With less than a month to go until its April release, Sega has delayed Amplitude's Humankind again - this time until 17th August.
The Civilization-esque 4X game was originally due to launch in 2020, before eventually being pushed back to early 2021.
Today, Amplitude released a video thanking fans for their feedback so far during the game's beta-style OpenDev sessions - and for their further patience:
With the likes of Monster Hunter Rise, New Pokémon Snap, Mario Golf: Super Rush and Skyward Sword HD all coming to the Nintendo Switch throughout the year, it's looking like the console's internal storage could struggle if you want them all installed at once. Especially if you're still digging through Animal Crossing, Super Mario 3D All-Stars and whatever else is in the backlog.
If you've found yourself debating which games to delete to save space then you should definitely check out these discounted SanDisk microSD cards while they're on offer once again at Amazon UK. Multiple card sizes are reduced: from a small 128GB bump to a chonky 400GB.
Of course, these can be used in many devices, but for a Nintendo Switch SD card, you shouldn't really need to go beyond the 200GB or 256GB for general use. However, the 400GB card is great value for money should you want to fully futureproof yourself for - essentially - the rest of the Switch's lifecycle. Plus, you should then be able to bring everything over to the Switch Pro, should the rumours of its existence be proven true.
The Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection due out in June includes 2007's Ninja Gaiden Sigma, 2009's Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and 2012's Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge - but it does not include Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2. Why?
According to Team Ninja, some of the code for those games was irretrievable.
In an interview with Famitsu (thanks, Siliconera), Team Ninja brand manager Fumihiko Yasuda explained:
In my first ever game of Dota 2, all my friends started laughing at me when I bought two sets of a boot from the shop. "What?" I said. "You need a pair of shoes..."
If you hadn't guessed from that anecdote, my friends (though trying their best) were not the best Dota 2 teachers, and I bounced off the game pretty quickly. But Valve is now attempting to make the game far more beginner-friendly, introducing several significant features to help new players learn the ropes - along with some tools to help returning players. Oh, and it's cracking down on veterans trying to sneak into beginner pools using smurf accounts.
The update coincides with the launch of the Dota: Dragon's Blood anime on Netflix earlier today, which will likely inspire a lot of viewers to try their hand at the game. Valve explained in a blog post that "the first steps of Dota discovery sometimes feel overwhelming," and it wants today's update to help with that.
Remarkable photos of a pristine Nintendo 64DD development kit have been published online, giving a rare look at a piece of hardware few have ever seen.
The 64DD - Nintendo's disc-based expansion unit for the N64 - is uncommon enough on these shores, since it was never officially released outside of Japan.
These photos, posted on Twitter by YouTuber Shane Luis, show the far rarer development kit version of the hardware. These units were sent by Nintendo to a handful of studios so they could be used to make and test games for the add-on.
The modern Hitman games are something of critical darlings - big, sprawling sandbox maps in colourful locations, where you're encouraged to do terrible things in a range of stolen clothes and uniforms. And now the finale of the trilogy is down to just £28 only a couple of months after release, if you buy from Currys and use the special code for the improved discount.
We've listed all the platforms they're selling on below. They're already discounted a lot, but enter the code FNDDGAME at checkout and you'll get them to their lowest price possible.
As well as including all the missions of Hitman 3, players can also buy the previous two installments as DLC, incorporating them into the game's mechanics and carrying any unlocked equipment across into earlier missions. And if you're still undecided, you can check out our full review of the game right here.
Xbox Live Gold will soon no longer be required to use party chat.
Microsoft will drop the subscription requirement at the same time as it also removes the need for Xbox Live Gold to play online free-to-play games such as Fortnite and Rocket League.
We knew about that latter part already, after a dramatic U-turn from Microsoft over a Xbox Live Gold price hike. That discussion prompted fierce criticism over the fact Microsoft continued to place games like Fortnite behind a paywall, in contrast to the situation on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms - something it then announced it would drop.
Treyarch revealed the new and improved version of Miami - widely considered Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's worst map.
In a tweet video, below, Treyarch unveiled Miami Strike, which launches next week in multiplayer with a new 6v6 close-quarters layout and a 24/7 playlist.
The first thing you'll notice is Miami Strike is set in the daytime, whereas the original Miami is set at night. This is significant because one of the chief criticisms of Miami has to do with its poor visibility due to the dark.
Psyonix's four-wheeled footie phenomenon Rocket League is heading to iOS and Android in the guise of "all-new" free-to-play spin-off Rocket League Sideswipe.
Sideswipe, which has been "built from the ground up for mobile", promises to deliver the competitive car-based football action of the original Rocket League, albeit with number of changes intended to make the experience more palatable on mobile devices.
Matches are now two-minute-long 1v1 or 2v2 affairs, for instance, played out using touchscreen controls and a new side-on perspective.
Somewhere within Sonic's bowels, I hope someone is still working on Super Monkey Ball. Sega's spherical puzzle series was brought back to life in 2019 for Banana Blitz HD - a re-release of the series' average Wii U entry - before everything went silent again.
In the meantime, over the last 12 months, an incredibly similar-looking spherical puzzle game has been put together by a small team after raising £43k via Indiegogo.
The result is Rolled Out! and it er, rolled out onto Steam Early Access last night.
Square Enix's long-in-the-works Final Fantasy 11 reboot for mobile devices has, six years after its initial announcement, been officially cancelled.
Final Fantasy 11 R - a mobile version of 2002's PlayStation 2, PC, and later Xbox 360 MMORPG Final Fantasy 11 Online - was originally unveiled back in March 2015 as a collaboration between Square Enix and online game specialist Nexon.
Leaked screenshots of the reboot emerged a year later, but the game sailed right through its originally planned 2016 release window with barely a peep. Since then, news on the project has been sparse, but now, some six years after the game's unveiling, Square and Nexon have finally confirmed what many had long suspected: development has officially ceased.
I have a confession to make: despite Valheim ostensibly being about hunting down terrifying monsters, I've instead become obsessed with making huge piles of food. I've even created a "snack shack" on my server so my friends can grab food on the go, and I regularly drop supplies in to keep it well stocked.
Food is seriously important in Valheim - it's vital for maintaining your health while roaming through dangerous biomes, and it's particularly important for boss battles. The snacks are often quite a challenge to make, requiring a mixture of farming, hunting and gathering to acquire the necessary resources, and you can't just load up on one type of food: your Viking needs a balanced diet to stay happy. All of this, I think, means that making a stack of sausages feels hugely rewarding in Valheim... once you stop thinking about the origins of the entrails.
But what if there were more recipes, using a wider variety of ingredients, and requiring several stages of prep? That's where the Master Chef mod for Valheim comes in. Made by hrve and available on Nexus Mods, the mod adds 25 new recipes to the game, and even introduces some previously non-edible items as recipes.
Steam Next Fest, a multi-day event featuring developer livestreams and downloadable game demos, will be held on 16th to 22nd June.
If all this sounds familiar, then yes - Steam Next Fest is the new name for Valve's semi-regular Steam Game Festival, which will probably play out in much the same way.
This time around, you'll get a chance to hear from and play the work of game developers during the usual mid-June E3 week. That's nice, of course, as it looks like there will again be no physical E3 event this year.
I almost turned it off. Genuinely, after 10 minutes, I'd had enough. A story about a girl's divorcing parents who are magically shrunk so they can go on an adventure together, and in doing so work out their differences and get back together? Do me a favour. People divorce and families move on. It's a normal part of life and shouldn't be construed as anything but. Are children supposed to play this and believe their parents could have rescued their relationship? Are divorced parents supposed to play it and feel bad? It's a dangerous idea to play with and I wish It Takes Two hadn't.
Moreover, the story is excruciatingly told. Your daughter finds a book about love at school, and it manifests as some all-powerful, passionate latin love guru, an over-the-top love therapist for shrunken Mum and Dad. All they - you - need to do is to learn to work together again! Rediscover your passion! Hhhhrrr. Pass me the sick bucket. It's like being pitched a condescending, sugar-powered seminar on marital relations by the Cartoon Network. Every time a cut-scene pops up to tell more story, the game suffers, particularly when that book appears.
However, there's also a lot about this game to love. Mechanically, it's wonderful, and one of the best co-op experiences I've had in years. It seems like just last week I was lamenting the dwindling amount of local co-op experiences, then along comes this, a game you can only play with someone else (and which gives you 'Friend's Pass' to play online with someone for free). What this means is that the co-op isn't just superficial, it's not an extra thing the game offers: it's fundamental, and the entire experience is designed around it.
A new seven-part expansion is coming to Hitman 3, themed around each of the seven deadly sins.
The first naughty dollop will arrive on 30th March, with a Dubai-set chapter themed around greed. Agent 47 is dispatched to the city in an expensive gold suit and in search of gold coins - to be obtained there by dispatching others.
Here's a quick look:
Last week, we took an exclusive look at the PlayStation 5 version of Marvel's Avengers for PlayStation 5, but Xbox Series code - difficult to give in advance owing to Smart Delivery complications - was not forthcoming. So how have developers Crystal Dynamics and Nixxes handled the port to both Series X and Series S consoles? The results are in, and we are looking at a game which exemplifies what we have referred to as the 'post resolution era' - where raw pixel counts are only one component in a game's visual make-up and perhaps not the most important.
In terms of the overall set-up offered by Marvel's Avengers on Xbox Series consoles, it's much the same as PlayStation 5 in delivering quality and performance modes. Series X's quality mode is essentially the same as PS5's: compared to last-gen consoles, users get higher resolution screen-space reflections, more destruction, better water rendering, higher resolution textures and all of the other enhancements previously detailed. It targets native 4K rendering with minor dynamic resolution tweakery depending on content. Series S? Quality mode is much the same again with a 1440p target, but lacks some visual features including the higher resolution texture pack enjoyed by PS5 and Series X. 30fps is essentially a lock on all systems in this mode.
Looking for a great 4K TV to pair with your PS5 or Xbox Series X? The Samsung Q80T QLED is now reduced at a number of stores to its best price yet.
It's a deal well worth highlighting as the Samsung Q80T has been picked by Digital Foundry at one of their top 4K TVs for gaming.
Why do they rate it so high? Well, these TVs come with a single HDMI 2.1 port, which offers support for 4K 120fps gaming on compatible PS5 and Xbox Series X games. Other useful gaming features include HDR 10+, VRR, FreeSync and extremely low input lag. The Q80T also excels at general TV and film viewing thanks to full-array local dimming backlight technology and decent viewing angles, making it a great all-round purchase.
PUBG Season 11 is kicking off at the end of this month, and it seems like the season will update some features of South American map Paramo, along with a couple of tweaks to spawn rates and game mechanics.
Season 11 heads to PC on 31st March and consoles on 8th April, bringing with it some alterations to Paramo: players can expect to find terrain improvements and extra field cover, along with an "expanded dynamic world system" (a feature that switches up major landmarks between matches). The item spawn rates in the Secret Room and for the Care Package Helicopter are also being increased, while players will now have the ability to "create custom games with the map". With the new additions, perhaps they should rename the map to Paramore - I can't imagine that's taken.
Something that really does sound a little different is the new Emergency Pickup mechanic, providing players with a new way to travel across the map. Players can use the item to deploy a "high-altitude fulton balloon", which once fully inflated, will call in an airplane to pick up the players after a one-minute wait. The players then get hoisted into the air, and carried towards the centre of the white zone - unless they choose to jump out early, and parachute back to the ground. PUBG Corp describes it as a useful way to outrun the blue zone or find a remote area to loot, but explains it's also a heavy item and can draw the attention of nearby players. Use at your own risk.
Watch Dogs: Legion gets a free trial this week, Ubisoft has announced.
The trial runs from 25th to 29th March on all platforms. A pre-load is available today, 24th March so you can get going as quickly as possible.
Every character in the game is available to recruit and play as during the free trial in both single-player and online modes. You can check out all the open-world activities, and explore half of the eight boroughs, including the City of London and Islington & Hackney. And finally, you can play the story up to the Skye Larsen mission.
Back in February, Frogwares teased first gameplay footage of Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, the latest entry in its well-regarded deduction-based adventure series, and the developer has now returned with a first proper gameplay trailer for those eager to see more.
Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One serves as a prequel to Frogwares' earlier Sherlock Holmes adventures, taking players back to Sherlock's days as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, and the investigation that would lead to a life of sleuthing.
Arriving on the sunny, Mediterranean-inspired island of Cordona - a deliberate aesthetic departure from the fog-shrouded London streets and rural corners of previous games in the series - Sherlock, with help from best friend Jon, begins inquiring into the death of his mother, kickstarting Frogwares' latest third-person, open-world investigation.
Gamesplanet's 15th anniversary sale continues, but now the focus is off horror games and onto all manner of RPGs, adventure games and narrative-focused classics. There's a great mix of games here, ranging from big titles to unique indies. Also a lot of JRPGs. Seriously, a LOT of those.
For those who aren't experienced with Gamesplanet, it basically deals in game codes (usually for the PC). Depending on the game and availability, you'll be able to redeem via Steam, Epic, Battle.net, GOG, Origin, Uplay, and any number of others, so your preferred storefront shouldn't be too much of a barrier. You can head straight to the storefront here, or check out some of the best deals below!
Anybody who also spends eight pounds or more can also enter the code RPGPARTY to get a free key for the complete season of the video game, "The Council". Our sister site Rock Paper Shotgun considers it pretty... interesting, to say the least, a dialogue-focused experience about world leaders meeting in the late 1700s for mysterious reasons. Those who feel like a shorter, more experimental play would do well to make the most of this opportunity while it still lasts.
On 25th March, Civilization 6's New Frontier Pass releases its final premium DLC: the Portugal pack - and it's going out on a high. This eye-catching, naval exploration-based new civ has a unique ability we've not seen before: it can put a building on another civ's tile. And when it does, there's nothing you can do to get rid of it.
Here's how it works: Portugal has the Nau, a unique naval melee unit that replaces the Caravel. It starts with one free promotion, requires less maintenance than the Caravel and has two charges to build Feitorias - special shipping ports unique to Portugal. A Feitoria can only be built by a Nau unit on a foreign city's coastal tile next to a luxury or bonus resource.
This hugely exciting new mechanic has certainly set the cat among the pigeons within the Civilization community. Will players be able to abuse it in multiplayer? Will AI Portugal be aggressive in coming over and plonking down the Feitoria on a single-player's coastal tile? How do players mitigate against it? Will they even want to?
Nintendo Switch still lacks Netflix - and most common media apps, really - but it does now have Funimation in the UK.
The anime-streaming service launched for Nintendo Switch in the UK this week, with a refreshed app design that will also roll out to other platforms in the future.
Sony Pictures Entertainment bought a 95 per cent stake in Funimation back in 2017, and as of last year now owns it outright.
Ikumi Nakamura, the former Tango Gameworks lead designer who stole the show at Bethesda's E3 2019 press conference, has set up her own indie studio.
Nakamura announced she had left Tango after a nine-year stint back in September 2019, prompting surprise from fans only months after her on-stage appearance. Since then, Nakamura has toured other studios and taken on freelance work - such as designing some creepy Rainbow Six Siege skins.
Now, in a 17-minute Cutscenes documentary, Nakamura has confirmed she has decided to open her own "small studio" and work on her own project as a creative director (thanks, Play Diaries).
Gloucestershire, England, 1837: renowned English educator Sir Isaac Pitman published what would become the most culturally significant of the seven books he wrote before his death in 1897, Stenographic Sound-Hand. In it, Pitman outlined a series of phonetic abbreviations to better write British-English as economically as is achievable - a style which is simply known as Pitman's Shorthand.
Around the same time, print journalism began to boom across Europe and North America. Late 18th-century American colonies would be motivated by newsletters to revolt against the British, Chromolithography revolutionised colour printing, and Napoleon's censorship laws were lifted after his exile in 1815. The art of print news had become a pivotal influencer, and Pitman's Shorthand would serve as the hilt in which journalism's steel blade rang its mighty unsheathed roar.
Nowadays most newsrooms prefer to use Teeline Shorthand. Created by James Hill in 1968, Teeline builds upon Pitman's with a few changes to better suit news reporting. It's mainly used in Commonwealth countries, with the National Council for the Training of Journalists - an organisation that regulates the education of journalists in the UK - acknowledging its usage.
The time has come. If you've been holding off on a purchase of Super Mario 3D All-Stars for Nintendo Switch, you have just one week left to play into Nintendo's artificially-induced FOMO and purchase a copy - or miss out forever.
Nintendo will delete its compilation of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy from the Switch eShop servers on 31st March.
Physical copies will become harder to find, meanwhile, with no more new shipments apparently due.
Serious Sam, Croteam's massively over-the-top first-person shooter series, is 20 years old this week, and the developer has surprised fans by launching a substantial free update for Serious Sam 2 on PC as part of its birthday celebrations.
It's been 15 years since Serious Sam 2's debut, and today's update aims to improve on that original experience by introducing a range of new features and enhancements.
There's a new weapon in the form of the BeamGun (modelled on the Ghost Buster from the original Serious Sam design document), for instance, alongside 12 previously unreleased multiplayer maps, including Yodeller, Hole, Stadium, and Desert Temple.
March 2021 marks two years since Hopoo Games' enormously successful co-operative rogue-like shooter sequel Risk of Rain 2 first entered early access, and the developer is celebrating with the launch of a significant free update on PC.
Risk of Rain 2's Anniversary Update - which launches this Thursday, 25th March - is intended to "flesh out and round out the base game", revisiting old items and finishing up content that didn't make it into Hopoo's version 1.0 release.
For starters, it introduces a previously scrapped Survivor known as the Bandit (Hopoo notes the scrapped version, which has since been revived by modders, will continue to work alongside the new iteration), as well as an abandoned boss referred to as the Grandparent.
Shadow Man: Remastered, Nightdive Studios' enhanced version of Acclaim's much-loved 1999 action-adventure, finally has a release date and will be coming to PC on 15th April.
Shadow Man, based on Valiant Comics' Shadowman series, charts the adventures of Michael LeRoi, the latest in a line of voodoo warriors all adopting the Shadow Man moniker.
What follows is a battle - blending third-person platforming, puzzling, and combat - against the forces of darkness as they attempt to cross over to the land of the living, known as Liveside. It's a fight that plays out in the real-world - with locations including the streets of New York City and the swamps of Louisiana - as well as its terrifying counterpart, Deadside.
Amazon Games is opening a new studio in Canada - and it's being helmed by a bunch of former Rainbow Six Siege devs.
Based in Montreal, the studio will focus on making original AAA games, starting with a new online multiplayer IP (which probably explains why the ex-Rainbow Six Siege devs have been brought in). Head of production Luc Bouchard, creative director Xavier Marquis, head of product Alexandre Remy and content director Romain Rimokh all previously worked at Ubisoft Montreal as the core team behind Rainbow Six. Here they are talking about leaving the Rainbow Six team back in late 2019:
In a statement, creative director Xavier Marquis said the team "couldn't be more excited" to start the studio.
UPDATE 23/3/21 4pm UK: Fortnite will refund all purchases of the Wild music track, an Epic spokesperson has told Eurogamer. The item should not have been included in the game's item shop, the company confirmed, and its appearance did not constitute a change of any rules around the exclusivity of battle pass items.
ORIGINAL STORY 12pm UK: Epic Games has updated Fortnite's in-game shop to remove an item released last night which comes from the game's current battle pass.
The Wild music track, which features the soundtrack from Fortnite's recent Zero Crisis Finale event, was available to buy for several hours. It's currently part of the game's Chapter 2 Season 6 battle pass, as its tier 70 reward.
I've just drifted my dog into battle, his hindlegs tilting out in a glorious arc at the press of a button for that precious extra boost of speed, before dismounting with the flick of a wirebug that sends a silken line up into the sky, allowing me to grapple onto it and swing towards my prey. In mid-air I pull out a sword fashioned from the remains of a bony Besarios and drive it straight down into the skull of another. Bring this big bastard down and I can fashion a hat out of his hide to complete my Besarios outfit and grant myself an attack boost, so that I might be able to go out and do it again only with more flair, and more efficiency.
Good gosh do I love Monster Hunter.
The core loop remains unchanged but Capcom's series has evolved an awful lot since its inception way back in 2004, and after a long run on Nintendo's console that peaked with the exceptional Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate it was only after 2018's multi-platform Monster Hunter World that the series found a proper foothold in the west. Here was Monster Hunter at its most accessible - and, with expansion Iceborne, at its most brutal - and for the first time it no longer felt like a niche pursuit. Monster Hunter had finally gone mainstream.
Monster Hunter has finally arrived on Nintendo Switch with Monster Hunter Rise and some might say it's a landmark title for the series. It's the first wide-open 3D experience built around Capcom's RE Engine for Nintendo Switch. It showcases what is possible with the engine on more limited hardware, combining elements the series was known for in previous handheld incarnations along with big feature improvements delivered by the excellent Monster Hunter World. The compromises are clear, but the results are impressive.
The series began life on PlayStation 2, though it found the greatest success on PSP, before transitioning to Nintendo platforms such as Wii, Wii U and 3DS and always followed a 'segmented' world design. Up until the arrival of Monster Hunter World, each area was broken up into a series of smaller, numbered maps. You would do battle with Monsters in these areas but they could move around the larger map where you could follow them through short loading screens. It worked but it always felt like a limitation put in place by the target hardware, which is why the arrival of Monster Hunter World represented a shift in design. By aiming for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the PC, Capcom was able to build a more ambitious game in which individual arenas were no longer divided by loading screens - it would become a single, seamless world. Of course, the villages were still divided out, but once you entered each hunting area, it was open for exploration without loading.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about Valheim's Body Recovery Squad - a group of players who risk virtual life and limb to help players get their items back, no matter the difficulty, and do it all for free. It's a wonderful community effort, but something you might not expect is that the BRS is also a well-oiled machine, with lots of work going on in the background to keep the wheels turning. Members file paperwork, take part in training exercises, and even carry out industrial-scale farming to keep operators stocked and fed.
I discovered all this for myself when invited on a "ride-along" with BRS founding members Lucas (RimJaynor), Brendan (Spanky), Jonny (Small_T2) and Gareth (Rolivend), who took me on several missions and even gave me a tour of their warehouse. In total we went on four recoveries - some tougher than others - and on at least two occasions the team also had to recover me, too. I guess I could have done with a spear-proof vest. So here's an overview of what happened that evening, complete with footage from our dramatic first and fourth missions, and an MTV Cribs-style tour of the BRS warehouse.
To kick things off, you can find the video of our first mission below - featuring a very rough landing in the swamps. Discord and Steam overlays have been edited out to protect player information, so stick around a few minutes before we dive into gameplay:
For those who want to boost their home office hard drives or keep thousands of games at the ready, Western Digital's hard drives are all getting big discounts on Amazon UK as part of the current Spring Sale. Ranging from small, portable hard drives to solid desktop hard drives that can vastly increase your computer's memory, all these are great hard drives at a far fairer price than most.
You can check out the full list of discounts here, but we've also curated some of the best options below for you to check out.
Of course, there's plenty more from Digital Foundry if you're looking for the best hard drives, especially when it comes to console expansion - including tips on increasing the storage of your PS5 and Xbox Series X!
If you've browsed the Valheim subreddit in recent weeks, you may have seen posts about a particularly grisly cheese method: players were harvesting materials from greydwarves by turning the area surrounding their spawn into a blazing inferno, creating an infinite supply of stone, resin and wood. But the latest Valheim patch should put an end to automated greydwarf farms, thanks to a simple tweak to how fires work.
In the patch notes shared on Steam, Iron Gate mentions that campfires, bonfires and hearths now take damage when they deal damage, meaning that a farm will no longer be infinite - you'll have to stand and repair the fires manually. I popped into Valheim to check out the rate of damage, and after standing in my campfire for a few seconds I noticed it had dropped half its health. Hearths fare a little better, but still only last a few minutes. So it's safe to say the toaster method is now far less practical than it once was, and you can't just leave it running while you do some chores.
Microsoft is one of several companies in talks to acquire Discord, a pair of new reports have claimed.
Both Venturebeat and Bloomberg [paywall] reported overnight on buyout discussions within Discord, with any sale expected to be worth $10bn.
One unnamed company is said to be in final negotiations over a deal, Venturebeat claimed, though no deal has yet been signed.
Like you, I have been surrounded by the same four walls for approximately one billion years now, entombed in a two-bedroom sarcophagus, hemorrhaging rent to an invisible overlord to maintain homeostasis in a world stood still. I'm convinced that, when I am asleep, these walls creep inwards by a few imperceptible millimetres, and that soon I'll have to slowly squeeze through narrow hallways to get around, like my flat is perpetually loading the next area, until one Tuesday afternoon I am finally crushed to death.
The Catacombs of Solaris Revisited is incredibly indoors. It's the most indoors I've felt since lockdown began. It's a free-roaming kaleidoscope, a perspective-shifting maze with no exit and no entrance. As you explore, the shapes of corridors and corners become momentarily apparent, their edges made visible by the patterned walls skewing and stretching as you move around. When you stop or turn, the maze changes. Sections that were once open space become flat textures projected onto solid walls, like Wile E Coyote's paintings of tunnels, or 3D chalk artworks on the pavement.
There's no light or shadow to offer your eyes any clues as to the catacombs' true shape, just the angles where the different textures seem to line up, and the illusory vanishing points suggested by the barely legible edges of rooms. There is no true shape. The credulous cubic inch of your brain responsible for creating mental maps is bamboozled every few steps you take, giving this visual toy the vibe of an unpredictable, psychedelic nightmare.
A new Pikmin mobile game is in the works from Pokémon Go developer Niantic.
Nintendo and Niantic today announced they will work together on multiple new projects, the first of which will be a mobile AR Pikmin experience due to release in 2021.
"The app will include gameplay activities to encourage walking and make walking more delightful," Niantic exec Kei Kawai said. "This will be the first title created by our Tokyo Studio since it was established in April 2018."
