Chat software hopes to develop a sort of social browser game portal Discord is making a play to not simply be the software you use to talk while playing games with your pals, but the software you use to play them too. The ubiquitous chat client already lets you play a handful of approved games inside itself without dowloading or launching anything seperate, along with other ‘Activities’ like watching YouTube together, and next week it will open up to a whole lot more....

Third-person stealth shenanigans ahoy Stealth gamesin which you can become “one with the shadows” cover a wide range, though I guess spectrum is the more appropriate word here. You’ve got sober infiltration games like Thief, which metes out gradations of light and dark with the care of somebody calculating their tax expenses, and stylised affairs such as Mark Of The Ninja, in which stepping into shadow desaturates you and sort of makes your character far too fancy for enemies to notice....

Carbon Development Platform also going open source The project is set in a region of space where civilization has collapsed. It tasks players with exploring and rebuilding a “broken world”. As you might guess from the extremely high-on-their-own-supply language above, it’s also a blockchain and cryptography-based affair, which the developers have broadly presented as a bid to ensure that the EVE universe outlives CCP. Our Jeremy Peelinterviewed CCP about all thisin October last year....

Little Bat Games' creative director talks through our feelings on Vampire Therapist After writing about the upcomingvisual novel-ish gameVampire Therapist(in which you are a vampire, acting as a therapist to other vampires) back in the middle of January, developer Cyrus Nemati reached out asking if I’d like to ask him more questions about it. This was surprising, because while I’d been broadly positive about the vibes of Vampire Therapist, I wasreasonably concernedabout the specifics of how it would all shake down....

Learn how to summon Spirit Ashes, Torrent and even other players in Elden Ring Wondering how to summon in Elden Ring?It’s an incredibly large, dangerous, and at times lonely world in the Lands Between ofElden Ring. So it’s a very good thing that FromSoftware have given players a plethora of tools with which they can summon powerful allies and comrades into battle with them. Using different unique items, you can summon everything from your trusty steed Torrent to packs of wolves, powerful sorcerers, important NPCs, and even other players into your world to help you conquer the Lands Between....

Yoshi-P wants to keep the story a ‘main focus’ of the lengthy MMO and avoid ‘diminishing its value’ Fallen behind onFinal Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s story? Whether you’re still yet to finishEndwalkeror are looking to pick up theMMOfor the first time in anticipation of enjoying a lovely summer holiday with your fellow Scions of the Seventh Dawn, you’re going to have to work before your Warrior of Light can kick back in next expansionDawntrail; there won’t be a free way to simply jump to the latest chapter of the story for free anytime soon....

Breed your own DarkMutants, thanks to the power of dataminers There are137 Palsin Pocketpair’s monster-catching simulatorPalworld, which might sound like plenty, but the serialPalworldplayer is an insatiable creature, always clamouring for new beasties to capture, pet and exploit, even as the developersencourage fans to play other gameswhile they wait for thenext Palworld update. If you’ve already bagged all the available Pals and are hungry for more, you might be interested in Palworld modBreed Unreleased Pals, created by ShameIHaveNoFriends, which grants access to three animals who exist in the game’s files but are not, strictly speaking, available to players....

Need a hint for Connections? Read our guide for help with Connections #276 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....

The Palworld Testing program is now open for sign-ups Palworlddevelopers Pocketpair have announced a newPalworldTesting program that asks players of the wildly popular monster-catchingsurvival gameto help test future updates and provide feedback on the game, ahead of new content drops being released to the general public. Players cansign-up via a Google Formnow if they wish, though Pocketpair stress that “the testing branch is not intended for free play or experiencing new content early, so we hope that only those of you genuinely interested in bug hunting and testing will apply....

Sabotage havechristenedthe incoming Sea of Stars multiplayer as “Single Player+”, so named because it will essentially be the original single-player story with localco-opadded on top. (While it’s local-only, you could presumably play onlineusing Steam Remote Play Together.) A brief teaser video shows battle-chef buddy Garl and Solstice Warriors Valere and Zale - who serve as the main selectable characters for lone players to choose from - running around freely together in one of the game’s pixel-art environments, rather than dutifully trailing each other in a conga line....

More outlandish gadgets make for a more exciting shooter, though the new 5v5 mode disappoints I’ve spent many gleeful hours inThe Finals(as has Graham), but I’ve always felt it could do more with the concept of itsFPSgameshow deathmatches essentially taking place in hyper-realistic VR. Exploding into coins upon death notwithstanding, and to be clear, rad as hell. Happily, itsSeason 2 updateis all about rewriting the rules of its glistening digital battlefields....

Release date emerges into the light after two years in early access After two years slumbering in the coffin of early access, vampiresurvival gameV Risingis lifting off the lid and rising into a full 1.0 release. Having previously been announced with a somewhat vague Q2 launch window, we now know exactly when V Rising’s 1.0 release date will be: May 8th. V Rising has managed to get plenty of blood pumping over its early access run,charming us mere mortalswith its well-dressed, smooth-talking combination of survival staples, a gripping harvesting ‘n’ crafting loop, and steady progression advanced by taking down ever more powerful bosses,Valheim-style, in pleasing ability-based combat....

Vote now as we continue deciding the single best thing in games Last time, you decided thata little hand for a cursor is better than left-handed FPS options. I dearly hope that when you clicked on your vote, your Windows cursor was a little gauntlet or skeletal hand or such. Onwards! This week, I ask you about grabbing (and poking, pulling, burning, pressing, activating, and otherwise using) stuff. What’s better, highlighted interactive objects or retrievable reusable ammo?...