You have a Swedish hot tub, a Korean game jam, and that pesky emotion called jealousy to thank for Peak

How does one come up with, and subsequently make, Peak? Well, it sounds like you just kind of have to do it in weird ways. If you’ve missed it, Peak isn’t just slang you’ve heard your teen use to denote something being really good, it’s a co-op video game about climbing mountains with your friends and having a very good/ bad time while doing so. The bulk of work was also done in a single month as part of a collaborative game jam between Another Crab’s Treasure developer Aggro Crab and Content Warning developer Landfall. And in an interview with PC Gamer, a couple of the devs that worked on Peak have shared a little insight into how it got made.

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Justice for faces as Jurassic World Evolution 3 drops its AI-generated scientist portraits

Upcoming park management/unethical science sim Jurassic World Evolution 3 will no longer feature generative AI. Publisher-developers Frontier Developments had previously disclosed that the oft-rubbish technology would be used to create scientist portraits for your uneaten staff. That disclosure has now vanished from the game’s Steam page, with the removal of the genAI material confirmed outright in a statement to Game Watcher.

“We have removed the use of generative AI for scientists’ portraits in Jurassic World Evolution 3 following some initial feedback,” reads the statement. “The team are continuing their diligent work on the game and are very much looking forward to launching on 21 October.”

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Disco Elysium has yet another heir in Pera Coda, a Turkish timeloop RPG set in a dreamlike version of Istanbul

If ever there was a game I didn’t expect to spawn a horde of spiritual successors from startup companies of varying dubiety, that game was celebrated commie hangover simulator Disco Elysium. And yet here we are with yet another claimant to the dance floor, Pera Coda. In fairness, it takes inspiration from a lot more than just ZA/UM’s RPG, but Disco Elysium is mentioned rather prominently in the marketing.

Created by Falan, a Turkish team founded by three architecture students, Pera Coda is a timeloop story set in a “surreal”, “neon-noir” Istanbul, in which you play an attorney, Deniz, who is navigating a purgatory inspired by Bardo in Buddhism. The city is described as “both a stage and a mirror, where East meets West, chaos meets calm, and each district reflects a piece of your fragmented self.” Certainly sounds quite Revacholian. Here’s a teaser trailer.

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Helldivers 2’s latest patch nerfs Leviathans, and might have snuck that review bomb cape in behind-the-scenes

It’s Tuesday, so Helldivers 2 has gotten a fresh patch. This one makes the Illuminate’s flying death slugs easier to battle and looks like it might have laid the groundwork for the game’s long-awaited review bomb cape.

Those Leviathan balancing tweaks have come after players continued to struggle to beat the airborne enemy, despite Arrowhead having previously added a spotlight effect to the attack it can use to one-shot your bottom into oblivion.

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Oblivion Remastered gets Fallout 4-style building from modder who wants to collaborate on a full settlement system

Yep, that sound you can hear is the pounding footsteps of a certain Fallout 4 minutefellow. He’s coming to tell you that another Oblivion Remastered settlement may soon need your help, as a modder‘s figured out how to let folks build stuff using the likes of rocks and beams as they play.

It’s not quite got all the bells and whistles of a full settlement building system yet, but its creator is hoping to find someone to collab with on putting together exactly that.

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Mighty Civilization 7 update adds Huge maps, but beware, your PC might struggle to run them

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII has received another big update, as the rather divisive 4X strategy game wrangles with a mostly negative user review consensus on Steam.

The latest Civ 7 update adds large and huge maps, each with a default of 10 players in single player and eight (including AI) in multiplayer. Developers Firaxis are working on supporting 12 players for Huge maps, but need more time to ensure that this doesn’t scuttle game stability and performance. As it is, they caution that “bigger maps have bigger hardware demands” and that you might see “slower turn times or performance drops, especially on lower end hardware.”

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Minecrafty sandbox game Hytale cancelled after a decade in development, as Hypixel Studios prepare to close

Six or so years on from an announcement trailer that made it clear people had an appetite for their game’s Minecrafty building and survival shenanigans (it’s got 61 million views to date), Hypixel Studios have announced that Hytale has been cancelled. On top of that, the studio themselves are gearing up for closure.

Hytale’s development kicked off all the way back in 2015, with its devs being the folks behind the huge Hypixel Minecraft server. League of Legends publisher Riot Games bought the studio in 2020, not long after we learned that Hytale would have undead chickens, and not long before the game’s target release year started being pushed back.

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Layoffs at Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 studio as Paradox promise RPG will still release in October

Still Wakes The Deep and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 developers The Chinese Room have laid off a number of staff, seemingly as part of parent company Sumo Digital’s wider strategic decision in February 2025 to move away from original game creation and “focus exclusively on development services for partners”.

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An entire crab army comes to Total War: Warhammer 3 in the crustacean nation mod

Carcinisation comes for us all, in time. Today, it is Total War: Warhammer 3‘s turn. The crustacean nation mod adds four legendary lords, heroes, 27 crabulous units, new spells, plus custom tech and building trees for a complete crab-paign experience. It would have been shellfish of me not to share, if not downright altruistic to avoid any and all crab puns.

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Dune: Awakening’s Deep Desert is getting “partial warfare” PvE areas so you can gather endgame resources without being PvPed to death

Good news if you’ve been a bit frustrated with how Dune: Awakening handles PvE and PvP, specifically in terms of its treacherous Deep Desert. The game’s creative director Joel Bylos has announced some changes coming in response to player feedback on both those and the Landsraad.

Basically, it looks like Funcom have switched up their plans to take the concerns folks have cited into account, aiming for a nice compromise between the original ideas and the practicalities of what’s been happening since the game dropped in full.

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