Runescape developer Jagex’s publishing wing has picked up a promising indie release for its Jagex Partners label, making Melvor Idle an indie no longer. The idler game, similar to games like Clicker Heroes or Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, released on Steam last year and wears its influences from Jagex’s flagship Runescape very proudly.  Melvor Idle is a detailed, multi-track idle game that seeks to reimagine “the core components of the RuneScape franchise in a way that they could be enjoyed casually,” says the publisher. It’s a fairly feature-rich idle game, one that has a lot of things to…

Impressively large and strange roguelike Caves of Qud has a new update out on October 25, a big one adding two new regions, a new village, and a bunch of improvements for those looking to get into what can be an intimidating genre.  In short, the creators say that the patch, called Palladium Reef, has got: “Wander and Roleplay modes, 9 preset builds, gorgeous new chargen UI, an arcology plastered in coral, gutsmongers and organ markets, thousand-year-old frogs, biblically accurate angels, extradimensional clams, anarchist commune, an algae snack, something called “sunslag”, skin glitter, tongue tyrants, spaser weapons, star kraken, flowerfolk,…

Welcome to This Week in PC Gaming, a show where we take a look at the new games, updates, events, and more coming at you over the next week, every week, until the end of PC games as we know it.  This week we get up close and personal with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Age of Empires 4 brings back classic RTS action to the PC, Darkest Dungeon 2 promises to be the most stressful road trip ever,  The PC gaming forecast is taken over by scary games you should play this week in order to get in the…

James Ohlen was lead designer on both of BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate games, and now he’s head of Archetype Entertainment, an internal studio working on story-driven videogames for Wizards of the Coast. Apparently he also had time to whip up a supplement for Dungeons & Dragons based on Baldur’s Gate, with help from some other ex-BioWare veterans (Drew Karpyshyn, Brent Knowles, and Jesse Sky are in the credits).  Minsc & Boo’s Journal of Villainy contains write-ups of characters from both the original games statted for D&D 5th edition. Some are presented as potential patrons for your characters, others as opponents. It…

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random obscure games back into the light. This week, the adventure that brought Tolkien’s epic fantasy to life like never before—using text! Wait, hang on… In the middle of the earth, in the land of the Shire, lives a brave little hobbit who we all admire. With his long wooden pipe, and fuzzy woolly toes, he lives in a hobbit-hole and everybody knows him. Bilbo. Bilbo Baggins. He’s only three feet tall. Yes, Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins. The bravest little hobbit of them all. Well,…

The latest marketing push for Call of Duty: Vanguard wants you to believe its graphics are so realistic that conflict photographers can’t tell the difference between the videogame and reality. “Call of Duty: Vanguard captures the epic intimacy of World War II in an incredibly immersive manner,” said chief marketing officer Fernando Machado, presumably keeping a straight face. A pair of photojournalists were given “special camera-like portals [to enter] into the game engine itself,” where they captured images just as they would if they were photographing a real conflict. Naturally, they also raved about how realistic the experience was: “As…

Through November 5, 2021 players on Battlenet can change the battletag associated with their Overwatch account for free. It’s only available for the limited time through the 5th of November, and you can only grab it if you don’t already have a free name change on your account.  So if you already have one, use it and snag another free one, I guess. It’s a great opportunity if you, like Blizzard, regret the name you chose. Such as, for example, a prominent character in your shooter.  For you, however, it’s probably more like when I chose my StarCraft username back…

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition system requirements have been revealed via the Rockstar Store, and things have come a long way since 2005, when GTA: San Andreas was released on PC. Back then, visiting Los Santos called for only a GeForce 3 video card, though the GeForce 6—released a year before—was recommended for seeing all of CJ’s possible hairstyles at their most glorious. You also needed a whole 256MB of RAM, with 384MB recommended and a parenthetical note adding “the more the better!”  In 2021’s version, you’ll need a GeForce GTX 760 or a Radeon R9 280,…

October was seconds old when people started declaring the start of spooky season, but Halloween is the one yearly event we’re happy to let claim an entire month. No one complains when signs for costume shops start appearing on the sides of abandoned department store buildings—it’s exciting, unlike the cloying Christmas songs that later invade all the still-operating department stores sometime in November. (It did, however, feel a bit tragic to see the Spirit Halloween sign on the side of an old Fry’s Electronics, the iconic Silicon Valley electronics chain that went out of business earlier this year.) Likewise, in-game…

Content creator Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter is facing criticism over a line of gamer-focused skincare products called Rflct that promise to “protect against and repair blue light damage” caused by exposure to digital screens.  There is no medical consensus that exposure to blue light through screens causes harm. “No one has established an independent causal association between blue light coming from the computer and visual symptoms,” Dr. John Lawrenson, a professor of clinical visual science at City, University of London told The New York Times in February. A prominent YouTuber and streamer promoting what to some appeared to be gaming-branded pseudoscience…