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A staple for the nerves I had, shall we say, a bad experience some years ago. Several days of lying in a darkened room eating cold party leftovers were to be expected. The amount of comfort I got from playingAlpha Centaurithroughout, though, was a surprise. It’s less about mere familiarity than you’d think, given how late I first played it. Sid Meier’sAlpha CentauriBy Sid Meier endures partly because its design has aged well, but mostly because it’s an unusually human 4Xstrategy....

Cool! Also, eh Following three years solely on the Epic Games Store,Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2’srecent Steam launchwas a largely happy occasion – save for it carrying over the same always-online requirement as it has on Epic. Yesterday’s1.1 patchfor the Steam version has now made offline play possible, but in a move that simultaneously makes loads of and absolutely no sense, it’s only available on theSteam Deck. Like. Okay?...

Sights in tight spaces After busting down the castle door with their chaotic, siege-based citybuilderDiplomacy Is Not An Optionlast year, the last thing I expected to see next from developers Door 407 was a chill, meditativepuzzle gamethat’s just about, well, building tiny cities. InUrbothere are no sky lasers, no oncoming hordes. Nothing. Just dinky little grid-based maps, and an endless stream of tiny adorable buildings to plonk down on them in the pursuit of sweet, sweet point scores....

Stuck on today’s Wordle word for October 19? 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?Every day,Wordlepresents its legions of players with a deviously simple quandary: can you guess the right five-letter word within just six guesses? All you have to help you in finding the Wordle answer are the contextual clues you gain from each guess - but often, that’s not enough....

Following “a period of disappointing financial performance” Frontier Developments have announced that they’ll be undertaking an “organisationl review” of the company after “disappointing financial performance and more challenging industry conditions”. The news came yesterday in anoteto investors, signalling yet another wave of industry layoffs. It’s not yet clear how many employees will be affected at Frontier, but the studio say that their goal of reducing annual operating costs by up to 20% will be “achieved through a recruitment freeze, spending cuts and, unfortunately, redundancies, subject to consultation”....

It’s not a Loot Lake, it’s an ocean Of course, this being a Fortnite creation made in the battle royale game’s custom map mode, it doesn’t quite have the same vibes as the original Alan Wake. While Alan Wake’s very I-am-a-writer observations couldbecome a bit silly at times, it was still an effective spooky thriller thanks to its shadowy levels and genuinely unsettling atmosphere. Running around Wake’s lakeside cabin and the haunted town of Bright Falls as Naruto, a buff cat person or a naked sentient banana in Fortnite, meanwhile, makes the game’s goofier moments look like a masterclass in gravitas now....

“One foot in cabala and the other in the laboratory.” TheAmnesiagames are set decades apart, but they all begin in the same moment, a moment of waking that is also a moment of erasure and disconnection, a rebirth outside the flow of events from which to descend into the machine of history afresh. On 19th August 1839, a young man opens his eyes to find himself in a vast, silent castle in the forests of Prussia....

“What is happening in Russia now looks like some kind of crazy experiment.” It’s rare that a developer explicitly introduces their game to you as “boring”, andIndikaseems anything but. Created by Odd Meter, the studio behind the well-received fantasy VR bow simulatorSacralith: The Archer’s Tale, and published byFrostpunkdeveloper 11 bit Studios, it’s a “very serious adventure game” set in 19th century Russia, which casts you as a young Orthodox Christian nun on the run....

Intel’s Raptor Lake Refesh chips are a skippable stopgap Outside of some mild clock speed increases and some new AI-powered doodads for the Core i9-14900K, this is about as conservative a yearly processor upgrade as it’s possible to imagine. The Performance and Efficiency cores are essentially the same hardware as they were in the 13th Gen Raptor Lake chips, and those were themselves barely a step forward from the transformativeAlder Lakeseries in the first place....

Companies to call it quits by “mutual agreement” ShadowrunandBattletechstudio Harebrained Schemes are “parting ways” with Paradox Interactive - or what’s left of Harebrained are, at least. Paradox have announced that they’re cutting the developer loose to pursue publishing opportunities elsewhere, following dismal sales of the studio’s latest release, swaggering 1930s-set Indiana XCOMalikeThe Lamplighters League. Paradox will keep ownership of The Lamplighters League and other games developed by Harebrained, though theCrusader Kingspublisher have no plans for a project or sequel in the same genre....

Need a hint for today’s Connections? Read our guide for help with Connections #129 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....

A nice piece of kit, it must be said. Asus make some of the best gaming laptops going, and their Flow Z13 (discounted today!) is one of the most interesting too. It’s an ultraportable 13-inch machine with high-end specs, a 1200p (1920x1200) 120Hz touchscreen and a detchable keyboard. Plug in Asus' discrete GPU (or any other eGPU solution), and you’re left with an extremely powerful gaming machine - then unplug and you’ve got a thin and light laptop for getting work done or consuming media on the go....

And it’s got a demo out now Tiles, they’re just pleasing. Plonk ‘em down, line ‘em up, watch pretty patterns emerge and your score multiply. Upcoming PC gamePlanetilesis about tiles - they’re right there in the name! - and looks to continue the immensely satisfying chill puzzling ofDorfromantikand its ilk. If Dorfromantik fell onto the side of hex-loving occupied by Catan and modern-daySid Meier’s Civilization, Planetiles looks to fall in with the polymino crowd of Tetris and pretty much every board game ever made by Uwe Rosenberg, the prolific German designer of Patchwork, A Feast for Odin and Agricola....