden resurgence more than six months after its open beta launch, forcing its small team to scramble to upgrade servers. The dog-themed game, described as an MS Paint-drenched version of Neopets, offers fishing, farming, cooking, trading, and a turn-based RPG dungeon, with 73 fish, 238 foods, 57 enemies, and 76 crops. Lead developer Mimi said the team got started a little less than a year ago and launched the public beta this past April Fools' Day.

  12. @Shinobi60246

    Rockstar says GTA 6 mission design is more open

    Rockstar's Rob Nelson said the studio made a conscious effort to open up mission design in Grand Theft Auto 6 without compromising quality. He cited the tower block escape from the Netflix preview having multiple routes, and the Raul mission where players can deviate from the optimal route and still escape. Missions tied to wanted levels or robbery systems are designed to stay consistent with the open world.

Oct 7Wed
  3. PC Gamer62

    Arc Raiders Frozen Trails hands-on: the grapple hook is the highlight, the skill tree rework is not yet transformative

    A PC Gamer writer spent 3 hours with the Arc Raiders Frozen Trails update and spent most of it using the new grapple hook. The green tier gadget can climb buildings, swing between rooftops, descend safely, stick to almost anything, and be redeployed midair with no cooldown or use limit, allowing chained swings. The update also adds a launcher that tethers two objects and a grenade that yanks Arc bots to the ground, which the writer did not test thoroughly. The reworked skill tree mixes old and new abilities with mutually exclusive branches, and the writer found most nodes to be incremental stat boosts that do not change play in the short term, while the new Pendola Pass map feels visually distinct for its snow but familiar in the areas they visit most.

  5. GameSpot69

    Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail preview: new frost map, skill tree overhaul, and battle pass

    Arc Raiders has released Frozen Trail, its first major update since the studio moved to a semi-annual cadence, and the author calls it a hefty, inventive makeover after a few hours of play. It adds a frost-themed map, a raid-style map event mixing puzzles and combat, new weapons and enemies, a skill tree overhaul, customization spaces called Outposts, a new gun-buffing system, weapon cosmetics, and a multi-tiered battle pass. Embark Studios announced in May that it was shifting to semi-annual major updates to give the team more time for meaningful content.

  6. Rock Paper Shotgun34

    Lynchian noir mystery Silver Pines takes the best bits from horror, the middling bits from Metroidvanias, and the worst bits from adventure games

    Silver Pines is Wych Elm's debut, a Twin Peaks-inspired neo-noir detective mystery published by Team17 that blends survival horror, 2D Metroidvania exploration and point 'n' click puzzling. Its moody town and missing-musician story work well, but once the town opens up it becomes a backtrack-heavy maze of dead ends and item hunts. The author got stuck on a puzzle requiring a swim across a river and asked the developers for directions; Wych Elm said they were looking at reworking that scene.

  9. IGN22

    ‘Why Hasn’t Someone Thought About That Before?’ – How Star Wars: Galactic Racer Solves One of Driving Games’ Biggest Problems

    An IGN opinion piece argues Star Wars: Galactic Racer replaces the familiar championship checklist with a run-based career mode where too many losses eject you from the whole championship and send you back to the start. Fuse Games co-founder and CEO Matt Webster says gaming is risk-reward and the risk has to have a consequence, with the game borrowing randomized rewards and build choices from other genres. The piece contrasts this with the iRacing-style PvP focus and the failure-proof Forza Horizon model.

  11. GameSpot48

    GTA 6 Won't Make You "All-Powerful" Like GTA 5 Did

    Rockstar's Rob Nelson said GTA 6 won't make players "all-powerful" like GTA 5 and earlier games did, with NPCs having impulses of their own and possibly coming after you. He said the world "will act upon you as well as you acting upon the world," and that you are no longer the only one with weapons or capable of violence. Nelson added that GTA 6's story follows the criminal lovers Jason and Lucia as "criminals on the run."

  13. 机核40

    Customization Makes Gameplay More Varied: Notes From the Gundam Intergalactic Journey Media Roundtable

    At a TGS2026 pre-show media trial, Gundam Intergalactic Journey showed its mech customization system, where players combine individual parts, weapons carry two skill slots, AT elements work as cooldown-based special gear tied to ultimate moves, and thruster types change air and ground movement. Producers Yuya Toyama and Kazuyuki Serizawa said the MOD SKIN transmog only changes appearance while actions and performance stay the same, with no presets or player sharing, and that development materials come from missions and map pickups with fixed, non-random stats. Three-player co-op is positioned as post-story endgame content, and the game depicts mechs fighting alien lifeforms called "Revelations" in a fully original world.

  15. Game Informer22

    Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration — The Coolest Cards We Pulled

    The Pokémon Trading Card Game: 30th Celebration expansion is out now, featuring all-new cards plus 30 classic reissued cards stamped with the 30th anniversary logo, and every card in the set is a foil card. The set introduces a new "Futuristic rare" rarity with art by Japanese artist Yoshirotten, and every booster pack includes one of 30 unique Pikachu cards from different artists. Booster packs aren't sold separately; the cards come in larger sets like the Elite Trainer Box, Poster Collection, Tech Sticker Collection, Pokémon ex Box, and Knock Out Collection.

  16. Push Square57

    Order of the Sinking Star (PS5) Review: Jon Blow's Huge Sokoban Design Mixtape Made Me Weary

    Push Square reviewed Order of the Sinking Star, Thekla's PS5 puzzle game with nearly a thousand puzzles, multiple endings, and four separate Sokoban-style worlds that eventually overlap. The reviewer calls the puzzle design lean and polished, but says the sheer scale, verbose dialogue, and lack of a compelling hook made it hard to stay interested after dozens of hours, so it is hard to recommend.

  17. Kotaku62

    Ten hours with Jonathan Blow's Order of the Sinking Star: strong sokoban puzzles, shaky narrative

    A Kotaku writer spent ten hours with Order of the Sinking Star, the Thekla puzzle game from Jonathan Blow that rebuilds four existing sokoban titles, and found the puzzles excellent but the story, characters, and visual readability weak. The review build used AI voices for roughly half the cast, which Thekla says will not be in the October 8 launch version. The four original games are free in browsers, while this one is on Switch 2 and PC.

  18. Rock Paper Shotgun27

    How Rainbow Six Tactics' destruction undoes the classic dynamics of flanking

    Rainbow Six Tactics creative director Elie Benhamou says destruction was a key feature from the very beginning, letting players create physical gaps in walls to fire through and open new lines of sight. This changes the usual turn-based tactics solution of flanking enemies behind cover, and makes cover feel less safe for both sides. Every operator can destroy scenery, though Ash and Sledge can destroy almost everything while Nøkk must get close and spend ammo, and there is still no release date.

  19. GameSpot60

    Order Of The Sinking Star Review: Sometimes Too Much Of A Good Thing

    GameSpot reviewed Order of the Sinking Star, the new puzzler from developer Thekla Interactive and director Jonathan Blow, praising its clever and numerous puzzles. The game claims over 1,000 puzzles spread across an open-world map modeled on 1987's The Legend of Zelda, all built around top-down grid-based block pushing. The review says that scale is both the best and worst part, sometimes making the game feel sprawling and unwieldy.

  23. Nintendo Life62

    Review: Order Of The Sinking Star (Switch 2) - Intense, Sometimes Gruelling, But Always Inventive

    Order of the Sinking Star is a block-pushing puzzle adventure from Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness) and developer Thekla, out now on Switch 2. It offers more than 1,000 puzzles in which players step through portals into characters who push, pull, teleport, reflect blocks through mirrors, or turn the environment into movable blocks. The review finds the mechanics simple yet inventive, with instant reset and rewind, but notes each puzzle steers toward a single intended solution and rejects clever workarounds.

  24. IGN33

    Disney Lorcana TCG's Hyperia City Expansion: First Hands-On Impressions

    Disney Lorcana TCG's fourteenth set, Hyperia City, launches with pre-release events starting October 16 and a wide release on October 23. The expansion adds a floating mana mechanic called ink drops, features Coco, Big Hero 6, and The Sword and the Stone, and includes a two-player starter set. New cards like Powerline Megastar, which has Singer 9, highlight the set's focus on singer and action-based decks.

  25. IGN66

    GTA 6 full interview: Rob Nelson on the criminal profile, relationship and car theft systems

    IGN published its full interview with Rockstar North head of development Rob Nelson, based on a July visit where GTA 6 was played in front of press for the first time. Nelson described a criminal profile system separate from a relationship system, where Jason and Lucia's bond grows through shared activities such as robberies, pool, mini golf and kayaking, and can suffer if the player ignores their texts. Car theft now requires tools like a key cloner or slim-jim, a phone scanner shows locks, alarms, trackers and resale value, and the wanted system only triggers when a crime is witnessed or an alarm is raised. He also said safehouses are closer to Red Dead Redemption 2 camps in interactivity and that the team has doubled in size to support the world's density.

  26. Kotaku62

    Overwatch Season 5 turns Sombra into a Support hero, and here's how she plays

    Overwatch's Season 5 patch reworks Sombra from Damage into a Support hero, and after several matches the author calls it the most fun he has had with her in over a year. Her retained abilities cast faster, and her new primary heal Hotfix applies healing over time in a way similar to the old Hack, though her numbers trail dedicated healers like Lifeweaver. Cyberspace, which replaces Virus, is an area debuff that halves enemies' healing and damage output and can be escaped by leaving its field.

  27. Pure Xbox38

    Digital Foundry 'Impressed' With Star Wars: Galactic Racer's 'Nigh-On Flawless Performance' On Xbox Series X|S

    Digital Foundry reports that Star Wars: Galactic Racer delivers "nigh-on flawless performance" across all consoles, including Xbox Series S. The Xbox Series X version runs at an exceptionally stable 60fps with ~1296p internal resolution, matching base PS5 performance, while Series S drops to ~864p and swaps ray-traced Lumen for baked lighting. The Fuse Games title is out now on Xbox Series X|S for £49.99 / $59.99.