In-depth articles on game development, performance optimization, and industry insights from the MonkeyGames team.
From cozy vampire sims to co-op nightmares, these are just a few standout horror games made with Unity in 2026 – organized by exactly how scared you want to be.
Undead Labs studio boss Philip Holt is "reluctant to share" how many employees the developer lost when it became independent of Xbox. Read more
Earlier this week, there was a ripple of excitement among long-suffering Xbox fans over news that the platform had struck an exclusive deal for the streaming rights to Grand Theft Auto VI – suggesting that while the game would launch on both PlayStation and Xbox, Microsoft’s Xcloud service would be the only place you could stream it, at least initially. Read more
Moonlight Kids explain how they built time-loop metroidbrainia Echo Weaver in Unity 6: chunk streaming, loop-reset architecture, and 2D optimization tips.
Xbox has announced a new XP business unit, dedicated to transmedia brand extensions, including the Fallout TV series and the Minecraft World theme park. Read more
The winners of this year's Australian Game Developer Awards have been revealed, with Beethoven & Dinosaur's Mixtape receiving three awards, including Game of the Year alongside Excellence in Art and Sound Design. Read more
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma reportedly held an internal town hall, telling staff that "after an all time low, we've started to return to growth." Read more
Today marks the launch of Playground, a new Google platform for generating games using natural language prompts, and it will soon host a version of Unity based around generative AI agents. Read more
Last week, we established what a studio is, and how understanding its core components can help you find your studio's purpose. This week, we're going to start on the FIRM framework proper, starting with the first pillar, which concerns your studio's future. Because the next most important question after "why do we exist?" is "where are we going?" Read more
High rework rates in art outsourcing almost always trace back to before kickoff: no written brief, unaligned style, verbal acceptance criteria. The full workflow from order to acceptance.
Outsourcing disputes are rarely about technology — they are about contracts. The clauses that must be written down: IP ownership, source-code delivery, and payment structure.
There is no universal price list for game outsourcing, but there is a clear pricing logic. A breakdown of full-project, staff augmentation and art outsourcing pricing, plus how to spot padded quotes.
Most outsourced projects derail from missing process: unlocked requirements, milestones without acceptance criteria, casual scope changes. Here is the 6-stage process a disciplined project should follow.
Managing outsourcing is not about managing people — it is about compressing the information gap. Milestone splitting, the biweekly review loop, and a high-risk checklist.
Picking the wrong outsourcing partner costs you schedules, budgets, and sometimes the whole project. Here are 10 practical criteria to evaluate a studio before signing.
Rebranded portfolios, sub-sub-contracting, padded resumes — the outsourcing market rewards packaging. Six vetting moves, ordered from free to costly.
Mini-games are the most-outsourced category — and the most underestimated. Platform review rules, package limits and paid-traffic performance differ sharply from regular mobile. Eight things to confirm before signing.
Buying capacity and buying results are two different games, with different cost structures, management demands and fit. A decision framework plus the hybrid setups real projects use.
Outsourcing is neither a universal money-saver nor a big-company privilege. Seven signals that you should outsource — and three situations where outsourcing makes things worse.
Silk & Sorrow looks a bit like Don't Starve, too.
Unity Spark combines AI-assisted game creation with artist-made Asset Store content, but Unity CEO Matt Bromberg stresses that creators must still design, iterate, polish, and finish their experiences.
Unity CEO Matt Bromberg introduces Unity Spark, a new way to make and share games in your browser with no prior Unity or game development experience required.
But you'll still enjoy this experience that might remind you of Cultist Simulator.
Veteran World Designer Nathan Cheever explains how traversal speed, encounter density, reusable spaces, and production resources determine how large a game world should actually be.
Unity Industry HMI template: An automotive HMI sample with instrument cluster, ADAS view, climate controls, and city sim, targeting constrained, embedded systems
Jagex also shared that an animated adaptation set in the RuneScape universe is planned.
ArtDanPol 3D's low-poly apple looks like an asset straight out of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Minecraft.
Project Aces combined Unreal Engine 5, proprietary cloud technology, vastly more detailed aircraft, and unprecedented manufacturer access to create the series’ strongest-reviewed game since 2001.
Despite recently having overseen the laying off of 268 staff in the second of multiple rounds of cuts planned for this financial year, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has denied that their are plans to sell Microsoft's gaming division. The bloodletting at Xbox in recent months has not only seen workers let go, but the place of studios within the company's structure being altered. Rather than lots of studios with their own degree of independence, Xbox have been parting ways with many studios and consolidating what remains under a small number of arms led by the bosses of the likes of Activision and Bethesda. Read more
After seeing open-world imm-sim No Law last month, I'm sure the developers would hope I was gripped by memories of missions you can approach stealthily or in all-out action, the sci-fi combat where you wield slow-time grenades and cyberpunk implants, or even the powerful kick you can use to boot open locked doors. But, no, what I keep thinking about is the corner shop where protagonist Grey Harker, an ex-soldier on a murderous rampage to take down Port Desire's four corrupt mayors, stopped to pick up some batteries. Read more
PUBG: Black Budget, an extraction shooter spin-off of Krafton's battle royale, has been cancelled after just under a year of closed alpha testing. Krafton cited a lack of faith that Black Budget's "current direction" would lead to "an experience players could enjoy over the long term" as the reasoning behind their call to end development. Though, they insisted PUBG Studios have learned valuable lessons that'll serve future games. Read more
I don’t know if memory shortages have permanently killed off the concept of 'cheap' gaming PCs, but they have at least beat it into a coma. On the desktop side, inflated RAM, SSDs and graphics card prices continue to inflict karmic pain for our years of "It's cheaper to build it yourself" smugness, while formerly affordable handheld PCs are either suffering 40%-plus jackups or launching above £1K from the off. And the Steam Machine! The poor, square Steam Machine. Every few weeks, possibly in denial, I’ll skim through the shops to see what budget games kit actually looks like in this day and age. Across the last five or six rounds, little has changed: the entry point into decent, more-or-less current-spec 1080p play remains stuck in the low quadruple figures, particularly if you’re fully new to PC ownership and need to factor in a monitor and peripherals. There is one exception, assuming you don’t fancy your luck on the secondhand market, but giving it a hands-on appraisal means confronting an ancient hardware foe of mine. And you all know how little I like to have my prejudices challenged. Still, research suggests that yes, this truly is the most gaming PC you can get for under £999. So, um. Here it goes. May...maybe gaming laptops aren’t so bad. Read more
Grab your pumpkin spice latte and check out our picks.
AION 2 has exceeded 171,000 concurrent Steam players and became the platform’s top seller during paid Advanced Access, days before its free-to-play launch.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer combines Burnout-style takedowns, exhilarating podracing, and an addictive roguelike campaign—and it's already the best-reviewed Star Wars game in over 20 years.
Stay updated with the latest creations from the Unity community. Explore our list of standout games made with Unity in August 2026.
The official Unity Plugin now works in Grok Build. Get 30+ Unity-written skills with one terminal command. Unity 6+.
PipeIt will be useful for any kind of artist building industrial, sci-fi, or plumbing scenes.
Aleksander Goryachev talks us through his Unreal Engine lighting setup to show how to reduce unnecessary noise in complex scenes with numerous lighting sources.
Wash filthy cars, upgrade your shop, and watch out for suspicious customers in Express Car Wash Simulator. We're giving away 5 Steam keys – get ready to clean up without leaving your gaming chair!
Kenji Ma has showcased a 3D action game in which a character wields a brush and splashes paint over the battlefield.
Nivalis Nights has been released on Steam.
Unity's External Dependency Manager (EDM) replaces EDM4U for Android and iOS SDK dependencies.
Max Soloha discussed the development of the horror roguelike I'm not a Psycho Invader, sharing the inspiration behind the game, technical details, and how he combined mechanics from No, I'm Not a Human and Buckshot Roulette.
Game developers can share their most common legal questions and concerns through a short survey. Common themes will be addressed in upcoming episodes of Xsolla’s Legal Office Hours podcast and future publications.
This week's extensive upgrade for The Witcher 3 modernizes the game's visuals, combat, progression, controls, and interface, plus there's even a particularly impressive native version for Nintendo Switch 2.
We spoke with Fabien Weibel, founder of Bubblebird Studio, about developing the cozy tropical game Sandcastle, refining its water and sand simulation in Unity, shaping its gameplay, and how player feedback helps improve development.
It's designed to work with minimal setup, handle complex geometry, and support IK-driven animation workflows.
Learn how Scritchy Scratchy used Unity to port the game across PC, mobile, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2 while maintaining performance and tactile gameplay.
Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios is bowing to the pacifists and trialing a PvE mode in their extraction shooter. If you play between October 13th and 20th, you'll be able to flick a toggle that means you load either into the traditional world of Arc Raiders, where human players vie for the valuable scraps left behind in a ruined world watched over by killer robots, or a slightly safer version where the machines are still deadly but the humans can't hurt you. "We’re seeing a large and growing group of Raiders who come to the Rust Belt for the co-op and the ARC, not fighting with other Raiders," Embark say in the post announcing the trial. "That group has become a core part of our community, so it’s important we learn how to support them properly rather than leave them working around the game." Read more
Armed Fantasia, a JRPG pitched as a spiritual successor the PS2-era roleplaying series Wild Arms – and led by former Wild Arms producer Akifumi Kaneko – has been cancelled. Digital Bros, the parent company of Armed Fantasia publishers 505 Games, announced in a financial statement that it was one of several games for which "The Group decided to discontinue development," the others being a sequel to F2P strategy game Battle Islands and action RPG Directorate Novitiate, which had already revealed its own demise in May. Read more
Rust LTD rebuilt Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 from scratch in Unity – ECS ballistics, custom firearm physicals, Quest 3 frame budget, and Editor tooling.
Demo sessions are often terrible ways to see a game, doubly so at conferences. You want to sink into a game at your own pace (and with unbroken access to fresh cups of tea), not get dropped into the middle of the action, hoisted up again 20 minutes later and plonked into another section of a game. However, that's the nature of these things sometimes and it suits some games more than others. Total War: Warhammer absolutely does not suit it. Grand strategy games are built for armchair generals. Not just any armchair, either, a wingback one where the leather on the arms is nearly worn through where said general has rested their elbows in deep contemplation. They're not games made to be played in short bursts. As such, I can't really speak to Total War: Warhammer 40,000's end quality from its Gamescom demo, but perhaps it says something that after an hour where I played 20 minutes of the battle tutorial, 20 minutes of the campaign tutorial, and 20 minutes in a scenario where my Space Marine army faced an overwhelming assault from an ork horde, I still came away keen as the baked beans found in an Astra Militarium ration pack to play the full game. Read more
There’s plenty to dislike about this latest round of corporate-mandated Xbox misery. The hundreds more human beings losing their livelihoods. The embracing of risk-averse factory line development. The fact that nobody, still, knows what on earth is happening with Arkane. Read more
Just hearing that a game has mashed two genres together does not generally excite me. It's a useful shorthand, maybe, but there's only so many roguelike deckbuilders I can take. Once in a while, however, a mashup comes along that makes me think, "well that doesn't seem right," and my ears perk up like a dog that's learned how to spell walk. Today, that mashup comes in the form of Brokensides, a psychological horror beat 'em up where you play as a violent sea bunny recently freed from imprisonment after committing a Cardinal Crime. Read more
id Software staff describe low morale and unclear communication after Xbox's layoffs.
Volodymyr Donchenko shares the process behind his breathtaking simulator scene inspired by The Matrix Awakens: an Unreal Engine 5 Experience, explains how he crafted a cooling system to help his PC survive through the project, and talks about the importance of making a fitting soundtrack for immersive scenes.
Adikteev's Emilien Eychenne knows that your biggest game growth lever isn't new installs; it's learning to spot churn early and win mobile players back for good.
If it ain't broke, why fix it? That seems to be the thought process behind Iron Bramble, the next game from the devs behind Rusted Moss. Like its predecessor, Iron Bramble is a pixel art metroidvania, one where you have a grappling hook that lets you swing about the place at rapid pace, only this time the setting is a "cyber-gothic megastructure" and you play a story-eating demon (?) woman in a world where humanity's flesh bodies have all died out and their souls now reside in metal, robotic husks. Read more
Meshingun Studio released a bundle that features a collection of gothic furniture props, realistic environments with Asian temples, stylized foliage, and 20 more masterfully crafted packs.
Unity 6.6 adds day-one support for Meta VR Glasses development: build with OpenXR, XR Interaction Toolkit, XR Hands, eye tracking, and quad views rendering.
The tech giant has filed a patent for a system that waits for natural breaks in gameplay before showing commercials.
Have you played the game?
If you ever dream of becoming a fashion designer, this game is for you.
Despite not being one myself, I do seem to write about furry-adjacent games for this ole webbed site, don't I? And I've got another one for you today! It's called Break The Night, a hack 'n' slash with slick movement, roguelike elements, and magical girls inspired by aesthetics from the late 2000s, and while it's still quite early days yet, I've been quite charmed by it. Read more
Ready to uncover ancient secrets and master the mysterious art of alchemy? Enter our new giveaway for a chance to win one of five Steam keys for Alchemist: Journey of the Soul.
Unity 6.6 introduces content directories, a faster and more granular replacement for AssetBundles that cuts build times, reduces game size, and improves load performance — with full remote delivery coming in Unity 7.
Bleeding_Hart also revealed how they created the shader.
Great for breasts, bellies, tails, and more.
Explore Unity Simulation Pro Early Access, a supported robotics simulation toolkit with URDF import, sensor simulation, ROS 2, and headless Linux.
Despite Rockstar Games' silence on the matter, the cat rather seems to be out of the bag about GTA 6 getting its own online component that'll doubtless serve as GTA Online has for GTA 5. Court docs the studio themselves filed as part of the ongoing final hearing in a legal battle over the firings of 34 developers last year are partly to thank, but now so is the boss of streaming platform Twitch just blurting out when he expects GTA 6 to get a big multiplayer bump. Read more
Layoffs have been a constant drumbeat in gaming industry news since 2022. Even if the cadence of layoffs seems to have slowed in 2026, the severity of those cuts has not lessened. In July, Microsoft made 1600 staff redundant as part of its great reset, and promised investors they would let 1600 more staff go in the next 12 months. Cuts like those and the ongoing economic pressures plaguing the industry – rising debt rates, a cost of living crisis, and a memory shortage that is making every aspect of making and playing video games pricier – should have the head of any large studio examining their plans for the future. Especially when games are taking longer to make, costing more to make, and up against a much greater volume of competition than even two years ago. With all that in mind, when I wasn't talking to Saber Interactive's chief creative officer Tim Willits about generative AI, I wanted to know what he would do if he ran one of those 200-people big-budget game studios. Because say what you like about Saber (and there's a lot of things people like to say about Saber), but the developer is doing well at a time when a lot of other studios and publishers are struggling. Read more
The European Commission proposed new rules around how under-15s access the likes of social media, AI chatbots, and online video games earlier this week. The draft legislation is called the EU Kids Act and calls for the setting up of a tiered system governing the types of accounts children under 15 can create to access such services, enforced by mandatory age verification for all users. The documents laying out the proposal have been officially released, and based on the current wording the Commission have used to define what they class as an online game, it seems single player games that rely on online platforms like Steam for updates, distribution, or even a one-time authentication could be caught in the crossfire. That is, unless the definition is tightened up before the law is set in stone, if it indeed it makes it that far. Read more
Brendy (RPS in peace) liked Keep Driving. Nic (RPS in peace) liked Keep Driving. I (RPS still alive) liked Keep Driving. Julian (RPS currently boss) liked Keep Driving. You, reader, should play road trip RPG Keep Driving if you haven't already. A good excuse to do so is the fact that it's getting official mod support via the Steam Workshop on September 28th. Read more
CD PROJEKT RED’s art directors explain how Night City was handcrafted, how first-person gameplay shaped its scale and detail, why path tracing fit its lighting pipeline, and what Phantom Liberty changed.
If you love clicking buttons, this game is for you.
CESA reports that over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI at least occasionally, while studios are prioritizing human review, restricted tools, and policies against using raw outputs unchanged.
Unity's official plugin for Codex is an official plugin that gives OpenAI's Codex Unity-written skills, so the agent works from Unity's own guidance for jobs like sprite atlases, URP renderer features, in-app purchases, and localization instead of from whatever it absorbed about Unity elsewhere.
A guest blog by Dilmer from Meta about speeding up your XR dev workflows with Unity CLI.
Kyle Thompson reveals that his brother has been writing music for his games for the past 7 years, explains how he came up with the concept for Well Dweller, and shares what his previous releases taught him.
The worse you draw, the better it gets.
Valve appears to have personalized Steam’s Discounts & Events grid, transforming a previously negligible source of traffic into thousands of monthly store-page visits for some smaller games.
Pavel Kuzmenko spoke about the native C++ plugin texLab for Unreal Engine, detailing the tool's core design, its JSON-based semantic database that pipeline TDs can extend, and explaining some of the additional workflows.
Gravity has found its next victim. We’re giving away Steam keys for JUMP KING QUEST, Nexile’s punishing platforming action RPG where every leap is a commitment and every missed landing becomes a very personal problem. Fight your way through a vast vertical world, tackle challenging bosses, and climb alone or with friends who may become part of the problem.
"The more, the merrier," "Two heads are better than one," and all that.
Trần Quốc Khánh shared his entry for the Gauntlet of Gods challenge.
HeyBird! CEO Petr Škorňok explains how the team handled the mind-bending complexity of a puzzle game where you decide which pieces of evidence matter and no answer is ever certain. He talks about the beauty and the challenge of relying on visual storytelling instead of endless blocks of text in a puzzle game.
Discover how the new Unity CLI simplifies CI/CD for game development. Learn how to replace complex custom scripts with a unified command-line interface to easily manage Unity installations, run tests, and execute builds across any CI provider.
Anna Smirnova spoke about the creation process behind the No Mercy project, explaining how she used base meshes for both the body and the head, and detailing how she built detail directly into the textures rather than relying on procedural shaders.
More insights into the making of Psych Rift.
Unity's official plugin for Claude Code installs Unity-authored skills, the Unity CLI, and live Editor control via Unity's MCP server, in one command.
Another sad one today, unfortunately. Back in July, Polyarc released Moss: The Forgotten Relic, a new version of the original two games combined together that ditched its VR headset origins. Now, unfortunately, it sounds like the studio is shutting down, as the developer's LinkedIn page shared a message this week noting it's ending "active development." Read more
Thank you to everyone who participated in our Gaming Istanbul (GIST) 2026 community quiz!
Researchers Anamaria Buliga and Kamil Tebani explain how EchoForge combines spatial audio analysis, scene graphs, and procedural generation to transform sound recordings into explorable and interpretable 3D environments in Unity.
Saving the galaxy sounds like a job for a highly trained professional. Unfortunately, it got you. We’re giving away 5 Steam keys for Breathedge 2, a humorous space survival adventure from RedRuins Softworks, where an ordinary Man, an immortal Chicken, and a questionable amount of duct tape face a galaxy-wide disaster.
Add it to your wishlist!
Developer liamflannery56 created the game within a week.
The leak was discovered by Exophase.
Patrick van Rooijen discussed the workflow behind the Dr. Doom project, explaining how he modeled the face and head using MetaHuman, detailing how he created the costume with ZBrush and Marvelous Designer, and how he added believable wear and tear to the cape.
Discover 10 of the best games featured in Steam Programming Fest 2026, including programming puzzles, hacking simulators, automation games, and creative coding experiences.
There are probably many jokes one could make about mushrooms being edible, and mushrooms being like, edible, man in relation to Shroom and Gloom, a positively mycelial roguelike deckbuilder where you roam spore-filled dungeons with two decks of cards in tow. I won't do that though because that would mean having to think of them, and like Edwin before me, I just don't have it in me. What I do have is the ability to tell you about Shroom and Gloom, which is out in early access today. Read more
Learn how Garage Collective leveraged Unity’s Entity Component System (ECS) to build DrakkenRidge, a massive open-world action RPG optimized for mobile VR.
Unity's official plugin for Claude Code installs Unity-authored skills, the Unity CLI, and live Editor control via Unity's MCP server, in one command.
I find it to be quite rare that when a game says it has a graphic novel art style that it actually has one. There's often just something that reads as slightly off, like it's not quite cut from the same cloth. I'm happy to say that isn't the case with Stack Order, a deckbuilding roguelike with a story all about layering your cards just right to maximise their effects that looks like you could find it in a hip and trendy French comic book shop. Read more
Initially developed through an editorial collaboration with 80 Level, the new platform features practical insights from developers, researchers, operators, and other experts working across the business of games.
Dahye Han discussed the workflow behind the RAID: Shadow Legends Fan Art of Alice project, explaining how they aimed to preserve the character's game artwork while adding more realistic traits, and how they textured the leather and the rabbit's fur.
Update: Annnnnnnnnnnnnndddd it's gone. Original story below: Those terrible firebrands at the Tetris Company have publicly rebuked the US government for publishing a Tetris parody game that promotes the Trump administration's brutalising rhetoric about securing the border with Mexico. They've even hinted that they're prepared to sue over it. The parody game in question is called Build the Wall, and sees you stacking bricks along "the Southern border" in order to repel invading zombies. Unlike in regular Tetris - yes, I've played the Trump game, I'm definitely going to hell now - you aren't trying to clear lines of blocks. Instead, blocks defeat wandering undead of the same colour. The game appeared last week alongside a swathe of other Trumpist propaganda games, based on the likes of Snake and Flappy Bird. A few of these games include goofy reworkings of Sony, Nintendo and Xbox console logo screens. The three platform holders have yet to comment. But the Tetris Company? They're coming out swinging with a... gently worded appeal to human community. Read more
Arenanet are keeping a lot of Guild Wars 3 hidden away. Throughout the short presentation of their new fantasy MMO, the refrain is 'We're not talking about that yet'. Mounts, professions, dynamic world events, even shops and the economy are all things the developers will talk about in the future. Though, what they did show more than made up for it. Read more
Face thousands of mythological creatures. Experiment with different abilities and artifacts, perform risky rituals, and grow stronger with every attempt. We’ve teamed up with Conifer Digital to give away 5 Steam keys for Versebound, a challenging action roguelike inspired by the world and folklore of the Kalevala.
Look, before you say it, I know. Persona 4 Golden is held up by some as one of the best and most important RPGs ever. After all, it was the series' Final Fantasy 7 moment, where many of the mechanical and thematic threads of the earlier games finally knitted together and became something greater than their parts. You step into the shoes of Yu Narukami, a Japanese transfer student freshly arrived in Inaba. There, you use your limited time to make friends, study for your exams, and dive into a metaphysical dimension to turn-based battle the literal manifestations of your friends and rivals' twisted perceptions of themselves. Its story and characters particularly celebrated for their honest and painful looks inward at the parts of ourselves best left unseen. I’m a fraud for not having played it yet, with that sin only compounded by having had it in my Steam family sharing library for years. I have no excuse. I’ll face the shame-filled shadow version of myself, eventually. Read more
"Never show the monster," horror film-makers, game-makers and other creepozoids have chanted, over the decades. The Well Is Not Empty wastes no time showing us the monster - one of the monsters, at least - and doesn't seem especially the worse for it. I mean, it's the worse, but in a good way. Look, you can see the monster right there, hunkered up like a frightened puppy in the corner of the room. A scrawny little fellow with broken xylophone teeth and eyes that genuinely do make me think of the view from the bottom of a well. The monster is no threat, as long as you stay out of grabbing distance - and as long as the lights are on. The problem, as you've already guessed, is that the lights are unreliable. A lot of the ceiling bulbs in the open areas are set to a timer. Best make sure you're back behind the sturdy radiance of those construction lamps before the ticking stops. Read more
You can also use it with a collection of free water matcaps.
Witcher-flavoured vampire RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker has received its first post-launch patch, with developers Rebel Wolves dipping their fangs into a modest neckful of problems with blocked quest progression and general controller behaviour on PC. They've also taught a blacksmith a new recipe. Alas, the devs are still working on fixes for those problems with stuttering, PlayStation button-mapping, and shader compilation we covered last night. Still, at least little Lunka will no longer get hopelessly lost while walking you through the tutorial. Read more
What are you doing across Monday 7th to Tuesday 8th September? If your answer isn't "weaving sick rhymes for PlayStation's former indie gaming boss Shuhei Yoshida and original TIGsource founder Jordan Magnuson", then begone, for we are no longer friends. Read more
It's been a couple of months since Double Fine parted ways from Xbox, and they've been busy getting to work since that split. There's that game jam Kickstarter they recently launched that has Brutal Legend 2 as a stretch goal (just ignore the fact that stretch goal is $100 million). And now, the once again indie studio has announced their first game post-Xbox: Thank You Bus Driver, a very silly job sim where you drive passengers to their destinations, and slap them if they break the rules. Read more
Do I need to explain how Cyclops from the X-Men's powers work? I'm going to anyway just in case. He shoots beams from his eyes! More or less, I think it's technically energy from a punch dimension? I'm not an X-Men nerd though, so correct me in the comments. Main point is, he can never stop shooting those beams, which is why he has to always be wearing glasses at the very least. Which, as it turns out, makes for a fun video game concept, as it's now been manifested in the form of Laser Guy, a twin-stick "anti-shooter" all about not killing your co-workers. Read more
You'll have between 5 and 15 hours of playtime.
GIST Gaming Istanbul is a next-generation gaming experience designed to connect every layer of the industry – from passionate players and indie developers to global publishers, esports teams, brands, and investors. We invite you to join a fun community quiz and win one of five tickets to the event!
This analysis of Steam’s 100 most-wishlisted games by GEM Capital reveals the top genres, publishers, trends, and strategies developers can use to build stronger wishlist momentum.
Metro 2039 launches in February, and new gameplay shows its unique brand of survival mechanics, brutal combat, and post-apocalyptic Moscow.
PlaySide Game Director Ryan McMahon explains how Game of Thrones: War for Westeros handles asymmetric factions, political intrigue, its sandbox campaign, large-scale battles, and an Unreal Engine 5 art pipeline.
If you like cats, this game might be for you.
Are you excited about this game?
Stay updated with the latest creations from the Unity community. Explore our list of standout games made with Unity in August 2026.
Nice shader.
The plan is to preserve SteamDB as a separate service while exploring how its extensive version history could help players identify incompatible mods and prepare for game-breaking updates.
The Immersive Edge, August 2026: 31 Unity resources from July and August, including BMW Group's Virtual Teardown Assistant and the Ditmara twin architecture.
Courtesy of XorDev.
Protect your nest, steal your enemies’ eggs, and prepare for total aerial chaos. We’ve teamed up with HexNest Games to give away 10 Steam keys for Birds of War, a team-based aerial PvP game with fast 3v3v3 matches.
Check out this week's 80 Level Job Digest for top openings at KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS, CD PROJEKT RED, Warner Bros. Games, Larian Studios, and thatgamecompany.
This week we got our first proper look at Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, Wizard of the Coast's new RPG-tinted action game. In theory, it's the story of a grizzled weapon master who is searching a lawless pocket dimension for somebody precious to her, but I disapprove massively of this objective, because it sounds like it's going to get in the way of unearthing weird spells and making a glorious mess. Created by a team of former Far Cry, Watch Dogs and Splinter Cell devs, Warlock gives you an open world full of charms, cantrips and conjurations to gather and fool around with. I'm really hoping it's as open-ended as they're making it sound. Here's a video, followed by some commentary from creators Invoke. Read more
Looks magical.
Thalassophobia warning.
What's that coming through the hiss and crackle of static? It's a transmission from the Gamescom zone, where a trio of RPS survivalists are fighting to stay alive amid all manner of hazards. You don't want to know the things they've told us about the loos. One of them, James, has ended up hunkered down in the same room as Stalker 2 devs GSC Game World and had the chance to ask them what's in store for the game now its 2.0 update and Cost of Hope expansion are out. The answer is a "different" second DLC and a free multiplayer mode the studio insist won't just recycle mechanics seen elsewhere. Read more
Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering tech, AKA the AI filter which was widely criticised upon reveal earlier this year for creepily yassifying a bunch of game characters' faces, is reportedly up and running prior to its planned release later this year. The folks to thank or blame for this are modders, who've found the files needed to get the tech's neural rendering working in Control. Read more
Josh Linao spoke about creating Iron Mitchell, a character inspired by fighting games like Mortal Kombat but with his own twist, and shared how he used Mike Tyson as a reference when sculpting the face.
Update 28/8: Valve appear to have taken action, changing the game's rating - the storepage can now be accessed in the UK. "It looks like Steam re-reviewed Future? No Thanks! and removed the 'frequent nudity or adult content' reverting the Germany geo-ban and the age verification by credit card in the UK," Paolo Perdicini writes on Bluesky. "It officially has only 'some nudity or adult content' as every good game should." Read more
Attention, dusty creeps who want to play poker with the Wickerman! I found one, a videogame you might enjoy. That game is Hillthorn, a spooky investigative cardgame from Fool Moon and Finnegan Motors - the latter also known for beaming corpo thriller Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination. Hillthorn is the story of a detective hired to investigate a disappearance at a secluded mountain community. One of the first things you do, after hassling a worryingly stained forest ranger for directions, is cross a line of salt on the trail. Seems like something a person familiar with the occult would avoid doing, but you are a Private Eye, armed with logic and cynicism. Besides, all of this is presented via the medium of cards. Who's afraid of cards? What are they going to do, give you a paper cut? Ouch! Oh, maybe don't bleed on the salt. Read more
I suppose, in a way, I asked for this. Crouched and cowering behind a garden fence, inches away from the thrashing, cleaver-faced miscreation who’d quite comfortably win in a fight against my splintering plank of rotten wood, I can almost hear Silent Hill: Townfall whisper mocking in my ear: not too much combat now, eh? Read more
The era of generative AI has kindled an era of generative AI witchhunts. It's routine right now for videogame developers to fend off accusations of using the technology, even when they are full-throated in their disapproval of ChatGPT, Claude and their ilk. Recent examples include Sandustry, the 2D factory builder from Hooded Horse with strangely haunting physics, and the just-announced Humankind 2, whose creators Amplitude have rushed to assure players that their announcement trailer is genuine live action film. The conversation reflects a shifting idea of what AI-generated imagery 'looks like' - shifting because, strictly speaking, AI-generated imagery has no fixed style or quality. It's derived from whatever data the model is 'fed'. The confusion is exacerbated by the fact that the technology is changing, with new or updated buzzwordy tools being added to the pile. Established hallmarks of generated imagery go out of date fast. Meanwhile, generative AI's richest advocates often muddy the waters, conflating tools and framing their capabilities in ludicrously open-ended, investor-baiting terms. Still, some responsibility falls on regular users who've become accustomed to chucking around claims of "AI slop". Read more
I am TONY STARK... and my brassy crimson pantaloons may have sprung a few leaks. A work-in-progress trailer for Marvel's Iron Man, an air-capable action game in development at EA Motive, has appeared online. You can find it on Resetera, though I imagine the video will be taken down soon. The timestamp "Aug26" indicates that it's a recent creation. The video itself uses unfinished assets, but the direction and editing suggest that it could be an early version of an official trailer. Or it could be for an internal presentation of some kind. There are some obviously goofy elements, like crediting Hulk as the "world director". HULK SMASH PROJECT SPRINT. Read more
Solo developer Joe Richardson on rebuilding a decade of Renaissance-art adventure games with Adventure Creator in Unity, merging three titles into one project, and porting to consoles with support from Akupara Games.
Saturdays are for actually remembering that it's a Bank Holiday weekend, rather than forgetting and coming in on Monday and getting viciously annoyed with Julian and Mark for seeming to ignore your Gchat messages. (They do that anyway, regardless of whether it's a day off.) Read more
While it's never been confirmed, some cut voice lines from the original release of Persona 4 indicated that once upon a time, the protagonist's right-hand party member Yosuke was romanceable. Instead what we ended up getting was a mostly quite homophobic character who never really moves past that mentality, though the upcoming Personal 4 Revival will apparently be changing Yosuke a bit. Though one thing it won't be doing, apparently, is adding that romance back in, even if the devs did consider it. Read more
Sundays are for resting, so I hear, though by the time you read this I’ll have got up at 5:30am to drive my parents-in-law to Gatwick Airport. As such, I’m probably not the best authority on resting, or, indeed, Sundays. Nonetheless, I have gathered some quality game-related articles to help you fill yours. Read more
There is a big part of me that doesn't really believe any aspect of Star Citizen is real. It's never really a game I've given all that much of my attention to, the thing gives off pyramid scheme energy in a way I can't quite explain. Probably something to do with the numerous promises developer Cloud Imperium Games have made over the years that haven't always come to fruition in the way they said, or when they said, they would. And here's yet another example of that: Squadron 42, the story-based single-player spinoff of Star Citizen, has been delayed in 2027, all because of a pesky game called GTA 6. Read more
We're a little over one week on from the launch of Mortal Shell 2, a game that Jeremy liked quite a lot. But the work of a developer is never done these days, what with the advent of the internet and patches 'n' all. A balance patch arrived on launch day, but the Soulslike has now received its first full update, bringing a whole lot with it. Read more
Things are shifting around a bit over at The Long Dark developer Hinterland Studio. Earlier this year, The Long Dark's story mode wrapped up with the release of Wintermute's fifth and final episode. After that, you may have fairly assumed that focus would have been mostly placed on the sequel that was announced in 2024, Blackfrost. But according to Hinterland, while Blackfrost is still in the works, the main focus will actually be put on The Long Dark's survival mode for a while. Read more
I've been hungry for an action adventure game recently. In this modern era of live service and infinite roguelikes and deckbuilders (seriously, I know they're popular genres, maybe try a different highly replayable genre), the humble action adventure game has fallen by the wayside a tad. So I've been quite curious about Usual June, a quite classic one of those that might end up being a Halloween regular (quick disclaimer: Cara Ellison, who many moons ago did some writing for RPS, is a writer on this one). Read more
There's also a Blender version available.
The artwork was displayed on a New York billboard as part of the Art Innovation exhibition.
Apex Volumetrics is launching in just a few days.
Do you like this game?
CGMatter discussed two approaches.
Tripo Co-Founder and Chief Scientist Dr. Yanpei Cao discusses Smart Mesh, generating usable topology in seconds, giving artists more control over generated assets, Gaussian Splats, production-ready 3D, and the shift from individual asset generation toward complete interactive worlds.
Filling gaps is also detective work.
Bellring Games discusses combining Dark Souls-style action combat with Arc Raiders-like extraction tension, creating a ruined Nordic aesthetic, maintaining PvPvE readability, and responding to more than one million players.
You can get it with a 34% discount.
Star Wars Zero Company has earned exceptional reviews for evolving XCOM-style tactics with cinematic presentation, memorable companions, flexible squad building, permadeath, and an original Clone Wars story.
The Hidden Mountain finale also has a release date.
HalkHogan's work will be included in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered.
Works on iPad and Android devices.
Check out Nando's fantastic recreation of the RPG's effect.
Protect your crown.
Coraline Lyu spoke about the creation process behind the Shell Grotto project, explaining how she aimed to capture the identity of the Shell Grotto in England, how she built two separate node-based systems, and detailing how she assembled the ornamental wall patterns.
Elie Paquiet discussed the workflow behind The Courtyard project, detailing how he made a modular building kit with 3m, 4.5m, and 6m scales, built his own multi-layer shader, and created the foliage using real plant photos as reference.
Have you ever imagined starting a cult?
Rockstar has finally revealed the first official GTA 6 gameplay, showcasing Jason and Lucia, third-person combat, slow-motion killshots, driving, detailed interiors, dynamic environments, and its enormous Vice City.
Were you waiting for this?
The Halloween season begins soon.
Kang Jeong discussed the workflow behind the CLOCK SAINT project, explaining how he sculpted the character by dividing it into four sections and detailing how he managed the Metallic and Roughness values in the materials to achieve the religious look.
Some are familiar, and others are completely new.
Apocalypse, Ancients, and hard choices.
Would you like to play as a dog?
According to a new exclusive report, Rockstar is aiming to iterate on Red Dead Redemption 2 by making GTA 6 an even more realistic and immersive open world.
Legendary Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano discusses his timeless visual identity, bringing ZAN into animation, avoiding trends, Eastern and Western influences, collaboration, and advice for young artists.
The new Commodore 64 variant features a Night City-inspired translucent case, enhanced FPGA hardware, and an exclusive 8-bit Cyberpunk 2077 demo.
Exodus, the cinematic sci-fi RPG from former Mass Effect and BioWare developers, launches in April 2027 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Play as Mega Man or Proto Man in a city taken over by uncontrollable robots.
Frictional Games is preparing another story-rich campaign.
There's also 18 minutes of gameplay footage to check out.
You can play the demo!
The remaster includes a Switch 2 version, a free upgrade for all existing owners of the game, and there's even a new DLC on the way next year as well.
Ronja Stucken discussed the workflow behind the Nymera project, explaining how she used real-world skin and anatomy references, sculpted from large to small forms, and used an Arnold skin shader for texturing.
At gamescom, Invoke Studios revealed Warlock’s fluid melee combat, versatile D&D spells, systemic world interactions, environmental puzzles, character progression, and open-world exploration in Darkon.
I'm already in love with it.
Metro 2039’s gamescom trailer showcases a Novoreich-controlled Moscow, handcrafted environments, stealth-action combat, and the latest evolution of 4A Games’ proprietary engine.
Check out an overview of Kuttenberg in 360° panoramas in Kingdom Compare.
The artist experimented with the felt style.
It lets you create squishy setups.
Part of The Definitive Character Workshop for Movies and Games.
You'll have to wait a while.
Margarida Coelho spoke about the creation process behind the Almalexia fanart, discussing how she sculpted the face, anatomy, muscles, and skin using custom brushes and hand-sculpting techniques, and explaining how she created the armor and the mask.
Did you like this game?
You can get the pack at a 50% discount.
ConchShip Games explains how The Scroll of Taiwu combines up to 10,000 dynamic NPCs, 700+ martial arts skills, generational storytelling, Chinese culture, and systemic sandbox RPG design.
Meet Ichor Online, an upcoming project from FR3NKD and LeoDev.
Looks like we're getting this in Blender 5.3.
Abcent Studios shared its debut project.
Ihor Fridman discussed how he built a custom motorcycle system for his own game, explaining how the physics of a motorcycle's stability work, how he treated the bike and rider as one system, and sharing some of the lessons from the project.
Morgane Muller discussed the workflow behind the Spellbound Dormitory project, explaining how she divided the scene into individual elements and detailing how she hand-painted everything and achieved the illusion of translucency in the stained glass.
Paul Thureau spoke about the creation process behind the Pokémaniac project, explaining how he translated a tiny 2D pixel into a 3D character, modeled it in pose, and detailed how he textured the eyes and clothes.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, the second series of the anime CD Projekt Red and Netflix grafted onto the former's cyberverse following Cyberpunk 2077's release, will premiere on October 20th. Having previously revealed the four new Night City dwellers its plot will be following, the show's creators have now put out another trailer teasing the tale of "revenge and redemption" in store. Read more
Well, the chase has begun. Rockstar parent company Take-Two are after the identity of the hacker or hackers behind this week's GTA 6 leak. Having spent a number of days swatting clips with takedowns, while the leakers dumped more and more across the net, Take-Two have filed multiple subpoenas in federal district court asking Microsoft and Discord to share records related to accounts which have been involved in posting and sharing the leaks. Read more
Before we talk about Sandustry, the excellent new spelunking factory builder from Lantto Games and Hooded Horse, we need to revisit that most quintessentially vidyagame of topics, the post-industrial countryside of Wales. Early on in my recent 105-mile "review" of the MSI Cyborg 14 laptop, I walked through the old slate quarries near the village of Aberllefenni – the longest continually operated slate mining setup in the world until its closure in 2003. Read more
I've already humiliated myself attempting to describe the sensory enormity that is Cicadamata", the new movement shooter from flowergarden with the tricksy title punctuation, so instead of writing additional sentences such as "this game is like drinking the aurora borealis" (OK, one more) or "this game is like surfing the Niagara Falls during a freak shower of potassium pellets" (enough!), I'm just going to transcribe the latest trailer. Read more
For the past ten days or so I've been whinging my way through a chest infection. My partner's been sent out for lemsips, tissues, the blood of a vital youth filled with hopes of a bright future, and chicken soup. With the last dregs of the lurgy coming out of me in runs of coughs I'm starting to feel well again, meaning I've a weekend of ignored chores to catch up on. That and attending a one-year-old's birthday party. Fingers crossed my immune system is now in fighting form because, with Gamescom next week, it would be right annoying to pick up something else. Read more
Sometimes, Sundays are only for rounding up videogame criticism and journalism. I try to cast a wider net when my turn comes to deliver the Papers, because I figure you've probably been reading about videogames all week, and would appreciate e.g. an essay on the mating habits of snails or the top 7 most elaborate UFO conspiracies, but this Sunday, there are no snails or UFOs within easy dredge. So instead, please accept a boatload of finest mitherings on Duke Nukem, oracular visual novels, sociable space sims, and 'search action' games. Read more
Earlier this week, South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games shared word that they now own all of the publishing rights to their games, a welcome update in light of the ongoing BDS boycott against Microsoft and Xbox. And now, another studio is joining the realm of boycott freedom, this time Psychonauts studio Double Fine, as CEO Tim Schafer has confirmed that they too now own the publishing rights to their own catalogue. Read more
Sorry folks, some bad news: Neverway, the horror life sim and RPG combo from one of the artists behind Celeste and the composer of Fez, has been delayed into 2027. While it never had an exact release date anyway, developer Coldblood Inc. shared word of the delay in a Steam blog post earlier this week. Read more
It's very rare that I'm not thinking about the works of Satoshi Kon (pop on Tokyo Godfathers this Christmas, you won't regret it), but the one that I always come back to is Opus. It's a manga the director made in the mid '90s that he ultimately never finished before his death, following a manga artist who gets sucked into his own creation and forced to deal with the consequences of his writing. Tulpa the Unseen Lover, a psychological visual novel made by former Spider-Verse animators, is sort of like that, only in this case it's about a manga creator bringing an anime girl to life in his mind. Read more
Look, I love a PS1 horror throwback as much as the next whatever Gonzo is, but they don't all have to look like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, do they? There have been some aesthetic divergences in the renewed interest in the pseudo-genre, like with 2024's excellent and queer as hell Sorry We're Closed, but I'm hungry for more. Hence my interest in NEHCROMIA, a high-contrast survival horror set in a castle made of memories that aren't yours (a seizure warning is in order for the trailer below). Read more
Raising sims aren't a genre I've partaken in, partially because so many of them are geared towards a sort of father, daughter vibe that doesn't quite fit me. Raising a mech pilot, however, seems like something a bit more my speed, so you won't be surprised to hear of my interest in Valkyrie Iteration: Mecha Pilot Raising Pocket Simulator, a visual novel with a name that seems to do what it says in the tin. Read more
JuanCarlos CR keeps impressing every time.
Check out our selection if you're looking for something new to play.
It looks even better than Wukong.
You can try the demo!
We asked Robin Ras, Co-Founder of Rusty Lake, about its latest game, Servant of the Lake, the lore, and puzzle-making.
What do you think about this?
Joseph Deese explains how Render Ready uses real-world garment scanning instead of digital cloth simulation and how it uses custom poseable mannequins for physical capture.
You can play it!
Playgama Wrap is a free service that turns HTML5 games into standalone websites with built-in payments, analytics, SEO, monetization, and user acquisition tools, giving developers another distribution channel outside traditional stores and portals.
Solo developer HyperMad Interactive is building Bloodfall's first-person melee combat around direct mouse control and physically simulated weapons that collide, rebound, lock, deflect, and interact with the environment in real time.
Black Pony Immersive will focus on developing single-player, first-person action RPGs.
Omar Itani is experimenting with ECS to move particles from one shape to another.
It's designed around Burst and the Job System, features segmented river output, automatic VFX/SFX integration, and more.
And until they sell their memecoin, apparently.
A bigger world, stamina-free combat, shotguns, and much more.
Bilibili will soon open its doors to Western audiences.
Dark and Darker developers IRONMACE explain how Aura helped a non-technical designer work directly with the game's codebase, prototype tutorial systems, communicate with engineers, and help complete in just a couple of weeks what the studio estimates would normally have taken five to six weeks.
Vertex School explains how periods of industry disruption can create an opening for new game artists who master both the fundamentals and the workflows studios increasingly expect.
I want to pet the sheep.
We’re excited to give away 15 Steam keys for Die in the Dungeon, a turn-based dice-building roguelike where every battle revolves around building and using your own set of dice.
Undertraining can lead to some pretty interesting results.
Brad Faucheux really nailed her moves, and the 2D effects are the cherry on top.
Quad Maker helps you keep your models clean.
What else would you like to see in the game?
Twisted Tower puts you against creepy fairy-tale mascots.
Kamil Tondera spoke about the creation process behind the Fungal Creature project, explaining which tools he used to create the vines and bark elements, and detailing how he achieved the organic appearance with hand-painted materials.
Anna Cerutti discussed the workflow behind the Harvey project, explaining how it started, the importance of creating a story for the character, and detailing how she blended cartoonish proportions with realistic details.
Would you like to play this game?
We see who you're aiming for, Sakura Rabbit.
Truly phenomenal work.
FocalRig replaces aim offsets with precise procedural look and aim.
Definitely not a game for introverts.
Get RBDLab, VDBLab, and FluidLab.
Juego Studios discusses the evolution of external development, full-cycle production, AI-assisted workflows, LiveOps, porting, and why studios increasingly view external teams as long-term strategic partners instead of traditional outsourcing vendors.
Save 97% off the total value.
It's very satisfying to watch.
David Papunashvili discussed the workflow behind the Punk Knight project, explaining how he projected the 2D concept directly onto the sculpt for reference and color matching, and detailing how he used PolyPaint to paint the character.
A love letter to the classics from a team that has "a passion for making things with our own hands and getting dirty".
Aaron Victor shared updates to his stylized game project.
Follow lassyla's guide and download her shader to try it out yourself.
It includes a live preview.
See how Stunt Puppet Pictures created stop-motion animation for American McGee's Plushie Dreadfuls, using lots of hot glue and sticky wax, and learn what McGee has in mind for Dreadfuland, how (and if) his Alice's story will continue in the new project, and what he wants to keep from older games.
Indie Game Joe discusses competing for attention online, finding a game's hook, creating better gameplay clips, turning viral ideas into commercial success, and why marketing and game design should evolve together from day one.
Dragoslav Vugdelija spoke about the Tears in Rain project, explaining how it was influenced by a Blade Runner monologue, how he built metal, glass, and plastic materials, and detailing how he divided the prop into four texture sets.
Would you like to play this game?
How many times did you watch it?
Check out the creative techniques behind Number Machine: Math Factory.
Deepak Kushwaha shared an insightful look at the work with lighting tests and analogue sketches.
A full recap of the Rideshare "Stimulator" drama, which got way too personal.
In 2021, in their bid to get more of a hold on the games industry after dominating film and television streaming, Netflix acquired Oxenfree and Afterparty developer Night School Studio, the first developer they had ever acquired. Now, five years later, the streaming giant is shuttering Night School Studio, as well as Moonloot, another developer they owned that was yet to put out a game. This comes six weeks after the release of Night School's latest game, the Netflix exclusive Unhinged. Read more
I won't dive into why this is happening to me at the moment, you'll either need to pay me £20 or let me pay you to be my therapist to get that explanation, but I've been having some odd dreams lately. They're frequently temporally confused, mixing and matching people from across my life that should never have crossed paths. This has left me looking to ground myself a touch, so of course I decided to take a look at Invisum Piscium 嫌魚, a walking sim that's not quite about dreaming, but is about looking for distilled water that's free from fish sex contamination. Read more
Creative Assembly have announced a release date for Total War: Warhammer 3 expansion Lords of the End Times. Consisting of four new legendary lords, each with a distinct retinue, campaign and battle map abilities, it's billed as "the biggest DLC that we’ve ever released in the series 10-year history". It'll accompany another, reportedly gargantuan free update with yet another legendary lord, the Vampire Queen Neferata, together with a rework for the Vampire Counts and Archaon The Everchosen, some new endgame scenarios, and updated victory conditions. There are over a hundred legendary lords in Twarhammer 3 at this point. I feel like the legendariness is at risk of being diluted. Can we organise some kind of spin-off game where every Warhammer army consists entirely of legendary lords? How about the legendary lords all go live on a big New England college campus and solve mysteries together? How about a Warhammer legendary lord adaptation of Guess Who? Read more
What do Dark Souls, Super Monkey Ball, Shadow of the Colossus, and Minecraft have in common? They are all explicit inspirations for The Canon of Balls, a spooky and unforgiving new open world platformer in which you are a horrified statue's face with a fleshy pink tongue, floating inside a rolling cage. You can use your tongue as a springboard. Look, stay with me on this. I think The Canon of Balls could be good. Yes, I know that we've done "Dark Souls in a ball" already this month, but I think this game stands apart. It reminds me a little of Straftat in being a very specific, even obstinate throwback project that's less about nostalgia - less about sheer recreation, and more the feeling that a deserted vein of weirdness has more to give, that there's another future down here somewhere. Read more
You’ve heard our ideas on how to make the RPS Supporter program more betterer, now we want to hear yours. Everyone, regardless of whether you’re already signed up or not, is invited to take the RPS Supporter survey: a succinct questionblast where you can tell us, to our wretched faces, what you think of the program. Read more
Saber Interactive have belatedly updated the Steam page for Unigine's chatty gig-work game Rideshare Stimulator with a disclosure about generative AI usage, following a withering back-and-forth between the game's former writer Stella Sacco and Saber CEO Matthew Karch. To catch you up, in case you had the good fortune to miss all the yelling earlier in the week: Sacco was lead writer at Saber from July 2023 to July 2024. On Tuesday 11th, responding to Rideshare Stimulator's announcement trailer, she posted on Bluesky that "Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development", adding that the game makes use of generative AI tools for passenger voices. Read more
Some pressing personal context: I live in a very small flat with huge windows and curtains that only ever seem to cover about 80% of the view, no matter how ingeniously I yank them around. Every laundry day, I have to decide between letting the sunlight in, and hiding my drying underpants from the eyes of the commuters walking to the bus stop. But it could be worse. I could be living opposite the protagonist of The Watcher, an Unreal Engine surveillance sim in which you, the stooge of a totalitarian state, spy on an opposing apartment building using a range of devices, searching for deviations in the routines of the inhabitants. Read more
Bit of a quiet one this week, gang. Half the RPS team are on holiday, ill, or off at some preview event, maybe in a less melty part of the world like Scandinavia, the lucky bastards. Games, however, must be played, and if it happens to be over a weekend, well... Read more
Sundays are for getting up early and testing the legs are still in working order after potentially overdoing it with a crosscountry ride. All week, climbing stairs has been a struggle, like the muscles contain only vapours of energy. Just a little test cycle out to the woods to see if everything's tickety boo. Then, inevitably, when I collapse into bed afterward, it will be time to settle into some heavy reading. Exercise for the old noggin, you know? Read more
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl's big 2.0 update is right around the corner, and developer GSC Game World have shared a plethora of details of what you can expect from it. For starters, the shooter is getting a visual upgrade, with a particular emphasis on lighting adjustments. Indoor lighting should look more realistic, the general landscape and foliage should look more natural, and hundreds of items that were previously inadvertently floating have been fixed too. Read more
Slay the Spire 2 has been moving at a solid pace since it launched into early access back in March, but back in May developer Mega Crit shared that updates would be switching to once every two weeks as opposed to the previously promised weekly updates. Now, as outlined in the game's August Neowsletter, Mega Crit say they'll be slowing down once again, though not necessarily forever. Read more
Gone are the days where a developer could give an NPC maybe two lines of dialogue and call it a day. The steady shift to realism essentially enforces the idea that characters must behave realistically, which is why whenever some kind of glitch or bug makes an NPC move about in an impossible manner it does numbers on Your Favourite Social Media App. And according to CD Projekt Red quest designer Philipp Weber, getting The Witcher 3's NPCs to react appropriately was a tad tricky. Read more
Do you remember, or do you even know, about the Game Boy Camera? It's exactly as it sounds, a little camera attached to an original Game Boy cartridge that you could plug in and take photos with. You could even get a printer! The aesthetic therewithin is a particular one, utilising a tiny 128x128 pixel sensor, the end result being an incredibly dithered and pixelated yet charming look. There are few games that capture such a vibe, but O EMPIRE! WARD OFF THY ROT, a game about carrying a cursed object through an abandoned world, might just manage to. Read more
I think it would be a tad fair if you heard that Thimbleweed Park 2 is in the works and thought, "who funded that?" Not because it doesn't deserve funding, but because adventure games aren't exactly in vogue (even though it's not as dead a genre as many think), and also there's that whole video game industry crumbling around us day by day thing. When it was announced last month, creator Ron Gilbert said that it was thanks to the help of a private investor, and now the developer has shed a bit of light on how that came to be, and how that relationship works. Read more
Not just a drawing tablet but a whole second monitor.
"The future is not a prophecy. It is a draft."
Donnie Yen's martial arts expertise is helping S-GAME Studio bring authentic kung fu choreography to Phantom Blade Zero's combat system.
Emanuel Pessel documented his entire process in a 62-page breakdown.
You can also download Edutaker's setup for free.
Also, Darksiders 4 and Tomb Raider: Catalyst.
Build detailed city environments while maintaining full artistic control.
Kai “Kizzle” Mergener recently created the Shattered World Signature Collection for Substance 3D Assets—fifteen dark fantasy materials built in Substance 3D Designer. Here, Kai discusses the collection's themes, his technical process, and why he's calling this project his grand finale as a material artist.
What would you like to see in the sequel?
Have you played this game?
There's a theory that it's limited to eight characters, and I love the guess that it will be Skyrim 2.
Upload your entry to the database so developers can see what's needed to support more mid-range tablets.
Early reviews highlight technical issues, though some players appreciate the game's indie appeal.
Telltale has brought the first-ever Choices Matter Festival to Steam, featuring discounts that stick around until August 17.
Discover how indie developers are using Character Creator 5 and iClone 8 to build AAA-quality indie game characters faster. From solo creators to small studios, these real-world case studies showcase streamlined character pipelines for Unreal Engine and Unity.
The app's signature cursive logo has been refreshed for the first time in 10 years, sparking mixed reactions from users online.
The Wild Blue Skies developers discuss modernizing classic on-rails shooters, embracing creative limitations, building custom systems in Unity, and creating the game's cel-shaded, Japanese animation-inspired world.
The bird looks so fluffy!
Now the developer studio is planning a movie adaptation with Story Kitchen.
Thank you to everyone who joined our gamescom dev 2026 community quiz! We loved seeing your answers and appreciate everyone who took the time to participate.
See the final animation.
Take a behind-the-scenes look at this photorealistic 3D scene.
Paint directly on 3D models, work across multiple UDIM tiles, and export game-ready texture maps for game engines, all without leaving Blender.
*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-(--sticky-padding-top)" dir="auto" data-turn-id="8971f17a-9527-4dc0-910b-3ae7ddfd7ebb" data-turn-id-container="8971f17a-9527-4dc0-910b-3ae7ddfd7ebb" data-testid="conversation-turn-5" data-turn="user"> Learn how it was implemented in Jarl and explore an interactive demo in your browser.
Distribution got democratized. Discoverability got concentrated. GAM3S.GG Head of Operations Eliza Crichton-Stuart speaks out on what that gap means for players and developers, and how to close it.
You can get it for $39.99.
Lunarium Director Jixiang explains how the team combines hand-painted 2D art, 3D geometry, custom lighting, and Unity tools to build its painterly isometric action RPG.
Mari "MadMaraca" is back with an incredible project.
Mani Salguero shared his workflow behind his first Blender project, a 3D portrait of Serie from Frieren, exploring a digital-painting approach to texturing to capture a distinctly 2D feel.
Shirzad Bahrami has published the tutorial along with a 3ds Max script.
A mobile version is definitely needed.
Disco Elysium fans might want to try the demo.
Check out this week's 80 Level Job Digest for top openings at Amazon Game Studios, Focus Entertainment, SEGA, NCSOFT, and thatgamecompany.
Do you imagine the game in this style?
It makes me want to clean the fingerprints.
Yechan Choi spoke about the text-based FPS game Torizon Telecom, explaining how the idea started as a typing game, how the progression system works, and detailing how he managed to create the game as a Solo Developer.
Curated from Unity Blog.
Panache Digital Games has also unveiled a new gameplay video.
Check out how developer Drin made it.
Have a look at how the 2D style was transferred to 3D.
"Made pretty much entirely in Blender and After Effects with no use of AI."
This probably should've been Deadpool.
This is a game that you need to play, not watch.
"Up 24% year-over-year."
It looks really cool!
KitBash is bringing ArtStation and Sketchfab together with KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla, while promising that existing portfolios, libraries, subscriptions, and core workflows will remain unchanged. Epic is consolidating its focus on Unreal Engine 6, Fortnite, and the Epic Games Store.
Beomsu Ko talked about the Disappeared Medieval Village project, explaining how they created a dark fantasy atmosphere with a subtle sense of hope while building the environment as a fully playable space using modular assets and tileable materials.
Check out how FromSoftware's RPG could have looked according to its early prototype.
Crementif shared their project on GitHub.
Lightbulb Crew's Othercide was a melancholy meatgrinder of an XCOM-style tactics RPG, featuring the world's worst mum. It saw you leading squads of sorrowful, blade and pistol-wielding clones into stark geographical projections of anguish. With the odds generally against you, the game put a huge emphasis on initiative, running order and acting outside your turn. Lightbulb's new game Ex Sanguis looks an awful lot like Othercide, from the porcelain beauty of the characters to the grotesque and gloopy metaphysicality of the battlespace, and I couldn't be happier. Read more
Just over a year of post-launch additions for climbing with your mates game Peak will end with one last update next week. In what's called the Final Ascent, devs Aggro Crab and Landfall are wheeling out two spooky new biomes as a challenge to round out the scaling of rugged landscapes. Read more
Much like the CIA spreading misinformation ahead of a cheeky little regime change, Ubisoft have begun talking about their next proper Ghost Recon game. According to live producer Irina-Gabriela Popa, it'll be "a fun, fresh experience that stays true to everything that defines Ghost Recon – tactical action, large scale operations, credible military storytelling and, of course, the Ghost Unit.” Read more
I’ve been scrolling through Nexus Mods near enough every weekday morning for three or four years now. On a good day, I might spot a couple of new mods potentially worth writing news about and a couple, usually Skyrim player homes, I might fancy checking out in my free time. Historically, browsing for mods was largely just a matter of gauging which looked complex or unique enough to be worth investigating further, and making sure nothing about them appeared offensive or otherwise dodgy. Usually, new quests, new mechanics, or substantial overhauls which can turn a game on its head got the nod. Then, a few years ago, AI-generated voices started popping up in the former. Skyrim, being the most actively modded game, was ground zero. Read more
Gaming hardware costs an absolute megaton, right now, but don't you worry, says Strass Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive – we'll soon be playing all our games via streaming services anyway. Speaking during the company's latest investor call, Strauss suggested that the games industry will "be in commercial streaming mode within three years" - that's to say, people will be accustomed to streaming live gameplay from potent central computers over low latency connections, and all of this RAMnarök stuff will be a thing of the past. Haha, look at you gawping! You are thinking a word in your head, and it rhymes with "Nadia". Read more
Sundays are for finally getting around to starting Peaky Blinders on your never-ending odyssey through all of the west's most laddish crime dramas. World War 1's just ended and every bloke's got PTSD from the trenches. Tommy Shelby and his brothers have returned to Birmingham, which probably hasn't helped their spirits. Cue lots of running around in flat caps and suits punching other blokes in flat caps and suits. Hours of fun so far, though I'm only a few episodes into the first series, so anyone who posts spoilers in the comments is getting slapped by a hat adorned with razor blades. Read more
Yet again, friends, I am escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism. They have need of journalists up there, no matter what that dafty Musk might prefer. Or so I understand from Space News Network - a No Man's Sky-esque exploration game in which you play a starpilot reporter, rocketing between strange new worlds in search of the next scoop. You'll brave pirate blockades, descend through the atmosphere and tangle with unidentified fauna, all in the name of such Pulitzer Prize-baiting bulletins as "Cisiom: it's glowy, it's blue. Is it safe to touch?" Read more
Two months ago, That's No Moon, a studio made up of former Naughty Dog and Infinity Ward devs, revealed Crossfire, a cinematic military shooter with a sci-fi flair. The team first formed around five years ago, but now it appears that there's layoffs before they've even managed to get their first game out the door. Read more
We've all been there. You're out on a hike with some friends, solving some abstract puzzles for a purpose that's not immediately clear, when you get two feet away from your pals and they're as quiet as a dormouse. Or at least, that's been the case for a bunch of folks playing Big Walk, Untitled Goose Game studio House House's latest, as the secret Predator game's approach to proximity chat has made it a little difficult to hear your friends. But an update seemingly fixing the issue is here! Just don't expect to be able to hear anyone from any distance. Read more
How about we get in our digital grass touching for the day? Well, I suppose we can't just yet, as Polyzonia, an ecosystem sim set in the Amazon rainforest, isn't out just yet, but it has caught my eye at the very least. Read more
I think about Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak, a GBA game that has never seen a release outside of that platform, probably more than I should. That's primarily because my experience of it is solely relegated to occasionally (very occasionally) playing a friend's copy on the way to school, I never actually owned it. There's just something so vibey and hangoutable about it that I've never really seen captured in another game before, except for maybe the upcoming Danchi Days. Which, thankfully, has a release date at long last! Read more
Is there anything more fear-inducing in this world than a haircut? Whether it be the need to endure a cacophony of sensory nightmares, or the knowledge that a stylist who doesn't quite care enough could turn your split ends into the split end of your social life, the whole process is dredged in anxiety. So how about a game where you have to play as a hairstylist that must take all of this into consideration, where all of your customers are beastfolk and you've made a deal with a demon? Enter Beastfolk Barber. Read more
It’s been a manageable, some might even say calm week for Team RPS, so we’re rewarding ourselves for a productive five days of PC games with some PC games. Or barbecue. Actually, that sounds better. Is it too late to switch? Read more
It's a mix of Cuphead and Hollow Knight.
If you have ever dreamed about being an insect, you might like this game.
The actor views the place as a cozy spot for locals.
BR1: INFINITE reportedly pays players real cash for eliminations, loot, and skill, but spots are limited and require a PC to play.
Eugenia Zanina discussed the workflow behind the Owl Harpy project, focusing on how she created the hair and feathers using XGen, how she used a custom hair shader to make the feathers look soft and fluffy, and how she set up the lighting in UE5.
Are you excited about the remake?
MUD1 co-creator Richard Bartle reflects on the origins of virtual worlds, the player-developer contract, free-to-play, pay-to-win, Web3, and why lasting MMOs need purpose before monetization.
More actors were revealed.
This low-poly little kitten looks so cute.
Japan has reportedly raised concerns several times this year about Pokémon, Naruto, and Mario being used in US political posts without permission.
But you might not be able to get it, according to players' complaints.
FAKE ME offers another take on the genre.
Andrés Borghi, Game Director, spoke about the survival horror puzzle game Tenebris Somnia, explaining how the idea of mixing 2D art and live-action scenes started, how they created both, and how they made them look similar.
Jeffy Zachariah spoke about the creation process behind the survival horror FPS The Void, explaining how the movie The Mist inspired it, what he wanted to achieve with the game, and its core gameplay and design choices.
I like the horror one.
We spoke with Kidbash: Super Legend's Creative Director about recreating the magic of retro-style visuals using a modern pipeline that transforms Blender models into carefully crafted sprite sheets through Aseprite before bringing everything into Unity.
Not going to lie, they look cool.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault nears a 1.0 release.
It looks mind-blowing next to the WIP.
Platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU are classified as VLOPs.
It's an enhanced version of the mod Native Camera Tweaks by Ersh.
Salaar Kohari, Founder of CAGE Studios, spoke about the movement-focused roguelite FPS Gunstoppable, explaining how the project started as a game about a monkey climbing a tree, and discussing which tools he used during development.
Curated from Unity Blog.
Inspired by EVE Online, Klang's ambitious simulation game SEED uses AI-powered characters that continue living, working, and shaping society around the clock, even after players log off, all using a custom-built inference pipeline.
The director behind The Haunting of Hill House will write the adaptation.
You might think some of them are kind of concerning.
Meet Zen BBQ 2.0 with a new baking system that allows for a non-disruptive workflow.
UV Flex from AlbertoFX features tools for interactive editing of UV islands within Blender.
Access your go-to brushes and tools in a few clicks.
Dmitry Bezrodniy spoke about the creation process behind the Ariadne character, discussing how he used MetaHuman to adjust the proportions, how he dressed the 3D scan, and how he turned AI output into usable ZBrush brushes.
I would love to learn the creature's story.
Game Freak's first major AAA action RPG outside Pokémon has solid and addictive combat, but Beast of Reincarnation seems to struggle to establish an identity beyond its inspirations.
It has 291 unique meshes and 478 prefabs.
Walk, talk, and try not to throw each other off the cliff (or don't).
It's a happy accident.
Kay Hilman showed the production process of the animated film NOXIOUS in a detailed breakdown video.
A tech-fantasy creature was modeled and animated from scratch, based on a 2D concept.
Juan Carlos CR is back with a new artwork.
"We will return Xbox to player and revenue growth."
NC has opened registrations for Cinder City's upcoming U.S. pre-alpha playtest, giving players their first opportunity to experience the studio's ambitious open-world, cinematic third-person sci-fi MMO shooter set in a post-apocalyptic version of Seoul.
Garena and Pocketpair have officially announced Palworld Online, a new mobile MMORPG that expands the creature-collecting survival hit into a persistent online world long before Pokémon has any indication of getting an official MMO of its own.
I want to swim there.
The creators of Sky: Children of the Light discuss live-service art direction, visual development, Figma workflows, the Beyond Engine, collaborations, and their new 245-page art book.
Can you imagine this saving you?
"We're going to cautiously move this forward."
Deezer's streaming tech and catalogue will drive Winamp's new subscription service, coming in 2027.
Stay updated with the latest creations from the Unity community. Explore our list of standout games made with Unity in July 2026.
What's the next logical games industry career step after being a cinematic director on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a lead cinematic consultant on XCOM: The Bureau, and a director at Ubisoft Montreal working on Assassin's Creed Unity and the recently reborn 1666: Amsterdam? If you answered "explore abandoned convents with a camera crew, proceed to make a horror game about it", then you are clearly Jesse Malcolm Sweet, developer of Sisters of Solitude, and I'll thank you to keep your nose out of my drafts. G'wan, get thee to a nunnery! Read more
About a week on from getting the thumbs up from the European Commission, the $55 billion leveraged buyout which will see Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner-founded investment firm Affinity Partners become the new owners of EA and take it private is expected to close next week, the company have announced. Read more
Photojournalist Frank West is heli-dropped into the Willamette Parkview mall, following a tip-off that there’s something sinister going down in the sleepy Colorado town. Impressively undeterred by the sight of people eating each other by a school bus during his fly-by, he instructs his pilot to drop him off on the mall roof and return for him in exactly three days. The rest, more or less, is up to you. If you decide to do absolutely nothing but lounge around in the security room for 72 in-game hours, Dead Rising doesn’t care. The chopper turns up on schedule, you get in and leave. Thanks for the £40, here’s the credits. Read more
As you might be aware, mods made using generative AI - either to directly generate the likes of character voices or for tasks linked to development - seem to be getting more common as the controversial tech continues to become tougher to avoid no matter where you're looking. Such mods aren't against the rules of modding site Nexus Mods, provided they don't infringe on the rights of voice actors or use assets without permission and are appropriately tagged. This week, the modding site have moved to tighten up the latter, dividing a single AI-generated content tag into three more specific ones. Read more
DLC-sized Fallout: New Vegas mod Fallout: New California's now available via GOG, offering an easy way to give it a go if it's long sat on your lost of mods to try at some point before the universe dies. Read more
As previously explainderised, not only do we want to do a better job of rewarding RPS Supporters with exclusive articles and other fineries, we want to a better job of highlighting what your patronage gets you, including the chance to catch up on exclusives you may have missed. Here, then, is the first in a series of roundups in which we bring together all of the past month’s Supporter articles, plus recaps of any news and developments around the program itself. And, if you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed: like what you see? Becoming an RPS Supporter is the best way to help sustain the work that we do, and on top of everything here – plus all other Supporter-exclusive articles, past and future – you’ll also get fully ad-free browsing across the site. Bargain. Read more
I wonder what’s going to happen when we eventually run out of crusty old public-domain drawings to put in these. Hopefully by that point the standards of what’s considered ‘old’ will have shifted and we can start using photos and video stills of, I dunno, my fourth birthday party or something. Or maybe Mark can learn woodblock printing and we can make some ourselves. Should Mark learn woodblock printing? Let us know in the comments, and also, what you’re playing this weekend. Read more
Sci-fantasy shooter Warframe is the sexy cyborg fruit of 13 years of updates and expansions, encompassing scores upon scores of quests, areas, plotlines, systems and characters, together with a huge quantity of player-made art. Much of Warframe's original design still exists within the game, however tweaked and refreshed: the developers have removed a few larger chunks, including the underloved PvP raids, but they've mostly sought to polish up aspects that have lost their lustre, while playing out stories that range from spacey self-referentiality to commentary on indentured work. Currently, the studio are reworking Banshee, a sonic avenger who formed part of the Warframe launch roster way back in 2013. "I know the Warframe team has been talking about bringing back raids, and doing stuff with that," the game's original design director Scott McGregor told me, at this year's Tennocon expo. "But overall, there's a lot of stuff from Warframe that's been in there for a long, long time. For better or for worse. I think, as a team, instead of mostly turning it off, we either improve it, or we replace it with something better." Read more
Sundays are for looking back at the week and honestly just thinking, yeesh, what are you doing, working in an industry that’s succumbed so deeply and so wilfully to moral decay. The publishers sold to executioners. The naked attempts at thought manipulation. The constant, miserable hum of distrust and paranoia produced by a technology that even bedroom modders, once the poster children of earnest DIY enthusiasm, are now using to cut corners and mislead players. God, it's awful. Thus, in honour of my dire need to spend this weekend thinking about something else – hopefully that being enough time to reset and rediscover some of the medium’s lingering pleasures – here are some quality reads from the past week, absolutely none of which concern games. Read more
Final Fantasy 7 is the game that never seems to end. That's not just because the original PS1 release is filled with things to do, it's because of the subsequent follow-ups that came as part of the Final Fantasy 7 Compilation. It's also because of the whole remake thing that Square Enix has been doing over the past few years, with the third part, Revelation, due out next year. And as hard as it might be to believe, according to director Naoki Hamaguchi, this really will be the end. For the remake trilogy, at least. More or less. Read more
I don't need to tell you how badly the games industry is doing, right? Badly in the sense of a handful of people desperate to continue making millions are laying off workers by the tens of thousands, with a new layoff story seemingly every week, of course. There's money to be found, just not for those putting in the work. With so many out of work, Necrosoft, the studio behind Demonschool, have decided to do their bit to help out by putting together a bundle of almost 150 games where the proceeds will go towards the game industry hardship fund. Read more
It feels kind of alarming that Crimson Desert is continuing to put out such regular patches months on from its release. There seems to be something new practically every week! And this week is no different, as another update has arrived in the action RPG that will please the moneygrubs out there. Read more
The Silent Hill series has one of those worlds that I just struggle to conceptually place in a contemporary setting. Sure, that'll partially be down to when the original four games were released, but seeing a faux iPhone in The Short Message just felt wrong to me. So I'm quite pleased by the fact that Silent Hill: Townfall is set in the '90s, replacing the games' iconic radio with a portable CRT. And in doing so, its devs were able to use that now nostalgic tech against us, so say the devs themselves. Read more
"Don't even talk to me before I've had my coffee that restores my lost memories!" This is a line I imagine that the general public would oft repeat in the world of Hips N Noses, a cafe management sim/Vampire Survivors-esque roguelike that's set in a world where no one but you can sleep, and everyone's suffering from a touch of amnesia. Read more
Mark Darrah believes an Origins remaster would sell well.
A remake or a remaster?
We're celebrating the upcoming gamescom dev 2026 with a fun community quiz!
Triqlide Studios brings back the retro days.
Jinho Yum discussed the workflow behind the Ornamental Filigree project, explaining how he created the patterns by distorting basic shapes, adjusting the direction and intensity of the curves, and detailing how he made the gemstones.
Ryan Portelli, Founder of Steelkrill Studio, spoke about the creation process behind the psychological horror game, Where Dolls Hang, explaining how he implemented the Mexican folklore and detailing how he blended the psychological elements with the supernatural.
The paranormal with a painterly style? I'm in.
It's inspired by Satoshi Kon's works.
The monsters are weirdly cute.
Whether you want a light haze or thick atmospheric fog, Lazy3D's add-on makes it easy to create the look you want.
The solo developer behind Don't Lose Aggro discusses redesigning MMO tanking for a single-player roguelite, creating readable threat systems, building AI companions, and making one of gaming's most overlooked roles fun and approachable.
A timeless classic.
ninetailedoctopus gave some insight into their approach.
Are you excited for this game?
Drama between the developer and publisher didn't affect the sales, it seems.
HDR10+ Technologies discusses Unreal Engine integration, HDR workflows, display-aware rendering, lighting pipelines, and how HDR10+ GAMING helps preserve artistic intent across compatible displays.
You can get it for $11.20.
Andrew Stokaliuk spoke about how to create a realistic and detailed weapon, explaining how to tessellate the prop, why and how to separate the model into various texture sets, and detailing how to work on each set to achieve an appealing look.
No more changing programs to build your assets.
"Being able to revisit older games and remake them helps Capcom meet that goal."
amsy3d plans to release it for free.
Klayme said the police findings "contained a subtle mistake that changed the course of my life."
Furry Puppet Studio discusses character design, practical creature effects, fabrication workflows, material selection, performance testing, and why physical puppets continue to offer something digital characters cannot replicate.
Matvey Meleshko discussed the workflow behind the Ember Bazaar, talking about how he was inspired by Star Wars, how he created the canopies with Marvelous Designer, and explaining how he made the materials look more realistic.
Top mobile titles grew D2C earnings by 38% in 2025. Explore the platform policy shifts, fee structures, and tooling driving mobile game webshops today.
The dark fantasy PvPvE extraction RPG Mistfall Hunter officially launches tonight with Souls-inspired combat, Arc Raiders-like extraction mechanics, cross-platform multiplayer, new content, and a launch discount.
It also includes butterflies!
It took five years to finish.
"Crush your kids' dreams on Rainbow Road. Launch your spouse into space in Smash Bros."
Explore more of the amazing work from the artists who brought Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender to life.
Check out this week's 80 Level Job Digest for top openings at Naughty Dog, Riot Games, Larian Studios, Owlcat Games, and Mob Entertainment.
Dune Casu, Founder and Creative Director, and Pietro De Grandi, Chief Operating Officer at Funselektor, spoke about over the hill, explaining some of the inspirations behind the game, as well as why they chose the road-trip genre and the multiplayer mode.
"There was a disconnect between the attention that I was getting and how much money we had."
SouthernShotty will walk you through creating a lightweight Geometry Nodes setup.
It's a new game from the developer of Slopecrashers.
The EverQuest Legends team discusses restoring lost assets, building custom art pipelines, recreating classic spell effects, and preserving the visual identity of one of gaming's most influential MMORPGs.
It looks so smooth.
The artist is also developing a game in a similarly nostalgic, craft-inspired style.
A new neat demo for Psych Rift.
Animation Production Coordinator Wilton Lander shared an insighful look at the shot he got to animate himself.
Reverse: 1999's Live2D tech is having its moment.
Beautiful art style.
Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Dell Technologies, Hugging Face, and others signed the letter.
"Everything in gamedev is fake. This is just a little more fake than usual."
"If people want that, I think companies should provide it."
It's another guide by crzyzhaa.
Motoi Okamoto shared his approach to creating a game with a rich narrative.
BlendCap is completely local and offline.
Check out Scarlet Deer Inn's engaging story.
If the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike’s analogue clickers were all about fine-tuning the sensation at the very tips of your mousing fingers, the HyperX Pulsefire Saga is all about adjusting the parts nestled in the rest of your hand. To nowhere near the same extent, granted, but the Saga’s modular components – and the fact that it costs a fraction of what the X2 Superstrike does – make it appealing addition to your wired mouse options. Read more
World of Warcraft studio Blizzard have announced that they've fired a developer after development-only spells were used to insta-kill some Mythic+ dungeon bosses for a party of non-dev adventurers. The studio will also be "taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation", which was unearthed by some combat log sleuths. Read more
Sundays are for sobbingly lifting exactly one boulder from the groaning dreampile that is my backlog. Good news, Vacuity, cpt_freakout and the rest – I'm trying out your precious, precious Troubleshooter game. I hear it's a hundred hours long, so please do not take this as a promise that a write-up is forthcoming. So far my major takeaways are 1) I enjoy collecting masteries, aka packages of abilities and modifiers, and 2) this "Short Break" track is cooool. Please hum along while browsing our latest collection of Rollicking Reads. Read more
I've been vaguely looking forward to grotty dark fantasy RPG The Blood Of Dawnwalker, despite its genAI flirtations. To recap, it casts you as a medieval vampire fledgling whose family has been abducted by another, boss vampire. You've got 30 days and nights to save your loved ones while deciding just how much you're going to succumb to the gore-guzzling curse. Read more
Finally, a Final Fantasy 14 job made specifically for the type of person who likes to dual wield shields in Dark Souls! The latest FF14 fan festival is taking place, and with that has come a suite of announcements, including a reveal at one of the two new jobs coming as part of the next expansion, Evercold. Read more
I don't see Sony going back on their plans to embrace a discless PlayStation future, but I do wonder if they realised just how many of us would continue to talk about it for as long as we have. Even RPS got involved, and us PC lot had to abandon discs a millenia ago! And now Sega, former physical media producers themselves, have wandered into the conversation, even throwing a bone to the computer preferring collective that we all are. Read more
Poor Thick as Thieves. When it was revealed over two years ago it had some promise, or at the very least an interesting mechanical premise in that it was a multiplayer immersive sim where everyone would be competing for the same loot. This got downgraded earlier this year ahead of its launch to just solo or co-op play, a real shame but hey ho, how many co-op imsims are there anyway? Sadly, the game has clearly not done well, as a number of layoffs have taken place at developer OtherSide Entertainment following its launch. But at the very least, what's left of the studio has some positive news: it won't become unplayable. Read more
If we ignore the many, many negatives that came with the late 90s/early 2000s era of video marketing, there was a certain charm to the edginess that I kind of wish was still around in some ways. I say that because of a recently revealed immersive action horror shooter named Ringwyrm, that, were it to have released in that era, so easily could have had a tagline like, "The only time you'll be happy you've got Ringwyrm." Alas! Read more
Video game cameras are often a point of contention primarily because a bad one can completely disorient you, or even outright make you feel sick. These are worthwhile things to consider, but I do wish there was more of a discussion around the specific choices that are made in particular camera angles and positions, and how it might actually be important that certain games should be played in the way they are designed. I'm going to throw all of that out of the window right now though and tell you about a Baldur's Gate 3 true third-person camera mod. Read more
I spent most of last Saturday laid out in a Baku hotel room, muscles in both legs ground to flecks of useless meat by the decision to walk down a mountain when there was a perfectly good funicular right there. May this weekend be more fruitful, and less marred by the stupidity of trying to please a step counter that only truly cares about where its next battery charge is coming from. Ruinous silicone bastard. Read more
Available for a limited time with 96% off.
Jimothy inspired many 2D and 3D artists.
Gaggle Studios reveals how they built a party gaming hit and what the game industry can learn from Goose Goose Duck's trajectory.
Loay Shaban used ragdoll dynamics to animate the creature.
Springloaded's James Barnard discusses building Let's Build a Dungeon, a game development simulator that lets players run a studio, build RPGs, create their own games, and explore custom editor tools inspired by real-world development workflows.
The developers of Forsaken Realms: Vahrin's Call discuss building a living fantasy world, designing a classless progression system, creating stylized realism inspired by Fable, and the lessons learned from a decade of indie RPG development.
He wants to fill the gap between indie and AAA games.
Sam Ailura spoke about the workflow behind the Cabin in the Woods project, explaining how she modeled each piece individually to assemble them, how she sculpted stylized props for the first time, and detailing how she managed to make the trees look fluffy and cute.
The developers held a Q&A session and revealed some details about gameplay features.
There are years' worth of unique materials to explore.
Check out the WIP.
Great timing, a year after Riot announced betting sponsorships.
The development team behind Disgaea Mayhem spoke about how they created the game, explaining how they adapted the franchise's mechanics and dynamics in an action RPG, and detailing how they managed to match the in-game models and animations with the character designs and the gameplay.
Tai Le discussed the creation process behind the Stylized Catalonia Town, explaining how he made six initial concepts to define the direction of the environment and detailing how he made architecture kits in small, medium, and large sizes to create the building sections more easily.
DigixArt breaks down Tides of Tomorrow's innovative Story-Link mechanic, explaining how Unreal Engine 5, state machines, Blueprint systems, Houdini pipelines, and asynchronous multiplayer combine to let players directly influence one another's narrative experience.
Are you excited for this game?
It's free.
Milen Piskuliyski will fill your next 26 hours with how to integrate your character into an environment.
It's not AI.
Sweet Hamster Days is a Japanese story sim where you are a hamster cared for by three sisters.
Get the latest version of Nodes Interactive's Blender tool.
OpenAI thinks it's only the beginning.
What do you think about this?
Serge Filin talked about the creation process behind the procedural waterfalls tool for HAWKED, explaining what the purpose of the project was and detailing how he solved the challenge of translating 2D concept art into a dynamic real-time material.
Anastasia Gorban discussed the workflow behind the Crystal Realms project, detailing the material's structure step-by-step, like how to achieve the look of the inside of the crystal using layers, how to get the iridescence in some stones, and how to texture them, adding fine scratches.
Have you played this game?
Daniel Abrams created this stunning setup inspired by the anime The Summer Hikaru Died without AI.
Great toe beans.
The settlement is the largest known copyright recovery in US history.
I already want to know more about the game.
From Sonic Adventure 2 to Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and the upcoming Pico Park collaboration, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka and Pico Park creator Shintaro Shimazu discuss why Sonic has remained one of gaming's most enduring icons for more than three decades.
Vincent Rochette, Creative Director at Fika Productions, talked to us about developing the Unity-powered strategy game Don't Kill Them All, where you manage an army of orcs and temper their brutality to protect resources. He shares how Cult of the Lamb and Into the Breach inspired the game and details the technical work behind its mechanics and hand-drawn 2.5D art style.
It's another impressive work by Rui Huang.
Disney has laid off several hundred employees across its entertainment businesses, with Pixar reportedly bearing the largest impact within the studio division, despite Toy Story 5 approaching $1 billion at the global box office.
Anastasiia Manaeva discussed the workflow behind the Matsuri project, explaining how she studied references of traditional Japanese festival floats to make a believable scene and detailing how she achieved the lively atmosphere without adding people.
Check out how a trailer for Inoxtag's challenge was brought to life.
Luke Penry's Ripple Pro is a ground-up reimagining of the classic modifier as a complete ripple, wake, and rain toolkit.
In our exclusive interview, Cliff Bleszinski reflects on what exactly brought down Boss Key, including the publishing deal that was too favorable.
Would you like to race in an office chair?
Ultima Online lead designer and Star Wars Galaxies creative director, Raph Koster, discusses building Stars Reach, cloud-native MMO technology, persistent worlds, ecosystem simulation, player-driven economies, and why sandbox MMOs are ready for a comeback.
"Honestly, it's all getting worse."
Starlance Studios' cinematic sci-fi RTS + RPG hybrid ZeroSpace has entered Early Access, combining traditional base-building, hero units, branching story decisions, ranked multiplayer, co-op missions, and a persistent Galactic War. Basically, it's StarCraft meets Mass Effect.
Mohamed Baki spoke about how landscape painting has influenced his 3D art, explaining how he paints outdoors, focusing on composition, light values, color, edges, and details, and discussing how he replicates real-life lighting in environment art using ray tracing.
Install editors, automate CI, and drive a running Editor or dev build from the terminal. The Unity CLI and com.unity.pipeline package give scripts and AI agents a fast, structured way to operate Unity.
Riot addressed the backlash over charging for the old-school skins and made them free.
A new video by Jan van den Hemel.
The Bethesda Game Studios director spoke about his future with the studio in a new interview with Jason Schreier.
Marathon's already announced mid-season 2 update is set to arrive next week, bringing with it the shooter's first proper, albeit experimental, PvE mode, Vault Breaker. A new blog post has gone into a bit more detail as to what you can expect with the new update, with a teaser trailer showing off some extra bits, but the biggest bummer is the fact that Vault Breaker will only be around for a short while. Read more
I've never been a football person, so this whole Global Mug thing that's going on at the moment is as important to me as eyelids for a fish. What I have always been is someone who likes platformers, however, even when they're all about that thing they call the beautiful game. And in the case of Kick, it seems that sidescrolling ball dribbling is actually quite delightful. Read more
The idea of another person controlling every action my body takes is one that keeps me awake at night more often than I like to acknowledge to myself. So how about a game all about that! It's called Remote Control, and in it you most titularly remote control human proxies to explore a derelict spaceship and figure out what went wrong on it. Read more
While reports about Microsoft's mass layoffs have painted a devastating picture, the company and affected studios like Doom developers Id Software have been publicly trying to reassure players that the cuts aren't the end of the world. Doom: The Dark Ages director Hugo Martin has stuck to that line while acknowledging the layoffs during on official livestream of the game's Revelations DLC, which came out the same week 136 Id workers were shown the door. Read more
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union and their Canadian offshoot CWA Canada have filed unfair labour practice complaints against Microsoft, accusing the company of having mishandled the recent mass layoffs at Xbox. Read more
Answering concerns that The Sims team may face pressure to reduce support for diversity following the Saudi Arabian-backed buyout of EA, senior character artist Jess Hyland says she's not "heard anything" about such a mandate and, if one were introduced, she "would fight it tooth and nail." Read more
The original Suzerain, a political strategy game presented as a visual novel, cast you in the role of Anton Rayne, the newly elected President of fictional country Sordland. You had to tackle political turmoil as the leader of a country coming out of years of authoritarian rule, while also dealing with an economic crisis, and threats from the powerful nations neighbouring your borders. In the Kingdom of Rizia DLC, you left elected politics behind and, instead, sat in the inherited throne as King Romus Toras. Though your absolute power was tempered by anti-monarchists, breakaway states, and corrupt vassals. The stakes in new DLC Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens are significantly smaller. You are just a journalist, Ilias Moris, the anchor on international news program The Neutral Lens. The decisions you make don't restrict trade in ports, pass laws that limit freedoms, or send citizens to war. Instead you're picking what question to ask in an interview or where to send your reporters for a scoop. But how much impact decisions the press can make on the world is exactly the point. Read more
Following Microsoft's mass layoffs, Bethesda have clearly been told to be a bit more active in communicating exactly what they've got in the works. Cue a big blog post announcing that Fallout 5's in preproduction alongside the studio's main focus, The Elder Scrolls 6, with both being assembled on a version of the Creation engine put together following Starfield's launch. Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters have also been confirmed to be on the way, though with no concrete release dates as of yet. Read more
Sundays are for realising that there's a car in Japan's Super GT racing series this year which is sponsored by horse girl game Umamusume Pretty Derby. Here it is. It's been racing in the GT300 category against, among other cars, a Mercedes sponsored by Hatsune Miku. I'm not sure I like them as much as my all-time favourite GT300 car, the Mooncraft Shiden (I mostly just dig its name), but hey, they exist. I often wonder if their small crews of drivers - Super GT has pilots swap over after a set time behind the wheel - gather at the back of the garages and think about some bloke in the UK writing for a games website. They probably don't. Read more
Which way are you voting in the election? There’s an election coming, could I trouble you to ask which way you’re voting? ELECTION. YOU. VOTING? WHICH WAY? The time to place the great slip of paper into the holy box of ballots is almost nigh, my honoured friend, wherefore will thou be placing thine vote and whom will it be in favour of? There are a lot of ways you can ask someone which way they plan to vote. All of them are awkward. The awkwardness isn’t helped by the fact that, in these situations, you might be standing on a doorstep having just interrupted their dinner or be butting into a chat they were having in the street with someone they actually like. Esoteric Ebb revels in that awkwardness. Read more
It's been almost two months since ZA/UM released their second game Zero Parades: For Dead Spies (and obviously first after years of controversy. Unfortunately for workers at the studio, the game does not appear to have sold well enough, as more than 30 devs are being laid off or are at-risk of being laid off. Read more
Another regular day in Marathon Land. Following on from mass layoffs at Bungie after the final major update for Destiny 2, and ahead of next week's mid-season 2 Marathon patch, the extraction shooter's game director Joe Ziegler has announced that he's left the studio, with Del Chafe III taking over his role. Chafe, up until this point, has served as Marathon's assistant game director. Read more
The Steam Machine is going to sit in an odd place when it arrives. It's technically a PC, but shaped and presented like a console, which is obviously the whole point. But it differs from most traditional consoles in that it won't be coming with any games exclusive to the hardware. That's because for Valve, they want the Steam Machine to be as open as possible. Read more
The Blood of Dawnwalker is, if done well, a game that might not land with everybody. For one, there's the lack of a traditional main story quest, and then there's the fact that you only have 30 in-game days and nights to beat it. Neither are necessarily massively novel, the brilliant Unsighted, for example, also forces a timer upon you, but this is still a notable AAA game taking a risk. This thing likely won't have been cheap to make, and crafting a scenario where not everyone is going to experience the entirety of what it offers, on purpose, is certainly a touch bold at the very least. So it's a good thing its director is happy with people missing things. Read more
It sounds like IO Interactive's take on the world of James Bond in 007 First Light was going to be quite different at first. Where the game as it currently is focuses on just Mr. Bond, once upon a time there was an idea for it to be something of an ensemble cast, where he would have been working with a number of double-O agents across his missions. Spoilers ahead! Read more
What are we all playing this weekend? This weekend is the eye of the wedding storm, a brief reprieve before heading up to Sheffield next week for further nuptials. Though, that doesn't mean I can relax. My body is in a finely tuned state that I can't let slacken with the finish line is in sight. I will, of course, be following my wedding guest training regime. Read more
Try pixtube now.
New changes are arriving as soon as next week.
Emberville is stacked with secrets and great voice actors.
After 15 years and 170M downloads of Magic Jigsaw Puzzles, ZiMAD's Chief BD Officer shares how to protect player trust and lead through fast change.
If you are afraid of spiders, this might make you feel sympathy for them.
Bethesda Game Studios has shared a roadmap for its biggest franchises, officially confirming Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters while reaffirming that The Elder Scrolls VI remains the studio's primary development focus.
In his first in-depth interview in years, Cliff Bleszinski divulges his deepest and most honest reflection on what exactly killed Boss Key. He discusses the publishing deal that was too favorable, the wrong console choice, and even the co-founder he turned down. And now, he's planning a comeback.
Learn how to visualize volumetric effects with a comprehensive learning video from Reza Sarkamari.
You can purchase it and customize it to your liking.
Check out how samsfacee created the setup.
You can import it into Blender using a free add-on.
It allows fluids, cloth, soft bodies, and granular materials such as sand to interact with each other in a single simulation.
"I haven't even finished a single page of the manuscript yet!"
Cute, melancholic, or eerie, KROMA – Atmosphere Toolkit can adjust the narrative.
You can already get it on Steam!
Max Bedulenko is back with another environment of the Velvet Road world.
Frost Kin is an upcoming survival adventure set in a cold wilderness.
Parent company Oppo is planning a restructuring.
It's aimed at beginner and intermediate game developers.
Joan Pous experimented with rendering to achieve a hand-painted style.
The artist shared many scenes he worked on.
Check out this week’s 80 Level Job Digest for top openings at CD PROJEKT RED, NCSOFT, KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS, Fuse Games, and FROMSOFTWARE.
800,000 players joined Palworld 1.0.
The pastel color is very eye-catching.
SideFX's latest major release is now available, introducing a redesigned interface, powerful procedural tools, and significant updates for artists working across VFX, games, animation, and virtual production.
The developers of Denshattack! discuss building expressive train movement, designing high-speed Tony Hawk-style gameplay, creating a cel-shaded Jet Set vision of Japan, and developing one of gaming's most original concepts.
New Geometry Nodes-powered physics, a Thin Wall mode in Principled BSDF, a Texture Cache system in Cycles, and plenty more.
Lionel Verlinden discussed how he used Sefki Ibrahim's course to create a hyperrealistic real-time character based on a real-life photo, sharing his approach to capturing an Afro hairstyle wrapped in a turban.
"The games industry must change if it is going to create art and franchises that have long term sustainable value."
Get Damage Control and start scattering, smudging, generating, and much more.
Learn more about Viktor Grigorev's project.
Some suspect foul play.
Pupworx's Dice'n'Go will challenge your relationships.
If you enjoyed Subnautica, this game might be for you.
It could be for a horror or action underwater game!
The race is on.
Their reaction is hilarious.
A setup many people would love to have.
See how the director of the Blender short film Dust of the Simulacrum solved wide-angle lens distortion.
Clément Doranlo gave us another sneak peek of Riverskin.
You don't need to know SQL to play!
Michelle Papadopoulos broke down the creation process behind the Livanthian, from the original idea that began a decade ago to the hand-painted techniques she used to texture its wood and leaves.
Coloratura promises an unusual experience that will help you fine-tune your senses.
It reminded me a lot of my childhood.
Tian Jin also shared a process video.
The developers used real-life references.
Kongor Studios' Nick "BreakyCPK" Caras spoke about Heroes of Newerth: Reborn, explaining how they revived the 2010 game, which elements were kept from the original and which ones are new, and shared how the beta phase has been helpful for the development.
You've heard about Microsoft's mass layoffs by now. The last few days have been filled with stories of how these cuts are affecting different studios both still and formerly owned by Xbox, with even Elder Scrolls 6 developers Bethesda not being spared, regardless of that series being one their corporate overlords are determined to squeeze more out of going forwards. Thankfully, those overlords are reciving some pushback, with unionised Bethesda staff planning protest rallies and a modder using their talents to offer players a way of showing solidarity. Read more
We’ve known for ages that the Steam Machine has a similar game compatibility rating system to the Steam Deck, wherein Valve tests games and slaps them with a Verified, Playable, or Unsupported sticker depending on how much they play technical ball. For the first fortnight and change of the Machine’s release, though, the results of these tests haven’t been visible – alongside the Deck verification info – on those games’ Steam store pages. Read more
Aw shucks. That's a bummer. I'm not angry about it, though. Surely this had to happen, just like the execs said it did. I'm paraphrasing quite facetiously, but that is the basic gist of id Software co-founder John Carmack's reaction to the studio cutting 136 workers as part of Microsoft's mass layoffs earlier this week, a devastating blow that leaves the Doom developers facing an uncertain future. Read more
For many decades, sci-fi buffs have debated the exact nature of the "C-beams" mentioned by Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner's legendary "tears in rain" soliloquy. Cutter beams used in construction? Weapon systems? Fey astral phenomena? The beauty of the term is its ambiguity, perhaps. Not any more, though. Now, whenever anybody muses moist-eyedly about the replicant's parting phrase, I can say: "actually, he was referring to the forthcoming space action-RPG C-Beams from Distant Light Games and publishers Hooded Horse, which also takes heavy inspiration from one of my childhood favourite space games - Ambrosia Software's Escape Velocity." Time to die roll the trailer. Read more
Radiator Forever, an "ongoing re-remaster/re-re-release" collection of developer Robert Yang's short and experimental gay games has arrived on Steam, giving it a new home alongside Itch.io. In a blog post about the release, Yang has outlined the complex situation facing adult game creators at the moment, with the likes of last year's business with payment processors and online-focused UK laws are making it a lot tougher for games like Radiator Forever to exist on the most prevalent PC platforms. Read more
Sundays are for waking up before the sun and getting a bike ride in before the tarmac gets hot enough to cook an egg. Any sensible person would skip the bike ride altogether, but I, a nonsensical person, have agreed to a ride across the country at the end of the month and I'm currently not able to manage 40 miles a day, let alone a hundred. So, I have to get them gains. Still, should I get back home unsizzled by this heatwave sun, I can celebrate with a tarmac-fried egg and lazy perusal of some of this week's best gaming (and non-gaming) reads. Read more
Multiplayer crime sandbox and massive money sink GTA Online is getting its first new heist mission in a little while next week, with balaclavas set to be donned on July 14th. The target of this shady op's is the art gallery dubbed the Kortz Center, which you might remember as the setting for that one Merryweather-battling mission with Michael and Trevor in GTA 5's main story. Read more
If you are fond of Nausicaa, Moebius, Andrei Tarkovski, Jeff Vandermeer, Rimworld, FTL: Faster Than Light, fungus, coral, and furiously bright colours in general, you may wish to take an interest in Trailblazers: Into The March - a roguelite colony sim in which you guide a crustaceous landship through a ravishing wilderness. Amongst other things, it is a game in which your vessel's chief fuel source is also a lifeform that has to be kept happy, if you don't want your valiant expedition to end in a cloud of cordyceps spores. Read more
I am just savvy enough with anime and manga to hesitantly observe that there are at least two broad types of "magic girl" story. There are the naive and upbeat ones in which the magic girls sincerely believe all the nonsense they yell about the power of Hope and such, and then there are the ones where magic girling is revealed to be an exploitative racket awash with misogyny and overwork. Read more
Another horrendously hot Saturday, another wedding to go to. I am all in favour of love, but could we please reschedule it to a cooler day in the year? Mercifully this one's a London wedding and it can be reached and returned from on the tube. Though travelling on a hot carriage and not arriving looking like a boiled saveloy pressed into a too-small suit will be a challenge. Read more
Soulframe, the fantasy action-RPG from Warframe creators Digital Extremes, is getting wolf mounts, a Warsongs quest, and a new Vadagar progression path or "Pact" that transforms your "Envoy" character into the lovechild of Soulcalibur's Ivy and Tim Curry's Hexxus from Fern Gully. Unfamiliar with both of those? Think ichor-slathered bone warrior with whipsword. The Vadagar class addition is intriguing because it sees you channelling the powers of the Ode, Soulframe's space-faring, spellsong-controlled enemy faction, who are trying to harvest or corrupt all the world's resources and wildlife. Read more
Digital Extremes's venerable looty-shooty mechabody extravaganza Warframe is finally getting a full second solar system, after a warm-up flashback tour in last year's The Old Peace expansion. The developers have just screened a first look at Tau, home of the game's Sentients faction, during a presentation at Tennocon, the annual Warframe and Soulframe expo. What does Tau harbour? In brief: lots of noir theming. The first of the system's two initial areas is a ringed city, Fornax, whose occupants are plagued by corrupting rain and addicted to a substance called the Bloom. Fornax is home to Brysko, a chain-smoking, trenchcoated "Chimera Warframe" with an inner monologue reminiscent of a Raymond Chandler detective (he's actually voiced by Critical Role's Matt Mercer). Before you read on, seasoned Warframblers, please understand: I am trying to phrase all this in the language of everyday mortals. I'm sure I'm getting all sorts of lore wrong. Read more
It works using Three.js.
Andrew Naicker of Skystone Games has spent 14 years watching the "ship faster, market louder" playbook fail. Here's what he actually builds and what it takes to launch in 2026.
Alexander Sheynin explained how he created the Nitro Express Checks and Balances Skin for Hunt: Showdown 1896, going over the intricate golden details and showing the material setup.
Oleksii Netrebenko, Game Developer at Brinemedia, spoke about the Stunt Paradise 2 sports game, explaining how they redesigned the levels to add more mechanics and dynamics, and discussing the software they used to create the vehicle behavior.
The long-awaited remake has already sold over 2 million copies, set a new Steam record for the Assassin's Creed franchise, and earned strong critical and player reception just days after launch.
It's very satisfying to watch.
Poppy Playtime Game Director Bryce Clark discusses weaponized nostalgia, psychological horror, environmental storytelling, community theory-crafting, and the design philosophy behind Chapter 5: Broken Things.
If you like things with nostalgic vibes, you're going to enjoy this game.
Give TheDuckCow's plug-in a try.
Yarr, ye not be needin' to shell out for the more expensive editions of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced or its day one DLCs if you want to have "the full, complete experience". So developers Ubisoft have said in response to Steam reviews giving the Black Flag remake a thumbs down because it has a bunch of purchasable extras on sale right out of port. Read more
You'll hate it.
Foyezes plans to release it for free.
A new release from Zhenggang Deng.
Follow Mojtaba Rakhshani's instructions to master weapon art.
Such a wonderful concept.
The $3.7 billion deal fell through over Shutterstock's editorial business.
A true sh*tpost gem.
It's one of my dreams.
Check out a new project from Robert Dale Smith.
Download TXTRCast now.
The setup is a test made with a Custom Node.
ShangYu Wang talked to us about the Elden Ring Glintstone Kris project, discussing Maya blockout, ZBrush high-poly sculpting, and texturing in Substance 3D Painterand, and focusing on the challenges of creating convincing crystal materials.
Mohamed Aziz Setti shared the process behind his first Blender project, explaining how he created a stylized 3D electric guitar prop, including modeling, texturing, adding outlines, a liquid material, and more.
ScansFactory's collection includes scenes and props ranging from ancient and fantasy ruins to abandoned urban environments and more.
Xbox says The Elder Scrolls 6 is "coming along well," but reports suggest Bethesda’s long-awaited RPG is still at least two years away from release.
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is cancelling an Avowed sequel and moving Obsidian Entertainment toward a new Fallout project as Xbox restructures around bigger, safer franchises.
Ubisoft discusses rebuilding Black Flag on the latest Anvil engine, modernizing naval gameplay, removing loading screens, and preserving Edward Kenway's beloved pirate adventure for a new generation.
With Overgrown, the team wants to build an open-source guide for creating large-scale animated productions.
The game, titled Ontos, is a mind-bending story set on a repurposed moon hotel.
SideFX Labs' UV Grid Texture COP is now available.
William Faucher's EasyWaterscape is ready to improve your 3D scenes.
Arturo Galván Soler shared with us the process behind creating a stylized 3D elf, discussing sculpting, hand-painted texturing, and animating using Blender, Substance 3D Painter, and Procreate.
Dany Bittel outdid himself.
Ryan King Art will teach you how to create three practical setups.
See how Swayam Sontakke modeled and textured crystal swords inspired by League of Legends' Katarina Du Couteau in this breakdown, where the artist showed us how he dealt with UVs and explained how he made lighting play on the crystal edges.
Halfbrick discusses collaborating with Bluey creator Joe Brumm, translating the show's beloved animation style into gameplay, and building a hand-drawn adventure inspired by the "Dragon" and "Escape" episodes.
Check out a new demo of Slice-AR showcased by Roy Rodenhaeuser.
AutoRemesher is now available.
Cartesian Caramel showed a new stunning setup.
"Games but no games."
We took Hi3D's AI 3D maker platform for a spin to see if it could turn a simple text prompt into a fully assembled, print-ready Space Marine miniature. Here's how the whole process works.
Farrukh Abdur showcases his new summer project.
1,600 workers are saying goodbye to their teams today.
Matteo Constant talked about the Migration project, explaining how he modeled the puffer jacket to define the figure and how he achieved the worn and degraded looks of the clothes with texturing, specifically by using a shader on the jacket.
Sia Ding Shen spoke with us about TCG Card Shop Simulator, explaining the core mechanics, some of the card games that inspired it, and detailing how they built different systems that create a cohesive experience.
Take a behind-the-scenes look at how Framestore and Practice Creations visualized realistic sabre-toothed cats, tiny island elephants, and other extinct animals for the docuseries.
The game has been reaching new heights.
The Pro version features a projection painting workflow for building seamless textures directly from photo references.
You wake up in a crappy flat. Ugh. Time to see what's in the cupboards for breakfast. No cereal. Great. Then, a cacophonous banging at the door. "yOu hAvEn'T fEd mE!" Oh, bollocks. You check your pockets. There's not enough scrap in them to cover your daily rent. Gulp. Bye bye possessions. This, from the sounds of it, is about to become a common experience in Rust, with the survival game's latest update adding in rentable apartments and shops. Read more
Very good World War RTS Company of Heroes 3 is getting a standalone wave defence roguelite spin-off, Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand, in which you have to outlast 12 rounds of attackers while steadily expanding and upgrading a custom battlegroup. It's pitched as a snackable, newbie-friendly version of the big-bellied strategy sim Katharine Castle (RPS in peace) described as "World War II on its summer holiday". It's out in July, supports two-player co-op, and LOOK OUT, MEN, WE HAVE TRAILER INCOMING. Read more
If Feed the Pit were simply a quickfire extraction game about hunting down obscenely wealthy people and chucking them into a ravenous Sarlacc, that'd have been plenty catharsis enough for this age of actual trillionaires. It'd have been solid reaction video fodder for terminally online Marxists, a kind of Hunt: Showdown for the dirtbag left. But Feed the Pit goes further. It's a creepy narrative experience that, after an hour with the game's first act, reminds me a little of Mouthwashing. Read more
As nautical stabbist remake Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced heaves into view of its July 9th release date, it’s already secured one piece of treasure. Namely, a full Steam Deck Verified badge, the highest honour Valve bestows upon games that don’t falter, fumble, or otherwise snap in half when faced with the SteamOS handheld PC. Read more
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is the end of the remake trilogy Square Enix kicked off with, er, Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Though, it looks like than ending might go on a bit longer than you might have anticipated. A cluster of listings in the backend of the Epic Games Store appear to suggest a heap of DLC's planned for Revelation, including a "Story Expansion Pass". Read more
Slay the Spire 2 has received a bunch of potent new cards specifically for co-operative multiplayer. They span all five of the game's classes, from the aloof and stargazing Regent to the venomous and underhand Silent (Silent! My beloved, etc). The update in question is out now via the roguelite deckbuilder's Steam beta branch, and comprises of a new colourless card, two new Regent cards, and three cards apiece for the other four classes. A few other cards have been reworked. All told, it's a great time to have friends who enjoy killing steeples. Read more
Back in 2019, experimental game developer and actual university professor Pippin Barr released a browser game consisting of eight, very silly variations on chess - a flagrant assault on the dignity of a strategy experience whose roots go back a thousand years, which Barr justified as an effort to "allow non-players of chess to get a kick out of the game". Read more
This weekend marks the first wedding of the season (and the first of three in July alone). There will be suiting, there will be booting, and there will be demanding the DJ plays Toxic. Though, I might change up the traditional demand to Robyn in honour of her UK tour. She has several equally inappropriate wedding songs – Call Your Girlfriend, Dancing On My Own, Love Kills. Ah, heck why choose? "Disc Jockey, take the night off, I've made you a list of sad bangers!" Read more
You know what, reader? Sundays are for whatever you goddamn feel like. Go swimming. Get lost in the woods. Take a kintsugi pottery class. Fix a broken appliance. Eat more than one hot dog. Learn Welsh. Smash your kintsugi pottery and take another class to repair it. Rearrange towels. Borrow some sugar. Don’t give it back. Read more
This week brought the news that Sony will stop selling physical PlayStation games at the start of 2028. Not just for their own games, but third-party, too. Here in the world of PC gaming, we've largely been without physical game releases for yonks now, but this move by Sony has stirred up some discussion at RPS. Mainly, is this a big deal or, as ever, a sign of the consoles lazily trudging after the path carved on PC? Read more
Since being founded back in 2017, Summerfall Studios have only managed to put out a couple of games, 2023's Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, and last year's Malys, a devil exercising deckbuilder. Unfortunately for the studio, neither game did amazingly, but according to co-founder and Dragon Age writer David Gaider, the studio is hoping to work on something new still: a heist RPG. Read more
You ever just blink and 10 years of your life have gone by just like that? I wonder if that's how the developers behind Scrap Mechanic feel, given that the survival sandbox game about building fancy machines out of whatever you can get your hands on celebrated its 10th year in early access back in January. That's a long time! So long I don't want to think about it, so instead let's look forwards by about, I don't know, 20 days, as that's when Scrap Mechanic will be launching into 1.0. Read more
How about a two-for-one today? Perhaps something from the RTS tower defence and city builder departments? Oh, and we'll throw in a medieval flavouring too, on the house. With all of that mixed together and wrapped up nicely, you get Bergfriend, a game in which you build medieval castles to your own specifications, and then defend them from rival knights who want to take them from you. Read more
Most Papers Please-likes that I'm aware of tend to all have a throughline in being 2D. That'll for sure be because one, it'll be easier to make and two, most derivative works don't exactly move that far away from their source of inspiration. That isn't so for Dreadwoods Gatekeeper however, an old timey one of those which positions you as a gatekeeper at an outpost where you're all by your lonesome, bar all the travellers and foul that turn up. Also I think there's monsters. Read more
Remember when you were a baby, and someone would cover their face with their hands, thusly disappearing entirely from existence, only to return and scream at you? This is to do with something called object permanence, an idea of understanding that even when you can't see something, it still exists, something that babies genuinely do struggle with. So how about a game that puts this to the test? Enter Object Impermanence, a puzzle game where nothing exists unless you look at it. Read more
Yash Jain talked about the creation process behind the Recreation of my Vacation Footage in Blender project, explaining how he built the terrain using an add-on and discussing how he created the mountain using Gaea.
Lili Brujin spoke about the workflow behind the Evergrove project, explaining how she followed the concept, how she added the mountains to accentuate the main building, and detailing how she used four different materials and RGB masking to texture the houses.
Some of the games on this list cost just $1 or even less.
Masangsoft joins us to discuss the art of preserving legacy online games, balancing modernization with nostalgia, and why classic MMORPGs still have a future in today's game industry.
Entertainment licensing isn't a AAA-only game anymore. Xsolla Agency global IP licensing advisor Mark Caplan discusses how mobile studios are sitting on one of the best growth levers in the industry and most aren't using it. Here's what developers get wrong and how the right partner changes everything.
AION 2 launches globally this September on PC, bringing full 3D flight, aerial combat, faction warfare, deep customization, and more than 200 dungeons to NC’s long-running MMO franchise.
Enjoy the serenity in happeh's work.
This series is intended for intermediate game developers and covers the full pipeline, including asset creation.
June was a big month for Unity games: both 33 Immortals and Zenless Zone Zero hit their full 1.0 releases, Unity sponsored Day of the Devs at Summer Games Fest — featuring world premieres from across the Unity community — and developers showed up in force for Steam Next Fest and the Wholesome Direct. Get the recap in our summary of Made with Unity games for June 2026.Made with Unity at Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest 2026Unity was proud to sponsor Day of the Devs at Summer Game Fest 2026. The Made with Unity games featured include:World premieresLazy River by Mike Boxleiter and teamIthaca by The Pixel HuntSuper Yooka-Laylee Kart by Playtonic GamesFloor Plan: Slap Out Of It! by Turbo ButtonBub by PaperfrogApple Crumble by Happy Broccoli GamesAlso featuredProve You're Human by sunset visitor 斜陽過客The Free Shepherd by Frame InteractiveShot One Fighters by Red Moon Workshop33 Immortals by Thunder LotusScreenbound by Crescent Moon Games, Radical ForgeWishlist these exciting games and more on Steam.Wholesome DirectWholesome Direct 2026 ran earlier this month — always a great showcase for cozy indie games, and plenty were built with Unity. A few to keep on your radar:Froggy Brews — Komodo Range StudioMoomin: Midsummer Madness — Crossbridge Game StudiosTOEM 2 — Something We MadeMoonlight Peaks — Little ChickenCheck out the full lineup on Steam and watch the showcase below.Made with Unity Steam Curator PageBe sure to stay up to date with the latest Unity creations on Steam by checking out our Steam Curator page.Games made with Unity: June 2026Want your next game to be included in our release round-up? Be sure to submit your project.Without further ado, to the best of our abilities, here’s a non-exhaustive list of games made with Unity and launched in June 2026, either into early access or full release. Add to the list by sharing any that you think we missed.ActionZenless Zone Zero, COGNOSPHERE PTE LTD. (June 17)OK👍 Boomer, Pugsy Studios (June 25 – early access)Flux Heroes (枭雄), Funmax (June 24 – early access)33 Immortals, Thunder Lotus (June 10)ULTRA0, PenGame (June 2)Bullet Heaven / Bullet HellTrials Survivors, Angry wisp (June 8 – early access)Sineus Arena Survivors, Sineus Games (June 22)Beats of Fury, Bubble Head Games (June 10)Wanted Shadows: Unchained, Conradical Games (June 8)Astral Lords, Dark Dimension (June 5)Backpack Raiders, WollemGames (June 3)Cards, dice, and deckbuildersTrading Card Inspector, Daydream Gallery (June 6)Witch's Apocalyptic Journey, MeowAlive (June 5)Far Mining, LostVolBytes (June 4)Casual, rhythm, and partyNAMAKORIUM, PolyScape Inc. (May 18)Glisynth, Team Charlotte (June 26 – early access)Cozy Mining, tatsumaki games (June 26)Pixel Empires, PiqFocus Interactive (June 25)Aura Farming, Fropy Studio (June 24)Cheese Stack, Allegory Team (June 16)Melody's Escape 2, Icetesy (June 12)Slice the Crops!, Wobblers Games (June 12)Puni the Florist, Earthquack Games (June 8)SeekOut, Nightroot Interactive (June 8 – early access)IncreKnight, SUPERita (June 3)Cheater's Table, Lagari (June 2 – early access)Chef Knight, Clover Bite (June 1)City and colony builderGlimvale: My Mini Overworld, Milkshake Games (June 17)Into the Depths, SmelJey (June 10)ComedyBurglin' Gnomes, Fobri (June 10)Burger Bots Inc., Nomogames (June 17)Pay 2 Win: The World is Mine, Patriots Division (June 4)The Greatest Penguin Heist of All Time, That Fish, That Other Fish (June 3)Experimental/surrealistTitanium Court, AP Thompson, Fellow Traveller (April 23)Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity, Sam Atlas (January 16)NIDANA, lvl374 (July 28)ExplorationFish & Hike, Sleepwalking Potatoes (June 8 – early access)A Kobold Story: Trenchoat Adventurer, Crystal Spider Games (June 4)FPSThe Last Salvage Squad, Sunfish Kumano (June 17)Killer Bean, Killer Bean Studios LLC (June 8 – early access)HorrorTales Beyond The Tomb - No Witnesses, 616 GAMES (June 19)Dawn Bell, USAGI STORE (June 23)The seven days i spent with you, RErevue_studio (June 17)There's Nothing Down There, Tim Trankle (June 4)The Victor Initiative, Spacepiano Games (June 1)Management and automationIcaria, Bindsight Games LLC (June 16)Code, Solve, Revolt!, Joyful Jo (June 26 – early access)Till Midnight, Take Me Out!, StaccWars (June 26)Slots & Diapers, Parodie Games (June 3)MetroidvaniaMaseylia: Echoes of the Past, Sol Brothers (June 19)Voltage High Society, Platonic Partnership (June 23)The Witches of Arkana, MechWolf Productions (June 15)Narrative and mysteryLetter Lost, FlatNine Games (June 10)Omen Exitio: Hunger, Tiny Bull Studios (June 25)Crushed In Time, Draw Me A Pixel (June 10)Tavern Talk Stories: Dreamwalker, Gentle Troll Entertainment (June 9)67 Minutes in Heaven, One Flow Man (June 6)PlatformerDeer & Boy, Lifeline Games (June 23)Gastova: The Witches of Arkana, MechWolf Productions (June 15)Frog Sqwad, Panic Stations (June 11)Hold Your King, Next Big Game Studio (June 10)Puzzle adventureSwan Song, Business Goose Studios (June 4)NAMCO LEGENDARY Mountains, BeXide Inc. (June 24)Dimhaven - The Lost Source, Zadbox Entertainment (June 23)For the Fish in the Bottle, makina game (June 1)Lost in Art: A Miniature Realm, Archaic Game Studio (June 1)Roguelike/liteOnce a Pawn a King, Clover Bite (June 25)Runeveil, dicehit (June 23 – early access)The Gate Must Stand, Senmu Studio (June 18)SWAPMEAT, One More Game (June 17)Lost Castle 2, Hunter Studio (June 11)Apocalypse Express, Llamaware Studios (June 10)Once Upon a Dungeon - Infinity, Koto Games (June 3)BARDA: Backpack Roguelike, Mudita Games (June 2)RPGEterspire, Stonehollow Workshop (June 4)Fortune Fragments, Runoi Games (June 24)Tales of Seikyu, ACE Entertainment (June 11)Bloob's Adventure Idle, Bloobs_Dev (June 1)Sister Ray, The Growing Stones (June 1)SandboxParalives, Paralives Studio, Alex Massé and team (May 25 – early access)Outbound, Square Glade Games (May 11)Pandora's Toybox, BetaLab (May 14)Plentiful, GabberGames (May 5 – early access)SimulationThank You For Your Application, IceLemonTea Studio (June 19)Lawn Care Simulator, Moonlighter Games (June 25)Plant Nursery Simulator, Robot Assembly (June 22)Cozy Cleaner, IceLemonTea Studio (June 22)Bakso Simulator 2, Akhir Pekan Studio (June 18)Airport Security Sucks!, JakeHub, Metater (June 11)Kebab Chefs! - Restaurant Simulator, Biotech Gameworks (June 11)Gacha Capsule Shop Simulator - Akihabara, UGC90 (June 8 – early access)Ice Cream Simulator, AM Playhouse (June 5)Sports Card Shop Simulator, OverPowered Team (June 4 – early access)The Brewline, Alcora Games (June 4)Battleship Command, Bracer (June 2 – early access)Campsite Hustle! - Management Simulator, Red Shore Games (June 2 – early access)My Garage, Viking Game Studio (June 2)My Little Cafe Nightmare, SethMadDev (June 2)Arcane Merchant, Findie Studios (June 1)Gaming Burnout Treatment Center, Wave Games (June 1)Sports and racing4PGP, 株式会社3goo, Vision Reelle (June 10)Tilt It! Golf, Kautki Cave (June 15)Exo Rally Championship, Exbleative (June 7)Slip & Skid, NHOGS Interactive (June 3)Hobby Horse, Games Incubator (June 2)StrategyWool at the Gates, Okay Creature (June 10)Orb of Creation, MarpleGames (June 23)Match! The 12 CZ Wars, CorvusCorax Studio (June 12)Tabletop Tavern, TJ (June 11)GEODE, PhD (June 1)SurvivalDon't Sleep With The Fishes, Taiki (June 26)Space Bross, Lavega Games (June 2)That’s a wrap for June 2026. Want more Made with Unity and community news as it happens? Don’t forget to follow us on social media: Bluesky, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitch.
The artist explained how they kept the animation seamless at UV edges.
Check out Florenaux's new work.
It's a nice and cheap effect.
Follow Juan Carlos CR's process behind this project.
After Sony announced that physical disc production for new PlayStation games will end soon, a new petition is asking the company to keep disc-based releases alive as concerns grow around digital ownership, legacy storefronts, and game preservation.
Flora Yu spoke about her contribution to the Sky: Children of the Light game, detailing how she uses environment design to communicate with players and explaining how she creates emotional and atmospheric spaces with lighting and color balance.
Kristiyan Borisov discussed the workflow behind the Glorp creature, explaining how this project allowed him to practice creating skin and folds, how he modeled the creature, integrating all of its features, and detailing how he solved the skin-collision problems.
It definitely has the iconic essence of the character.
The ofrenda looks very detailed.
polygoniq's humaniq offers 119 humans, 16 items, and 2 crowd generator presets.
If you miss video stores, check out this cool web app.
Jesse Pitela tests new Niagara Fluids.
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that new PlayStation games will be released only digitally starting in January 2028, while PlayStation Store access on PS3 and PS Vita will begin shutting down across select markets this year.
80 Level invites you to dive into the dark strategy of <a class="anchor_edefb8 anchorUnderlineOnHover_edefb8" href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3179730/Deck_of_Haunts/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" title="Deck of Haunts (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3179730/Deck_of_Haunts/)" role="link" tabindex="0">Deck of Haunts – a unique roguelite deckbuilder where you don’t play as the hero, but as the haunted house itself.
You can already add it to your wishlist!
Save $710 on 13 environment and VFX packs.
Karl Aldskogius discussed the workflow behind the Sunset Garden project, explaining how this project allowed them to experiment with different workflows, how they created the stones, and detailing how they achieved the appearance of the wisteria.
Lukáš Gallo shared with us the research he did in collaboration with Bohemia Interactive, explaining how he ran some performance tests on four open-source simplification tools, showing the different results of each one and the situations in which they can be used.
Check out the process videos as well.
*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-(--sticky-padding-top)" dir="auto" data-turn-id="f840a6fa-47f6-4b82-886f-00bb2328303d" data-turn-id-container="f840a6fa-47f6-4b82-886f-00bb2328303d" data-testid="conversation-turn-21" data-turn="user"> It can also be used to generate stripes and other patterns in addition to hair.
An amazing work by Malcolm Hunt.
You can also download the Terk Box case model.
It covers Shader Graph, HLSL, the Particle System, compute shaders, and C#.
Yes, it is exactly how it sounds.
Flavio Kappelhoff, Director of Business Development at GPORTAL, explains how scalable hosting infrastructure, bare metal servers, and global deployment strategies help multiplayer games handle growth and player demand.
Team Clout CEO Max Verehin discussed how ILL uses Unreal Engine 5, body horror, realistic physics, dismemberment, binaural audio, and cinematic pacing to create grounded first-person horror.
Cartesian Caramel is back with a beautiful scene.
The alleged freeze mainly affects deals that were still being negotiated.
This Steam Sale is a huge win for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
See the latest updates and explore the new documentation site.
Quentin Moulinneuf talked to us about recreating J.C. Leyendecker's painting Barking Up the Wrong Turkey in 3D, discussing modeling, painting, and rendering.
JL Mussi joined us to discuss his career as a 3D Artist, explaining how it started, what inspired him to create courses for other artists, and detailing what someone can achieve with the Blender Hard Surface Blueprint course.
Check out this week’s 80 Level Job Digest for top openings at Creative Assembly, Disney Animation, Rockstar Games, Playground Games, Infinity Ward, Square Enix, and Focus Entertainment.
You'll love the mouse.
Framed51's lively character is back.
Years after its troubled launch, Cyberpunk 2077 is seeing one of its strongest Steam surges in recent memory, but it's not because of new content.
Shiva Omidvar has a distinct style.
Have a look at ushika's new piece.
And in some sense it is.
Creative Assembly have announced the first six playable factions for historical strategy bash Total War: Medieval 3, while also sharing a little insight on the process of choosing Total War factions. Of course, the optimal way to select Twarieval 3 factions would be to mock up a grand tournament, where designers adorned with the heraldry of each realm prove their mettle in the jousts, the melee, and the pas d'armes, while rival spymasters contrive to spike their goblets with arsenic. Sadly, I don't think Creative Assembly have the budget to build a jousting arena, and poisonings tend to be frowned upon by HR departments. But they are, at least, letting players vote on 23 other playable factions they're thinking about adding. Online voting: the tiltyard of the modern era. Read more
Urgh. Have you seen memory prices lately? If you somehow haven’t, make sure to look through your fingers, as they are truly terrifying. DDR5 RAM sticks are ungodly expensive, older DDR4's not much better, high VRAM graphics cards are ridiculous, and any PC hardware that includes at least one of these (which is a lot) is suffering ludicrous price hikes in turn. That includes the new Steam Machine, while handheld PCs are being stripped of affordable options, and next-gen, standalone VR headsets are unlikely to do much better. But we’re been here before, right? We made it through the crypto-mining-induced GPU price spikes of 2018, the 2011 hard drive shortages caused by flooding in Thailand, and the pandemic-driven PC surge. Remember the Discord stock alerts? The retailer lotteries? The waiting lines for websites? We can do this. We can weather the storm of new memory price hikes. But we don’t have to do it in silence. We don’t need to damn our enthusiasm for the PCs that play our PC games. There are ways to still upgrade and improve your rig, and its gaming prowess, even with memory prices as ridiculous as they are. Read more
Driven witless by the UK heatwave, I throw open my email inbox and search desperately for videogames about waterfalls, canopies of thick palm leaves, and the sibilant settling of ice in the bellies of the largest, most enduring glaciers. Instead, I am challenged to excavate a world of sand. Hooded Horse and Lantto Games have announced an early access release date for Sandustry, their 2D factory-building game in which resources break down into pixels with individual physics. It's out in early access via Steam, GOG, and the Microsoft Store on August 13th. Please be careful when watching the below trailer. It may absorb whatever body fluids you have left. Read more
Watch out, Steam Machine! One who would claim your throne comes forth from the sun-kissed streets of France. He might have your number, once he's figured out what he's comfortable being called. He's the PC Box from French tech sellers LDLC, and he was originally dubbed the Stim Machine because no parody can be too on the nose. Read more
Stardew Valley creator Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone has released his latest reminder that yes, he's still working on Haunted Chocolatier, the action-RPG and life sim in which you run a sweetshop in a realm of ghosts. This particular blogpost is notable for a mildly agonised aside about the game's recipe book interface, which needs to be "seamless, clear, intuitive, satisfying, aesthetic", in a word, perfect. Read more
Coffee Talk started out as a slice-of-life visual novel casting you as a night-shift barista serving Seattle’s uniquely magical residents, from elves to vampires to succubi, hearing out and advising their whims and woes over steaming cups. Its strength was not just in the individual lines of dialogue spouting from these monsters (affectionate), but also in how those were placed within the context of Magical Seattle: a thread of societal distaste towards interspecies relationships, for example, is held taut through several characters’ arcs, not just in the two characters whose parents explicitly disapprove of them for it. Opinions and arguments towards the ills facing this world are treated with the weight they deserve, acknowledging the fluidity of both public opinion and the problems themselves. Read more
I would like to say this missive is brought to you from a dark, ventilated room where I lay upon a bed of ice packs. However, if all goes according to masochistic plan, I will already have been cycling for a few hours when this goes live. I need to get out of the house and onto the road before the sun's too high in the sky and the tarmac becomes an oven baking me from below. The payoff at the other end? The first BBQ of the summer and, I sincerely hope, a tall glass of chilled water. Read more
Hmm. On the one hand, a Turbulent Thursday. On the other, a Big Mum. We’ve all had Thursdays we could describe as turbulent, so the owner of the 2014 Nissan Fairlady Z who drives with the Neo Limited crew scores a point for relatability. That said, the large mother of the Family Business gang, who as fate would have it also drives a Fairlady Z, scores points for being straightforwardly funky. Both racers’ names are hilarious to me, but in the list of top ten opponent monikers from Tokyo Xtreme Racer, there simply isn’t room for both of them. Read more
Sundays are for hopping over stepping stones across a river. There's a stone missing in the middle. Immediately, a quest decision prompt flashes up before my eyes, offering three choices: turn back in humiliation; attempt the leap and risk perishing in the writhing waters, leaving this week's Sunday Papers unfinished; or pile up smaller stones into a rudimentary foothold – an alteration of the river's flow that will surely lead to calamity miles downstream in the Humber Estuary. Urgency is added by the arrival of swarms of flies. I chickened out and turned back in the end, but not before taking a lovely photo. Anyway, here are some things to read. Read more
Earlier this week, French video game union STJV called for a national industry strike, starting with a picket line held at Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream's physical studio. The union claimed that 115 jobs were at risk of layoffs as part of an "internal reorganisation." Now, based on a report that speaks with some devs that work at Quantic Dream, it sounds like the studio's upcoming Star Wars Eclipse is at risk of cancellation. Read more
Civilization 7 is a big, complicated mess of a game with intricacies so delicate you and I couldn't possibly understand at a glance how or why they were decided upon. So, to shed some light on the design process, Firaxis has put out a big ole post answering a load of community questions digging into things like controversial historic figures, whether there'll be more 20th century era leaders coming in the future, and more besides. Read more
That RAM crisis, huh? Surely it'll end sometime soon. Undoubtedly. We'll all be able to afford technology again, games consoles and computers won't be only for the 1%, and we can laugh about this silly point in history. Sorry, I've just had a note handed to me and, oh, oh no, Lenovo are saying they think that these new astronomically high prices will be the new normal as we enter 2030. Excuse me while I scream into the void for a moment. Read more
I do love me an odd little immersive sim I do. There's just something special about the flexibility in them, so my ears always perk up like a dog hearing the word walkies whenever a new one enters the scene. Today, it's Bloodwoven, the next game from the devs behind Blood West (guess they like blood a lot), with a logline that has immediately drawn me in: "survive and thrive in a world built upon the frozen corpse of a forgotten god." Chills! Read more
The thing about Citizen Sleeper is that I wish there was more of it. Not literally, necessarily, I'd never want that world to be exhausted of its setting, and my imagination is stronger than any threequel or otherwise. Still, I'd like to play more of it because its inventive approach to digitising tabletop RPG design still feels fresh now. Thankfully, more and more games inspired by its structure are popping up, like Joy Malignant, another dice-based RPG where every choice you make affects how people see you. Read more
div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> Miris built an interactive WebXR car configurator that streams HDR-grade material fidelity to desktop browsers, tablets, and headsets like Apple Vision Pro, all from a single 1.2GB source asset with no cloud GPU allocated per viewer. Here's how they did it and what it means for the future of interactive 3D.
A simple add-on that adds collision-aware behavior to finger bones.
80 Level and PQube invite you to explore the charming world of <a class="anchor_edefb8 anchorUnderlineOnHover_edefb8" href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3840230/Adorable_Adventures/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" title="Adorable Adventures (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3840230/Adorable_Adventures/)" role="link" tabindex="0">Adorable Adventures – a heartwarming exploration game where you play as Boris, a curious baby boar searching for his family after a forest fire.
He was trying to make the site more balanced.
Players have more to watch, play, and scroll through than ever. They have less time to give any of it. Lexi Sydow explains why that gap is the real battleground for every game in 2026.
I can definitely imagine the iconic sailor there.
Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders are now open, and early reports suggest demand may already be historic, with retailers warning of console stock pressure ahead of Rockstar’s November 2026 launch.
It's another amazing project by Daniel Novillo.
See how Morgane Muller created diversity in the 3D vegetation for a savannah on an alien island in this breakdown, where she talks about various plants and their texturing.
We caught up with Crema to discuss Temtem: Pioneers' blend of creature collection, survival crafting, and real-time combat, its solo and co-op experience, and the biggest technical and creative challenges behind the development.
Learn how Thin Wall mode works for rendering translucent surfaces and how to create a creepy frosted-glass effect with it.
The film was created using Maya and Houdini.
Hotaru Kuro hand-keyed the transformation.
Mike-Amir El Frangi shared some behind-the-scenes of the character.
I love it, but some might hate it.
You can try the different stylized city themes it has.
Sony Interactive Entertainment confirmed major layoffs at Bungie, affecting most of the Destiny team, some Marathon developers, and supporting SIE teams, following Destiny 2’s final live-service content update.
Gábor Meggyesi discussed the workflow behind the Cursed Knight project, explaining how he modeled the armor, spear, and other details like bells, chains, and buckles, and detailing how he used the hair to show the character's story.
Pauline Ferrand spoke about the creation process behind the Urban Street project, detailing how she made the tileable textures by using a big to medium detail rule, and explaining how she used Vertex Color to add color variation to the plants.
Part of ARTnGAME's Sky Master ULTIMATE.
Spot the anomalies in The Queen's Gondola's world, inspired by Victorian and Art Nouveau styles.
Shining Isle Productions discussed the advantages of a real-time pipeline, developing a customizable real-time NPR shader, and achieving big results on an independent budget.
It has very impressive details.
Artists at Playground Games shared their creations for the game.
Scaling mobile games has changed. User acquisition (UA) is no longer about finding players who convert quickly, and it hasn’t been for some time. To drive incremental scale, today’s UA campaigns need to focus on acquiring the right players who generate long-term lifetime value (LTV) or risk their sustainability.To meet this need, Unity Ads powered by Unity Vector has expanded its optimization capabilities with the D28 IAP ROAS optimizer.For studios and publishers running UA campaigns on Unity Ads, this adds a new optimization window and expands targeting capabilities. D28 IAP ROAS campaigns help advertisers acquire users with higher retention and stronger long-term value by optimizing for return on ad spend (ROAS) over a 28-day post-install period.But this new capability raises important strategic questions - do D28 campaigns make D7 campaigns obsolete? Will they cannibalize each other's performance? Which campaign type should you prioritize?The answer: Prioritize and run both.TL;DR:D7 and D28 IAP ROAS campaigns capture different player cohorts.D7 optimization provides rapid campaign validation and early revenue signals.D28 optimization captures players with longer monetization curves, who make up over 60% of high-value spenders.Unity Vector uses first-party gameplay data to simultaneously optimize both windows without bidding against yourself.The benefits and costs of D7 and D28 IAP ROAS campaignsA quick primer. IAP ROAS (in-app purchase return on ad spend) optimizers use machine learning to predict which users are most likely to make purchases in your game. These optimizers dynamically adjust bids to acquire high-value players while aiming to meet your target ROAS. The "D7" or "D28" refers to the optimization window, or how far into the player's journey the model predicts the player will generate revenue.Each campaign type has its unique strengths and blindspots. D7 and D28 IAP ROAS campaigns aren't competing strategies, but complementary systems designed to capture different player cohorts.Effective UA can determine which games just survive and which thrive, and both campaign types help games realize revenue potential and sustain long-term viability. The most effective UA strategies treat D7 and D28 as complementary optimization windows rather than a trade-off: D7 provides the velocity to scale quickly by optimizing for early IAP revenue and supplying signals to Unity Vector, while D28 provides greater IAP revenue through longer cohorts. By running both, UA managers are more likely to capture an improved performance throughout the entire value curveHow Unity’s D28 IAP ROAS optimizer prevents D7 cannibalizationThe question remains that if both campaign types bid on impressions in the same inventory, won’t they compete against each other and drive up costs?Unity's analysis of D28 converters reveals that only 38%* of users who convert with in-app purchases by D28 spend in the first week. In other words, roughly two-thirds of high-value D28 spenders showed no early IAP conversion signals whatsoever.These aren’t players who nearly converted on D7 but needed a few more days. They’re a different player cohort with different motivations, engagement patterns, and conversion triggers.This is where Unity Vector's support is vital. Traditional optimization models can only see what happens after a user installs: Did they convert? How much did they spend? Unity Vector enables Unity IAP ROAS optimizers to see something more.Because Unity powers both game creation and user growth, Unity Vector has unique visibility into player behavior and patterns.Unity Vector combines holistic player and game intelligence to understand why certain players match with certain games, and when they're likely to convert. It uses both attributed data and unattributed data, like cross-game behavioral patterns and aggregate cohort insights, to distinguish between these player types at the moment of bid decision.The future of ROAS optimization with Unity VectorWhen UA efficiency increasingly plays a large role in which games succeed and which fail, leaving only 38% of IAP converters addressed isn't viable. And without the early converters of D7 campaigns, optimizers have less signals and businesses have less to invest in their late-game campaigns.Both are necessary. And with Unity Vector powering both optimization windows, these Unity Ads campaign types can deliver better results as the model learns from Unity's place at the intersection of game creation and growth.The architectural decision to optimize for holistic player and game intelligence means Unity Vector's optimization capabilities improve alongside games as they evolve and player behaviors shift - allowing Unity Vector to provide later LTV predictions as the market demands increasingly longer optimization windows. Ultimately, this ensures Unity is able to help creators build games that players love to play, and turn those games into profitable, sustainable businesses.Ready to expand your optimization strategy? Get started.*Source: Internal Unity data, D7 IAP/D28 IAP Comparative Analysis, April 2024 - February 2025
It's being developed by two brothers.
Yasuhiro Nishiyama, a former SEGA game developer and producer and the founder of Get Wrapped Up, spoke with us about the auto battler genre and the studio's upcoming deck-building strategy game SANGOKUSHI BOND, set in the legendary world of the Three Kingdoms.
Saber Interactive’s Stuntman: Hollywood puts players behind the wheel of iconic Universal vehicles, blending precision driving, cinematic chaos, and arcade-style stunt challenges across franchises like Fast & Furious, Knight Rider, Back to the Future, and Miami Vice.
Check out Ivailo Ivanov's new work.
The unique designs will fit perfectly in an environment with a retro-futuristic aesthetic.
Support for NVIDIA hardware is also on the way.
We spoke with Jonathan Wai about the differences between animation and live-action VFX lighting, balancing artistic quality and render efficiency in feature animation, the projection-based hologram lighting workflow for Transformers One, and career advice.
Valve says rising component costs made its original Steam Machine pricing goal “no longer viable,” while arguing that selling hardware at a loss would go against the open nature of PC gaming.
"I think it would be strategic to come to terms with where this is heading."
If you ever wanted to fix journalism, this game is for you.
After playing Star Wars: Galactic Racer at SGF, it is clear Fuse Games is not simply reviving Star Wars racing nostalgia, but building a fast, aggressive, story-driven arcade racer with real character inspired by Burnout.
Also made in Blender.
Download Rytelier's shader and give it a try.
Absolute piracy.
It might, for starters, permit publishers to withdraw from a development contract.
Heather Geiger discussed the workflow behind the Fantasy Ruins Forest environment, talking about what the goals of this project were, explaining how she sculpted the trees under certain parameters, and detailing how she assembled the landscape.
Romain Lemaire spoke about the creation process behind the LadyBug material, explaining how he started the project, how he created the shape of the insect, and discussing how he used Substance 3D SDF to make the material.
Its art style remains iconic.
I'd love to go for a walk there.
Germans Alekseikovs, the CEO and Technical Director of Argentum Studio, joined us to talk about creating the short film The Cradle, discussing how the team used Unreal Engine 5 and custom tools, including a proprietary hair rendering system, drawing inspiration from Zdzisław Beksiński's works, and crafted a surreal, cinematic world.
Sahil Banik is back with another impressive rig.
The character's animation started from mocap and was further refined.
Lotus Design also unveiled the shader setup.
Fantastic work.
PUBG: Battlegrounds – aka Plunkbat – is getting generative AI team mates in the shape of PUBG Ally Duo, which is available now in beta. The new functionality uses Nvidia tech to simulate "autonomous game characters that use AI to perceive, plan, and take action within their environment". They also have speech models so that they can do bantz. Read more
Slay the Spire 2 has received a major update that adds Steam Workshop support for mods alongside a proper monster bestiary for the Compendium. It also introduces a new boss, Aeonglass, in place of the much-berated Doormaker. These are pretty juicy changes, and yet, the most intriguing part of the patch is a deceptively dry question of disobedient mathematics. Read more
Obsidian Entertainment, developers of The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed, have been sued in California for allegedly engaging "in a systematic pattern of wage and hour violations". The case was initially filed in the Superior Court of Orange County by plaintiff Victoria Turner in the latter half of 2025, with Turner accusing Obsidian of - among other things - failure to pay minimum and overtime wage or provide lunch and rest breaks. Obsidian filed a response in March denying "each and every allegation" in Turner's compaint and asking to have the case thrown out. Read more
Billionaires rarely make for very interesting fabulists - they have people for that sort of thing - but in their obsession with securing a legacy, they do necessarily spend a lot of time in the realm of make-believe. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the shape of luxury apocalypse bunkers, all of them perfect settings for horror games. Read more
Saturdays are for realising that there are ASMR playlists for Frictional's Amnesia games. ASMR playlists, for games that make use of subliminal crackling noises to suggest mounting delirium, and Shepard tones to create the impression that a life-saving generator is always just about to run out of fuel. What on earth is wrong with you people? And why can't I stop listening to the Rebirth one? What is it about the sound of a thousand ghoul talons raking a blackboard that goes so well with a bowl of Shreddies? It is too late for me, I fear. Here's what the rest of the team are up to. Read more
Sundays are for sitting by a window in your pants eating cold pasta, as a game of football meanders through its grassy paces on a screen not too far away. Light curtains drawn in an attempt to eliminate any chance for people in the street below to catch a glimpse of your boxers, time slows to a crawl. You're never not moving, but at least in this moment you're being afforded that chance to move slowly. Life never stops, but it does at least occasionally allow the odd evening in cruise control. You're snapped out of your trance by a flurry of activity on the screen. A decision has been made. One team flap around voicing their unhappiness. The referee ushers them away so the ball can be placed and the spot kick taken. The taker steps up. On the back of his shirt, instead of a name, you see a question. Read more
Despite being a dad game, a pseudo-genre that has its fair share of problems in the way it depicts father-child relationships, Pragmata generally seemed to approach all of this fairly well. The consensus seems to be that space man Hugh was genuinely kind of a nice guy, and that his relationship with Diana was actually quite sweet. But as it turns out, the game's lead devs had to get a bit of a helping hand in writing Diana specifically, resulting in a group of women coming in to help as part of the "Diana Police." Read more
Back in March, a report emerged claiming that Sony no longer had plans to release the likes of Ghost of Yōtei and other such singleplayer-only games on PC. Sony are yet to explicitly confirm that this is the case, but it certainly seems like that is the case based on their annual business environment and strategy report for PlayStation. Oh, but it does mention how they plan to use AI, so. Yay. Read more
I think despite the mess that was the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, it wouldn't be right to say that CD Projekt Red's reputation was completely tarnished. It is still a game with a lot of cultural relevancy, and nobody can shut up about The Witcher 3 to such a degree that it's even getting a brand new expansion more than 10 years after the last one came out. Even still, it doesn't sound like joint CEO Michał Nowakowski is entirely convinced that the studio has managed to complete its redemption arc. Read more
It's been a while since there's been a new Ultima! Just about eight years, in fact, and it wasn't even called Ultima (it was Underworld Ascendant, which we didn't review back in the day). Such is the case with many series' that are over 40 years old, they just don't have quite the same steam as they used to. But then earlier this week, it appeared that EA (who have long owned the rights to the series) filed a couple of new trademarks for Ultima this week. And following this, it appears series' creator Richard "Lord British" Garriot is trying to get the copyright back. Read more
Many of you young'uns might hear the term Y2K and think of a vague, all encompassing descriptor of 2000s aesthetics, but us older folk think of it as this apocalyptic event that never came to be at the turn of the new millennium. Because the world didn't end, many thought that it was just a load of hogwash. In reality, there was a genuine computer bug that could have ruined important infrastructure worldwide if it hadn't been fixed leading up to the year 2000. All this to say, here's MonCraft 199X, a Pokemon-esque survival game where Y2K really did happen. Read more
Storefront rearchitecture and redesign, more personalization, patch notes, and more are coming.
It uses real topology.
Face rig fully animatable with DMC, example animation sequences created by professional animators at Epic Games, and more.
Absolutely unplayable if true.
Show your best creative work and take part in a community-driven showcase where talent gets recognized. This competition is supported by Natsura and Houdini, giving participants access to industry-standard creative tools. Submit your favorite piece and let the audience decide which entries stand out the most.
Developers and industry experts react to Epic’s State of Unreal announcements, from UE 5.8 and UE6 to MCP, AI-assisted workflows, Verse, and the future of Blueprints.
It has a lot of options for you to create a game that you like.
It's another creation made by Fox 福克斯.
"We've introduced more ways to monetize, opening up new genres and helping developers with smaller, engaged communities."
It makes me want to touch it.
Juhwan Jeon discussed the Persian Female Warrior project, a real-time Unreal Engine 5 character combining ancient Persian costume design with modern ornamentation, and whether AI belongs in the production pipeline.
BGEN Picker allows you to build custom animation pickers with visual controls, custom shapes, sliders, scripting, and more, simplifying the animation of complex characters.
Zephyr Zhou showed us the work done for the Vernal Prayer project, explained how the girl was made delicate and emotionally expressive, and shared a look at the process behind the pearly earrings.
Pre-orders start in June.
You can choose your tools, commands, and shortcuts more easily.
It allows you to control the pixel density.
Epic Games has shared its vision for Unreal Engine 6, outlining plans to unify Unreal Engine and UEFN and eventually deprecate Blueprints.
It reached 50,000 wishlists after a week of announcement.
You can download it for free.
New additions also include the MetaHuman Animator Markerless Motion Capture plug-in, open-sourcing of core MetaHuman libraries under MIT, and other improvements.
Astral Hearts shared a quick tutorial.
Lore is optimized for projects that combine code with large binary assets.
Chess and cats, two of my favorite things in life.
Alien: Isolation 2 developers discussed how the sequel evolves the original’s stalking Xenomorph gameplay with outdoor spaces, hostile weather, Unreal Engine 5, and dynamic audio.
Neon Giant showcased No Law during State of Unreal, revealing how UE5 technologies like Nanite, Lumen, MegaLights, and Mass Framework are powering its densely detailed cyberpunk city.
It's another amazing character made by Rina Smorodina.
I would love to explore this place.
It's the 65th animated film from Walt Disney Animation Studios.
It should be especially good at eliminating foot sliding and achieving proper ground contact.
We spoke with Divider Studios about their first-person psychological horror, where players exorcise demons by reciting sacred rites through a microphone, and explored its inspirations, gameplay mechanics, religious themes, and development journey.
We talked to Brocap Studio about creating their atmospheric game Hubert, a story from the perspective of a shepherd dog set in the northern wilderness, covering painterly world design, herding mechanics, and the custom solutions they crafted for the game.
Cast n Play's Co-Founder discusses the company's miniature design pipeline, digital sculpting workflow, print testing process, and the future of tabletop gaming and 3D printing.
If you played pinball in your childhood, you might like this game!
The artist made 220 flowering animation models!
In our interview with the Associate Game Director for Hellraiser: Revival, we discuss how the developers adapted the twisted horror franchise for modern audiences by leveraging Unreal Engine 5.
The game sold 2 million copies in just a week!
Check out this week’s 80 Level Job Digest for top openings at Ofer Rubinstein, ArenaNet, CAPCOM, Electronic Arts, Bloober Team, Supercell, and CD PROJEKT RED.
Jörm absolutely nailed the retro anime aesthetic.
More product placement.
Nick Girnet discussed his atmospheric Serpent Rite: Consecration project, inspired by classical Greek sculptures, and showed us the steps he took to complete the body and the intricate crown.
Darena Georgieva spoke about the workflow behind the Stinger project, explaining how she used cosplayers as a reference to build the armor more efficiently, and detailing how she achieved the teal color with a hand-painted style using highlights, subtle color variations, and dark outlines.
You can download this project.
The white eyes look a little bit disturbing. I love it.
It reminded me of one of my favorite movies.
Daniel Abrams is back with another impressive animation.
Industrial digital twins are entering a new phase.For years, the conversation around digital twins focused primarily on visualization: creating real-time 3D representations of machines, production lines, and industrial systems. But across manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, energy, and industrial automation, the role of the digital twin is starting to shift.The question is no longer simply how realistic the visualization looks. Increasingly, the challenge is how effectively industrial systems connect live machine state, enterprise data, documentation, and operational knowledge into something operators, engineers, and AI systems can actually use.At the same time, two major industry trends are beginning to converge.AI tools are creating demand for structured, grounded operational dataIndustrial organizations are modernizing documentation, lifecycle management, and cybersecurity practices across increasingly connected systemsIn Europe, this shift is partially accelerated by EU Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230. But the underlying operational drivers are global: manufacturers everywhere are dealing with growing system complexity, workforce shortages, rising support costs, and pressure to make industrial knowledge more accessible and maintainable over the full lifecycle of the machine.That convergence is the focus of our new two-part e-book series developed in partnership with author Thomas Strigl, CEO of realvirtual.io. Why this matters nowMany industrial AI discussions still focus on future autonomy. But for most integrators and OEMs, the more immediate opportunity is far more practical:Faster fault diagnosisBetter operator supportEasier access to machine knowledgeReduced dependence on specialist expertiseMore scalable remote supportStructured lifecycle documentationLower integration overhead between systemsThe architecture required to support these operational improvements also happens to create the foundation for grounded industrial AI.That overlap is important.The same structured documentation, component metadata, and machine context prepared for maintainability and lifecycle support can also serve as grounding material for AI systems later. Rather than treating AI as a separate initiative, the e-books argue that many organizations are already building parts of the required foundation — whether they realize it or not.Part 1: Beyond the digital twinThe first e-book, From Visualization to Action: Unity, Machine Information Systems, AI Agents, and the Industrial Digital Twin, explores how digital twins are evolving from visualization environments into what we describe as Machine Information Systems (MIS).Instead of functioning as standalone 3D viewers, these systems become operational surfaces where multiple layers converge:Live machine signalsMES and production contextStructured documentationSpatial 3D contextMaintenance and operational historyThe e-book introduces a four-layer architecture that connects these systems together and explains why this model is becoming increasingly relevant for industrial operations globally.Key themes explored in Part 1Why the digital twin is becoming an integration layer, not just a visualization layerHow structured documentation changes the role of industrial HMIsWhy spatial context improves operator efficiency and troubleshootingThe operational case for machine information systemsHow standards such as Asset Administration Shell (AAS) are shaping machine interoperabilityBest practices for building maintainable machine information systemsThe e-book also examines practical architectural patterns emerging from integrator projects today, including Unity-based authoring environments, browser-based runtimes, structured metadata pipelines, and long-term lifecycle versioning strategies.Part 2: The reasoning layerThe second e-book, The Reasoning Layer: LLMs, Agents, and MCP, builds on this foundation by examining one of the biggest challenges facing industrial AI deployments: grounding.A language model without operational context cannot reliably answer questions about a specific machine, fault condition, or production environment. For AI systems to become genuinely useful in industrial settings, they need structured access to:Live machine stateEnterprise and MES contextManufacturer documentationHistorical operational knowledgeThis is where protocols such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) become relevant.The e-book explores how MCP can act as a standardized integration layer between AI systems and industrial infrastructure — exposing machine state, MES information, and documentation through consistent interfaces.Key themes explored in Part 2The “grounding problem” in industrial AIHow MCP fits into industrial architecturesWhy grounded AI is more important than autonomous AIRead-only vs advisory vs action-taking AI agentsThe role of structured documentation in reliable AI outputHow LLMs can reduce integration effort for digital twin projectsWhy standardised interfaces matter for long-term scalabilityRather than presenting AI as a replacement for industrial expertise, the e-books position it as a support layer grounded in authoritative machine information and operational context.The bigger takeawayOne of the central arguments across both e-books is that the digital twin is evolving into something more durable than a visualization product.As the cost of integrating signals, documentation, enterprise systems, and AI interfaces falls, the digital twin increasingly becomes the operational layer where everything else meets.For system integrators and OEMs, that may ultimately be the most important shift:the industrial digital twin is becoming less a standalone deliverable — and more the connective tissue between machines, people, documentation, and AI-driven reasoning.The technologies discussed throughout the series are not speculative. Most are already available today.The bigger question is no longer whether industrial AI will arrive. It is whether organizations are building the structured operational foundation required to use it effectively.Explore the full e-book seriesCheck out the complete two-part series to explore the architectural patterns, implementation approaches, and operational implications in more detail:Part 1: From Visualization to Action: Unity, Machine Information Systems, AI Agents, and the Industrial Digital TwinPart 2: The Reasoning Layer: LLMs, Agents, and MCP
Rayen Bahri's solution automatically generates matching quad topology.
I like a factory simulation that fervently embraces the basic evilness of factory sims, these games about wrapping a smoking, clanking straitjacket around a realm of organic colours and unsuspecting resource deposits. Or in the case of Asema, around the wonders of the interstellar abyss, and whatever life it contains. "You are old, one of many," goeth the blurb. "There may be an infinite amount of your kind in the cosmos, older than stellar dust. But for you, the only space that matters is the one you can silence." Gosh, that's a sentence, isn't it? Up there with "Sins of a Solar Empire" in terms of billowing nihilism. What else have you got to offer, Asema? You say you're replacing our beloved conveyor belts with huge railguns, so as to launch resource packages between factory nodes suspended in a 2D gravitational simulation? Yes, I think the grasping starbarons who read Rock Paper Shotgun would enjoy hearing about this. Read more
I'm not sure I can imagine greater horror than that of the "desktop idle sim". My computer's desktop already fills me with confusion and dismay. It's a mixed media moraine of reaction gifs, rogue ebooks, abandoned drafts, and shortcuts for apps I uninstalled years ago. It is like seeing my life's failure reflected in the compound eye of the fly nibbling on my corpse. And now, you would have me run a small widescreen videogame at the bottom of the view? Madness. A small widescreen videogame about a mage attending mage school? Well, all right then. But give me a few seconds to at least sort by Item Type. Read more
In case you missed the opening night of this year's Summer Geoffs, Like A Dragon/Yakuza devs RGG Studio's Japanese history-hopping crime brawler Stranger Than Heaven got a release date. That was rather overshadowed, however, by the reveal that it'll feature a digitally resurrected version of rapper Tupac Shakur. While not the first deceased face to be confirmed as featuring in the game, that honour went to Japanese actor Bunta Sugawara, Shakur's inclusion naturally raised a lot of eyebrows. RGG boss Masayoshi Yokoyama's now spoken in more depth about the decision to include Tupac's likeness in a game about the origins of the Tojo Clan. Read more
I really should learn to take this stretch of trail a bit more carefully. The one that runs precariously alongside the edge of a lake, dipping and getting muddier right at the point when it’s easiest to gently stumble into the water if you’re not paying enough attention. The one which seems the only passable route around a mountain to the final cabin I’ve yet to visit in this autumnal stretch of Canadian backwoods. I really should be more careful, I lament as my Land Rover sits uselessly slumped on its side under the waves, its engine having drowned a good five minutes ago. Read more
Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster developers Frontier have a new Planet game in development that involves neither zoos nor rollercoasters, a scandalous turn of events. The project features a "completely new setting", in fact, though it'll still be some kind of strategy management game. Read more
Following some instances of Forza Horizon 6 players losing saves and ending up having to start over from scratch, developers Playground Games are starting to roll out fixes. For PC folks, they're advising a check that the latest version of Microsoft Gaming Services is running, as the app is the way PC-centric fixes for the issue are being rolled out. Read more
Sundays are for testing the limits of the hunger for street furniture in your community. Since moving into the new flat, we've been taking things left behind by the previous owner down to the street one-by-one. A lamp here, a side table there, a splash of shelving. So far, everything has been taken by neighbours and passersby. But, after a week of rain where we couldn't take anything out without it getting drenched (and losing any chance of being taken), we've a glut of things to put out. With my sister coming to stay on Monday, it all has to go in one. Will my neighbors be left unable to choose between an office chair, a wobbly step ladder, and yet more shelving? Time will tell. Still, while I sit beside the living room window, watching to see if anyone carries off the loose kitchen cabinet unit, I'll need something to read… Read more
If, like me, you walk through this world forever thinking about Chicken Run, you too may expect at any moment to discover the animal kingdom is actually made up of industrious town-building critters. Though, hopefully they're not looking to attack and tie us up if ever they're rumbled. Especially when the towns they're making look as delightful as those in frog townbuilder Croakwood. I could watch their hustle and bustle all day. The next game from Parkitect developer Texel Raptor, Croakwood puts you in the role of mayor and town planner for a small community of frogs. Hidden under the canopy of leaves and trees surrounding a small pond, the amphibian settlement would be easy to miss as you stroll through their wood. Especially when you consider the frogs themselves are only a few centimeters tall. But there's more going on in this townbuilder than meets the eye, as the developers have been exploring ways to capture the challenge of a demanding management game without introducing the stress and pressure that traditionally comes with them. Read more
Aleksandr Bajev, Marketing Producer at Playrix, recently sat down with the Unity team to discuss how one of the world’s leading mobile gaming companies is leveraging Unity Ads to grow their titles. Watch the video or keep reading to learn how Playrix is utilizing Unity’s suite of growth services to scale Township and drive greater revenue, including with Unity Ads’ D28 IAP ROAS optimizer powered by Unity Vector.Can you please introduce yourself, share a bit about Playrix, and what your role is on the team?Aleksandr Bajev: “My name is Aleksandr Bajev and I'm a Marketing Producer at Playrix. I'm responsible for working with networks like Unity. I work with retargeting and I’m in charge of benchmarks and marketing intelligence.Playrix is a mobile gaming company. We're usually known for our casual titles, such as Fishdom, Gardenscapes, Homescapes, and Township.”How long has Playrix been working with Unity Ads?AB: “Unity and Playrix - we're working together for quite some time. As of today, we're working with the whole suite of Unity marketing offerings.”How has Unity Vector impacted your campaigns, both existing and new?AB: “After the Vector release, we started to see a granular improvement that definitely affected how much we were able to scale with that channel.Maybe the biggest point that was impactful for us was Vector improvement on Google Play. Historically, we're not spending on Android, but starting in the second half of the year, the improvement was so obvious.We scaled very significantly, from basically having very, very limited scale, to now Unity on Google Play is really one of the top channels for us.”What prompted Playrix to test and scale Township with Unity Ads’ D28 IAP ROAS optimizer?AB: “When we had a chance to participate in testing that product together with Unity, we were super excited to do so. And just as advertised, it did work well for us. We saw that type of campaign scaling over time, and we're super happy with the outcomes.”What metrics or feedback did you monitor to ensure your campaigns were performing?AB: “With D28 specifically, we scaled gradually because we understood that the long-term curve would be different. Because retention comes first, we understand that the retention of those users is significantly better, so we'd expect that long-term value would be better. And in the end, we did see that higher CPIs were outshined by better revenue per install over time.Then we just ensured that the curve is stable long-term and started to scale it. And with scaling D28, we monitored and compared it also toward D7.”What results did you see post D28 IAP ROAS optimizer launch?AB: “We saw as we increased the spend on D28 that the performance was significantly better there, our overall spend did increase and we were able to scale D7 plus D28 significantly higher than it was before. So we are happy with the results.We definitely plan to keep both types of campaigns, both types of optimizations. Again, the main result, our scale within our expected performance increased by using D28.Vector is moving towards being a solution, and Unity as a channel being a solution, that is stable and significant in our overall marketing mix.”What aspects of working with Unity’s team did you find most valuable?AB: “Especially when we were testing a new optimization type, the support from the Unity team was super important for us. They initially suggested what kind of geos and titles we could explore first, and that's how I started with Township specifically.It's a very strong team on the partner's side. By trusting them, we really gained the results that we want.”
Crimson Desert. It's basically an everything game at this point, so it's not too suprising that the latest update developers Pearl Abyss have put out takes the Red Pudding further down the road of being a Nintendogs competitor. The number of pets you can tame as you wander around Pywel has been growing gradually since launch and you can now have up to 100 of them. That seems dangerously impractical, but hey, video game. Read more
As with most suits of this nature, the one Nintendo filed against Palworld developer Pocketpair has been going on for a while now. Almost two years, in fact, specifically over infringement of patent rights related to specific mechanics, as opposed to anything like copyright. Nintendo suffered a bit of a loss earlier this year, and now it sounds like the whole thing might only net them what is essentially pocket change (for a billion dollar company, anyway). Read more
Generally when a game gets remade, you'll assume that it'll mostly be the same at least narratively, given how not normal can be with works that are considered uncomfortably sacred. That's certainly what many may have guessed about the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, only those pesky Whispers to get in the way offering some changes here and there. Rebirth continued that here and there, staying the course in other ways, and Revelation will be out next year with an ending you can't change. And according to director Naoki Hamaguchi, that ending has been planned right from the beginning, more or less. Read more
City builders, kind of by definition, tend to be quite large in form. You're constructing an entire city here after all, and all the complications that come with that. So how about a citybuilder that's going for something a bit smaller? Meet Zlin City: Arch Moderna, a city builder designed to look like you're making dioramas, made by scanning actual, physical models, inspired by the real Czech city Ziln. Read more
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that when you think of penguins and video games, Club Penguin is probably the one that comes to mind for you (or the Surf's Up adaptation if you're nasty). There aren't really a lot of games about these flightless birds, and they're normally on the sillier side when there are because penguins are funny little critters. Penguin Colony, the next game from the devs behind Umurangi Generation, doesn't completely abandon that silliness, but it does throw in some cosmic horror and the hubris of man in for good measure. And its first demo certainly sets the stage for an old experience. Read more
Vanillaware might not be a household name to some of you, but it's got a library that hangs up there with the best of them. Odin Sphere, Dragon's Crown, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, all games that I have seen their biggest supports plead for you to play them on sites like Dwitter and Bluesky. Only problem for us lot is that none of them are on PC. Well, most of them, as just this week it was announced that one of their earlier titles Muramasa: The Demon Blade will finally be coming to PC. And, as it seemingly turns out, Vanillaware would like more of their games to be made available on PC… it's just not up to them. Read more
The weather has been an unpredictable mess of downpour and blazing sun this week, but Saturday feels like it could be the turn. Another chance for the sun to yank on the starter cord of summer and get that season's engine thrumming. I simply refuse to have to turn back from another walk around the park because 10 metres from my front door the lovely sunshine is replaced by pelting rain. Read more
Among the worries faced by game developers seeking a publisher is the gamble of a prototype – that is, "a playable build that meaningfully shows what’s good about your game – a proof of concept", in the summary of Suspicious Developments boss Tom Francis. Specifically, Francis says a "prototypable project is one where you can build that in an amount of time you can afford to lose". Few independent devs have bags of time to lose, and there's no guarantee the labour will be rewarded. And yet, many publishers today won't even come to the table unless they can get their hands on a playable slice of a game. At Digital Dragons in Krakow this year, I spoke to people from 11 Bit, Jagex and Bloober Team, together with a couple of independent teams, about the seeming necessity of prototypes and the associated temptation to knock them together using generative AI. Read more
Artist CataRackta shared the work behind the Chimera character, taking us from early sketches to revised versions of the girl with animal parts and discussing the rigging process.
Sega's head of development studios on LiveOps, global growth, and going direct to players.
You can download the file for free!
I want to pet it.
This looks weirdly beautiful. Would you like to play it?
If you like funny games and would like to throw a shoe at someone, this might be for you.
Light and small, this mouse offers precision and control for $59.99.
Maxx Ortiz discussed the Jade Portal project, a stunning environment inspired by Korean Buddhist architecture, with nearly every asset crafted from scratch.
250M Gaussian splats and 6GB of data streamed on demand.
Jacob Bock demonstrated an implementation based on a 1999 paper on cellular automata.
Most studios arrive at the environment art co-development conversation too late, with a brief that's too narrow, and then wonder why the results feel disconnected from the rest of the game. There's a smarter way to structure it — and it starts before you hit capacity.
She looks very badass and cool!
They're beard buddies!
It was inspired by the Studio Ghibli movies.
It sounds weirdly interesting.
Disclaimer: This story features a fictional persona created for illustrative purposes and does not depict a real customer or individual.For years, Daniel had the same problem every training designer runs into eventually:The training worked.But it didn’t stick.Slides explained the process. Videos demonstrated it. PDFs documented every safety step in painstaking detail. Yet new operators still struggled when they stepped onto the factory floor for the first time.Because watching a workflow isn’t the same as experiencing it.Daniel has spent nearly a decade designing training programs for manufacturing teams.He loves the challenge of helping people learn complex processes quickly and safely. Daniel knew interactive training would make a difference. The problem was getting it built.He wasn't a simulation developer, nor did he have a dedicated technical team sitting idle waiting for training requests. Creating interactive experiences often meant competing for engineering resources, working with external vendors, or spending weeks building a business case before anyone could even see a prototype.By the time something was approved, reviewed, revised, and deployed, the process being trained had often evolved.So most ideas never made it past the whiteboard. That changed when Daniel started using Unity Studio to create interactive 3D experiences.8:30 AM: Starting with existing 3D assetsDaniel's morning starts with a message from the operations team.A new packaging line is scheduled to go live next month, and leadership wants operators trained before launch day. The equipment is different from what most employees have used before, and there's pressure to get people up to speed quickly without disrupting production schedules. In the past, Daniel would have started with a series of planning meetings, screenshots from engineering, and a rough storyboard in PowerPoint. It could take weeks before stakeholders had something tangible to react to.Now, he opens Unity Studio in his browser and drags and drops existing 3D assets from the company's CAD data into his workspace.No learning complex CAD software assets between disconnected toolsNo waiting for engineering supportNo special hardware or software setup requiredWithin minutes, the packaging line appears as a fully navigable 3D environment. Instead of asking stakeholders to imagine how the training might work, Daniel can begin building around the actual equipment operators will use on day one. 10:00 AM: Turning procedures into hands-on learningNext, Daniel works on building the training experience itself.As he considers the workflow, he thinks about where new operators typically struggle.It's rarely the routine tasks that cause problems. It's the moments when something unexpected happens: a missed safety check, an equipment fault, or a shutdown procedure performed out of sequence.Those are the situations he wants people to practice before they ever step onto the factory floor.Using Unity Studio, Daniel begins creating guided training scenarios.Operators must:Inspect the safety latch before startupStart the conveyor correctlyRespond to an equipment faultFollow the proper shutdown sequenceRather than describing these procedures in a slide deck, he can build them into an interactive experience.He adds prompts that guide learners through each step. Visual cues draw attention to critical controls. Warnings appear when actions happen out of order.Some scenarios require more than simple instructions.If a learner skips a safety check, Daniel wants the training to flag the mistake. If equipment is shut down incorrectly, he wants operators to understand the consequences before they encounter the situation in the real world.Using Unity Studio's visual scripting tools, he can create these interactions without writing code. Through a visual, node-based workflow, he defines what should happen when learners make specific choices or complete specific tasks.For example:If a learner starts the conveyor before completing the safety check, display a warningIf a fault occurs, guide them through the correct response procedureWhen all required steps are completed correctly, unlock the next stage of the trainingInstead of simply telling operators what to do, Daniel can create opportunities for them to practice decision-making in a safe environmentWhat previously might have required a specialized simulation team is now something Daniel can prototype himself.And because learners are actively interacting with the workflow instead of simply reading about it, the training feels much closer to the real-world environment they'll encounter on day one.For Daniel, that's the goal.Not just delivering information, but helping people build confidence through practice. 12:30 PM: Getting feedback before the budget meetingBefore lunch, Daniel shares a browser link with two subject matter experts (SMEs) from the operations team.The timing matters.Later that afternoon, he has a review scheduled with leadership, and he'd rather uncover issues now than during a formal approval meeting.This is normally where projects start to slow down.In the past, Daniel might have spent weeks gathering requirements and waiting for a prototype before stakeholders had something concrete to react to. Feedback often arrived late, revisions were expensive, and teams found themselves debating how a training experience might work instead of reviewing something tangible.Today is different.Within minutes, both SMEs are exploring the experience from their laptops.As they walk through the workflow, one notices that a safety check is missing before startup. Another points out that operators frequently get confused during an equipment fault and suggests adding additional guidance to that section.Then comes the kind of feedback every training designer knows well:"Can we make that change before the leadership review this afternoon?"A few years ago, that request might have pushed the timeline back days or even weeks.Instead, Daniel updates the training flow while everyone is still on the call.The SMEs refresh their browsers and immediately see the revised experience.No lengthy handoff processNo waiting in a production queueNo trying to explain changes through screenshots and email threadsJust faster iteration, clearer feedback, and greater confidence that the training is heading in the right direction. 2:00 PM: Building confidence across teamsBy the afternoon, Daniel has a working prototype ready for leadership review.And this matters for more than speed alone.In previous projects, leadership reviews often relied on storyboards, screenshots, and lengthy explanations. Stakeholders would ask questions, make assumptions, and occasionally leave with very different interpretations of how the training experience would actually work.This time, everyone is looking at the same thing.Safety leaders explore the startup procedure. Operations managers review the workflow against real-world processes. Training stakeholders experience the module from a learner's perspective.Instead of debating concepts, they're discussing something tangible.That shared understanding helps teams identify issues earlier, align more quickly, and make decisions with greater confidence - before expensive rollout mistakes happen.For Daniel, that's one of the biggest shifts.The conversation is no longer about imagining what an interactive training experience could be. It's about improving something stakeholders can already see, explore, and react to together. 4:00 PM: Getting the training into people’s handsBy the end of the day, Daniel publishes the training experience for pilot teams across multiple regions.The timing is crucial.Operators are scheduled to begin training next week, and leadership wants early feedback before the new packaging line goes live.Because the experience is web-based, there’s no complicated deployment process. Teams can access the training from different locations and devices without waiting for software installations or specialized hardware.For Daniel, that means the conversation can move from planning to learning much sooner.And he knows the work isn't finished.As operators begin using the training, new questions will emerge. Procedures may change. Feedback will inevitably come in. But instead of rebuilding materials from scratch every time something changes, he can update the experience and share revisions quickly.What once felt like a long production cycle now feels much more iterative and agile - allowing training to keep up alongside the real-world processes it's designed to support. When the people closest to the problem can help build the solutionDaniel's story reflects a challenge many training teams face.They understand the learning objectives. They know the outcomes the business needs to achieve and the skills employees need to develop.But turning those ideas into interactive learning experiences has traditionally required specialized workflows, long production cycles, and resources outside their control.Unity Studio helps change that.Instead of relying solely on static materials or waiting for complex development processes to begin, training teams can prototype ideas and put experiences in front of operators sooner.The impact goes beyond creating content faster.That means less guesswork, faster validation, and greater confidence that the training will be effective in the real world, and not just in theory.Most importantly, the people who already understand the business problem can participate directly in building the solution. Because when that happens, training teams stop waiting for someone else to build their ideas. They start testing them, improving them, and putting them into the hands of learners faster. Disclaimer: This story features a fictional persona created for illustrative purposes and does not depict a real customer or individual.
Stanislav Petrushin talked about creating the Abandoned Dacha Environment for Into the Radius 2, explaining how he approached the texturing process in three layers and sharing the challenges of creating environment art for a VR game.
The company is not happy to have its "layoff embargo" broken.
Tyler Wilson's project can be used to lerp between different values in stretched or compressed parts of a mesh.
The character looks very expressive.
The tattoos are my favorite part.
Looks very realistic.
In just two weeks!
Set nearly a century before the films, Saw: Genesis turns the franchise’s iconic traps and moral choices into short, intense online multiplayer matches.
According to an internal employee email from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma obtained by Bloomberg, the company's revenue has declined by "nearly half a billion" dollars during the past five years, while spending over $20 billion.
Check out this beautiful work by José Molfino.
Ideal for set dressing and environment art.
Help your friends explore this wide-open world of Big Walk or make it as hard for them as possible.
A demo is now available!
Serenity Forge and Studio Meadowflower unveiled Vivarium, a hand-illustrated life sim adventure about an endless summer, a tiny terrarium town, and the strange secrets hidden beneath its cozy routines.
It looks so magical and interesting.
I could watch this on a loop.
Are you excited about this game?
Silent Hill: Townfall replaces the franchise's iconic radio with a handheld CRT television that powers exploration, stealth, storytelling, and survival horror gameplay.
New tools for 3D Gaussian Splats, plus updates to character animation, simulation, Copernicus, USD world building, and beyond.
Antonio Milo, Director at SuperBlimp, discussed the workflow behind Captain Itch, a freeloading parasite who moves into your home and refuses to leave, which was part of a campaign for Elanco's Advantage Spot On flea treatment.
The company is changing strategies with its new CEO.
We talked to Alex K. Arabi to learn how he created his Alley of Peace in 3D, what shaders he used to add variety and mood, and how lighting helped him make this nostalgic atmosphere.
It reminds me of oil paintings.
One of the games is taking inspiration from the 80s classics.
The combat style will be more dynamic, and the story will occur in the Purgatory.
We spoke to Ian Galvin about how he created concept art for a spaceship in the Project Hail Mary film, discussing what he considered when designing a spacecraft with no real-world reference, and how it feels to be part of a project of this scale and emotional depth.
And the studio didn't abandon their style for the characters.
A remastered edition of the first game is scheduled for release later this year.
"Become the pilot you were born to be."
The game, previously called "Project Robot," has debuted a new trailer.
It may, as I write this, be summer showcase season. However, you should get ready to wrap up warm. Co-op Viking survivor Valheim's set to get very cold soon, as its 1.0 release brings a final new biome, the Deep North. "A frigid land encased in ice and mystery" this dangerous locale and Valheim 1.0 will arrive on September 9th. Read more
It's hard to conceive of a nastier workplace than Mouthwashing's spaceship - that delirious, foam-clogged labyrinth of cracked sunsets and fire-freshness - but developers Wrong Organ are certainly upping the ante with their new game Carcass Clad. Announced just today, it's a co-op simulation about a tank crew traversing a gutted and unholy city, loosely inspired by the 1939 "Winter War" between Finland and the Soviet Union. Three players must collaborate to operate a dreadful machine, while going up against other dreadful machines covered in squirming and screaming "divine livestock". Each player handles a different part of the tank. The Commander scouts through the periscope, plots routes, and monitors the radio; the Driver looks after steering, fuel consumption, and power allocation; the Gunner aims, shoots and reloads, as fast as they safely can. Amongst other difficulties for international audiences, all the tank controls are labelled in Finnish. Read more
Surprise. the follow-up to Misfits Attic's Duskers is called Duskers 2.0. Get ready for more spooky and strategic scavenging of shipwrecks hovering ominously above planets, this time with the goal of establishing colonies which can give the denizens of a doomed universe a second chance. Read more
Square Enix have announced the third part of their Final Fantasy 7 action RPG remake trilogy. It's called Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, and it's out on all platforms including PC in spring 2027. Yep, there's no wait for a port this time. We get to live out the closing act of Cloud Strife's journey and participate in the associated Discourse at the same time as those console gremlins. The publishers dropped a trailer for Revelation at this year's Summer Game Fest, revealing two additional/returning playable characters - Vincent Valentine and Cid Highwind. They'll join Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, Yuffie and Cait Sith on a mission to avert an apocalyptic Meteor spell and defeat swishy bad boy Sephiroth, who is on the brink of godhood. They'll also jump out of airships a lot, in curious echo of the battle royale genre. Read more
Io Interactive's Hitmanly Bond adventure 007 First Light is getting some DLC, and the DLC involves PIRATES. Specifically, it involves pirate king Bawma, played by singer and actor Lenny Kravitz, who makes a fleeting appearance in the main game. In the upcoming DLC, players will travel to the pirate haven of Aleph to help Bawma out with a mysterious request. What does it involve? Io aren't saying, just yet, but they have published a roadmap for the game's first year of updates. I've hitherto expressed violent objections to the unromantic term "roadmap" in game marketing, but I will let it slide here, because James Bond drives a lot of cars, and presumably consults a map now and then when he isn't dodging bullets. Anyway, let's dig in. Read more
Sundays are for recovering after a late night of trailerblogging and oop, no, wait, there’s another two full-length showcases just this evening. It’s too late for me, readers, but you can save yourselves with some more thoughtful, maybe even calming reads on games and not-games. I bet none of them even have the words "great experience for our players." Read more
Good news, people who suck at getting away with murder in quintessential pandemic lockdown game Among Us. Developers Innersloth have announced a single player detective spin-off, Among Us Story: On Guard, in which you play a spaceship security guy trying to catch an Imposter – possibly, more than one Imposter - before they gut the whole crew. You'll need to prove your own innocence, too. Read more
Saturdays are for lying in bed and resting your sore typing fingers, muttering curses at Geoff Keighley under your breath. They're not particularly mean curses, I quite enjoy covering events like SGF. It's nice having a few hours where game announcements pour forth like bubbling water. Yes, those bubbles can be the ineffable gassing up of marketing hype, but I won't dismiss everything we see as pure cynicism. And besides, as tired as I may be this morning, it's not as bad as the time I worked a week of night shifts covering E3 at PCGamesN. At the end of the week, on the last train home, I fell asleep, thouroughly missed my station and got kicked off at the terminus. With no phone battery and no taxis in the small village, I had to sleep in a park until the next morning when the trains started up again and I could get back to my bed in Bath. Read more
Frogwares' are ready for you to dip your toes into their survival horror game The Sinking City 2. What happens to said toes in those tentacle-filled Lovecraftian waters is your responsibility. As well as a release date – August 18th –, the Ukrainian developers have released the game's first hour as a demo on Steam. You'll step into the waterlogged gumshoes of private investigator Calvin as he searches for his missing lover, Faye, in the city of Arkham, a flooded Massachusetts town overwhelmed by Cthulhu horrors. Our Jeremy played a portion of the game recently and said it might just be "we'll finally have a good Cthulhu game that can stand up to the likes of what Pyramid Head and Nemesis have given genre enthusiasts." Read more
Self-cloning sci-fi strategy game The Alters is getting a DLC expansion in which you terraform the world of the original game, using cryosleep to fast-forward the years, even as your hard-working alternate selves age and wither. Out on 13th July, it's a 20 hour epilogue starring Jan Scientist, one of Jan Dolski's vat-grown doubles, who creates his own workforce of clones while investigating a phenomenon called "the Oasis". Over the course of the expansion, you'll build up a new underground base, populate the volcanic soils with flora and fauna, and contend with the planet's increasing hostility to your efforts. It's not quite clear from the release, but I imagine there's also a moderate risk of being dragged from your cryopod and crucified by a bunch of septuagenarian doppelgangers. Anyway, with useful irony I can't think of any more synonyms for "clone". Here's a trailer. Read more
Here's one I wasn't quite expecting: Silent Hill 2 remake and Cronos: The New Dawn developers Bloober Team are working on a Star Trek game in collaboration with license owners Paramount. As you might imagine, given Bloober's pedigree, it doesn't appear to be a very uplifting Star Trek game. It is not a Star Trek game in which you would expect to have an Earl Grey teaparty on the Holodeck, with Data playing the viola. Called Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, it's a "psychological thriller" set on an uncharted planet that has become a spaceship graveyard. Something with tendrils lurks hereabouts, and it's trying to eat your mind. Read more
In our exclusive interview, Potion Projects and Ninoc Studio discuss the creative vision, hybrid 2D/3D pipeline, choreography workflows, and artistic challenges behind Dungeon Fighter Online's ambitious animated music video for virtual group I-D.
This is great news for indie developers.
The long-requested remake of Resident Evil Code: Veronica is finally real, bringing Claire Redfield's iconic Dreamcast-era adventure into Capcom's modern remake lineup.
It's really satisfying to watch.
ArenaNet has officially announced Guild Wars 3. The long-awaited MMORPG sequel will enter beta in Fall 2027, marking the franchise's first new mainline entry in more than a decade.
I'm not going to lie, I think it looks good.
See the details behind the robot you will need to convince it's not human in sunset visitor 斜陽過客's game.
Square Enix has officially revealed Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third and final chapter of the remake trilogy that began with Remake and continued with Rebirth.
This is the first major project of Paramount in the gaming world.
Unsupported remote infrastructure during an active production can quickly become a security, compliance, and operational problem. As deadlines tighten and remote collaboration remains essential, postproduction teams face increasing pressure to maintain high-performance, secure access to editorial and finishing systems without disrupting artists, editors, or reviewers.HP has officially ended new-customer sales of HP Anyware. According to HP’s Trust Center, the Anyware Trust Center and Trusted Zero Clients reach end of support on October 31, 2026, after which they no longer receive updates or patches; broader HP Anyware support and maintenance continue through October 31, 2029. Teams on multi-year terms may have their own support window with HP.As with any software past its end-of-support date, running HP Anyware outside these support windows can create security and compliance risk - particularly for workflows handling high quality studio and broadcaster content with content-security requirements.This guide explains what the sunset means for 3D development and postproduction workflows, where Parsec fits, and how to plan a low-risk transition without interrupting ongoing productions.What HP Anyware enabledMedia and entertainment teams widely used HP Anyware to centralize graphics-intensive workstations and provide remote access for editorial, VFX, and finishing workflows. Teams often adopted it for support across Windows, Linux, and macOS environments and for deployments requiring centralized infrastructure.You can read more about HP Anyware's end of life announcement and key dates here.Why Parsec is relevant for editorial and finishingParsec originated as low‑latency game streaming technology and now underpins remote post‑production at many studios and facilities.Key characteristics:Low latency and responsivenessSub‑16 ms added latency with GPU‑side encoding.*Up to 4K at 60 fps, with support for 10-bit and 4:4:4 color mode on Windows for color‑critical work.Multi‑monitor support (up to three displays) to replicate suite layouts.Support for professional toolsWacom and similar tablets with pressure and tilt.Precise keyboard and mouse input.Controller support where interactive content is part of the workflow.Media stays on secure storageEncrypted peer‑to‑peer connections stream frames directly from the GPU buffer on the host to the client.Designed so media and project files remain on your infrastructure, not on Parsec’s servers.For postproduction teams, Parsec delivers a workstation-quality remote experience for editors and colorists.Parsec vs. HP Anyware: Key differencesHP Anyware and Parsec both centralize workstations and keep media on secure storage, but the operational experience for editorial teams can differ significantly.Protocol and architectureHP AnywareUses PCoIP pixel remoting from a centralized stack that utilizes CPU. Advanced offloading solutions require additional hardware.Requires components such as Connection Manager, Security Gateway, and often load balancers.ParsecStreams frames peer‑to‑peer (media does not transit Parsec’s infrastructure), using GPU‑side hardware encoding (NVENC, AMF, VideoToolbox).Lightweight application install. Uses a proprietary UDP‑based protocol and a single relay application for scalable enterprise firewall supportAdds sub‑16 ms latency in common creative workflows.Implications in the suiteScrubbing timelines and playing back complex sequences remains responsive.Color grading and finishing operations behave closer to local use.Supports multi‑monitor and multi-user setupsSecurity and complianceParsec for Enterprise is SOC 2 Type II certified and compliant with TPN best-practices, with support for SAML 2.0 SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and audit logging.Encrypted peer-to-peer connections keep media and project files on centralized storage while enabling integration with existing identity, security, and compliance workflows.Unlike a full PCoIP stack, Parsec does not require several separate connection managers or gateways, but makes one lightweight option available for complex enterprise firewall setups.Platform and environment considerationsTwo areas require particular attention when moving from HP Anyware to Parsec:Linux hostsFully air‑gapped environmentsLinux host supportHP Anyware supports Windows, Linux, and macOS as host operating systems.Parsec supports Windows and macOS as hosts, with clients on Windows, macOS, Linux, and web. Linux hosts are not supported today.If your pipeline includes Linux workstations (for example, certain VFX or finishing tools), a typical approach is:Use Parsec for Windows and macOS editorial and finishing machines.Maintain a separate, Linux‑compatible remote solution for the subset of Linux hosts.Air‑gapped and tightly isolated environmentsHP Anyware can be deployed in air‑gapped or tightly controlled environments with no external connectivity.Parsec enables encrypted peer‑to‑peer streaming and firewall protected connections via its High Performance Relay. It is not optimized for fully air‑gapped deployments that cannot allow any external connectivity.Many organizations adopt a hybrid model: Parsec for most critical and performance dependent editorial and review workflows, plus a separate solution for machines that must remain fully isolated or Linux‑only.Parsec for Teams vs. Parsec for EnterpriseWhen planning an HP Anyware migration, postproduction facilities can choose between Parsec for Teams and Parsec for Enterprise.Parsec for TeamsSuitable for small to mid-sized facilities that:Need high-performance remote access for editorial and review workflows.Require straightforward administration and SSO integration.Work with freelancers, external reviewers, or distributed creative teams.Parsec for EnterpriseDesigned for organizations that:Manage larger deployments across multiple sites.Require advanced governance, orchestration, compliance, and automation controls.Need simplified firewall configuration and reduced VPN dependence through its High Performance Relay (HPR).Integrate its remote access infrastructure with existing provisioning systems and SIEM platforms.Both editions share the same core streaming technology. Enterprise adds controls designed for larger-scale deployments and operational governance.A concise migration plan from HP Anyware to ParsecA structured migration helps reduce operational risk and minimize workflow disruption.Step 1: Assess your current deploymentList HP Anyware users, host machines (OS, GPU, location), and use cases.Identify workloads: i.e. editing, grading, conform, QC, review, broadcast operations.Note Linux hosts and any air‑gapped segments.Step 2: Select the appropriate Parsec editionSmall to mid‑sized facility? → Parsec for Teams.Larger, multi‑site, or compliance‑driven environment? → Parsec for Enterprise. Work with Parsec or a partner to map HP Anyware seats to Parsec licenses and prioritize which hosts move first (typically Windows and macOS editorial machines).Step 3: Deploy Parsec on hostsInstall Parsec on Windows or macOS workstations (on‑premises or in the cloud).Configure security policies and validate workflows with pilot users.Step 4: Deploy Parsec on clients, onboard users, and run parallel testsInvite users through the Parsec admin panel.Install Parsec on end-user computers (Windows, macOS, or Linux)Run HP Anyware and Parsec in parallel for a defined period.Ask editors to perform standard tasks in both environments and provide feedback on performance, color, audio, and peripherals.Confirm that access and security controls meet internal standards.Step 5: Decommission duplicate solutions where appropriateRemove unused clients and host components from machines that have migrated.For Linux or fully air‑gapped hosts, maintain a separate solution if required and document that scope clearly.Next stepsWith so many great reasons to use Parsec, now is the time to plan and execute a transition on your own schedule rather than during a production-critical moment.Practical next steps:Identify Windows and macOS workstations that can move first.Decide whether Parsec for Teams or Parsec for Enterprise best aligns with your environment.Run a pilot where editors use Parsec alongside HP Anyware and provide structured feedback.A successful transition is not only about replacing remote access infrastructure. It is about maintaining editorial momentum, reducing workflow interruptions, simplifying remote collaboration, and enabling editors, artists, and reviewers to work together without friction.For many facilities, Parsec also simplifies onboarding for freelancers and external collaborators while reducing infrastructure complexity.When you are ready:Contact sales@parsec.app to discuss your migration plan, orStart a Parsec for Teams trial at parsec.app/signup-teamHP Anyware may be sunsetting, but production schedules, client reviews, and delivery deadlines are not. Parsec helps postproduction teams maintain responsive, secure remote workflows that keep productions moving.* Latency is measured from the client's frame rate and compared against the host's frame rate, under reference conditions (e.g. both machines running atleast 60 fps with recommended network and hardware configurations).
But in a good or bad way?
Restructuring is coming.
Tractive is still actively being developed.
Streamline your workflows by connecting Claude Code, Codex CLI, Meshy AI, Tripo AI, and other AI services directly into Unreal Engine with Nwiro's new Integration Kit.
I feel disturbed, but intrigued.
“Rayman Legends Retold is our way of revisiting what makes Rayman so special, and re‑telling that experience for a new generation of players.”
Headware Games discusses Hollowbody's retro-inspired art pipeline, PS2-era visual constraints, Unity-based development, atmospheric lighting workflows, and the challenges of building a modern survival horror game as a solo developer.
This year's event is backed by a powerhouse roster of industry leaders, offering a combined $45,000 in cash and prizes across five distinct categories.
It's a mix of cooking simulation with light RPG progression.
It's 1996, and you play as Simon Ordell, a man arriving on the Scottish island of St. Amelia and encountering a town lying quiet beneath a heavy fog.
The remake of the original Tomb Raider features expanded environments and modernized gameplay.
Oscar Sanz, Senior Technical Artist at CD Projekt Red, has written a blog post.
Juan Hernández is back with another incredible creature.
Ikumi Nakamura, the Creative Director, worked on Okami at Capcom, The Evil Within, and Ghostwire: Tokyo.
Are you excited for this game?
The Temtem: Swarm team breaks down how they designed a scalable, data-driven ability framework capable of supporting more than 250 techniques through modular stat systems, layered perk architecture, and flexible scripting pipelines.
Voicemod discusses on-device NPU-powered voice processing, privacy-first design, and why customizable voices may soon become as important to digital identity as avatars, skins, and usernames.
Ludeo's new Indie Program allows developers to turn creator gameplay clips into instantly playable game experiences, offering marketing grants, creator partnerships, and up to $50,000 in campaign support.
Denis Rychkov's NukeRef lets you stay in one place.
CozyBlanket Pro is designed for UV unwrapping, GPU-based packing, texture baking, and other optimization tasks.
Jettelly is selling it at a lower price.
Henry Kelly, CEO & Founder, joined us to talk about his experience in the 3D art world, explaining some of the projects he has worked on, and discussing the inspirations, mechanics, and development process of the survival game Airlock.
Would you like to be a Guardian that hunts vampires, zombies, demons, and other creatures?
It glows beautifully!
What kind of characters do you imagine in this setting?
Supported by the Endless Foundation, the new GGJ Micro-Missions pilot will connect indie studios with aspiring developers through paid art, audio, and QA projects designed to provide production support, portfolio-building opportunities, and real-world industry experience.
After months of rumors and insider reports, Santa Monica Studio finally announced God of War Laufey and it looks absolutely spectacular in its 20-minute gameplay presentation debut.
"No tracking, no subscriptions, no funny business."
It keeps the viewport responsive and interactive while letting artists see the final result in real-time.
After 2.1, the developers will shift the focus to long-term support.
Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered devs joined us to discuss some of the challenges they faced while revisiting the early-2000s original and detailed how they worked on assets and environments from the original game.
Surface Forge creator ArghanionsPuzzlebox explains how to recreate Crimson Desert-inspired POM silhouettes, self-shadowing, UV rotation fixes, and production-ready displacement workflows in Unreal Engine 5.
PUBG STUDIOS’ Gi Hwan Park and Starbreeze Entertainment’s Tobias Remmers discussed how the teams adapted PAYDAY’s co-op heist gameplay, class roles, stealth systems, AI, and mission structure into PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS.
It looks like it holds mysterious magic.
What do you think her story is? Do you imagine her as a villain or a hero?
A lot happened in games in the month of May: hotly anticipated life sim Paralives officially entered early access, ZA/UM launched ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies to critical acclaim, and Steam officially recognized Bullet Heaven as its own distinct game genre. Get the full recap in our summary of Made with Unity games for May 2026. Award-winning Unity games: May 2026Looking at this month’s game awards ceremonies, Unity developers were well-represented around the world. gamescom LATAM – BIG Festival Awards 2026 Is This Seat Taken? by Poti Poti Studio (Best Casual Game)Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth by Hyper Games (Best Art)Goodnight Universe by Nice Dream (Innovation)A Rat’s Quest: The Way Back Home by The Dreamerians (Best Game: Latin America)WHAT THE CLASH? by Triband (Best Mobile Game)Jolly Match: First MR Match-3 Puzzles by (Best XR/VR Game)I Don’t Want To Be A Good Woman by We Remember (BIG Impact)Tavern Keeper by Greenheart Games (Best New Game)Pavs Game Awards 2026We were excited to see Unity titles winning seven of the nine total prizes at the 2026 New Zealand’s Pavs Game Awards, including: Total Chaos by Trigger Happy Interactive (Slice of Heaven: Grand Prize) Beyond These Stars by Balancing Monkey Games Limited (The Accessible Ambrosia: Excellence in Accessibility) Toroa: Skycall by Atawhai Interactive (The Diverse Delight: Excellence in Representation)Beyond These Stars by Balancing Monkey Games Limited (The Perfect Slice: Excellence in Design) Rollick N’ Roll by Crayonix Games (The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art) Teeto by Eat Pant Games (The Composed Segment: Excellence in Audio) The Drifter by Powerhoof (The Guest Plate: Excellence in Games from Across the Ditch [Australia])Nordic Game Awards 2026Discounty by Crinkle Cut Games (Best Debut)LEGO® Voyagers by Light Brick Studio (Best Fun For Everyone)Made with Unity Steam Curator PageBe sure to stay up to date with the latest Unity creations on Steam by checking out our Steam Curator page.Games made with Unity: May 2026Want your next game to be included in our release round-up? Be sure to submit your project.Without further ado, to the best of our abilities, here’s a non-exhaustive list of games made with Unity and launched in May 2026, either into early access or full release. Add to the list by sharing any that you think we missed.ActionHUNTDOWN: OVERTIME, Easy Trigger Games, Coffee Stain Publishing (May 7 – early access)CYBERMATRIX, Tim Murich (May 29)Bounty Brawl, Nanuq (May 28)Blueblood Arena, Team Blueblood (May 15 – early access)Stitchlings, Studio Woolworks (May 12)Alien Strike: Blasting the Intruders, Combo Game Studio (May 7)Bullet Heaven / Bullet HellEnter the Chronosphere, Effort Star (May 26 – early access)SCAD, NAISU (May 28)Shikhondo: Blue Pieta, DeerFarm (May 18)Duriano, Adisoft Gaming Co., Ltd. (May 12)Cards, dice, and deckbuildersGamble With Your Friends, TEAM GYWF (May 1)Cardburners, GrosChevaux (May 28)All About Luck, Flow Universe (May 28)Black Jacket, Mi'pu'mi Games GmbH (May 12)Rainbow Legends, Unipixel Cloud Cedar Studio (May 6)Handmancers, 58BLADES (May 5 – early access)Islantiles, Thunderrock Innovations (May 4)Prime Monster, Cavalier Game Studios (May 4)Die in the Dungeon, ATICO (May 1)Casual, rhythm, and partyNAMAKORIUM, PolyScape Inc. (May 18)Dancing Line, Cheetah Technology Corporation Limited, Dancing Line Team (May 31)Scale the Depths, Glass Gecko Games (May 28)TBH: Task Bar Hero, Nugem Studio, Tesseract Studio (May 27)Kernelbay, Nexent Games (May 13)Boardwalk Builders, Studio Primitive (May 11)Greenhearth Necromancer, Silverstring Media Inc. (May 11)Meow My Crop!, Nocturnal Games (May 5)Midnight Ramen Shop, SilentKeep (May 5)WITHOUT A HITCH, Codename Entertainment Inc. (May 5)Gamble With Your Friends, Team GWYF (May 1)STAB!, mightyraccoon! Studios (May 1)City and colony builderLife Below, Megapop (May 26)Nova Patria, Sower Interactive (May 14)Amberspire, Lunar Division (May 6)Cube Kingdoms, GamingPugsStudios (May 1 – early access)ComedyScary Game 2: The Mad Shepherd, KanGames (May 8)In My Bubble •°, Juicy House, Jungle Game Lab (February 5)YAPYAP, Maison Bap (February 3)Pie in the Sky, Monster Shop Games (February 2)Experimental/surrealistTitanium Court, AP Thompson, Fellow Traveller (April 23)Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity, Sam Atlas (January 16)NIDANA, lvl374 (July 28)ExplorationROVA, FreeRangeDevs (May 8 – early access)Whisper of the Swallows, Blown Leaves (January 29 – early access)Super Chipflake Ü: Quest for the Uncooked Schnitzel, SalsaShark Studios (January 24)Cozy Caravan, 5 Lives Studios (January 8)FPSGravelord, Fatbot Games, s.r.o. (May 21)No More Demon, Mundus Games (May 25 – early access)FLAW, Plasmeo (May 12 – early access)Deadlucre, Koneworks (May 8)HorrorMidnight Special, Scared Stupid Inc (May 21)Dread Fields, Podoba Interactive (May 28)Psalm 2, Notex, a1esska, N4bA (May 21)Unanswered, WhiteRoot Studio (May 15)Creepy Tale: Snow Child, Creepy Brothers (May 14)追曙, 悄语灯 (May 11)Red Door Yellow Door, Burnout Industries UG (May 8 – early access)ARSONATE, Nash (May 6)Not My Hand, BeetleGame (May 2)MATRESHKA, Megame LLC (May 1)Management and automationGamestonk Simulator: Gone Rogue, simsum (May 21)Astrobuilder, wastudio (May 25 – early access)MetroidvaniaAugment Anthem, Project Ego (May 15)Shattered Divinities, 星魂游戏 (May 14)Narrative and mysteryControl, I'm Not Coming Back, Desborde Games (May 29)Schrödinger's Call, Acrobatic Chirimenjako (May 27)Coffee Talk Tokyo, Chorus Worldwide Games, Toge Productions (May 21)Luna's Room, DonutDroid (May 14)CaseCracker 3, Blackrobe (May 13)Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery, Nobody Crown (May 13)NOOK FALL: West Town, Narratruth Games (May 11)CD-ROM, monoclelord (May 9)PlatformerBubsy 4D, Fabraz, Atari (May 22)Blueberry, MELLOW Games (May 28)Touhou Yukkuri Mountain, Bexide Inc. (May 27)JUMP KING QUEST, Nexile (May 25)The Melty Way, G Doublé (May 15)Dragon Hop, Dustrider Studios (May 11)Koloboke: Sickness Simulator, Megame LLC (May 1)Puzzle adventureYerba Buena, Mad About Pandas, Focus Entertainment (May 26)Do You Even Forklift?, Garage 5 (May 28)Secrets of Velendar Castle - Escape Room, Biri Biri (May 28)Schrödinger's Cat Burglar, Abandoned Sheep (May 21)The Guardian of Nature, Inlusio Interactive (May 21)Walk the Frog, Walk the Frog (May 21)Alchemist: Journey of the Soul, OnSkull Games (May 21)Noun Town Language Learning, SUPER HYPER MEGA (May 20)Phonopolis, Amanita Design (May 20)Membrillo Hid My Socks, Footnote Games (May 19)Panthalassa, Meia Calça (May 17)Whirlight: No Time To Trip, imaginary lab (May 14)Luna's Room, DonutDroid (May 14)Život Není Krásný: Poslední Exekuce, ZNK Studio (May 13)Roguelike/liteEverything is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelite, Odd Dreams Digital (May 8)Into the Slimy Mines, Ant Workshop Ltd (May 29)Realm of Ink, Leap Studio (May 26)Mad King Redemption, Studio (May 14 – early access)Corebreaker, aQuadiun (May 8 – early access)FROGGY HATES SNOW, CRYING BRICK (May 7)Vehicle No. 4, indiejoh (May 5)Rogue Voltage, Horizont Computergrafik (May 1)Gambonanza, Blukulélé (May 1)RPGZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, ZA/UM (May 21)STARDUST: Wish of Witch, Kniv Studio Co., Ltd. (May 28)The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, Coin Drop Games, Lucas Immanuel, jucobee, Kyle Chuang (May 28)Ova Magica, ClaudiaTheDev, Skinny Frog (May 26)Sea Walker Saga, Antelus Games (May 14 – early access)The Siege of Jeomdo, Studio Hip Sword (May 10)Never Second In Rome, Alessandro Roberti (May 5)SandboxParalives, Paralives Studio, Alex Massé and team (May 25 – early access)Outbound, Square Glade Games (May 11)Pandora's Toybox, BetaLab (May 14)Plentiful, GabberGames (May 5 – early access)SimulationFarm to Table, indieGiant (May 9)Alien Market Simulator, Silly Sloth Studios, Kheddo Entertainment (May 29)Airport Baggage Simulator, Three River Games (3RG) (May 28)Tabletop Game Shop Simulator, Ludogram, Night Fever Games (May 28)Budgie's Bug Shop, Moon Lagoon (May 25)Blind Box Shop Simulator, NovaraGames (May 22)Tropical Resort Simulator (Paradise Beach Simulator), Beardroid Games (May 21)Moonshiner Simulator, Goosix Games (May 20 – early access)Food Processing Simulator, Bewolba Studios (May 14)Cheap Car Repair: Welcome to Nowhere, Little Dog Games (May 11)Ice Cream Simulator: Prologue, AM Playhouse (May 8)Forage Wizard, Lost Maxim (May 5)Game Saloon Simulator, Gnome Games (May 4)Sports and racingCrashout Crew, Aggro Crab (May 28)XF Extreme Formula, Feperd Games (May 26)Global Football, Giovanni Marin, Carlos Eduardo Fernandes, Guilherme Souza, Vinicius Marchesini de Oliveira (May 15 – early access)Kilfur, My Little Computer Friends (May 14)Super Night Riders S1, miyu.works (May 11)StrategyRogue Command, Fenneq (May 14)Feywood Wanderers, Vicente Miranda (May 28)Statecraft: Corrupted Democracy, Engincan Çiçek (May 26)TOHOTOPIA, Remilia Command (May 14 – early access)Relic Arena, Double Edge Games (May 7)Wardrum, Mopeful Games (May 7)Ash & Adam's Existential Treads, Ash & Adam's Games (May 4)GladiEATers, MilkBubblesGames (May 1 – early access)SurvivalIridio, KR Games (May 14)MAZEBOUND: Hunt, Gather, Run!, Absam Studios (May 13)That’s a wrap for May 2026. Want more Made with Unity and community news as it happens? Don’t forget to follow us on social media: Bluesky, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitch.
But the battle isn't over yet.
Years after launch, Wigmund is still being called a hidden gem by some players.
Quentin Dupieux didn't have much of anything but imagination.
I wonder if enough thought has been put into where a game gets made. There is surely a special quality in other art forms like film where you might be whisked away to another country, or in theatre where you construct a world on a stage. Games mostly get made in office buildings, which isn't particularly magical sounding. What about a remote Japanese mountain village? Well, this is exactly what Yoshio Nishimura did, a former Capcom and Vanillaware devs with 30 years of experience. Enter stage left: Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle. Read more
There are plenty of philosophical critiques to be had of The Witness (and its creator at large), but there was something still quite appealing about the idea of a world harbouring puzzles in unexpected places. Thankfully, there's a new one of those on the way that can knock The Witness off of its podium called Red Frame, a time manipulation game set in a buried mansion where if you can see something that might look like a red frame, you're certain to find a puzzle. Read more
Last year, more than 30 Rockstar Games staff members were fired in an act of alleged union busting by the GTA 6 developer. Rockstar claimed that this firing was because said devs were leaking features from upcoming games. Following this, the UK's IWGB filed legal claims against the studio due to them supposedly refusing to negotiate over firings, a case which continues on to this day. Now, Rockstar devs have gone public with their union, calling themselves the Rockstar IWGB Game Workers Union. Read more
Before I tell you about the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era early access roadmap, I fear I must finally have a tantrum about the terrible word, "roadmap". Videogame developers, I cannot think of a more flattening, soul-sapping way to describe the process of tinkering with the clockwork of make-believe. In this case, Unfrozen are planning to add a persistent netherworld to their strategy RPG, stretching beneath every mountain and valley. They are also even now convening a Thieves Guild for surveillance purposes, and breeding unspecified monsters as powerful as lich dragons. If I were going to summarise all that, I would toy with words like Cornucopia or Manifestation or Eruption or Blight. I would go rooting around in the Epic of Gilgamesh for a line that sounds vaguely like a hotfix. Roadmap? You are cultivating a fantasy, Unfrozen, not paving one over. From now on, the only game developers who are allowed to use the word "roadmap" are people who are making games about actual infrastructure. Anyway, let's dig into the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era early access cornucopia. Read more
A Californian bill backed by the Stop Killing Games campaign, which would see publishers shutting down servers for online games forced to provide full refunds or a version of the game players can keep on playing independently of said servers as part of the process, has hopped another hurdle. It's passed a full vote in California's State Assembly, paving the way for it to head to the state's senate as it inches closer to becoming a fully enacted law despite opposition from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). Read more
The Witcher 4 is the work of over twice as many CD Projekt developers as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the company's executives have revealed. That's approximately as many people as worked on Cyberpunk 2077, although naturally, the figure excludes a lot of external or infrequent contributors, such as voice actors. Read more
If you have been hankering for a new scifi singleplayer real-time strategy game - specifically, one in which the charm of your human protagonist is inversely proportional to the quality of the mechs - spare a few moments for ZeroSpace. A collaboration between Starlance Studios and Ironward, it puts you in charge of a galactic "Protectorate" army made up of units from various species or factions, and invites you to splattergun swarms of grumpy arachnids, while navigating "through political turmoil in the Orion sector". It's out in early access on 20th July. Read more
Helldivers 2 has a new update that aims to improve the extraction shooter's performance, a source of some woe lately among Super Earth's democracy-managers. It introduces support for upscalers – specifically, FSR 3.1.5 (with FSR 4.0.3 for certain GPUs), DLSS 4.5 and XeSS 3.0 - together with variable rate shading and dynamic resolution scaling. Read more
Sundays are for stumbling upon a ruined church, squirrelled away among the hawthorns behind a currently active church in the neighbourhood. I was flabbergasted – I've walked past that churchyard a thousand times without noticing. In this case, I just happened to take a different route around the cemetery. The old church is roofless and barred, but I managed to thrust my phone through a grill and take pictures of a peaked mausoleum, squat in the middle of the transept crossing, together with the coruscating beehive thumbed into the arch of one window. Magic. Anyway, here are some articles about mostly videogames. Read more
I fired up the launch patch notes for Io Interactive's 007 First Light hoping to find some rich material for James Bond quips. You know, like when James Bond beheads a villain with a skillet, then says something like "I always suspected you were… small fry." Or when James Bond murders somebody during an egg-and-spoon race, then says "You're cracking me up, my dear sir." Alas, developers Io Interactive have let me down. The game's first hotfix is a bunch of routine but important-sounding fixes for various crash bugs. For example, it fixes a crash that occurs during a cutscene where Bond and Moneypenny enter an elevator. "Elevator crash bug" – what am I supposed to do with that? Hang on, do elevators also crash??? I need to stop using those things. Read more
The impact of generative AI upon PC gaming has proven controversial, which is my balanced journalist way of saying it’s been horrible. Players are widely repulsed by genAI material, developers and even some publishers are increasingly wary of its temptations, and in a rush to build the requisite infrastructure, component shortages have ravaged the hardware market. Nonetheless, EVE Online devs Fenris Creations – formerly CCP Games – have become dead keen on robot brains, and what they might be might be able to think up for EVE itself. Earlier this month, a newly independent Fenris announced a "research partnership" with Google DeepMind, the search giant’s AI research division, that would see DeepMind take a minority stake in the company while training its AI agents on a separate, offline version of the longstanding space MMO. Days later, Fenris CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson sat onstage with DeepMind co-founder Adrian Bolton at the annual EVE FanFest conference to discuss the partnership, in a presentation that left the concrete plans of what it means for EVE still broadly vague – yet seemingly against the run of wider sentiment, escaped any significant backlash from the game’s historically outspoken playerbase. Read more
You're A Scalper, Aren't You? is a collectible card shop management sim dedicated to punishing the terrible, awful, no-good people who buy up popular or hard-to-find cards, and sell them on at massively inflated prices. Certainly, it's one of the more vengeful job sims I've encountered lately. Think Papers, Please, but instead of weaselling out subversives, you're putting the squeeze on folks who are trying to make a killing from Pokémon's Prismatic Evolution packs. Read more
This weekend, I’m going to a not particularly good football stadium to watch assorted famous people play not particularly good football. No, not the average [team you don’t like] match, but Soccer Aid. Why isn’t there a Games Aid, huh? Oh, there is. And they do great work, from the looks of it. Maybe one day we’ll use our own games-playing powers for good, but for now, it's just the following: Read more
007 First Light is built on the bones of IO Interactive’s Hitman, and makes no effort to hide that fact. But it’s far from just Agent 47 in a wig and doing his best posh English boarding school accent. The section that properly convinced me of this, ironically, is when First Light gets closest to resembling one of Hitman’s murder sandboxes. Read more
You can recognize Tomasz Woźniakowski's style right away.
Komikaze by Rahul Parihar is now 25% off.
Get ready for pure warehouse madness in <a class="anchor_edefb8 anchorUnderlineOnHover_edefb8" href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3172570/Extreme_Forklifting_3/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" title="Extreme Forklifting 3 (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3172570/Extreme_Forklifting_3/)" role="link" tabindex="0">Extreme Forklifting 3 – a physics-based forklift simulator where every delivery becomes a challenge. Balance oversized cargo, survive absurd obstacles, and try not to flip everything over while mastering increasingly chaotic tasks.
Jarred Everson shared a glimpse of his latest work.
Room 8 Group has appointed Juanita Draude as CEO, marking a new phase of growth for the external game development partner as it focuses on integrated, technology-driven production.
The artist shared a really detailed breakdown.
It's a game from the developers of Quern, and it feels like there are some heavy Myst and Riven vibes.
Xbox has delayed Playground Games' highly anticipated Fable reboot to February 2027, extending development time for one of the company's most important first-party RPGs.
Just days after Amazon unveiled three AI-assisted animated series through its new GenAI Creators' Fund, filmmaker Jorge R. Gutierrez appears to be distancing himself from the initiative.
The creators of Cinemachine discuss how Black Eye 2.0 aims to unify gameplay, cinematic, and virtual production camera workflows inside Unreal Engine.
"Use AI as a tool, but do not use AI as the final word on anything creative. That's where I draw the line."
The animated feature is a Mexican dark fantasy horror musical filmed under the guidance of Guillermo del Toro.
Tiebreakers features intense and fast combat and hand-drawn 2D animation.
Thousands of combinations are possible with over 100 sliders to fine-tune all traits, custom texture slots, and more features coming in future updates.
Watch the breakdown and hear from Untold Studios' Senior VFX Supervisor Chris Ritvo about how it all came together.
Newzoo's April 2026 rankings are in, with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, PRAGMATA, and NBA 2K26 among the highlights.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has officially been unveiled by Activision and Infinity Ward, with early reactions praising the return to grounded military storytelling.
If you like action games with emotional storylines, you will probably enjoy this game.
Yacht Club Games discusses the retro-inspired design philosophy behind Mina the Hollower, including the Game Boy Color-era artistic constraints and the challenges of building the studio’s most ambitious project yet.
Léopold Herlaud shared the workflow behind the Sea Dragon's Lodge, explaining how he created modular pieces to organize the scene more easily and discussing how he achieved the subtle wind animation.
Jorge R. Gutierrez is a surprising name among the GenAI Creators' Fund producers.
The artist drew inspiration from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
It kind of explains why horses sleep on their feet.
It allows you to extract motion directly from a real reference and use it as a foundation for your animation work.
This massive price increase was unexpected, and it makes you wonder just how expensive the Steam Machine will end up being.
Some games that inspired the creation of Deer & Boy are Planet of Lana, Limbo, and Neva.
Would you like to see these characters in a fantasy video game?
Nwiro AI Pro integrates directly into Unreal Engine 5, allowing developers to generate Blueprints, PCG systems, environments, C++ classes, and more using natural language prompts.
Aleksander Stepanov's work earned fourth place in our Showcase Competition.
Scraptory has received major updates, and an announcement trailer is coming soon.
SUBMERGE showcases how creators can produce cinematic-quality 3D renders using Render Network without the cost, hardware demands, or workflow limitations of traditional local render farms.
A great result for a Patreon-funded project.
Witchcraft!
Yevhen Matiushenko's work is a third-place winner in the 80 Level's Showcase Competition.
Kaia also got new hairstyles and outfits.
Check out Nikita Vasilkov's take on Simon Gocal's Arlinoe, the Guardian of the Boy-King.
You can also mind-control your enemies and much more if you get tired of kicking everything.
You can create a visual style inspired by VHS tapes, security cams, and 90s camcorders.
This FlipBox includes 12 tutorials covering the full production pipeline, from cyberpunk worlds to realistic and surreal environments.
Enrique De la Garza absolutely cooked.
Create Minecraft-style props with VOXIFY by 3D Generalist Masoud Rezaei.
It will launch with over 100 maps compatible with this new system.
3D Artist Farrukh Abdur is back with a new learning video.
DX was inspired by Forza Horizon 4.
Thomas "Pilgrim" Butters released Levels.
Built for performance-critical indie games, where heap allocations and GC spikes can break smooth gameplay.
Baobab Studios discusses its evolution from VR animation pioneer to Roblox-focused transmedia company, including franchise development, Gen Z audiences, live-service storytelling, and adapting games like Deepwoken for film and television.
Material Artist Max Eno shares his first experiment with procedural tile creation.
The pilot of Glitch Productions' new show is out.
KIXEYE discusses the legacy of browser-based strategy games, long-term live operations, ethical free-to-play design, and why the studio is bringing Battle Pirates and War Commander to Steam.
Epic Games has officially teased Unreal Engine 6, positioning it as the successor to UE5 and the next major evolution of the company’s interconnected game development ecosystem.
Birds, as we all know, are dinosaurs. Yet there exists a higher being above birds that answer the question "what if dinosaurs really were birds?": dragons. I can only assume the exact same logic I've laid out here was used during the design process for the board game Wyrmspan, the dragon-oriented follow-up to the bird-focused strategy card game Wingspan. And now, much like Wingspan before it, Wyrmspan too is getting its own video game adaptation. Read more
While I've never really played all that much of The Sims (does maybe four hours of My Sims Kingdom from when I was 11 count?), my partner certainly has, expositing all of the surprisingly deep lore to me from time to time. Yet nothing shocks me more than hearing both the cost of expansions and the contents therewithin. What do you mean you have to hand over legal tender for bloody seasons? I'm supposed to pretend that this simulation of life exists in a post-weather world right up to the point of handing over 40 bucks? All of this to say, Paralives continues to sound convincing for the expansion fatigued Simmers thanks to its first roadmap. Read more
Sundays are for setting up a fan fiction writing group with your fellow RPG dungeon masters. You gather in a nice living room that often reminds visitors of the beloved previous tenants, and you write something. It's of indeterminate quality, at least until it's fully formed, mainly because you let it go where it wants as you go, rather than planning out a path ahead of time. It's a wild horse, and sometimes it bucks you off by, for example, having you roll into a metaphor you're unlikely to be able to maintain unless you suddenly write cowboy hats into existence for your gang of would-be masters. The words spill forth, occasionally dripping onto the carpet or being flung towards a metal spitoon in the corner, where they land with a satisfying ftannnggg sound. Sometimes you do just about manage to keep the metaphors going. Read more
Cruelty Squad is quite quietly influential. It obviously isn't the first game to opt for visuals that look are debatably an affront to every sense you have and a few you don't, but its surprise level of popularity has bled into the design sensibilities of other indie devs in the years following. Games like Splatter and Dungeons of Blood and Dream certainly feel like they fit into a post-Cruelty Squad world with their ocularly maximalist approach to visuals, and now Grindset T.V. will be joining them in the ranks, an "open world speedrunning first person platformer for the freaks." Read more
Another day, another Crimson Desert patch. The devs behind the everything but the kitchen sink RPG, Pearl Abyss, seem deadset on somehow eventually including the sink too, as while this update is a small one, it continues to add yet more features, things to discover, a pet to own, and a good bit more besides. Read more
Check out important updates on the future direction of Ucupaint as well.
Lux Aeterna discusses how satellite datasets, geological projections, and cinematic VFX techniques were used to recreate prehistoric Earth for Netflix’s The Dinosaurs.
Godot has unveiled a new official Asset Store, expanding beyond the engine’s existing Asset Library with commercial tools, plugins, and creator-driven marketplace features. Now in Beta.
The game has a lot of features. If you like to customize your character, explore, and create strategies, you'll probably enjoy this.
It's another work by Lotus Design that mixes 3D art and a traditional watercolor style.
If you enjoy games where you have to discover the secrets of an abandoned place, you'll probably like this.
This highly detailed Persian Warrior character is real-time rendered in Unreal Engine 5. What kind of stories do you picture her in?
The team at Fabraz discusses balancing nostalgia with sincerity, building momentum-driven gameplay in Unity, and redefining Bubsy’s identity for a new generation.
Focus Entertainment discusses the evolution from physical distributor to global publisher, the realities of modern AA publishing, live-service support, developer partnerships, and the strategy behind hits like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II.
If you like nature and would like to get inside a painting, check out this upcoming game called Cozy Country.
DrDebug is a user-friendly custom toolkit that makes it easy to debug shaders, materials, and rendering pipelines in real-time.
The movie surpassed KPop Demon Hunters during a similar period.
This marvelous work, created by Christine Jung, is a winner of 80 Level's showcase competition.
Bungie has confirmed that Destiny 2’s final major update will arrive in June, effectively ending the game’s long-running live content pipeline as the studio shifts focus toward new projects. Destiny 2 will go into maintenance mode.
The developers behind Coffee Talk Tokyo discuss moving the series to Japan, designing yokai-inspired characters, evolving branching narrative systems, and building cozy late-night atmosphere through music, staging, and environmental storytelling.
Check out a gallery of beautiful artwork from PRAGMATA, Borderlands 4, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Monument Valley 3, and more.
I can't stop watching it, even though I don't like spiders.
Building interactive 3D applications frequently hits a hard bottleneck. Design and training teams hold a clear vision for an experience, but bringing that vision to life requires specialized coding skills and complex development cycles. Reviews happen across disconnected channels, iteration moves slowly, and scaling from a simple prototype to a fully realized production environment often forces teams to rebuild projects from scratch.Unity Studio exists to eliminate these barriers. As an intuitive, web-based, no-code editor, Unity Studio empowers teams to create and share interactive 3D applications without relying on developer resources. You can import existing 3D data, assemble interactive experiences, and share them instantly across devices.Now, we are expanding Unity Studio to integrate seamlessly into your broader professional ecosystem. We’ve released two major updates to the Unity Studio platform: collaboration features and seamless Studio-to-Editor Export.These updates address the friction points technical leads, creative directors, and developers face when scaling 3D production. Here’s a closer look at how these new capabilities streamline team workflows, reduce communication silos, and bridge the gap between initial ideation and advanced production.Here’s a quick overview of what this update means for teams building 3D experiences at scale:New collaboration features help teams review, align, and iterate in real-time.In-context feedback reduces communication silos and accelerates decision-making.Studio-to-Editor Export enables a seamless path from rapid creation to advanced production.Together, these updates help teams move faster without rebuilding work or overloading development teams.Breaking down the pain points of scaling 3DBefore examining the new features, it helps to understand the core challenges these updates address. When organizations attempt to scale interactive 3D creation, they typically encounter three primary roadblocks:Fragmented feedback loops: Stakeholders review static renders, PDFs, or screen recordings instead of the actual interactive 3D environment. This leads to misaligned expectations and costly rework.Developer bottlenecks: Non-technical teams must wait in line for engineering resources just to tweak a material, adjust a lighting setup, or build a simple product configurator.Disconnected toolchains: Prototyping tools rarely connect directly to production engines. When a prototype needs advanced logic or custom integration, developers usually have to rebuild the entire application from the ground up inside the core engine.The latest Unity Studio updates address these challenges directly, turning 3D creation into a shared, scalable workflow rather than an isolated, specialized process.Unifying teams with advanced collaboration featuresInteractive 3D creation is always a team effort. Creative directors need to provide visual direction, technical leads must review asset optimization, and stakeholders need to experience the product before greenlighting it. Our new Collaboration features transform Unity Studio from a single-user workspace into a shared environment where teams align instantly.Direct 3D annotationsGathering actionable feedback on a 3D application is often difficult when using traditional tools. Unity Studio’s new annotation system allows you to add comments, questions, and feedback directly onto specific 3D assets within the Unity Studio scene.Contextual clarity: Stakeholders pinpoint exactly which component needs adjustment, reducing the confusion of vague email descriptions.Accelerated review cycles: Design teams see the feedback right where the work happens, allowing them to iterate faster.Centralized communication: All project feedback lives within the Unity Studio environment, reducing the risk of lost notes or versioning issues.Real-time multi-user editingWaiting for a colleague to close a file before you can make a change slows down progress. Unity Studio now supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work inside the same project simultaneously.Live co-creation: Design and training teams can construct a scene together, adjusting layouts and logic in real-time.Fast alignment: Creative directors can guide layout decisions live, watching as the team updates materials and positioning on the fly.Reducing silos: By bringing everyone into a single, accessible web-based editor, you reduce the divide between the people requesting the content and the people building it.These collaboration tools help your entire team stay synchronized. You move from ideation to approved interactive 3D content faster, with clarity across all departments.Bridging the gap: Seamless Unity Studio-to-Editor exportWhile Unity Studio provides a robust environment for no-code 3D creation, some projects eventually require custom logic, backend integrations, or advanced performance optimizations. Historically, moving a project from an approachable entry-level tool to an advanced development engine often meant discarding the prototype and starting over.The new Studio-to-Editor Export feature significantly changes this workflow. It creates a bidirectional, seamless bridge between the approachable web interface of Unity Studio and the capabilities of the Unity Editor.Start fast, scale without frictionTechnical leads and developers often hesitate to adopt no-code tools because they expect to hit functional limits. Studio-to-Editor Export ensures that the work done by non-developers serves as a foundation developers use for the final product.Preserve structural integrity: Export any Unity Studio project directly into the Unity Editor. Your hierarchies, materials, lighting setups, and basic logic transfer consistently.Empower non-technical creators: Designers and training managers can build most of an application on their own. They lay out the facility, assign the textures, and establish the user interface without writing code.Optimize developer time: Developers no longer have to act as asset integrators. They take the exported project and can focus on high-value tasks, such as integrating complex APIs, writing custom C# scripts, or optimizing for specific deployment hardware.Creating a unified ecosystemThis export capability positions Unity Studio not just as a standalone tool, but as an on-ramp into the broader Unity ecosystem. It acknowledges that true enterprise scaling requires both accessibility and extensibility.When your organization leverages this workflow, you reduce the friction between your design and engineering departments. Teams start fast in the browser, validate their ideas with stakeholders using real-time collaboration, and then hand off a functional base project to developers for advanced execution.Transform your 3D creation workflow todayBringing interactive 3D ideas to life no longer always requires complex development cycles or fragmented review processes. By combining the accessibility of a web-based, no-code editor with new tools for team alignment and engine integration, Unity Studio delivers a connected workflow for the modern enterprise.The introduction of real-time collaboration helps your creative and technical teams stay aligned, while the Studio-to-Editor Export feature supports projects as they scale in complexity without disrupting existing work. You can reduce the bottlenecks holding back your 3D initiatives.Experience how these new capabilities can accelerate your team workflows. Start a free trial of Unity Studio today to explore the web-based editor, or dive into Unity’s documentation to see how these tools integrate with your existing pipelines.
Capture long-term player value with new D28 Ad Revenue ROAS and Hybrid ROAS campaigns – now completing Unity’s current ROAS suite across IAP, Ad Revenue, and Hybrid monetization models. Following the launch of D28 IAP ROAS earlier this year, Unity Vector is now expanding to support two new campaign types: D28 Ad Revenue ROAS campaigns and D28 Hybrid ROAS campaigns. These new additions extend D28 optimization to advertisers monetizing through ads or a mix of ads and in-app purchases, making it easier to acquire users whose value builds over time through ad engagement, purchases, or both. With this launch, Unity Vector now offers a complete D28 ROAS suite across the major mobile game monetization models: IAP, Ad Revenue , and Hybrid (IAP + Ad Revenue)What’s NewD28 Ad Revenue ROASD28 Ad Revenue ROAS is designed for games where ad revenue is the primary monetization stream.Advertisers set a D28 ROAS target by country, and Unity Vector predicts each user’s likely ad revenue over 28 days, dynamically adjusting bids to optimize toward that target.This campaign type is especially useful for games where:ad engagement builds over timeretention is a key driver of monetizationa meaningful share of ad revenue happens beyond the first weekBased on Closed Beta results, D28 Ad Revenue ROAS delivers significantly higher retention and ARPU by leveraging Vector’s deep-funnel learnings.¹90% showed higher D28 retention vs D7, with a median uplift of +62%67% showed higher D28 total ARPU vs D7, with a median uplift of +68%D28 Hybrid ROASD28 Hybrid ROAS is designed for games where both in-app purchases and ad revenue contribute meaningfully to user value.Instead of optimizing separately for early IAP or early ad engagement, Hybrid D28 ROAS helps advertisers optimize toward a combined 28-day revenue signal. This makes it easier to acquire users whose total value would be underrepresented in a shorter or single-stream optimization window.Based on Closed Beta results, D28 Hybrid ROAS delivers significantly higher retention and ARPU by leveraging Vector’s deep-funnel learnings.¹88% showed higher D28 retention vs D7, with a median uplift of +76%59% showed higher D28 total ARPU vs D7, with a median uplift of +41%Why D28 MattersIn many mobile games, not all valuable users monetize in the same way or on the same timeline. Some players watch more ads after they build a habit, some make purchases later in their progression, and many hybrid users generate value through a mix of both.D0 and D7 find users who monetize early. D28 is designed to complement it by helping advertisers reach users whose value builds beyond the first week. These strategies work best together, not as replacements for one another.Ready to optimize beyond the first week?Log in to get started.¹ Based on internal Unity closed-beta analysis comparing D28 campaigns against paired D7 campaigns. Results reflect games included in the beta performance evaluation between March 8 – April 8, 2026 on a per-game basis. Individual results may vary.
Arnaud Jézéquel brought his signature painterly style to the character's look.
Cristhianc3d created this cool work with Blender and After Effects.
Ryan Amos joined us to talk about how it has been for him to work on different projects, the problems with production pipelines, building tools that can make the work easier, the connection between art and engineering, and his thoughts about technical art and its evolution.
Javier Benver walked us through the process of recreating Arcane’s Jinx in a painterly style, discussing character modeling and texturing in ZBrush.
The water looks so fresh and chill, I could definitely imagine myself living in that house.
Building interactive 3D applications frequently hits a hard bottleneck. Design and training teams hold a clear vision for an experience, but bringing that vision to life requires specialized coding skills and complex development cycles. Reviews happen across disconnected channels, iteration moves slowly, and scaling from a simple prototype to a fully realized production environment often forces teams to rebuild projects from scratch.Unity Studio exists to eliminate these barriers. As an intuitive, web-based, no-code editor, Unity Studio empowers teams to create and share interactive 3D applications without relying on developer resources. You can import existing 3D data, assemble interactive experiences, and share them instantly across devices.Now, we are expanding Unity Studio to integrate seamlessly into your broader professional ecosystem. We’ve released two major updates to the Unity Studio platform: collaboration features and seamless Studio-to-Editor Export.These updates address the friction points technical leads, creative directors, and developers face when scaling 3D production. Here’s a closer look at how these new capabilities streamline team workflows, reduce communication silos, and bridge the gap between initial ideation and advanced production.Here’s a quick overview of what this update means for teams building 3D experiences at scale:New collaboration features help teams review, align, and iterate in real-time.In-context feedback reduces communication silos and accelerates decision-making.Studio-to-Editor Export enables a seamless path from rapid creation to advanced production.Together, these updates help teams move faster without rebuilding work or overloading development teams.Breaking down the pain points of scaling 3DBefore examining the new features, it helps to understand the core challenges these updates address. When organizations attempt to scale interactive 3D creation, they typically encounter three primary roadblocks:Fragmented feedback loops: Stakeholders review static renders, PDFs, or screen recordings instead of the actual interactive 3D environment. This leads to misaligned expectations and costly rework.Developer bottlenecks: Non-technical teams must wait in line for engineering resources just to tweak a material, adjust a lighting setup, or build a simple product configurator.Disconnected toolchains: Prototyping tools rarely connect directly to production engines. When a prototype needs advanced logic or custom integration, developers usually have to rebuild the entire application from the ground up inside the core engine.The latest Unity Studio updates address these challenges directly, turning 3D creation into a shared, scalable workflow rather than an isolated, specialized process.Unifying teams with advanced collaboration featuresInteractive 3D creation is always a team effort. Creative directors need to provide visual direction, technical leads must review asset optimization, and stakeholders need to experience the product before greenlighting it. Our new Collaboration features transform Unity Studio from a single-user workspace into a shared environment where teams align instantly.Direct 3D annotationsGathering actionable feedback on a 3D application is often difficult when using traditional tools. Unity Studio’s new annotation system allows you to add comments, questions, and feedback directly onto specific 3D assets within the Unity Studio scene.Contextual clarity: Stakeholders pinpoint exactly which component needs adjustment, reducing the confusion of vague email descriptions.Accelerated review cycles: Design teams see the feedback right where the work happens, allowing them to iterate faster.Centralized communication: All project feedback lives within the Unity Studio environment, reducing the risk of lost notes or versioning issues.Real-time multi-user editingWaiting for a colleague to close a file before you can make a change slows down progress. Unity Studio now supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work inside the same project simultaneously.Live co-creation: Design and training teams can construct a scene together, adjusting layouts and logic in real-time.Fast alignment: Creative directors can guide layout decisions live, watching as the team updates materials and positioning on the fly.Reducing silos: By bringing everyone into a single, accessible web-based editor, you reduce the divide between the people requesting the content and the people building it.These collaboration tools help your entire team stay synchronized. You move from ideation to approved interactive 3D content faster, with clarity across all departments.Bridging the gap: Seamless Unity Studio-to-Editor exportWhile Unity Studio provides a robust environment for no-code 3D creation, some projects eventually require custom logic, backend integrations, or advanced performance optimizations. Historically, moving a project from an approachable entry-level tool to an advanced development engine often meant discarding the prototype and starting over.The new Studio-to-Editor Export feature significantly changes this workflow. It creates a bidirectional, seamless bridge between the approachable web interface of Unity Studio and the capabilities of the Unity Editor.Start fast, scale without frictionTechnical leads and developers often hesitate to adopt no-code tools because they expect to hit functional limits. Studio-to-Editor Export ensures that the work done by non-developers serves as a foundation developers use for the final product.Preserve structural integrity: Export any Unity Studio project directly into the Unity Editor. Your hierarchies, materials, lighting setups, and basic logic transfer consistently.Empower non-technical creators: Designers and training managers can build most of an application on their own. They lay out the facility, assign the textures, and establish the user interface without writing code.Optimize developer time: Developers no longer have to act as asset integrators. They take the exported project and can focus on high-value tasks, such as integrating complex APIs, writing custom C# scripts, or optimizing for specific deployment hardware.Creating a unified ecosystemThis export capability positions Unity Studio not just as a standalone tool, but as an on-ramp into the broader Unity ecosystem. It acknowledges that true enterprise scaling requires both accessibility and extensibility.When your organization leverages this workflow, you reduce the friction between your design and engineering departments. Teams start fast in the browser, validate their ideas with stakeholders using real-time collaboration, and then hand off a functional base project to developers for advanced execution.Transform your 3D creation workflow todayBringing interactive 3D ideas to life no longer always requires complex development cycles or fragmented review processes. By combining the accessibility of a web-based, no-code editor with new tools for team alignment and engine integration, Unity Studio delivers a connected workflow for the modern enterprise.The introduction of real-time collaboration helps your creative and technical teams stay aligned, while the Studio-to-Editor Export feature supports projects as they scale in complexity without disrupting existing work. You can reduce the bottlenecks holding back your 3D initiatives.Experience how these new capabilities can accelerate your team workflows. Start a free trial of Unity Studio today to explore the web-based editor, or dive into Unity’s documentation to see how these tools integrate with your existing pipelines.
"Fully procedural. More alive than ever."
David Badgerow has published a whole series of these videos.
Pau Moreno Digón is launching Deprecation Manager.
Jennifer Liao spoke with us about her contribution as a Software Engineer in the video game industry, focusing on Forza Horizon 5 and explaining how she improves rendering stability and ensures consistent visual quality across different hardware environments.
The developer behind Project Shadowglass discusses building a “true 3D pixel art” aesthetic in Godot through custom rendering techniques, pixel stabilization systems, retro immersive sim influences, and a highly experimental rendering pipeline.
ININ Games and Strictly Limited discuss retro game preservation, Japanese publishing partnerships, physical collector editions, Neo-Retro indie games, and the evolving business of restoring classic games for modern audiences.
Simone Mirandola shared the workflow behind the architectural structure he made with other artists for an unreleased project, explaining how they organized to bring everyone's work together, and discussing the modeling and texturing of the assets.
Voidmaw Games talked to us about the solo development of Katanaut, a fast-paced cyberpunk roguelite built around responsive katana combat, covering the development aspects from design and technical challenges to marketing and lessons learned along the way.
Take another closer look at the character creation of Overwatch. Did you like the Kiriko Cupid skin?
Get the Complete Building, Survival & Crafting Game Kit with a 50% off.
Big Polly Pocket vibes.
Angelo Ciervo showcased the elements that shaped this amazing environment.
tinynodes is intended for a public release.
Learn how to try it out yourself.
The newly rebranded studio positions itself as a full-service cinematic co-development partner, unifying performance capture, scanning, VFX, and engine-ready delivery under one roof.
DrawCall is one of the biggest bottlenecks in mobile game performance. This guide covers the fundamentals of GPU rendering pipeline, the root causes of DrawCall overhead, and practical optimization techniques including SRP Batcher, GPU Instancing, and batching strategies with real-world data.
Textures account for 60%+ of mobile game memory. This article compares ASTC, ETC2, and PVRTC across compression ratio, quality, and compatibility, with practical recommendations for different scenarios.
Shader variant explosion is a common Unity project issue. Learn how to manage shader keywords, leverage ShaderVariantCollection, and build automated tools to prevent variant bloat.
Game development outsourcing is an effective way to reduce costs. This guide compares in-house, staff augmentation, and full-cycle outsourcing across cost, efficiency, and risk to help game companies make informed decisions.
UE5's Lumen and Nanite are impressive but face severe challenges on mobile. This guide shares MonkeyGames' practical experience in UE5 mobile optimization, covering Forward Renderer, texture compression, LOD strategy, and custom lightweight pipelines.
Go's goroutine model is ideal for high-concurrency game servers. Learn how MonkeyGames rebuilt game backends with Go, achieving 82% operational cost reduction through goroutine pooling, memory pooling, and deterministic frame sync.
Game art outsourcing is an effective way to rapidly scale production capacity. This guide covers the complete process, document templates, and quality control methods for managing art outsourcing partnerships efficiently.
Performance optimization requires the right tools. This article covers the three core profiling tools used by MonkeyGames, including usage guides, key metric interpretation, and common bottleneck identification techniques.
io_uring is a revolutionary async I/O interface introduced in Linux 5.1+. Learn how MonkeyGames built a high-performance C++ game gateway with io_uring, achieving 10,000+ concurrent connections with sub-millisecond latency.
Game globalization is more than just translating text. Cultural adaptation, UI layout, font rendering, date formats, and payment habits are all critical. This guide shares MonkeyGames' localization experience from global game publishing.