The Rogue Prince of Persia revealed- a slick 2D roguelite coming to Steam in May-
I was a little surprised to learn that Ubisoft is publishing a second 2D Prince of Persia game so soon after The Lost Crown, meaning both were in development simultaneously. This one is a bit different though: It’s not developed by a Ubisoft studio, and it’s releasing on Steam in early access this May, which is notable because Ubisoft has been doing timed Epic Games Store exclusives for the past several years.
The Rogue Prince of Persia was announced at today’s Triple-I Initiative showcase, although its existence was leaked earlier. It’s being developed by Evil Empire, the studio founded to make DLC for popular roguelite Dead Cells while Motion Twin moved on to a new project, and sees the Prince reacting to a Hun invasion with his usual melee combat and platforming. As the “rogue” bit of the title hints, though, something new happens when the Prince inevitably finds himself at the bottom of a spike trap.
Lucky for our impaled Prince, he’s been “living a roguelite h…
I am mesmerized by the impeccable vibes of this trippy twin-stick shooter-
“A celestial flower blooms, as a vicious wasp protects. Complete their entwined symbiotic life cycle in a realm crawling with hunger,” reads the simple description for Nidus, an upcoming twin-stick shooter from indie developer Caleb Wood.
What it describes is some of the most entrancing gameplay snippets and trailers I’ve seen all year. Nidus is a twin-stick arcade shooter that looks to be some seriously demanding gameplay. Here’s the trick: You control both flower and wasp as a symbiotic organism to survive their strange ecosystem long enough to complete their life cycle.
The two characters push and pull against each other. The wasp can smash, slice, and sting enemies with great speed. The flower has a more stable movement, and can seemingly fire projectiles both directionally and in spinning bursts. As the wasp takes down enemies it collects energy that it can use to pollinate the flower, which lets it unleash those burst attacks—and heal the duo.
Non…
TSMC looks set to hit Intel where it hurts, announcing its A16 node with ‘Super Power Rail’ backside power delivery-
While Intel has been busy making bets on its 18A node as part of its accelerated roadmap towards chip making dominance, TSMC appears to have been beavering away in the background to undercut it.
It’s just announced its own “angstrom-class” process, A16, which thanks to its backside power delivery implementation looks set to not only offer significantly improved performance compared to its upcoming NP2 process, but also improve energy efficiency, too. Intel has its own competing backside power delivery tech, PowerVia. While Intel says it will begin producing chips on 18A next year, it doesn’t expect to start producing large volumes of chips on the 18A node until 2027.
TSMC says that chips built on the new A16 process will provide an 8-10% speed improvement over N2P at the same voltage, with a 15-20% power reduction at the same speed and up to a 1.10X chip density improvement for data centre products. The company aims to begin production on chips using the tech in 20…
Twitch bans ‘promotion or sponsorship’ of CS-GO skin gambling-
Late last year Twitch began to take the issue of gambling streams on its platform seriously, issuing new guidelines that prohibited such content and triggering an exodus of content creators that gambled on-stream. This saw major figures such as xQc, a hugely popular Canadian streamer who often gambles big money and admits he has a problem, move over to Twitch rival Kick, which allows gambling (though the $100 million definitely helped).
Twitch has now begun to get more laser-focused on these guidelines, and has issued a new edict that prohibits streamers from either promoting or being sponsored by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) skin gambling sites. Estimating the size of this grey industry is a near-impossible task, but it’s fair to say it is enormous, enormously popular, and has been a part of the CS:GO scene pretty much since Valve added skins (heck, I’ve gambled CS:GO skins in the past via sites that let you bet on tournament results). There a…
Three great Warhammer tabletop RPGs for under $20 is a deal worthy of the Emperor himself-
You might raise your eyebrow at me posting about tabletop RPG bundles two days in a row, and I wouldn’t blame you. But I’m afraid I can’t just ignore a deal this good on not one but three great Warhammer RPGs.
Humble Bundle’s latest deal includes PDFs of the core books, as well as sourcebooks and adventures, for three of the four major Warhammer TTRPGs: Soulbound, Wrath & Glory, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Imperium Maledictum is left out, but that’s new so we’ll forgive publisher Cubicle 7 for that. For just £15 / $18, you’re getting over £250 / $300 worth of stuff, with more than enough material to run a full campaign in all three systems.
Soulbound is a game of high-powered, mythic fantasy set in the Age of Sigmar universe. Huge fights against hordes of foes and towering monsters are quick and easy to play out; as I’ve said here before, I think it’s a fantastic alternative to D&D for those who love over-the-top adventure.
The RTX 4070 just leaked, looks like a match for an RTX 3080 without frame gen-
Nvidia is keeping the RTX 4070 under wraps but it looks like absolutely no one else is. We’ve got what’s claimed to be an entire specification list, and proof of third-party models from MSI and Palit, to ponder over ahead of the graphics card’s expected release.
Videocardz has got hold of a slide that is claimed to be from Nvidia. We’ve no guarantee of that, but it looks like it holds water.
The slide shows Nvidia will be using the AD104 GPU for the RTX 4070—the same GPU used in the RTX 4070 Ti. That checks out with what we’re expecting, and the rest of the spec is no surprise, either. There’s reportedly 12GB of GDDR6X memory capable of pumping out 504GB/s bandwidth across the card, working in tandem with a large L2 cache size of 36MB to push performance. That’s 9x the L2 cache of the equivalent RTX 30-series cards.
In terms of performance, there’s a graph comparing the RTX 4070 to the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3070. It looks good, but what we’re looking at i…
Valve is working on a new Steam feature that will let you hide all those weird sex games from your friends-
Valve appears to be working on a new feature for Steam that will let you mark individual games as “private,” which will let you keep your profile public while preventing all your friends from knowing just how much time you spend playing Horny Housewives Booty Call Blackmail. (Or, you know, whatever.)
Currently, the privacy options on Steam are limited: You can set your profile, or individual parts of it (game details, friends list, and inventory), to public, friends only, or private. That provides some control over what the rest of the Steam universe can know about you, but it’s an all-or-nothing solution that lacks flexibility.
The addition of a per-game privacy option, spotted and shared on Twitter by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, promises to go a long way toward addressing that shortcoming. Steam users will be able to mark individual games as “private,” which will keep other Steam users—even their friends—from seeing it.
Let’s be honest wit…
Forget tempered glass and RGB, witness the fruits of a cross-country effort to save a 20-year-old Teddy bear PC-
We at PC Gamer have developed a fondness for bears rendered by our computers, be they a party of bears in Pillars of Eternity or the results of putting all your skill points into “bear” in Diablo 4, but what if the computer itself was the bear? Prolific retro hardware YouTuber LGR engaged in a cross country effort to secure just that: a turn of the millennium desktop encased in a giant Ikea Teddy bear.
LGR was alerted by his followers to an LA Craigslist post for the ursine contraption, put up for sale by its creator, Case modder and computing enthusiast Peter Isaacson. Isaacson created the “Bear-a-Byte” for his wife, documented on his personal website via the Wayback Machine. Isaacson hollowed out a now-discontinued “Varlig” Ikea jumbo stuffed bear just enough so it could encase an old PC tower, then coated the front plate with some of the leftover fur just for good measure.
LGR viewer Charles Lai stepped up to make the pickup and ship the Bear-a-Byte …
Fallout’s original co-creator has casually dropped ‘the true purpose of vaults’ on YouTube-
Tim Cain’s had a storied career, hasn’t he? The man’s had a hand in pretty much all of my favourite games: Fallout 1 and 2, Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines, Pillars of Eternity, and Tyranny. Now the legendary game designer has a new hobby: Dropping (in the inimitable words of PCG’s Ted Litchfield) “heater after heater” of classic RPG development lore over on his YouTube channel.
One of those heaters is the absolutely irresistible “The true purpose of vaults in Fallout,” wherein Cain drops the knowledge that—in his original conception at the end of Fallout 1—the vaults were basically testbeds for a starship.
“If you ever read reports from the ’50s about what scientists thought of full-scale, international, superpower nuclear exchange,” said Cain, “there basically is no Earth to come back to”. That cheery thought gave him an idea, “Maybe that was the whole point: There is no Earth to come back to”.
“So the head of the Enclave”—Fall…
After a week of teasing, Patch 6 of Baldur’s Gate 3 is now live—adding randomised smooches, camp animations, and scary new Honour Mode legendary actions-
After a long week of teasing from the weirdly Pingu-centric Larian Studios Twitter account, the sixth patch of Baldur’s Gate 3 is now live, adding a bunch of shiny new touches to the Sword Coast’s cast and crew.
Those promised smooch improvements are now in the game, and while they’re suitably steamy, Astarion won’t be grabbing your throat every single time—thank Mystra, honestly, I don’t think my knees could handle that.
“All characters now have unique kisses that reflect their personality, with an emphasis on the plural. These kisses are randomised and vary from the incredibly romantic to… uh, a little more intense. Kisses have also been improved for shorter and taller body types, so embrace without delay.”
For the romance-averse among you, you’ll be pleased to know that there are some more platonic animation improvements. Companion characters now have more idle behaviours at your campsite: Halsin whittles, Jaheira whispers to …