The post Windows PC Gaming in 2025: Handheld Innovation, Arm Progress and DirectX Advances appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Author: Game Infliction
With little fanfare, Helldivers 2’s creative director shares that Arrowhead are prototyping a roguelite mode
I think there is a very compelling case for Twitter not being the place that information about, well, honestly anything, should be casually shared in a matter of fact manner. It is a site for, if we must use it, posting things like “just downloaded some MP3s to my iPod Touch,” not sharing that Arrowhead are currently testing a roguelite mode in Helldivers 2, which is exactly what the game’s creative director Johan Pilestedt did today.
Match delightfully silly, hand-drawn dogs in Dogpile, a roguelike deckbuilder take on Suika Game
With trends and trendy games passing by these days, I’d understand if you’d already forgotten about Suika Game. I am not here to remind you of its existence to talk about it, more so use it as genre context for Dogpile, a new game that is essentially the question “what if Suika Game actually had a bunch of dogs and was also a roguelike deckbuilder?” I know, I know, there are too many of those already, but this one’s just so charming!
Nintendo Switch Parental Controls App Updated To Ver. 2.3.0, Here Are The Patch Notes
Getting dark.
Hot off the back of yesterday’s Switch and Switch 2 system update, Nintendo has today released a patch for its Parental Controls app, bumping things up to ver. 2.3.0.
The big addition this time around is a new Dark Mode, which will turn on automatically according to your phone’s settings — so no more glaring white light in the gloomy winter evenings. There are also more options on the ‘Extend Daily Play-Time Limit’ menu, bonus bedtime settings and more.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Build a Bright Future in Frostpunk 2: Fractured Utopias
Build a Bright Future* in Frostpunk 2’s Fractured Utopias!
(*definitions of ‘Bright Future’ may vary – ask your local faction representative).
Since the launch of Frostpunk 2, attention has mostly been on the ‘Story’ mode, the long-awaited follow-up to Frostpunk’s ‘New Home’ scenario, which focuses on the fate of New London thirty years after the Great Storm.
As much as we are proud of the six-part story, it somewhat overshadowed the ‘Utopia Builder’ mode. Unlike the first Frostpunk, where the ‘Endless Mode’ was added in a patch to answer the popular player demand to, well, play endlessly, Frostpunk 2 was engineered from the ground up as a sandbox to tell new emergent stories. In ‘Utopia Builder’, players are tasked with leading a new city made up of different communities and factions in pursuit of the titular, elusive ‘utopia’.
The ‘Fractured Utopias’ DLC logically doubles down on this theme, by giving each faction unique tools leading up to their ideal society. Here a peek at how it works, and how to make it work for you and your faction:
Each faction now has a ‘Utopia Tree’, with twelve unique nodes per faction unlocking faction hubs, laws, and a flurry of new perks and abilities. Move the City in the ideological direction a faction wishes and they will reward you with points to invest in their Utopia Tree. Unlock all the nodes in one tree and bring your faction’s vision to life (including remodelling the city to their liking by converting enough housing districts to their needs and building enough of their hubs), and you will forever unite your City behind their vision, solving Tension.
Whether you want to usher in the dawn of a ‘New Humankind’ with the Proteans, crave establishing a ‘Machine City’ through the power of compute with the Technocrats, or pave the way for any of the other six factions’ promised lands, ‘Fractured Utopias’ will allow you to reshape your society in fresh new (did someone say twisted?) ways.
Obviously, everyone’s utopia is someone else’s dystopia, so if you’re not quite ready to indulge factions, we have your back too The free content update we’re launching alongside the DLC adds thirteen so-called ‘moderate laws’ for you to try and tread the middle way. Pass all of them to try and appease the City.
That’s only a sneak peak of what we cooked up in Fractured Utopias. All this new content obviously comes with over one hundred new consequences and narrative events which will demand the type of difficult decisions the Frostpunk IP got you used to. And if you’re one of these people who only click on choices with blue gameplay effect text, then have fun making your bed and sleeping in it. But whatever you do, remember: the City must not fall!
Frostpunk 2: Fractured Utopias
11 bit studios
$12.99
The first DLC for Frostpunk 2 embraces the core concept of Utopia Builder mode, giving it more structure, expanding its scope, and emphasizing the weight of the player’s choices. New mechanics give each faction a bold ideological goal – and ways to pursue it. But a dream of a perfect society never comes without a cost.
Each faction now envisions its own unique Utopia, structured into a tree and powered by affinities. As you earn their trust, you’ll unlock specialized laws, buildings, and abilities that reinforce their distinct identity. Unlock all nodes of the Utopia Tree to enact a singular vision on the city – binding your entire society to a single path forward and permanently resolving all the Tension.
Your city may not fall. But whose future will it serve?
Key New Features:
8 unique faction Utopias, each with new systems, tools, and endgame
12 unique unlocks (laws / new HUBs / Abilities, etc.) per faction
8 new faction hubs (1 per faction)
8 new faction-specific variants of housing district
Over 100 new narrative events
2 premium Tales: “Doomsayers” and “Plague”
1 new map
The post Build a Bright Future in Frostpunk 2: Fractured Utopias appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Beastro, a crunchy-cozy deck builder, comes to PS5 spring 2026
This is Lindsey, game director at Timberline Studio. Today, I’d like to tell you more about how the concept of flavor is integral to how we built our cooking and gameplay systems in Beastro, our upcoming crunchy-cozy deck builder, coming to PS5 in Spring 2026.
We know that’s a lot to unpack up there, so let’s get into it.
Flavor as biomes
In the world of Beastro, our regions are broken up by flavor types: bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami. Each of these flavors has its own culture, creatures, and color palettes. And depending on where a character hails from, it will define their palate and what they want their food to taste like!
Over the course of our four chapters, you’ll venture into these various flavor biomes to fight off the monsters that have invaded from another realm. It’s up to you to fight them off and protect the flavor spirits in these lands.
You’ll first find yourself in The Marshlands, the nearest region of the Umami Wilds. The Umami lands, and its denizens are signified by their depth of life and heartier ingredients. Mushrooms are the foundation of this region and the mossy, mishmash of land they thrive in. This biome is full of deep greens and browns. We wanted it to feel dense, enveloping, and comforting at the same time. I often think of Umami as a big bowl of stew, and we seek to hit that energy in the characters and environment.
Our heroes, the Caretakers
Word spreads quickly that ravenous monsters have arrived and that they are wreaking havoc on the flavor wilds. Heroes from the flavor factions, the Caretakers, are sent to protect everyone and quell the tide of the invasion; however, none of them are capable of battling on an empty stomach.
Soon, these Caretakers arrive in our quaint little town of Palo Pori in search of a meal, but they get more than a full stomach. The food our chef, Panko, prepares with the help of the fire god, Flambé, unlocks the power of the flavor spirits from within the ingredients, granting magical abilities to the Caretakers, allowing them to engage in unique card battles with the monsters.
Each Caretaker has their own motivation that’s driving them to defeat the monsters. As champions for their people, they all seek to leave their mark on the world and show they can save the world on their own.
The Umamis seek to bring everyone together, particularly the friendly creatures in the wilds who lack the skills to fight off the monsters. Oyshi, our Umami Caretaker, is always happy to offer a safe home to a small creature in need.
And our third playable Caretaker, Kalan, hails from the land of Bitter. The Bitters are known as the protectors of this world, entrusted with the responsibility to ensure the survival of all flavors… and they take this responsibility very seriously.
Kalan is very single-minded, looking to reinforce the Bitter’s role as the protectors. Kalan has less stamina than the other Caretakers, but his palate leads him toward the healing properties of many Bitter ingredients. It’s important to eat your leafy greens. Because of their devotion to a flavor many others would choose to avoid, they feel they’re just a little bit better than everyone else, and Kalan’s more than willing to remind you of that. They prefer their coffee black, as why would you ruin a lovely bitter thing with another flavor?
Unlocking the magic of flavor
While the first Caretaker may have arrived due to hunger, Oyshi soon helps recruit the others to Palo Pori to unlock flavor magic of their own. As the chef, it’s up to you to balance their desired flavors and the magic you think they’ll need to be successful in the wilds.
Palo Pori and the restaurant in Beastro are built around a concept of: from town to table. Many of the ingredients you use are grown, gathered, or fished out of the sea to cook up the meals for the Caretakers. As you sauté, chop, boil, roast, and assemble your meals through the various mini games, you’ll find yourself developing a nice flavor profile for your caretaker as you balance and enhance the flavors of your meal.
This is all done through “mise en place,” where you place your ingredients and determine how to create the best well-rounded meal for your visitor and one that unlocks the magic and effects they’ll need to defeat the monsters, because not only does each ingredient have a flavor, it has a power level… and many of them have effects too!
You’ll have to discover, learn, and experiment with how different ingredients combine to unlock new powers that will make each caretaker stronger and allow them to battle more ferocious foes with every round.
We can’t wait to tell you more about our game, but for now, we’ll leave you with a new Gameplay Trailer that shares a bit more about the mechanics we mentioned above.
Time for me to get a snack! Thanks for taking the time to learn about Beastro!
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s director has one key, and likely familiar, word to keep in mind for part 3
I am most certainly the kind of sucker that has few complaints about Final Fantasy 7 Remake being split into multiple parts. Those are my guys! I love my grumpy idiot all too realistic looking Cloud, I think Midgar being so well realised helps to justify the splitting of the game, and as maximalist as Rebirth is, there’s a quality to it I can’t help but admire, even with its many flaws. Keeping things fresh is still something necessary in dividing the game up though, and in a recent interview, director Naoki Hamaguchi spoke of how he’s trying to do that with the as-of-yet untitled third part.
‘Era of Ruinin’ Scalps’ — Games Workshop Revives Special Edition Horus Heresy Book After Scalpers Brought Down Warhammer.com — and This Time Fans Actually Have a Chance of Buying It
Games Workshop has revived the Siege of Terra: End of Ruin special edition book after scalpers descended upon its pre-orders, forcing Warhammer.com itself offline.
In June, Games Workshop pulled its own website, Warhammer.com, offline after scalpers caused chaos during the launch of pre-orders for the Siege of Terra: End of Ruin special edition book.
Siege of Terra: End of Ruin is an anthology of short stories set during the aftermath of the Siege of Terra and the Horus Heresy. For the uninitiated, the Horus Heresy is the Space Marine civil war that took place 10,000 years before the current Warhammer 40,000 setting. It is the foundation of 40K’s grimdark universe, and reveals how the carrion Emperor ended up on the Golden Throne.
Siege of Terra: End of Ruin was a hugely exciting release for 40K lore fans, but its special edition is even more enticing. It features a leather-effect cover with gold foil details, gilt page edges, and a metal emblem of a ruined Imperial eagle.
Games Workshop had signaled the special edition would be available “strictly while stocks last,” and that it would go on sale at 10am UK time on June 10. It also told fans it planned to use a queue system “to ensure fair distribution.” Unfortunately, this queue system caused chaos, with fans desperate to pre-order the book unable to make progress. Amid frantic messages of complaint across social media, Discords, and subreddits, Warhammer.com suddenly… stopped. It was offline, and no-one knew why.
Eventually, Games Workshop issued a statement on the debacle — a rare event in of itself — to say it had brought Warhammer.com offline because it had noticed scalpers were bypassing its systems. “Scalpers attempted to use bots to bypass our normal safeguards,” Games Workshop said. “Our eagle-eyed Tech Priests caught this happening in real-time, so we pulled Warhammer.com offline.”
At the time, Games Workshop promised Siege of Terra: End of Ruin would return, but half a year went by without any news. Now, Games Workshop has announced plans to sell the special edition once again — but with one key chance that has already got real fans excited.
In a post on Warhammer Community, Games Workshop said the special edition of Era of Ruin is being made available this coming weekend as a “guaranteed stock run.” Order it between Saturday and 8am UK time on Christmas Eve, and “you’ll be on the list to receive a copy of this sumptuous edition capping off the Siege of Terra series.”
This means the special edition is a “guaranteed stock product,” with Games Workshop printing the books based on demand. As a result, production and delivery can take up to 180 days.
Reaction to the news among fans is hugely positive, with some declaring it a win for real fans of the Warhammer 40,000 setting and a big L for scalpers. “Era of Ruinin’ Scalps,” declared one fan on the Black Library subreddit. “It’s the best decision they could make,” said another. “The secondhand market is 95% scalpers.” Another fan added: “Print on demand, what sweet words to read!” “Do I need this book? Absolutely not. Will I be purchasing so they see how positive this move is? Absolutely,” declared another fan.
Some are now hoping Games Workshop uses this release method for all its special editions going forward. “I’m totally cool with waiting a bit of time to get my copy if print on demand is an option moving forward,” said one hopeful. “It’s about freaking time. I’ve been saying this for five years. It’s about time they did something sensible,” added another.
“This is REALLY great news, HUGE win by GW and BL. And here I thought we weren’t going to have anything for Christmas, this is the best present. And I hope they see the potential of this kind of order, it could literally change everything. Really really pleasantly surprised.”
Games Workshop has suffered pre-order problems for years now, and special edition book launches are often plagued by scalpers who go on to sell the products at hugely inflated prices. Fans are now crossing their fingers this new method of selling books actually gets them into the hands of real fans.
Image credit: Games Workshop.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Forgo therapy and destroy your robot-filled hometown in Virtue and a Sledgehammer
I am not someone that thinks you can be therapied out of any kind of mental anguish. Life just doesn’t work that way! Sure, it can be a helpful tool, but sometimes you need to pick up a sledgehammer, go back to your hometown that is filled with robots, and smash it all down. Or, at least that’s the argument that Virtue and a Sledgehammer makes, the latest game from The Red Strings Club and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood developer Deconstructeam.
Opinion: Resident Evil Requiem Needs To Solve The Series’ Villain Problem
Where art thou, Wesker?
Warning: this article contains scenes of explicit spoilers.
Resident Evil Requiem launches on the Switch 2 in just under three months, but even now, the game is heavily shrouded in mystery (well, a little less so after the accidental reveal of Leon).
Read the full article on nintendolife.com