Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Two Microsoft software engineers who interrupted a Microsoft anniversary event to protest against the company’s dealings with the Israeli military have been fired for misconduct, according to a report. Software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad, who is based in Canada and once worked for the company’s genAI division, lost her job on Monday 7th April due to “wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty,” according to internal documents picked up by CNBC. Another Microsoft software engineer, Vaniya Agrawal, had announced that she would resign on April 11th, but according to another document cited by CNBC, Microsoft have terminated her job in advance.

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Some video games aim to pull originality from the ether, and some video games try to accomplish it by theatrically amassing a bunch of rad parallels and sort of crushing them together until the molecular boundaries give way, and a new Element is produced. This is the vibe I get from Welcome To Brightville, a new “emergent immersive sim” that reminds me instantly of Thief, Dishonored, Bioshock and recent soulslike Lies Of P.

The setting blends “industrial Victorian architecture, neo-baroque extravagance, and futuristic cyberpunk elements” to produce a “manapunk” world in which magic and machinery jostle together like cats in a bag. It’s a heady stew of references, and perhaps not that novel for a dark fantasy RPG – people have been slopping the cyber over other literary genres for a while now, and don’t get me started on the abundance of -punk derivatives. Still, it rattles and whirrs along convincingly enough in the below announcement trailer.

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Inspired is one word for it, anyway. Still, since Heroes Of Might & Magic-likes aren’t exactly giving roguelite deckbuilders a run for their ubiquity, I’m broadly receptive – the warmest and most exploitable of the four gamer emotions. Stormbinders is a turn-based strategy set in a fantasy land with bad weather and badder shimmering angelic eyeballs. You may recognise what it’s going for. This may delight you.

You’ll choose a hero, then get stuck into the campaign. “The story progresses across unique scenarios, uncovering a tale of magic, heroism, unlikely alliances and betrayals,” reads Steam. The titular Stormbinding sounds like the interesting twist here. The game randomises weather patterns each time you boot it up, which apparently adds new wrinkles to both battle and the global map.

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Palworld developers Pocketpair have announced their next gig as a fledgling games publisher. They’re palling up with MythicOwl to release the latter’s jaunty delivery sim Truckful, in which absolutely nothing waits for you in the woods. In which there are no ghost trucks. In which “hidden paths, misty wetlands, unforgiving marshes and dusty quicksands [do not] tell the stories of the past, waiting to be discovered”. Here’s a trailer.

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Right, Doom: The Dark Ages is still a month away, but I’m guessing there’s some of you that could do with a bit of boomer shooting to fill the gap in the meantime. Metal Eden will probably scratch that itch, the next game from the devs behind the quite violent and flashy Ruiner, given that it’s out May 6th. That’s still about a month away though, so you could always try out the free demo that dropped today offering a small taste of its sci-fi shooter.

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Diablo 4 is coming up to its second anniversary but it still has a good bit of gas in the tank. Earlier today Blizzard shared its roadmap for the game across the rest of the year, though obviously we’re a quarter of the way through that already. The game is currently in its seventh season, with its eighth, Belial’s Return, starting sometime this month. This one, unsurprisingly, adds Belial, Lord of Lies as a boss, alongside a couple of bosses from Vessel of Hatred as “part of the updated Lair Boss system.”

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It’s another week, and with that comes word of the next Civilization 7 update. The patch isn’t ready quite yet, but in a new update check-in post, Firaxis shared that the game’s next update is coming April 22nd, just a couple of weeks away. There’s a few big changes coming too, so how about we just jump right in. First up is a change to resources. There’ll be ten new resources coming to the game, all of which will get their own new narrative events for starters.

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You know, I’m going to be very real with you right now: I thought Sonic Rumble was already out. It feels like I’ve been hearing about this thing for an eon now, probably because it was leaked a good while before Sega even officially revealed it. And yet here we are, with an announcement from the house of hog (sorry) saying that in actual fact, it’s not out until May 8th, exactly a month from now! Perhaps this is a sign that I’m losing track of time, perhaps this is a game that Sega has been cooking in the kitchen for a bit too long. Who’s to say!

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The latest update for Schedule I – the memey baggy slinging simulator that’s actually a deceptively moreish co-op factory game – is now in open beta. It’s named v0.3.4, which sounds like it has deep number mythology behind it, but developer Tyler is calling this the game’s ‘first proper update’. As with his plans for all updates, it’s going to be floating around in a beta for a few days first. You can find the full update notes here, alongside instructions to access the branch.

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A little pigeon, huh? And she’s your pal! Well, isn’t that great. Tenstack are a tiny Swedish studio on a mission to make “digestible games so people won’t choke playing them”. They’re currently making a new small game every 3 months, the latest of which is Little Wings Deliveries. It’s under a fiver, under an hour, and is maybe the third or fourth game at this point to have a skateboarding pigeon in. I do not mind. I have a headache. The soothing coos and soothing faceplants of a skateboarding pigeon are just what I need right now.

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