Slack-handed? Hm.Hmmmm. Right. So, what have we got here? There’s my Blood Donor card, which reduces the value of the hearts I play, but also heals me. That’s fine, actually. Reduced score means I can squeeze in another card for more healing. If I can pull my Tarot card, I’ll deal damage with each heal, and I’ve already pulled two scratch cards for yet more quick damage. Now, if I can just pull a Jack, I can plonk down the King Of Space And Time for a brutal finisher....

Faust never had a therapist At some point every proud ruler must ask themselves the question: what should I do with all this stupid, tiresomecivilisationI’ve built? Do I let it spin on forever, a gleaming machine of prosperity bathed in an eternal twilight, or do I, as the case may be, unleash a horde of voluptuous hellwomen to gather spirit energy for the resurrection of my tragically slain beloved? If you picked option B you should probably playMy Lovely Empress, a plush empiremanagementsim with a dastardly twist, from Indonesian team GameChanger Studio....

Fading echo Facebook and Oculus Rift ownersMetaare reportedly closing Ready At Dawn Studios, the outfit behind the excellentEcho VRandLone Echogames, as part of wider reductions at the company’s Reality Labs division. A Meta spokesperson also told the site that the reductions at Reality Labs aren’t evidence of cuts to the number of first-party games on Quest VR headsets, and that Meta are still committed to VR development. Meta declared that Quest 3 sales are “exceeding their expectations” in the company’s most recent quarterly earnings call last week....

For ten? Ten-four Spaceship likers, come hither. Long-runningspace simElite Dangeroushas just unloaded a new interstellar vessel into its universe, and she’s a beaut. The new Type-8 Transporter is a medium freighter capable of hauling a maximum of 406 tons of cargo. It’s got a default jump range of 17.55 light years and two big prongs sticking out of its face like a sci-fi forklift. Cool. The catch is that this ship can only be bought with real money for now,say the developers....

On reflection I probably won’t be writing the words ‘fits’ again It is I, the wound salter. The injury insult adder.Life By You, thesimulationlife-em-up from Paradox, wascanceled in Juneafter beingdelayed indefinitely. The day after the cancellation - which Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester implied was down to a “lacking”, unfixable development state - designer Willem Delventhal spoke about his time at the subsequently shuttered Paradox Tectonic.He claimed the teamspent a month “in purgatory” prior to being told of the game’s cancelation and studio shuttering two weeks before launch, despite being told by higher-ups that work was “exceeding expectations....

Need a hint for Connections? Read our guide for help with Connections #424 This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s solution? Check out theConnections hint and answers for Thursday 12th December! Want a hint for Connections today?Piggybacking off the monumental success of daily puzzle gameWordle, the New York Times has another fantastically popular word game out now. It’s calledConnections, and if you haven’t played it before, now’s the time to start....

It’s been banned in my house for several years Robloxhas been banned in Turkey, with a government agency citing concerns over “child exploitation.” The decision to ban all access to the game and platform was taken by the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), who also blocked access to Instagram in the country earlier this week. The ban wasannounced by the Turkish Minster of Justice via X. “According to our Constitution, our State is obliged to take the necessary measures to ensure the protection of our children,” said the statement, which is otherwise light on detail....

And it’ll offer a polished 40-hours at launch Shapez 2will launch inEarly Access on August 15th, bringing the relaxing, shape-cutting factory builder into 3D. In a new post, its lead developer haslaid out what to expect from Early Access. In the main: a polished, 40 hours-or-so experience with no known major issues, and a post-release roadmap waiting to be defined by player feedback. “We’ve spent a lot of time polishing the game already and are really happy how it turned out....

Scorrevole! I’d initially assumed thatpuzzlegameSliding Herocounts was a Sokoban-like, until I realised that it’s actually you, not endless boxes, that do the sliding here. Still, I wasn’t entirely convinced. The only thing that’s fun to slide back-and-forth indefinitely is a lounging cat on a smooth kitchen worktop. Still, after messing around withSliding Hero’s Steam demo, I think this one might have much longer legs than its restrictive-sounding concept suggests. All the better to endlessly slide with....

Shtrafbattle brothers I was partial to a scrappy littlestrategy gameeven before idiot billionaires doomed the planet, and the UK to brain-steaming heat just when you thought we’d escape it this year.Khaligradis plenty scrappy. Its edges are rough and you have to figure it out yourself, but it’s more intuitive than it appears, and easy to operate once you discern some basics. It’s scrappy too in that it’s, well. It’s Stalingrad. Not really: its world is so fictional it’s their 15th century....

The Weird West devs on becoming the “alt-Arkane” WolfEye’s debut gameWeird Westattempted to pack a little ofDishonored’s immersive sim sorcery into a top-down action-RPG. For the studio’s next game, co-founders Raphaël Colantonio and Julien Roby are leaning into comparisons with their old endeavours at Arkane more earnestly. The new game - currently untitled and without a release date - is a first-person sci-fi RPG set in an alternate-1900s North America, which ostensibly combines the ingenuity and gadgetry of Dishonored andPreywith a “real RPG” experience redolent ofSkyrimand modern-dayFallout....

Stuck on the Wordle word for August 8? Read our hint or find the answer below! This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s solution? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 12th December! Need a hint for today’s Wordle answer?Wordleis an addicting but challenging test of word acumen. Luckily, you’re in the right place for some assistance. Every day, Wordle presents its legions of players with a deviously simple quandary: can you guess the right five-letter word within just six guesses?...

Massive mod has many mugs… Er, bugs Fallout Londonlaunched late last month, but the huge, long in-development mod is so buggyNic had to abandon his attempts to play it. Its developers have already promised hotfixes, and now say a “huge” update is also on the way. “We have some big plans for the future, starting with a hotfix,” saysthe message shasred on the Team FOLON Discord server. “This hotfix will address some crashes and include essential systems like ‘Buffout 4,’ which will be merged into the mod itself....