The scripting language powering some of the best written games now works with Unreal engine

80 Days, Heaven’s Vault and the Sorcery! games were all created by Inkle using their own scripting language, called Ink. It’s a powerful tool for creating game narrative using simple markup rather than code, and it’s open source so it can be used by other developers.

One drawback thus far has been that there was no native integration with the Unreal engine. That has now changed thanks to a new open source plug-in created by The Chinese Room.

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This 27-in 1440p 165Hz monitor is in the price/performance sweet spot for $280

LG makes some of the best monitors going, in my opinion, with their Fast IPS panels being the basis of many great gaming monitors from other manufacturers too.

Today we’re looking at one of their first-party options, the 27GP83A, which combines a winning spec sheet with a reduced price: $279.99 for a 27-inch 1440p 165Hz gaming monitor.

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Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer wants to do Pillars of Eternity 3 with Baldur’s Gate 3’s budget

Obsidian Entertainment design director Josh Sawyer has said that he’d be well up for making a new Pillars of Eternity RPG, given a budget on par with Baldur’s Gate 3. Specifically, he’d like to build on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire‘s combat system, and use a “scripted 3D camera” that avoids some of the fuss of exploring the world and navigating the interface of Larian’s game.

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New Stellaris DLC Astral Rift will take you on a journey to other dimensions

Paradox’s space 4X strategy game Stellaris is getting a new Astral Planes expansion, in which you send ships through rifts to “completely different realms of existence, where fundamentals that were certain at home may not always be true”. I’ve read a few sci-fi novels in my time, and have come to the conclusion that tunnelling into other dimensions is seldom a wise move, but there’s no turning back at the threshold when you’re nurturing a mighty galactic empire, I guess. Find a trailer below in which some poor science ship pilot gets his brain fried by a crackling window of purple impossibility.

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Activision Blizzard push Diablo 4 discounts and free trials even as Season 2 updates divide players

Activision Blizzard rolled out Diablo 4‘s Season 2, also known as the Season of Blood, this week, together with an absolute deluge of quality-of-life improvements across console and PC. The publisher have also now launched the hitherto Battle.net-based PC version on Steam, and are trying to attract newcomers with a discount on Valve’s platform and a free 10 hour trial this weekend (that’s 19th-22nd October) for Xbox players.

Have the Season 2 updates – which you could summarise as “slay vampires to get vampire powers” and “spend less time and have more fun grinding/farming for loot and levels” – salvaged Blizzard’s action-RPG from the ashes of Season 1? I’ve been trawling the reactions this morning, and while the new Diablo appears to be evolving in the right direction, the big picture is still of a game with just as many raters as haters.

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Bit.Trip ReRunner’s Mario Maker-esque level editor makes a good game even better

Cor, it sure is good to be back in Commander Video’s running shoes again. I know Bit.Trip Runner and Choice Provisions’ assorted Bit.Trip rhythm games have been available on Steam for absolutely yonks (and still are, in fact), but my memories of these are all on the Nintendo Wii. That’s where I encountered most of the games firs – and I haven’t really been back since. I dabbled in Runner 2 on the Wii U, but positively bounced off the 3D-ness of Runner 3 when it came to PC, preferring instead the clean, simple lines of its stark pixel sprites.

It’s with some surprise, then, that I’ve had such a good time with Bit.Trip ReRunner, the recently released fancied up version of the auto-running original that brings its rhythmic courses kicking and screaming into that third dimension. But it’s really more of a compilation game than anything else, packing in extra protein in the form of EP soundtracks and freshly-created course selections from all eight games in the series (mashing tunes from Beat, Core, Void, Fate, Flux into a Runner-style format), as well as lots of new tricks and abilities up its sleeve. But the crown jewel in ReRunner isn’t so much the joy of getting a fresh dose of OG Runner again, but seeing what its player base has already started making with its brilliant Runner Maker level editor. Yep, much like Super Mario Maker before it, Bit.Trip has opened itself up to the whims of would-be game making audience, and they are running with it (sorry).

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The cheapest 1TB SSD for Steam Deck or ROG Ally is this £80 option from WD

There’s fierce competition in the 2230 NVMe SSD space right now, as these pint-sized SSDs are the only ones that will fit in PC handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. Previously Sabrent were offering the cheapest option available at the 1TB price point at £85, but now Scan has reduced the price of the WD SN740 to just £80. This is a good deal on a PCIe 4.0 2230-size SSD, offering speeds of up to 5150MB/s on the ROG Ally and around 3500MB/s for the PCIe 3.0 Steam Deck.

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