Against The Storm’s latest update arrives next week, adds fancy trends window and blight post upgrades

Against The Storm is a roguelite city builder that features lizards and beavers, as they attempt to survive in a universe where it doesn’t stop raining. We gave it a Bestest Best badge when it launched into 1.0, and since then the developers promised more major updates. Patch 1.2 is the latest of the bunch, and when it arrives next week it’s bringing with it a “consumption/production” window, upgrades to the Blight Post, and lots of balance changes.

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Our favourite wireless gaming headset is down to under £100 at Amazon UK

SteelSeries make some of my favourite gaming headsets – and RPS’ favourite wireless gaming headset, which today is discounted to under £100 versus its normal price of £175. That’s a good price for the Arctis 7+, a comfortable and great-sounding headset that works not only on PC but also on Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S – that’s all the consoles!

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Connect All The Things with this £19 7-port powered USB hub

Here’s something a little different: a seven-port powered USB hub from Sabrent that makes it easy to connect a huge amount of peripherals and drives to your PC without having to fumble blindly with the back of your PC – or turn one of your laptop’s USB ports into many many more. It normally goes for £30 to £40, but today you can pick it up for just £19 at Amazon UK.

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In precision platformer Clown Meat, you have to cheer up a Godzilla-sized clown from Jupiter

I’ve done some elementary study of the planet Jupiter for various creative research projects/dead-ends. It’s probably a symptom of my failings as an astronomer, but I have to say that at no point have I noticed any gigantic, depressed clowns. In new platformer Clown Meat, one such gigantic, depressed clown has swum through Jupiter’s atmosphere, drifted to Earth and kicked off some kind of meatpunk apocalypse, saturating the surrounding countryside with circus-themed abominations.

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Wrath: Aeon Of Ruin review: sometimes the old FPS ways can still work

I’ve had to look up…. goddamn it, hang on. I’ve had to look up Wrath Colon Aeon Of Ruin every day to remember its utter nothing of a name. Such a weak title deserves a much worse game, but this captures the feeling of its late 90s FPS influences as they actually were, and ends up just familiar enough to work, and just original enough to refresh the formula. At times, it’s a little too accurate, but even with its annoyances dialled up by the pressure of playing it too hard for the sake of review, I’m impressed with the balancing act it’s struck.

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Stardew Valley “thriving more than ever” as new mod-centric 1.6 update gets a March release date

Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has marked the 8th birthday of his farming sim phenomenon baby (also called Stardew Valley) by announcing the impending release of update 1.6. The PC version – the one we care about – is arriving on the 19th of March, and consoles and mobile as soon as possible after that. The actual content of update 1.6 is largely a mystery, but Barone has teased a few things here and there, including that it’s “mostly changers for modders” that’ll make it “easier and more powerful to mod”.

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Elden Ring might have one little secret left, Miyazaki says, and I hope we never discover it

While players have scoured and stained every inch of the Lands Between in the two years since Elden Ring launched, they might not have uncovered every secret just yet. With a June release now confirmed for Shadow Of The Erdtree, the long-awaited expansion, director Hidetaka Miyazaki has now hinted that we Tarnished may have missed something. One small secret may yet remain, assuming he’s not pulling another prank, or maybe not. Honestly, Miyazaki should say it has hundreds of undiscovered things. Keep everyone guessing. Communal Internet knowledge has ruined the mystique of video games.

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Pitch: the big IP holders should license them cheaply, so people can make loads of weird fanfic games

Last night I dreamt I had to review a Dragon Age DLC. I reviewed it poorly. I thought that it should not have been marketed as main game DLC instalment when it pivoted to being a magical girl dating sim. This serves to show how unrealistic dreams can be; in my waking hours I am, of course, of the clear-eyed awareness that a magical girl dating sim is entirely in-keeping with the rest of the Dragon Age oeuvre.

I’m worried about Dragon Age. I’m worried that so much cost has been sunk, team members changed and redrafting did that it’ll end up kind of a mess. But that’s the pessimism talking. What I’d like to propose is that all the big game companies have a crack at something similar to Amazon’s (hiliarious and abortive) attempt to officially license fan fiction, which was called Kindle Worlds.

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Shashingo, out today, helps you learn Japanese through photography

As someone who’s learning Japanese, I crave other methods of language acquisition that don’t feel like studying. Textbooks, flashcards, even watching Japanese media can all feel a bit too close to being back in a classroom. Shashingo, a game that helps you learn Japanese through taking cute photos, may be the study companion I’ve craved. And having covered it two years ago when it was first properly shown off, I’m very happy to see it’s finally arriving later today.

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The sequel to acclaimed Metroidvania Ender Lilies gets PC early access release

Out of all the Nintendo Direct announcements last week, the one I was most sad to see not get a PC release date was the sequel to the much beloved Metroidvania Ender Lilies. The announcement came as a bit of a surprise, all told, and I was worried I’d have to consign it to what I’ve now dubbed my Unicorn Overlord pile of games that are never coming to PC. Happily, publishers Binary Haze Interactive have now confirmed that Ender Magnolia: Bloom In The Mist is, in fact, coming to PC (and other consoles) after all, and that it’s coming real soon, as its PC early access release has been set for just weeks away on March 25th. Result.

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