As is known, Microsoft plans to release Project Helix - a hybrid console and PC running Windows with a special Xbox Mode. The device will feature an architecture extremely close to that of a standard PC and will be able to run regular PC versions of games.

If PlayStation games continued to be released on Steam or the Epic Games Store, owners of the new generation of Xbox consoles could freely purchase and play Sony exclusives directly on Microsoft's hardware. The very essence of brand competition would be diluted, as Helix would become the ultimate device, combining the libraries of both platforms.

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Microsoft is strengthening its console division. And it doesn't look like a joke.

Xbox has brought in two key specialists - Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet. Ball is a bestselling author of The Metaverse and a former Amazon Studios strategist. Van Vliet is a former engineering director for Microsoft Teams (yes, the one who survived the COVID era) and an Azure OpenAI specialist.

Ball becomes Xbox's new Chief Strategy Officer. He already runs Epyllion, an investment firm focused on film, TV, and games. His arrival is a clear signal: Xbox is thinking beyond traditional consoles.

Van Vliet is the new CTO. With his background, he could boost cloud tech and AI tools. That's a serious claim to technological leadership.

On top of that, Chris Schnakenberg has moved over from Activision Blizzard. He's now Corporate VP of Partnerships and Business Development, working with external publishers and studios.

PlayStation might not need to panic - but it should definitely pay attention. Xbox is assembling a strong team of strategists, tech experts, and dealmakers. The console war is entering a new phase. We'll grab the popcorn.

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Remember Machinarium, Creaks, Samorost? Those cozy puzzle games that warmed your heart? The folks at Amanita Design just released their new game.

It's called Phonopolis.

A story about Felix - a young dustman who accidentally becomes the only person aware of a looming threat. The Leader is preparing the "Absolute Tone", a sound so powerful it will strip every citizen of their will. Forever.

Felix has to break the system. Literally.

What does it look like?
The entire world is made of cardboard. By hand. Every building, every character, even smoke and fire - painted on paper and brought into a 3D world. Animation runs at 12 FPS, just like classic stop motion films.

Inspired by constructivism, futurism, and the works of Čapek and Orwell. It looks like a museum exhibit - but you can actually play it.

How does it play?
Puzzles. Lots of them. All integrated into the environment. Turn walls, shuffle floors, control machinery, tear paper curtains. Even the loudspeakers that control the city, you can use them for good.

The music is by Tomáš Dvořák (Floex) - the same genius behind the Machinarium and Samorost 3 soundtracks.

Who is this for?

— Fans of cozy puzzles with no action
— Anyone who appreciates handcrafted visuals
— People who got emotional over a little flower in Machinarium
— Those who want to topple a cardboard dictatorship with a smile

Amanita Design doesn't make bad games. Phonopolis is yet another proof. Jump in, solve puzzles, admire the art. Save the city. From cardboard. From the Leader. And maybe from yourself.

⬇️ Steam page is live, grab it today

Phonopolis.

Safe space. What you say here stays here.

I'll go first:

I have never finished Red Dead Redemption 2. I've started it four times. I get to chapter three, something happens in real life, I stop, and I can't make myself go back because I know what's coming for Arthur and I'm not ready.

Your turn. The worse the confession the better.

Some examples if you need them:

• A game you lied about finishing
• A genre you secretly love but won't admit
• A game everyone hates that you think is actually good
• The easiest game you rage-quit

No judgment. We're all frauds here.

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A single upgrade in the skill tree of Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred expansion turned the hunt for loot into absolute madness.

With one click, you can gain so much power that Blizzard never planned to give you and the ground becomes covered with so much loot that the game starts to break.

The new activity skill trees in Lord of Hatred allow players to customize different dungeon types, adding bonus loot and stronger bosses. Many players initially overlooked the option to resurrect slain enemies while a shrine buff is active.

But now the community has realized the true potential of this mechanic - it can trigger a chain reaction of endlessly respawning treasure goblins, the most profitable monsters in Diablo 4.

YouTuber FP proved that the "Gauntlet" upgrade for nightmare dungeons can bring in over 2 000 treasure goblins in a single run - in FP's case, that number was 2 401.

But as the player warns, that's too many goblins for one person. Piles of loot start disappearing because the game can't handle that many items on the ground - a kind of cosmic punishment for greed.

FP's video is essentially a demonstration of a farming strategy that outpaces everything else in the game - as long as you don't push it too far. The trick requires finding a dungeon with guaranteed shrines and resetting it until treasure goblins spawn - a rare event that can take time.

Before killing the goblins, you need to plan a route to activate several shrines in a row. All goblins killed while a shrine buff is active will respawn after it ends, giving you a window to activate the next shrine and continue the chain.

"Gelatinous" goblins are especially valuable, as they split into several smaller ones when killed. Those small goblins respawn at full size, leading to exponential growth with each cycle.

Barbarian players using the popular Whirlwind build, like FP himself, can simply spin through the dungeon without really looking at what's happening beneath layers of item text. Everyone else should use the new loot filter settings in Lord of Hatred to only show relevant items. A podcast or video playing in the background while sorting through mountains of loot also helps.

FP admitted he lost almost all of his loot and plans to be more modest next time. He hopes a more reasonable 399 goblins will allow the game to keep the rewards.

That said, according to Diablo lore, demons never truly die - they respawn in the depths of hell. So FP may be setting himself up for serious trouble when the goblin army returns for its treasure.

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The game is now available on PC via Steam.

On May 20, the stealth-action game Thick As Thieves - developed under the watchful guidance of the legendary Warren Spector, who previously worked on Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Thief: Deadly Shadows - was released on PC.

The action of Thick As Thieves takes place in an alternate version of the Scottish city of Kilcarne. The developers call the release just the beginning - in the future, they plan to expand the game's world and tell new stories through additional content.

At launch, Thick As Thieves offers an introductory campaign lasting at least four hours. It includes two playable thief characters, two maps, 16 contracts, and six unique gadgets and tools.

The project can be played both solo and in two-player co-op. Players will take on contracts, infiltrate guarded locations, hunt for valuable loot, and gradually master the art of thievery. Each heist promises to be unique thanks to dynamic elements and varied approaches to gameplay.

GAME HERE!

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Remember the Cyberpunk 2077 chaos? And the struggles with the first Witcher remake? Well, the devs themselves admitted: yes, it was bad. But now they'll learn from it. Maybe.

At the Digital Dragons conference, CD Projekt RED's technical staff gave a confession. Turns out, back when the studio was small, no one expected them to become a giant. They kept no documentation. Knowledge was passed down "verbally" - senior devs telling junior devs over a cup of coffee.

By the time they started working on Cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher remake, they realized: there is no knowledge base. Nothing. Just good old oral tradition.

>"Maybe some files are sitting on ancient servers," says Adrian Fulneczek. "But finding them would cost a ton of time and money. We don't want to do that."

Now the studio has to reverse engineer its own old games. Taking apart their own legacy, piece by piece.

Lesson learned? Let's hope so. Because "coffee knowledge" is cute - but for AAA development, proper documentation is probably better.

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Within the first few hours of the Xbox Player Voice launch, users pushed "EXCLUSIVES" to the top of the request list. There are already nearly 1 000 comments - some argue that without exclusives, the console has lost its identity and reason to buy. Others say the damage is already done and there's no turning back.

Meanwhile, PlayStation literally just confirmed the return of exclusives yesterday. Nintendo never even flinched.

Whose side are you on?

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A classic discussion has resurfaced on gaming forums: why have modern titles almost stopped giving players a physical map that you have to pull out and study?

The trigger was a screenshot from 2008's Far Cry 2, where the protagonist holds a paper map and a portable PDA to track his position.

The question itself is somewhat misleading. Even at the time of Far Cry 2's release, this approach was a rarity - maps in games were typically displayed as a translucent overlay on the screen or a standard menu window.

The debate also touches on a broader shift in design philosophy. The more a game guides players with markers and quest arrows, the less incentive level designers have to build landmarks into the world itself - noticeable buildings, natural focal points, narrative clues.

What some gamers truly mourn is this shift, rather than paper maps themselves.

Truly "diegetic" interfaces were rare: aside from Far Cry 2, 2008 saw similar attempts from Dead Space, Fallout 3, and Alone in the Dark.

Commenters also examined the technical side of the issue. As gaming veterans note, it's difficult to implement familiar conveniences on a physical map - filters, search queries, marker sorting, layers with different content. Any attempt to do so breaks the illusion of a real object in the character's hands.

There's also a gameplay reason. A map that doesn't pause the game turns studying it into a risk - while the hero looks at a piece of paper, they can be attacked. The animation of unfolding the map, aiming, or switching layers also takes time, which quickly becomes irritating in dynamic scenes.

The media response also played a role. Far Cry 2 was criticized precisely for its map - some reviewers called it "inconvenient," others "unnatural" because player and objective markers moved across the paper on their own. Against the backdrop of 2008's gaming landscape - where most titles used simple picture-based maps - such criticism partially closed the door to other studios willing to experiment.

The modern AAA segment has almost entirely moved to interactive maps with markers, points of interest icons, filters, and auto-routing. The logic is simple: the wider the target audience, the less willing it is to figure out unconventional interfaces. Immersive solutions remain the domain of niche genres - soulslikes, survival games, and VR titles, where time spent learning the interface is considered part of the pact with the player.

The idea hasn't died entirely. The Metro series continues to make physical objects the center of its interface, a map on a tablet in your hands, a gas mask timer on your wristwatch, inventory as a backpack.

A similar approach is found in Amnesia: The Bunker, which has no HUD at all. You count bullets by looking at the revolver cylinder, assess health by wounds on the character, and study the map on the wall of a save room.

More recent examples include the Dead Space series (and its remake), Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with its journal instead of a menu, Firewatch with its paper map and compass, and both parts of The Forest. Silent Hill 2 Remake kept the tradition of hand-drawn maps that the hero updates as they explore.

Hell is Us and Road to Vostok are two recent titles specifically designed around the absence of handholding and active environmental reading.

VR games stand apart. Into the Radius, Behemoth, Arken Age, the VR version of Resident Evil Village - all of them, one way or another, use physical interfaces that the player pulls out with their own virtual hand. The format itself pushes for this solution, and in VR, it's the norm rather than the exception.

An immersive interface also awaits Metro 2039 from 4A Games. The studio has promised a completely UI-free system - health is read from breathing and visible wounds, bullets are counted through transparent magazines, objectives are marked with charcoal notes on a paper map, and radiation is tracked with a wrist-mounted Geiger counter.

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Analysts from Newzoo have observed a tectonic shift in the gaming industry: while consoles become more expensive and major publishers try to normalize the $70 price tag, gamers are increasingly voting with their wallets for budget releases.

Market research in the US and key European countries shows that the $25 psychological threshold has become a significant barrier to sales. This trend has hit the PC platform the hardest, where sales of new releases priced under $30 have skyrocketed by an impressive 156% since 2022.

The only downside is that the charts are now dominated by "party slop," cobbled together for the price of a bag of chips.

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The other day, director Nicolas Winding Refn - who lent his likeness to Hideo Kojima's character, announced his first film in 10 years, titled Her Personal Hell.

The idea for the new project came to Nicolas after he experienced clinical death due to heart disease three years ago. Refn was dead for 20 minutes. When doctors brought him back, he realized he wanted to make movies again.

Refn's character in Death Stranding also has heart problems: Heartman dies every 21 minutes and is revived three minutes later. Just like Nicolas Winding Refn in real life, Heartman draws inspiration from death.

Her Personal Hell will be released in theaters on July 24.

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The entrance is through a tree stump. Inside: a clay stove, a place to sleep, and a projector for the console.

No extra light. No notifications. No "why aren't you at work?" Just earth, fire, and a gamepad.

Men dream of one thing and it's different for everyone. Some want a Ferrari. Some want silence in the woods with a controller and a warm drink.

This isn't just a hideout. It's architectural "leave me alone." Give this guy a grant.

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Sifu is a brutal and stylish action game where the protagonist, a kung fu student, seeks revenge against the enemies who murdered his family. The game's standout feature is the aging mechanic: with each death, the character grows older, gaining more power and new abilities. The combat system of Sifu is the pinnacle of hand-to-hand combat mastery.

The main strength of Sifu lies in its depth and realism within the genre. The combat is based on realistic kung fu principles. Every punch, block, dodge and grab has weight and consequences. The player must carefully study enemy attack patterns, choose the right moment to counter, and use the environment. The "structure" system, which governs enemy defense - along with the ability to break opponents' balance, turns every fight into a thrilling dance of violence. Endless move combos and upgrade options make Sifu a game you can keep mastering forever.

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Simple rules. One comment = one sentence. Must follow from the previous comment. No killing the main character before comment 50. No resetting the story.

I'll start:

"The village had been burning for three days before anyone noticed the fire wasn't spreading - it was waiting."

Next person continues. Let's see where this goes.

(Best story threads get compiled into a full post at the end of the week.)

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Not "buy Bitcoin" or "study harder." Something real. Something only another gamer would understand.

I'll go first:

"The hours aren't wasted. You'll understand why later."

Your turn. One sentence. One truth. What do you tell the kid on the floor in front of the TV who has no idea what's about to become important to them?

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YouTuber agabadoogi imagined what Toby Fox's project would look like if it had been released on PS2 back in 2001.

They redesigned the locations, characters, and atmosphere in the style of JRPGs from that era. Soft textures, simple models, a touch of grit and suddenly you're craving a dusty disc drive, a memory card, and a Friday night with no internet.

Deltarune in this style doesn't look like a fan project. It looks like a lost classic you accidentally discover on a bootleg disc with 30 random games.

Respect to Toby Fox and the PS2 era - we didn't deserve it, but we miss it dearly.

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