20 Small Mazes is an extremely good game made of, er, 20 small mazes – and it’s free!

Do you like puzzles? Do you like free games? Do you like free puzzle games that are charming and idiosyncratic? Then you’ll love 20 Small Mazes, a game that is just 20 small mazes. As the Steam store page says, they’re good mazes, though. It’s out on February the 16th from FLEB, which seems to be just one guy who really likes puzzles and making puzzles. I wholly support him.

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Persona 3 Reload review: a high school reunion better left in the history books

On the 23rd of May, I strode out of the exam hall with my head held high. Not only had we cleared out the 42nd floor of the cursed extra-dimensional horror house that was our school’s midnight alter-ego, I’d also just aced my midterms. I spent the afternoon helping my french foreign exchange friend sew a kimono for his estranged uncle, then killed some time before bed by consoling the small child I’d been hanging out with lately about her parent’s divorce.

So goes an average day in one of the very, very many days stuffed into Persona 3 Reload’s year long taste of demon-slaying high school life. A charming fantasy? Perhaps! There’s plenty here for fans who don’t mind an old-school approach to grinding while exploring heartfelt, albeit cheesy, friendships. Those who don’t get on with anime tropes, though, might find it exhaustingly written and repetitive.

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Nebulous: Fleet Command is the hardcore version of Homeworld I didn’t know I wanted

Every “incoming missile” alert in Nebulous: Fleet Command spawns a host of questions, scattering through your brain pan like chaff. The most important of those questions is: “which missiles, exactly?” There are many species of self-propelled ordnance in this dangerously engrossing space sim from Eriadanus Industries – you can design your very own in the fleet editor – and while all are bad news, some are far worse than others.

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Sapphire’s excellent RX 7800 XT 16GB Pulse card is down to £480

AMD’s RX 7800 XT is arguably Team Red’s best value graphics card from this generation, offering great performance for 1080p and 1440p gaming with the ability to stretch to 4K in titles that offer FSR 2 upscaling.

Relatively few cards have been available at the launch RRP of £479, but today you can pick up the excellent Sapphire Pulse 16GB model for exactly that much rather than the £519.99 it debuted at. Is that a deal worthy of an RPS deals post? Sure, why not?

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There are almost 20,000 Palworld breeding combos, and now players want to breed Pals with humans

Palworld isn’t just about capturing non-copyright-infringing Poke-fied wildlife, slaughtering the poor creatures and/or setting them to work in terrible gun factories. There’s also the frightful question of Pal breeding. Every Pal in the game can be bred with every other Pal to produce a Pal subspecies with a chance of inheriting traits from its parents.

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Baldur’s Gate 3’s Nocturne is a landmark in trans representation, but for her voice actor it’s just the beginning

I bought Baldur’s Gate 3 shortly after its release as a need than a want, when I was a year-and-half into my gender transition and hormone replacement therapy. Gender transition is not just an arduous journey of self-discovery, but also a profound and constant engagement with one’s own reality. I was desperate for some escapism, and Larian Studios’ much-anticipated new entry into the Baldur’s Gate fantasy RPG franchise offered the perfect rabbit hole to fall down.

As a child, my gaming habits were relatively stereotypical for a closeted girl: select female characters wherever possible, especially in RPGs. But the immersion almost always wears off. The trans inclusion in games like Dungeon Siege, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and others is effectively non-existent, and the result for transgender and transsexual players is a feeling that, even in fantasy worlds, we are invisible at best. Nocturne, a trans supporting character in Baldur’s Gate III played by Abigail Thorn, has changed that experience for me. In an interview, Thorn shared some of her thoughts and experiences regarding Nocturne and trans representation in games.

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Would you wait over 20 years for a Final Fantasy 6 remake? Because that’s how long it might take

Final Fantasy 6 is one of the most beloved Final Fantasy games in the series, so much so that even staff at Square Enix keep hassling series producer Yoshinori Kitase about when they’re going to remake it and give it the full Final Fantasy 7 treatment. Alas, the prospect of such a project has had fresh water poured over it this weekend, with Kitase explaining that, given it’s already taken them ten years to make Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (with a third entry to complete the trilogy yet to come), a Final Fantasy 6 remake would likely take twice as long as that to actually make. And you know what? I’m good, actually. The Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster is good enough for me in this lifetime.

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Obsidian’s fantasy RPG Avowed won’t have companion romance, which is fine

In a conversation with Eurogamer’s Bertie Purchie, game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo drilled down into some details on Obsidian’s upcoming first-person fantasy RPG Avowed. Part of the Pillars Of Eternity universe, Avowed is set in a place called the Living Lands, an island continent with, I infer, very sedate night life, because Patel confirms you can’t romance your companions.

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