Pontogay

When everyone said they wanted Sims to have more interesting lives, I don’t think any of us meant incest. Nor did EA intend it, so a Sims 4 patch yesterday has addressed the sudden tendency for Sims to try pursuing a romance with their relations.

A few different bugs cropped up after the romance-focused Sims 4 Lovestruck expansion and a base game update last week but the two most prominent were Sims being way too mean to each other for no particular reason and Sims deciding to develop illicit relationships with their family members. It was happening through the “Neighborhood Stories” feature which allows Sims outside your played family to have life milestones of their own like marriages, pregnancies, job changes, or accidental deaths without your direction. Nice, in …

First spotted by AlphaBetaGamer, Van Hellswing’s free demo already gets my hearty recommendation. It’s basically like Devil Daggers⁠—horde mode PFS survival against floating, swarming enemies⁠—except you’re trapped in a vertically complex arena and given a sick grappling hook.

That movement’s really the star of the show here. Despite the name, Van Hellswing’s signature move is more of a Zelda hookshot deal than a Titanfall, Spiderman swing one, but it’s a joy to use. It caps off a moveset that also includes a double jump, dash, wall run, and bunnyhopping, and developer Codeclue has really made the perfect bedrock for almost any kind of shooter they wanted, not just a survival arena.

Your sole weapon is a double barrel flintlock, which you use…

Don’t worry if you’re close to running out of guesses in today’s Wordle, because all the help you need is right here. You’ll find a fresh clue for the September 11 (814) just below, alongside our general tips and advice. And if you need something stronger, today’s Wordle answer is never more than a click away.

Well I got today’s solution, but I wish it hadn’t taken an embarrassingly long time, as well as every go on the board, to do so. I had everything I needed right in front of me quite early on, I just seemed to miss the woods for the trees today.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Monday, September 11

Someone or something that had been around longer than something else could be called the _____ of the two. Or to put it more simply: the opp…

I’m kind of amazed by how accurate DORF Real-Time Strategic Conflict feels to a specific era of classic RTS games. From the chunky animations, to the synth-heavy music, to the early 3D look of its scurrying little units, it’s about as evocative of Command & Conquer and its ilk as you could possibly get in 2023. Just look at it in motion.  

Promising “elaborate base-building, resource-gathering, and massive battles with powerful and unique units”, the game has been in development by a team of just two people since September last year via a Patreon page. There, supporters are able to vote on what features and units they want to see in the game. Though considering they recently voted to keep the name as-is rather than change it to the brilliant ‘Wartrash’, I’m not sure they …

Vampire survival game V Rising remains in early access, and is celebrating its first anniversary with the Gloomrot expansion: In which developer Stunlock Studios has basically said sod it, let’s add Frankenstein’s monster. The studio has now released a trailer for the expansion, which arrives on May 17, but the big takeaway for me is just how awesome the new castles look.

The Gloomrot expansion adds a ton of new stuff to the game, but what has fans most excited is the multi-level building. A big part of V Rising’s vampire fantasy is building your own gothic crib from which to terrorise the world, replete with ornate furnishings and all the Dracula trappings one could wish for. There was a bit of an issue though: The castles could only have one floor, which led players to th…

Just to say it up front: I’m very smart. My mom says so. That means it’s totally fine that, according to recent Tweets from former BioWare cinematic designer John Ebenger, I’ve been bamboozled into thinking my characters are moving faster when they aren’t, thanks to techniques like “speed lines” and “whooshing sounds.” Yes, I’ve basically fallen for the video game equivalent of when you trick a dog by pretending to throw something. I’m not at all upset and I’m handling it very well.

We owe this latest reveal of game developer villainy to Twitter user @dyingnome, who tweeted on Saturday that a Dragon Age: Inquisition dev once admitted that they “just added some wind lines” to obscure the fact that DA:I horses weren’t actually going any faster while sprinting. Ebenger quoted …

Valve loves tweaking and futzing with Steam to ensure that everything is running just so. Some of it is front-facing, like the recent beta client update that added “game notes” and a slew of other new features, and some happens more in the background—for instance, the discount policy changes for developers it rolled out in early 2022. But even by those measures, the changes that went live today are really granular.

Steam store pages are now limited to just two videos on the left-hand side of the thumbnail row. Developers can add as many as they like, but any excess videos will be display on the right-hand of the thumbnail row, after the screenshots. Page owners can set which two videos they want before the screenshots, and which will come after, through the…