Compact keyboards are the fastest-growing segment of the mechanical keyboard space, a reversal of the traditional wisdom that gamers want full-size boards with tons of macro keys, media controls and other exciting doodads. Instead, these 60 percent, 65 percent, 75 percent and TKL boards focus on a clean aesthetic that's super-portable and takes up minimal desk space, while still providing all of the keys you'll need for 99 percent of modern games. In this round-up, we'll share our recommendations for the very best compact keyboards on the market based on our extensive testing.

Indie keyboard makers have been making 65 percent, 60 percent and even smaller sizes for the enthusiast crowd for years, but now the bigger brands are starting to get involved - the Razers, Corsairs and Logitechs of the world. If you wanted to see what the fuss is about with these smaller boards without losing creature comforts like synchronised RGB lighting and well-developed software packages, this is a great time to jump aboard the mini keyboard bandwagon. Of course, smaller vendors have their advantages too, and we'll try to cover both ends of the spectrum - while still focusing on boards that are readily available.

Oh, and the by the way -  if you're interested in seeing our picks for full-size keyboards too, do check out our round-ups of the best gaming keyboards and best mechanical keyboards, both of which have some unique options worth knowing about!

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Is there porn on the Epic Games Store? Seems like a pretty easy “yes” or “no” question. Today, however, the ongoing, increasingly contentious Epic v. Apple court case showed us that actually it’s possible to have a nearly 10-minute argument about it.

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This past month was Backlog Month at Kotaku. April, our thinking went, would be fairly slim in terms of new games, bookended by two blockbusters (Outriders and Returnal) but devoid of tentpoles in the interim. What better time to play the games we already have?

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Resident Evil Village is available now and many are preparing to start their journey as Ethan Winters. For those getting ready to take on the latest Capcom horror adventure, there are a few things you need to know before diving in. Luckily, we're here to help. Here are our Resident Evil Village tips and tricks! 

What you need to know before playing Resident Evil Village

If you're familiar with Resident Evil, then you already know there will be puzzles to solve and enemies to slay. We've got a few helpful puzzle guides here and here, but what about more generalized tips? The good news is that there really is no "wrong" way to play, but there are a few pointers on how to make your time in this creepy journey a little more efficient and fully optimized. 

Pay attention to your map

Whether you're in the village, in the castle, or in the later parts of the story, you'll see certain areas on your map that are either blue or red. Red means there are parts of a certain area that you haven't explored completely. This is great to pay attention to, because some of the items found can be a little hidden. You might need to crouch down to find it, or break glass to get to it, but the goal should be to turn all of the red areas blue. Once blue, you'll know you've cleared it and you're good to move on.

Resident Evil Village has a few puzzles that players will encounter, including one that involves stone statues. This one is tricky at first, but it's definitely one of those that once it clicks? It clicks. Without further ado, here is what you need to know in order to solve the Resident Evil Village abandoned stone statue puzzle. 

How to solve Resident Evil Village abandoned stone statue puzzle

Getting out of Lady Dimitrescu's castle is.. a pain in the butt. You've got murderous vampires, you've got hallways that all look the same, decrepit floors that also want to kill you because life sucks. It's a lot. Luckily, the puzzles don't have to be an added frustration for those that may be looking for some help so that they can carry on with the (amazing) story. 

For this particular puzzle, you'll find it on the second floor of the castle, an area you will be annoyingly familiar with during your time in Village. The area you need to be in is called the Hall of Ablution, a place that you'll find once crossing the courtyard after exiting the main hall. There is a door to the right of the courtyard, make it up towards that and you'll find a set of stairs. Follow the stairs up, go down the hallway and enter the third door on your left. 

Congratulations to the Hunters

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On August 14 last year, just 24 hours after Fortnite was removed from the App Store over Epic's bypass of Apple's internal payment system, Epic launched Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite. The video, a parody of an old Apple ad from the titular year, positioned Epic as a hero fighting back against the Orwellian Big Brother Apple, destroying the "App Store Monopoly" with a sledgehammer. All of this was accompanied by the hashtag "#FreeFortnite" as a call to action to its playerbase: Fortnite, the beloved video game players love, was in danger. And Epic had arrived to stop the bad guys who wanted to take it away.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/13/fortnite-1984-apple-parody-video-short"]

The very put-together and professional-looking Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite did not come together as some kind of knee-jerk response to Apple doing something completely unexpected. The video was clearly a planned, calculated move from Epic, prepared months in advance in case Apple made the decision to show Fortnite the door. In fact, the entirety of #FreeFortnite and its associated video propaganda, in-game character skins, and competitions to win hats was a movement to turn public sentiment against Apple and force the multi-trillion-dollar corporation to do what the multi-billion-dollar corporation wanted it to do. With the game removed from mobile storefronts and smartphone players unable to play any longer, Epic wanted to make sure the audience knew who to blame. Epic, the sledgehammer-wielding hero, was here to beat up the mean ol' monopoly.

Like most online games, Final Fantasy XIV is what you make of it. You can dedicate yourself to hitting the level cap in every job, focus on completing tough raids on max difficulty, or simply cultivate a second life through role-playing with your friends. But Chungo Humongo, a level 80 Roegadyn Paladin, has a much…

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It sure feels like deck-based games are having a moment right now, and if that's something you're into maybe spare one of your moments to look at Cross Blitz. The developers of this RPG card-battle game say it's inspired by the likes of Dragon Quest and Slay The Spire, among other games. Oh and it's got concerningly burly lion pirates too, which might be another thing folks are into. The developers have just announced Cross Blitz with a new trailer and are planning an early access launch later in 2021.

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Harmonix is seeking a senior generalist software engineer to join one of the teams developing creative and unique game titles. ...

Meanwhile, Wrath of Man is only in theaters

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She’ll obliterate enemies for you

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During Apple’s cross-examination of Steven Allison, general manager of the Epic Games Store, Apple’s lawyer walked all assembled, piece by piece, through the Epic Games Store. Alongside saying game titles like Warframe and Necromunda: Hired Gun like they’re normal human words, Apple’s lawyer also pointed out a…

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CI Games has announced a delay for the PlayStation 5 version of its upcoming long-distance shooter Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2, resulting from "unforeseen technical issues".

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 - which features a "dramatic single-player campaign set in modern day Middle East" - was originally due on PlayStation 5 on 4th June, arriving alongside versions for PS4, Xbox One, Xbox X/S and PC. However, despite the PS5 edition's delay to a currently unspecified future point, other platforms will receive the game as originally planned.

CI hasn't offered specific details on the "unforeseen technical issues" affecting the PS5 release, but says its "highly experienced, professional and dedicated team are working hard with the platform holder and engine provider to resolve the problems as soon as feasibly possible".

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Warhammer Fest still has one day left, but already there’s tons of news

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Lori Wright, VP of Xbox business development, was one of the first experts to take the stand in this week's Epic Games v. Apple trial. Apple, however, is now asking her testimony be struck from the record. ...

I hope you like Igneous Hammer because it’s the only reward this week

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Resident Evil Village is here and it wouldn't be a new game in the iconic Capcom horror franchise if there weren't a few puzzles to power through. For those attempting to solve the bell puzzle in Castle Dimitrescu, there are a few things you need to know. To help, here is our Resident Evil Village bell puzzle in the Atelier room guide. 

Resident Evil Village Bell Puzzle, How To Solve

This particular puzzle is in the Atelier you will come across in Lady Dimitrescu's massive castle. This will require you to find five hidden bells, a task that you'll see when you find a half-written note on the painting atop an easel in the Atelier room. The note will advise Ethan Winters (poor guy) to ring all five bells at once. I know how that sounds, daunting right? Don't worry, you don't actually have to ring them all at the same time, that would be impossible. Instead, you'll hit each bell and this will cause the torch on the top of each to light up. You can trigger the torch at the top being lit up by either hitting it with a melee attack or with a bullet from your preferred gun. It's pretty simple, you just have to actually find the bells first. That's where we come in.

Head to the Tower for some Exotics

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Next week, Famicom Detective Club makes its Western debut. Itching to solve video game mysteries? We’ve got some great recommendations!

The post What Are the Best Video Game Mysteries? appeared first on Siliconera.

After Returnal’s previous major update resulted in players having their save files corrupted, developer Housemarque has announced that May 8’s patch will solve the issue.

Housemarque made the announcement Friday on Twitter. The Returnal 1.3.6 patch will go live on May 8 at 11 AM GMT/4 AM PDT, but warned players to still disable the auto-update feature on their PlayStation 5 in the meantime.

Though Returnal received generally positive reviews for its blend of bullet-hell action and roguelike progression, including from IGN, a common criticism was that Returnal’s single-life runs could take upwards of two hours. That issue is compounded by the fact that you can’t save your game mid-run. The only way to theoretically “save” your progress is to put your PS5 in rest mode, but any auto-update applied to Returnal would result in your current run being wiped.

Housemarque released Returnal’s 1.3.3 patch on Wednesday, which contained a number of standard bug fixes, but unexpectedly resulted in players having their save files corrupted. At the time, the only way to fix the issue was to redownload Returnal. Housemarque quickly released a patch that reverted the game back to its 1.3.1 state.

Now, Returnal’s 1.3.6 patch will also address a number of bugs and issues, including stability fixes, pre-order cosmetics blocking progress, incorrect healing behavior, custom controller mapping issues, and more.

In case there was any doubt, the studio that makes Borderlands games is working on another Borderlands game. Gearbox Entertainment CEO Randy Pitchford shot down some rumors about the studio co-developing a new vault hunter game by saying "Gearbox is lead dev of any future games in the Borderlands franchise". He followed up to add that the Borderlands 3 developers are "working on the big one". The next one is pretty much always "the big one" when it comes to game developers, but perhaps Gearbox are considering teasing their plans this summer.

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They’ll be even prettier

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After the internet spent months pining and meme-ing, she’s finally here: Lady Dimitrescu—and also Resident Evil Village, I guess. But was she (and, I suppose, the game) worth all the hype and marketing-driven hoopla? On this week’s village- (and Village-) themed episode of Splitscreen, we find out.

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Patch delivers 4K resolution or 60 frames per second

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Developer Housemarque is releasing a new patch for PlayStation 5-exclusive roguelite Returnal tomorrow, 8th May, which will, among other things, reinstate all pre-rollback fixes that briefly went live earlier this week.

On Wednesday, Housemarque was forced to pull Returnal's 1.3.3 patch after players began reporting it was corrupting save games. The developer later released version 1.3.4, which rolled back to Returnal's most recent stable build - a move that enabled some affected players to resume their progress, while other, less fortunate souls saw their saves effectively deleted.

As a result of the rollback, a number of welcome fixes introduced in update 1.3.3 were also whisked out of players hands, which is where tomorrow's 1.3.6 patch comes in. As well as jettisoning the save corruption bug that resulted in clenched fists and wet cheeks earlier this week, the update, which goes live at 11am GMT, brings the following improvements:

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A few weeks ago, when a portion of Capcom's contract with Sony for Resident Evil Village circulated on social media thanks to ongoing digging into the Capcom data leak, a lot of folks got rather upset. To many who don't stare at legal documents for a living, a portion of these papers seemed to suggest Sony paid Capcom to make the game effectively worse on other consoles, holding back features so that the PS5 version would look good. Another tweet suggested that Sony paid to have the PC version of Monster Hunter World delayed.

It didn't take long for lawyers and other games industry experts to step in and reassure everyone that this was utter nonsense.

These accusations revolved around something called "parity clauses," a standard inclusion in many games industry contracts between platform holders like Sony, Xbox, Nintendo, and some of the PC game stores. Parity clauses are so boring that of the three legal experts and two publishers I asked for comment for this article, multiple were baffled I was asking at all, with one of them telling me that asking them about parity clauses was the equivalent of asking them if I had copper or PVC pipes under their sink, or asking them about the weather.

But while they are a standard part of the day-to-day for many games industry folks, understanding parity clauses does provide an interesting bit of insight into one of the ways publishers and platform holders try to protect their own businesses and ensure everyone playing their games has a good time regardless of platform.

The next big expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online is just around the corner, meaning plenty of folks will be grouping up to take on the new Oblivion-themed zones. Some of us prefer playing our MMO's solo though, and for us ZeniMax Online Studios are introducing the new companion system for ESO. These new recruitable characters will join you in combat so you don't have to go it alone, which honestly might be the most exciting ESO feature for me in a long time.

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What if XCOM and Rogue Legacy had a British demon baby?

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Resident Evil 4 cinematics lead Yoshiaki Hirabayashi writes about the overhauls and challenges which faced one of the franchise's most notable entries. ...

The nominees for the 23rd annual Independent Games Festival Awards have been announced, with Genesis Noir, Spiritfarer, and Umurangi Generation leading the pack.

Nominees for the Seamus McNally Grand Prize include Genesis Noir, Spiritfarer, Umurangi Generation, Paradise Killer, Teardown, and Chicory: A Colorful Tale.

Genesis Noir, a noir adventure game set just before the Big Bang, touts the most nominations of all, including Excellence in Audio, Narrative, and Visual Art. Umurangi Generation, the photography game set in a world inspired by real-life (and sci-fi) natural disasters, follows up with three nominations, including the Nuovo Award, which is focused on pushing the video game medium forward.

Blaseball, the absurdist sports game featuring a sentient peanut god, also gets some love in the Nuovo Award category and a few honorable mentions in others.

The IGF Awards are traditionally held just minutes prior to the annual Game Developer Choice Awards. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, July 21 2021 at 4:30 PM PT. The awards will be streamed as part of a virtual event.

You can read the full list of nominees and honorable mentions below.

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

Paradise Killer (Kaizen Game Works)

Teardown (Tuxedo Labs)

Chicory: A Colorful Tale (The Chicory Team)

Genesis Noir (Feral Cat Den)

Siliconera spoke with Shantae series director Matt Bozon about fun memories and unexpected challenges from creating the original game.

The post Interviews: Shantae’s Matt Bozon Reminisces About Its Development appeared first on Siliconera.