Concerned Ape is taking a break from Haunted Chocolatier to work on Stardew Valley’s next update

Fans have likely spent endless seasons in the comfort of Stardew Valley, and now the chill life sim is getting even bigger. Stardew Valley’s creator Eric Barone (otherwise known as ConcernedApe) is “taking a break” from working on his highly-anticipated Haunted Chocolatier. Barone will instead work on Stardew Valley’s upcoming 1.6 update, which focuses on improvements for modders, alongside some new content as well.

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The Crucial T700 shows the promise, and limits, of PCIe 5.0 SSDs

For hardware that’s all about searing speed, advances in SSD tech can be a Beckettian waiting game. Microsoft’s DirectStorage has only so far only found support in the ho-hum Forspoken, and PCIe 5.0 SSDs still aren’t widely available despite the first compatible CPUs and motherboards launching in 2021.

However, the latter are coming soon, and I’ve been testing out an engineering sample of the Crucial T700 to see how PCIe 5.0 – also known as PCIe Gen5 – drives could perform in an honest-to-goodness gaming PC. The short version: with maximum read and write speeds that tower over the current generation’s best SSDs, albeit with less impact on game load times than such explosive pace would suggest.

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Nexon are suing Dark And Darker developers over copyright infringement

Publisher Nexon have filed a lawsuit against Ironmace Games, the developers behind the multiplayer looter Dark And Darker, accusing the studio and two individual developers of copyright infringement. The two Korean companies recently went public with their dispute, but now their beef has extended to the US legal system where Nexon is demanding a trial by jury.

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Shardpunk: Verminfall is a mashup of Darkest Dungeon, XCOM and Skaven

Shardpunk: Verminfall smooshes together a bunch of different ideas you’ll have seen before. It’s got turn-based tactical combat against rats with magic rifles in a steampunk world already in ruins. It’s got the need to keep on moving, lest an approaching rat horde overwhelm you. It’s got bunkers in which your party rests, de-stresses, and tools up before moving on.

Kind of a Fallouty, XCOMy, FTLy, Vermintidey mix, then – which together seems very cool. It’s out now, and there’s a demo.

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Fabledom is a fairytale citybuilder about romancing princes and princesses

Occasionally I wonder if the market for wholesome town builders has reached saturation, but then a trailer pops up for another one and I’m never less than intrigued. The latest is Fabledom, which promises the pastoral fields and castle wall construction I adore, then adds a twist by being set within a fairytale kingdom. It’s in early access now.

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Ghostwire: Tokyo has added new stuff, and I have a tourism tip for new players

If you’re starting playing Ghostwire: Tokyo after it came to Game Pass this week, I have a hot tip for you: prioritise upgrading movement abilities. The freedom to glide from rooftop to rooftop over haunted Tokyo will bring you so much more joy than any incremental damage upgrade. That’s the most important thing I have to say, that it makes for good virtuatourism.

Oh, and I suppose a free content arrived this week too, adding new side-missions, handy new combat abilities, and a new “rogue-lite” mode. The update, uh, apparently also added Denuvo, over a year after the game launched? Cool, cool.

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Look, just bloody play Loretta, damn you

I’d planned on starting with a line about how Loretta is an exception to how psychological horror games are about trudging around an abandoned mental hospital with the worst torch in the world until the girl from Ringu menaces you. It was already interesting and good enough pretty much right away to earn a recommendation, but after one of what will definitely be several playthroughs, leaving my praise that faint would do it a terrible injustice.

Loretta is goddamn excellent by any standard. Where other games use the mentally unwell narrator to explain everything away with “turns out you’re secretly crazy”, it’s instead just one layer of a complex horror mystery with splashes of drama and noir, whose surprises I’m straining not to spoil.

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Minecraft Pringles are a thing, and I’d quite like some

I’m always up for trying new and odd foods. I mean, I barbecued some womb in a restaurant in Japan recently, and I can confirm that it was like calamari but tougher, and, largely, a lot worse. So, that’s why the idea of Pringles releasing a limited-edition Minecraft Suspicious Stew flavour intrigues me! I would like to give it a go and see if it’s actually quite nice or makes me barf.

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Climb a Brutalist tower in this first-person platformer inspired by Minecraft parkour

I spent my morning trying and failing to rise from the depths of a vast Brutalist tower in Beton Brutal, a new first-person platformer. It’s a challenging climb yet a curiously chill vibe, perhaps because any time I fall all the way down, I’m delighted to be back surrounded by overgrown plants and sculptures rising from a pond. The developer says Beton Brutal “tries to replicate and build upon the parkour mechanics seen in Minecraft,” and I think I have a lot to learn. I didn’t even know Minecraft had parkour.

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The Logitech G305 Lightspeed wireless gaming mouse is down to £30

The Logitech G305 Lightspeed, a top-tier wireless gaming mouse that normally retails for £60, has dropped to £30 at Amazon UK this morning. Here’s why we rate it.

In short, the G305 offers a lightweight design, fast and reliable Lightspeed wireless, 300 hours of battery life and a comfortable shape, making it ideal for a wide range of use case for competitive gaming on a desktop PC to a light, comfy mouse for working on a laptop in a cafe.

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