Hollow Knight: Silksong will be playable at Gamescom, as Xbox offer first chances to fiddle with the ROG Xbox Ally

A demo of Hollow Knight: Silksong will be playable at this year’s Gamescom, with Microsoft set to show it off in tandem with the first public exhibition of the ROG Xbox Ally handheld.

Yep, the fates of this long-awaited Metroidvania sequel and Asus’ Xbox-branded portable PC continue to intertwine, like star-crossed lovers. Well, aside from how star-crossed lovers are traditionally bound by love and crossed stars, not a desire to make money and also a desire to make more money.

Read more

Cyberpunk 2077 modder makes NPC cleanliness optional in order to avoid popular “non-sexy mods” being “hidden unnecessarily”

The Cyberpunk 2077 modder behind a bunch of the game’s most popular romance mods is set to make NPC showering an optional extra in two of their works, with the hopes that these “non-sexy mods” will no longer be “hidden unnecessarily”.

Their decision comes as a response to recent changes Nexus Mods have made regarding creations that’re classed as “adult”, something the modding site’s done as a result of the Online Safety Act coming into force in the UK. The legislation’s seen the likes of social media and porn sites also have to adopt new age verification checks before allowing users to access a range of content deemed unsuitable for children.

Read more

A spidery new mech crawls onto the eternal battlefield of The Forever Winter

Dusty extract-o-shooter The Forever Winter got an update over the weekend that added another mech to the growing list of horrifying war machines that roam its post-apocalyptic world looking for fleshy idiots to squash and eat. “The StiltWalker is a multi-legged destruction machine: equipped with multiple missile and machinegun weapon systems,” say the developers in an update post on Steam. Pfft. What’s so scary about that? Just shoot some rockets at it.

“It is also equipped with a point defense system that can detonate explosive munitions that are fired at it from a distance.”

Ah. Well. Nevertheless.

Read more

Steam’s redesigned store menu is out in beta, so you can take the freshly embiggened search bar for a spin

Valve have released a revamped Steam store menu in beta, so folks can give a number of changes a whirl and offer feedback ahead of the full rollout.

As the pipe-themed company wrote in a news post about the menu emerging from the labs for this testing, the main goal of its changes is to offer “easier access to the places Steam users most frequently visit”. Insert joke about the sorts of weird stuff one can have lurking in their Steam library here.

Read more

My best deals for PC gamers today include an Alienware x16 laptop and savings on premium keyboards and mice

Alienware’s Aurora mid‑range x16 laptop deal is the highlight today, coming in at the same price as the entry‑level model but with a stronger CPU. It’s effectively a free upgrade for anyone shopping smart. To round things out we’ve pulled together some of the best gaming keyboards and mice currently discounted and ready for headshots. Let’s get into it.

Read more

Devolver sign up to publish Quarantine Zone, in which you run the checkpoint during a zombie apocalypse

In Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, you play one of the hazmat-sporting goons at a government checkpoint during a zombie apocalypse. Your job is to let refugees through the gate one by one, and appraise them for evidence of infection. You know the kind of thing: hidden bite marks, weird heartbeats, high temperatures, people ripping your face off without showing appropriate documentation, etcetera.

Read more

Once again, I have been flanked by ginger cats the size of office buildings in a racing game

“You OK babe? You’ve barely touched your boost?” mentions a helpful fish in the trailer for roguelike racer Reality Drift, thus setting the new standard for all reminder pop-ups going forward. I tabbed this one because the phrase “racing game where your choices matter” intrigued me. I was unaware of the helpful fish at this point. Or the road signs that offer you a choice between ‘space’ ‘cat land’, and ‘hell’. Here’s a visual compilation of suchlike images, with added movement.

Read more

Indie gaming’s only three genres have inevitably converged into grimdark Balatro with a whimsical egg idiot

Whimsy, grimdark, and gambling? And a roguelike to boot?! In my 2025 indie game? Eh, go on then. It looks neat. The trailer below features a desolate, hellish area called “The Pläins öf Päin” (umlauts mine) inhabited by lone egg idiot named ‘eggo’. A curse on the egg idiot and his cracked shell, and a curse on the world for allowing this kind of tomfoolery to proliferate unchallenged.

Read more

Ubisoft date Assassin’s Creed Shadows New Game+ mode alongside plans to make its open world more convenient

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will get a New Game+ mode on 29th July, Ubisoft have announced in a video about their summer plans for the feudal Japanese open world stab-me-do. They’re also working on a free Assassin’s Creed Shadows update that lets you fast-forward the time of day, an ability that would certainly serve me well right now, as I contemplate the seven grim hours of video game journalism that separate me from the weekend.

Read more